Robert Chambine, who had two children at a $2, ooo-a-year school in Scarsdale, stood unobtrusively at the edge of the warehouse, intently watching the group go through their rehearsal and thinking of the end-of-term plays through which he and his wife always sat, proud of their daughters’ participation.
Chambine was surprised by his own analogy, because really there wasn’t very much similarity. These six weren’t play-acting and it showed. They had improved upon the equipment provided and, using the plans and measurements, had created a workable reconstruction of the exhibition room at the Breakers. Polystyrene blocks represented the walls, with gaps for windows and doors. Each camera and spotlight had been fixed to a photographic extension pole, set at precisely the height and position at which Bulz and Beldini would have to work.
The innovation which particularly impressed Chambine was the Polaroid cameras, of which he had not thought. They had bought four, and while Bulz and Beldini came in through the side door and went through their practice, covering first lights and then lenses, the other men positioned themselves by four of the cameras and took photographs as rapidly as they could. This fell far short of what the videotape would record, but it had enabled the two men who would be going first into the room to recognise and therefore guard against the points of maximum exposure.
Throughout the polystyrene was threaded red and yellow flex, indicating the wired alarms, and these had actually been connected to battery-operated bells which rang if, during any part of the rehearsal, anyone disturbed either a window or door alarm or stepped on one of the pressure pads that Chambine had guessed would be there, and therefore marked around the display cases.
As much thought had gone into the cases as everything else. The entry through the side door was planned to enable a lengthy bypass lead, with alligator clips at either end, to be simply clamped into place, and this would maintain the circuit so that the intervening alarm wire could be cut, allowing the door to be opened about two feet.
At first Chambine frowned both at the other leads and the expandable steel rods carried into the practice area after Bulz and Beldini had immobilised the cameras, unable to think of a purpose for them. And then he smiled at the expertise. The rods were extended and slipped beneath the display cases by Bertrano and Petrilli. At Bertrano’s nod they lifted the cases, but only slightly. Chambine saw that they had anticipated that the case legs would be wired, to trigger an alarm the moment there was any extended movement. With the case about three inches from the ground, Bulz and Beldini went on their knees and clipped more bypass leads into place, linking them with the alarms on the adjoining case so that at all times the circuit would remain intact.
‘Good,’ said Chambine approvingly, moving further into the warehouse when the rehearsal was over. ‘Very good indeed.’
The performance had gone far more smoothly than he had ever hoped it would.
‘Our first attempt timed out at forty-five minutes,’ said Bertrano. ‘The last three runs have all come out around twenty.’
‘The camera-covering averages out at about four minutes,’ added Bulz. ‘We can lose about another minute, but it increases the risk of exposure before a camera. Even though we’ll be masked, we figure it isn’t worth it.’
‘I agree,’ said Chambine. ‘Four minutes is fine.’
‘Can you imagine any other alarms we haven’t thought of?’ asked Bertrano.
Chambine shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He turned to Saxby and Boella.
‘What about the outside lights?’
‘Better than we expected,’ said Saxby. ‘Every fourth lighting pedestal has a small junction box. The idea must be to reduce the possibility of a full-scale blackout. All we’ll have to do is to make our selection and take out the entry cables with wire cutters.’
‘Have you worked out a pattern?’ demanded Chambine.
Boella produced a drawing. It was quite detailed, showing the area off South County Road and Breakers Row, with the hotel golf course sketched in. The lights were designated in green and those they intended extinguishing were crossed through in black.
‘Swimming pool and beach area first,’ said Saxby, indicating the initial targets. ‘That’ll create a diversion. Then some in the gardens, but still away from the exhibition area. Those around that and the car park will be the last.’
Chambine moved his head, as satisfied with this as he had been with the other preparations.
‘We thought about midnight,’ said Bertrano. ‘By that time those still around will be sufficiently drunk and the hotel staff will be tired.’
Chambine stood nodding.
‘At midnight,’ continued Saxby, ‘we hit the lights by the pool…’
‘… and we go in through the side door immediately after the security checks by the guards,’ said Bertrano.
‘We paced out the distance,’ said Saxby. ‘Four times, in fact. Allowing three minutes for any eventuality we haven’t considered, we’ll be outside the exhibition hall, with all the lights out, in fifteen minutes.’
‘And by that time,’ said Bertrano, ‘we will have all the cases except the last two freed from whatever wiring there might be and positioned near the car-park window.’
‘Which is fifteen minutes ahead of the next security patrol,’ remembered Chambine.
‘We want to talk about that,’ said Bertrano. ‘One thing which could stretch our timing is how long it will take us to load the cases into the cars. Even if there is no interruption, I can’t see us clearing the car park before twelve-twenty-five. That’s only five minutes before the inspection. It’s hardly long enough.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if we waited and took the guards out?’ asked Boella, obviously the spokesman for the proposal. ‘It would take maybe half an hour – perhaps longer – to discover what had happened to them. That would give us much more time. We’d get clear of the island.’
Chambine made a reluctant movement with his head. ‘I said I didn’t want violence if it could be avoided,’ he reminded them.
‘We’re not sure if it’s safe to avoid it,’ pressed Bertrano.
‘If we are out of the car park by twelve-twenty-five, then we will have disposed of the cases by twelve-forty,’ said Chambine. ‘By twelve-fifty you’ll be paid off and on your way. If the alarm is raised promptly at twelve-thirty, I can’t imagine the police getting themselves organised in twenty minutes, can you?’
‘And what happens if we don’t get away from the car park by twelve-twenty-five?’ asked Boella stubbornly.
For several moments, Chambine did not reply. Then he said, ‘I agree it’s a problem.’
‘So how do we resolve it?’ asked Bertrano.
Chambine sighed, reaching the decision. ‘I shall be outside in the car park, with Saxby and Boella,’ he said, addressing them as a group. ‘I’ll be responsible for time checking that part of the operation. If it becomes clear that we’re not going to be able to get away – completely away – a few moments before twelve-twenty-five, then we’ll stay and hit the security people as soon as they enter the room…’ There were relieved smiles from the men in front of him. ‘I’m agreeing to it because it is obviously the sensible thing to do,’ he went on. ‘But if I can, I’ll avoid it…’ He looked specifically at Saxby, Boella and Petrilli. ‘Don’t forget what I said about those guns,’ he warned them. ‘If we get away without trouble, I want them dumped. I’m not having something as sweet as this screwed up by an unlicensed weapon arrest.’
Saxby and Boella nodded and Petrilli said, ‘Sure, I won’t forget.’
‘I mean it,’ stressed Chambine.
‘Okay!’ said Saxby.
Chambine hesitated at the challenge in Saxby’s voice and then decided to let it pass. Instead he looked at Bertrano. ‘I’d like the suite for a meeting.’
‘Sure,’ agreed the man from Chicago.
Chambine extended the conversation, to include them all.
‘And I’d appreciate your all being away from the hotel from noon to maybe four o’clock.’
Saxby grinned. ‘So he’s a shy guy.’
‘Yes,’ said Chambine. ‘He’s a shy man. And for fifty thousand apiece, he buys his right to stay that way.’
‘Nobody minds,’ said Bertrano.
‘I’ll be here before noon,’ said Chambine. ‘At exactly midday, I’ll telephone the Papeete Bay Verandah at the Polynesian Village hotel. I want to know you’re all there.’
Chambine waited for any objection to this expressed doubt that one of them might remain, to discover who the financier was.
‘We said we’d be away from the hotel,’ Bertrano reminded him quietly.
‘And I said he buys the right to remain anonymous,’ said Chambine. He waited, but no one appeared to want to take the conversation further.
‘I think this is going to work,’ said Chambine, wanting to reduce the tension that had arisen between them. ‘I want to thank you all for what you’ve done.’
‘We are as determined for this to succeed as you are,’ said Bertrano.
Chambine nodded. ‘We’ll not meet again, as a group, until Thursday. ‘I’ll be in the foyer, ready for you to arrive.’ He looked at Bertrano. ‘As soon as you enter, I’ll leave, to be in the car park when Saxby and Boella start taking out the lights. I will have earlier in the day put the station waggon and a back-up car into position immediately outside the exhibition room…’
‘What about cars after the pay-off?’ interrupted Petrilli.
‘I’ll be responsible for them, too,’ Chambine assured him. ‘There’s a metre area overlooking the sea on Ocean Boulevard. There’ll be hire cars parked there. I’ll give you the keys and numbers at the same time as the money. I’d like you all to make plane reservations to get out of Florida as soon as you can on Wednesday morning. Probably be safer to fly from Miami.’
There were assorted gestures of agreement from the men before him.
Chambine waved his hands towards the practice area. ‘And I want all this stuff dumped. And I mean dumped. I don’t want anybody trying to hock any of the cameras or lights and being remembered if there’s a police check. Just discard it. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Saxby.
‘It’s going to work,’ repeated Chambine enthusiastically. ‘It’s going to work beautifully.’
He went out of the side door of the warehouse, to which five of Pendlebury’s surveillance squad had followed him from Palm Beach. One man would remain there, later to retrieve the listening device that had been planted after F.B.I. observers attached to the group at the Contemporary Resort had trailed them to the building the day they had begun rehearsing and upon which every practice had been monitored, despite Pendlebury’s initial reluctance.
Within three hours of Chambine’s encounter with the men who were going to carry out the robbery, the recording was on its way, by car, to the F.B.I. controller at the Breakers.
General Valery Kalenin had one friend and the contrast between them made that association inexplicable to the few who knew about it. Alexei Berenkov ranked among the most successful agents ever infiltrated into the West. A flamboyant extrovert of a man, he had remained undetected for nearly fifteen years and behind the facade of a wine importer’s business in the City of London developed a network that had penetrated the NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Cabinets of two British administrations.
His capture had been a setback to Kalenin’s service. But because of their friendship, remote though it had been all those years, the seizure had distressed Kalenin even more than it would have done to have lost any other operative of Berenkov’s calibre. It had been that feeling which had made him cast aside his customary caution and agree so readily to the operation, about eight years earlier, in which the heads of the American and British Intelligence Services had been trapped by an aggrieved British agent; they had provided Kalenin with guaranteed hostages that he had used to get Berenkov repatriated from the British jail in which he had been serving a forty-year sentence.
Since Berenkov’s return, the habit had developed for them to meet at least once a week, alternating between Kalenin’s spartan apartment and Berenkov’s home, where the man’s wife always prepared the Georgian meals she knew Kalenin enjoyed.
This week it was Berenkov’s turn to visit Kutuzovsky Prospekt. They had eaten well but less elaborately than at Berenkov’s house and sat now over coffee and the remains of the French wine of which Kalenin knew his friend had become a connoisseur during his time in the West and which he preferred to Russian products. Berenkov lit a Havana cigar and sat back contentedly, thrusting his legs out before him.
‘It’s a good life,’ he said. ‘I consider myself a lucky man.’
Since his repatriation, Berenkov had been assigned to the spy college on the outskirts of Moscow and established himself as one of the better lecturers. The cowed nervousness that he had had when he first returned had completely disappeared now and only the complete whiteness of his hair remained from his period of imprisonment.
‘I’ve a slight concern,’ said Kalenin, who often used their meetings to talk about any problems that might be particularly troubling him.
‘What?’ asked Berenkov, his attention still on the cigar.
‘Seems I’ve been identified,’ said Kalenin shortly.
‘Identified?’ Berenkov looked up from the cigar, immediately attentive.
‘It really is most bizarre,’ said the K.G.B. chief. ‘There was an anonymous telephone call to the Washington Embassy, warning of a robbery of some Tsarist stamp collection. And the caller identified me by name.’
‘The C.I.A. would know, of course,’ said Berenkov thoughtfully.
‘That’s what makes me suspicious,’ said Kalenin. ‘It could be some peculiar operation to discredit us.’
‘You must respond, though,’ said Berenkov.
‘I have,’ said Kalenin. ‘I didn’t want to do it, but I finally decided to awaken a sleeper.’
‘It was justified,’ said Berenkov at once. ‘You had to find out. What does the man say?’
Kalenin looked at his watch. ‘His initial report is due in the Washington diplomatic bag by tomorrow morning. I gather he’s got some photographs of people involved with protecting the collection, but not very much more.’
‘Not an easy assignment,’ sympathised Berenkov. He knew that his friend would have left instructions to be contacted and would return to the Kremlin as soon as the information arrived.
‘No,’ agreed the general. ‘What would you have done?’
Berenkov did not reply immediately. Then he said, ‘Probably disclosed myself in the hope of whoever it was responding and identifying himself. But to whom could our man disclose himself?’
‘That’s the trouble,’ agreed Kalenin. ‘There isn’t anybody.’
‘What about the robbery?’
‘I’ve put some other people in to watch that,’ said Kalenin dismissively. ‘There appears no reason at the moment to think anything is likely to happen.’
‘Could be a difficult one,’ said Berenkov.
‘Yes,’ said Kalenin. ‘That’s what worries me.’