The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  “I did several films in Germany a few years ago,” Bergman said hesitantly. “It was in 1938. I was pregnant with Pia. Karl Fröhlich took me to one of those huge Nazi rallies in Berlin. You know… the enormous stadium, floodlights and torches everywhere, bands playing, the steel-helmeted storm troopers. Hitler was there. Right in the center of all that organized madness. He was beaming. And returning that Sieg Heil salute…”

  She paused. We waited. I could hear insects and night birds through the screens.

  “Anyway,” continued Bergman brightly, with what I heard as a subtly false note in her voice, “everyone in the huge crowd was Sieg Heiling, arms thrusting out like marionettes, and I was just looking around. I was, you understand, amused. But Karl Fröhlich almost had a fit. ‘Inga,’ he whispered, ‘Mein Gott, you’re not doing the Heil Hitler salute!’ ‘Why should I, Karl?’ I replied. ‘You’re all doing it so marvelously well without me….’ ”

  Everyone laughed politely as Bergman looked down at her brandy snifter. Her lashes were long and lovely, and her cheeks colored very nicely with pleasure as the chuckling continued.

  “That’s the form, Daughter,” boomed Hemingway, putting his right arm around her and squeezing her. “That’s why you have to be my Maria.”

  I sipped my own coffee. It was interesting—watching and hearing Bergman slip from her shy actress persona into actual acting. She had been lying about the Sieg Heil incident—I was certain of that—although for what reason and in what way I had no idea. It occurred to me that there were only four of us at the table—Winston Guest, Dr. Herrera Sotolongo, Patchi Ibarlucia, and myself—who lived in the real world. Hemingway and Gellhorn created fiction; Bergman and Cooper acted it out.

  Then I almost laughed out loud. I was there under false pretenses, hiding even my real reason for being there—a spy who lied and cheated and was asked to kill for a living. So there were only three real humans at this table of six: the physician, the athlete, and the millionaire were real. The rest of us were aberrations, distortions—shadows of shades—empty silhouettes, like those Indonesian shadow puppets dancing and posturing behind thin screens for the delight of the crowds.

  EVENTUALLY HEMINGWAY UNCORKED another bottle of wine—our fourth for the dinner, counting the brandy—and suggested that we enjoy it on the terrace. Bergman looked at her watch, exclaimed that it was almost midnight, and insisted that she had to get back to the hotel—she said that she had an early flight in the morning, connecting in Miami for a flight to Los Angeles to meet with Michael Curtiz, her director on Casablanca, and to do some preliminary wardrobe tests even though actual filming would not begin for almost a month. There was a flurry of hugs and kisses on the front terrace—Bergman telling Cooper and Hemingway that she was so sorry that she would not be in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway stubbornly assuring her that she would be—and then Juan, the black chauffeur, closed the rear door on her and the black Lincoln was gliding down the driveway. The rest of us followed Hemingway and Gellhorn to the rear terrace.

  Before I could make my excuses and escape to the guest house, Hemingway had refilled my wineglass and we were sitting in comfortable chairs on the terrace, enjoying the night sounds, the cooling air, the stars, and the distant lights of Havana.

  “A very, very nice lady,” said Patchi Ibarlucia. “Please, Ernesto, who is this Lindstrom she is married to and why does she keep a different name?”

  Hemingway sighed. “Her husband’s a doctor… Petter with two t’s. At least he’s a doctor in Sweden. Now he’s in Rochester, New York, trying to get certified and accredited or whatever the hell foreign doctors do to get their parchment. She’s Mrs. Petter Lindstrom in Rochester, but she kept her maiden name for movies.”

  “We met them for the first time at dinner in San Francisco two years ago,” said Gellhorn, shaking her head impatiently as her husband offered to pour her more wine. “Petter is very nice.”

  Hemingway only grunted.

  “Well,” Cooper said slowly, “I’m glad that I came down to meet her. It’s too bad that Sam Wood chose Vera Zorina instead of Ingrid. Of course, Mr. Goldwyn didn’t want to loan me out to Paramount either….”

  “Loan you out?” I repeated.

  Cooper nodded. He was an elegant man, I realized, as comfortably at home in his expensive jacket and slacks and perfectly knotted silk tie as Hemingway seemed uncomfortable in his formal clothes. Where the writer seemed rumpled after the evening, the actor looked as cool and sharply pressed as he had before the dinner had begun. Throughout the evening I had noticed Gellhorn glancing at Cooper and then at her husband, frowning slightly as if she were comparing the two. Cooper was sitting next to me, and I caught a hint of soap and a subtle cologne or shaving lotion as he turned his face in my direction. “Yes, Mr. Lucas,” he said politely. “The movie business is a bit like slavery before the Civil War or major league baseball today. We’re under ironclad contract to our studios and unless we’re loaned out—usually as some sort of trade—we can’t do projects for other studios. In this case, Sam Goldwyn made a deal for me to go to Paramount to do this movie largely because of Ernest’s insistence to the press that I was the right man for it.”

  “What kind of deal?” asked Winston Guest. “Was something or someone traded?”

  Cooper smiled. “Mr. Goldwyn told Sam Wood—he’s the director who took over from DeMille for Paramount on this project—that I could do For Whom the Bell Tolls if Wood would direct me in a baseball picture.”

  “When do you make this picture, Señor Cooper?” asked Dr. Herrera Sotolongo.

  “It’s already made, Doctor,” said the actor. “Mr. Goldwyn wanted it to be finished before I went to Paramount for this project. It will be released soon. It’s called The Pride of the Yankees. I play Lou Gehrig.”

  “Lou Gehrig!” cried Patchi Ibarlucia. “Yes, yes. But you are not left-handed. Señor Cooper!”

  The actor smiled and shook his head. “They tried to teach me to throw and bat left-handed,” he said ruefully, “but I am afraid that I was very clumsy. I was never that good at baseball anyway. I hope they can save it by skillful editing.”

  I stared at Cooper. He did not look all that much like Lou Gehrig. I had followed Gehrig’s career since shortly after he joined the Yankees in 1925. I had been listening to the radio in June 1932 when Gehrig hit four consecutive home runs in a single game. In his seventeen years for the Yankees, the Iron Horse had played in 2,130 consecutive games, and he left baseball with a career batting average of .340, 493 home runs, and 1,990 RBIs. On July 4, 1939, I had taken my only vacation in four years so that I could go to New York’s Yankee Stadium—I had paid eight dollars for a ticket, a fortune—to see his farewell to baseball. Gehrig had died just a year ago, in June 1941. He was thirty-seven years old.

  I looked at Cooper and wondered at the arrogance of someone imitating Lou Gehrig for a mere movie.

  As if reading my thoughts, the actor shrugged and said, “I probably wasn’t the right person for the role, but Mrs. Gehrig was very nice about it and I got to spend time with Babe Ruth and the other—”

  “Shhh!” hissed Hemingway.

  In the sudden silence we could hear the crickets, the night birds, a single car on the highway below the hill, and laughter and music from the farmhouse on the adjacent hilltop.

  “Goddamn it!” cried Hemingway. “That bastard Steinhart has a party going. And after I warned him.”

  “Oh, Ernest,” said Gellhorn. “Please don’t…”

  “Is it war, Ernesto?” shouted Patchi Ibarlucia in Spanish.

  “Sí, Patchi,” said Hemingway, getting to his feet. “It is war.” To the house, he cried, “René! Pichilo! The weapons! Bring the weapons and the ammunition!”

  “I’m going to bed,” said Martha Gellhorn. She stood, bent to kiss Cooper on the cheek, said “I will see you in the morning, Coop” to the actor and a curt “Good evening, gentlemen” to the rest of us, and went into the house.

  The houseboy, René, a
nd Hemingway’s gardener and the keeper of his fighting cocks, José Herrero—whom Hemingway had introduced me to earlier as “Pichilo”—came out of the house with boxes of fireworks and long, hollow, bamboo stalks.

  “It’s getting late,” I said, setting aside my wineglass and standing up. “I should…”

  “Nonsense, Lucas,” growled Hemingway, handing me a bamboo stalk about a meter and half long. “We need every man. Choose some ammo.”

  Cooper, Winston Guest, and Ibarlucia had already doffed their jackets and rolled up their sleeves. Dr. Herrera Sotolongo looked at me, shrugged, removed his jacket, and carefully folded it over the back of his chair. I did the same.

  The “ammo” consisted of two crates of fireworks—skyrockets, cherry bombs, strings of firecrackers, bottle rockets, stink bombs, and St. Catherine pinwheels. Ibarlucia handed me a rocket with a short fuse. “These are very good with your launcher, Señor Lucas.” He grinned and nodded toward the hollow bamboo stalk.

  “You all have lighters?” said Hemingway.

  Both Cooper and I did.

  “Is this a long-term feud, Ernest?” said Cooper. He was trying to suppress a smile, but it kept creeping around the corners of his mouth.

  “Long enough,” said Hemingway.

  Piano music and laughter came from the other house, to the northeast. Steinhart’s house was the only other large building on the hilltop—slightly lower than Hemingway’s finca but apparently much older and grander, judging from the blaze of electric lights and the glimpses of art noveau wings and gables seen through the screen of trees.

  “Patchi, you and Wolfer and the doctor know the drill,” said Hemingway, crouching at the edge of his terrace and sketching a map in the moist soil of the garden with his finger. He had already taken off his jacket and tie and looked happier with his collar unbuttoned. His finger sketched lines and loops as if he were drawing a football play in the mud.

  “We go down here through the trees, Coop,” he whispered. We were all crouching around him. The actor was grinning. “This is the finca… here. This is Steinhart’s mansion… here. We go down through the trees here… single file… and cross the enemy frontier, here, at the fence. Stay low until we get on the other side of his wall here. No one fires until I give the word. Then blow the shit out of his soirée.”

  Cooper raised an eyebrow. “I take it that you object to his dinner parties, Ernest?”

  “I warned him,” growled the writer. “All right. Everyone fill your pockets.”

  We did: skyrockets, stink bombs, cherry bombs, and the large firecrackers. Guest and Ibarlucia both strung strings of firecrackers over their shoulders like bandoliers. Then we were following the writer through the garden, out through the weeds, over a low stone wall, and down the hill and through the screen of trees that separated us from the light and noise of Steinhart’s party.

  I knew this was all childish nonsense, but my adrenal glands evidently had not been informed. My heart beat quickly, and I was filled with that sense of slowed time and heightened sensory awareness that always accompanied me into some sort of action.

  As Hemingway held the wire fence open for us to crawl through, he whispered, “Be careful after we fire. Steinhart’s been known to unleash the dogs and open up with his twelve-gauge.”

  “Madre de Dios,” whispered Dr. Herrera Sotolongo.

  We crouched there until Hemingway took the lead again—I made note of our willingness to let him lead and of his easy assumption of the role—and we followed him up another slight rise, through thinning mango trees, across a fallow field, stopping to crouch behind a belt-high stone wall that must have been at least a century old.

  “Another twenty meters,” whispered Hemingway. “We’ll move around to the left to get a clear shot at the dining room and terrace. Coop, follow me. Wolfer, stay with Coop. Then the doctor, then Patchi, and Lucas you’ll bring up the rear. Every man for himself coming back. I’ll cover your retreat at the fence.”

  Gary Cooper was smiling. Winston Guest’s cheeks were flushed. I could see Ibarlucia’s white grin in the dark. The doctor sighed and shook his head. In Spanish, Herrera Sotolongo whispered, “This is not good for your blood pressure, Ernestino.”

  “Shhh,” hissed Hemingway. He went over the stone wall with the grace of a cat and moved silently up the hill.

  We had taken up positions in the weeds less than fifteen meters down the hill from Steinhart’s brightly lighted terrace and broad dining room glass doors when Hemingway gave us a hand signal to load. Everyone fumbled for rockets and stink bombs. I shook my head and turned my back to the target. There was no chance that I was going to have to admit that I had fired incendiary devices at one of Havana’s more important local citizens.

  It was just as I turned that I saw the movement at our left, behind the low stone wall that Hemingway had called the “pig fence” during our tour earlier in the day.

  In military training—and at the BSC Camp X in Canada—combat instructors emphasize that the best way to see the enemy in the dark is to look slightly away from where they might be. Peripheral vision is more effective than straight-on viewing in the dark. Wait for movement.

  I saw the movement—the briefest of occultations as a human form eclipsed the lights of Havana through the trees. Again. Someone in black flanking us to our left. The form was carrying something too thin to be one of our absurd bamboo stalks. A glint of reflected light on glass told me that it was a rifle with a scope and that it was aimed in our direction… in Hemingway’s direction.

  “Now!” cried Hemingway, and rose up. He fit a rocket into the bamboo stalk, lit the fuse with his gold lighter, and fired directly at the Steinharts’ dining room window. Ibarlucia fired a second later. Guest threw a long string of firecrackers. Cooper hurled a cherry bomb onto the terrace. The doctor shook his head and fired off a rocket that flew high, disappeared onto a third-story terrace, passed through an open window, and exploded deep within the house. Hemingway had reloaded and was firing again. The skyrockets—designed to explode into starbursts hundreds of feet above the ground—exploded and then exploded again in magnesium and sulfur rosettes across the terrace and walls. There were screams and shouts and the sounds of breaking crockery from the house. The piano playing stopped.

  I had never quit watching out of the corner of my eye for the shape beyond the pig fence. Now the silhouette rose and the light of exploding cherry bombs reflected on the glass scope.

  Cursing myself for not bringing a pistol or serious knife, I lit the short fuse to the rocket, stuffed it into the bamboo stalk, and fired in the direction of the pig fence and the highway. It missed high and exploded among the lower mango branches. I loaded another and began running toward the pig fence, trying to put myself between the silhouette with the rifle and Hemingway.

  “Lucas,” came the writer’s shout from behind me, “what the hell are you…”

  I ran on, crashing through corn stalks and leaping tomato plants. There was the impression of movement beyond the pig fence and something buzzed past my left ear. I lobbed a cherry bomb and flicked the short-bladed gravity knife open in my left hand, holding it low, and then I was hurtling over the fence in the dark, dropping the bamboo stalk and crouching with the knife loose and ready.

  This side of the fence was empty. High weeds rustled ten meters toward the road. I rose, began to move in that direction, and then threw myself flat as gunshots erupted behind me.

  A shotgun. Two blasts. Shouts. The hysterical barking of large dogs—Dobermans from the sound of them. The barking stopped as they slipped their chains. Strings of firecrackers went off, confusing the dogs and driving them into a frenzy of barking.

  I hesitated only a second and then jumped back over the fence and ran in a fast crouch toward Steinhart’s wall and the low area separating the two properties. The shotgun exploded again just before I hurtled over the stone wall. It came from Steinhart’s mansion and had been aimed high… either deliberately over our head or at the Hemingway
house.

  There were huddled shapes at the wire fence. Men were shouting on the Steinhart terrace, and at least two searchlights stabbed out through the smoke. Another cherry bomb went off.

  “Goddamn you, Hemingway,” a man was shouting up the hill. “Goddamn you! This isn’t funny.” The shotgun roared again, and pellets tore leaves off the mango tree above us.

  “Go, go, go,” Hemingway was saying, patting the other pale forms on the back. Guest was breathing heavily, but he jogged quickly up the hill. I could see Cooper’s grin. He had torn the knee of his pants and his shirt was streaked with mud or blood, but he moved off briskly. Ibarlucia helped the doctor run up the slope and through the trees.

  Hemingway grabbed my collar. “Where the hell were you going, Lucas? Why were you shooting toward the road?”

  I removed his hand from my shirt. Men shouted behind us and underbrush snapped as the Dobermans crashed down the hill toward the fence.

  “Go!” said Hemingway, and tapped me on the back. I ran, pausing only long enough to look back and see the writer take a slab of raw steak from his trouser pocket and toss it over the fence toward the sound of the approaching dogs. He calmly lit and threw his last cherry bomb, then started up the hill in a slow trot.

  STEINHART AND HIS GUESTS did not follow the pursuit beyond the fence. The dogs were called back in the dark. Shouts echoed across the fields for a while, then the piano music started up again.

  Cooper, the doctor, Patchi, Guest, and Hemingway collapsed in their chairs on the terrace, laughing and talking loudly. The actor had torn his hand on the fence, and Hemingway brought out bandages and whiskey—pouring the good whiskey on the wound before bandaging it, then filling Cooper’s glass.

  I waited just beyond the edge of light from the terrace for some minutes, but there was no sign of movement toward the road. I came back, picked up my jacket, and said my good-nights. Gary Cooper apologized for the bandage and shook my hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, fellow commando Lucas,” he said.