The Englishman said, “Well?”

“He’s reading the Herald Tribune.”

“How frightfully unsporting of him.”

Mezetti hadn’t drawn his drapes. He sat in the hotel room beside the telephone reading yesterday’s Paris edition.

“Fat lot of good.” The Englishman drew his collar away from his jowls. They had the window wide open because it steamed up if they closed it. Mezetti’s room evidently had double-pane windows. They were frosty in the corners but clear enough to see through.

The Englishman was fairly high up in MI-5. He was spherical and bland and appeared boneless; he wore a sandy officer’s moustache and a striped regimental tie.

CIA kept a stringer in Lahti but like most of his kind he was so well known Lime didn’t want to use him. All competent authorities, both Finnish and otherwise, would be expected to have dossiers on him and there was no point taking the chance of frightening Mezetti’s contact away.

If there was a contact.

It stood to reason, if only because Mezetti had finally come to rest after leading them erratically across the length of Europe. He had checked into the hotel yesterday and taken all his meals in his room. He seemed to be waiting for the telephone to ring. Lime had a tap on it.

The Englishman said, “Have a look down there.”

Cars were parked haphazardly along the curbs; an East German Wartburg was slipping into a space.

“Ridiculous. Getting like a bloody business convention down there.”

“You know him?”

“He’s with the Vopos. Plainclothes.”

The driver wasn’t getting out of the car. The passenger had walked into the hotel lobby. After a moment he came out again, got back into the car and sat there. The car didn’t move.

“Does he wear Moscow’s collar?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Not any more.”

There was a Renault containing a spook from the French SDECE and a four-door Volkswagen containing four large members of Bonn’s BND. Lime swept the square with the 20X binoculars and spotted occupants in five other cars. He recognized one of them—a Spanish agent he’d met in Barcelona three days ago.

It was a comic-opera medley. The Englishman was right; it was ridiculous.

Lime reached for the phone. “Chad?”

“Go ahead.”

“The square’s crawling with spooks. Let’s get them out of the way.”

“I’ll try.”

“Use muscle.”

“They won’t like it.”

“I’ll apologize later.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

Lime went back to the window, preternaturally drained. Sleeplessness glazed his eyes; his lids blinked slowly with a grit-grainy sort of pain.

The Englishman sat by the window like a Buddha. Lime said, “It bothers me, the Russians not being down there. Everybody else is.”

“Perhaps you’ve got a point.”

“This is still Yaskov’s area, isn’t it?”

“You know him?”

“I’ve been here before. A while ago.”

“Yes, it’s still his bailiwick.”

Yaskov was around here somewhere, Lime thought. Not as brutally obvious as these others, but around somewhere. Watching, biding.

He resumed his seat at the window beside the Englishman. Had a quick look through the glasses—Mezetti hadn’t stirred; he was turning a page and Lime could read the headlines effortlessly through the gyros.

He set them aside and leaned forward to look down over the sill. A Volvo had entered the square, unobtrusive and quiet; it pulled over to the curb and four uniformed Finns got out and began to saunter along the storefronts. They approached the Volkswagen and Lime saw one of them stoop to talk to the occupants. The three remaining Finns continued up the walk; one of them approached the parked Wartburg and made a cranking motion with his hand to indicate he wanted the passenger to roll down his window.

Evidently there was some acrimony at the Volkswagen but in the end the Finn stood up and saluted stiffly and the VW’s starter gnashed. It pulled out and rolled across the square, moving very slowly like a child dragging his heels; it disappeared into the southbound high road and the Wartburg left soon after.

The Finns continued on their rounds and presently seven cars had left the square. The Finns went back to their Volvo and drove away.

“Quite neat,” the Englishman applauded.

“We’ll catch hell for it.”

“Well one could hardly have them falling all over themselves, could one.”

It would mark the end of whatever international cooperation there had been. But Lime had known that at the outset. Henceforth the cooperation would take the form of lip service. Nobody liked being insulted.

The Englishman was smug. By openly volunteering his services he had forestalled similar eviction. That was all right; Lime needed to keep a few friends.

He rubbed his eyes. Yaskov’s not showing himself wasn’t very surprising. Yaskov wasn’t fool enough to crowd in with the pack.

He’s around here somewhere.

Forget it, he thought. Other fish to fry. Where’s Mezetti’s contact? What do you suppose the bastard’s waiting for?

There were other leads and they weren’t altogether standing still. The “Venezuelan handyman” who’d been hired by the chief groundskeeper at Perdido—the one who’d evidently sabotaged Fairlie’s original helicopter and killed the Navy pilot—had been identified by the groundskeeper from mug shots: Cesar Renaldo.

Together with the Corby fingerprint in the glove it banished any possibility this was anyone’s caper but Julius Sturka’s.

But still everything was flimsy. Hundreds of thousands of people were working on it, looking for Sturka and the rest, looking for Raoul Riva. Nothing. There was only one physical lead: Mezetti.

Mezetti sat in a chair reading a newspaper.

The wind came in through the open window. It came right down from Lapland, picking up chill moisture over the frozen Finnish lakes. The sun was a low thin rime in the south, weak pink through haze; it had risen late and would set within three hours.

“I say,” the Englishman muttered. Lime jerked awake.

Across the way there was movement. He snapped the glasses to his eyes and made the rapid search until he found Mezetti’s window. Locked onto it and watched.

Mezetti had put the newspaper down and was at the wardrobe, shouldering into a coat, reaching for a hat.

Lime handed the glasses to the Englishman and wheeled to the telephone. “He’s moving. Coat and hat.”

“Right.”

He got into the Mercedes. Chad Hill at the wheel craned his head around inquiringly.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Lime told him wearily. “He’s probably headed for a drugstore to buy a toothbrush.”

They watched the face of the hotel. Lime plucked the two-way’s mike from its dashboard hook. “Just checking the communications.”

“Loud and clear.”

After two or three minutes Mezetti appeared on the step. He looked around the square with a great deal of care before he walked the half-block distance to the Saab he’d hired in Helsinki yesterday.

Lime had planted a bleeper under the Saab’s bumper. It gave off an intermittent radio pulse. Two vans were equipped to receive the signals and follow by radio triangulation but Lime still preferred line-of-sight tailing; you never knew when the car might trade drivers and then just keep moving with your radio eavesdroppers none the wiser.

Mezetti was having a little trouble getting the car started. Probably the damp cold in the carburetor. Lime flicked the microphone switch. “I’m on him but we’ll want two other cars.”

“All set.”

Finally smoke puffed from the Saab’s pipe and it moved away from the curb.

“Here we go.… Heading into the middle of town.”

“Two vans and three cars on him.”

Lime latched the microphone and spoke to Chad Hill. “Hang back. Don’t tailgate him.”

The Mercedes threaded the narrow streets. Mezetti had turned on his foglights and the red taillights were easy to follow.