Lanny examined it carefully—or pretended to. He knew he couldn’t tell the difference without a magnifying glass; he had a little one in his pocket but would not use it, because that was not the game. From the circumstances it was quite clear in his mind that this was Himmler money—created out of the intensity of his desire and the concentration of his thoughts, if you could accept the word of the founder of Christian Science, a remarkable lady.
‘It looks all right’, Lanny said. ‘How much of it have you got?’
‘I have a thousand dollars and a little more’, said the man cautiously. ‘But please don’t speak of it to anyone’.
‘You have it all in five-dollar notes?’
‘Fa, mein Herr. It is just as the bank gave it out, still with the paper around every ten notes. My cousin asked for small notes because it is so hard to spend large ones’.
‘But I don’t have any such sum of Polish money with me. I make it a point to travel with no more than I need for a trip. It is dangerous, as you can easily understand’.
‘Fa, ja, mein Herr, natürlich. Aber—how soon could you get Polish money?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it’.
‘You have credit, perhaps, mein Herr?’
‘I did in the old days, but people don’t trust Americans now as they used to. Let me think about it’.
VI
Lanny already had a plan in mind but it wouldn’t do to reveal it too quickly. They discussed back and forth, and Lanny, who never made a false statement if he could help it, explained that he was an art expert and that he was here to look for paintings for which it might be possible to find a market in the United States. If he found any, the payments would be made in the American sector of Berlin upon the arrival of the shipment. Did Herr Guzman—such was the name the man gave—know of any one who had old masters or other art works of note? Herr Guzman said regretfully that he did not, but he would look and perhaps be able to find some.
Lanny knew that if the man found anything it would be trash, so he wasted no time on that. He said that it was too bad that Herr Guzman did not know him and his reputation, so that he would be willing to turn over the thousand dollars or more to Lanny and let him arrange in Berlin to have the money put to Herr Guzman’s credit in a bank, say in Wroclaw. This very idea frightened the man—and that was what Lanny had meant to do.
Guzman explained, ‘I am a poor man. I am not supposed to have money. I would not have sold my car except that I was afraid they would take that away from me’.
‘They might take it from your cousin’, said Lanny with a smile. ‘It seems to me that you are in a bad way, and I don’t know what I can do for you’. It was all a process of bargaining, such as has gone on through the ages—and the farther eastward you go in the world the longer it takes.
Lanny kept the discussion going while they finished their food. The woman came, and he took out his purse, which contained only a moderate amount of Polish money. He paid the bill for both of them, and Herr Guzman did not protest too strenuously. Then, after the woman had gone, Lanny said, ‘I will buy a couple of those American notes from you just to help you out’. He wanted to be magnificent, but not too much so, therefore he haggled properly over the price. Finally he settled by paying seven hundred zloty for the two five-dollar American notes. The zloty stood at that moment somewhat below one cent, depending on what sort of black market you went to.
Then the American visitor had an inspiration. ‘Why don’t you take a trip to Berlin?’ he asked. ‘You can enter the American sector without the least trouble, and I will agree to pay you three hundred and fifty zloty for each of the five-dollar notes, as many as you have. Nobody will know about the transaction, and you can do whatever you want with the money, hide it away or put it in a bank where it will be safe’.
‘Aber, mein Herr!’ the man exclaimed. ‘How would I get to Berlin?’
‘You can ride with me. I plan to go back this very night, and I have room in my car’.
‘Aber—aber—!’ The man was evidently taken aback. He was wet, he objected, and cold. Lanny answered that he had a blanket, and the man could wrap himself up and be warm. The man said, ‘But at night!’ Lanny replied that he had driven over the road and it was good enough, and the night would make no difference.
‘Aber—I don’t have the money with me! I will have to get it’.
Lanny said, ‘All right. Get in the car and I’ll take you, and you can get it. Then we will drive to Berlin’.
It took the man some time to get used to the wild idea. He was frightened—everybody in this war-torn world was frightened. But at last he gave way and told the American Herr where to drive. He had a room in an old converted shed. He said nothing about the family, so Lanny guessed they were probably mythical. He drove to the place, and the man went in, and when he came back he said he had the money in two packages under his arm.
Lanny said, ‘Now, Herr Guzman, this is rather embarrassing, but I have to put it up to you plainly. I don’t know you, and I don’t know anything about you. I am proposing to take an entire stranger into my car and to drive him in the night. Suppose that stranger were to pull out a gun and hold me up, and perhaps shoot me and make off with my car?’
‘Ach, mein Herr, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I am an honest man’.
‘I hope you are, but I have no means of knowing. The only terms on which I will take you into my car are that you will submit to being searched. If you like you may search me in return, because I am a stranger to you’.
‘Ach, mein Herr, I am sure you are a gentleman, an American gentleman, and no robber’.
Lanny said, ‘I offer to be searched also, because I don’t wish you to take it as an indignity. It is a necessity of the circumstances’.
So the small-sized and anxious stranger gave his consent, and Lanny did a thorough job, searching not merely the pockets of his damp coat and trousers, but under his armpits and in other places where Lanny had been trained to look for weapons. He was unarmed; and as for the packages he carried, they were tied up, and Lanny would see to it that they were not untied during the trip. He was willing for the man to search him, but the man said no, no, he would do the great American Herr the honour to accept his word. So they got in the car, and Lanny gave him a blanket to wrap himself in, and they set out down the road that led to the highway below.
VII
They had a long ride before them, a matter of six or eight hours on war-torn roads. It was nothing for Lanny, who had driven across the United States in a little less than five days. He was glad to drive at night, guessing that it would be more comfortable than sleeping in a bed in this tormented land where men had preyed upon one another through the centuries, and where fleas, bedbugs, and lice preyed upon men. The car was clean and sleep could be postponed. He had bought some petrol in Wroclaw, paying seven hundred and fifty zloty per litre for it, and he would get some more at the same place on the way back.
He meant to spend those hours finding out what he could about this Herr Guzman, who was obviously a pusher of Himmler money, whether for Nazis, Communists, or just plain gangsters. He would begin by telling the man about himself and fill him full of wonder tales of America and the fortunes that could be made there. Thus he would tempt the other to talk about himself—and if he was lying it wouldn’t take Lanny long to tie him up in contradictions and learn more than he knew he was telling. It might be that he would come across and talk freely; or it might be that he would have to be arrested. In any case, Lanny’s mission would no longer be a failure.
The P.A. had been trained for this sort of understanding. He had studied people’s minds and sought to learn what interested them and impressed them. Now he wanted very much to keep this man’s mind busy, so that there would be no time for fears or suspicions to lodge in it. He was careful not to suggest anything political, for the man might be either Brown or Red. The man was greedy for money and would be impressed by money, and that was the subject that al
l the would could agree upon.
Lanny talked about his profession. He told the story of how he had discovered a painting by Goya in an old manion in a remote part of Spain and had brought it to America and sold it for twenty-five thousand dollars. He told how he had purchased a Van Eyck from the aunt of the General Graf Stubendorf, and the ten per cent commission he had been paid upon its very high price. He told how he had had both legs broken in a plane wreck, and had travelled all the way across China with his bride, and had travelled all over Europe in the good old days, looking at beautiful paintings and now and then finding a purchaser for one. He told about travelling in America, in that wonderful south western country where you could keep up a speed of sixty or seventy miles an hour and thought nothing of driving six or seven hundred miles in a day. The road would travel straight as an arrow a hundred miles across the desert, and then it would wind into a canyon and over a pass with rocks red and yellow, brown and grey, black and white, sometimes piled up in masses so that you could hardly believe you were not looking at the ruins of some old cathedral or mighty fortress.
‘A wonderful country!’ Lanny said. ‘Why don’t you come to America, Herr Guzman? It is so much easier to earn a living there, and you don’t have to be afraid as you are in this unhappy country’.
Herr Guzman said that he would like very much indeed to come to America, but he had been told that it was difficult to get permission. Lanny said it sometimes was, but it might be easy if you had a friend who had influence and knew how to make the right approach. He said that casually, but he didn’t mean it so.
Nobody could have been more genial or more considerate than this American art expert. He made sure that Herr Guzman was comfortably warm in his blanket. He told him if he was tired to go to sleep. When they stopped in Wroclaw to refill the tank, he made joking remarks about the black market, and it was a lead for the passenger to tell his experiences with that market. He did so, but his stories were of the harmless kind, and little by little Lanny realised that the man was shrewder than he appeared and that he wasn’t going to make any sort of damaging admissions He didn’t offer to tell where he had been born or what he had been doing. He didn’t say any more about his automobile or about the mysterious cousin who had bought it. No, he just listened to Lanny and chuckled appreciatively over Lanny’s stories; he was admiring and grateful, but nothing more.
VIII
The daylight had departed, and rain began again; driving through it was monotonous. Lanny talked to keep himself from getting sleepy. Now and then a great truck would come roaring along, the rain dividing its lights into thousands of tiny sparkles. They were coming to the Oder River, and it was a question of crossing the border from Polish territory into East Germany. Guzman said they might have bad trouble, although both countries were run by the Communists, trade was not free and the search would be thorough. Evidently he had been making the crossing previously, and Lanny did not fail to make note of the point. But he relied upon his wonderful big pass from Marshal Sokolovsky’s office. It had got him in and it would get him out.
But doubts tormented the pusher. How was he going to get those packages of money past the strict guard the Soviet authorities maintained? He had been so allured by Lanny’s splendid offer and by his entertaining conversation that he had overlooked that detail. The car most certainly would be searched, and this time the search would be thorough. Lanny might convince them that the food was American food purchased in the American store; the worst they could do would be to confiscate the food, and Lanny said he could stand that loss. But what about those precious packages of money, which Herr Guzman now admitted amounted to two thousand dollars? Lanny asked, ‘Haven’t I, as an American, the right to have American money?’ Guzman answered, ‘They will want to know why you have so much, and they won’t let it get away from them. They will confiscate it, and it is everything I have in the world!’
The worried pusher wanted Lanny to drive more slowly while they discussed that problem in the middle of a rainy night. ‘Herr Budd’, he said, ‘you are a rich American gentleman, and you have the right papers, but I have no papers. I have no right to be riding in a car, and they will drag me out and will make a search of everything. What I have to do is to get out of the car and get myself smuggled past. I have a way to get to Berlin; I have done it more than once’.
Lanny had guessed as much and was not surprised. He knew that Berlin was a big city, with an area of 340 square miles, and that was a lot of territory to guard. He said, ‘Okay, I will go to the Savoy Hotel and get a room. You can come there’.
IX
But it wasn’t settled for long. Doubts began to assail the pusher, who may have had many offences on his record. His smugglers might rob him, he said, or even kill him. Some robber might hold him up before he got to the border; on dark nights all sorts of crimes were committed. Also, the border was being guarded more and more strictly; swarms of people were trying to escape from the Soviet zone.
‘Herr Budd’, said the man timidly, ‘don’t you think it might be safer if you took the money in. You are a rich American gentleman’—it had become a formula. ‘They wouldn’t dispute your right to have American money’.
‘All right’, said Lanny, ‘if you want me to take it for you’.
‘Where would you hide it, Herr Budd? Leave it under the seat?’
‘I wouldn’t hide it at all. I have a perfect right to have American money. I am an art dealer, and I have frequently carried tens of thousands of dollars in cash to pay for a purchase. I am well known in my profession, and I would have no trouble in establishing my reputation’.
There followed a long silence. Lanny could imagine the process that was going on in Guzman’s mind. Did he dare to trust this elegant-seeming and plausible American gentleman? How easy it would be for him to drive into the West sector of Berlin and drive on! Or to take a plane and disappear into the wild blue yonder! His name might be an alias, his tales might be fictitious—in short, he might be just such a man as Guzman himself!
The silence was broken by a faint murmur. ‘You wouldn’t let me down, Herr Budd!’
Lanny permitted himself to chuckle. ‘No, I promise I won’t let you down’.
‘This money is everything I have in the world, Herr Budd’. The voice was plaintive, and would have been touching—if the money hadn’t been fraudulent.
Lanny permitted himself another chuckle. ‘Listen, Guzman’, he said, leaving off the Herr this time and establishing himself as a social and financial superior. ‘This deal means nothing to me. I have often been paid ten times as much money as commission on the sale of an old master. I once bought a painting for a thousand dollars and sold it for twenty-five thousand. I was just making this trade because you asked me, and you looked as if you were hard up. It doesn’t make a particle of difference to me what you do about the money. If you want me to take it in for you, I’ll take it, and I’ll be at the Savoy Hotel in Berlin-Charlottenburg until tomorrow, or you can take it yourself. Make up your mind’.
‘I am afraid I might be betrayed. The Reds would search me, Herr Budd, and if they found the money they might shoot me. I am a poor devil, and I have no right to have American money’.
‘Couldn’t you tell them about having sold your car to your cousin?’
‘Yes, but they wouldn’t believe me. I am a foreigner, half Spanish and half Roumanian, and they would call me a spy. They might order me to confess something—anything’. It became clear that the man had been in trouble before and didn’t want any more of it. At last he said reluctantly, ‘All right, Herr Budd, you take the money’.
So it was agreed. Lanny stopped by the roadside, and they took out the packages, which had been hidden under the food; then, while Lanny went on driving, Guzman unwrapped them. There were some four hundred bills and made quite a wad. Guzman would hand Lanny an inch or so of the wad, and Lanny holding the steering wheel with one hand, would stuff the wad into an inside pocket. When the process was completed he was pre
tty well stuffed, but fortunately his overcoat was ample. He was quite sure the Russians wouldn’t search him, and if they did he would be magnificent and ask to telephone to Marshal Sokolovsky, whose document he carried.
This procedure was a moral ordeal for the pusher. When it was over he had scarcely enough voice to speak. ‘What if I can’t get across the border for some reason, Herr Budd?’
‘I don’t expect to stay in Berlin more than two or three days’, Lanny answered. ‘If you don’t show up I will seal up the package and put it in the hotel safe in your name; you can call for it’.
So the matter was settled, and when they had got within a half mile or so of the River Oder, Guzman said, ‘I had better get out now’. Lanny drew up to the side of the highway. ‘You are a good and very wise gentleman, Herr Budd’, said the man plaintively, and Lanny said, ‘Auf wiedersehen’, and drove on, leaving the pusher standing in the pitiless rain. There is a lot of it in the late autumn in that part of the world; it turns the fields into quagmires, which is why military conquerors have to start their operations as soon as the spring rains have dried up. Hitler had waited until the twenty-second of June, the Kaiser until the end of July, and it had been too late for both of them.
X
Lanny came to the bridge. He got out of his car, having learned that it was more polite to confront ‘People’s’ soldiers on a basis of equality. He produced his permit and his passport, also his few choice Russian phrases. The poorly dressed Russian sergeant spoke no English. He commented on Lanny’s few Russian words, and Lanny said he had visited Leningrad in 1921, Odessa two or three years later, and Moscow three times since then. The art expert felt guilty about his overstuffed clothing, but nothing showed through his large overcoat. He produced a couple of packages of American cigarettes, known everywhere as ‘camel’, and the soldiers grinned with pleasure and waved him on.
The Return of Lanny Budd Page 9