Establishment (12 page)

“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 million 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.

Kober's English was better, his accent British. “Will you tell this bloke who we are, Brodsky?”

“His name's Cohen, Bernie Cohen,” Brodsky told Kober. “He's running the operation, not me. I think he's right. We'll hold the money until we see the goods.”

“You know us. Don't you trust us?”

“I wouldn't trust my own mother with two million dollars. Don't worry. We intend to stay close. Everyone stay close!” he shouted to the pilots.

Evidently the Czech officers did not understand English. They were listening and watching. Bernie identified himself. “I understand this was all prearranged,” he said to them, speaking French. “You were expecting us.”

The Czech officer nodded coldly.

“My men are hungry and tired. They need food and they need a place to sleep. This is Irving Brodsky. My name is Bernie Cohen. We're also cold and hungry and tired. Isn't there a place where we can sit down and talk?”

Kober said to him in French, “Get off your high horse, Cohen.” Then he said to the officer, “Can we go to the lounge, colonel? You're not the only one who's suspicious. He's suspicious too. But we've got the money and we're ready to do business. And if you can find some food for these boys, we'd appreciate it.” Then he asked in English, “Got any money, Cohen? American?”

“How much?”

“Twenty'll be enough.”

Bernie took out his wallet and handed Kober a twenty-dollar bill. The Czech officer was watching intently, as was his companion. “They come cheap,” Brodsky whispered. Kober palmed the bill and then shook hands with the Czech. It was utterly transparent, and the men from the flight, watching, began to grin.

“Let's get to the lounge,” Kober said. “Look, Cohen, you got to trust Dov and me. We're all you got here.” He dropped his voice. “Never mind those two clowns. They're nothing.” He led the group of men across the field. “I don't know you either. There were supposed to be ten planes. You only have nine out there.”

“We lost one at sea.”

“Rotten luck.”

They walked the whole length of the field. The lounge, as they called it, reminded Bernie of a cheap highway lunchroom. Beyond it loomed the hulks of factory buildings.

“Skoda Works,” Kober explained. “This is a very tense moment. I think the communists have taken over. Either that or it's in process. BeneÅ¡' position is very shaky, and no one wants to go out on a limb. I'm not even sure whether our deal is on or off because, the money aside, this is one cold nest of anti-Semitic bastards.”

“Nobody hates two million dollars.”

“Cohen, they got the two million. We're here, and that money is sitting right here in Pilsen. They have us by the short hair, and don't you forget that.”

A file of soldiers had accompanied them to the lounge and remained outside. Except for themselves, the room was empty. The pilots began to badger Bernie.

“Cohen, we're starved.”

“What's with those goons outside?”

“Do we eat or don't we?”

“Where do we stay?”

“What gives, are we under arrest?”

“I guess twenty's not enough,” Kober said.

Bernie took out forty dollars, which Kober gave to Benash, who left the lounge. A half-hour later, he returned with two soldiers, who carried a case of bottled beer and a basket filled with bread and sausage.

Bernie, Brodsky, and Goodman sat at one of the tables with the two Haganah men. The sausage was hard, the bread stale, and the beer warm, but they were hungry enough to overlook the quality of the food.

“What do we do?” Bernie asked Kober. “Sit and wait?”

“That's right. We wait. They know we're here.”

“What about sleeping?”

“God knows. At least this bloody shack is warm. Maybe we can bed down here. There's a toilet out back, so your guys have the convenience.”