Flynn coughed. “You’ve got the lines just right Hold the importuners at bay.”
“Da, you’re smoking too much.”
“Ach,” Flynn said. “I hardly smoke at all.”
26
“TAAAOOO!” Flynn yelled. “ERK! YOW! UGH!”
He fell forward in the dark and struck his chin on the ground. Line was falling on him. His knees and back felt broken.
On the two-hour ride in the back of the helicopter from the British aircraft carrier Flynn had sat cross-legged on the floor, hands over his ears, glad he had eaten nothing. The noise caused searing pain in his ears. The vibration was sickening.
When the pilot waved at him, Flynn had stood up and clicked his parachute line to the overhead. The door opened. It was just before dawn.
The pilot gestured with his thumb.
Flynn closed his eyes and jumped out into the dark. Not his life, but his wife and five children passed before his eyes.
Now, from the ground, he looked up at the pilot.
The helicopter was only three meters from the ground!
“Ta,” said Flynn.
The pilot slid open his window.
“Sorry, guvnor. Guess I brought you in a little lower than you was expectin’.”
“Yow,” said Flynn, on his back, knees up, wind from the rotor blades shooting sand into his eyes. He wondered how he could disengage himself from the parachute line without the force of G.
“Jumped with your eyes closed, did you?” the pilot shouted. “Bad habit, that.”
The pilot waved cheerily. “See you tomorrow.”
Suddenly Flynn’s line began to move with the speed of a snake.
The pilot was taking off and Flynn was still connected to the helicopter.
“Hey!” yelled Flynn, as he was stood up by the line pulling taut. “Hey, up there!” he yelled as his feet came off the ground. “Hey, you!” he yelled as he found himself rising back into the sky.
Gravity or some kind hand broke his connection with the helicopter and again Flynn fell to the ground. The opening parachute fluttered down to cover him.
“Oof,” said Flynn. “Ohhh.”
Again he rolled onto his back.
He flailed the parachute away from his face.
A man in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat was standing over him.
“13?” the man asked quietly.
Flynn said, “How did you ever find me?”
“I heard you.” The man pointed to some trees. “From over there.”
“Not,” Flynn said, “my most surreptitious penetration into a nation not precisely expectin’ me.”
“I’m N.N. 2842.”
“Proud to know you,” Flynn said from the ground. “Would you mind helpin’ me remove my shroud?”
N.N. 2842 had expressed great uncertainty regarding the wisdom of Flynn’s order that he park the three-wheeled car on the main street of Solensk so they could then set off on foot in search of breakfast and general information.
Solensk is a town, its buildings and its streets built of round gray stones. It is a small town, on a hillside on an island west of mainland U.S.S.R. in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is a small town, far from the capital, but it is still Russian.
N.N. 13 outranked N.N. 2842 by precisely 2,829 other N.N. male and female operatives at large in the world, plus, Flynn guessed, probably the robot Ginger as well, as soon as it was returned from the fixit shop.
So 2842, his eye sockets walled with concern, parked the little car facing downward on the hillside, its one front wheel against the curb.
“Sure,” said Flynn, extricating himself from the car, “if we have to start somewhere we might as well start with something warm for breakfast. That’s always the wise thing.”
All the way into Solensk snow had been blowing across their path, from west to east. None had accumulated on the ground.
“Tell me.” Flynn stood on the sidewalk, watching the horizontal snowstorm. “Doesn’t even the snow settle here?”
A middle-aged woman passing Flynn on the cobblestoned sidewalk looked sharply at him.
2842, face horrified, dashed from his side of the car to Flynn.
“You’re speaking English,” he whispered in the wind. “Loudly.”
“What’s that? Well, of course I am. I don’t speak Russian, you see. And I’m sure a dose of the old A-E-I-O-U will do them no harm at all. Now, where did you say breakfast is?”
“I don’t know. I’m not from Solensk. I’ve never been here before in my life.”
“Hell of a tour guide you are.” Flynn started down the street. “Don’t even know where breakfast is.”
“Well, sure, isn’t it a lovely day for doin’ nothin’ at all?” Flynn stretched his feet toward the potbellied stove.
They had found a restaurant down a few stone steps in the basement of a stone building with stone walls and a stone floor. The place was as warm as a sleeping puppy’s belly. Flynn had removed his coat.
“There’s something undemocratic about wearing a coat,” he commented to the pale 2842, expecting to be chided for appearing in Solensk in clothes that may have been European or American but certainly not Russian. 2842 said nothing. He grew more pale.
Flynn had breakfasted on warm potato soup, black bread, sausage, potato patties, and five cups of steaming tea. Several times he tried to make conversation, in English, with 2842, but each attempt was greeted with silence and a nervous glance at a big bear of a man in a blue uniform sitting against one wall with Pravda and a cup of tea. The man had no insignia on his uniform but Flynn supposed he was the town cop. He did have a full walrus mustache.
“Blustery day like this, it’s grand havin’ a good cup of tea or five.” (2842 had had only one cup of tea.) “Never been in Solensk before, eh?” 2842 said nothing. By now the cop had looked at Flynn several times. “Haven’t missed much, I think. Good soup and bread and tea you can get almost anywhere in Russia. My, I’ve been in some dismal places lately, haven’t I just? And it seems to me the wind’s been blowin’ in every one of them.”
The cop stood up. He folded his newspaper under his arm. He came over to Flynn’s table, and said something.
“Didn’t quite catch that,” Flynn answered the large man.
The man repeated himself.
Beads of perspiration were on 2842’s upper lip.
“What’s he sayin’?” Flynn asked.
2842 blurted in English, “He wants to see your papers.”
“Ach, that. Tell him I haven’t any.”
2842 said, “You haven’t any papers?”
“Well, sure,” said Flynn. “My Massachusetts driver’s license. My United States Social Security card. You can show him my wee badge as an inspector in the Boston Police Department.” Flynn reached in his pocket. “That might impress him some.”
He handed his badge to the cop, who looked at it right side up, upside down, and sideways.
2842 said, “You haven’t even got a passport? A Russian visa?”
“In my other trousers,” said Flynn. “I came away in rather a hurry.”
The cop handed Flynn’s badge back to him and said something.
2842 said, “He wants to know what you’re doing here.”
“Ach,” said Flynn. “Tell him I’m a spy.”
2842 stared at Flynn a long moment before speaking in Russian with the cop.
2842 looked down at the tabletop. “He says you can’t be a spy,” he said. “You don’t speak Russian.”
Flynn smiled. “Tell him I’m not a Russian spy.”
Apparently 2842 did so.
The cop laughed and shook hands with Flynn.
“He sees,” Flynn said, “I’m perfectly harmless. That I am. Invite him to take a cup of tea with us.”
The cop dragged a third chair to the table.
“Tell him,” Flynn said, “that as a spy I couldn’t help noticin’ that he didn’t pay the proprietor for his mornin’ tea break. Assure him that that universally is the policeman
’s custom.”
The large cop laughed and shook hands with Flynn again.
While they had tea Flynn and the cop talked of the weather, which is to say the wind and the snow. Flynn admitted the ground that morning had been hard enough with frost to make burying his parachute difficult. The cop laughed.
“Ask him if he plays chess,” Flynn said.
At the question, the cop became excited, stood up, called the proprietor.
“I think he’s ordering up a chess set,” said 2842, who still wasn’t even slightly relaxed.
“No, no,” said Flynn. “Tell him we can play later, if there’s time. First we have to find and talk to—if we can—the great American counterfeiter, Cecil Hill. But don’t tell him Hill’s a counterfeiter. No use spoilin’ the man’s reputation where he’s chosen to live.”
The cop was reseated. He and 2842 spoke for some minutes. To Flynn the cop appeared listening, understanding, cooperative, gracious. Toward the end of the conversation an edge came into his voice and his face colored.
2842 said to Flynn, “He says the American, Cecil Hill, works at the large printing plant on the east side of town. He says he is very well regarded, as a printer.”
“That’s true,” said Flynn. “Will you ask our man in blue what it is the printing plant prints?”
In a moment, 2842 answered, “Textbooks. School-books for all Russia.”
“Not money?” Flynn asked.
The cop laughed when he heard the question.
2842 said, “The policeman says it is not a far walk to the printing plant and he’d be happy to accompany us to make sure we find the American Cecil Hill.”
“Very obligin’ of him,” Flynn said. “But, tell me. I thought I noticed a little anger in the man, a moment ago, when he was speaking of the printing plant.”
“That’s because his nephew runs the place,” 2842 said. “He doesn’t like his nephew.”
“Then neither do I,” said Flynn. “Neither do I.”
27
IN fact, Flynn did not like the nephew, who was a skinny man in wire-rimmed glasses who moved too fast, spoke too fast, and generally demonstrated the impatience of a rooster upon first discovering why he had been put in the henhouse.
Flynn did not like the printing plant, either. Built of an ancient stone with red-brick wings, it was cold, damp, and dark. Walking through the plant to the administrator’s office, he saw that the workers were sunken-chested and blue-nosed.
Red-faced from the beginning, Solensk’s cop yelled everything he had to say at the nephew-administrator, apparently having to beat down the man’s bureaucratic arrogance to get him to fulfill a simple request.
Finally, after a long moment of silence during which Flynn understood Cecil Hill had been sent for, a short, aproned, heavily sweatered, ink-stained man in his fifties entered carrying a single sheet of galley. He looked sullenly at Flynn, particularly his clothes. He spoke in Russian to the plant administrator, who shrugged indifferently.
“You’re Cecil Hill?” Flynn asked.
“You’re Irish?” Hill asked.
“Yes,” Flynn said. “American.”
“You’re a cop?”
“When I’m at home.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
“Helicopter.”
“If you have any idea you’re taking me back with you, to stand a mock trial in an American court and be put in prison for the rest of my life, you can forget it. Russia does not waste workers’ talents.”
“Unless they’re intellectual workers or otherwise disagreeable,” Flynn said softly.
“I’m much too valuable to these people, to the people of Russia, as a printer.”
“I understand that,” Flynn said.
“Then what do you want?”
“I know you’re a good printer,” Flynn said. “In fact, you’re considered one of the world’s top ten counterfeiters.” Hill smiled. “Tell me, Mister Hill: do they actually have you living in a dacha? Your address is Dacha 11.”
“It’s no dacha.”
“More like a cold-water room?”
“I had a dacha.”
“At first?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re obliged to share your cold-water room with other people …?”
“They’re friends.”
“I trust they’re very good friends.”
Flynn handed Cecil Hill the three American bills without saying anything about them.
Cecil Hill took them to the window and examined them.
“The twenty-dollar bill is a fake,” he said. “A good one—good enough to fool some people—but it’s a fake.”
“And the fifty- and the one-hundred-dollar bills are not?”
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they’re not. To be absolutely certain, I’d have to use a microscope and some chemicals.” He held the one-hundred-dollar bill up to the window light. “But it looks like somebody’s already done that.”
He handed the bills back to Flynn.
Flynn said, “Not your work?”
“What?”
“You didn’t manufacture this money?”
“No.”
“Mister Hill, in all the time you’ve been in Russia—especially when they had you ensconced in your dacha, stuffing you with vodka and caviar—did you design, or make, or in any way formulate plans for the manufacturing of United States currency?”
“No.” Cecil Hill laughed. “An American flatfoot comes all the way over here on what you think is a counterfeit case? Wow.”
“What we ‘think is a counterfeit case’?” Flynn repeated.
“United States currency must be in some kind of trouble.”
Flynn thought for a moment: … think is a counterfeit case … United States currency must be in some kind of trouble….
“I think your phrasing has been helpful to me, Mister Hill.”
“Delighted, I’m sure.”
“I’m puzzled, nevertheless,” Flynn said, “by one of the world’s top ten counterfeiters living in one of the world’s most unpleasant resorts?”
“I’m at home here, mister.”
“But your peers are ‘at home’ on the French Riviera, in Paris, New York, California…. One is at home in federal prison in Marion, Illinois, of course.”
“I like it here.”
“But a man who has … let’s say, the knack for making money you have—”
“What of it?”
“—to live under a Communist regime, which does not encourage the use of currency among its citizens … puzzles me.”
“That’s the point, mister. If I believed in money as a real thing I wouldn’t have made the fake stuff, would I?”
“There’s that word believe again. Relieve in money.’ I believe Satan walked the earth. My son was just killed, therefore I believe it is time I win a fortune gambling.”
2842, still not an entirely relaxed man, was watching Flynn, listening to him closely.
“In the Western world, mister—your world—money is be-all end-all. Money! Just little bits of paper anybody can reproduce.”
“Not anybody,” said Flynn.
“Anybody.”
“Anybody with certain skills, talents …”
“Anybody!” insisted Cecil Hill. “People run their whole lives, cradle to grave, centered on something totally unreal.”
“Some do.”
“All do.”
“A good many do.”
“All!” insisted Cecil Hill.
“You’re saying money is phony anyway…”
“Of course. Fake. All money is fake. An illusion.”
“Excrement,” Flynn said. “Garbage.”
“No. Both excrement and garbage have some use. Money is totally fake. All money is fake.”
“Ah, the darlin’ mind of the criminal,” said Flynn. “Endlessly fascinatin’. No mind believes more in justice than the criminal mind. All money is fake, ergo makin’ more of it is no crime
at all.”
“Communism does not encourage a belief in money,” Cecil Hill said. “A belief I didn’t have anyway. I am quite comfortable here.”
The man’s socks were so thick he couldn’t lace his shoes.
“I’ll not be disturbin’ your comfort much more,” Flynn said. “But you did say how valuable you are to the Russian people. Just a matter of academic interest: if you’re not grinding out the old buck for them, what is it you do that makes yourself so valuable to the people of Russia? If you don’t mind my askin’ …”
Cecil Hill hesitated a moment, then picked up the galley sheet he had brought into the room with him and put on the administrator’s desk. He handed it to Flynn.
The light being bad in the room (except directly over the administrator’s desk), Flynn took the galley to the window. It was in English. While the administrator sat at his desk, 2842 and Solensk’s cop stood by the door. Cecil Hill stood close enough to the administrator’s electric heater to turn the rest of the room colder. Flynn read:
THE BROTHERS’ WAR, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1861–1865, also known as THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR and THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES. In which the expansionist industrial Northern states provoked war with the agricultural Southern states, HISTORIC RESULTS: the South’s black laborers lost their cradle-to-grave social and economic security provided by the South’s plantation-slave system and became wage-earning slaves, without social and economic security, to the North’s industrial system. Although granted paper “citizenship,” the economic value of black laborers fell considerably, and fell again in the 1880s and 1890s when American Northern industrial capitalists discovered an even cheaper form of labor: refugees from the decaying imperialistic European systems (Karl Marx) lured to America by promises of land availability. Only enough land went to the immigrants (and that only to immigrants who had some capital; grubstake in the American idiom, i.e., enough money to buy food and other living necessities while land was being developed) to make the “promise” real. No land, no part of the economy went to blacks, as they were the conquests of THE BROTHERS’ WAR.
Outside the window the snow was swirling furiously. Still, none seemed to be accumulating on the ground.
Flynn cursed his compulsion to understand comprehensively. Life is so simple, seen in black and white. In black and white and with a song on the lips. He’d had his chance at universal, eternal truth, twice, and found it boring. We live between the keys, between the chords, between the black and white. He’d lived between the borders. There is nothing more painful than a wide youth.
The Buck Passes Flynn Page 15
