Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Otto broke a long silence by breaking wind. Then he sighed. Then he yawned, showing a lot of half-chewed sausage sandwich. Then he swallowed, scratched himself, and said, “Well, Corporal, we’re back in operation together again.”

Smiling, watching the trucks slowly gaining ground ahead of him up the mountain, Rudi said, “Like the good old days.”

“It’s good to be working with the Major again.”

“Especially,” Rudi said, “considering some of the other meatballs in this job.”

“You know what the Major says,” Otto reminded him. “No enterprise of any scope can be accomplished without allies.”

With a sly grin, Rudi said, “At least for a while, eh, Sergeant?”

Chuckling heartily, Otto said, “Until the objective is attained, Corporal.”

Both had a good laugh at that. Rudi, the first to sober, frowned again through the windshield, saying, “Still. To be on a job with the Italians again. It gives me a creepy feeling.”

Sternly opposed to any expression of doubt, Otto said, “The Major knows what he’s doing, Corporal.”

Not entirely convinced, but obedient, Rudi nodded: “Oh, I know that, Sergeant. I know that.”

The boat train from London to Paris travels overland as far as Dover, where the freight cars and passenger cars and wagons-lits (or sleeping cars) are placed on a ferry, a huge bulky awkward-looking ferry with one lower deck as lined with railroad track as any freight yard. The English locomotives and dining cars are left behind (good!), and the ferry pushes drunkenly off toward Calais, where French locomotives (not so good) and dining cars (very good) will be added for the overland run to Paris.

Sir Mortimer Maxwell had hoped to have the tiny wagons-lit compartment to himself, but he turned out to have a roommate — or cellmate. What was worse, he was an obese Frenchman without English. What was even worse than that, he was an obese Frenchman who traveled with an entire hamper of food — bread, wine, sausages, cheese, fruit — from which he fed his fat face constantly . And noisily. Chomp chomp, squgg squgg, slish slish. It was simply not to be borne.

The fact of the matter was, Sir Mortimer didn’t much like to travel either by train or boat, and traveling by both simultaneously did nothing, in his opinion, to improve either. He was sitting in an extremely cramped train compartment, listening to a fat Frenchman gnaw his way through the world’s food supply, and the extremely cramped train compartment was weaving and rolling like a ship. It was damned unpleasant.

It was finally more unpleasant than Sir Mortimer could bear, and he left his short narrow wagons-lit bed, donned a dressing gown, and left the compartment. Staggering down the narrow corridor to the end, he left the car, turned right, found an open door, and went down the steps to lean out and look at all the railroad cars stacked like toys in a child’s dresser drawer. Far above was the yellow-painted steel ceiling, spaced infrequently with rather dim lightbulbs. And over there, glimpsed between other railroad cars, were the two yellow freight cars which were Sir Mortimer’s special interest. He nodded at them, as though greeting an old acquaintance. He was happy to see them, but not at all happy at where they had brought him.

Oh, well; it was all in a good cause. And someday it would all be over, and he could return to Maxwell Manor well supplied with the cash necessary to keep the world at bay. In the meantime, stiff upper lip. He would soldier on.

And at the moment, he would sit upon these steps here and contemplate that glimpse of yellow freight car. It was more comfortable — and more reassuring — than the compartment full of an eating Frenchman.

But not every wagons-lit compartment was disturbing to its occupants. In one not terribly far from Sir Mortimer, in the rolling darkness, two voices were speaking, both coming from the bottom bunk. One of the voices belonged to Charles Moule, and the other belonged to Renee Chateaupierre, and both voices vibrated softly with repressed emotion. “Then,” Charles was saying, “after Claudia was shot by the tourists in Barcelona, life no longer seemed worth the effort.”

“You don’t have to talk about this, Charles,” Renee said.

“But I feel I must, Renee.”

“It’s not necessary, Charles.”

“It’s necessary to me , Renee. After... after what has happened between us, I can no longer remain silent. Tonight is my rebirth. I want you to understand my soul.”

“I do understand your soul, Charles.”

“Do you understand how I felt after Barcelona?”

“But you could never show it,” Renee said.

“How could I show it?”

“You never could.”

“I could never show it.”

It was raining at Le Bourget, the oldest and smallest of Paris’s three airports, the one where Lindbergh landed after his transatlantic crossing. The London taxi parked by the fence gleamed darkly wet in the sheets of rain. Within the taxi were Bruddy and Andrew, and Bruddy was saying, “Doesn’t it ever stop raining? When this job is done, I’m taking my share and travel the world over till I find—”

“There!” said Andrew, pointing toward the distant runway. “That’s it!”

“What? Oh, ho, you’re right.”

The two men watched the cargo plane landing — a DC-3, painted in the Yerbadoroan colors of purple and black. Squish squish, went its wheels on the runway. Rapidly the plane shushed by, spray flying.

“Easy,” Bruddy said, beneath his breath. “Take it easy, old son, don’t wreck that plane.”

“Right on time,” Andrew said, happily smiling at his watch. “That girl Lida’s information is infallible.”

Bruddy wasn’t yet ready to fall over into total optimism. “Just let the rest of it work as well,” he said. “And let it bloody well stop raining.”

In her simple hotel room on the Rue des Ecoles, Lida prepared herself for her solitary bed. In a floor-length white cotton nightgown that clearly exhibited both her beauty and her strength of character, she was about to climb into the narrow bed and switch off the light, when there came a knock at the door.

She hesitated. Who would be knocking at the door at this hour? A lone girl, defenseless in a hotel room in Paris, must ask herself such questions.

The knock was repeated.

Well. Even a lone girl, defenseless in a hotel room in Paris, must be allowed a certain curiosity. And if the hotel room door is locked, which this one most certainly was, there was perhaps not too much risk in responding to a knock on it by voicing one’s curiosity aloud. Emboldened by these reflections, Lida tiptoed to the door, leaned close to it, and was about to speak when the knock occurred a third time. This knock, coming when Lida was bent close to the door, was so loud in her ear that she started back with an involuntary cry, her small right fist pressed to her chest between her breasts. She waited, wide-eyed, gazing at the door, but when nothing further happened she dared approach it again, and this time she called, “Who is it?”

The voice from beyond the wood was one she had never expected to hear again in this life: “Manuel,” it said.

Manuel! Joyfully, Lida unlocked the door and flung it open. “Manuel!”

Manuel entered, shutting the door behind himself. A sturdy handsome peasant with a broad nose and a grim, glum manner, Manuel was dressed in rough corduroy trousers held up by a length of rope instead of a belt, a pair of heavy workshoes, and a coarse cotton shirt with a wide collar and flaring sleeves. “Lida!” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, and held his arms wide.

Lida flew to them. They embraced, passionately, murmuring endearments to one another in Spanish, the native tongue of Yerbadoro and in fact the only language with which Manuel was at all familiar.