Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Nothing else,” Smith said, sounding surprised. “Just fly. Are you still interested?”

“Go on,” said Barber.

“A friend of mine has just bought a brand-new single-engine plane. A Beech-craft, single engine. A perfect, pleasant, comfortable, one-hundred-per-cent dependable aircraft,” Smith said, describing the perfect little plane with pleasure in its newness and its dependability. “He himself does not fly, of course. He needs a private pilot, who will be on tap at all times.”

“For how long?” Barber asked, watching Smith closely.

“For thirty days. Not more.” Smith smiled up at him. “The pay is not bad, is it?”

“I can’t tell yet,” Barber said. “Go on. Where does he want to fly to?”

“He happens to be an Egyptian,” Smith said, a little deprecatingly, as though being an Egyptian were a slight private misfortune, which one did not mention except among friends, and then in lowered tones. “He is a wealthy Egyptian who likes to travel. Especially back and forth to France. To the South of France. He is in love with the South of France. He goes there at every opportunity.”

“Yes?”

“He would like to make two round trips from Egypt to the vicinity of Cannes within the next month,” Smith said, peering steadily at Barber, “in his private new plane. Then, on the third trip, he will find that he is in a hurry and he will take the commercial plane and his pilot will follow two days later, alone.”

“Alone?” Barber asked, trying to keep all the facts straight.

“Alone, that is,” Smith said, “except for a small box.”

“Ah,” Barber said, grinning. “Finally the small box.”

“Finally.” Smith smiled up at him delightedly. “It has already been calculated. The small box will weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. A comfortable margin of safety for this particular aircraft for each leg of the journey.”

“And what will there be in the small two-hundred-and-fifty-pound box?” Barber asked, cool and relieved now that he saw what was being offered to him.

“Is it absolutely necessary to know?”

“What do I tell the customs people when they ask me what’s in the box?” Barber said. “‘Go ask Bert Smith’?”

“You have nothing to do with customs people,” Smith said. “I assure you. When you take off from the airport in Cairo, the box is not on board. And when you land at the airport at Cannes, the box is not on board. Isn’t that enough?”

Barber took a last pull at his cigarette and doused it. He peered thoughtfully at Smith, sitting easily on the straight-backed chair in the rumpled room, looking too neat and too well dressed for such a place at such an hour. Drugs, Barber thought, and he can stuff them …

“No, Bertie boy,” Barber said roughly. “It is not enough. Come on. Tell.”

Smith sighed. “Are you interested up to now?”

“I am interested up to now,” Barber said.

“All right,” Smith said regretfully. “This is how it will be done. You will have established a pattern. You will have been in and out of the Cairo airport several times. Your papers always impeccable. They will know you. You will have become a part of the legitimate routine of the field. Then, on the trip when you will be taking off alone, everything will be perfectly legitimate. You will have only a small bag with you of your personal effects. Your flight plan will show that your destination is Cannes and that you will come down at Malta and Rome for refuelling only. You will take off from Cairo. You will go off course by only a few miles. Some distance from the coast, you will be over the desert. You will come down on an old R.A.F. landing strip that hasn’t been used since 1943. There will be several men there.… Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” Barber had walked to the window and was standing there, looking out at the sunny street below, his back to Smith.

“They will put the box on board. The whole thing will not take more than ten minutes,” Smith said. “At Malta, nobody will ask you anything, because you will be in transit and you will not leave the plane and you will stay only long enough to refuel. The same thing at Rome. You will arrive over the south coast of France in the evening, before the moon is up. Once more,” Smith said, speaking as though he was savoring his words, “you will be just a little off course. You will fly low over the hills between Cannes and Grasse. At a certain point, you will see an arrangement of lights. You will throttle down, open the door, and push the box out, from a height of a hundred feet. Then you will close the door and turn toward the sea and land at the Cannes airport. Your papers will be perfectly in order. There will have been no deviations from your flight plan. You will have nothing to declare. You will walk away from the airplane once and for all, and we will pay you the twenty-five thousand dollars I have spoken of. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Lovely,” Barber said. “It’s just a delicious little old plan, Bertie boy.” He turned away from the window. “Now tell me what will be in the box.”

Smith chuckled delightedly, as though what he was going to say was too funny to keep to himself. “Money,” he said. “Just money.”

“How much money?”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds of money,” Smith said, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Two hundred and fifty pounds of tightly packed English notes in a nice, strong, lightweight metal box. Five-pound notes.”

At that moment, it occurred to Barber that he was speaking to a lunatic. But Smith was sitting there, matter-of-fact and healthy, obviously a man who had never for a minute in all his life had a single doubt about his sanity.

“When would I get paid?” Barber asked.

“When the box was delivered,” Smith said.

“Bertie boy …” Barber shook his head reprovingly.

Smith chuckled. “I have warned myself that you were not stupid,” he said. “All right. We will deposit twelve thousand five hundred dollars in your name in a Swiss bank before you start for the first time to Egypt.”

“You trust me for that?”

Fleetingly the smile left Smith’s face. “We’ll trust you for that,” he said. Then the smile reappeared. “And immediately after the delivery is made, we will deposit the rest. A lovely deal. Hard currency. No income tax. You will be a rich man. Semi-rich.” He chuckled at his joke. “Just for a little plane ride. Just to help an Egyptian who is fond of the South of France and who is naturally a little disturbed by the insecurity of his own country.”

“When will I meet this Egyptian?” Barber asked.

“When you go to the airfield to take off for your first flight,” Smith said. “He’ll be there. Don’t you worry. He’ll be there. Do you hesitate?” he asked anxiously.

“I’m thinking,” Barber said.

“It’s not as though you were involved in your own country,” Smith said piously. “I wouldn’t ask a man to do that, a man who had fought for his country in the war. It isn’t even as though it had anything to do with the English, for whom it is possible you have a certain affection. But the Egyptians …” He shrugged and bent over and picked up the manila envelope and opened it. “I have all the maps here,” he said, “if you would like to study them. The route is all marked out, but, of course, it would be finally in your hands, since it would be you who was doing the flying.”

Barber took the thick packet of maps. He opened one at random. All it showed was the sea approaches to Malta and the location of the landing strips there. Barber thought of twenty-five thousand dollars and the map shook a little in his hands.

“It is ridiculously easy,” Smith said, watching Barber intently. “Foolproof.”