The Dragon With One Ruby Eye

by Paul Moomaw

  Meissner crossed the room toward Pray and Gabriela. “I have spoken with Herr Strauss, of the shop on the Kaerntnerstrasse in Vienna,” he said. “He speaks highly of you, and assures me you have a very sharp eye for beauty.” He paused and spread his palms toward Gabriela. “But then, one can see this, isn’t it so?”

  “It was Herr Strauss who gave me your name, Herr Meissner. He advised me to make every effort to meet you. He told me, in fact, that if I failed to see your collection of jade pieces, my trip to Austria would be entirely wasted.”

  Meissner laughed delightedly. “Such a flatterer, that Strauss.” He looked around at the shelves and cases of jade with a proprietary gaze. “No, I shouldn’t say that, for I’m afraid I am conceited enough to believe he’s correct.”

  Pray knew, or hoped at least, that the talkative Herr Strauss had told Meissner a lot more—had spun him a tale, in fact, of a young man whose expensive tastes were outrunning his inheritance, who was becoming just a bit desperate, and who might, as a result, be interested in doing a touch of shady business.

  “It seems almost to offer a history of the art, Herr Meissner,” Pray said.

  Meissner nodded energetically. “A skimpy one, of course. A spotty survey. I am only one man. But you’re quite correct.” He picked up a small carved disk of white nephrite, with a hole drilled in it. “This piece is the oldest I have. It comes from some time around the Second Century before Christ. I had it from a very dear friend who is unfortunately dead. He received it as a gift while on a diplomatic mission to Tokyo before World War Two, and gave it to me at the end of that awful time. He knew that his estate, which was near Nickelsdorf, practically into Hungary, would be looted by the Russians.”

  Meissner put the piece back on its shelf and shook his head. “A bad time,” he said. He sounded so convincingly sad that Pray had to remind himself that the period in question had been a very lucrative one for the elegant gentleman who stood here in the midst of his treasures.

  Meissner turned to another piece, a crane of clear, green jadeite—the Burmese stone known as kingfisher jade—frozen in descent toward a stylized island of white jade, with its wings high and its long legs stretching downward.

  “And this comes almost exactly a year ago from the hand of an artist in Munich, a young, blonde woman named Muriel who was born in the English seaside town of Brighton, and who has never, as far as I know, been anywhere near the Orient.”

  Pray touched the dragon boat. “What’s the history of this, do you know? It looks Chinese. I would guess late 17th or early 18th Century” He kept his voice carefully neutral.

  “You do know your jade, don’t you?” Meissner replied. “My friend who has given it to me tells me it came from a collection in the city of Vancouver, in Canada, and that it is indeed from that period. But as for the identity of the man who made it, no one knows .” Meissner smiled and stroked the little boat. “A mystery ship on a mystery voyage.”

  Hannes returned pushing a wheeled cart before him. On the cart rode a bottle of champagne that shared a large silver ice bucket with three crystal champagne flutes, and three dishes of caviar, each on its own mound of ice, surrounded by three small spoons.

  “Ah, here is a ship whose voyage is no mystery at all,” Meissner said, as Hannes wheeled the cart to the center of the room and marched back out. “Allow me.” He poured champagne into one of the chilled glasses and offered it to Gabriela with a bow, then repeated the process for Pray before filling his own. He raised his glass, bowed stiffly, and clicked his heels together. “A toast to the stone of heaven, and to those of us who love it so,” he said. “Sometimes, I think I might kill for it.” He smiled quickly and drained the glass.

  “If you wish a bit of toast with the caviar, please say so,” he said, refilling his glass with champagne and picking up one of the dishes of roe. “I prefer it unadorned, with a champagne chaser. You will find that it is very fresh. We are able to get a good grade of malossol beluga here—from the Russians, of course. They can no longer afford to eat it themselves. It must kill them to think that a former SS member enjoys now, by virtue of capitalist wealth, the fruits of their labor, which we could not win by force of arms.” He cocked his head and gazed at Pray and Gabriela. “Does that bother you, that I have been a good Nazi once upon a time?”

  “I’m not big on history,” Pray said.

  “Me neither,” Gabriela said, picking up one of the dishes of caviar and a spoon.

  “Good,” Meissner said. “Shall we sit?” He pushed the tray toward a table which stood against the tall windows and settled himself carefully into one of the chairs. “Please make yourselves at home,” he said, hoisting the dish of caviar in their direction.

  “I understand from Herr Strauss,” Meissner said after Pray and Gabriela were settled, “That your visit might be more than merely social.”

  “The world is full of possibilities,” Pray murmured with a smile.

  “Ach, a discrete American. Mustn’t that be . . . ein Wiederspruch . . . a contradiction? One of those, oh, what is that wonderful English word you have . . . an oxymoron.” Meissner clapped his hands and smiled triumphantly, then picked up his champagne glass and gazed at Pray over its top. “I am always interested, at any rate, in opportunities to enlarge my collection.”

  Here goes, Pray thought. He shook his head emphatically. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be at all interested in selling any of my own collection, as meager as it is compared to this one. I’m sure you can understand my reluctance.”

  Meissner nodded. “Absolutely. It is only that I am given to understand . . .” He raised an eyebrow and paused again.

  “Not jade, Herr Meissner.” Pray broke off, stared at Gabriela, then returned his gaze to Meissner. When he spoke again, it was in German. “Perhaps I might pay you another visit, tomorrow. Alone.”

  Meissner responded in the same language. “Your companion speaks no German?”

  “I sincerely hope not, mein Herr.”

  Meissner smiled. “Morgen, denn, zwar. But not too early in the morning.” He rose and switched back to English. “Right now, let me show you some of the little pieces I particularly like, Herr und Dame.”

  * * *

  “Well?” Gabriela said, as they pulled out of Meissner’s drive on the way back to Salzburg.

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, what do you think, is what. Is he going to bite?”

  “He didn’t turn and run.” Pray glanced over his shoulder at the receding house, then back at his companion. “Mainly, I think I’m going to get my goddamned boat.”

  “What boat?”

  “The dragon. The one he said was from a friend in America. The son of a bitch stole it from me, and from a friend, along with a big quota of my self-esteem, and I’m going to take it back. One way or another.”

  “I don’t understand, Adam. What’s a jade boat got to do with anything?”

  “I’ll explain later. Meantime, what did you think? Of Meissner, I mean.”

  “I think he may be a great admirer of beauty, but he couldn’t care less about women, is what I think.”

  “Oh, come on. After the fuss he made over you? Not to mention the gorgeous Hungarian.”

  “Come on, yourself, Adam. Give me a little credit for knowing some things.”

  “Boobs again?”

  “What do you mean, boobs?”

  “That’s what you told me in Coeur d’Alene—that you could read a man’s character by the way he looked at your boobs.”

  “So I get a little crude, sometimes. But I can tell when a man looks at me, and when he really sees me. It was more than that, too.”

  “Speak on.”

  “It’s hard to describe.” She turned in her seat. “I heard a story once about Lawrence Olivier. You know, the actor?”

  Pray nodded.

  “He had a role where he had to play a closet gay. He had to get his homosexuality across to the audience, but he couldn’t be obvious about it—nothing swishy,
that sort of thing. The story is that he did an absolutely marvelous job, and no one could figure out quite how he’d pulled it off. When they asked him afterwards, he said it had been simple: he had just pretended, every move he made, that his balls were made out of glass.”

  Pray tossed back his head and laughed. “Okay, I can’t top that one. At least I won’t have to worry about Meissner running away with you will I?”

  Gabriela reached across the seat and rested her hand on Pray’s knee. “Not a chance,” she said. “In fact, as a token of my good faith, let’s go into town tonight and I’ll buy dinner.”

  Pray squeezed her hand. “Done,” he said.

  The car passed a curve on the lake shore. Pray pulled over and gazed back across the lake. A corner of Meissner’s roof line showed through the bare branches of the trees around his house.

  “I’m going to get that damned boat,” Pray said. “One way or another, it’s going home with me.” Impulsively, he raised his middle finger toward the house across the lake. Then, feeling a little foolish, he put the car in gear and drove off.

  Chapter 26

  Peter Klemper glowered at the disorderly flotilla of small craft and ancient coastal steamers that lay at anchor in the Alexandria Harbor. The truck he sat in, which had borne its cargo of steel bottles from Cairo to the sea, was in the same condition most of the vessels in Peter’s view seemed to be. Every time he shifted his weight he felt the sharp edge of a broken seat spring pressing into the back of his thigh, and there seemed to be nothing in the truck that could be touched without carrying away a tattoo of rust or grease.

  Peter glanced sourly at his insufferably cheerful driver, whose name was Fayed, and who had a primitive but sufficient command of bastard German, speckled with words in Arabic, English, French, and some other language completely unknown to Peter.

  The drive had been awkward. Fayed insisted on trying to make conversation, which only irritated Peter more Their arrival at the port had relieved him a little, but he still felt the tension in his neck and shoulders. Herr Meissner had assured him that the bottles and their contents were perfectly safe, but every pothole in the road—and Fayed seemed to have an affinity for them—triggered a spasm in Peter’s sphincters.

  A strong wind whipped the harbor into a heavy chop, even behind the windbreak, and the air held a chill that surprised Peter.

  “There,” Fayed said, and pointed out to sea. “Ship there. The Sea Gull. My brother’s. Very fine.” Fayed nodded rhythmically and wagged his finger as he repeated the last words. “Very fine. Very fine.”

  Peter followed the finger to a coastal steamer which looked as if it had once been painted black—probably in the days of King Farouk—and never touched again. He shook his head and rolled his eyes heavenward. Sea Gull, he thought. It looked more like a wounded turtle, lying on its back, with a freeboard of not more than a foot, so that salty waves washed rhythmically over its deck. A lone seaman dressed in tan britches and a T-shirt lounged against the entryway to the bridge, and a frayed Egyptian flag fluttered disconsolately in the wind.

  “How do we get to her?” Gazing at several rowboats tied to rotten looking planks across the Corniche Road from the truck, Peter feared he knew the answer already. Fayed confirmed the fear by pointing to the craft which lay closest to the truck.

  “No problem. Good little boat.”

  No problem. That had been Fayed’s response to everything, from the moment Peter had met him at the Cairo airport and asked where the shipment was.

  “No problem,” Fayed had said cheerfully, and started walking toward a low, metal building. Halfway there, he had stopped and turned to Peter.

  “One small thing. The man in there helps us. He needs payment.”

  “A bribe?”

  Fayed had shaken his head energetically from side to side, his eyes wide. “Oh, no. No bribe. Tip. Tip.”

  “How much?”

  Fayed had named a figure in Egyptian currency and held out his hand, then resumed a brisk march toward the customs building after Peter had counted the amount out and handed it to him. In the building, Fayed had nodded toward a customs guard dressed in khaki shorts and shirt, with a heavy, antique-looking Webley revolver hanging in a military holster from a wide, brown belt.

  “Wait,” he had said, and walked toward the guard. The two men had talked, and then Fayed, with apparent unconcern about who might be watching, had pulled out the wad of currency. He had also been, apparently, unconcerned about Peter’s reaction as he counted out what looked like less than half the money and handed it to the guard, then stuffed the rest back into the pocket of his dirty linen jacket. Then Fayed and the guard put their shoulders to a hand truck on which rested a large, wooden crate. Fayed had nodded and cocked an eyebrow at Peter as he and the guard wheeled the crate toward the exit.

  Outside, Peter had wanted to open the crate to insure that it contained the metal bottles Herr Meissner had told him he was escorting, but Fayed had shaken his head rapidly, taking Peter by the arm and drawing him away from the guard.

  “Paid not to open crate. If we open it, he must look. Not paid not to look.”

  “You have money left.”

  Fayed had smiled broadly. “Oh, not enough. Not enough.” He had gone back to the crate, exchanged a handshake with the guard. “You must push,” he had called to Peter, as the guard walked back toward the building. Peter had sighed in resignation and helped Fayed push the hand truck toward the beat up van in which he now sat. Once the crate was loaded, Peter had jumped into the back of the van, getting filthy in the process, and opened the crate as Fayed drove away. There was no light in the van, but the glow of headlights from oncoming vehicles sufficed to show him the dimly glinting metal bottles. Unable to make himself touch them, Peter had closed the crate and clambered back into the front seat.

  Now he stared unhappily at Fayed’s brother’s boat. As if he read Peter’s mind, Fayed suddenly spoke.

  “Old. That boat is old. Someday, too old. But it is ours, that boat. This old truck—also too old. But they are ours, my brother and mine.” He pulled out a cigarette and a worn Zippo lighter. The smell of heavy Latakia tobacco filled the truck. He held out the pack to Peter.

  “I don’t smoke,” Peter said. Fayed shrugged and slipped the cigarettes back into his pocket.

  “Some day,” he said, and paused. He blew three, almost perfect smoke rings, one inside the other, and grinned. “Good, eh?”

  Peter grinned back. “Good,” he agreed. Fayed was hard not to like, he thought, crook or not. Shit, I’m a crook myself. And tonight I will be a traitor as well. He blinked the thought away.

  “Some day,” Fayed continued, “We will maybe have a good boat, and a good truck, and get better work.” He reached into his pocket again and removed a wallet, and pulled from the wallet a grimy, faded photograph. “I want good things for her. My daughter. She calls Farsa. Beautiful, yes?”

  Peter took the photo. It showed a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, you couldn’t tell with these Arabs, but she looked to be on the edge of womanhood, with an open, innocent smile and huge, dark eyes.

  “Very beautiful,” he said, handing the photograph back to Fayed.

  Fayed slipped it back into the wallet. “She must have a better life. That is my dream.”

  Peter nodded. He could understand having a dream. He and Hannes had one, after all. One I am about to betray my employer for, he thought. He shifted uneasily in the seat.

  “When do we load this?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the rear of the van.

  Fayed looked at the lowering sun, then at the clunky steel watch on his wrist. “In two hours, maybe, it is dark enough.”

  Peter stretched, felt the broken spring poke at him again. “I think I’ll take a walk,” he said.

  “Very good. I will wait here.”

  Peter twisted the door handle and pushed. Nothing happened. Fayed grinned and reached over. He slammed the heel of his hand against the door and it popped open with
a screech. He shook his head and grinned.

  “Too old,” he said.

  Peter crossed the road to the water side and began pacing slowly along the low sea wall, attending peripherally to the traffic—mostly trucks and motorbikes—that sped past him. He came to a bench and sat down. The chilly wind had driven people indoors, leaving the usually crowded beaches deserted.

  I wish I did smoke, he thought, remembering the obvious pleasure Fayed took in his rank-smelling cigarette. He nuzzled the middle knuckle of his right hand with his teeth, gnawing on it gently as if to provide a substitute for a cigarette, and stared out across the harbor. There, somewhere, out of sight of land, his brother waited on a boat Peter had never seen, didn’t know the name of. Hannes, and Delon, and probably some more of those Frogs, waiting for dark, clustering around a radio receiver. Peter had the companion piece of equipment in the worn canvas suitcase that was his only piece of luggage—a transmitter. Turn it on an hour after you leave the harbor, Delon had said, showing him how the equipment worked, then showing him again, as if he gave Peter no credit for brains. Nazi or not, Peter didn’t like Delon, didn’t like the French in general. How could a Frenchman be a decent Nazi, anyway, he wondered? The French had no self respect. Sometimes in his apartment, staring at the torn flag on the wall, the red faded and the white stained, but the black swastika still stark and beautiful, and perhaps even more beautiful because of the stains and tears that spoke of the flag’s bloody history, Peter allowed himself to daydream, to imagine how it could have been if Hitler had won. There would be no Frogs calling themselves Nazis then, and telling good Austrians what to do; and Peter wouldn’t have had the taste of tourist ass on his tongue from childhood. But better tourist ass than ashes in the mouth, he thought, shrugging. That was why he sat here tonight, waiting to leave Alexandria in a rusty boat, carrying a load of dangerous stuff—although Meissner had told him it was perfectly safe as long as it stayed in the bottles, couldn’t blow it up if you tried, unless you poured it out of the bottles all into one pile. Then, boom! Peter grinned briefly, imagining the boom, imagining Delon and his Frog dogs sitting on top of the pile when it went off. It would be a hell of a blast, Meissner had said. Not an atom bomb, but close enough.