Castle in the Air

by Donald E. Westlake

  ***

  "Group B!" yelled Eustace, steering the motorcycle one-handed as he strove to make contact with the remnants of his team. "Group B, I know you're out there! Come in!" And beside him Lida, white-faced but determined, clung to the sides of the sidecar and was given many opportunities to read the brand names on tires.

  It was Bruddy's voice that finally responded to Eustace's screams, saying, "What now, you half a loaf? Did you find them?"

  "No. Did you?"

  "Not a whisker. This is a ruddy wild goose chase, if you ask me."

  "Nobody asked you, Bruddy," Eustace said. Frustration made him snippish.

  In the sidecar, Lida wailed, "We must find the people's money!"

  "Yes, dear," Eustace said. "Yes, yes, we know."

  And now from the B-marked walkie-talkie in Eustace's hand came Andrew's calm, rather thoughtful voice, saying, "You know, Eustace, I'm beginning to wonder if those chaps left Paris at all. Were it me, I believe I'd lie low in the city awhile, and not involve myself in any merry chases."

  "Hmmm," said Eustace. "Hmmmm."

  17

  Back in the warehouse, screeching to a stop near the empty truck and the incomplete castle, came the Renault. Rosa and Angelo and Vito surged out and ran in small circles, and then Angelo stopped and pointed and said, "Look! The bicycle!"

  And there it was, leaning against the front of the truck. All three looked at it, and Vito said, "The French. They were here before us."

  Rosa said, "But why leave their bicycle?"

  "They didn't take the truck," Angelo pointed out.

  Rosa gave him a look, but said nothing.

  Vito sniffed. "I smell water," he said. "Not very clean water."

  Rosa moved toward the rear windows: "What's outside here?"

  ***

  On the Quai de Valmy, beside the Canal St. Martin just north of the Rue du Fauberge du Temple, where the canal goes underground beneath Boulevard J. Ferry, Renee and Jean and Charles all stood up in the parked open-topped Volkswagen they'd commandeered at the warehouse, and they all gazed at the canal with some intensity. What they were watching so avidly was the slow but steady progress of the block-filled boat containing Herman and Rudi and Otto, moving in leisurely fashion away from them, southward. As they watched, the flat-bottom boat sailed serenely on underground and out of sight.

  Slowly, Charles and Jean and Renee all sat down, Charles in the driver's seat, Renee beside him, Jean in back. "Well," said Charles. "Agreed," said Renee. "But what now?"

  Thoughtfully Charles said, "This canal eventually goes on to the Seine. I imagine that's their intention. From there, they could very easily get out of Paris in any direction at all."

  "Then let's get a boat," Renee said, "and follow them."

  "No," Charles said. "They'd see us. We'll drive down to the other end of this tunnel, and wait for them."

  Renee said, "Where's that?"

  "Place de la Bastille. We'll see them come out there, and we'll trail them till they stop."

  Jean said, "What if they turn around and come back out this way?"

  Charles frowned at him. "Why would they do that?"

  "They might," Jean insisted. "Maybe they intend just to hide in there until tonight, and then come out again and go back the other way."

  Deadpan, Charles said, "Would you like to wait at this end, Jean, while Renee and I go keep watch at the Place de la Bastille?"

  Smiling, Jean said, "And you'll come back for me if you get the money, won't you?"

  Deadpan, Charles said, "Of course."

  Suddenly, pointing at the canal, Renee said, "Look!"

  They looked, and what they saw was Herman and Rudi and Otto walking out from the darkness of the tunnel, pacing carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the canal and the stone embankment wall.

  "They're coming out," Renee said, unnecessarily.

  "Without the boat," Charles pointed out.

  "Ah," explained Jean.

  ***

  Pacing carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the canal and the stone embankment wall, Herman and Rudi and Otto walked in single-file, talking over their shoulders to one another. Herman, in the lead, said, "Now we he for a few days, until the others wear themselves out with all their running around, and then we come back and collect our reward."

  "I'm going to open a beergarden," Otto said. "In fact, a chain of beergardens."

  "There is," Herman said, the harsh planes of his face very nearly softening, "a small vineyard near Bemkastel, which I have coveted all my life. A fourteenth century castle stands atop the hill, overlooking the steep vine-covered slopes. There I will breed Doberman Pinschers."

  The three happy men climbed the narrow stone steps up to the Quai de Jemmapes, on the opposite side of the canal from their former colleagues in their former Volkswagen. Otto said, "What about you, Rudi? You must have plans for your money."

  "Oh, I do," Rudi said. He smiled like a suitcase opening.

  "What, then?"

  "Las Vegas," said Rudi.

  Otto frowned at him. "What?"

  "I have," Rudi said, "an absolutely unbeatable system at the craps table. I intend to win myself a casino." Preening a bit, smoothing down the wrinkles in his shirt, he said, "Can't you see me, running things in Las Vegas?"

  "Possibly," Otto said.

  "Taxi!" Herman said.

  ***

  The sound of water lapping against the stone wall of the abandoned warehouse was obliterated by the sudden putt-putt of a motorcycle and cough-cough of a London taxi. Then the engine sounds stopped, and the eternal water of the Canal St. Denis was heard again, gently lapping. Eustace's head appeared, with very wide eyes, in a window overlooking the canal. Eustace's head disappeared, with abruptness. The putt-putt and cough-cough burst once more into their hearing, and rapidly receded. The water lapped.

  ***

  Charles and Jean and Renee paced carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the Canal St. Martin and the stone embankment wall, reversing the route just taken by the departed Germans. Charles, in the lead, carried a small pocket flashlight, which he switched on as he reached the darkness of the tunnel.

  "What an awful smell!" said Renee.

  "Money sweetens all smells," suggested Jean.

  Into the darkness they walked, wrinkling their noses against the aroma, blinking as Charles flashed his light here and there.

  The flat-bottomed boat was not very far from the entrance, tied to an old iron ring, and empty.

  "Empty!" cried Renee.

  Flashing the light around, Charles said, "They hid it somewhere." But the ranging beam of light showed nothing in particular; merely the slimy tunnel and the fetid water.

  Jean said, "Would it all be underwater?"

  Pointing the light down at the greenish water, Charles said, "Not even Herman would willingly reach in there."

  "What did they do with it?" Renee cried, and her echo came back from the tunnel with a clear edge of panic in it. "They didn't carry it away, it must be here."

  "There has to be an answer," Charles said. So fiercely was he concentrating that the cigarette stood out straight from the corner of his mouth, like a signpost. "There has to be an answer."

  "I should hope so," said Jean.

  But as Charles continued to shine the flashlight first this way and then that way, never seeing anything but the tunnel and the water, the water and the tunnel, the tunnel and the water and the empty boat, a sense of defeat gradually spread through all three of them, until Renee voiced what all three were thinking: "We can't find it. Whatever they did with it, we just can't find it."

  Jean sighed.

  "Very well," Charles said. His cigarette drooped, but his furrowed brown denoted determination. "We'll wait here," he said, "until they come back to get it. Then we'll follow them, and sooner or later we'll find an opportunity to take it away from them."

  Jean sighed again, then coughed, then said, "Let us return to the ou
ter world. I don't much like sighing in this atmosphere."

  Discouraged, despondent, the three turned about and began to retrace their steps. But hardly had they taken half a dozen paces when Renee abruptly stopped and called, "Wait!"

  The two men, who had been preceding her, halted and looked back, Charles shining his flashlight on Renee, who was pointing at the tunnel wall. "Look at this!" cried Renee.

  The men did. Charles obligingly lit it with his flashlight beam. The wall was a wall, nothing more. It had no doors or other features. Jean said, "What about it?"

  "This is it!" Renee told them.

  They looked at her. Charles said, "This is what?"

  "The wall!" Renee patted a palm against it. "This isn't the real wall, this is-"

  Charles, suddenly understanding, reached out and poked at one of the wall's stone blocks. It moved. "You're right!"

  Jean, at the edge of the false wall, pulled out a stone block and shook it. Chinkle. "This is it!"

  "Now," Renee said. "Now what?"

  "Now," Charles told her, "we reload the boat."

  ***

  The white Renault racing south along the Quai de Valmy beside the Canal St. Martin had already passed the black Volkswagen-abandoned for the second time today-when Rosa at the wheel slammed on the brakes, causing Angelo to stuff much of himself into the map compartment under the dashboard and Vito to ricochet around the back seat like a captured firefly in a bottle. While Italian imprecations filled the gallic air, Rosa shifted into reverse, slammed the Renault backward, and pounded it to a quivering halt beside the Volkswagen. Out bounded Rosa and Angelo. Out crawled Vito, shaking his head, counting his teeth.

  Urchins nearby listlessly kicked a soccer ball in various directions. They listened to Rosa's Italianate French with a kind of passive bemusement, as though she weren't asking questions at all but were merely attempting to entertain them, until in a sudden fury Rosa grabbed the soccer ball and threatened to throw it in the canal; then it turned out that these urchins were capable of answering questions after all. Satisfied, Rosa kicked the ball a block away and, as the urchins ran screaming after it, turned to pass the information on to Angelo and Vito: "The Germans floated into that tunnel in a flat-bottom boat stacked with building blocks. The Germans walked out and took a taxi away. Our French friends walked in, and didn't come back out."

  "On!" cried Angelo.

  "I've been a good man all my life," Vito mournfully announced, as the other two stuffed him back into the Renault. "Why am I being punished this way?"

  ***

  In the reeking tunnel, the refilled boat floated placidly southward, the way illuminated by Charles' tiny flashlight. Her voice echoing, Renee said, "Are you sure you're sure where this tunnel goes?"

  Shrugging, Charles said, "It has to come out sometime."

  "You mean you aren't sure?"

  "I'm sure," Charles told her. "Of course I'm sure. We'll come out just below the Place de la Bastille, I know that for a fact."

  Renee sighed. The echo of her sigh circled the boat. "Stealing from hotel rooms," she said, "is much more pleasant than this."

  "After today," Jean told her, encouragingly, "you'll be able to live in a hotel."

  She looked at him in astonishment: "And be robbed?"

  Peering ahead, Charles said, "I think I see light at the end of the tunnel."

  Renee squinted: "Where?"

  "Turn off the light," Jean said, "so we can see."

  Charles switched off the flashlight. There was utter blackness, total ebony, midnight, thorough going Stygian dark. Great furry gobs of black, in which the miasma of the water seemed to roll up around them, as though only the feeble flashlight had so far held horrors and evils and catastrophes at bay.

  "Turn it on!" Renee screamed.

  The light flicked on, pale, uncertain, but at least real. "Sorry," said Jean. "I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel."

  "Don't do that again," Renee said.

  ***

  Beside the doubly-abandoned Volkswagen stood the motorcycle and the London taxi. Beside the motorcycle stood Eustace, obstinately clutching the soccer ball while engaged in frantic, furious sign-language converse with the urchins.

  ***

  Charles switched off the flashlight. "There, you see? Light at the end of the tunnel."

  "Thank God," said Renee.

  The boat floated toward the arched exit. Beyond, sunlight gleamed on the water of the Gare de L'Arsenal, the last step in the canal journey before the Seine.

  "I told you I was sure," Charles said. "That's the Boulevard Bourdon over there. We're passing right under the Place de la Bastille."

  "Just so we're coming out," Renee said, and out they went, and sunlight gleamed on their faces.

  ***

  Leaning over the railing on the south side of the Place de la Bastille, Rosa and Angelo and Vito looked down at the sunlit faces of Renee and Charles and Jean, who failed to recognize their Italian friends silhouetted against the sky above them. "We could drop something on them," Rosa said, conversationally. "Like an airplane, like a bomber. We could sink them from here."

  "No, no," Angelo said. "We don't want to sink our profits."

  Vito said, "Why couldn't they get the bathtubs? It isn't fair."

  ***

  In their hotel room, the triumphant Germans poured more drinks, but while Herman actually gulped his down, both Otto and Rudi were more circumspect about their alcoholic intake, Otto surreptitiously emptying his glass into a long-suffering plant and Rudi just as surreptitiously emptying his out the window. What a waste of good liquor.

  ***

  Within the tunnel lately occupied by Renee and Charles and Jean and the loot from the castle there was a mighty roaring, preceded by a stabbing, prying white light. The roaring advanced and became the motorcycle, without its sidecar, racing along the narrow path beside the wall. A grim-faced Bruddy clung to the handlebars, while a white-faced Eustace on the seat behind him clung to Bruddy's waist. Quick, urgent, determined, loud, the motorcycle roared on.

  ***

  Andrew, in terror of the French traffic, steered the London taxi timidly southward along the busy Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Sir Mortimer and Lida sat in back, a large map of the city spread out on their laps. "For God's sake, Andrew," Sir Mortimer cried, while Lida tentatively moved her fingers this way and that on the map. "get some speed up!"

  "I'm not a driver," Andrew said, quailing away from several blatting little deux chevaus. "Bruddy's the driver."

  "Get your hands out of there!" Sir Mortimer cried, slapping at Lida's fingers. "I can't see!"

  "But I think we're here," Lida said, her fingers all over the place again.

  "Out! Out! Away!" Successfully repelling Lida's fingers, Sir Mortimer peered at the map, saying, "The only other bit of water I see is down here by the Place de la Bastille. Are you on Boulevard Richard Lenoir?"

  "I haven't the faintest notion," Andrew said. "Frankly, I think I'm in hell."

  "Young woman," Sir Mortimer said, "would you kindly keep your hands to yourself?"

  "I'm sorry, I'm only trying to-"

  "Make yourself useful," Sir Mortimer suggested. "Find a street sign."

  "If only," Andrew said forlornly, "I had used my talents for good."

  ***

  Herman and Rudi and Otto, (apparently) done in by schnapps, sat sprawled and (apparently) asleep in their hotel room. Slowly, Rudi's left eyelid raised, his left eye scanned back and forth like a TV monitor. Slowly he lifted his head, cautiously he surveyed his companions. Slowly he got to his feet, slowly he crept from the room.

  ***

  On the comparatively broad waterway of the Gare de L'Arsenal, the loot-laden boat flowed serenely toward the Seine. Renee and Charles and Jean, much more cheerful and optimistic now that they were free of the reeking tunnel, smiled happily at one another and at the busy, tooting, merry, ebullient life of Paris all around them.

  "Well, Charles," Renee said, basking
in the sun, "what should we do now?"

  "We'll go to Ile St. Louis," Charles told her, "We'll hide the blocks there, and then we'll lie low until all the foreigners go away."

  "We don't have to lie low," Jean said.

  The other two looked at him. Charles said, "Why not?"

  With a coy smile, Jean said, "We didn't doublecross anybody. The Germans did it all. We've been out looking for them, like everybody else."

  A slow smile spread across Charles' face. "That's nice," he said. "That's very nice."

  ***

  In the Renault, driving along the Boulevard Bourdon, Rosa and Angelo and Vito watched the progress of the flat-bottom boat. "Look at them smile," Angelo said. "Just look at the bastards smile."

  "They'll smile," Rosa said. "But they'll smile upside down, before this day is done."

  ***

  Otto, opening a cautious eye, looked at where Rudi wasn't and in utter shock he jumped to his feet and stared around the room. Herman slept on. Rudi was gone.

  So, a minute later, was Otto.

  ***