Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

No; that couldn’t be so. He was a planner, was Eustace Dench, a magnificent planner. He simply had to have faith that, before being faced with all these blank faces and mulish dispositions, the plan he’d devised had been a good one. And would be a good one again.

“Right, then,” he said, forcing himself to straighten up and appear at least slightly determined and optimistic. “We’ve all gone over the plan together.”

“We’ve-all-gone-over-the-plan-together,” dutifully and dully droned Rosa and Herman and Jean, each in their own language.

Eustace sighed. “We’ve ironed out our differences,” he said.

“We’ve-ironed-out-our-differences,” thudded the translations.

“We’ve agreed on payment.”

“We’ve-agreed-on-payment.”

There was general grumbling. The question of shares had made for some trouble awhile back.

Well, it wouldn’t make for trouble now. “We have agreed on payment,” Eustace said sternly, glaring around. There were no translations this time, but none were needed; and there was no more grumbling either, so Eustace went on: “We all know what we’re supposed to do.”

“We-all-know-what-we’re-supposed-to-do.”

Trying for a pep-talk ring to his voice, Eustace said, “So now, let’s go do it!”

“So-now-let’s-go-do-it.”

The rain poured down, it lashed, it drenched, it fell in sheets and buckets and cascades, it plunged down from the sky as though God, having just finished His bath, had pulled the plug on the celestial tub. The port city of Southampton squatted fatalistically beneath this deluge, all of its citizens remaining sensibly indoors. At the harbor, the freighters moved sluggishly at their moorings, the sea pockmarked with raindrops, the ships’ decks awash with water. Puddles widening into lakes lay on the cobblestones and blacktop of the harbor. The clouds were dark and low, almost touching the funnels of the freighters, and the roar of the rain blotted out all other sounds.

The taxi from London came nosing hesitantly through the puddles, along the harbor quay. Bruddy Dunk, at the wheel, grumbled to himself and squinted out the windscreen, past the hard-working but virtually useless wipers. Here and there along the quay piles of cargo lay stacked, some beneath tarpaulins, some exposed to the pelting rain. At each of these mounds Bruddy paused, while Andrew Pinkenham in the back seat peered through the water-streaming side window, trying to read whatever ownership or destination information might be imprinted on the cargo.

“Trust bloody Sir M,” Bruddy grumbled to himself, as he paused at yet another anonymous mountain of cargo, “to absent himself when the discomfort starts.”

Andrew, leaning forward toward the open side of the glass partition between front and back seats, called, “What say?”

“Nothing, man, nothing. What about this lot, then?”

“A moment.” Andrew’s nose pressed to the side window, he closed one eye and squinted the other, and read aloud, “Iran Air Force.”

“What’s that?”

“Iran Air Force!”

“Not ours, then,” Bruddy said, and drove on to the next. “Bloody girl’s bloody information probably all wet anyway,” he muttered. “Wet as bloody us.”

“What say?”

“Nothing, by bloody God, nothing! Mind your own business, can’t you?”

“No need to get shirty,” Andrew said.

“Shirty,” Bruddy muttered. “Bloody... How about this, then?” And he paused at a great sprawling stack of wooden crates, each covered with stencilled words.

Once again, Andrew pressed his nose to the side window, but this time before he could read anything his own exhalation of breath steamed the window.

Bruddy called, “That it?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew said, rubbing the steam off with the sleeve of his Burberry. “Impossible to see in this rain.”

“Open the bloody window.”

“Afraid I’ll drown,” Andrew said. “You didn’t by any chance drive off the end of the pier without noticing, did you?”

“Arf, arf,” said Bruddy. “Open the bloody window and let’s get this over with.”

Even placid Andrew was getting a bit short-tempered in this weather. “What are you in such a hurry for?” he demanded.

For once, Bruddy didn’t take offense. Instead, he treated the question seriously, and gave it a serious answer: “I’m in a hurry,” he explained, “to go someplace dry and warm and drink something wet and cold.”

“Amen, Bruddy, amen.”

“So open the bloody window and read the bloody boxes.”

“If I must, I must.”

Andrew tugged down the window, and at once the rain poured in. So did the thunderous roar of the rain. Face pinched up against the flurry of cold raindrops, Andrew looked out at the crates and read Escondido Castle — Property of Government of Yerbadoro . “That’s it!” he cried.

Bruddy, frowning at him in the rearview mirror, yelled over the rain, “What say?”

Andrew pushed the window up, lessening the volume of rain in more ways than one. “That’s it,” he said, and shivered. “Now, let’s go to the place you mentioned for the reason cited.”

“Done and done,” said Bruddy.

In the sunshine, high on a hill overlooking the port of Livorno, Rosa Palermo and Angelo Salvagambelli stood beside the little red Fiat, Rosa looking through binoculars, watching the cargo from the South American ship being loaded into two large orange trucks. Beyond the ships the Ligurian Sea glistened and sparkled in the sunlight, and up. from the city came the plink and tinkle of mandolin music. The air was warm, the sun bright, the hill green, the day thoroughly beautiful, and Angelo was growing impatient. “Rosa,” he said.

She made no reply, but went on looking through the binoculars at the lading going on below.

“Rosa,” Angelo repeated, “let me look.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Rosa said, and went on looking herself.

“If there’s nothing to see,” Angelo said, reasonably enough, “stop looking and let me look.”

“In a minute,” Rosa said.

“Rosa...”

“Be quiet, I can’t see.”

Angelo’s boredom and impatience led him to push the issue. Tugging at Rosa’s arm, he said, “Rosa, it’s my turn!”

At once, Rosa exploded into a counterattack, leaping away from him as though his arm-tug had been some sort of karate chop. “You’re so domineering!” she yelled, glaring at him. “A woman can’t breathe around you! Always grinding women beneath your heel!”

Astounded, Angelo fell back against the side of the Fiat, as though utterly felled by this unjust accusation, and feebly pointed at his own chest, as though to say Me?

“Yes, you!” Rosa told him, and pointed her own finger at his chest. “You and only you!” Then she thrust the binoculars at him, crying, “Here! You’ll pull them out of my hands, here they are!”

Moving away from the Fiat, turning his back, flinging his arms this way and that to express rejection and despair, Angelo said, “I don’t want them. I don’t care to look.”

“You’d knock me down to get them,” Rosa insisted, following him away from the car. “You’d break my arm! Here, here, here they are, I submit!”

Spinning back to face her, his expression furious, Angelo cried, “Submit? To rob a man of his manhood is your only pleasure!”

Now it was Rosa’s turn to fall back in astonishment, clutching at her chest. “I? I? ”

“You! You!”

The argument continued for some time.

Night. The two orange trucks with the shipment from South America ground slowly up the twisting road through the Swiss Alps. Behind them buzzed the black Volkswagen beetle convertible, top up. Rudi Schlisselmann was driving, while Otto Berg beside him thoughtfully chewed a sausage sandwich. Herman Muller was not along on this ride.