Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  The answer was—possibly—any Austrian over sixty-five. There were ambiguities. Hitler forced the Anschluss, but they truly cheered him from the Tyrol to Vienna. Most soldiers were probably draftees, just as most people just go along to get along. But they served, they knew, they participated, and were the first to agree that the Aryans were a master race.

  “In Europe today they forget what America means. But my family does not forget,” Marie Laure said. “I want to be able to go to America. I want to go with you. I want Anna Geneviève to visit her grandmama,” she said to me.

  Mike Hayakawa drew back and said nothing.

  “What do these people think of their president?” my mother asked me.

  “I don’t really know,” I said.

  The story of President Kurt Waldheim, once Wehrmacht Oberleutnant Waldheim, is a strange one. He had been Secretary General of the United Nations from 1972-82 and Austria’s representative there before that. For obscure, unfathomable reasons that reek of international intrigue but could as easily be casual carelessness, it was not until he ran for president that his war record crept out from under the rocks. While it was clear that he was not Adolf Eichmann, it was also clear that he was a knowing participant in an army unit involved with the deportation of civilians to concentration and death camps, reprisals against civilians, deportation of Jews from the Greek islands, mistreatment of Allied POWs, and handing over civilians to the SS. Also, as each revelation came out, he lied like a Nixon, each lie requiring another to cover the last.

  “Black people can use the word nigger with each other,” I said, “and they do, all the time. But a white person can’t. That’s what I feel like if I ask an Austrian about Waldheim.”

  “There’s a joke in America,” my mother said. “You’ve heard of Alzheimer’s disease? That’s where you forget everything. Then there’s Waldheimer’s disease. You just forget you were a Nazi.”

  “What does the book say about this place?”

  “‘The Judenplatz,’” my mother read from her Berlitz guide, “‘housed a synagogue until fourteen twenty-one, when it was dismantled in a pogrom and its stones carted off.’”

  More than the palaces—the Hofburg, the Neue Burg, Schönbrunn, or Belvedere. More than Stephensdom or The Ring itself or the Opera—that synagogue is the perfect icon for Vienna, a thing that is not there, symbol of what was and now is not—Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Theodor Herzl, Anton Bruckner, Arthur Schnitzler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Victor Adler, Arnold Schönberg, Max Reinhardt, Martin Buber, Bruno Bettelheim, and the Nobel prizewinners in physics, Hess, Rabi, Pauli.

  What is Vienna without them? Vienna is perfect. A great place to shop, if you don’t mind buying retail.

  THE THIRD MAN

  I HAD LIED.

  The alarm at Hiroshi Tanaka’s office was very simple. There was no number code. The key turned it off. It was a good lie. It did two things for me. If the disc was in the office, I would be alone when I found it, in control of its destiny and value. If it was not there, Mike Hayakawa still owed me one, for being the guy who went in while he stayed safe at the hotel, in the bar, drinking Scotch. He wanted to wait downstairs. I convinced him that it might draw the cops.

  I arrived at the office a little after six. I stood in the street and watched the lights go out and saw Helga exit between the stone lesbians who supported the portico. Then I telephoned from the booth on the corner. No one answered. It’s not foolproof. Sometimes switchboards are shut even if someone is in the office. But it’s one more sign.

  I went upstairs. I looked, I listened. It was quiet. It was dark. I opened the office door with the set of keys from Tanaka’s apartment in St. Anton, then turned the alarm off. I was inside.

  Then the cops grabbed me.

  Two of them came through the door. They had flashlights. They had guns. I put my hands up. One shone a light in my face. The other went behind me. He pulled my arms down and put plastic ties around my wrists. They were tight enough to be uncomfortable. Once they were secure, the one in front punched me in the solar plexus. It knocked the wind out of me and I went to my knees, gasping. Then the one behind me kicked me in the ass, knocking me down to the floor. I managed to land on my shoulder instead of my face. They kicked me several more times. But not in the kidneys, testicles, or head. They didn’t want to harm or mar me, just hurt me.

  When they stopped, a third man was standing there. He didn’t wear a uniform. He was a big man, heavy, about sixty, and leaned on a cane. “You are a pain in the ass, Cassella,” he said. In English. “You’re smart. I can use that. But you’re stupid, and that’s going to get you hurt.” American English.

  “I’m too old for this shit. I’m a father.”

  “Take him away. Throw him in the jail,” the third man said in German. His hair was cropped short and shot with gray. It was a tough gray. He knew it.

  The two Polizei stood me up.

  “What do you want?” I asked him.

  “What is it you want, Cassella?”

  “What do I want? I want some snow. I want to make a little bread from my Laundromats, without bothering anyone. I want to teach my daughter how to ski. I maybe want to have another baby.”

  “Bad answer,” he said.

  One of the Polizei whacked me across the back of the thigh with his flashlight. It was four D cells long and at least that heavy. Police don’t carry them to light up the world, they carry them because they’re good for beating on people.

  “Fuck you,” I said. I meant ouch. Then I asked, “What’s the right answer?”

  “You tell me,” the third man said.

  “I hate this game,” I said.

  “The next time he’ll hit you in the kneecap.” The two uniformed Polizei said nothing, in English or German. Grabbing, holding, and hitting were their things—not speech.

  “I know what I want to do,” I said very reasonably. “I want what you want.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now try this—‘I want to serve my country!’”

  “I want to serve my country,” I said.

  “Try ‘I want to go back to America!’”

  “Okay,” I said, “I want to go back to America.”

  “Did you sic the cops on Chip the other day?”

  “Me? Would I do that?”

  The other Polizei hit me across the other thigh with his flashlight. It was all very fascist and cruel.

  “I assume you did. You’ve been making things very difficult for him. He’s a nice, sincere kid.”

  “And a Mormon,” I said.

  “That too,” he said. “If you cooperated with him, you wouldn’t have to contend with me.”

  “It’s hard to have a lot of faith in him,” I said.

  “I understand,” the third man said. “But you better learn to get along. He holds your future in his hands. Maybe your life. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Actually, I don’t. We could do a lot better without the heavy mystery and the secret secrets. If I knew what was going on, maybe I would cooperate. Maybe I could cooperate. Pardon me for being frank, but all I’ve gotten so far is a lot of bullshit. Now you can beat me up some more, though I hope you don’t, but it would probably be a lot more practical to break out the brandy and cigars and sit down and discuss this in a frank, open, and informative manner.”

  “Sure,” he said, amiably. He turned and walked toward the inner offices. He had a heavy step with his good leg and a stiff movement with the bad. He gestured for me to follow him. The Polizei shoved me along. We entered the rather grand corner office.

  “Was this Tanaka’s office?”

  “Exactly,” he said. He sat, with a grunt, in the chair behind the desk. There was a chair facing the desk. He indicated. I sat. Here was a humidor on the desk. He carefully selected two cigars. He put one down, clipped the other, moistened it, lit it, then got it going with noisy signs of pleasure. “You like skiing. A lot,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said.

&nbs
p; “Fine,” he said. “Break his kneecap,” he told the cops. As if they’d been waiting for the command, one cop whipped his arm around my neck from behind, the other raised his flashlight. “Wait,” the third man said. The raised flashlight stopped in midswing. “What I wanted to explain was control. I am in control. I am running things. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” I croaked through the choke hold.

  “I don’t think you really get it. We used to do some shit in Vietnam. You throw someone out of a chopper, the other guys know who’s in control. You cut off an ear or a finger, they get the picture. I want you to understand that I’m a person who will go to extremes. I’ve been called a control freak. And I like to win.”

  If he liked control and winning he should have hated Vietnam. But he didn’t seem to remember it that way. So I didn’t say anything. Except “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “I like the ‘sir.’ Maybe you are getting it. You understand that I’m trying to be a gentleman about this. I have threatened you, but not your family. Your mother, your daughter, your girlfriend. Gosh, she’s pretty. I know you think so. You were practically coming all over her in the Flemish section. I can reward you too.” He smiled. “It’s okay. Release him.” One of the Polizei snipped the cuffs. “Thanks, boys,” he said. He took an automatic out of his shoulder holster. It looked like a Glock, like Chip’s. He chambered a round, took the safety off, then put it on the desk in front of him. He nodded at his Polizei. Like good Dobies, they trotted off.

  “What do you think, Cassella. You think the disc is here?”

  “Well, it’s not in his apartment in St. Anton. It’s not in the Vienna apartment. I thought this was a good bet.”

  “So did I,” he said. “You might as well search it. Maybe you’ll see something we missed. Did you want the cigar?”

  “I’ll take one,” I said. “Will you tell me what the disc is?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s a source code.” He gave me the cigar.

  “Of course. I should have realized. Source code. That’s heavy-duty stuff.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic with me, Cassella. We don’t know each other well enough for that yet.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to find the disc,” he said, and offered me a light.

  “Which I now know to be a source code.”

  “Correct.”

  “Am I allowed to ask some questions here?”

  “Certainly. You would be a fool not to.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Let me be frank. I’m an old-time spook. An intelligence officer. A spy. In your situation, I am your case officer. Your handler. Your control. Welcome to the CIA.”

  “That’s a hell of a line,” I said. “Does that usually blow them over. How about what does the CIA need me for? Doesn’t the CIA have its own clowns? Well trained, well paid, with medical plans, pension funds, and loyalty oaths? Guys who will sit still to be polygraphed and have their urine tested? Fine Americans like Chip Sheen?”

  “Yes, we do. But not a single one of them happened to be a German-speaking ski bum in St. Anton at the time that Hiroshi Tanaka bought it, who also is a trained and very talented investigator. Don’t be modest—I’ve checked. There are people who truly hate you. You’re very good. You upset a lot of equations.”

  “It didn’t matter in the long run, did it?”

  “No. I guess it didn’t.”

  “But you did have a man in place. Chip Sheen was there.”

  “He sticks out like a sore thumb, doesn’t he?” the third man said. “I lost my train of thought there. What was I saying? Oh, yes. Ski bum, in St. Anton, has languages …”

  “My German sucks.”

  “It’ll do. You don’t have to pass for a native.” He paused and picked up the list, “… Investigator who I can control because he’s under indictment, who is not known to any of the opposition and who is trusted by Mike Hayakawa. Don’t you love how he does that Mike thing? So American. So trustworthy. So helpless. Fucking Japs do that all the time. That small and humble act. Little island, few resources, learning from us, depending on us. Voom! Badadadadadada. The next thing you know, Pearl Harbor. So we put ’em down. We put ’em in their place. Bombed ’em back to the Stone Age.

  “Humble. You wouldn’t believe humble. You should’ve been there before Nam, when the yen was three hundred sixty to the dollar. Service. You could get a pedicure, a full sashimi special, and your cock sucked—all at the same time, for ten bucks. And they gave good value for your money. Now ten bucks won’t get you a cup of Tokyo coffee. They learn. Don’t underestimate ’em. They learn from success and failure. Their success was that we underestimated ’em. So they made sure we did that again. Keep on bowing. Radios! Bowing. Cameras. Bowing. Televisions. Little things. Their failure was that they hit us head-on. Got us united and our backs up. So not this time. This time it’s commercial—Toyota, Datsun, Honda, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Suzuki. Microchips. Computers. No guns, no killing, but ruthless just the same. War, just the same. Don’t kid yourself that nineteen ninety is not an extension of nineteen forty-one. It’s the same master plan from the same master race.

  “So there you have it. You’re on the inside. It’s like God handed me a double agent. I don’t overlook God’s gifts. I’m no Holy Joe, like Chip Sheen, I’m a whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking, pussy-loving son of a bitch. But when the good Lord hands me an advantage on a plate, I say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’”

  “So you want me to find this thing, make sure that Mike Hayakawa doesn’t get it, and that you do.”

  “No, son, not at all. You don’t appreciate the full dimension of this thing. But you will. You will truly enjoy this.”

  “I will?”

  “Now I believe that Mike Hayakawa—do you know that his father was mentioned as a war criminal? We never tried him, but he was part of the military-industrial combine that drove Japan to war, used slave labor, abused POWs. His father sent him to California to learn to be American so he could learn to use America against itself. He has made you a very substantial offer. I believe the figure was six hundred sixty-six thousand dollars. Am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re very close.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, son. I’ll hurt you,” he said.

  He knew the number. It wasn’t a guess. He’d been listening to me and Hayakawa. He hadn’t found me breaking in. He and the Polizei had been waiting for me. There were microphones back home and in Vienna too. Probably in the Musashi Élégant, maybe in the hotel as well.

  “Do right by me and you will do very well for yourself.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the number.”

  “You wouldn’t want to forgo that, would you?”

  “If it meant a choice between the money and my country, I would take my country, sir! Particularly with what you have on me, sir!”

  “Well said, Cassella. I didn’t think you were capable of such heartfelt insincerity. It’s a sign of maturity. Or a stint in the military. Well, I have a very pleasant surprise for you. Your job is to get that money.”

  “It is?”

  “Oh, yeah. I want you to find the disc. I want you to give it to Mike Hayakawa. You might as well get your money while you’re at it. But you better make damn sure that he doesn’t get away with the disc. Your job is to set him up. So I can catch him dirty.”

  FRIENDS

  MIKE HAYAKAWA WAS WAITING up for me.

  He had the hotel staff tipped and alerted. The sober uniformed doorman told me to head for the Amadeus Mozart Bar. As I crossed the lobby the chirpy bellman told me that Mr. Hayakawa was expecting me. The very responsible spectacled fellow at the front desk hailed me and informed me of the same. He also handed me a note. It told me where to meet Mike in case the entire staff of the hotel had it wrong.

  If they’d only beaten one leg I would have had to pretend not to limp. Since they had both been whacked, I had to pretend not to hobble. The bar hostes
s showed me her cleavage. Then she showed me to Hayakawa’s booth. By then I was certain both were wired.

  “Did you get it?” Mike said.

  “No,” I told him. His face fell. “I’m sorry.” I had searched. I hadn’t done any better than the third man. I now had a name for him. Lime, like Harry Lime. It was a code name. I was Apple, as in the Big Apple; Chip Sheen was Peach; Hayakawa was Cherry. We were a bunch of fruits.

  “I know that if it had been there you would have found it. But I don’t know if you would have given it to me. You are a trickster, Rick.”

  “Call me Tony,” I said, building trust. “That’s my real name. Anthony Cassella. The Upper West Side, by way of Brooklyn.”

  “Put ’er there, Tony,” he said, and held out his hand. “Have a drink with me.”

  Why eighteen-year-old Scotch should kill the pain any better than eight-year-old or even twelve-year-old is a minor mystery. Not as significant as mother love or the female orgasm, but still worth noting for its transubstantial nature.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry I have failed,” I said.

  “You have not failed. It was logical and it was necessary to look here. But if it was not here, you couldn’t find it here. What do we do next? That is the question.”

  “We go back to St. Anton. And start again,” I said. Unless I could convince Marie Laure that our best option was to disappear, change some names, get new passports, and head for higher ground.

  “How do we start again? Where?”

  “Let me ask you something,” I said.

  “Ask me anything,” Mike said.

  “Why is this disc so important to you?”