by Howard Fast
“Let’s get to a telephone, and we’ll see.”
When they had gone, Brodsky introduced Bernie to Feinstein. The circle of pilots and navigators were grinning with pleasure. A man called Condon joined them, a thin, worried man who was the field manager. “I got a hell of a lot of sympathy for you,” he said, “but this means trouble.”
“Being alive means trouble.”
“That may be. The point is, can you get fueled and take off before dark? They’ll get that court order, believe me.”
“I think so. We’ll try.”
Feinstein led Bernie and Brodsky and Montego across the field to where his car was parked. He explained that Montego had a Jewish grandmother. “Half the world is Jewish, if you look hard enough. By the way, Luis here will fly with you to Panama. He has a crew waiting there to tear out the seats and convert the planes to cargo carriers.” At his car, he unlocked the trunk and took out two leather suitcases. “Two million dollars,” he said. “Cold cash. Ten Messerschmitts and all the munitions the rest of it will buy. Use it wisely, kids.”
“You mean you left it like that,” Bernie said, “sitting there in the car?”
“What did you expect, an armored car? The trunk was locked.”
Bernie and Brodsky each took a suitcase. “The closest we’ll ever get to being millionaires,” Brodsky said.
Three hours later, the sun sinking behind the pines, the planes took off. The Customs men and the FBI had not returned.
***
Sarah Levy came to visit Dan at the hospital. She brought a jar of nuts, a box of homemade cookies, and a bunch of yellow roses. “Although,” she said, looking around the room, “flowers are the last thing you need. You have enough already to start a flower shop.”
“I know. A man never knows his rating in flowers until he’s dead.”
“And you’re not dead, Danny. I don’t like to see you lying there feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a lucky man.”
He didn’t deny it, aware that she was thinking that it was almost twenty years since her husband, Mark, Dan’s partner and best friend, had died of a massive coronary occlusion. That was how it was written for him and his kind; you clawed and scrambled and grabbed and went to bed each night counting another marker of money and power, and then it washed out in the same senseless ending—and for Sarah, the apparently endless years of loneliness and waiting. For what? What did she wait for so patiently? What would Jean wait for? He wondered how old Sarah was now. Seventy? Certainly close to seventy. She was a thin wraith of a woman, her hair white, her face wrinkled, the skin, once so white and pink, having long ago given up the struggle. He could remember clearly the young woman Mark had married, her long yellow hair braided and piled in a crown on her head. Half a century had passed since then. Dan had been only ten years old at the time of Mark’s marriage. Mark had been twenty. Dan’s father had taken him into the chandler shop on Fisherman’s Wharf that was owned and operated by Mark’s father, old Moe Levy, who had come across the country with a peddler’s wagon, trading gimcracks with the Indians. Sarah had just arrived, nineteen years old, an immigrant girl from Lithuania, alone, without family, tagged and shipped across the breadth of the country to marry a man she had never seen. Frightened, thousands of miles from a home she would never see again, surrounded by the babble of a strange and incomprehensible tongue, she was like a beautiful, terror-stricken young animal.
“You’re a lucky man, Danny,” she said again.
“I suppose so.”
“Just give up the cigars and stop drinking and you have another twenty years.”
She spoke in expected clichés. Did she think that way? he wondered. Had she given up all the questions to which there were no answers? How desperately he wanted a cigar! A long, cool, sweet-smelling Cuban cigar.
“Joe was here?” she asked him.
“Came up the night it happened.”
“He’s a good boy, such a good boy. Do you know how happy Mark would have been, your son married to his granddaughter? On the other hand, my Sally is a very strange girl. She would try the patience of a saint.”
“They’ll get along.”
“I hope so. Jean has been here?”
“She’s always here. I chased her out.” He knew that Sarah could not reconcile herself to Jean, could not accept that they had come together after May Ling’s death. Dan realized that he wanted Sarah to go, to leave him be, and the realization filled him with guilt. What happened to people? He had once adored Sarah. A thousand years ago.
“You’re tired,” she said.
“I guess so.”
“Then I let you rest, Danny. Don’t worry about anything. Only get well.”
***
The telephone rang, and Barbara, waiting eagerly, anxiously, grabbed it. The operator wanted to know whether she would accept a collect call from a Bernie Cohen in Panama.
“Yes, yes, of course.”
His voice came through, apologizing. “It’s just that there was no other way I could call you from here, Bobby.”
“I know. Never mind, Bernie. Oh, I’m so glad to hear from you. Are you all right?”
“Just fine. What about you and Sammy?”
“Strong and healthy and lonely.”
“Don’t be lonely. A few more days and it’s done. Say, two weeks at the most before I get out of Palestine.”
“Bernie, what are you doing in Panama?”
“I’m at Tocumen Airport here. It’s our route, honey. It was all planned and laid out by the guys in New York. We got out of New Jersey two jumps ahead of the sheriff—well, not exactly the sheriff. The FBI and Customs. We’re refueling here, and then we fly to the Azores, and then from the Azores to Czechoslovakia, where we pick up our cargo and take it to Palestine.”
“Bernie—” She hesitated. “Bernie, do you have to go all the way? Can’t it go on without you?”
“I can’t drop out now. Look, Bobby, I called because I was afraid you’d get the news on the radio and begin to worry.”
“What news?”
“We lost a plane. It went down over the ocean. Three good guys—Jesse Levine, Bob Sanders, and Al Green. If I stepped out of it now, it would throw them all into a panic. There’s just no way I could do it.”
“But you said the planes were good?”
“They are good. This one developed engine trouble and came down. It happens.”
“And it could happen again.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“But three men are dead.”
“We don’t know. They may have been picked up. We radioed their position, so there’s still hope.” Then she was silent until he asked, “Are you still there, Bobby?”
“I’m just so damn miserable. I’ve never said that before. I just feel you’re stretching this beyond luck.”
“Bobby, I’ll be all right.”
Barbara put down the telephone and sat and stared at it. An hour later, when the doorbell rang, she had still not severed the connection between herself and the black instrument she faced. Jean was at the door.
“How is he?”
“Much better, I think,” her mother said. “What were you doing?”
“Staring at the telephone. Bernie called.”
“Where is he?”
“In Panama.” She told her mother what had happened.
“I’d like a drink,” Jean said.
“Have you eaten?”
“Sort of. I’m not hungry. Do you have any brandy?”
Barbara watched her mother sip the brandy. “About men,” Jean said. “They come in two sizes, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It’s time you did. It has to do with games, which is what differentiates them from animals. Animals don’t play games.”
“Puppies?”
“Not really. Consider the lion. The lioness does the hunting, finds the food, delivers the children, and raises them. The lion does nothing. Struts and fornicates. Nothing else.”
“I really don’t care to discuss lions,” Barbara said. “My world is very crumbly. Last week I was married to a sober, worried businessman who ran a garage that didn’t make any money. Now my father is in the hospital with a heart attack; my husband is in Panama with nine old airplanes—what do you mean, men come in two sizes?”
“Not that it matters.” Jean sighed and refilled her glass.
“You’re entitled to get drunk,” Barbara said. “It’s all right. You can spend the night here.”
“Have you ever seen me drunk? And on brandy? No.”
“It matters. I can’t stand people who are enigmatic. Anyway, it’s time we had a good talk.”
“About men?”
“Yes, by all means.”
“They play games. That’s a childhood preoccupation. There are essentially only two kinds of men. They all begin the same. They play games, and one kind continues with the games and the other kind stops. But neither kind ever reaches adulthood. I can lay claim to being a modest authority, since I married both kinds. John Whittier was the kind who stops. It just died inside of him. Men like Dan and Bernie, they go on with the games. You’re like me, which is why you made the same kind of idiotic marriage.”
“Thank you, mother.”
“I’m not being nasty,” Jean said. “I fell in love with Dan Lavette forty years ago. If he dies, I’ll be an empty, worthless old bag. But I don’t deceive myself. Anyway, I’m talking a lot of nonsense, am I not?”
“Yes and no.”
“Oh, I do wish you wouldn’t be so damn righteous and superior. Try being a little girl for ten minutes. Tell me that you love me and that I exist!”
“I do love you, and I’d look silly trying to be a little girl, even for ten minutes. I’m a woman of thirty-four years who has a lot of problems. A week from now, I have to go to Washington and testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.”
Jean put down the glass of brandy and stared at her. “I don’t understand. What on earth are you talking about?” Then she added, “That’s impossible. It’s ridiculous and impossible. You’re a Seldon.”
Barbara burst out laughing. “Mother, I love you, I do, truly. I am still a Seldon. My name was Barbara Lavette, and then it became Barbara Cohen, but I am a Seldon. It’s so simple. But it isn’t.”
“Will you please tell me what happened?”
Barbara told her about the subpoena and her meeting with Harvey Baxter. “But this is my thing, mother, not yours and not daddy’s. I don’t want him to know. In fact, I don’t want anyone else to know about this yet, and I think with daddy in the hospital, you’ll agree he shouldn’t know.”
“I still don’t understand. Is this because of Bernie and what he’s doing?”
“No, it’s because of me. I am not a simple housewife who writes books between feedings. Things have happened to me.”
“They certainly have. What will you do about Sam?”
“It’s only for a few days.”
“I’ll take him, of course.”
“No, you’ll be with daddy. I’ll take him up to Higate and leave him with Eloise and Adam for a few days. They’ll be delighted.”
“I won’t hear of it!”
“Do you know,” Barbara said, “you are an amazing woman, mother. I do patronize you, and that’s sheer stupidity on my part. But it’s not basic. Basically, I think you’re quite remarkable, and I do love you.”
***
To fly at night, Bernie decided, was to move out of man’s ordinary reality into another world. Time and space collapsed, and the roar of the four motors obscured all other sounds of life; yet beyond the motors they were ringed by silence, and the sound and the silence coexisted. He must have dozed off, for Jerry Fox was shaking him. “I’ve got it on automatic, Bernie. Sit at the controls for a while.” He pointed out the dials to watch. “Shlemsky’s right here next to you, so there’s nothing to worry about.” Fox relaxed and was asleep almost immediately. Bernie rubbed his eyes and watched the maze of dials. Shlemsky sang softly, “Twilight soon will fade, nobody’s left at the masquerade…” Ahead of them, the rim of the sea lightened and the first hint of a corona of light appeared. A while later, Bernie could make out the shape of the other planes, stretched across the sky in irregular formation.
“Counting them?” Shlemsky asked.
“We’re all here.”
“Not all. Only nine.”
“Only nine,” Bernie agreed.
“Better wake Fox.”
The first glowing edge of the sun lifted above the water as he shook Fox awake. An hour later, one after another, the planes touched down on the great flat expanse of the airport in the Azores.
Phil Kramer, a New York accountant, a round-faced bald man who wore gold-rimmed glasses and who carried two pens and a pencil in his breast pocket, was waiting for them. He was a fussy little man, very neat, very organized, and he kept jotting things down in a little notebook. He shook hands with Bernie and Brodsky, jotted down Bernie’s name and address for future reference, and asked about the money.
“Safe in the planes.”
“You know, it’s not small change. Two million dollars is not small change. It took a lot of crying to come up with two million dollars.”
“The money’s safe,” Brodsky assured him.
“I see only nine planes.”
“Haven’t you heard? We lost one on our way down to Panama.”
“Terrible. That’s terrible. What about the crew?”
“We don’t know.”
“I’ll try to find out. I’ve been here for three days, that’s why I haven’t heard. Now I’ve made all arrangements for refueling. Do your men need sleep? I can arrange for something overnight.”
“We’ve been sleeping in shifts. I think it’s best that we take off as soon as we’re fueled. I don’t know how far the hand of the FBI reaches, but this was sort of an American field all through the war, wasn’t it?” Bernie could not shake off his uneasiness.
“It’s Portuguese now. Don’t worry about that. I’ve spread a little vigorish here and there,” Kramer told him. “The fuel is paid for, and I’ve made arrangements with the restaurant for the food. Just let your boys fill up with whatever they want. Now, does anyone in your gang talk Czech?”
“I doubt it,” Brodsky said. “But our French is good; Bernie’s is better than mine, but I get along with it. They’ve got to speak French.”
“Probably. The point is, you have to bargain with them. They’ll take your blood if you let them.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small thirty-eight-caliber revolver, which he handled gingerly and uncomfortably.
“What’s that?” Bernie asked.
“You don’t have any weapons, do you?”
They shook their heads.
“With two million in cash, we thought you ought to have a weapon.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” Bernie agreed, grinning. “Very thoughtful indeed.” He put the revolver in his jacket pocket. “But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. One suitcase is with me and the other’s with Brodsky. There’s nowhere to go in an airplane.”
When they took off, four hours later, Bernie saw Kramer standing in front of the airport building, jotting entries in his little notebook.
“But you know,” Shlemsky said, “he was right, Bernie. When you think of guys sticking up gas stations for fifty bucks, you got to admit that a million is very enticing. We got a lot of wild guys on this flight.”
“Like killing someone,” Bernie said. “You have to do it on the spur of the moment or think about it a long time. The same with this money. No one came into this to steal a mill
ion or two, and we’re moving too quickly for anyone to figure out how to do it.”
It was dusk as they crossed over into Czech airspace and received instructions to put down at a military airfield near Pilsen. The runway was lit as they landed, and a man in uniform, standing in a jeep and shouting at them in French, signaled for the planes to follow his car to a parking area. The sight of a hundred or so soldiers around the parking area made Bernie nervous. Brodsky had assured him that there would be Haganah men waiting when they put down in Czechoslovakia, but when he finally dropped out of the plane, spotlights blinding him, he felt a knot of fear in his stomach. He had heard every story conceivable about what went on or could go on behind the so-called Iron Curtain, and now it occurred to him how simple it would be for them to impound the planes and the money. He tightened his grip on the suitcase. Brodsky was shouting to him. Soldiers with submachine guns pressed toward him, and the pilots, navigators, and radiomen were gathering in a cluster around him, blinking, shading their eyes from the lights, very nervous now that they were in the land of the enemy—or what might be the enemy. Then Brodsky reached him, clinging, like Bernie, to a suitcase containing a million dollars. Behind him were two stocky men in leather jackets.
“What the devil is it?” Bernie demanded.
“It’s all right.”
Two uniformed Czechoslovak officers joined the group.
“They’re in the middle of a revolution of some kind,” Brodsky whispered to Bernie. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but they’re suspicious as hell.”
One of the Czech officers was saying in French, “We shall have to search the planes.”
“Go ahead,” Bernie told them. “They’re empty.”
“We shall see.” They shouted a string of commands, and some of the soldiers took off toward the parked planes. Meanwhile, one of the two men in leather jackets said to Bernie, “That’s the money, in the portmanteaus?” He had a heavy accent. Brodsky introduced him as Dov Benash. The other was Zvi Kober. “They’re Haganah men,” Brodsky explained.
“We meet you here, yes,” Benash said. “We take the money.”
“We’ll hold on to the money for the time being,” Bernie said.