The Money That Money Can't Buy c-3 Read online

  "I beg your pardon," Istvan said humbly. "This is a door of considerably ingenuity." Boris moved forward to it, and Istvan grabbed his arm, then gabbled as Boris looked down at the restraining hand: "You mustn't go inside the doorframe. See where it is guarded." His finger, carefully out of range, pointed to pairs of holes set in the sides of the doorframe, and at the top and bottom.

  "Photoelectric cells," he said. "Each pair makes a circuit. Break the circuit and you set off an alarm. Perhaps you do more." He smiled. "This is very thorough. Sometimes with photoelectric cells it is possible to jump over them, or slide beneath them. Here there is no chance. The biggest gap is only ten centimeters square."

  He brought his box carefully close to the door, stood on it, and peered at one of the cells, then another, then a third.

  "How delightful," he said. "The wire is run into the woodwork. I have only a tiny piece to cut at." He got down to look at the cells that led into the door lintel. "And from beneath, no wire shows at all." He sighed. "It will take a long time, I'm afraid."

  "We've got all day," Boris said.

  Craig and Boris squatted, privileged pupils, and watched the master at work. With a long, thin chisel he cut into the wood near the wires to the photoelectric cells, and exposed them. One by one the rubber-sheathed pairs of copper strands came into view. Craig noticed that to each pair of wires that activated a cell another pair of wires was attached, running up vertically to a point above the door. Istvan saw them, too, and smiled.

  "I was right," he said. From the tool kit he took a pair of pliers, and cut, first the vertical wires, then the horizontal ones. Then he attacked the lintel in the same way, exposing, cutting.

  "It is as well to be certain," he said, and stood up. "We may now stand in the doorway," he said. "So useful if it should rain." He bent then to look at the lock, then more closely at the door itself. "Really, whoever did this was very thorough," he said. "Who did he fear? What did he have to protect?"

  "He thought the United Arab Republic was after his penny blacks," said Craig. "There isn't an Arab in miles and he sold all his penny blacks to build this fort. He was mad."

  "No doubt," said Istvan. "But so ingenious. Look at the lock."

  Craig looked. It was a flat piece of dull, thick steel, with a tiny hole set in it.

  "These are very difficult," said Istvan. "Make one false turn and the whole lock jams. And the key one tries must be exactly right."

  "Why not cut round it?" said Craig. "Cut the lock out?"

  "Excellent, excellent," Istvan said. "It is a way, of course, but a very difficult way. Look. I will show you."

  He took the thin chisel again, and a mallet, and tapped into the wooden panels of the door. They gave easily for a quarter of an inch, then metal squeaked on metal.

  "You see?" Istvan said. "The door is a sheet of steel. This wood is decoration only. To drill would take time."

  "Couldn't you blow it in?" Boris asked.

  "It would take a lot of explosive, and make a lot of noise," said Istvan. "The only way would be to attack the hinges, and they as you see are inside the door. I can't get at them. Besides—there is another risk. Best, I think, to try with the lock."

  He took a piece of fine wire from his tool bag, and probed the keyhole, listening intently as he worked. After a while, he inserted a pair of calipers in the hole, measured carefully, and put a slight bend in the wire. This went on for an hour, while Craig sat, watched, and wished it were time for a cigarette. Beside him Boris did much the same as Istvan probed, bending the wire, straightening it, bending it again. At last he was satisfied, and took a thin piece of steel from his kit. At one end of it was the hollow circle of an old-fashioned key. Next he produced a hacksaw, fine files, emery paper, and began to make a key from the wire template. When it was finished, he polished the steel key with emery paper, and oiled it.

  "Forgive my vanity," he said. "But there are not three other men in the world who can do what I have just done."

  "If it works," said Boris.

  "It works, believe me," Istvan said. "Would you like to try?" He handed him the key. "One turn to the right, three to the left, two more to the right."

  Boris inserted the key, and tried to turn it. Nothing happened.

  "Forgive me," said Istvan. "It is new and stiff. Try this."

  He handed Boris a short cylinder of bar steel. Boris pushed it across the rink of the key, and turned, his massive body stiff with strain. Slowly, reluctantly it grated to the right, then, with each twist, more easily to the left—once, twice, thrice. When he moved it the two final turns to the right there was no resistance at all.

  Istvan pushed open the door, and had to use considerable strength to do it, then stepped inside. Boris and Craig followed, and he closed it again, looking up as he did so. Then he smiled, and his smile was quite beautiful. Craig thought that he would have a big future conning women in Vegas or Formentor. Then he too looked up.

  "You see?" Istvan said. "How ingenious your stamp collector was."

  Above the door was a massive steel shutter, rolled up, ready to slam down.

  "If I had just cut the wires of the photoelectric cells this would have come down at once," said Istvan. "It was wired to them, too. Remember?"

  Craig remembered the wires leading vertically to a place above the door. Istvan was good, all right, but there were still the time locks to face.

  They looked round. The shelves empty now, dust settling, gentle as a requiem benediction on the kind of handy place round the corner the supermarkets had made obsolete. Istvan examined shelves and cupboards.

  In one corner, by the stairs, stood a safe, massively squat. A heavy steel grille barred their approach to it.

  THE MONEY THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY 209 "Difficult," said Boris.

  "Not really," he said. "But that is not the one we want. Let us try the cellar."

  Craig deliberately headed for the stairs, but Istvan forestalled him.

  "I'll go first please," he said. "There may be more surprises."

  He found another photoelectric cell at the head of the stairs, and yet another at the foot. As he worked on them, Craig and Boris sat and waited. They had no need of conversation, and Craig was grateful for it. While he sat he could think about what Simmons had done to that poor man he had once been, and feel sorry for him. Not that it wasn't the man's own fault in a way, he conceded. It was stupid to rely on women as much as that. And who needed them anyway? The only man who really mattered was the one who knew how to fight. And there he had nothing to worry about. Sir Matthew Chinn had said it, and it was true. . .

  Istvan called to them, and they went down. The timelock safe was immediately visible. It had been taken into the cellar a section at a time, and reconstructed. Now the cellar was almost filled by it. Istvan patted its slate-gray side and grinned.

  "This was the one they considered burglar-proof," he said. "It is a very remarkable construction. High-tension steel all over—back, sides, door, top and bottom. There is no question of attacking it from its weakest side. It has no weakest side. Nor is it possible to blow it. Look at that door, gentlemen—hinged from inside." Istvan, carried away by enthusiasm for a masterpiece, talked like a television art expert confronted by a Caravaggio. "To insert a charge into that door would mean drilling for days, and even then the charge would have to be so great I doubt if we could survive the blast. And if we did, the door would merely drop a little and be jammed in grooves set in the base. If we used an even bigger charge to blow it free, we would of course destroy not only the safe but its contents; 99.9 per cent of all burglars would simply ignore a safe of this type. It is too much trouble."

  "Safes like this have been robbed," said Boris.

  "It is possible. One must break into the bank, and wait for the time lock. If the lock has been set so that the safe will not open for sixty hours, then one must wait for sixty hours. If bank employees arrive, one must kidnap them, keep them prisoner. There is no other way. A safe with a time lock has to
wait for the time set."

  "I doubt if we can do that," Craig said. "The Tangier bank is too crowded."

  "We will not have to," said Istvan. "There is another way. You see," he said, and his manner became more than ever that of the expert lecturer to first-year students, "the trouble with time locks is that they're too good. They even have the clock inside the safe now, where people like me can't get at it. But suppose something goes wrong, then the bank has a problem. If the time lock developed a fault you couldn't get in, not without boring holes in the safe. And that could take days. So they put a secret way in—almost always. There's one in the bank in Tangier. There's one here."

  "Where?" asked Boris.

  "Through the safe upstairs," said Istvan. "First you have to get through a grille with a key lock— then there's the safe itself. That has a combination lock. Come up and I'll show you."

  To open two sets of locks and work out two combinations took time, but there was no possibility of denying Istvan's certainty. They entered one safe at last. From there they could attack the other, now beneath them. This problem too he solved with massive certainty. As he prepared to open the trapdoor Boris said: "An hour to get in, an hour to open the safe. That's pretty good."

  "It's brilliant," said Craig, and Istvan smiled. "And it'll take even less time to do the bank. The way-in's already been done. All we've got to do is the safe."

  Boris lowered himself down into the time-lock safe, then a beam of light flicked at him, and he swore again in Hungarian.

  Inside the safe sat Loomis, torch in hand, a flask of coffee by his side.

  He beamed at Istvan.

  "You're good, cock, d'you know that?" he said. "In fact you're better than good, you're bloody marvelous." He paused. "I knew you would be— or I wouldn't be here."

  He beamed at Istvan once more. "You know a chap called Chelichev?"

  "I do indeed," said Istvan, and Boris stiffened.

  "I'll be writing to him soon. Tell him just how good you are."

  15

  They flew to Tangier in a Comet 4B, and Boris took advantage of the quaint local custom that allowed him to drink cheap liquor because he was on a plane. It didn't seem to affect him. Istvan tried it too, and it made him drunk, or at least talkative. Craig settled down to listen. So long as Istvan talked of the jobs he had done he was fascinating, and Craig, an expert himself, found no difficulty in tuning in to that part of his mind. The overwhelming need to solve the apparently insoluble was one he knew all about. It delighted him, and he was happy to hear it, and even as he grappled with the details of picklocks and tumblers found himself remembering his own pleasure at finding out how to defeat two men, two good men, who jump you simultaneously from opposite sides. But then Istvan began to talk of women, and Craig became first bored, then restless. It would be easy to shut him up, but Loomis had told him to be nice to him, so he went on listening. It was Boris who interrupted.

  "You think too much of women," he said.

  "But consider," said Istvan. "I am supposed to be an American."

  Boris laughed. "That is a point, but even so, you mean it, Istvan."

  "I was a very long time in Siberia," the Hungarian said.

  "And were there no women there?"

  "Not in the sense that I mean," Istvan said. "In that sense there were none at all."

  Craig said: "Boris is right. Women get in the way —slow things up."

  The Hungarian's eyes were both shrewd and pitying as they looked at him.

  "That is the British way," he said. "It works, I suppose."

  "It works very well," said Boris. It was his official voice; Istvan was silent.

  "Our controller is a woman," he said. "She is quite young and very beautiful. It would be foolish of you to desire her, Istvan."

  Istvan said at once: "Extremely foolish."

  There was a pause: they both seemed to be waiting for Craig to speak.

  At last he said: "I should have been told this earlier."

  Boris said: "Don't worry. She is extremely good. Like a man is good. She thinks like a man, works like a man. Only the body belongs to a woman. That is very useful. And very dangerous."

  "Will she meet us at the airport?" Craig asked.

  "No, no," said Boris. "That will all be arranged in time." He pressed the bell above him. "I think we should all drink cheap brandy and stop talking about women. . ."

  * * *

  So much about Tangier had changed, Craig thought. There was a modern airport now, and the road linking it to the city was fast and new. Now, too, the taxis were numerous, and the driver didn't try to sell you a woman as soon as you opened the door. The town looked cleaner, and more cared for: the lights in the street came on first time. The brothels had gone, and the shops where you could buy anything, from a fountain pen to an automobile, below duty-free price, below cost price sometimes, so that you came out wondering if the ring or the watch or the radio you had bought was counterfeit, or merely stolen . . . But the sea was still there, the confluence of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the incredible view of it from the headland: the water in solid bars of blue and green, and behind it, softened by distance, the rocky masses of Gibraltar and the mainland of Spain. Craig thought briefly of George Allen, and Dovzhenko, who preferred to be known as Jean-Luc Calvet. Spain was a country he liked, and he'd been there often enough in the old days, but here in Tangier he was at home. He had no house any more, and no doubt tourists now used the little bar that had once belonged to the smugglers, but he felt still as if he had roots here, the stability of language and customs perfectly learned and understood. Many of the people he had known would be gone by now—particularly the Spaniards. When Spain had abandoned Spanish Morocco a lot of them had slipped back home across the water, but a lot of them would be left. And Arabs and Jews, and the Christians who were often so enchantingly vague about their nationality. If they saw him they would recognize him, but it didn't matter. The police couldn't touch him, didn't want to. After all, the arms he'd sold had all gone to the Algerians or the Moroccans themselves. Never to the French. That made him more of a local hero than a criminal. Nobody would mind if he brought over a couple of respectable business friends to look at the sights, though a few people might be disappointed to find that he was now respectable too.

  The three of them dined in their hotel, a new one just off the Boulevard Pasteur, with a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms, and an open patio that looked straight up at stars that seemed almost gentle in the black and tender sky. They ate well, and without preoccupation, and Craig sensed that the woman—their controller—was not in the hotel. Then they walked back to the Boulevard Pasteur, and sat outside a cafe, to watch the aimless meandering of a Mediterranean crowd that knows how to enjoy the cool of the evening by doing nothing but relaxing and gossiping at cafe tables.

  That night, as every night in summer, the crowd was mostly foreigners, tourists with money who would stray inevitably into souvenir shops, cafes, and cabarets. But now and then there passed a man in a djibbah, or a veiled woman, shrouded from the bridge of her nose to her toes, walking behind her lord. And sometimes, Craig remembered, those toes were covered by shoes imported from Paris, and the scent on their bodies came from Cardin . . . He watched a donkey go by. An old countryman rode on it. Behind him walked his wife, bent double under a load of firewood. Between them they halted a line of American cars, and the police-

  man on duty let them. After all, they were citizens too.

  Boris said: "There is a great deal of inefficiency here." Craig agreed. "And a smell, also. Have you noticed it?"

  "Drains?" Craig asked.

  "No," said Boris. "It is a strange smell—thin and bitter. A lot of the people here seem to carry it about on their clothes."

  Istvan giggled.

  "That's kef," said Craig. "A kind of marijuana. A lot of people use it here instead of alcohol. Alcohol's not approved of in a Muslim country."

  "A lot of people seem to be drinking it
," said Boris.

  "They like it," said Craig. "So just for tonight they pretend they're Christians."

  Boris said: "This is crazy. And we should not be here."

  "Why not?" Craig asked. "Suppose this man Brodski were to see you— and us?"

  "Brodski hasn't left his villa since he got here," said Craig. "He's waiting for Simmons."

  "You seem very well informed," said Boris.

  "I didn't know about your controller being a woman," said Craig.

  Then Boris sulked. If it had been a peace conference he would have walked out. Craig had never worked with an ally before and never wanted to again. He sighed and bought Boris a brandy. It was like a sweet for a naughty child.

  Boris had almost finished his drink when Hornsey appeared. He wore a white lightweight suit and a panama hat, and when he sat down at the table next to theirs was at once besieged by bootblacks. He tried to repulse them in painstaking French and had no success at all. It was Craig who drove them off, in a machine-gun burst of Arabic. When they had gone he looked across at Craig.

  "That was awfully kind of you," he said.

  "Not at all," said Craig.

  "You must let me buy you a drink."

  "Some other time," Craig said. "We have an appointment."

  "Ah," said Hornsey. "Well, thanks anyway."

  He ordered mint tea, and when they left, merely nodded.

  The three men strolled on up the Boulevard Pasteur to where a little formal garden looked across at Europe. Below them the Casbah was teaching tourists that every experience must be paid for. Just across the road was the Credit Labonne.

  "You were indiscreet," said Boris. "You made that man curious about you."

  "He looked so helpless," said Craig.

  Boris began to lecture, and Craig thought about Hornsey. It had been nice to help him, to spare him embarrassment, and nice to know that they need not recognize each other. It had seemed also as if Boris and Istvan did not know him. It was difficult to be sure about these things, but Craig was prepared to bet on it at reasonable odds. He didn't want Hornsey to know Boris, but if he didn't, how had he arrived in Tangier so opportunely? Perhaps Simmons had told him to be there, before he had messed up his chances by killing Zelko. Or perhaps,