Short Stories: Five Decades (94 page)

Smith chuckled. “You have been in Paris how long?” he said. “A year and a half?”

“Sixteen months,” Barber said, wondering how the man knew
that
.

“Nothing very mysterious about it,” Smith said. “People talk at bars, at dinner parties. One girl tells another girl. Paris is a small city. Where shall I drop you?”

Barber looked out the window to see where they were. “Not far from here,” he said. “My hotel is just off the Avenue Victor Hugo. You can’t get in there with a car.”

“Oh, yes,” Smith said, as though he knew about all hotels. “If it doesn’t seem too inquisitive,” he said, “do you intend to stay long in Europe?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On luck.” Barber grinned.

“Did you have a good job in America?” Smith asked, keeping his eyes on the traffic ahead of him.

“In thirty years, working ten hours a day, I would have been the third biggest man in the company,” Barber said.

Smith smiled. “Calamitous,” he said. “Have you found more interesting things to do here?”

“Occasionally,” Barber said, beginning to be conscious that he was being quizzed.

“After a war it is difficult to remain interested,” Smith said. “While it is on, a war is absolutely boring. But then when it is over, you discover peace is even more boring. It is the worst result of wars. Do you still fly?”

“Once in a while.”

Smith nodded. “Do you maintain your license?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, that’s wise,” Smith said.

He pulled the car sharply in to the curb and stopped, and Barber got out.

“Here you are,” Smith said. He put out his hand, smiling, and Barber shook it. Smith’s hand was softly fleshed, but there was a feeling of stone beneath it.

“Thanks for everything,” Barber said.

“Thank you, Mr. Barber, for your company,” Smith said. He held Barber’s hand for a moment, looking across the seat at him. “This has been very pleasant,” he said. “I hope we can see each other again soon. Maybe we are lucky for each other.”

“Sure,” Barber said, grinning. “I’m always at home to people who can pick eighteen-to-one shots.”

Smith smiled, relinquishing Barber’s hand. “Maybe one of these days we’ll have something even better than an eighteen-to-one shot,” he said.

He waved a little and Barber closed the car door. Smith spurted out into the traffic, nearly causing two
quatre chevaux
to pile up behind him.

It had taken two weeks for Smith to declare himself. From the beginning, Barber had known that something was coming, but he had waited patiently, curious and amused, lunching with Smith in the fine restaurants Smith patronized, going to galleries with him and listening to Smith on the subject of the Impressionists, going out to the race tracks with him and winning more often than not on the information Smith picked up from tight-lipped men around the paddocks. Barber pretended to enjoy the little, clever man more than he actually did, and Smith, on his part, Barber knew, was pretending to like
him
more than he actually did. It was a kind of veiled and cynical wooing, in which neither party had yet committed himself. Only, unlike more ordinary wooings, Barber for the first two weeks was not sure in just which direction his desirability, as far as Smith was concerned, might lie.

Then, late one night, after a large dinner and a desultory tour of the night clubs, during which Smith had seemed unusually silent and abstracted, they were standing in front of Smith’s hotel and he made his move. It was a cold night, and the street was deserted except for a prostitute with a dog, who looked at them without hope as she passed them on the way to the Champs-Elysées.

“Are you going to be in your hotel tomorrow morning, Lloyd?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Barber said. “Why?”

“Why?” Smith repeated absently, staring after the chilled-looking girl and her poodle walking despairingly down the empty, dark street. “Why?” He chuckled irrelevantly. “I have something I would like to show you,” he said.

“I’ll be in all morning,” Barber said.

“Tell me, my friend,” Smith said, touching Barber’s sleeve lightly with his gloved hand. “Do you have any idea why I have been calling you so often for the last two weeks, and buying you so many good meals and so much good whiskey?”

“Because I am charming and interesting and full of fun,” Barber said, grinning. “And because you want something from me.”

Smith chuckled, louder this time, and caressed Barber’s sleeve. “You are not absolutely stupid, my friend, are you?”

“Not absolutely,” said Barber.

“Tell me, my friend,” Smith said, almost in a whisper. “How would you like to make twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“What?” Barber asked, certain that he had not heard correctly.

“Sh-h-h,” Smith said. He smiled, suddenly gay. “Think about it. I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for walking me home.” He dropped Barber’s arm and started into the hotel.

“Smith!” Barber called.

“Sh-h-h.” Smith put his finger playfully to his mouth. “Sleep well. See you in the morning.”

Barber watched him go through the glass revolving doors into the huge, brightly lit, empty lobby of the hotel. Barber took a step toward the doors to follow him in, then stopped and shrugged and put his collar up, and walked slowly in the direction of his own hotel. I’ve waited this long, he thought, I can wait till morning.

Barber was still in bed the next morning when the door opened and Smith came in. The room was dark, with the curtains drawn, and Barber was lying there, half asleep, thinking drowsily, Twenty-five thousand, twenty-five thousand. He opened his eyes when he heard the door open. There was a short, bulky silhouette framed in the doorway against the pallid light of the corridor.

“Who’s that?” Barber asked, without sitting up.

“Lloyd. I’m sorry,” Smith said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.”

Barber sat up abruptly. “Smith,” he said. “Come in.”

“I don’t want to disturb—”

“Come in, come in.” Barber got out of bed and, barefooted, went over to the window and threw back the curtains. He looked out at the street. “By God, what do you know?” he said, shivering and closing the window. “The sun is shining. Shut the door.”

Smith closed the door. He was wearing a loose gray tweed overcoat, very British, and a soft Italian felt hat, and he was carrying a large manila envelope. He looked newly bathed and shaved, and wide awake.

Barber, blinking in the sudden sunshine, put on a robe and a pair of moccasins and lit a cigarette. “Excuse me,” he said. “I want to wash.” He went behind the screen that separated the washbasin and the
bidet
from the rest of the room. As he washed, scrubbing his face and soaking his hair with cold water, he heard Smith go over to the window. Smith was humming, in a soft, true, melodious tenor voice, a passage from an opera that Barber knew he had heard but could not remember. Aside from everything else, Barber thought, combing his hair roughly, I bet the bastard knows fifty operas.

Feeling fresher and less at a disadvantage with his teeth washed and his hair combed, Barber stepped out from behind the screen.

“Paris,” Smith said, at the window, looking out. “What a satisfactory city. What a farce.” He turned around, smiling. “Ah,” he said, “how lucky you are. You can afford to put water on your head.” He touched his thin, well-brushed hair sadly. “Every time I wash my hair, it falls like the leaves. How old did you say you are?”

“Thirty,” Barber said, knowing that Smith remembered it.

“What an age.” Smith sighed. “The wonderful moment of balance. Old enough to know what you want, still young enough to be ready for anything.” He came back and sat down and propped the manila envelope on the floor next to the chair. “Anything.” He looked up at Barber, almost coquettishly. “You recall our conversation, I trust,” he said.

“I recall a man said something about twenty-five thousand dollars,” Barber said.

“Ah—you do remember,” Smith said gaily. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, do you want to make it?”

“I’m listening,” Barber said.

Smith rubbed his soft hands together gently in front of his face, his fingers rigid, making a slight, dry, sliding sound. “A little proposition has come up,” he said. “An interesting little proposition.”

“What do I have to do for my twenty-five thousand dollars?” Barber asked.

“What do you have to do for your twenty-five thousand dollars?” Smith repeated softly. “You have to do a little flying. You have flown for considerably less, from time to time, haven’t you?” He chuckled.

“I sure have,” Barber said. “What else do I have to do?”

“Nothing else,” Smith said, sounding surprised. “Just fly. Are you still interested?”

“Go on,” said Barber.

“A friend of mine has just bought a brand-new single-engine plane. A Beech-craft, single engine. A perfect, pleasant, comfortable, one-hundred-per-cent dependable aircraft,” Smith said, describing the perfect little plane with pleasure in its newness and its dependability. “He himself does not fly, of course. He needs a private pilot, who will be on tap at all times.”

“For how long?” Barber asked, watching Smith closely.

“For thirty days. Not more.” Smith smiled up at him. “The pay is not bad, is it?”

“I can’t tell yet,” Barber said. “Go on. Where does he want to fly to?”

“He happens to be an Egyptian,” Smith said, a little deprecatingly, as though being an Egyptian were a slight private misfortune, which one did not mention except among friends, and then in lowered tones. “He is a wealthy Egyptian who likes to travel. Especially back and forth to France. To the South of France. He is in love with the South of France. He goes there at every opportunity.”

“Yes?”

“He would like to make two round trips from Egypt to the vicinity of Cannes within the next month,” Smith said, peering steadily at Barber, “in his private new plane. Then, on the third trip, he will find that he is in a hurry and he will take the commercial plane and his pilot will follow two days later, alone.”

“Alone?” Barber asked, trying to keep all the facts straight.

“Alone, that is,” Smith said, “except for a small box.”

“Ah,” Barber said, grinning. “Finally the small box.”

“Finally.” Smith smiled up at him delightedly. “It has already been calculated. The small box will weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. A comfortable margin of safety for this particular aircraft for each leg of the journey.”

“And what will there be in the small two-hundred-and-fifty-pound box?” Barber asked, cool and relieved now that he saw what was being offered to him.

“Is it absolutely necessary to know?”

“What do I tell the customs people when they ask me what’s in the box?” Barber said. “‘Go ask Bert Smith’?”

“You have nothing to do with customs people,” Smith said. “I assure you. When you take off from the airport in Cairo, the box is not on board. And when you land at the airport at Cannes, the box is not on board. Isn’t that enough?”

Barber took a last pull at his cigarette and doused it. He peered thoughtfully at Smith, sitting easily on the straight-backed chair in the rumpled room, looking too neat and too well dressed for such a place at such an hour. Drugs, Barber thought, and he can stuff them …

“No, Bertie boy,” Barber said roughly. “It is not enough. Come on. Tell.”

Smith sighed. “Are you interested up to now?”

“I am interested up to now,” Barber said.

“All right,” Smith said regretfully. “This is how it will be done. You will have established a pattern. You will have been in and out of the Cairo airport several times. Your papers always impeccable. They will know you. You will have become a part of the legitimate routine of the field. Then, on the trip when you will be taking off alone, everything will be perfectly legitimate. You will have only a small bag with you of your personal effects. Your flight plan will show that your destination is Cannes and that you will come down at Malta and Rome for refuelling only. You will take off from Cairo. You will go off course by only a few miles. Some distance from the coast, you will be over the desert. You will come down on an old R.A.F. landing strip that hasn’t been used since 1943. There will be several men there.… Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” Barber had walked to the window and was standing there, looking out at the sunny street below, his back to Smith.

“They will put the box on board. The whole thing will not take more than ten minutes,” Smith said. “At Malta, nobody will ask you anything, because you will be in transit and you will not leave the plane and you will stay only long enough to refuel. The same thing at Rome. You will arrive over the south coast of France in the evening, before the moon is up. Once more,” Smith said, speaking as though he was savoring his words, “you will be just a little off course. You will fly low over the hills between Cannes and Grasse. At a certain point, you will see an arrangement of lights. You will throttle down, open the door, and push the box out, from a height of a hundred feet. Then you will close the door and turn toward the sea and land at the Cannes airport. Your papers will be perfectly in order. There will have been no deviations from your flight plan. You will have nothing to declare. You will walk away from the airplane once and for all, and we will pay you the twenty-five thousand dollars I have spoken of. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Lovely,” Barber said. “It’s just a delicious little old plan, Bertie boy.” He turned away from the window. “Now tell me what will be in the box.”

Smith chuckled delightedly, as though what he was going to say was too funny to keep to himself. “Money,” he said. “Just money.”

“How much money?”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds of money,” Smith said, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Two hundred and fifty pounds of tightly packed English notes in a nice, strong, lightweight metal box. Five-pound notes.”

At that moment, it occurred to Barber that he was speaking to a lunatic. But Smith was sitting there, matter-of-fact and healthy, obviously a man who had never for a minute in all his life had a single doubt about his sanity.

“When would I get paid?” Barber asked.