Short Stories: Five Decades (95 page)

“When the box was delivered,” Smith said.

“Bertie boy …” Barber shook his head reprovingly.

Smith chuckled. “I have warned myself that you were not stupid,” he said. “All right. We will deposit twelve thousand five hundred dollars in your name in a Swiss bank before you start for the first time to Egypt.”

“You trust me for that?”

Fleetingly the smile left Smith’s face. “We’ll trust you for that,” he said. Then the smile reappeared. “And immediately after the delivery is made, we will deposit the rest. A lovely deal. Hard currency. No income tax. You will be a rich man. Semi-rich.” He chuckled at his joke. “Just for a little plane ride. Just to help an Egyptian who is fond of the South of France and who is naturally a little disturbed by the insecurity of his own country.”

“When will I meet this Egyptian?” Barber asked.

“When you go to the airfield to take off for your first flight,” Smith said. “He’ll be there. Don’t you worry. He’ll be there. Do you hesitate?” he asked anxiously.

“I’m thinking,” Barber said.

“It’s not as though you were involved in your own country,” Smith said piously. “I wouldn’t ask a man to do that, a man who had fought for his country in the war. It isn’t even as though it had anything to do with the English, for whom it is possible you have a certain affection. But the Egyptians …” He shrugged and bent over and picked up the manila envelope and opened it. “I have all the maps here,” he said, “if you would like to study them. The route is all marked out, but, of course, it would be finally in your hands, since it would be you who was doing the flying.”

Barber took the thick packet of maps. He opened one at random. All it showed was the sea approaches to Malta and the location of the landing strips there. Barber thought of twenty-five thousand dollars and the map shook a little in his hands.

“It is ridiculously easy,” Smith said, watching Barber intently. “Foolproof.”

Barber put the map down. “If it’s so easy, what are you paying twenty-five thousand bucks for?” he said.

Smith laughed. “I admit,” he said, “there may be certain little risks. It is improbable, but one never knows. We pay you for the improbability, if you want to put it that way.” He shrugged. “After all, after a whole war you must be somewhat hardened to risks.”

“When do you have to know?” Barber asked.

“Tonight,” Smith said. “If you say no, naturally we have to make other plans. And my Egyptian friend is impatient.”

“Who is we?” Barber asked.

“Naturally,” Smith said, “I have certain colleagues.”

“Who are they?”

Smith made a small regretful gesture. “I am terribly sorry,” he said, “but I cannot tell you.”

“I’ll call you tonight,” said Barber.

“Good.” Smith stood up and buttoned his coat and carefully put the soft Italian felt hat on his head, at a conservative angle. He played gently and appreciatively with the brim. “This afternoon, I will be at the track. Maybe you would like to join me there.”

“Where’re they running today?”

“Auteuil,” Smith said. “Jumping today.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Perhaps,” Smith said. “There is a mare who is doing the jumps for the first time. I have spoken to the jockey and I have been told the mare has responded in training, but I’ll hear more at three o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good,” Smith said enthusiastically. “Although it is against my interests, of course, to make you too rich in advance.” He chuckled. “However, for the sake of friendship … Should I leave the maps?”

“Yes,” said Barber.

“Until three o’clock,” Smith said as Barber opened the door. They shook hands, and Smith went out into the corridor, a rich, tweedy, perfumed figure in the impoverished light of the pallid hotel lamps.

Barber locked the door behind him and picked up the packet of maps and spread them on the bed, over the rumpled sheets and blankets. He hadn’t looked at aerial maps for a long time. Northern Egypt. The Mediterranean. The island of Malta. Sicily and the Italian coast. The Gulf of Genoa. The Alpes-Maritimes. He stared at the maps. The Mediterranean looked very wide. He didn’t like to fly over open water in a single-engined plane. In fact, he didn’t like to fly. Since the war, he had flown as little as possible. He hadn’t made any explanations to himself, but when he had had to travel, he had gone by car or train or boat whenever he could.

Twenty-five thousand dollars, he thought.

He folded the maps neatly and put them back into the envelope. At this point, the maps weren’t going to help.

He lay down on the bed again, propped against the pillows, with his hands clasped behind his head. Open water, he thought. Five times. Even that wouldn’t be too bad. But what about the Egyptians? He had been in Cairo briefly during the war. He remembered that at night the policemen walked in pairs, carrying carbines. He didn’t like places where the policemen carried carbines. And Egyptian prisons …

He moved uneasily on the bed.

Who knew how many people were in on a scheme like this? And it would only take one to cook you. One dissatisfied servant or accomplice, one greedy or timid partner … He closed his eyes and almost saw the fat, dark uniformed men with their carbines walking up to the shiny, new little plane.

Or suppose you blew a tire or crumpled a wheel on the landing strip? Who knew what the strip was like, abandoned in the desert since 1943?

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Or you would think you were making it. The box would be on the seat beside you and the coast of Egypt would be falling off behind you and the sea stretching blue below and ahead and the engine running like a watch—and then the first sign of the patrol. The shimmering dot growing into … What did the Egyptian Air Force fly? Spitfires, left over from the war, he supposed. Coming up swiftly, going twice as fast as you, signalling you to turn around … He lit a cigarette. Two hundred and fifty pounds. Say the box alone—it would have to be really solid—weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. How much did a five-pound note weigh? Would there be a thousand to a pound? Five thousand multiplied by a hundred, with the pound at two-eighty. Close to a million and a half dollars.

His mouth felt dry, and he got up and drank two glasses of water. Then he made himself sit down on the chair, keeping his hands still. If there was an accident, if for any reason you failed to come through with it … If the money was lost, but you were saved. Smith didn’t look like a murderer, although who knew what murderers looked like these days? And who knew what other people he was involved with? My colleagues, as Smith called them, who would then be your colleagues. The wealthy Egyptian, the several men at the old R.A.F. landing strip in the desert, the people who were to set out the lights in the certain arrangement in the hills behind Cannes—How many others, sliding across frontiers, going secretly and illegally from one country to another with guns and gold in their suitcases, the survivors of war, prison, denunciation—How many others whom you didn’t know, whom you would see briefly in the glare of the African sun, as a running figure on a dark French hillside, whom you couldn’t judge or assess and on whom your life depended, who were risking prison, deportation, police bullets for their share of a box full of money …

He jumped up and put on his clothes and went out, locking the door. He didn’t want to sit in the cold, disordered room, staring at the maps.

He walked around the city aimlessly for the rest of the morning, looking blindly into shopwindows and thinking of the things he would buy if he had money. Turning away from a window, he saw a policeman watching him incuriously. Barber looked speculatively at the policeman, who was small, with a mean face and a thin mustache. Looking at the policeman, Barber remembered some of the stories about what they did to suspects when they questioned them in the back rooms of the local prefectures. An American passport wouldn’t do much good if they picked you up with five hundred thousand English pounds under your arm.

This is the first time in my life, Barber thought curiously, walking slowly on the crowded street, that I have contemplated moving over to the other side of the law. He was surprised that he was considering it so calmly. He wondered why that was. Perhaps the movies and the newspapers, he thought. You get so familiar with crime it becomes humanized and accessible. You don’t think about it, but then, suddenly, when it enters your life, you realize that subconsciously you have been accepting the idea of crime as an almost normal accompaniment of everyday life. Policemen must know that, he thought, all at once seeing things from the other side. They must look at all the shut, ordinary faces going past them and they must know how close to theft, murder, and defaulting everyone is, and it must drive them crazy. They must want to arrest everybody.

While Barber was watching the horses move in their stiff-legged, trembling walk around the paddock before the sixth race, he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Bertie boy,” he said, without turning around.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Smith said, coming up to the paddock rail beside Barber. “Were you afraid I wouldn’t come?”

“What’s the word from the jock?” Barber asked.

Smith looked around him suspiciously. Then he smiled. “The jockey is confident,” Smith said. “He is betting himself.”

“Which one is it?”

“Number Five.”

Barber looked at No. 5. It was a light-boned chestnut mare with a delicate, gentle head. Her tail and mane were braided, and she walked alertly but not too nervously, well-mannered and with a glistening coat. Her jockey was a man of about forty, with a long, scooped French nose. He was an ugly man, and when he opened his mouth, you saw that most of his front teeth were missing. He wore a maroon cap, with his ears tucked in, and a white silk shirt dotted with maroon stars.

Barber, looking at him, thought, It’s too bad such ugly men get to ride such beautiful animals.

“O.K., Bertie boy,” he said. “Lead me to the window.”

Barber bet ten thousand francs on the nose. The odds were a comfortable seven to one. Smith bet twenty-five thousand francs. They walked side by side to the stands and climbed up together as the horses came out on the track. The crowd was small and there were only a few other spectators that high up.

“Well, Lloyd?” Smith said. “Did you look at the maps?”

“I looked at the maps,” Barber said.

“What did you think?”

“They’re very nice maps.”

Smith looked at him sharply. Then he decided to chuckle. “You want to make me fish, eh?” he said. “You know what I mean. Did you decide?”

“I …” Barber began, staring down at the cantering horses. He took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you after the race,” he said.

“Lloyd!” The voice came from below, to the right, and Barber turned in that direction. Toiling up the steps was Jimmy Richardson. He had always been rather round and baby-plump, and Parisian food had done nothing to slim him down, and he was panting, his coat flapping open, disclosing a checkered vest, as he hurried toward Barber.

“How are you?” he said breathlessly as he reached their level. He clapped Barber on the back. “I saw you up here and I thought maybe you had something for this race. I can’t figure this one and they’ve been murdering me all day. I’m lousy on the jumps.”

“Hello, Jimmy,” Barber said. “Mr. Richardson. Mr. Smith.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Richardson said. “How do you spell it?” He laughed loudly at his joke. “Say, really, Lloyd, do you know anything? Maureen’ll murder me if I go home and tell her I went into the hole for the afternoon.”

Barber looked across at Smith, who was watching Richardson benignly. “Well,” he said, “Bertie boy, here, thinks he heard something.”

“Bertie boy,” Richardson said, “please …”

Smith smiled thinly. “Number Five looks very good,” he said. “But you’d better hurry. They’re going to start in a minute.”

“Number Five,” Richardson said. “Roger. I’ll be right back.” He went galloping down the steps, his coat flying behind him.

“He’s a trusting soul, isn’t he?” Smith said.

“He was an only child,” Barber said, “and he never got over it.”

Smith smiled politely. “Where do you know him from?”

“He was in my squadron.”

“In your squadron.” Smith nodded, looking after Richardson’s hurrying, diminishing figure on the way to the seller’s window. “Pilot?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good?”

Barber shrugged. “Better ones got killed and worse ones won every medal in the collection.”

“What is he doing in Paris?”

“He works for a drug company,” Barber said.

The bell rang and the horses raced toward the first jump.

“Your friend was too late, I’m afraid,” Smith said, putting his binoculars to his eyes.

“Yep,” Barber said, watching the bunched horses.

No. 5 fell on the fourth jump. She went over with two other horses, and suddenly she was down and rolling. The pack passed around her. The fourth jump was far off down the track, and it was hard to see what, exactly, was happening until, a moment later, the mare struggled to her feet and cantered after the pack, her reins broken and trailing. Then Barber saw that the jockey was lying there motionless, crumpled up clumsily on his face, with his head turned in under his shoulder.

“We’ve lost our money,” Smith said calmly. He took his binoculars from his eyes and pulled out his tickets and tore them and dropped them.

“May I have those, please?” Barber reached over for the binoculars. Smith lifted the strap over his head, and Barber trained the glasses on the distant jump where the jockey was lying. Two men were running out to him and turning him over.

Barber adjusted the binoculars, and the figures of the two men working on the motionless figure in the maroon-starred shirt came out of the blur into focus. Even in the glasses, there was something terribly urgent and despairing in the movements of the distant men. They picked the jockey up between them and started running clumsily off with him.

“Damn it!” It was Richardson, who had climbed up beside them again. “The window closed just as I—”

“Do not complain, Mr. Richardson,” Smith said. “We fell at the fourth jump.”