It came out slow, reluctantly. “Four of them. The ones you named and Peggy Astin.”

“It’s a bad idea lying to me,” Lime said. He lifted the plier points against the pit of Mezetti’s chest and began to twist and grind.

“That’s the truth for God’s sake.”

Lime kept grinding.

“Look if you—Christ get that fucking thing off me!” Mezetti was trying to squirm away from the pliers but the two agents held him pinned in the chair. He began to reek with the sweat of fear.

Abruptly Lime withdrew the pliers. “Now.”

“If you know so much you know I’m telling the truth. Shit.”

“But there’s outside help isn’t there?”

“Well Sturka knows people all over the place. He’s got contacts you know.”

“Name them.”

“I don’t——”

“Raoul Riva,” Lime said, and watched.

It puzzled Mario. Lime dropped it. “When you left that boat on the shoals you killed the skipper. Then what did you do?”

He made it sound like another test. Mezetti said, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him.”

“You’re as guilty as the rest, you know that.”

“For God’s sake I didn’t kill anybody.”

“You threatened to kill the pilot who flew you up here from Gibraltar.”

“That was just to get him to cooperate. I didn’t kill him, did I?”

“What did you do after you killed the boat owner?”

Lime was toying with the pliers and Mezetti slumped in the chair. “We had another boat waiting.”

“You still had Fairlie in the coffin?”

Mezetti’s eyes grew round. He swallowed visibly. “Off and on. We didn’t keep him in it when we were out at sea.”

“Where did you go from there?”

“Down the coast.”

“To Almería.”

“Well that was the other boat,” Mezetti said. “I mean we did a couple of hundred miles in a truck about half way down the coast. We didn’t have time to do the whole thing in boats—it was too far.”

“All right, you used a truck. Who set it up?”

“Sturka did.”

“No. Sturka arranged for it but Sturka wasn’t the one who put the truck there for you. Who delivered it?”

“I never saw the guy.”

“It was Riva wasn’t it?”

“I never heard of any Riva.”

“Hold him,” Lime said. He stood up and posted himself beside Mezetti and gently pushed the points of the pliers into Mezetti’s earhole. When he felt it strike the eardrum he put slow pressure on it; he held Mezetti’s head against the pressure with his left hand. “Now who was it Mario?”

Mezetti started to cry.

Lime reduced the pressure but kept the pliers in Mezetti’s ear and after a little while Mezetti hawked and snorted and spoke. “Look I never even met the guy.”

“But you’ve seen him.”

“… Yeah.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sturka called him Binyoosef a couple of times.”

Chad Hill said, “Binyoosef?”

“Benyoussef,” Lime said absently, scowling on it. He withdrew the pliers. “A fat man with a bit of a limp.”

“Yeah,” Mezetti said dismally. “That’s him.”

Lime sat down facing him across the desk. “Let’s go back to that garage at Palamos where you made the tape recordings.”

“Jesus. You don’t miss much.”

“Now you were packing things up. You had Fairlie in the coffin. The coffin went in the hearse. Corby drove the hearse. The rest of you cleaned up the place—wiped it for fingerprints, gathered up everything you’d brought with you. Now everybody gets into the hearse.

“But somebody had to switch off the light and close the garage door. You did that.”

“Yeah. Christ did you have the whole thing on television?”

“Sturka told you to go over and switch off the light.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you walked out and pulled the garage door shut. You wiped your fingerprints off the door and got in the hearse.”

“Yeah yeah.” Mezetti was nodding.

“Sturka watched you switch off the light didn’t he.”

Mezetti frowned. “I guess he did, yeah.”

“Then maybe when you came to close the garage door he handed you a rag to wipe it with.”

“Yeah. Jesus Christ.”

Lime sat back brooding. It was what he’d had to know.

After a moment he changed the subject. “You went ashore at Almería. Did everybody go ashore?”

“Just me. I rowed in on the raft.”

“The rest of them stayed on the boat? What was the plan?”

Mezetti was looking at the pliers. “Jesus Christ. You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you?”

“We’re going to take you back to Washington. You’ll get killed but not by me.”

“Pig justice. A fascist gas chamber.”

“A gas chamber has no politics,” Lime said mildly. “Your friend Sturka gassed a whole village once.”

The mistake he’d made was stopping to think. It had given Mezetti time to reflect on the hopelessness of his position. It was going to be harder to get more out of him now; the pliers would open his mouth but he’d start trying lies. An extended interrogation would fix that; put pressure on and keep it up until they got the same answer every time.

But Lime didn’t have that sort of time. He stood up and handed the pliers to one of the agents. “Take him down to Lahti.”

It was about nine o’clock. Chad Hill trailed him into the police office. Lime’s coat was heavy and steamy with moisture; he got it off and threw it across the chair.

“I think Benyoussef Ben Krim is around here somewhere. We’d better have a net. Photo and description to the airports particularly—he’s probably on his way out if he hasn’t left already.”

Chad Hill said, “I thought Benyoussef was the guy who supplied the boat.”

“He was.”

“But that was in Spain. What makes you think he’s up here?”

“Somebody left the car and the note for Mezetti.”

“Why Benyoussef?”

“He used to be Sturka’s errand boy. It looks as if he still is.”

Chad Hill was still puzzled and Lime explained it. “Mezetti’s fingerprint in the garage was deliberate—Sturka’s idea. Sturka watched him switch off the light but didn’t tell him to wipe it.”

“So?”

“We were supposed to identify Mezetti,” Lime said. He struggled to his feet; sitting in the chair was too dangerous. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep just yet.

Eighty-seven hours to inauguration. He arched his back, bracing his fists against his kidneys; heard the ligatures crackle. “Have we got that Concorde?”

“It’s in Helsinki,” Hill said.

“Good. We’d better get to it.”

“You need sleep. You look like a corpse.”

“I’ll sleep on the plane.”

“Where to?”

“Algiers,” Lime said. “That’s the place to start.” It was the place he should have started in the first place. Satterthwaite had been right. Sturka was a pro; a pro was somebody who didn’t make stupid mistakes. The fingerprint in the garage—you’d have to practice to get that stupid. Except that it wasn’t a mistake.

So the red herring had drawn them off all the way to Finland and in the meantime Sturka was down in the Western Desert all the time. Benyoussef was the evidence that supported that. If Sturka was using the members of his old Algerian cell then that was where he had to be.

The old stamping grounds. The place where Sturka had outwitted Lime every time.

MONDAY,

JANUARY 17

3:20 A.M. EST The preparations had been completed and tonight Riva’s part of the plan went operational.

Riva had watched the weather forecasts and timed the action to coincide with the arrival of the low-pressure front over Washington.

The temperature was 34 degrees and that made it a wet snowfall, the flakes congealing in lumps and splashing where they struck. The thick flurries made bad visibility and that was what Riva wanted.

They were working in two cars, Kavanagh and Harrison in a Chevrolet and Riva in the Dodge. They had ten of the molded satchel charges in the Chevrolet. Riva had fitted together a hosepipe bomb and had put it on the seat beside him under a folded newspaper.