were expensive; they were among the best. Their only morality was to the
pound sterling and the American dollar.
Along with this round-the-clock surveillance, Berlin Would take
extraordinary measures to prevent him from developing his own network in
Buenos Aires. That would mean infiltrating the American embassy. Berlin
would not overlook that possibility. A great deal of money would be
offered.
Who at the embassy could be bought?
To attempt corrupting an individual too highly placed could backfire; give
him, Spaulding, dangerous information…. Some one not too far up on the
roster; someone who could gain access to doors and locks and desk-drawer
vaults. And codes…. A middle-level attach6. A man who’d probably never
make it to the Court of St. James’s anyway; who’d settle for another kind
of security. Negotiable at a very high price.
Someone at the embassy would be Spaulding’s enemy.
Finally, Be – rlin would order him killed. Along with numerous
others, of course. Killed at the moment of delivery; killed after
the dusserste Oberwachung had extracted everything it could.
David got up from the slatted green bench and stretched, observing the
beauty that was the Plaza San Martin park. He wandered beyond the path onto
the grass, to the edge of a pond whose dark waterg reflected the
surrounding trees like a black mirror. Two white swans paddled by in
alabaster obliviousness. A little girl was kneeling by a rock on the tiny
embankment, separating the petals from a yellow flower.
He was satisfied that he had adequately analyzed the immediate options of
his counterparts. Options and probable courses of action. His gut feeling
was positive – not in the sense of being enthusiastic, merely not negative.
He had now to evolve his own counterstrategy. He had to bring into play the
lessons he had learned over the years in
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Lisbon. But there was so little time allowed him. And because of this fact,
he understood that a misstep could be fatal here.
Nonchalantly – but with no feelings of nonchalance – he looked around at
the scores of strollers on the paths, on the grass; the rowers and the
passengers in the small boats on the small dark lake. Which of them were
the enemy?
Who were the ones watching him, trying to think what he was thinking?
He would have to find them – one or two of them anyway -before the next few
days were over.
That was the genesis of his counterstrategy.
Isolate and break.
David Ht a cigarette and walked over the miniature bridge. He was primed.
The hunter and the hunted were now one. There was the slightest straining
throughout his entire body; the hands, the arms, the legs: there was a
muscular tension, an awareness. He recognized it. He was back in the north
country.
And he was good in that jungle. He was the best there was. It was here that
he built his architectural monuments. his massive structures of concrete
and steel. In his mind.
It was all he had sometimes.
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26
He looked at his watch. It was five thirty; Jean had mid she’d be at his
apartment around six. He had walked for nearly two hours and now found
himself at the comer of Viamonte, several blocks from his apartment. He
crossed the street and walked to a newsstand under a storefront awning,
where he bought a paper.
He glanced at the front pages, amused to see that the war news – what there
was of it – was relegated to the bottom, surrounded by accounts of the
Grupo de Oficiales’ latest benefits to Argentina. He noted that the name of
a particular colonel, one Juan Per6n, was mentioned in three separate
subheadlines.
He folded the paper under his arm and, because he realized he had been
absently musing, looked once again at his watch.
It was not a deliberate move on David’s part. That is to say, he did not
calculate the abruptness of his turn; he simply turned because the angle of
the sun caused a reflection on his wristwatch and he unconsciously shifted
his body to the right, his left hand extended, covered by his own shadow.
But his attention was instantly diverted from his watch. Out of the comer
of his eye he could discern a sudden, sharp break in the sidewalk’s human
traffic. Thirty feet away across the street two men had swiftly turned
around, colliding with oncoming pedestrians, apologizing, stepping into the
flow on the curbside.
The man on the left had not been quick enough; or he was too careless – too
inexperienced, perhaps – to angle his shoulders, or
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hunch them imperceptibly so as to melt into the crowd.
He stood out and David recognized him.
He was one of the men from the roof of the C6rdoba apartment. His companion
David couldn’t be sure of, but he way sure of that man. There was even the
hint of a limp in his gait; David remembered the battering he’d given him.
He was being followed, then, and that was good.
His point of departure wasn’t as remote as he’d thought.
He walked another ten yards, into a fairly large group approaching the
comer of C6rdoba. He sidestepped his way between arms and legs and
packages, and entered a small jewelry store whose wares were gaudy,
inexpensive. Inside, several office girls were trying to select a gift for
a departing secretary. Spaulding smiled at the annoyed proprietor,
indicating that he could wait, he was in no hurry. The proprietor made a
gesture of helplessness.
Spaulding stood by the front window, his body concealed from outside by the
frame of the door.
Before a minute was up he saw the two men again. They were still across the
street; David had to follow their progress through the intermittent gaps in
the crowd. The two men were talking heatedly, the second man annoyed with
his limping companion. Both were trying to glance above the heads of the
surrounding bodies, raising themselves up on their toes, looking foolish,
amateur.
David figured they would turn right at the comer and walk east on C6rdoba,
toward his apartment. They did so and, as the owner of the jewelry store
protested, Spaulding walked swiftly out into the crowds and ran across the
Avenida Callao, dodging cars and angry drivers. He had to reach the other
side, staying out of the sightlines of the two men. He could not use the
crosswalks or the curbs. It would be too easy, too logical, for the men to
look backward as men did when trying to spot someone they had lost in
surveillance.
David knew his objective now. He had to separate the men and take the one
with a limp. Take him and force answers.
If they had any experience, he considered, they would reach his apartment
and divide, one man cautiously going inside to listen through the door,
ascertaining the subject’s presence, the other remaining outside, far
enough from the entrance to be unobserved. And common sense would dictate
that the
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unknown to David would be the one to enter the apartment.
Spaulding removed his jacket and held up the newspaper – not ftffl but
folded; not obviously but casually, as if he were uncertain of the meaning
of some awkwardly phrased headline – and walked with the crowds to the
north side of C6rdoba. He turned right and maintained a steady, unbroken
pace east, remaining as far left on the sidewalk as possible.
His apartment was less than a block and a half away now. He could see the
two men; intermittently they did look back, but on their own side of the
street.
Amateurs. If he taught surveillance, they’d fail his course.
The men drew nearer to the apartment, their concentration on the entrance.
David knew it was his moment to move. The only moment of risk, really; the
few split seconds when one or the other might turn and see him across the
street, only yards away. But it was a necessary gamble. He had to get
beyond the apartment entrance. That was the essence of his trap.
Several lengths ahead was a middle-aged portefia housewife carrying
groceries, hurrying, obviously anxious to get home. Spaulding came
alongside and without breaking stride, keeping in step with her, he started
asking directions in his best, most elegant Castilian, stating among other
points that he knew this was the right street and he was late. His head was
tilted from the curb.
If anyone watched them, the housewife and the shirtsleeved man with a
jacket under one arm and a newspaper under the other looked like two
friends hastening to a mutual destination.
Twenty yards beyond the entrance on the other side, Spaulding left the
smiling portefia and ducked into a canopied doorway. He pressed himself
into the wall and looked back across the street. The two men stood by the
curb and, as he expected, they separated. The unknown man went into his