The Luxembourg Run

by Ellin, Stanley

  conspicuous.”

  101

  Darkness came too soon.

  A late dinner of bread and cheese, then we were conducted downstairs

  to the garage where Kees designated seating arrangements in the two cars.

  Despite all the room in Yves’s big Buick, Yves and Leewarden would have it

  to themselves. And despite the discomfort Jago suffered when he was wedged

  behind the wheel of the VW, that was the spot he was assigned, Anneke at his

  side, while Kees and I occupied the back seat. In the car Anneke was released

  from her bonds but I was not.

  We moved off through the back part of town past Bonnevoie cemetery —

  a reminder, as if I needed any, of the menacing future — and into the Route de

  Thionville. Still some traffic this time of the evening, but the gaudy taillight

  display of the Buick offered a beacon easy to follow.

  My mind raced in circles. As far as I could calculate, the dangerous time

  for Kees would come at the French border. My hands would certainly have to

  be untied just before we reached it, then we would be required to pull up and

  show passports. So this was the time for me to order Anneke out of the car.

  Just tell her loudly and clearly to get out while the douanier was hovering

  close by.

  And then?

  I mentally sweated out every conceivable possibility of what then as we

  moved steadily southeast, passed the outskirts of Mondorf-les-Bains, that

  Luxembourg version of luxury spa, and headed into a black and traffickless

  region beyond, on our way toward Schengen and the frontier. The red bars of

  the Buick’s taillights held steady a hundred yards in front of us, and then Kees

  leaned forward, sighting at what could be made of the roadside in the

  illumination of our headlights. “Slow down,” he suddenly said, and Jago

  obediently slowed down.

  In the distance, the Buick’s taillights continued to recede then also

  slowed down. Obviously, Yves was keeping an eye on us, adjusting his pace

  to ours.

  “There.” Kees pointed. “In that opening between those trees.”

  The car lurched off the road into the opening. It crawled a few yards,

  dried twigs crackling beneath the wheels, and came to an abrupt stop, its lights

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  fixed on absolutely nothing ahead, although there was something below. A

  deep gorge, even deeper, it seemed, than the Vallée de la Petrusse that cut

  through the heart of Luxembourg city.

  “You and your friend understand,” Kees said to me, “that when we

  arrive at the border you will both behave with great discretion. Now we will

  rearrange ourselves to avoid complications. Jan, as proprietor of this vehicle,

  will take the wheel. I will be seated beside him. Jago and the young lady will

  move back here. And” — he displayed the gun — “this will be an unseen but

  overwhelming presence.”

  Jago surveyed the back seat. “I’ll never make it.”

  “You will. And it’s only for a short time.”

  My hands still bound, I was ruthlessly hauled out by Jago. It was his turn

  now to take the place I had occupied, and his getting into it was like the

  swollen cork of a champagne bottle being driven back into the bottle.

  Meanwhile, the gun in Kees’s hand was indeed an overwhelming presence.

  When Jago was settled into place Kees leaned through the open door to

  take stock of him. “Well, how is it?”

  “It could be better,” Jago said, “but I’ll survive.”

  “Will you now?” said Kees, and the sound of the gunshot was like a

  dynamite blast going off inside the car. Jago’s head bounced back against the

  seat, came forward a little. Slowly it slid sideways until it rested on that huge

  shoulder, the unblinking eyes staring at me through the window. I was

  incredulously fixed on those eyes when what must have been the gun butt hit

  me a sledgehammer blow on the skull.

  I came to, seated in the car, draped over the steering wheel, aware with

  slow-dawning, head-splitting awareness that Anneke was seated next to me,

  drooping forward in an approximation of my position, and that my hands were

  at last unbound. And finally, and much too late, that the car was in motion,

  gaining speed as it rolled toward the gorge. There was a stench of gasoline in

  my nostrils, a flickering light around me, a wave of heat suddenly scorching

  my back, and as the car tilted over the edge of the gorge while I hopelessly

  jammed my foot down on the brake, I had just enough command of my wits to

  know that Kees Baar, whatever his reason, had supplied the gasoline and

  flame.

  103

  Down we went, the car bounding over obstacles, fast picking up

  momentum, the heat from the spreading flames almost unbearable now, and

  still, idiotically, I kept jamming my foot down on the useless brake. Then we

  slammed hard into some obstruction, the door on my side sprang open, and I

  was hurled through the opening, like something released from a slingshot, into

  a sloping carpet of wet leaf mold. I hit it on my shoulder, skidded along it, then

  rolled over and over down the slope to be brought up short by a thicket.

  I heard the car hit the bottom of the gorge, heard the explosion, saw the

  glare of it, and the dimming of the light as metal and flesh burned steadily. I

  couldn’t bring myself to look around at it. But from where I was, deep in soggy

  mold, camouflaged by thicket, I could look up at the crest of the gorge and see

  by the light of the flames behind me a figure standing there. Kees Baar. As I

  looked, two other figures joined him. From the length of white scarf against

  black coat one was Yves Rouart-Rochelle, so the other had to be Leewarden.

  It was Yves alone who started down the slope, scrambling and sliding,

  and, as he came, bellowing in anguish, “Non! Non! Non!”

  Then he must have seen there was no going further downhill without

  danger — in fact, there was no use going downhill at all just to view that pile

  of burning metal and the ashes in it — so he stopped where he was. The two

  others made a chain of clasped hands to reach down and help him back to

  level ground.

  All three together again, they stood looking down at the scene for a little

  while and then went away.

  104

  Ilay there. The fire incinerating the

  wreckage flickered lower and lower, finally becoming a dull glow that I could

  see reflected in the rivulet trickling through the gorge. The slightest move was

  agony, but, as in that terrible Paris wintertime years before, the chill eating

  into every cell of me soon began to numb other physical pains. Even so, the

  sodden mold I was half buried in showed no signs of frost, which meant that

  possibly I wouldn’t freeze to death before sunrise.

  Too bad.

  Because death — the falling asleep and never waking up again — was

  the sweet and comfortable and necessary way of coming to terms with the

  knowledge that there was no more Anneke. I had ingested her into my being so

  completely that just the thought of living without her was as horrifying and

  implausible as the thought of dragging myself through life with my belly ripped

  open and my organ
s and entrails bloodily hanging from the open cavity. My

  Anneke a handful of ashes? Impossible Incomprehensible If I could bear the

  pain of the effort and call her name, she would come to me. I filled my lungs as

  best I could and feebly called her name. Called it louder. Called it again and

  again, and in a sort of delirium waited for those warm ashes to swirl upward

  and take form as my woman. They didn’t. I had created a small, perfect

  universe for myself out of this woman, but now it had been blown to dust by

  His Satanic Majesty and a pair of assistant demons.

  Kees Baar.

  Yves Rouart-Rochelle.

  Simon Leewarden.

  It had been Kees who had hijacked that million dollars, had made the

  false case against me, had brilliantly disposed of all evidence against himself,

  so that his partners would never know the truth.

  No. I didn’t want to die.

  I had an overpowering reason to live until all accounts were settled.

  With only the scorched clothes on my back and very little money in my pocket

  I might not seem a proper adversary for that trio, but I had one asset that was

  beyond all price.

  I was dead.

  105

  And Kees Baar, Yves Rouart-Rochelle, and Simon Leewarden had been

  witnesses to my death.

  106

  Iopened my eyes in a panic. Gray misty

  daylight, a ravine in some unfamiliar stretch of emptiness east of Mondorf-les-

  Bains, west of Schengen, a stench of burnt cloth in my nostrils, a sound of

  approaching footsteps. A man moved toward me, gaunt, white-haired, in rough

  clothes and with a shotgun under his arm. He stood over me, the twin barrels

  sighting between my eyes. “Can you understand me?” he said. The language

  was Luxembourgesch with a strong French flavor.

  “Yes.”

  “I heard the noise last night, but no use trying to make it here in the

  dark.” It was not an apology. “You have business around these parts?”

  “No.”

  “Papers?”

  I painfully tried to reach into my pocket and had to give up. “My

  wallet,” I said. “You’ll have to get it out.”

  The gun remained sighted between my eyes as he got out the wallet and

  went through it, thumbing through the scanty assortment of banknotes — Dutch,

  West German, British — and then examined the passport. “Dutch?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But you like to travel empty roads late at night, it seems, and with all

  kinds of money in your pocket. Now let’s have it. What were you trying to do,

  run some stuff across the line and the police got too close?”

  I said nothing, just stared at him.

  “Don’t be a fool, Dutchman. You can trust me. The name is Delange.

  Joseph Delange. I live two kilometers that way” — he pointed south of the

  ravine toward the French border — “and there isn’t another house near mine.

  And the doctor I can get you knows how to keep his mouth shut. So let’s have

  the truth. You’re in the trade, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t have to ask if he was. The look and sound of him, that ready gun,

  the questions about the police indicated that, like many another who lived

  within a stone’s throw of the border — any border — he had at least a finger

  in the smuggling trade. “It wasn’t the police who ran me off the road,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about them. It was my partners who did the job on

  me.”

  107

  “That happens.” The gun swung away from me. “You’re too much of a

  load for me to carry. I’ll be back in a while with a horse.”

  He returned after an hour with a swaybacked old cart horse, and then,

  myself shakily riding pillion behind him, we made our way along the narrow

  stream at the base of the gorge through a woods and out into the open, naked

  fields. A barnyard, a conglomeration of pigs and geese, and then a stone

  farmhouse with a sagging roof, a telephone line looping across the fields to it

  the only sign that this was still the twentieth century.

  A room of my own under the eaves. Into bed at last, half dead from the

  journey. Two kilometers. Three would have finished me off for good.

  108

  The doctor, it turned out, was a

  veterinarian who took an illegal turn now and then at handling human trade. In

  appearance and speech he was another Joseph Delange. “Nothing broken. Eat

  and sleep, that’s all. Time will make all the repairs.”

  Sound advice, no doubt, but each day I ate unwillingly, trying to force

  down the meals Joseph carried up to my attic room, and each night I slept

  badly, endlessly raging at myself for the weakness that was keeping me from

  my mission. The images of Mijnheer Baar and Monsieur Rouart-Rochelle and

  Mr. Leewarden were always there with me in my room, the toothy smile of

  Kees Baar more real than the encouraging curve of the lips Joseph gave me

  when I managed to get some food down.

  Joseph was no fool. One day he said to me, “Not sleeping, eh? And

  shouting nightmares as soon as you close your eyes. You know, that time I

  found you, you let slip something about your partners. I think that’s what’s

  doing it. I went through it myself.”

  “How?”

  “It wasn’t partners in my case, it was the police. The French police, the

  scum of the earth. They caught my son on the other side of the line with a case

  of cigarettes. A lousy five hundred francs worth of cigarettes. He tried to get

  away, and they ran him down in their car like a chicken. Killed him on the spot

  as neatly as if they’d put a bullet through his head. An accident, that’s how it

  went on the record. I didn’t sleep after that either. It took me two years to hunt

  down the driver of that car and get him where I wanted him. Two years. Then

  the garrotte. A nice shiny piece of piano wire around the neck. I could have

  used the knife, but no, the garrotte gave me the time I needed to whisper my

  son’s name in his ear before he went. After that, I slept.”

  “The garrotte is too quick,” I said.

  “Then choose anyway you want as long as you can get away with it.

  Believe me, until it’s all over life isn’t worth living. How many of those

  partners were there?”

  “Three,” I said. “Big shots, all of them, living the good life. And I’ve

  already worked out what must be done to them. Two aren’t worth the killing;

  just taking away the good life will be enough. Taking away everything that

  109

  makes it worth living. The third is a different case. A fox, that one. A rabid

  fox. And he must be driven back and forth like an animal until he’s ready for

  the killing. A very slow and painful killing.”

  “Three of them,” Joseph said. “Quite a handful. The danger is that when

  you move against the first one, the others take alarm.”

  “Not the way I plan it. The trouble is that I need money to attend to it

  properly.”

  “Your money is still in your wallet,” Joseph said. “Every penny of it.”

  “I’m sure of that. But I’m talking about a great deal of money, maybe

  twenty or thirty thousand francs. Enough to provide me with a certain style,


  give me freedom to move around readily. But that’s not your problem.

  “The garrotte,” advised Joseph. “Find your fox and do with him as I

  would. When you’ve got your strength back I’ll show you just how it’s done.”

  He was, for all his grim look, the soul of kindness. I finally made it

  down the stairs on wobbly legs and unable to help with the outside work, I

  undertook to be a scullion and cook and housekeeper again, putting my heart

  into it. Joseph took notice of the order emerging in his home from the encrusted

  accumulation of years. He nodded approval. “My son was like that. Always

  neat and orderly. And a good cook too when he tried his hand at it. You’re like

  him in many ways.”

  And when at long last I did have the strength to go outside, wearing the

  son’s long-stored-away clothing, to work the other end of the crosscut saw,

  swing an ax, apply myself to carpentry and masonry work, although my mind

  was always off on my mission, Joseph said, “I’ve been thinking. If you want to

  make your home here —”

  ”Is there money to be made here?”

  “Not the kind you talked about. No, if you mean we might turn a fat

  profit overnight moving some stuff across the line, there isn’t anything doing in

  that right now. There’s a fat trade in drugs coming down from Luxembourg

  city, but I have no part of it. For the rest —”

  ”So,” I said, “I have to go where the money is.”

  Where the money is. Sweat it out on the docks or truckloading platforms,

  scraping together pennies until I had the capital I needed? Foolish, considering

  how eternally long it would take and the state of raw nerves I was in. Hit a

  110

  bank? Go for broke with one big heist? In the final desperate analysis, it might

  come to just that.

  Then, what I found my mind turning to again and again was the old man

  in that house on South Bay Shore Drive in Miami. My grandfather. A man with

  a lot of money in the bank. And maybe with a trace of the old affection for me

  still in him.

  Make it a loan. Call on him as a borrower, not a beggar. And what were

  the odds that I would be turned down? Too good. All right, worry about that

  when it happens.

  I made dinner the day of decision, working myself up to the moment. At

  dinner I said to Joseph, “There’s someone who might lend me the money. But I

  must use the phone for a long-distance call. It won’t cost you anything. The one