Honor Among Thieves Read online

  “What will it be, honey?” asked a waitress who wore a red uniform and a black apron and held a pad in her hand.

  “Just black coffee, please,” said T. Hamilton McKenzie.

  “Coming right up,” she said cheerfully.

  He was about to check the time when he was reminded once again that his watch was on the wrist of a young man who was now probably miles away. McKenzie looked up at the clock above the counter: 8:56. He began to check everyone as they came through the door.

  A tall, well-dressed man was the first to walk in, and as he scanned the room McKenzie became quite hopeful and willed him to look in his direction. But the man walked towards the counter and took a seat on a stool, with his back to the restaurant. The waitress returned and poured the nervous doctor a steaming black coffee.

  Next to enter the room was a young woman, carrying a shopping bag with a long rope handle. She was followed a moment later by another smartly dressed man who also searched the room with his eyes. Once again, T. Hamilton McKenzie’s hopes were raised, only to be dashed when a smile of recognition flickered across the man’s face. He too headed for the counter and took the stool next to the man who had come in a few minutes earlier.

  The girl with the shopping bag slipped into the place opposite him. “That seat’s taken,” said T. Hamilton McKenzie, his voice rising with every word.

  “I know, Dr. McKenzie,” said the girl. “It’s been taken by me.”

  T. Hamilton McKenzie began to perspire.

  “Coffee, honey?” asked the waitress who appeared by their side.

  “Yes, black,” was all she said, not glancing up.

  McKenzie looked at the young woman more carefully. She must have been around thirty—still at an age when she didn’t require his professional services. From her accent she was undoubtedly a native of New York, though with her dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin her family must surely have emigrated from southern Europe. She was slight, almost frail, and her neatly patterned Laura Ashley dress of autumn browns, which could have been purchased in any one of a thousand stores across the country, made certain she would be forgettable in any crowd. She didn’t touch the coffee that was placed in front of her.

  McKenzie decided to go on the attack. “I want to know how Sally is.”

  “She’s fine, just fine,” said the woman calmly. She reached down and with a gloved hand removed a single sheet of paper from her bag. She passed it over to him. He unfolded the anonymous-looking sheet:

  Dear Daddy

  They are treating me well but please agree to whatever they want.

  Love Sal.

  It was her writing, no question of that, but she would never have signed herself “Sal.” The coded message only made him more anxious.

  The woman leaned across and snatched the letter back.

  “You bastards. You won’t get away with it,” he said, staring across at her.

  “Calm down, Dr. McKenzie. No amount of threats or rhetoric is going to influence us. It’s not the first time we’ve carried out this sort of operation. So, if you hope to see your daughter again…”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  The waitress returned to the table with a fresh pot of coffee, but when she saw that neither of them had taken a sip she said, “Coffee’s getting cold, folks,” and moved on.

  “I’ve only got about two hundred thousand dollars to my name. You must have made some mistake.”

  “It’s not your money we’re after, Dr. McKenzie.”

  “Then what do you want? I’ll do anything to get my daughter back safely.”

  “The company I represent specializes in gathering skills, and one of our clients is in need of your particular expertise.”

  “But you could have called and made an appointment like anyone else,” he said in disbelief.

  “Not for what we have in mind, I suspect. And, in any case, we have a time problem, and we felt Sally might help us get to the front of the line.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said the woman. Twenty minutes later, when both cups of coffee were stone cold, T. Hamilton McKenzie understood exactly what was expected of him. He was silent for some time before he said, “I’m not sure if I can do it. To begin with, it’s professionally unethical. And do you realize how hard—”

  The woman leaned down and removed something else from her bag. She tossed a small gold earring over to his side of the table. “Perhaps this will make it a little easier for you.” T. Hamilton McKenzie picked up his daughter’s earring. “Tomorrow you get the other earring,” the woman continued. “On Friday the first ear. On Saturday the other ear. If you go on worrying about your ethics, Dr. McKenzie, there won’t be much of your daughter left by this time next week.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “Ask John Paul Getty III if we wouldn’t.”

  T. Hamilton McKenzie rose from the table and leaned across.

  “We can speed the whole process up if that’s the way you want it,” she added, displaying not the slightest sign of fear.

  McKenzie slumped back into his seat and tried to compose himself.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s better. At least we now seem to understand each other.”

  “So what happens next?” he asked.

  “We’ll be back in touch with you some time later today. So make sure you’re in. Because I feel confident that by then you’ll have come to terms with your professional ethics.”

  McKenzie was about to protest when the woman stood up, took a five-dollar bill out of her bag and placed it on the table.

  “Can’t have Columbus’s leading surgeon washing up the dishes, can we?” She turned to leave and had reached the door before it struck McKenzie that they even knew he had left the house without his wallet.

  T. Hamilton McKenzie began to consider her proposition, not certain if he had been left with any alternative.

  But he was sure of one thing. If he carried out their demands, then President Clinton was going to end up with an even bigger problem.

  Chapter Six

  Scott heard the phone ringing when he was at the foot of the stairs. His mind was still going over the morning lecture he had just given, but he leaped up the stairs three at a time, pushed open the door of his apartment and grabbed the phone, knocking his mother to the floor.

  “Scott Bradley,” he said as he picked up the photograph and replaced it on the sideboard.

  “I need you in Washington tomorrow. My office, nine o’clock sharp.”

  Scott was always impressed by the way Dexter Hutchins never introduced himself, and also assumed that the work he did for the CIA was more important than his commitment to Yale.

  It took Scott most of the afternoon to rearrange his teaching schedule with two understanding colleagues. He couldn’t use the excuse of not feeling well, as everyone on campus knew he hadn’t missed a day’s work through illness in nine years. So he fell back on “woman trouble,” which always elicited sympathy from the older professors, but didn’t lead them to ask too many questions.

  Dexter Hutchins never gave any details over the phone as to why he needed Scott, but as all the morning papers had carried pictures of Yitzhak Rabin arriving in Washington for his first meeting with President Clinton, he made the obvious assumption.

  Scott removed the file that was lodged between “Tax” and “Torts” and extracted everything he had about the new Israeli Prime Minister. His policy towards America didn’t seem to differ greatly from that of his predecessor. He was better educated than Shamir, more conciliatory and gentler in his approach, but Scott suspected that if it came to a knife fight in a downtown bar, Rabin was the one who would come out unmarked.

  He leaned back and began thinking about a blonde named Susan Anderson who had been present at the last briefing he had been asked to attend with the new Secretary of State. If she was at the meeting, the trip to Washington might prove worthwhile.

  A quiet man sat on
a stool at the end of the bar emptying the final drops in his glass. The glass had been almost empty of Guinness for some time, but the Irishman always hoped that the movement would arouse some sympathy in the barman and he might just be kind enough to pour a drop more into the empty glass. But not this particular barman.

  “Bastard,” he said under his breath. It was always the young ones who had no heart.

  The barman didn’t know the customer’s real name. For that matter, few people did except the FBI and the San Francisco Police Department.

  The file at the SFPD gave William Sean O’Reilly’s age as fifty-two. A casual onlooker might have judged him to be nearer sixty-five, not just because of his well-worn clothes, but from the pronounced lines on his forehead, the wrinkled bags under his eyes and the extra inches around his waist. O’Reilly blamed it on three alimonies, four jail sentences and going too many rounds in his youth as an amateur boxer. He never blamed it on the Guinness.

  The problem had begun at school when O’Reilly discovered by sheer chance that he could copy his classmates’ signatures when they signed chits to withdraw pocket money from the school bank. By the time he had completed his first year at Trinity College, Dublin, he could forge the signatures of the provost and the bursar so well that even they believed that they had awarded him a scholarship.

  While at St. Patrick’s Institution for Offenders, Bill was introduced to the bank note by Liam the Counterfeiter. When they opened the gates to let him out, the young apprentice had nothing left to learn from the master. Bill discovered that his mother was unwilling to allow him to return to the bosom of the family, so he forged the signature of the American Consul in Dublin and departed for the brave new world.

  By the age of thirty, he had etched his first dollar plate. The work was so good that, during the trial that followed its discovery, the FBI acknowledged that the counterfeit was a masterpiece that would never have been detected without the help of an informer. O’Reilly was sentenced to six years and the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed him “Dollar Bill.”

  When Dollar Bill was released from jail, he moved on to tens, twenties and later fifties, and his sentences increased in direct proportion. In between sentences he managed three wives and three divorces. Something else his mother wouldn’t have approved of.

  His third wife did her best to keep him on the straight and narrow, and Bill responded by producing documents only when he couldn’t get any other work—the odd passport, the occasional driver’s license or social security claim—nothing really criminal, he assured the judge. The judge didn’t agree and sent him back down for another five years.

  When Dollar Bill was released this time, nobody would touch him, so he kept his hand in at fairgrounds doing tattoos and, in desperation, sidewalk paintings which, when it didn’t rain, just about kept him in Guinness.

  Bill lifted the empty glass and stared once again at the barman, who returned a look of stony indifference. He failed to notice the smartly dressed young man who took a seat on the other side of him.

  “What can I get you to drink, Mr. O’Reilly?” said a voice he didn’t recognize. Bill looked around suspiciously. “I’m retired,” he declared, fearing that it was another of those young plain-clothes detectives from the San Francisco Police Department who hadn’t made his quota of arrests for the month.

  “Then you won’t mind having a drink with an old con, will you?” said the younger man, revealing a slight Bronx accent.

  Bill hesitated, but the thirst won.

  “A pint of draft Guinness,” he said hopefully.

  The young man raised his hand and this time the barman responded immediately.

  “So what do you want?” asked Bill, once he’d taken a swig and was sure the barman was out of earshot.

  “Your skill.”

  “But I’m retired. I already told you.”

  “And I heard you the first time. But what I require isn’t criminal.”

  “So what are you hoping I’ll knock up for you? A copy of the Mona Lisa, or is it to be the Magna Carta?”

  “Nearer home than that,” said the young man.

  “Buy me another,” said Bill, staring at the empty glass that stood on the counter in front of him, “and I’ll listen to your proposition. But I warn you, I’m still retired.”

  After the barman had filled Bill’s glass a second time, the young man introduced himself as Angelo Santini, and began to explain to Dollar Bill exactly what he had in mind. Angelo was grateful that at four in the afternoon there was no one else around to overhear them.

  “But there are already thousands of those in circulation,” said Dollar Bill after he had listened to Angelo’s request. “You can find them all over the place. You could buy a good reproduction from any decent tourist shop.”

  “Maybe, but not a perfect copy,” insisted the young man.

  Dollar Bill put down his drink and thought about the statement.

  “Who wants one?”

  “It’s for a client who’s a collector of rare manuscripts,” Angelo said. “And he’ll pay top dollar.”

  Not a bad lie, as lies go, thought Bill. He took another sip of Guinness.

  “But it would take me weeks,” he said, almost under his breath. “In any case, I’d have to move to Washington.”

  “We’ve already found a suitable place for you in Georgetown, and I’m sure we can lay our hands on all the materials you’d need.”

  Dollar Bill considered this claim for a moment, before taking another gulp and declaring, “Forget it—it sounds too much like hard work. As I explained, it would take me weeks and, worse, I’d have to stop drinking,” he added, placing his empty glass back on the counter. “You must understand, I’m a perfectionist.”

  “That’s exactly why I’ve traveled from one side of the country to the other to find you,” said Angelo quietly. Dollar Bill hesitated and looked at the young man more carefully.

  “I’d want twenty-five thousand down and twenty-five thousand on completion, with all expenses paid,” said the Irishman.

  The young man couldn’t believe his luck. Cavalli had authorized him to spend up to one hundred thousand dollars if he could guarantee the finished article. But then he remembered that his boss never trusted anyone who didn’t bargain.

  “Ten thousand when we reach Washington and another twenty thousand on completion.”

  Dollar Bill toyed with his empty glass.

  “Thirty thousand on completion if you can’t tell the difference between mine and the original.”

  “But we’ll need to tell the difference,” said Angelo. “You’ll get your thirty thousand if no one else can.”

  The following morning a black limousine with smoked windows pulled up outside Ohio State University Hospital. The chauffeur parked in the space reserved for T. Hamilton McKenzie, as he had been instructed to do.

  His only other orders were to pick up a patient at ten o’clock and drive him to the University of Cincinnati and Homes Hospital.

  At 10:10, two white-coated orderlies wheeled a tall, well-built man in a chair out through the swing doors and, seeing the car parked in the dean’s space, guided him towards it. The driver jumped out and quickly opened the back door. Poor man, he thought, his head all covered in bandages and only a small crack left for his lips and nostrils. He wondered if it had been burns.

  The stockily built man clambered from the wheelchair into the back, sank into the luxurious upholstery and stretched out his legs. The driver told him, “I’m going to put on your seatbelt,” and received a curt nod in response.

  He returned to his seat in the front and lowered his window to say goodbye to the two orderlies and an older, rather distinguished-looking man who stood behind them. The driver had never seen such a drained face.

  The limousine moved off at a sedate pace. The chauffeur had been warned not, under any circumstances, to break the speed limit.

  T. Hamilton McKenzie was overcome with relief as he watched the car d
isappear down the hospital drive. He hoped the nightmare was at last coming to an end. The operation had taken him seven hours, and the previous night had been the first time he had slept soundly for the past week. The last order he had received was to go home and wait for Sally’s release.

  When the demand had been put to him by the woman who left five dollars on the table at the Olentangy Inn, he had considered it impossible. Not, as he had suggested, on ethical grounds, but because he had thought he could never achieve a true likeness. He had wanted to explain to her about autografting, the external epithelium and the deeper corium, and how unlikely it was that… But when he saw the unnamed man in his private office, he immediately realized why they had chosen him. He was almost the right height, perhaps a shade short—an inch, no more—and he might have been five to ten pounds too light. But shoe lifts and a few Big Macs would sort out both of those problems.

  The skull and features were remarkable and bore a stunning resemblance to the original. In fact in the end it had only proved necessary to perform rhinoplasty and a partial thickness graft. The results were good, very good. The surgeon assumed that the man’s red hair was irrelevant because they could shave his head and use a wig. With a new set of teeth and good makeup, only his immediate family would be able to tell the difference.

  McKenzie had had several different teams working with him during the seven hours in the operating room. He’d told them he needed fresh help whenever he began to tire. No one ever questioned T. Hamilton McKenzie inside the hospital, and only he had seen the final result. He had kept his end of the bargain.

  She parked the Ford Taurus—America’s most popular car—a hundred yards from the house, but not before she’d swung it around to face the direction in which she would be leaving.

  She changed her shoes in the car. The only time she had nearly been caught was when some mud had stuck to the soles of her shoes and the FBI had traced it to within yards of a spot she had visited a few days before.