Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  ‘I’ve sent a message to him,’ said Tiptree. ‘He’ll meet us here. It’s too damned public, that square.’

  When the door was opened, by a slight Mexican boy who wore a straw hat, brim curled cowboy-style, I noticed there was a sheet of steel layered into the woodwork of the door. Another boy stood behind him, studying us warily. He recognized Tiptree and nodded.

  ‘This is the bank,’ announced Tiptree. It was a large room that overlooked the square, but the blinds had been pulled down. The room, with its ornate Victorian wallpaper and brass light-brackets, had the atmosphere of some Wild West saloon a century ago. Three almost identical men sat at three almost identical old tables. The men were dressed in white short-sleeved shirts with black trousers and black ties and black well-polished shoes: the uniform used throughout the world by men who wish to be entrusted with money. Each man was equipped with half a dozen ledgers, a small cash-box, a scribbling pad and a Japanese calculator. Through a half-open door I could see another room where girls were typing on the wide-platen typewriters that are required for account sheets.

  ‘It’s a money-change office,’ I said.

  ‘Three partners; brothers. They used to run a loan company…One that was always ready to change money too. But, when the government nationalized all the banks, larger horizons opened.’

  ‘Is it a legal bank?’ I asked.

  ‘Strictly speaking it’s not legal and it’s not a bank,’ said Tiptree. ‘But it’s right for what we want. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico, Samson. I know how things work here.’

  I looked at the old man sitting inside the door with a shotgun across his knees. The teenage boys who’d let us in looked like blood relations. Perhaps it was a family business.

  Tiptree greeted Zena. She was sitting on a wooden bench and nodded politely to both of us. Despite the heat, she was dressed in a linen suit with Paris labels, and her make-up and the low-heeled shoes made her look like someone who’d prepared for a journey. There was no sign of Werner.

  ‘Is this where the money is supposed to be?’ I asked.

  Tiptree smiled at the doubt he heard in my voice. ‘Don’t be misguided by appearances. A quarter of a million dollars is a bagatelle to these people, Samson. They could have ten million, in any of the world’s major currencies, laid out across the floor within an hour.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out,’ I said.

  ‘You’re the muscle; I’m the brains,’ said Tiptree, without expending too much energy to persuade me it was a joke.

  Tiptree exchanged polite, British-style greetings with one of the partners and formally introduced me. The senior partner was called Pepe, a soft-spoken man with white hair, a pock-marked face and a pocket full of pens. Tiptree told him that Zena was the one to whom the money was to be paid. I looked at Zena and she smiled.

  When they were ready to count the money, Zena went to the table to watch the man piling the hundred-dollar bills on the table. I went to watch too. They were used notes; 250 of them in each thick bundle. They were held together by heavy-duty red rubber bands into which torn scraps of paper had been inserted with ‘$25,000’ scrawled on each of them. There were ten bundles.

  Perhaps in some other bank, in some other town, the money might then have been passed across the table. But this was Mexico and these were men well accustomed to the mistrust that peasants show for bankers. It all had to be counted a second time note by note. Despite Pepe’s fumbling, it took only a few minutes.

  When he’d finished counting, Pepe opened a cupboard to get a cardboard box for the money. There were many other boxes, of all shapes and sizes, stacked in the cupboard. On the side of this box it said ‘Flat fillets of anchovies 50 tins – 2 oz.’ I wonder who first discovered that fifty tins of anchovies fit into exactly the same space as a quarter of a million dollars. Or vice versa.

  Perhaps I should have given more attention to Pepe’s nervous manner and to the clumsiness he showed in handling the notes but I was too concerned with the prospect of Zena departing with the money before Stinnes arrived. I looked at my watch and I looked at the clock on the wall. Stinnes was late. Something had gone wrong. All my professional intuition said leave, and leave right away. But I stayed.

  While Pepe was putting strapping-tape on the box, Zena went to the window. She was holding back the edge of the blind to see down into the square when Pepe told me and Tiptree to put our hands on our heads.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Pepe, whose drawn white face, the stubble of tomorrow’s beard already patterning his chin, bore a frown of desolate unhappiness. ‘I’m doing only what I must do.’

  Tiptree, despite his excellent Spanish, did not understand Pepe’s soft instruction.

  ‘Put your hands on your head,’ I said. ‘Do as he says.’ Even then I think Tiptree would not have understood except that he saw me put my hands on my head. ‘Someone got here ahead of us.’

  ‘Your friends?’ said Tiptree, looking round the room.

  ‘How I wish they were,’ I said. But I had no time for Tiptree’s stupid suspicions. I was trying to decide what role the old man with the shotgun was playing in this business, and whether the two boys with him were armed.

  Now Zena also had her hands on her head. She’d been pulled away from the window in case her shadow on the blind was seen by someone in the street. ‘What’s happening?’ said Zena.

  It was then that a burly, dark-suited man came from the next room. Beside him there was a Mexican boy with a machine-pistol. I didn’t like machine-pistols. Especially cheap machine-pistols like this one. Hoping to survive a false move against a man with a machine-pistol was like shouting abuse at a man with a garden hose and hoping not to get wet. I looked at it carefully. It was a Model 25, a Czech design that dated from the time before they changed over to Soviet calibres. An old, cheap gun, but the boy liked waving it around, and he kept the metal stock folded forward to make this easier to do.

  I recognized the dark-suited man from the night I’d spent at Biedermann’s house. It was Stinnes’s companion, the man who called himself Pavel Moskvin; the ‘fink’ – a tough-looking fifty-year-old with a cropped head and the build of a debt-collector. ‘You,’ he said to me in his abominable German. ‘You make sure your friends know that no one will harm them if they do as they are told.’

  ‘What’s it all about?’ I said.

  He looked at me but didn’t answer. ‘Tell them,’ he said.

  Zena and Tiptree had heard for themselves. Tiptree said, ‘Is this your doing, Samson?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘It’s a KGB stake-out. They are waiting for Stinnes. They might leave us out of it if we behave.’

  ‘What will they do?’ said Tiptree. ‘Are they going to kill him?’

  I shrugged. We could only wait and see. The door-buzzer sounded, and Moskvin nodded to tell Pepe to open the spyhole.

  Pepe looked out and after a brief muttering through the hatch said it was a woman who wanted to change some US one-dollar bills into Mexican money. ‘Do you recognize her?’ Moskvin asked Pepe.

  ‘We have a lot of people asking for change: waiters, hotel workers, shop workers. I don’t know. I can’t see much through the hatch.’

  ‘Tell her to return tomorrow. Say you’ve run out of money.’ Moskvin’s Spanish was even worse than his German. To get a job in the Soviet foreign service with so little aptitude for languages, a man would have to be a very loyal Party supporter.

  Pepe sent the woman away and then we all settled down to wait. It was a nerve-racking business. Moskvin had prepared it well. It was the right place. He had all the evidence he needed to nail Stinnes, and this way he’d have the dollars too. There was nothing the KGB liked better than rubbing our noses in it. I cursed Tiptree for changing the rendezvous. It wouldn’t have been so easy for Moskvin out there in the dark crowded square.

  I looked at Pepe. His business made it unlikely that he had Communist Party connections. Probably the KGB had had Tiptree under observation when he
came here to make arrangements about the money.

  In such a situation almost everything is guesswork. I guessed the old man was the regular guard for the bank, simply because he did not look like the sort of tough whom Moskvin would bring in. And I guessed from the way he held the double-barrelled gun that Moskvin had removed the shells. And the despondent expressions of the faces of the young boys and the envy with which they eyed the machine-pistol convinced me that they were unarmed. I could take the old man and the kids, I could probably handle Moskvin at the same time, but the machine-pistol tilted the balance.

  I kept my hands on my head and tried to look very frightened. It was not difficult, especially when I saw the way the kid with the machine-pistol was flourishing it and caressing the trigger lovingly. ‘I want everyone to remain still,’ said Moskvin. He said it frequently and in between saying it he was looking at his wrist-watch. ‘And stay away from the windows.’

  Pepe made a harmless move to get a handkerchief from his pocket. Moskvin was angry. He punched Pepe in the back with a force that knocked him to his knees. ‘The next person to move without permission will be shot,’ he promised, and gave Pepe a spiteful kick to emphasize this warning.

  There were just the two of them, it seemed, and it was unlikely that they had worked together before. One machine-pistol and probably some kind of handgun in Moskvin’s pocket. Against them, one person alone would stand little chance.

  I looked round the room, deciding what to do when and if Stinnes pressed the buzzer. They’d have to open the door because otherwise the steel door-lining would both protect and hide him. Did they have someone downstairs in the bar, I wondered. Or someone outside in the street to watch for Stinnes’s arrival. The crowded bar would make a perfect cover.

  I looked at the three partners, the three guards and the two women clerks who’d been brought in from the next room. They all kept their hands on their heads, and they all had that patient and passive visage that makes the people of Latin America so recognizably different from the Latin people of Europe.

  It was while I was musing on this question that I heard the bang of the downstairs door. Under normal circumstances the sounds of footsteps on the staircase would not have been audible, but the circumstances were not normal; everyone in the room was wound up tight.

  The boy with the machine-pistol pulled the bolt back to cock the gun for firing. There was a click as the sear engaged the sear-notch in the bolt. It was enough to snap some mechanism within Zena’s mind. ‘You promised,’ she shouted. ‘You promised not to hurt him.’

  She was shouting at Moskvin, but he smiled without even bothering to look back at her. So that was how it had been done. Moskvin had been monitoring the whole thing through Zena. But she wasn’t KGB material. There was no need to ask what she was getting out of it; the box of money. Nice going, Moskvin. But if my wife Fiona wasn’t behind that notion I’d eat the money bill by bill.

  We could hear the footsteps as someone reached the top of the stairs and paused on the landing. ‘You promised,’ said Zena. She was almost incoherent with anger. ‘I love him. I told you.’ She stiffened as she recognized their total indifference, and her face had gone livid under the bright make-up.

  Neither Moskvin nor his machine-gun man bothered with Zena. Their eyes were on the door where Stinnes was expected any minute.

  There is always some damned possibility that lies beyond every probability. Perhaps the only thing I’d never considered was that Zena could be infatuated with Stinnes. There was a strong streak of romanticism in her complex personality, and there was that old Prussian rectitude that made her record every broken teacup in a notebook. Zena would allow Stinnes to be betrayed but not killed.

  Ignoring the machine-pistol, Zena flung herself across the room like a human cannon-ball. She collided with the boy, her feet kicking and fingernails gouging. He bent, and almost fell, under the momentum of her attack, and there was a crash as their two bodies smashed against the wall. Trying to defend himself against her fingernails, the boy dropped his machine-gun and tried to grab her hands. An ear-splitting bang echoed round the room as the bullet in the chamber was fired by the impact. But by that time Zena had her nails into the boy’s face and he was yelling at her to stop. He was frightened of her, and it was to be heard in his yells. Thus encouraged, she stopped only long enough to grab his long hair and use it to swing his head against a sharp corner of a filing cabinet.

  Had Moskvin reached into his pocket for a pistol, or stooped to pick up the machine-gun, he might have regained control. But he used his huge fists. It was the reflex action of a man who’d spent his life throwing his weight around both literally and figuratively. He gave Zena’s small body a mighty blow to the kidneys and followed it with a left hand to the side of her head.

  The punches landed with sickening force. They took care of little Zena all right. She was only half conscious as she fell to the floor, arms flailing. Then Moskvin could not resist a kick at her. But it took time. There was lots of time, and I pushed my pistol back into my belt as I watched Tiptree bring a small Browning automatic from his pocket and with commendable speed fire two shots at Moskvin. The first bullet went wild – I heard it ricochet and hit a typewriter in the next room – but his second bullet hit Moskvin in the leg. Moskvin stopped kicking Zena and screamed. I guessed he was an amateur. Now he demonstrated the way in which an amateur is efficient only while all goes well for him. Once injured, Moskvin lost interest in killing Stinnes. He lost interest in the money. He lost interest in the boy who’d had his face shredded by Zena’s nails and his cranium gashed on the sharp corner of the filing cabinet. He even lost interest in the machine-pistol on the floor.

  The Mexicans all remained very still, hands on heads and their faces impassive. I put my hands back on my head too. There was no sense in getting killed, but I got ready for the aftermath by stepping slowly to one side so that I could plant my foot on the machine-pistol. That was the trump card.

  Moskvin fell back on to a chair and pressed his palm against the copious bleeding. He nursed his pain and wanted everything to stop. He clamped his hands to his wounded leg and crooned and wept with the pain of it. The pain could not have been very great but he was frightened. He’d probably convinced himself he was going to die. Even people hardened to the sight of blood can be very deeply affected by a glimpse of their own.

  Now Tiptree found time enough to look around to see where I’d gone. ‘Open the door,’ he told me, with a superiority that bordered on contempt. ‘And take your hands off your head. It’s all over.’ When I didn’t move fast enough, he looked down to where I had my foot on the machine-pistol and said, ‘Oh, you’ve got that, have you? Good.’

  Loudly Moskvin said, ‘I must go to hospital. I’m bleeding to death.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  Despite the changed situation, the Mexicans kept their hands on their heads. They were taking no chances. I picked up the machine-gun, went to the door and slid back the hatch, expecting to see Stinnes. Instead, a small child whispered, ‘I have a message. It is only for Señor Samson.’

  ‘I’m Señor Samson,’ I said.

  The child looked at me for a long time before deciding to confide his very guarded message. He whispered, ‘Your friend is waiting for you at the place you arranged.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You are to give me one hundred pesos,’ said the child. Stinnes knew how to get his messages delivered. I passed a note through the hatch to him, and then closed it.

  ‘I must go to hospital,’ said Moskvin. His voice became lower and more forceful as a little of his confidence returned to him.

  ‘If he says another word about anything, shoot him,’ I told Tiptree in English. ‘They won’t ask him questions in the morgue.’

  Tiptree nodded solemnly. I think he would have done it too; you never can be sure with enthusiasts like Tiptree.

  Moskvin went suddenly quiet. He obviously understood enough English to know what was
good for him.

  The onetime machine-gunner was sitting on the floor covered in blood. He was only half conscious and his eyes were closed with the pain. He’d discovered that the filing cabinet can be a formidable weapon.

  ‘What’s next?’ said Tiptree. His voice was shrill. He was excited and over-confident and still waving his pistol around.

  ‘You’re staying here to make sure no one leaves until I phone you from you know where.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Tiptree, his voice revealing a sudden concern. ‘This all has to be sorted out. This Russian shot, the Mexican boy badly hurt and the girl unconscious. The police may come. How do I explain the guns?’

  I dialled the freight office at the airport. Werner answered immediately. ‘We’re ready this end,’ he said. ‘Is everything all right with you?’

  I looked at Zena. There was no point in alarming Werner; there was nothing he could do. ‘So far, so good,’ I said, and hung up the phone. To Tiptree I said, ‘The success of this operation will be measured according to whether we get our man to London; nothing else counts for much. You told me that. London are relying on you, Henry. Don’t let them down. I’ll get someone to call you at this number to tell when we are safely airborne. Meanwhile keep them here. This is your big chance. They’re very dangerous agents.’

  ‘I’ll go. You stay,’ suggested Tiptree.

  ‘You don’t know where I arranged to meet our friend,’ I said.

  ‘And you won’t tell me,’ said Tiptree.

  I didn’t bother to answer. I looked at them. The stupid peasant Moskvin, with his trouser-cuff rolled up, winding his tie round his leg to stop the bleeding, and frightened for his life. And the erstwhile machine-gunner, now sitting on the floor groaning, eyes closed, staunching blood from his lacerated face and head with a great handful of paper tissues.

  And there was tiny Zena, the astounding little fireball whom I would never understand. How typical that as she began to regain consciousness her fingers were searching out the rips and torn seams in her expensive Paris suit.