ABOUT    START    CONTENTS

Page 45.

Several times, he helped her shoot up, because she did not have the courage to face the needle herself. For his part, he licked a bit of the monkey but didn’t want to get any further involved in its grip. Régine needed the stuff, but managed to get by most of the time with substitutes like cocaine and hashish brought in from the north by Arabs.

As he slipped into bed with her for the third time, she dozed off. Frustrated in his desire for her, he considered going out to find a tart on the street, but he was too tired. So he contented himself with one of her cigarettes and a tall glass of Clery’s red Bordeaux. He fell asleep in bed beside her, trusting that her staff would let her know if by some astronomical chance the maitre was coming home, which he almost never did, and when he did one could tell by the bright headlights shining up the driveway and illumining the bedroom so that venetian blind shadows swam like shark gills on the wall. As Régine snored softly beside him, Rob fell asleep with one arm around her slender waist.

There he shaved, showered, and had his maid make a solid breakfast for two, with strong black coffee. Whistling, he packed a travel bag and listened to the birds, the trees, and the street noise of Kinshasa.

Régine appeared at his house just in time as the heavyset maid—wrapped in silky white native dress, and frowning—brought their food. They ate under a large tree, at a mossy little table with two rickety wrought-iron chairs. Birds twittered loudly overhead, and every once in a while a monkey or a parrot screeched in the neighborhood.

Régine smoked a cigarette and laid her arm across the table. Rob cooked up a spoon and put a tourniquet on her. Carefully, he drew up the bubbling yellowish brown horse and injected her. She squinted and looked away, holding up fingers and cigarettes to shield herself from the view.

Rob ate heartily, while she picked at her dry toast, smoked, sipped coffee, and stared out through the hanging willow fronds. “What are you plotting, sweetheart?”

She flicked her cigarette carefully on the stones around the table. “We’re going to fly up into Mauritania.”

“Mauritania! That’s far away!”

“Oh don’t be silly. I know you go there with Willi and Walther on business.”

“It’s still a long way off. Why would I make the time for that?”

“To keep me company.”

“I can keep you company right here.”

“I know, but it will be worth it. You’ll make money.”

“Okay, that’s interesting. How did you latch up with my old friends?”

“I watched you, darling. I was with you when you had them fly in a crate of French brandy to pay off a gambling debt. I made inquiries and found out they can hook me up with some Arabs in Mauritania who bring in my stuff from Tunisia and elsewhere. I met one of them long ago, in Belgium.”

Malone considered carefully. She needed her stuff badly enough to take risks, but fortunately, he knew the two Germans well enough. They were expatriates, like so many people here. Normal Germans quickly became ex-Nazis once they got out of their toxic Hitler world. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

“You’ll have a good time, Rob. I’ll make sure of it.” She puffed deeply, exhaled luxuriously as the drugs coursed through her mind. Rob, meanwhile, felt a slight sweat break out along his neck. “Régine, I wish you’d clear things like that with me first.”

She sat up, looking drunk. She seemed to have trouble focusing for a second, and her lips trembled as if she wanted to speak. A minute later, she had recovered, and sat close to him. “Darling, it’s the answer to all of our problems. They have a large amount of hashish and some opium that I have already agreed to buy from them, and I need you to go along to carry the cash. Plus there is supposed to be a pound of heroin and some cocaine for me. It will keep me for weeks. Bring a gun.”

“How much cash exactly is that, Régine?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

He whistled. “That could get us robbed and killed along the way.”

“Yes, but Willi and Walther are good men. I happen to know Willi from a sports flying club near Houffalize before the war, when the Germans still had to hide the fact that they were developing an air force. They were in thick with people from Fokker.”

“Small world.” Rob shook his head slowly. “You’re sharp, babe.”

“Intelligence, Rob. They have a connection to a Russian spy network up there. I know it because I overheard my husband talking with another Belgian last week. You can make a note of it for use in your little private business.”

“Of which you must never speak,” Rob said. He’d known her husband was an enthusiastic Communist, though just as much a Belgian nationalist opposed to letting the colored people steal back their own land.

“Just think,” she said. “If this works out, and I’m sure it will, we can make this trip once every two months, or you could go more often. You can buy drugs from them, posing as an ex-pat. You can give me my bit, sell the rest, and pay off your debts.”

“Brilliant,” Rob said. It was a gamble, but he was just desperate enough to try. Besides getting some money to pay off his debts, he was developing a lead on a double agent, code-named Jaguar, playing for both Hitler and Roosevelt, which probably meant he was also in Uncle Joe’s crib. That would make him a triple, but Rob was still working on that angle. He’d already hinted about it to his boss, Ivor Crane, and indications were that Donovan would look favorably on Rob if he could crack something that complicated.

Within 30 hours, they sat aboard the Märzig brothers’ stolen Ju-52, headed north into Mauritania for their drug deal outside the desert city of Néma.