Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Lida, her expression and posture valiant, clutched Jean’s forearm to say, “You shall save my people from destitution!”

Jean looked at her askance. “What’s this?”

“Half,” Eustace said. “That’s the arrangement I have with Lida.”

“What arrangement?” Storm clouds were crossing Jean’s face now, and his moustache was at half mast.

“We take half the profit for our work and expenses,” Eustace explained, “and the other half goes back to Yerbadoro with Lida.” But simultaneously, behind Lida’s back, Eustace was briskly waving his hand back and forth, to let Jean know he was lying.

“Ah,” Jean said, with a large nod and a small smile, “I see. Well, that sounds fair.” To Lida, pouring on the charm, he said, “You are a stirring spokeswoman for your people.”

Her response was violent: “I am a fiery furnace for my people!”

Taken aback, Jean retreated in his chair a few inches. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can see that.”

“Now,” Eustace said. “The only problem is—”

“Of course there’s a problem,” Rosa Palermo said. Stuffing scungilli and spaghetti into her mouth, she went on talking just the same: “There’s always a problem, Eustace.”

“A small problem, Rosa,” Eustace said, with a casual shrug of the shoulders and an airy gesture with his fingers. There was something about lunch at an outdoor restaurant on Rome’s Via Veneto that made him more than usually expressive with his body and his hands. “A minor problem,” he said. “Nothing that need stop us.”

Rosa, a hefty beauty in her mid-forties, aggressive and excitable, swigged down a mouthful of Bardolino and said, “Tell me about this problem, this minor problem.”

“It’s nothing at all,” Eustace assured her. He was aware of the male passerby frowning at him, wondering by what system of punishments and rewards a fellow like Eustace Dench deserved to be at table with such a fiery pair of beautiful women; so different from one another but both so desirable. “It’s merely,” he said, “that we don’t know exactly which stones we want.”

In sudden anger, Rosa flung her fork onto the table, sat back in her chair, squared her shoulders, aimed her breasts at Eustace, and said, “ What ? Then it’s useless, we can’t do a thing!”

“Of course we can—”

“You take me away from a perfectly fine shoplifting operation, you—”

“Rosa, Rosa, wait. It’s simple, really, I promise you it is.”

“You promise me, do you?” Mistrustfully glaring, Rosa picked up her fork, stuck it into the spaghetti, and twisted. “Tell me about it,” she said.

“We steal the entire castle.”

“Steal—?” Rosa’s fork remained unmoving. She stared at Eustace’s smiling confident face, and slowly she shook her head. “This girl,” she said, with a quick glance at Lida, “has scrambled your brains.”

“It can be done, Rosa,” Eustace assured her. “You know me, you know my history, I only organize capers of the highest character.”

Dubious, Rosa filled her mouth with spaghetti, and chewed. “A whole castle,” she said.

“We need more help,” Eustace told her. “That’s the only thing.”

“Oh, yes,” Rosa said. “Sure you do.”

“Think of it,” Eustace said, leaning toward her, unmindful of his tie in the tomato sauce, “think of it. The best criminal brains in Europe, the masters , and each bringing in their own assistants.”

Still dubious, Rosa pondered the idea, saying, “Who, for instance?”

“Well, you and me, of course. And from Germany, Herman Muller.”

With a judicious nod, Rosa said, “Yes. Yes. I’ve heard of him.”

Eustace checked the names off on his fingers. “From England,” he said, “Sir Mortimer Maxwell.”

“Sir Mortimer,” Herman Muller said. “Yes, I worked with him once, in a counterfeiting scheme.”

“A good man,” Eustace said.

Herman, a skeleton-thin, smooth and eerie man with a long pockmarked face, shrugged: “A trifle unsocial,” he suggested.

“None of us is perfect,” Eustace said, and peeled off a slice from the large white radish on the side dish. Chewing it, swallowing it with a mouthful of beer, he returned his attention to his bratwurst. Here in the sunny tree-filled central courtyard of Munich’s Hofbräuhaus, he and Lida were lunching with their German connection.

Who now said, “Who else?”

“From France,” Eustace said, around a pillow of bratwurst, “Jean LeFraque.”

Herman considered. “I don’t think I know the name.”

“A very good man,” Eustace assured him. “He’s been working American widows recently, in a sort of semi-retirement, but he’s been responsible for some of the finest outrages in the files of the Sûreté.”

“Widows can ruin a man for serious work,” Herman said sternly. “Particularly American widows.”

“You don’t have to worry about Jean.”

Dispassionate, Herman said, “If you say so. Anyone else?”

“From Italy, Rosa Palermo.”

Herman stopped with his beer stein halfway to his mouth. For the first time, a bit of color came into his cheeks. He said, “ That madwoman?”

“Ah,” Eustace said, with his blandest smile. “You’ve heard of her.”

“Heard of her? On a clear night, you can hear her, the other side of the Alps.”

“She’s a bit excitable,” Eustace admitted, “but she’s the best.”

Herman considered that, frowning. “The best? In Italy, you mean.”

“Of course.”

“That’s possible, I suppose,” Herman said, and drank his beer.

“Then you’ll head the German contingent,” Eustace told him, “and I will serve as liaison among the groups.”

“Well, that’s the situation,” Eustace said, smiling around at his guests. Here in the garden of his little chateau outside Zurich, with the high privet hedge to guarantee privacy, Eustace and Sir Mortimer Maxwell and Jean LeFraque and Herman Muller and Rosa Palermo and Lida Perez were seated around the white-painted iron lawn table, eating potato pancakes and drinking chablis. The sun shone down, the grass was a rich dark green, the mountains were comfortably massive above the privet hedge, the wine was good, the potato pancakes were as light as clouds, and Eustace basked in a glow of well-being. Not one of his first-choice assistants had turned him down, and he knew full well it wasn’t because the caper itself seemed such a sure thing, but because of him , his unarguable skill, his enviable reputation. Only Eustace Dench could pull off a heist of such magnitude! To steal an entire castle! Smiling, beaming, already feeling the warmth of the victory to come, he said, “Any questions?”

Sir Mortimer immediately asked the obvious one: “How much is this thing worth?”

“Impossible to say, precisely,” Eustace told him. “Best estimates, going on the basis of newspaper accounts of Lynch’s probable worth, place our haul at somewhere between ten and twenty-five million pounds.”

Sir Mortimer was honestly awed. “Good God,” he said.

Rosa Palermo said, “What’s that in lire?”

Herman Muller’s lip curled. “Seven wheelbarrows full,” he said.

“Lire?” Eustace did some fast mental math. “Between sixteen and forty billion.”

Rosa merely gaped. “Billion?”

“As I said,” said Herman.

Jean LeFraque said, “Would you put that in a currency I understand?”

“In francs?” Eustace’s brain ticked over again. “It would be, in new francs—”

“No, not francs,” Jean LeFraque said. “I understand dollars best, US dollars.”