Richard Stark - The Mourner

The bills were all loose. There were hundreds and fifties and twenties, handful after handful, and gradually they filled the suitcase. They made no attempt to count, just stowed it away, quickly and silently.

When the suitcase was full, there were still some bills left over. “Alas, I misjudged,” said Menlo, smiling at the double handful of bills he held. “Who would have thought a small statue could have held so much?”

He stuffed the bills into his own pockets, and suddenly his right hand emerged holding a derringer, a Hi Standard twin-tubed. 22. It packed hardly any power at all, but at this close range it could do the job as well as anything.

Menlo’s smile was now broad and cherubic. “And now, my dear professionals,” he said, “I am most afraid we must part company. You have been of such excellent assistance to me, I truly wish I could at least repay you with your lives. But you have already demonstrated once your ability in tracking your quarry, and I should prefer not to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I hope you appreciate that.”

Parker and Handy both moved, each in opposite directions, but Menlo in his own way was also a professional. His face tightened as he fired twice, and both were hits. Handy slammed into the wall, and collapsed in a crumpled heap. Parker flailed backward, arms pin-wheeling, scattering statues, as he crashed into a pedestal.

Menlo paused a moment, but bodies lay still, and the derringer was empty. He gathered up the suitcase and statuette and hurried from the room, a round lithe fat man in a black suit, the suitcase hanging at the end of one short arm, the small white statuette tucked under the other.

The last thing he did before he left was switch off the lights.

Auguste Menlo was forty-seven years of age, five feet six inches tall, weight two hundred thirty-four pounds. His title was Inspector, his occupation that of spy on his fellow citizens. During the Second World War, when he was much younger, no taller, but quite a bit thinner, he had been active in the anti-Nazi underground movement in Klastrava, spending the last fifteen months of the war living in the mountains with a guerrilla band, every member of which had a price on his head, set by the Nazis.

An underground movement is primarily a destructive social force, and only secondarily a constructive political force. Whatever political ideology is present invariably reflects the political ideology of whichever outside nation supplies its matériel. Because of Klastrava’s geographical location, that outside nation was the Soviet

Union. The support originally came, for the most part, from the United States through Lend-Lease, but this was never mentioned by the Russians, who were not born yesterday.

Klastravian soil was liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army. The collaborationist puppet government of wartime having been summarily done away with, was replaced by men from the wartime resistance movement, and their political orientation was reinforced by the presence of the Red Army. Klastrava was quietly and efficiently absorbed, and shortly became one of the Soviet Union’s smallest but least troublesome satellites.

Before the war, Auguste Menlo had had no particular trade, being a young man content to be supported by his doctor father. During the war, and particularly during the last fifteen months of it, he had learned a trade, though his trade at first glance seemed to have no peacetime application. Then, in early 1947, through resistance comrades, he received an appointment to the National Police. At last Auguste Menlo had found his true vocation. He did his work well, and with enthusiasm, and his promotions came rapidly.

In any religion, it is the priest who is likely to ask the most pertinent questions; and if there are flaws in the religious structure, it is the priest, being closest to it and most learned in it, who is most likely to discover them. And Auguste Menlo became, in a way, a priest of Communism. In a quite literal way, he became a confessor; in the silent and private rooms of stone beneath the ground he listened to the halting confessions of the wrong in heart. Over the years, Auguste Menlo came upon the flaws that bothered no one else, and patched them as best he could, and efficiently went on about his business.

Till someone waved a hundred thousand dollars in front of his face. One hundred thousand dollars American.

Auguste knew instantly what he was going to do, the very second he was informed of his assignment. He knew it as though he had known all his life, as though his entire career had been only a preparation for this great moment when he would come into one hundred thousand dollars American. The circumstances were too perfectly joined for there to be an alternative.

Auguste Menlo had been chosen for the job in the first place because he had such a perfect record, without a blemish of any kind. He had been married, since 1949, to a plump, practical woman, a good housekeeper and an efficient mother to his two teenage daughters. So far as the record showed — and the record was exhaustive — he had never once been unfaithful to his wife, any more than he had ever been derelict in his duty to the state. He was the logical and inevitable choice.

There is a kind of man who is perfectly honest so long as the plunder is small. This kind of man has chosen his life and finds it rewarding, so he will not risk it for anything less rewarding. And while Menlo had long since lost interest in his Anna, the occasional woman who became available seemed to him hardly much of an improvement, certainly not worth the risk of losing his comfortable home. Nor were the financial temptations that cropped up along his official path worth the comfort and security he already enjoyed. As time went by, his reputation grew and so did the trust it inspired. Who better to trust with one hundred thousand dollars, four thousand miles from home?

There is no way for officialdom to protect itself from such a man. Can a man be mistrusted for being too honest?

So Auguste Menlo was informed of his mission and given his round-trip jetliner ticket to the United States. Outwardly, it was the same sober and industrious Auguste Menlo who walked out of the Ministry that day, was driven home, packed his suitcase, and kissed the leathery cheek of his wife good-bye. But inside he was a totally different man. On the train to Budapest, where he would make connections with the plane for the West, he allowed himself, concealed by a newspaper, the first outward indication of his feelings. A broad and delighted smile, as infectious as a giggle, spread over his face. It made him look like a depraved and aging cherub.

The first plane took him from Budapest to Frankfurt am Main, that foggy valley in the middle of Germany so ill-suited to the landing and taking off of airplanes. But they landed without incident, and an hour later he boarded the jet that would take him in six hours nonstop to Washington National Airport, an ocean and a continent away. A world away.

The stewardess was slender, in Western fashion, with pale-blue skirt taut over pert and girdled rump. Menlo feasted upon her, his eyes bright, almost feverish, his mouth frozen in a delighted smile. It was a foolish and dangerous way to behave. Had the Ministry chosen to keep him under surveillance — But the Ministry’s trust was complete, and only the stewardess noticed the funny, happy fat man with the glazed eyes. She merely thought he was full of vodka, and hoped he wouldn’t be sick. He wasn’t.

In Washington, sanity returned to him. He boarded the airport bus and rode to the G Street terminal, and in the course of that ride he regained control of himself. Until he actually had the money, he must be circumspect. He must be cautious.