Honour Among Thieves

speaking. The door at the bottom was already open. Once they were inside, Angelo introduced them to Bill O'Reilly. Bill led them down the corridor to his room. When he reached the locked door he turned the key as if they were about to enter Aladdin's cave. He opened the door and paused for just a moment before switching on the lights, then led his little party to the centre of the room, where the two manuscripts awaited their inspection. He explained to his visitors that only one was a perfect copy of the original. Bill passed both men a magnifying glass, then took a pace backwards to await their judgement. Tony and his father were not quite sure where to start, and began studying both documents for several minutes without uttering a word. Tony took his time as he went over the opening paragraph, 'When in the course of human events. . .', while his father became fascinated by the signatures of Francis Lightfoot Lee and Carter Braxton, whose colleagues from Virginia had left them so little room at the foot of the parchment to affix their names. After some time, Tony's father stood up to his full height, turned towards the little Irishman and handed back the magnifying glass, and said, 'Maestro, all I can say is that William J. Stone would have been proud to know you.' Dollar Bill bowed, acknowledging the ultimate forger's compliment. 'But which one is the perfect copy and which one has the mistake?' asked Cavalli. 'Ah,' said the forger. 'It was also William J. Stone who pointed me in the right direction for solving that little conundrum.' The Cavallis waited patiently for Dollar Bill to continue his explanation. 'You see, when Timothy Matlock engrossed the original in 1776, he made three mistakes. Two he was able to correct by simple insertions.' Dollar Bill pointed to the word 'represtative', where the letters e and n were missing, and then to the word 'only', which had been omitted a few lines further down. Both of the corrections had been inserted with a A. 'But,' continued Dollar Bill, 'Mr Matlock also made one spelling mistake which he did not correct. On one of the copies, you will find, I have.' HANNAH LANDED AT Beirut airport the night before she was due to fly to Paris. No one from Mossad accompanied the new agent, to avoid the risk of compromising her. Any Israeli found in the Lebanon is automatically arrested on sight. Hannah had taken over an hour to be cleared by customs, but she finally emerged carrying a British passport, hand luggage and a few Lebanese pounds. Twenty minutes later she booked herself into the airport Hilton. She explained to the receptionist that she would only be staying one night and paid her bill in advance with the Lebanese pounds. She went straight to her room on the ninth floor and did not venture out again that evening. She received just one phone call, at 7.20. To Kratz's question she simply replied 'Yes,' and the line went dead. She climbed into bed at 10.40, but couldn't sleep for more than an hour at a time. She occasionally flicked on the television to watch spaghetti Westerns dubbed into Arabic. In between she managed to catch moments of restless sleep. She rose at ten to seven the following morning, ate a slab of chocolate she found in the tiny fridge, cleaned her teeth and took a cold shower. She dressed in clothes taken from her hand luggage of a type which the file had indicated Karima favoured, and sat on the corner of the bed staring at herself in the mirror. She didn't like what she saw. Kratz had insisted that she crop her hair so that she looked like the one blurred photograph of Miss Saib they had in their possession. They also expected her to wear steel-rimmed spectacles, even if the glass in them didn't magnify. She had worn the spectacles for the past week but still hadn't got used to them, and often simply forgot to put them on or, worse, mislaid them. At 8.19 a.m. she received a second phone call to let her know the plane had taken off from Amman with the 'cargo' on board. When Hannah heard the morning cleaners chatting in the corridor a few moments later, she opened the door and quickly switched the sign on the knob outside to 'Do Not Disturb'. She waited impatiently in her room for a call saying either 'Your baggage has been mislaid,' which meant she was to return to London because they had failed to kidnap the girl, or 'Your baggage has been retrieved;' the code to show they had succeeded. If it was the second message she was to leave the room immediately,