Hour of the Assassins by Andrew Kaplan Page A

while Beckmann calculated. He picked up the stamp again and examined it, like a doctor poking at a patient.
    â€œI cannot guarantee you more than seven hundred seventy-five thousand francs.” Caine tried to keep his face expressionless as he translated the sum. It was more than $310,000. “Of course,” Beckmann added placatingly, “we may be able to get more. I will do my best for you.”
    â€œIt’s a deal,” Caine replied and put the stamp back in his pocket. Beckmann’s eyes followed the stamp, peering at Caine’s jacket as if he could see the stamp through the fabric. “I shall deposit the stamp at the bank. When you have a cash buyer, you can make the arrangements through Herr Kröger.”
    Caine took a Klein taxi back to the bank and deposited the stamp with Kröger. Then he walked over to Kranzler’s for a late lunch. So now all he had to do was find Mengele, Caine thought, sipping the Kirschwasser . There was nothing to it. All he had to do was get his junior James Bond secret agent kit, throw on his Burberry trench coat, and play a wild hunch. It always worked out in the movies.
    He could start by eliminating Asia and Africa, where a white man stood out like a grain of salt in a pepper shaker, he thought. Except for the Middle East, where the Arabs had a penchant for German scientists with whom they could share a common dislike of Jews. Of course Mengele wasn’t really a scientist. Still, it was a possibility. He could probably scratch Australia and North America, because the Jewish communities were too large and the climate for notorious Nazis too inhospitable. Europe was almost certainly out, except perhaps Spain. No, even Spain would have been too hot for the Angel of Death, and Mengele wouldn’t have gone east. If he had been picked up by the Communists, they wouldn’t have bothered with the niceties of a public trial. Still, that was something to keep in mind. The Poles and the Russians still wanted Mengele and just might have some information on him. So that left South America at the top of the list, with the Middle East and Eastern Europe as places to be checked for information. According to the Interpol file Mengele was last heard of in Argentina, but that was in the days of Perón and long before the Eichmann snatch. It was hopeless, Caine thought as he motioned the waiter over for the check.
    â€œ Rechnung, bitte ,” he said, shaking his head. The son of a bitch could be anywhere. He would have to play it by the book. His first targets would be information sources in the Middle East, Poland, and Germany. Then he could narrow it down to someplace in South America with a greater degree of certainty.
    The Grill bar in the Baur au Lac is the place to be in Zurich. Long ago the action was at the Odeon Café, where Mata Hari danced for the officers and the young Mussolini played billiards; but since the war it’s the Grill. That evening the bar was jammed with laughing businessmen and expensive women flashing jewelry from Meister’s and conversation from the society pages. As Caine looked around, he thought he spotted agents from at least half-a-dozen intelligence services. It was like a spies’ convention, he mused as he sipped a marc . Then he got lucky.
    He saw a powerfully built man sitting at a corner table with a stunning blonde who was sensuously licking the cherry in her cocktail. He recognized Mahmoud Ibn Sallah from the briefing he’d had on the Abu Daud hit.
    Ibn Sallah had dark curly hair and soft brown eyes nestled under long curling lashes. But the soft eyes that made him irresistible to women concealed a brain that could unravel Byzantine plots with the cunning ruthlessness of his Levantine forebears. His dark business suit did not disguise what was still an impressive body. In his youth he had been an Olympic wrestler.
    At the moment Ibn Sallah was pouring champagne for the blonde, and from her reaction he