The QE2 Is Missing

Hank took it inside and stared at the featureless white envelope, mailed just the day before in Honolulu.

“For goodness sake — open it! The message is inside, not on the outside, my love,” Frances said, leaning over his shoulder. He tore it open and they both read the brief message. There was a single sheet of hotel stationery from the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki Beach. In the middle of the page, in small letters, was printed

“ROOM 1125.”

“Not what you would call long-winded,” Frances said.

“It’s all I wanted to know. The last I heard was that I would be contacted here and told where to take the tapes. Now what can I take them ashore in?”

“You can’t. Men don’t carry anything off the ship — other than cameras. It’s women who always do the world’s work and carry around back-spraining parcels. Let me find that nice hessian shoulderbag with the picture of Sydney Opera House on it. Put the sack of them in there.”

“Shut up,” he hinted. “Get your sunglasses and let’s go.”

They got their boarding cards at the head of the gangway. At the foot the wahinis were waiting to drape flower leis about their necks.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Frances said, smelling the fragrant blossoms.

”No. Let’s find a garbage can to dump these so we won’t look like tourists — easy marks for every hustler in town.”

“You’re being beastly. I’ll wear yours as well.”

There were cabs waiting to take the travellers and their bulging wallets to the waiting and hungry merchants. They took one of them to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. There were plenty of cars and other cabs about and Hank had no idea if they were being followed or not.

“Our neighbors on the ship are the suspicious type. They may be tailing us to see where we go,” he said.

“What can you do about it? Dart down alleys and such the way they do in the movies?”

“Not my style. We have to lose them — if they are there — without letting them know we even think we are being followed. Going to the hotel is innocent enough, we could be meeting friends there, anything. So here’s what we do. Get into the elevator and press one of the top floors, or any floor where no one else is getting out. Once we are sure we have shaken off our tail____”

“You sound so professional!”

“…. we separate. You keep the bag but I take the reels. Do some shopping, buy some things to put in the bag, and we’ll meet in the bar on the ground floor an hour later. How does that sound?”

“Is there a bar on the ground floor?”

“Is there a hotel in the world without a bar on the ground floor?”

“You’re right, of course. If there is more than one bar in the hotel, I’ll be waiting for you in the one nearest the front entrance.”

“I can see that you’re an old hand at this game. Here we are.”

They pushed through the lobby to the big bank of elevators at the rear. A fat woman in a floral print mu-mu was just getting into one of the elevators and they followed her in just as the doors closed. She pushed the button for the third floor and turned to them.

“Can ah help with your floor?”

“Very kind. Fourteen please.”

When the door closed behind her on the third they were alone.

“Should we press for the eleventh and get off there?” Frances asked.

“No. Someone might be watching the floor indicator. We’ll carry on as planned. You go on to the top.” He took out the plastic bag of tapes and gave her a quick kiss as the doors opened on the fourteenth floor. The hallway was empty. She smiled at him as the doors closed, but there was worry behind the smile.

Hank walked down the hallway until he came to the fire exit. He opened it and checked to see that it was not the kind that locked automatically behind you when it closed. He really didn’t feel like walking down fourteen flights. No, thirteen flights he saw, when the number on the door below proved to be twelve. Superstition rules the world. He listened carefully before he pushed open the door on the eleventh floor; he was not being followed. When he knocked on 1125, Uzi Drezner opened the door for him, then locked it quickly behind him when he entered.

“Here are the tapes,” Hank said.

“Wonderful. Any problems?”

“Not in the taping. Plenty of conversation here. But our neighbors were suspicious of us at first and looked us over closely. We haven’t talked to them since.”

“That’s fine. I want you to meet Mr. Ginzberg.”

A short, gray-haired man rose from the couch and shook his hand. “My pleasure,” he said in slightly accented English. His eyes were on the bag, not on Hank, as he spoke.

“Mr, Ginzberg was a professor of German,” Uzi said. “But that was before his stay in Buchenwald. He works with us now. Knows every dialect and regional accent in German and can even place the speaker’s home town within a couple of miles.” They watched Ginzberg leave the room.

“Would you like a drink?” Uzi asked. Hank looked at his watch.

“I suppose so. Sun’s over the yardarm. Bourbon on the rocks, please.”