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he’d lined up. Well, we took him on again; gave him a bath; ran him through the odd course in Alex—cipher stuff mostly; and then dropped him and a fist man back into Romania with twenty bloody thousand in gold.”
    â€œDollars?”
    â€œPounds, lad, pounds. Gold sovereigns, although, thank God, they were yours and not ours.”
    â€œMine?”
    â€œOSS. We put it together; they paid for it. Your chaps wanted two things: first of all, information on how good a job of work your bombs had done on the Ploesti refineries, and secondly, how the Romanians were keeping your pilots that they’d shot down. We’d take anything else that the dwarf could skim off and send back. Plus any mischief he could create. That’s what the gold was for.”
    â€œYou dropped him in by parachute, huh?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œThat must have been a sight.”
    Baker-Bates shrugged indifferently.
    â€œSo he went in with about a hundred thousand dollars in gold.”
    Baker-Bates blew out some smoke. “About that”
    â€œI’d say you made one damn-fool mistake.”
    â€œWell, as they say, if ever you need a real thief, you should cut him down from the gallows or hire a Romanian. We hired two.”
    â€œThe fist man was also Romanian?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd you never heard from them again.”
    â€œOh, we heard from them, all right,” Baker-Bates said. “Once. A five-word message: ‘Ploscaru dead. Police closing in.’”
    Jackson leaned back in the leather seat, looked up at the street lamp, and chuckled. The chuckle went on until it turned into a laugh.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?”
    â€œI think Nick’s already spent your money.”
    â€œThat doesn’t worry us. We wrote the rotten little bastard off long ago. He’s ancient history. Besides, it wasn’t really our money, was it?” As if to answer his own question, Baker-Bates flipped his cigarette out into the darkness. “You two, you and the dwarf, you don’t interest us much. You’re spear carriers. It’s the chum at stage center that we’re really interested in.”
    Jackson stared at the thin Englishman for several moments. “Kurt Oppenheimer,” he said finally.
    â€œThat’s the lad. Kurt Oppenheimer, the zipper king’s son.”
    Jackson nodded. “And you’re going to tell me about him.”
    Baker-Bates seemed to think about it. He glanced at his watch and said, “Your treat?”
    â€œSure,” Jackson said. “My treat.”
    The bar that they found was only a few blocks from the hotel. It was a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of place, a bit dank, a bit smelly, and its few customers were sad Mexicans who seemed to have even sadder problems which they discussed in low tones. Both Jackson and Baker-Bates ordered beers and drank them out of the bottle.
    â€œThe first thing I should tell you is this,” Baker-Bates said after a long swallow. “We don’t want Oppenheimer in Palestine.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe had a bad war, very bad, but it developed his talents.”
    â€œWhat kind of talents?”
    â€œRemember Canaris?”
    â€œThe Abwehr admiral.”
    Baker-Bates nodded. “They say that Canaris had him once in late ’43, but let him go. They say that he fascinated Canaris, that they had long talks.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œThe morality of political assassination. Canaris was a jellyfish, you know. They’d have done for Hitler early on if Canaris had ever been able to make up his mind. But Canaris had him and that’s a fact although some still say that Canaris didn’t let him go, that he escaped.”
    â€œOppenheimer.”
    â€œOppenheimer.” Baker-Bates held up a thumb and forefinger that were less than an inch apart. “Some say that he was that close to Himmler once. That close, they say, though it’s probably