Establishment (13 page)

“And who are we dealing with? The army?”

“We are not sure,” Benash said. “Is hard to say. Maybe army, maybe Communist Party, maybe secret police.”

“You must have made the deal with someone,” Bernie insisted.

“There's a sleazy chap called Lovazch,” Kober told them. “He's got a finger in a lot of things. He's a civilian, but the colonels hop to attention when he speaks. Which makes me think that perhaps he's party, commissar or something of the sort. The army's in on it, because this is a military airport attached to the Skoda Works, which have been taken over by the government. We got to him through Max Selnik, who's a French filmmaker with a lot of contacts in curious places. Max is Jewish, so he went to the trouble of setting this up. The Haganah has been buying arms from the Czechs, but this will be the biggest deal we've had a go at. Brodsky tells me,” he said to Bernie, “that you're a weapons expert.”

“I've used them. I fought in Spain and then I did six years in the British army.”

“Are you a commie?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Pity. They might listen better to one of their own. Do you know the German weapons?”

“A bit. Not a damn thing about Czech guns.”

“Don't worry. They won't sell us any Czech guns. They'll want to palm off the German junk they picked up after the war.”

“It's not all junk,” Bernie said. “Not if it's in decent condition.”

“Can you be the judge of that?”

“With the weapons, yes. Not with the Messerschmitts.”

“Dov's a mechanic. That's his game.”

“What do you need most?” Bernie asked.

“Small arms, rifles, machine guns. And mortars. Small field pieces, if we can get any. But I suppose we'll have to take what they give us—if they give us anything.”

They had been in the lounge for almost three hours before anyone appeared to remember they were there. Most of the men were stretched out on the floor. Some were asleep. A few played cards. A few were still chewing on what remained of the sausage and bread. Most of the men who were awake were smoking, and the small room was heavy with cigarette smoke. A counter across one end of the room had a curious baroque mirror behind it. Evidently, it had once been used as a lunchroom or barroom of some sort; on the wall behind the counter were a number of cardboard signs with words and prices printed on them. There were four tables in the room. At three of them, poker games were in progress. Bernie, Brodsky, Goodman, and the Haganah men sat at the fourth, the two suitcases under the table, each between two sensitive feet. Bernie, half-dozing, was listening to Kober's description of the political situation in Czechoslovakia. There were rumors that Jan Masaryk, the foreign minister, had been murdered by the radical left only two days before. “The story is,” said Kober, “that he fell from his window in the Czernin Palace. Bloody clumsy of him, if one is to believe it. I don't. They've been arresting members of the government in the opposition parties right and left—that is, the left is soaking it to the right, and the situation appears to be on the edge of a communist takeover. None of our concern. Ours is to get the bloody planes and weapons and get out of here.”

That was when Bernie saw the two men come into the room. One was a very fat man in civilian clothes. His pink, perspiring face sat in collars of fat, and even as he entered, he was wiping his brow. He had thin blond hair, tiny blue eyes, and a curious cupid mouth. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, and black tie, and a black armband was sewn on his sleeve. “That's Lovazch,” Kober whispered. “The armband's for Masaryk. Kinky sense of humor they have. He's a shrewd pig.” The other wore a uniform with three rows of medals on his breast; he was a tall, gray-haired, military type who walked stiffly and held his spine erect. “Don't know him,” Kober said.

Lovazch, spotting Kober and Benash, led the officer across the room to their table. Bernie preempted two chairs from the nearest poker game, and Al Levine, a pilot, wailed, “For Christ's sake, Cohen, you want me to deal the motherfuckin' cards standing?”

“Can it,” he whispered. “This is the brass we've been waiting for.”

Lovazch bowed stiffly as Kober introduced Cohen, Brodsky, and Goodman. “This is General Anulko,” Lovazch said, speaking English with a heavy accent. Then he spoke to the general in Czech. Bernie caught the names of all five of them and the word Haganah.

“Cohen here, and Brodsky—both of them speak French,” Kober said.

“We talk in English, so? The general don't speak French.”

“Please sit down,” Bernie said.

“So? Thank you.” They seated themselves. “You have money?”

“We have money,” Kober said.

“How much?”

“Two million, American.”

“Where?”

“Let that rest for a while,” Kober said.

“Oh? Please—don't give me shit, like you say. Either show me money or I walk out.”

They looked at each other. “Show him the money,” Bernie said. “What's the difference?”

Kober shrugged. Benash nodded. He had a face like a hawk, brown and cold and hard, with blue eyes narrowed to slits.
Unless I've forgotten all I used to know about men like him
, Bernie said to himself,
he has a gun in his pocket and his finger on the trigger. He's a killer, and like all killers, a little crazy. He'd like nothing better than to put a bullet into Lovazch, and that would be just dandy.

Aloud, Bernie said, “I am in command of this operation, Mr. Lovazch.” Kober and Benash glanced at him, surprised. They remained silent. “May I first express my gratitude to the great people's democracy of Czechoslovakia, and of course to you. The money is nothing. It is merely a symbol. The struggle for liberty is everything.” He smiled and nodded and reached under the table for the suitcase. Brodsky followed his action, and they placed the two suitcases on the table. Neither had been opened since Feinstein had turned them over. The thought occurred to Bernie that conceivably neither suitcase contained any money. How long was the chain that had to be trusted? How many before Feinstein? What strange force held them all together in this? He had never really believed that anything superseded human greed, but evidently the will to create something on a parched piece of desert on the Mediterranean took precedence even over greed. He met Irv Brodsky's eyes. Brodsky's thin smile suggested that perhaps he had the same thoughts. Curiously, the luggage was not even locked, only held together with snaps and leather straps. He and Brodsky undid the fastenings, and the others around the table rose as they opened the suitcases. Both were packed with tight bundles of hundred- and five-hundred-dollar bills.

As if possessing a dynamic force of its own, the money communicated itself. The poker games stopped, and the chatter of voices in the room stopped too, and slowly and silently the whole group of airmen gathered around the table.

With awe and respect, someone said, “Holy shit!”

It expressed it completely
, Bernie thought. “All right, guys,” he snapped at them. “Break it up! You all seen a dollar before. Forget it. We have business to do.”

They moved away, slowly, reluctantly, as Bernie closed the suitcases. “Do you want to count it?” he asked Lovazch.

The fat man wiped his brow. “Not necessary.” He took out a notebook. “You pay as we decided each purchase.”

“Nothing doing!” Kober said curtly.

“Isn't it simpler,” Bernie said, “to make the payment when the goods are loaded?”

“You must trust me,” Lovazch said. “I trust you, you trust me.”

“When the goods are loaded.”

“You are making it difficult for me. Do you not know, Mr. Cohen, that you are in Czechoslovakia at very trying time? You must not press me too hard. It is within my authority to impound your planes and your money. That would be unfortunate, no?”

They sat in silence for a while, and then Bernie suggested that he and his friends have a few words. “Of course,” Lovazch agreed. “Of course.” The five of them went across the room and put their heads together.

“We had a deal,” Kober whispered.

“Forget it,” Bernie told him. “He's going to skim the cash, he and that sonofabitch general. Suppose we told him to fuck off? Is there any kind of appeal here, any straight people you can do business with?”

“Are you kidding?”

“The question is,” Brodsky whispered, “will he deliver?”

“Oh, yes, he'll deliver, at his own bloody price. He has us, we have him. I say, pay his price and let's get the hell out of here. If we insist on paying when they load, that cuts him out, and that fat bastard isn't going to see himself cut out.”

They returned to the table. “We'll deal,” Bernie said.

“Ah, I see, Cohen, you are a man of sensibility. Then we begin with the Messerschmitts. Ten planes.”

“The planes are disassembled and ready to load,” said Kober. “But we can only take nine. We lost one of our transports in flight.”

“You agreed to ten, you pay for ten.”

“We can't take ten,” Bernie put in. “God Almighty, you have a handful of people there in Palestine who'll be fighting for their lives any day now. Every dollar we have here means something.”

“Please not to invoke God. You contracted for ten planes, you pay for ten, sixty thousand each, all together, dollars six hundred thousand.”

“The price was fifty thousand!” Brodsky exclaimed.

“So price changes.”

“What is it, Mr. Lovazch? Are you determined to have your pound of flesh?”

“Ah, Shakespeare.
Merchant of Venice
. I am not Jewish, Mr. Cohen.” He pronounced it
Youish
. “You are Jewish. You will have your pound of flesh, but not from me. Oh, no. I do not bargain. Very Jewish, bargaining. We offer you life and you bargain.” He pursed his little cupid-bow mouth and made a sour face. “Disgusting. No more bargaining or I walk out of here and tell you and your Jews to go to hell. Do you understand me?”

Bernie nodded. Benash's face became even colder and tighter. Kober was smiling pleasantly. Bernie whispered to Kober, who sat beside him, speaking an inadequate Hebrew, “No trouble from Benash, please.” Still smiling, Kober said to Benash in Hebrew, “If you do something crazy, Dov, I'll kill you, I swear.”

“I only have a gun,” Benash replied in Hebrew. “If I had a knife, I'd cut that fat pig's heart out.”

“You will speak in English,” Lovazch said.

“Yes, of course,” Bernie agreed. “We accept the price.”

“Then the money,” Lovazch said, making marks in his notebook.

“Now?”

“Of course, now. We make a deal, money passes hands.”

“Irv,” Bernie said, “count out six hundred thousand.”

Brodsky counted out the money. The very fact of the enormous sum of money changing hands brought the listening airmen to their feet. Now they moved closer to the table.

Lovazch consulted his notebook. “I have Russian rifles, very good, three thousand, two hundred twenty.”

“No Russian guns,” Bernie said flatly. “I hear you have German guns.”

“Russian guns are excellent.”

“Close that goddamn suitcase, Irv,” he shouted at Brodsky. “The hell with it! We came to do business, not to be robbed! You can take this money from us, but you'll have one hell of a fight. Most of us here are American citizens. If you think you can kill or jail thirty American citizens and get away with it, Lovazch, then go ahead and try! You're going to load those nine Messerschmitts and we're going to take off—and you just try to stop us!” His voice had climbed to a snarling roar, and Brodsky and Goodman were staring at him in amazement. Kober was smiling, and for the first time, Benash's lips parted in a thin smile. The airmen were grinning with pleasure.

Lovazch spread his hands. “Who is talking of robbing?”

The general was speaking in Czech. Lovazch answered him, and for a few minutes they held a dialogue. Then Lovazch said again, “Who talks of robbing? I suggest Russian weapons. The Red army is the greatest army in the world. You think they fight with pitchforks? You want German guns? Fine. We talk about German guns. What do you want?”

“Volksturm Geschuss,” Bernie said.

“Ah, Volksturm Geschuss. Why not Mausers? I sell you five thousand Mausers.”

“What the devil is a Volksturm Geschuss?” Kober asked.

“Light carbine type. Nine and a half pounds. Forty-four-caliber, and takes a magazine of thirty rounds. It's a hell of a weapon. That's what I want,” he told Lovazch.

“Cost you, Mr. Cohen. It will cost you.” He consulted his notebook. “Two hundred we sell, no more. A hundred dollars each.”

Bernie nodded at Brodsky, who counted out twenty thousand dollars.

“Ammunition?”

“Sixty rounds for each gun.”

“We need more—double that, at least.”

Again, Brodsky counted out money.

“I want Schmeizers,” Bernie said.

“Schmeizers, Schmeizers!” Lovazch exclaimed. “Ask me for diamonds!”

Brodsky nudged him. “Machine pistols,” Bernie said. “The damnedest weapon that was ever made. Seven hundred and fifty rounds per minute.”

“No Schmeizers,” said Lovazch. “Schluss. No Schmeizers.”

“Why not?”

“You pay a thousand dollars each, yes?”

Kober shook his head. “Buy the Mausers,” he whispered to Bernie.

The bargaining went on for another hour. Twenty-two MG-42 light machine guns, the five thousand Mauser rifles, an assortment of Lügar pistols. The money was heaped in front of Lovazch and the general. The general could not keep his eyes off it. He sat with his cold gaze fixed on the piles of American dollars.

“I want fifty thousand dollars' bond,” Lovazch said finally, “for airport privileges, fuel, loading.”