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”

“Indicating some changes are going to be made?” asked Plummer.

“Sounds like it,” said Martin.

“Then the garbled bit. But look at the listener’s reaction, Terry. He not only slams the phone down, he calls his colleague ‘son of a whore.’ That’s pretty strong stuff, eh?”

“Very strong. Only the senior man of the two could use that phrase and get away with it,” said Martin.

“What the hell provoked it?”

“It’s the garbled phrase. Listen again.”

The technician played the single phrase again.

“Something about Allah?” suggested Plummer. “ ‘Soon we shall be with Allah? Be in the hands of Allah?’ ”

“It sounds to me like: ‘Soon we shall have ... something ... something ... Allah.’

“All right, Terry. I’ll go along with that. ‘Have the help of Allah,’ perhaps?”

“Then why would the other man explode in rage?” asked Martin. “Attributing the goodwill of the Almighty to one’s own cause is nothing new. Nor particularly offensive. I don’t know. Can you let me have a duplicate tape to take home with me?”

“Sure.”

“Have you asked our American cousins about it?”

“Of course. Fort Meade caught the same conversation, off a satellite. They can’t work it out, either. In fact, they don’t rate it highly. For them it’s on the back burner.”

Terry Martin drove home with the small cassette tape in his pocket. To Hilary’s considerable annoyance, he insisted on playing and replaying the brief conversation over and over again on their bedside cassette player. When he protested, Terry pointed out that Hilary sometimes worried and worried over a single missing answer in the Times crossword puzzle. Hilary was outraged at the comparison.

“At least I get the answer the following morning,” he snapped, and rolled over and went to sleep.

Terry Martin did not get the answer the following morning, or the next. He played his tape during breaks between lectures, and at other times when he had a few spare moments, jotting down possible alternatives for the jumbled words. But always the sense eluded him. Why had the other man in that conversation been so angry about a harmless reference to Allah?

It was not until five days later that the two gutturals and the sibilant contained in the garbled phrase made sense.

When they did, he tried to get hold of Simon Paxman at Century House, but he was told his contact was away until further notice. He asked to be put through to Steve Laing, but the head of Ops for the Mid-East was also not available.

Though he could not know it, Paxman was on an extended stay at the SIS headquarters in Riyadh, and Laing was visiting the same city for a major conference with Chip Barber of the CIA.

The man they called the “spotter” flew into Vienna from Tel Aviv via London and Frankfurt, was met by no one, and took a taxi from Schwechat Airport to the Sheraton Hotel, where he had a reservation.

The spotter was rubicund and jovial, an all-American lawyer from New York with documents to prove it. His American-accented English was flawless—not surprising, as he had spent years in the United States—and his German passable.

Within hours of arriving in Vienna, he had employed the secretarial services of the Sheraton to compose and draft a courteous letter on his law firm’s letterhead to a certain Wolfgang Gemütlich, vice-president of the Winkler Bank.

The stationery was perfectly genuine, and should a phone check be made, the signatory really was a senior partner at that most prestigious New York law firm, although he was away on vacation (something the Mossad had checked out in New York) and was certainly not the same man as the visitor to Vienna.

The letter was both apologetic and intriguing, as it was meant to be. The writer represented a client of great wealth and standing who now wished to make substantial lodgements of his fortune in Europe.

It was the client who had personally insisted, apparently after hearing from a friend, that the Winkler Bank be approached in the matter, and specifically the person of the good Herr Gemütlich.

The writer would have made a prior appointment, but both his client and the law firm placed immense importance upon utter discretion, avoiding open phone lines and faxes to discuss client business, so the writer had taken advantage of a European visit to divert to Vienna personally.

His schedule, alas, only permitted him three days in Vienna, but if Herr Gemütlich would be gracious enough to spare him an interview, he—the American—would be delighted to come to the bank.

The letter was dropped by the American personally through the bank’s mail slot during the night, and by noon of the next day, the bank’s messenger had deposited the reply at the Sheraton. Herr Gemütlich would be delighted to see the American lawyer at ten the following morning.