Castle in the Air

by Donald E. Westlake

  Unfortunately, the chorus was in full voice again, having replenished its breath, and Rudi heard nothing. Otto had to get to his feet and follow Rudi and tap him on the shoulder. Then he had to wait while Rudi juggled the tray full of beer mugs, as he'd been startled out of his wits. But the tray didn't get away from him, the beer mugs didn't fall, the crash didn't awaken all the neighbors asleep at their places, and Rudi and Otto were not at once torn limb from limb by a crowd of fifty-five year old fat men. Instead, Rudi managed to keep the tray under control, and to keep himself under control as he turned around and whispered, "Otto! There you are!"

  "Rudi? What are you doing here?"

  "I've got the local Volkswagen franchise," Rudi whispered acidly, "what do you think I'm doing here? Come on, will you, my arms are falling off." And he put the tray down on a nearby table.

  "Come on?" Otto was having trouble catching up. "Come on where?"

  "With me, naturally."

  "But I can't leave yet," Otto whispered. "I'm not finished."

  Rudi gave him a look of scorn. "What do you want, their shoelaces? I'm here with Herman Muller, I'm talking about something big."

  Otto looked around, rather regretfully; then shrugged. "Oh, well," he said. "It's an annual affair, I can finish next year."

  3

  The Hotel Vendome, on the Rue de la Paix in Paris' First Arrondissement, is for those delicate few who find the Ritz garish. With a broadly sweeping but very dark lobby so thoroughly swathed in broadloom and brocade that the entire revolution of May 1968 took place outside without a single sound penetrating so far as the second rank of potted palms, the clientele is assured that absolutely no reminder of the twentieth century will ever disturb their slumber. Unless, of course, the management makes the mistake of letting a room to the wrong person; a possibility lessened by the outrageous prices charged.

  But no system is foolproof. Consider:

  It is early afternoon. Gently suspirating bodies, sodden with lunch, sag on all the low sofas. Gentle snores soothingly flow from beneath walrus moustaches. The principal light source is the diamonds worn by most of the female guests. A waiter in a maroon Eton jacket crosses, carrying a mint julep on a silver tray; not a sound emanates from the contact of his shoes with the thick carpet, swirling with art deco design. Then, with a faint shushing sound, an elevator door slides open-the amenities are twentieth century, even if nothing else is-and all hell breaks loose.

  ***

  Her name was Maria Colleen San Salvador Porfirio Hennessy Lynch. She was the wife of Escobar Diaz McMahon Grande Pajaro-Lynch, El Presidente of Yerbadoro, and she didn't care who knew it. An explosive woman, with voice and gestures larger than life, she had the self-confidence and determination of the bull on first entering the ring. Larded with makeup, draped with layer upon layer of the most expensive clothing Paris could offer, she wore Inca jewelry hanging around her like scaffolding around a cathedral. She had never had second thoughts about anything, had never failed to get her way, and only had the slightest suspicion that, in fact, other human beings actually existed.

  She entered the Vendome lobby from the elevator under full sail, striding purposefully forward and bellowing at the top of her voice. "… never going to get my hair done if all we do is look at lots day in, day out!"

  Shock! Turmoil! Spasms! Snores became snorts, red-rimmed eyes opened in astonishment, and several of the most active tenants even considered getting to their feet. Maria, unknowing and uncaring, continued both to stride and to shout: "If today's barren field is as hopeless as yesterday's barren field," she announced to all of the First Arrondissement, "I am through looking at barren fields!"

  In her foaming wake trailed five men, four of them trotting and smiling and bowing, one of them strolling and smiling and nodding. The stroller was Maria's husband, El Presidente Lynch himself, a tall and handsome man, with a handsomeness that was at first appearance rugged but on closer examination merely decayed. Self-indulgence and cleverness showed in his full-lipped smile, in his sardonic eyes, in the casual ease with which his careless stride kept pace with everybody else's bustling haste. As for the four bustlers, two were Yerbadoroan bodyguards, one was an official of the International Exposition Board, and one was a functionary from the French Government. They, and the Lynches, were here to find a site for the expected castle, and Maria for one was growing bored with the problem: "If the truth be told," she roared at the lobby, shaking dust from the wall sconces, "I like that damn building right where it is."

  Her husband's smile glinted in the musky lobby. Softly, he said, "You'll like it better in Paris, Maria."

  His voice, particularly in comparison with hers, was the merest whisper, the slightest hint of sound; nevertheless, she faltered for a second, her expression becoming for just an instant uncertain. Then she smiled again, confidence renewed. "I'm sure I will!" she sang out, and sailed through the outer doors to the waiting limousine, the five men following after.

  ***

  The "damn building" was, in fact, a damn castle, called Escondido Castle, and it stood at present in pretty parkland by the Yerbadoro River, twenty miles north of Enfermedad City, the capital of the nation. Not quite two hundred years old, Escondido Castle had been built by one of those Irish freebooters who had taken over Yerbadoro from the Spanish back in the eighteenth century, and the design had been influenced both by the owner's memory of stately homes in his native Ireland and by his work crew's memory of Inca temples in the nearby jungles. The result was essentially pleasing, here and there surprising, and perfectly acceptable as a castle, though somewhat smaller than the word "castle" might suggest. In fact, the outbuildings and the wall around the courtyard would remain in Yerbadoro-and would look rather odd all by themselves-while only the main structure, a compact three-story building of large gray stone blocks, would be dismantled and shipped to France.

  ***

  Today's barren lot was a winner. Even Maria had to admit it, at the top of her voice: "You know, I like this spot."

  "I'm glad, my dear," her husband said.

  It was in fact a very pleasant spot, fairly high on a hill in Montmartre, the only truly hilly part of Paris. Narrow twisty streets, old buildings, and here a rectangular vacant lot where a ruined old factory, once an absinthe distillery, had recently been torn down. "Yes," Maria said, turning in a slow circle, looking about her and nodding, "I think I could live here."

  "Visit," Escobar Lynch corrected, with a small warning smile.

  "That's right," Maria said. "Visit. I think I could visit here." Turning to the two Frenchmen, she said, "It's a deal. You boys have sold a lot."

  4

  Here and there in the bustling center of Paris underground, garages have been built-dug? constructed? scooped out?-with direct access from the wide busy streets. The hustling little vehicles of Paris descend into these nests without slackening their street-speed, so that to an innocent bystander on the sidewalk it looks as though every once in a while a hurrying automobile is simply swallowed up into a hole in the ground. Zip, zip, zip, go all the cars, and then zip-floop. Zip, zip, zip, zip-floop, zip, zip, zip, zip-floop, all day long. It can become unnerving, at least to innocent bystanders who continue to stand there all day long instead of going on about their business.

  On a sunny Tuesday, at midday, such a bystander would have seen, amid the other zipping beeping traffic, a black Volkswagen beetle convertible with the top down, looking like a midget command car, sporting front and rear the oval white license plates of West Germany. Driving this VW and yelling at the nearby French drivers in German, was Rudi Schlisselmann, burglar extraordinare. Beside him, munching morosely on pills to aid dyspepsia, sat Otto Berg, the last of the happy wanderers. And seated ramrod-straight in back, looking to neither left nor right, suffering the cacophony of the traffic as he would suffer any fools-that is, only up to a point-sat Herman Muller, team leader.

  Zip-floop. Volkswagen all gone.

  Shortly thereafter, if our bystander were st
ill standing by, he would have seen a little red Fiat zipping among the blue and white Renaults and Simcas, and at the wheel of the little red Fiat he would have seen Angelo Salvagambelli, teeth sparkling in a lush smile, black hair glistening in the wind, a white polyester scarf wrapped in devil-may-care fashion around his neck. Beside him, blinking in terror at the traffic and the noise and the people and the sunshine, cowered Vito Palone, retired master criminal dragged out of retirement by popular demand.

  Or at least by demand of Rosa Palermo, who was now squeezed uncomfortably into the small back seat of the Fiat, from which command post she kept up a steady stream of advice and warning to Angelo about the other traffic, all of which Angelo cheerfully ignored.

  Zip-floop. Ta ta, Fiat.

  Almost immediately after that, our loitering bystander's attention would have been attracted to the smallest, oldest, most battered and dented little gray Renault ever seen on the streets of Paris. Since its license plate began with "75," the number-code for Parisian cars, this bedraggled little Renault must frequently have been seen on the streets of Paris, and it's only a wonder the dogcatcher never grabbed it. Alone at the wheel of this mutt-for who could possibly be induced to travel anywhere in it other than its driver?-slouched Charles Moule, pianist and existentialist, a cigarette smoldering from the corner of his mouth.

  Zip-floop. A bas, Renault.

  After a few minutes of no activity, our bystander-doesn't he have a home?-next sees coming along the street, sailing gaily through the traffic, a bicycle built for two, with Jean LeFraque in front and beautiful cat-burglar Renee Chateaupierre in back. This bicycle, with its attractive riders, being taller, more slender and more agile than most of the other traffic, was not only attracting a lot of attention from the other travelers but was also making better time.

  Zip-floop. Away the bicycle, accelerating.

  But what's this coming? A London taxicab, in Paris? Naturally, with everybody's pal but nobody's fool Bruddy Dunk at the wheel. And reclining in comfort in back, feet stretched well out, were Sir Mortimer Maxwell and Andrew Pinkenham, discussing Great Crimes Of The Century.

  Zip-floop. To the depths, Austin taxi.

  Our bystander, convinced that he'd seen everything, departed at last, but he was wrong. One more vehicle now came down the same street, growling mightily and cutting left and right through the slower traffic; a motorcycle, with sidecar. At the handlebars of the motorcycle, head sheathed in leather goggles, perched Eustace Dench, master criminal, the only begetter and deviser of this entire caper. And in the sidecar, starlingly beautiful and windblown, the Yerbadoroan lovely, Lida Perez, for whom-perhaps-this whole enterprise was being undertaken.

  Zip-floop. Motorcycle and sidecar down the ramp.

  Down the ramp, down and down the ramp, curving down through the gray concrete tunnel of the ever-descending ramp, past parking levels filled with sleeping autos, past deeper parking levels only halffilled, past deeper parking levels with merely a vehicle here and a vehicle there, until at last the motorcycle, with sidecar, reached the very bottom of the ramp and emerged onto the lowest level of all, where there were no parked cars at all.

  Oh, yes, there were. In the farthest, farthest corner, half-hidden beyond all the concrete support pillars, were clustered the black Beetle, the red Fiat, the doomed Renault, the now-riderless bicycle built for two, the taxi (with its orange To Hire sign alight over the windshield), and their twelve various drivers and passengers. Eustace steered his motorcycle to his group-or these groups, as the nationalities seemed to be bunching together and avoiding strangers-and brought it to a racketing stop. Climbing off the motorcycle, removing his goggles, Eustace stepped forward to the group-or groups-with a confident smile, saying, "Well. We're all here. Time to get started."

  Vito Palone, the poor old man, had no English. He said, in Italian (the only language he had), "What was that?"

  Eustace frowned at him: "What?"

  Charles Moule, existential though he might be, had neither English nor Italian, so it was in reference to what Vito had said to Eustace that Charles said to Jean LeFraque, "What did he say?"

  "Just a minute now," Eustace said, with down-patting hand movements, as though trying to quell a mutinous mob. He was feeling it start to slip away, and he was determined it wouldn't happen. "Let's get organized here," he said. "Let's just be calm and get organized."

  Otto Berg, whose happy wandering had been mostly limited to Germany and who spoke none of the languages so far bandied about in this parking level, now said to the group at large, "Would somebody tell me what's going on?" In German.

  "Nobody's making any sense!" poor old Vito cried, growing excited. Eustace, also growing excited, yelled back at Vito, "Why don't you speak English?"

  "He's Italian," Rosa said.

  "You're Italian," Eustace pointed out. "You speak English."

  "Reluctantly," she said.

  Sir Mortimer now stepped forward, saying, "Come along, Eustace, let's get started, shall we?"

  A babble of voices demanded to know what had just been said, by whom, to whom, in what language, and why. Eustace, dropping back a pace, stared at them all in growing horror. None of them except the team leaders spoke English.

  ***

  Three hours later. Eustace, in rolled-up shirt sleeves, was exhausted and depressed and even pessimistic, and much the same expression could be seen on all the faces around him. With endless translations and backtracking and misunderstandings and sketches in the dust on the various vehicles he was now fairly sure he'd managed to communicate his plan to all those mono-linguists (he was a mono-linguist himself, Eustace was, but since his one language was English it didn't matter), but by the time his rather complicated and tricky plan had been fully laid out in this manner he'd begun to lose some of his delight in it. Maybe the plan wasn't any good after all, maybe it was exactly as bad as it had begun to sound somewhere in the second hour of explanation.

  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."

  5

  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 an
d 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."