The Buck Passes Flynn (19 page)

The large cop laughed and shook hands with Flynn again.

While they had tea Flynn and the cop talked of the weather, which is to say the wind and the snow. Flynn admitted the ground that morning had been
hard enough with frost to make burying his parachute difficult. The cop laughed.

“Ask him if he plays chess,” Flynn said.

At the question, the cop became excited, stood up, called the proprietor.

“I think he’s ordering up a chess set,” said 2842, who still wasn’t even slightly relaxed.

“No, no,” said Flynn. “Tell him we can play later, if there’s time. First we have to find and talk to—if we can—the great American counterfeiter, Cecil Hill. But don’t tell him Hill’s a counterfeiter. No use spoilin’ the man’s reputation where he’s chosen to live.”

The cop was reseated. He and 2842 spoke for some minutes. To Flynn the cop appeared listening, understanding, cooperative, gracious. Toward the end of the conversation an edge came into his voice and his face colored.

2842 said to Flynn, “He says the American, Cecil Hill, works at the large printing plant on the east side of town. He says he is very well regarded, as a printer.”

“That’s true,” said Flynn. “Will you ask our man in blue what it is the printing plant prints?”

In a moment, 2842 answered, “Textbooks. School-books for all Russia.”

“Not money?” Flynn asked.

The cop laughed when he heard the question.

2842 said, “The policeman says it is not a far walk to the printing plant and he’d be happy to accompany us to make sure we find the American Cecil Hill.”

“Very obligin’ of him,” Flynn said. “But, tell me. I thought I noticed a little anger in the man, a moment ago, when he was speaking of the printing plant.”

“That’s because his nephew runs the place,” 2842 said. “He doesn’t like his nephew.”

“Then neither do I,” said Flynn. “Neither do I.”

IN fact, Flynn did not like the nephew, who was a skinny man in wire-rimmed glasses who moved too fast, spoke too fast, and generally demonstrated the impatience of a rooster upon first discovering why he had been put in the henhouse.

Flynn did not like the printing plant, either. Built of an ancient stone with red-brick wings, it was cold, damp, and dark. Walking through the plant to the administrator’s office, he saw that the workers were sunken-chested and blue-nosed.

Red-faced from the beginning, Solensk’s cop yelled everything he had to say at the nephew-administrator, apparently having to beat down the man’s bureaucratic arrogance to get him to fulfill a simple request.

Finally, after a long moment of silence during which Flynn understood Cecil Hill had been sent for, a short, aproned, heavily sweatered, ink-stained man in his fifties entered carrying a single sheet of galley. He looked sullenly at Flynn, particularly his clothes. He spoke in Russian to the plant administrator, who shrugged indifferently.

“You’re Cecil Hill?” Flynn asked.

“You’re Irish?” Hill asked.

“Yes,” Flynn said. “American.”

“You’re a cop?”

“When I’m at home.”

“How the hell did you get here?”

“Helicopter.”

“If you have any idea you’re taking me back with you, to stand a mock trial in an American court and be put in prison for the rest of my life, you can forget it. Russia does not waste workers’ talents.”

“Unless they’re intellectual workers or otherwise disagreeable,” Flynn said softly.

“I’m much too valuable to these people, to the people of Russia, as a printer.”

“I understand that,” Flynn said.

“Then what do you want?”

“I know you’re a good printer,” Flynn said. “In fact, you’re considered one of the world’s top ten counterfeiters.” Hill smiled. “Tell me, Mister Hill: do they actually have you living in a dacha? Your address is Dacha 11.”

“It’s no dacha.”

“More like a cold-water room?”

“I had a dacha.”

“At first?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re obliged to share your cold-water room with other people …?”

“They’re friends.”

“I trust they’re very good friends.”

Flynn handed Cecil Hill the three American bills without saying anything about them.

Cecil Hill took them to the window and examined them.

“The twenty-dollar bill is a fake,” he said. “A good one—good enough to fool some people—but it’s a fake.”

“And the fifty- and the one-hundred-dollar bills are not?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they’re not. To be absolutely certain, I’d have to use a microscope and some chemicals.” He held the one-hundred-dollar bill up to the window light. “But it looks like somebody’s already done that.”

He handed the bills back to Flynn.

Flynn said, “Not your work?”

“What?”

“You didn’t manufacture this money?”

“No.”

“Mister Hill, in all the time you’ve been in Russia—especially when they had you ensconced in your dacha, stuffing you with vodka and caviar—did you design, or make, or in any way formulate plans for the manufacturing of United States currency?”

“No.” Cecil Hill laughed. “An American flatfoot comes all the way over here on what you think is a counterfeit case? Wow.”

“What we ‘think is a counterfeit case’?” Flynn repeated.

“United States currency must be in some kind of trouble.”

Flynn thought for a moment: …
think is a counterfeit case
…
United States currency must be in some kind of trouble
….

“I think your phrasing has been helpful to me, Mister Hill.”

“Delighted, I’m sure.”

“I’m puzzled, nevertheless,” Flynn said, “by one of the world’s top ten counterfeiters living in one of the world’s most unpleasant resorts?”

“I’m at home here, mister.”

“But your peers are ‘at home’ on the French Riviera, in Paris, New York, California…. One is at home in federal prison in Marion, Illinois, of course.”

“I like it here.”

“But a man who has … let’s say, the knack for making money you have—”

“What of it?”

“—to live under a Communist regime, which does not encourage the use of currency among its citizens … puzzles me.”

“That’s the point, mister. If I believed in money as a real thing I wouldn’t have made the fake stuff, would I?”

“There’s that word believe again. Relieve in money.’ I believe Satan walked the earth. My son was just killed, therefore I believe it is time I win a fortune gambling.”

2842, still not an entirely relaxed man, was watching Flynn, listening to him closely.

“In the Western world, mister—your world—money is be-all end-all. Money! Just little bits of paper anybody can reproduce.”

“Not anybody,” said Flynn.

“Anybody.”

“Anybody with certain skills, talents …”

“Anybody!” insisted Cecil Hill. “People run their whole lives, cradle to grave, centered on something totally unreal.”

“Some do.”

“All do.”

“A good many do.”

“All!” insisted Cecil Hill.

“You’re saying money is phony anyway…”

“Of course. Fake. All money is fake. An illusion.”

“Excrement,” Flynn said. “Garbage.”

“No. Both excrement and garbage have some use. Money is totally fake. All money is fake.”

“Ah, the darlin’ mind of the criminal,” said Flynn. “Endlessly fascinatin’. No mind believes more in justice than the criminal mind. All money is fake,
ergo
makin’ more of it is no crime at all.”

“Communism does not encourage a belief in money,” Cecil Hill said. “A belief I didn’t have anyway. I am quite comfortable here.”

The man’s socks were so thick he couldn’t lace his shoes.

“I’ll not be disturbin’ your comfort much more,” Flynn said. “But you did say how valuable you are to the Russian people. Just a matter of academic interest: if you’re not grinding out the old buck for them, what is it you do that makes yourself so valuable to the people of Russia? If you don’t mind my askin’ …”

Cecil Hill hesitated a moment, then picked up the galley sheet he had brought into the room with him and put on the administrator’s desk. He handed it to Flynn.

The light being bad in the room (except directly over the administrator’s desk), Flynn took the galley to the window. It was in English. While the administrator sat at his desk, 2842 and Solensk’s cop stood by the door. Cecil Hill stood close enough to the administrator’s electric heater to turn the rest of the room colder. Flynn read:

Outside the window the snow was swirling furiously. Still, none seemed to be accumulating on the ground.

Flynn cursed his compulsion to understand comprehensively. Life is so simple, seen in black and white. In black and white and with a song on the lips. He’d had his chance at universal, eternal truth, twice, and found it boring. We live between the keys, between the chords, between the black and white. He’d lived between the borders. There is nothing more painful than a wide youth.

Flynn turned to Cecil Hill. “History in depth, is it? Is that what you’re writing?”

“I don’t write it. I only print it.”

Flynn handed him back the galley. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

“WELL, I’ll be a monkey’s psychiatrist,” Flynn said.

He climbed the restaurant stairs to the sidewalk. It was still snowing but still no snow had accumulated.

It was two-thirty in the morning.

“I suppose this is what they call a nice night in Solensk.”

2842 and citizens of Solensk, including the cop, were leaving the restaurant with him, arms around each other, slapping backs, saying goodnight. Having had nothing better to do, Flynn had returned to the restaurant with the cop after seeing Cecil Hill at the printing plant. He had been playing chess ever since. Other citizens of Solensk had come in to watch them play. Even Cecil Hill had appeared during some part of the evening and silently watched awhile. Although Flynn had kept himself to potato soup, cucumber soup, Russian onion soup, black bread, and tea, substantial quantities of vodka had gone down other throats, especially that of 2842, who had had a long and nervous day. Toward midnight he had begun chirping, in English, “I’m a spy, I’m a spy!” before
falling asleep. During the afternoon and evening Flynn had become fond of the citizens of Solensk, especially the restaurant’s large woman proprietor-cook, who apparently refused to believe anyone who could consume as much soup as Flynn did not speak Russian; the jolly bear of a cop, whose mood shifted manic-depressively depending upon the success of his chess moves; and a man who had entered the restaurant sometime during the early evening, sat in a corner, and played the clarinet beautifully.

“Well,” Flynn said, stuffing 2842 into the three-wheeled car and waving good-bye to his friends, “this is not a bad old place at all.”

Flynn drove. Beside him, chin on chest, 2842 slept.

It took Flynn more than an hour of driving around to find the right place to wait for the helicopter. That morning he had taken a casual fix on two distinctive peaks against the dark sky so he could find the place again in the dark, without 2842, if he needed to. He needed to. 2842 was dead to the world. To make absolutely certain he was in the right place, Flynn left the car and, after much searching in the dark, found the place he’d buried his parachute.

Then he sat in the cold car again. 2842 slept beside him. The wind whipped around them, snow blowing all sides.

All afternoon and evening, playing chess, Flynn had had the growing feeling that he knew something, was pretty sure of something, had heard something or, over time, had heard some things that fitted together somehow into a logic. A logic true to itself, but based on an insane or, at least, incorrect axiom. Cecil Hill, George Udine. Paul Sankey. Jimmy Silverstein, the Las Vegas comic. Marge Fraiman. Something Elsbeth had said…

Flynn poked 2842.

“I’m a spy,” 2842 said, “I’m a spy.”

“Talk to me,” said Flynn.

“Where are we?”

“Waiting for the chopper.”

“How did we get here?”

“By the seat of my pants. Thank you.”

“It’s still dark.”

“It is that.”

“Why did you wake me up? I want to sleep. I’m a spy.”

“I have to make sure you’re well enough to drive yourself home after I leave you. If the local authorities see the chopper coming in this morning they might come to believe I was serious. It wouldn’t do at all for them to find you sleeping peacefully next to the pasture where the helicopter landed and took off, would it?”

“Not at all.” 2842 sat up in his seat.

“Where is your home, anyway?” Flynn asked.

“Finland. I’m Finnish.”

“You’re a long way from Finland. You’ll never make it in this car.”

“No. I’ve been stationed the last six years over on the coast. At the campus.”

“The campus of what?”

2842 looked across at Flynn in the dark. “K. campus.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a… uh… I’m a spy.”