The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [94]
“Is that how we begin with this Communist?” Glavanis asked.
“Yes. You may not have to do much more. He’s used to being protected, being invulnerable. He thinks of himself as a dangerous man. That’s one of the pressure points—he won’t know how to handle being helpless. Also, he’s a hypochondriac. He’s going to get very cold in here with no clothes on, and he’s going to be worried about pneumonia.”
“Can we use water?”
“If you have to,” Christopher said. “I don’t know that it’ll be necessary. I have something to keep him quiet when you take him, and when we let him go.”
“You’re going to let him go?”
“Yes. Don’t let him see your faces at all. You’ll have to tape his eyes as soon as you take him.”
Eycken smiled, his white teeth glittering beneath the hair on his lips. “I’d better shave,” he said.
“Afterward would be better,” Christopher said. “I want you to start in the morning. You fly to Reggio and pick up the car there. Stavros, you still have the papers I gave you? The car is booked in that name, at Auto Maggiore at the airport.”
“Yes, I still have the papers. What information does this type have, that he’s worth all this trouble?”
“If I knew, we wouldn’t have to go through all this,” Christopher said. “Come on upstairs. I’ll explain the operation.”
Christopher showed them the maps he had drawn on the basis of Klimenko’s description of the house in Calabria, and gave them photographs of Frankie Pigeon.
“It would be better to know more about his habits,” Glavanis said.
“I agree, but there’s no time. You have to have him back here before first light day after tomorrow. You’ll have to lie up and watch, and take the first chance you get.”
“What about the bodyguards? Can we deal with them as we think best?”
Christopher handed Glavanis a small briefcase. Glavanis removed two .22 caliber pistols from it and looked quizzically at Christopher. He pushed a cartridge from one of the clips; there was no lead bullet as in ordinary ammunition. The nose of the cartridge case was pinched shut. “What’s this supposed to be?” Glavanis asked.
“It’s birdshot. You can’t kill with it, but if you fire into the face from close range, you produce a lot of pain and shock. You want to immobilize these people for an hour or two, that’s all.”
“There’s a better method of immobilizing people,” Eycken said.
“No doubt. But this isn’t a war zone, Eycken. If you kill somebody, you’ll have carabinieri all over you before you get to Naples.”
Eycken slid a clip loaded with the birdshot cartridges into one of the pistols and felt the weight of the weapon, holding it at arm’s length. “I suppose it’ll work if you get close enough and hit the eyes,” he said.
“There’s no need to hit the eyes.”
Glavanis, seeing the contempt in Eycken’s face, grinned broadly. “Jan isn’t used to working with a man who has scruples,” he said.
Glavanis sorted out the other things in the briefcase: two airplane tickets to Reggio, an envelope fat with dirty thousand-lire notes, bandage and tape, handcuffs, a hundred feet of light manila rope, a pair of binoculars, a bottle of pills. He shook the bottle and asked a question.
“Seconal,” Christopher said. “Give him two or three if he’s conscious when you take him. It should take seven or eight hours to drive back to Rome. He’ll sleep most of the way in the trunk. Don’t give him too much Seconal. We want him awake when you put him in the hole.”
Glavanis prodded the contents of the briefcase with his blunt fingers. He nodded in satisfaction. “Everything we’ll need is there,” he said. “We’d better sleep now.” Before he went upstairs, he winked at Christopher. “Do you know what day it is tomorrow?”
“Christmas.”
Glavanis nodded rapidly and uttered a short, sharp laugh.
While Glavanis and Eycken slept, Christopher tested the loudspeaker in the interrogation room and prepared the other things that would be needed there.
Then he spent an hour in the darkroom. Dieter Dimpel’s photographs of the tortora file at Dolder und Co. were