Odds On: A Novel Page 7

  Jencks liked the idea of calling it a “scenario.” He had treated the whole project as a scenario, but not in the Hollywood sense of the word. In the sense used by the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute—meaning, little stories of hypothetical actions which followed a given premise to its logical conclusion or conclusions in order to see what might happen … if. The Rand Corporation, of course, used scenarios to advise the State Department on international strategies, but the principle was widely applicable. Jencks had used it.

  In a way, it was a natural outgrowth of his interest in statistics. Early in his life, Jencks had discovered that he had an aptitude for abstract thinking and mathematics in particular. This, coupled with a fascination with uncertainty, probability, chance, the odds, had led him into an informal study of statistics, which he later applied to gambling.

  He had begun by reading simple texts on basic statistics—frequency distributions, means, and modes. He had progressed rapidly to correlation and regression, tests of significance, and finally, multivariate procedures using electronic computers. But in his studies he had read a number of books which applied mathematics and statistics to everyday life, and they had greatly impressed him. One was a slim volume entitled Multivariate Procedures for the Behavioral Sciences, which discussed the use of computers in predicting and explaining “human” situations. Another was Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict, a book concerned with how groups in opposition can and should react to each other. There had been an interesting example in that book of how a man might react to the knowledge that a burglar was in his home—what he might do, and what he might want to do, all expressed in purely mathematical terms.

  That example had given him ideas.

  But the book which had made the greatest impression was one by Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War. In it, Kahn, a statistician and physicist by training, had objectively outlined what could happen in the event of an all-out war, and how the effects might be minimized. The cold, often brutally logical thinking in that book, the buttressing of facts and opinions with mathematical evidence, the absence of sentimentality, had all appealed to Jencks. While reading it, he had decided to look for other uses for statistics besides war games and gambling. This project was the inevitable result.

  He turned to Miguel. “You read the scenario?”

  “Yes.”

  “Questions?”

  “Many, many questions.”

  “Fair enough. But I think it would be simpler if I review the plan in detail, from start to finish. Maybe I’ll answer your questions as I go along. If I don’t, interrupt me. All right?”

  Miguel nodded. Bryan lit another cigarette. The atmosphere in the room was coldly serious.

  “That basic idea is simple enough,” Jencks said. “We are going to rob the Hotel Reina.”

  As the plan unfolded, Bryan watched Jencks with increasing amazement. The man could make a fortune as a salesman, he realized; the pitch Jencks was now giving was superb. He spoke with authority and conviction.

  “One of the most important considerations is one that most people would never think of—why rob a luxury hotel? What’s in it for us? There will be a few women here with valuable jewels. The guests will probably have a reasonable sum of cash with them. But most of the money here is undoubtedly in travelers’ checks, and they’re safe from theft. Supposedly.

  “As for the hotel safe, it will contain any large amounts of cash which guests have brought, some jewels, and perhaps the payroll of the employees. That third sum is negligible—Spanish chambermaids and waiters don’t make enough money to buy you ice cubes for a week. So on the surface, robbing this hotel doesn’t seem to make sense. That is one of our principal advantages.

  “I have, however, made a preliminary estimate of the total wealth at our disposal. There are three hundred rooms in this hotel. On weekends, with the two-day crowd coming up from Barcelona, every room will be filled. Let us say, as a low average, that the occupants of each room are carrying $2,000 with them in some form or another, not counting jewels.”

  Miguel looked surprised.

  Jencks said quickly, “That’s an average, don’t forget. For every rich American carrying ten grand, you can have four others with no money at all.” Miguel nodded and Jencks went on. “With three hundred rooms, that comes to $600,000. Jewels are hard to estimate, but let us say a minimum value of $100,000—it is probably twice that figure. In any event, the total minimum potential of the Reina is $700,000. And I think we will find, in actual practice, that it is closer to a million dollars.”

  Miguel lit another cigarette. They were talking about big money, and big money meant big risks.

  “A great deal of that million will be in traveler’s checks, perhaps as much as 2/3 or 3/4 of it. Technically, this money should be useless to us, not worth stealing. In fact, as you both know, it is perfectly good money if we are willing to lose a percentage in unloading it. I have made arrangements for all the traveler’s checks we steal to be flown from Barcelona to a man in Rome. This man is an excellent forger and completely trustworthy. He will take the checks to Egypt and Turkey and dispose of them on the black market, where nobody bothers with things like passports and signing checks on the spot. He will change the checks for whatever currency he can get, preferably French francs and German marks. His services will cost us money. The exchange will cost us money.”

  “How much?” Bryan asked.

  “Thirty percent.”

  “Of the gross take, or the net?”

  “The gross.”

  “How fast will he work?” Miguel asked.

  Jencks smiled. Bryan had been right, the man knew his business.

  “The same day we take the checks, our man will get them in Rome. He will spend forty-eight hours in Cairo, and twenty-four in Istanbul. Within five days, all the checks will be converted, and the cash back in Italy. By that time, American Express and the other issuing banks will already have put out stop orders for many of the checks, but we’ll be moving too quickly and too far underground for that to matter to us. Undoubtedly, some of the black-market people will find themselves with useless checks; lots of shop owners and small banks in the Middle East will come up with the others. But we’ll be all right.”

  “Jesus,” Bryan said, “it’s going to cause a hell of a panic. Six hundred thousand dollars worth of forged traveler’s checks in Europe.”

  “Too bad,” Miguel said, grinning.

  “The cash we find here,” Jencks continued, “is cash. No problem there. The jewels are more difficult. It is impossible to say what they’ll be worth, or how we can best get rid of them, until we see exactly what we have. But on general principles, I’m opposed to breaking down large stones.”

  The two men nodded in agreement. Too expensive, too much money lost. If you had a good fence, you could sell the stones intact and come out much better.

  “All right. I think you can see now that the job is worth doing. All that remains is to show you how it is to be done. I’ll tell you right now that it’s complicated. It has to be.”

  He walked to the bed and picked up the pile of photographs and spread them out on the other bed.

  “Actually,” he said, “in planning this operation, three major difficulties presented themselves. The first was handling the money. The second was stealing the money. The third was escaping. On reflection, the second and third problems appeared to be related; in other words, the way we stole the money would directly affect our chances of avoiding a cozy Spanish jail. So the problem of the actual theft becomes critical.” He pointed to the photographs.

  “These are views of the hotel taken from various viewpoints. You can study them later, but I want you to notice this one in particular.” He held up an aerial view looking down on the hotel, its island, and the bridge connecting it to the mainland. The two swimming pools, the traffic circle, and the terrace on the fourth floor with its circular awnings and chairs were all clearly visible.

  “In order for our r
obbery to succeed, we need isolation—at least, temporarily. This hotel is incompletely isolated. Therefore we must do two things: cut the telephone lines and blow the bridge.”

  “Who blows the bridge?” Miguel asked.

  “I do,” Jencks said.

  “You have experience at this sort of thing?”

  Jencks gave him a withering look. Quickly, Bryan said, “With the bridge cut, how do we get away?”

  “We don’t. That’s the beauty of it all. We sit right here with the rest of the robbery victims. Our traveler’s checks will be forged and distributed along with the rest. We will complain to the police along with the rest and bitch to the Consulate along with the rest. And we don’t touch our money, which will be deposited in Venezuelan banks, for at least a year.”

  “Gutsy,” Bryan said, “and very risky.”

  “As a matter of fact, it is the least risky way of all. Because we are going to provide one final diversion. We are going to make it appear that the thieves escaped before the bridge was blown.”

  Bryan sat up in his chair. This was new; it had not been discussed in London. “Is this the computer’s idea?”

  “The computer doesn’t have any ideas. It only evaluates my own, but I’ll come to that. The basic plan I have in mind is this: at 12:40 on Saturday night, a taxi will pull up in the traffic circle, apparently called all the way from Bagur to collect passengers. The cabby and the doorman of the Reina will exchange pleasantries; it will be a slow time of night. At 12:48, all the lights in the hotel will go out, and the ensuing confusion will be immense—screams, noise, panic. The doorman will hurry back into the hotel to find out what happened. As he goes, he will hear both doors of the cab slam shut, and the car will roar off. At 12:50, the bridge will be blown up.”

  “The cabby shuts the doors himself?” Bryan asked.

  “Right.”

  “Stolen cab?”

  “Stolen plates.”

  “What if the doorman doesn’t hear the cab door slam and see it leave?”

  “The chances are better than even that he will. But if he is too preoccupied with the confusion to notice it, he will recall it later—because in the clear light of Sunday morning, that cab will be gone. And anybody can put two and two together.”

  “Very nice,” Miguel said.

  Bryan nodded.

  “This is really an essential part of the plot. We must make it look like an outside job, otherwise we’re finished. If we ran away, it would be as good as a confession, and we’d never get out of the country. If we stayed here, but the police had any reason to suspect that someone in the hotel was responsible, they would run massive checks on everybody, and they would discover, among all the respectable businessmen and vacationing movie stars, three somewhat strange individuals with shady backgrounds. It would be all over.

  “But given strong clues which clear everyone stranded on the island, and given the apparent idiocy of any thief remaining at the scene of a crime such as this, they will free everybody with only the most brief and soothing interrogations. They will feel that they must be nice to us, since we are foreigners robbed by a band of native hooligans. We’ll get kid gloves treatment.” Jencks smiled. “But we’ll bitch like hell anyway, and rightly so. I’m going to be robbed of fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “Nine hundred dollars,” Miguel said.

  “Six hundred pounds,” Bryan said.

  “Rich bastard.” Miguel laughed, and lit another cigarette.

  “Now the robbery itself,” Jencks said, “is very touchy. It will take place over a period of one day, Saturday. We will be robbing all day long. That is another unusual feature of our operation.”

  “I don’t understand,” Miguel said. “I read that in the scenario, and I didn’t understand it then, either.”

  “It’s really very simple. A person staying at any large hotel has his own private credit card—his room number. He can sign for anything and has no real need for money until he comes to check out and pay the bill. Therefore, people in hotels tend to be careless about their money. Certainly they don’t bother to carry it with them, since they change clothes several times a day, what with swimming and sunbathing, and since they simply don’t need money. They leave it in their rooms. And, except for the hottest part of the afternoon and late at night, they are rarely in their rooms.”

  Suddenly the flash card routine became clear to Miguel. “You mean we go into the rooms, don’t disturb anything, and take money all day long?”

  “Exactly. I doubt, during the course of a day, whether anyone will even bother to check if his money is still there. In the event that he does check, robbery will still be the last thing to occur to him. After all, the room has not been ransacked; nothing is out of place. Any sane man will think he has misplaced his money. Besides, most of it is traveler’s checks, and who would want to steal them?”

  “Very, very nice,” Miguel said, in genuine admiration.

  “What about keys?” Bryan asked.

  “The problem of keys threw me for a while. Hotels vary in their locks; some small hotels have a single master key for all doors; some have one key for each floor. For several weeks, I couldn’t get any information on the Reina.”

  “But you finally got it?”

  “Yes. It’s rather tricky. The doors do not have individual locks, as I had feared. They use a kind of zigzag system. Each key opens doors for one floor, on alternate sides of the corridor, skipping one each time.”

  The faces were blank. Jencks saw it, and explained again.

  “My room is 205. The next room over, on my side of the corridor, is 207, then 209. The other way it’s 203 and 201. Across the hall, the room facing mine is 206, and all the numbers on that side are even. Okay?”

  “One side is even, the other side is odd. Okay,” Miguel said.

  “Now, my key, the one to 205, will also open 208 and 204 on the opposite side of the hall, and 201 and 209 on my side. My key will open 200, 201, 204, 205, 208, 209.… Get it?”

  “It skips numbers 1-3-1-3,” Bryan said. “That makes sense. It means that a man who forgets exactly where his room is won’t open the wrong door by accident. On his own side of the hall, he can’t open either door adjacent to his, nor can he open the door opposite his.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Miguel said. He showed no embarrassment, and Jencks appreciated that. A man who could say he didn’t understand, without pride or false humility, had his respect.

  “I’ll draw a sketch,” Jencks said. Rapidly, he drew two columns of numbers, connected with a zigzag line.

  Miguel saw it instantly. “Two keys for each floor,” he said. “Five floors—ten keys. Is that it?”

  Jencks drew from his pocket a key chain, with ten shiny silver keys.

  “Quick work,” Bryan said. “How’d you manage that?”

  “Preparation,” Jencks replied, as if that were sufficient explanation. He went on. “On Saturday, you will each take five keys. Over the course of the day, you will examine the rooms which are worth examining.”

  “What do you do?” Miguel said. He wanted to add, “Sit on your ass?” But he didn’t.

  “I will be busier than either of you,” Jencks said. “And you’ll be very, very busy.”

  “We search all the rooms?” Miguel asked.

  “No,” Jencks said, “not all. In the first place, it is humanly impossible. In the second, it is not worth the trouble in many cases. Our job in the next few days—the three days between now and Saturday—will be to find out which rooms to leave untouched. This means that we must meet the guests, as many of them as we can manage.”

  “And select the most juicy rooms?” Miguel asked.

  “No. Select the least juicy. We will work to eliminate rooms, not include them. Understood?”

  Heads nodded.

  Jencks went on. “When precisely we search the rooms during Saturday is a matter of individual judgment. In general, the best times will be noon to two and four to six, with a final period
between nine and eleven. In the early morning, people will either be sleeping late, or the maids will be making the beds. In the afternoon, many people will rest before going back outside about four. Between six and eight, they will be dressing for dinner. Those are times which should be avoided.”

  Bryan scratched his short hair impatiently.

  “Problems?” Jencks asked.

  “Yes. What are you going to be doing all day?”

  “I’ll set the charges for the bridge and the telephone and power lines. I’ll jam the elevator and provide a few other distractions of that sort. And I’ll hit the safe.”

  “I was going to ask you about that,” Miguel said. “The scenario doesn’t allow very much time for—”

  “That’s right,” Jencks interrupted. “But it will be adequate. You see, the hotel safe cost me ten thousand dollars.”

  For a moment, there was silence in the room, and then the two men grasped what Jencks had said. Finally Miguel spoke.

  “You mean you have the combination?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Bryan said. “How did you manage that?” First the keys, he thought, and now the combination. Jencks was a master, there was no doubt about it

  “Don’t ask. Ten thousand dollars isn’t much money, but in the right places it works wonders. And the fact that we have the combination raises the probability of success from .77 to .89.”

  “Says the computer?”

  “Yes. You see, the question is one of timing. We can check the rooms leisurely all day, but the safe is the pot, and we have to hit it at just the right time. At 12:48, I enter the manager’s office and go to the safe. That will be precisely the moment that all the lights go off. It will also be four minutes after a fire breaks out in the nightclub.”