Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  Five names. One each from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, East Germany. One in Cyrillic.

  “To the highest bidder. The fuckin’ Japs. Musashi Company. The disc was just proof they could get good stuff. Then … then money to go private. How much was Musashi going for … twenty million up front?”

  “Yes. Twenty million for the greatest industrial espionage network in the world,” Hayakawa said.

  “Dollars?” I asked.

  “Dollars.”

  “What if I could get you the list?” I said.

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction,” Lime said. “No satisfaction. I’m gonna die. Motherfucker. I been one bad motherfucker.”

  “You let them go,” I said, pointing to Guido and Marie Laure, “and I’ll find you the list.”

  “Don’t do it,” Lime said. “Then he has to kill you anyway. Don’t you?”

  “Shut up,” Mike said. “Shut up.” He grabbed a gun from one of the Bulgarians and marched forward, the gun outstretched, pointing at Lime’s head.

  “I almost outbid him … didn’t I, Mike? With, with Germans, SpeerGruppen. Don’t give him the list. He’ll kill you …”

  Mike fired. He wasn’t more than two feet away by then. The back of Lime’s head blew away. It splattered and scattered, spewing brain and blood and bits of bone. Marie Laure began to scream and scream. Guido put his arms around her and held her. She sobbed into him. I tried to move toward her, but Mike swung the gun around and pointed it at me.

  “Wait a minute. Take it slow,” I said.

  “I am very sorry,” he said. “Very sorry. I like you, Tony. Like your mother. Nothing personal. But you are a witness.”

  “I’d lie for you, Mike. Any time,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You set me up. I am not angry with you for that. After all, you pursued your first loyalty and that is right. Do you pray?” he asked. “No,” he answered for me. “I don’t think so. But I would let you before you die if you did.”

  “Mike, let Marie go. We have a new baby. Think about your baby, and leaving her an orphan, no mother …”

  “Tony, don’t plead. Have dignity. Your daughter has her grandmother. I will send money. I promise.”

  “Mike, I’m begging you …”

  “Have dignity,” he snapped at me, and aimed the gun.

  “Okay, sure, no pleading. Mike, for our friendship, there is one thing I would ask,” I said. Anything to stall. Something to stall. Until maybe I could get the shotgun or the automatic in the cash register.

  “What is it, Tony?”

  “The lady, Marie Laure, I want to marry her. I don’t want my daughter to be illegitimate. That’s important to me.”

  “You want what?”

  “The old man—he’s a priest. He could marry us, before you … you know.”

  “Are you serious?” Mike said.

  “Oh, Tony,” Marie Laure said, tears streaming down her face. Not tears of happiness at being wed at last. Tears of fear and worry for her baby. I knew I was going to go after Hayakawa. If I ate a bullet doing it, then so be it. I just needed to break the rhythm, break his attention and get close to the shotgun.

  “You, priest,” he said.

  “Yes,” Guido said.

  “You make this real fast,” Mike said.

  “I will,” Guido said.

  “Two minutes, no more,” he said.

  I started walking toward Marie Laure, toward the shotgun as well. I gestured her to come toward me. “I got to thank you for this, Mike. I really do. It’s a special kindness.”

  “It is,” Marie Laure said. “Thank you. It will give me a chance to tell him how much I love him.”

  “I love you too,” I said, my eyes filling with tears and sentiment. “I really do.”

  “Je t’aime,” she said.

  “Je t’aime,” I said.

  “Are you ready?” Mike said.

  I was standing under the shotgun. “Yes,” I said. “Father, why don’t you stand there,” I said, pointing to a spot that would put him partly between Hayakawa and me. While he shuffled into position I said, “Let me ask you something else, Mike, just out of curiosity. Who did hire Hans Lantz to kill Tanaka?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “He was disloyal. He was working for Musashi! Then Harry Lime came to him with a deal from another group. SpeerGruppen. Germans. He was going to deal with them.”

  “So he had the list and you killed him and you were going to take the list and put together the network yourself.”

  “But I have failed.”

  “You know,” I said, “I still think I could get you the list.”

  “Yes, but if you know the list, and your loyalty is to America, what good is it? You will give it to the CIA and they will eliminate all of them.”

  “You overestimate the CIA, Mike. Why think they’re any better than General Motors?”

  “You are a witness, I have to kill. You better get married quick,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “Go on, Guido.”

  “I guess I better keep it short,” Guido said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Marie Laure, are you ready?” Guido asked.

  “Yes, Father,” she said. “Thank you for this, Tony.”

  A banshee screamed and two figures ran, yelling, into the room. They came at Hayakawa waving knives. I shoved Marie to the floor. I reached up and grabbed the shotgun. Hayakawa and the Bulgarians were firing into the screamers, who just swallowed up the bullets and kept on coming. They staggered like the undead from a bad zombie movie, losing bits and pieces while they came.

  I fired twice in rapid succession. The Bulgarians and Hayakawa were in a group and the shotgun blast took them all. The older Bulgarian turned toward me. He was still standing. He aimed at me. Arlene Tavetian, more dead than alive, fell into him, the big kitchen knife held in front of her, and stabbed into his gut. Marie Laure and Guido were both down, crawling behind tables. I ran for the bar. I hit the cash register. Someone was still shooting. The drawer popped open, I grabbed the gun, turned.

  The younger Bulgarian was standing. His hand was over his face, blood streaming from his eyes. He was blind. But still shooting. I shot him. Mike Hayakawa was on the floor. I shot him.

  Then, it was quiet.

  PAYMENTS

  I HAD THE PRESENCE of mind to send Marie Laure away with the deutsche marks. That was fortunate because it cost me DM500,000—that is, $333,000, plus Rick’s American Laundromat, to get Franz, the gendarme, to make a palatable story out of the insane massacre. Austria is not America. Everything is perfect in Austria. They have the lowest murder rate in the world. It’s expensive to cover up a killing there. It wasn’t like he got to keep it all—he had to spread some around. I understood that.

  The official version was that Lime had a shootout with Hayakawa and the Bulgarians. He handled all the guns. I wasn’t even there. Nor was Marie Laure, nor was Guido. The Bulgarians were blamed for Sheen, though that wasn’t who killed him. Arlene Tavetian had. And I was an accomplice in a way. The Tavetians were there, in the official story. But no one was going to blame the Tavetians, who only had knives, for attacking men who had guns. Particularly since Hayakawa had murdered Wendy.

  The reason Marie Laure and Guido had showed up was that Guido had discovered a microphone and thought he should warn me that someone must have listened in. When we went back we discovered two sets of microphones. A day and a half later, Robert Tavetian was well enough to talk. Fortunately he would only talk to me.

  “Tried to warn you she was crazy,” he said.

  “Was that your microphone?” I asked. “In my house?”

  “Got it mail order. From Spy Inc. catalog, Miami.”

  “Did you put a beeper on Chip Sheen’s car? Follow him to Budapest?”

  “Yeah. Arlene. Obsessed. Sorry.”

  “Mail order?”

  He nodded yes.

  �
�Did she kill Chip Sheen?”

  He nodded. “Heard you say … him.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Not your fault,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “We already blamed it on the Bulgarians.”

  He nodded. “Arlene,” he said, “gonna make it?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but not in real good shape.”

  That was all he could take. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he looked away from me, at the wall.

  I married Marie Laure under my real name. Guido performed the service. My mother and Franz, the gendarme, were the witnesses.

  Gerald Yaskowitz called. He said that there was no such guy at the CIA as had signed my letter. It was a phony. That was more or less what I had expected.

  Hiroshi Tanaka had had a fairly brilliant idea. One of the few things the Eastern Europeans had really developed to the point where they were competitive with the West was espionage. In recent years, rather than political or military, it had become primarily technical and industrial espionage, which made it even more marketable. All it needed was a packager—someone to realize the potential of the networks already in place, take them commercial, and bring their services to the people with real money to spend.

  Viewing it from the other side, the buyer’s, it was also a great idea. An established, working spy network already in place. It would do far more for the Japanese, for example, than it had ever done for the Russians, because the Communists didn’t know how to utilize the information. The production and engineering capabilities of Toshiba or Musashi—for that matter of a Hyundai or Mercedes—coupled with the information-gathering capabilities of Stasi, the KGB, the Czech, Hungarian, and Polish security services would be fearsome indeed. It could be the alliance that tipped the balance in the economic wars of the coming century. Assuming that the balance has not yet tipped.

  Harry Lime was an old man with a taste for young women and intrigue who was facing a gimpy retirement on a government pension based on dollars in a decade where that currency was the wrong place to be. I thought he actually was CIA. As such, he got wind of Tanaka’s idea and decided to take it over. He was able to use some official sources and resources. He was even willing to use some personnel, like Chip Sheen, because Sheen was both very eager and not too swift, a boy scout with a gun who thought God was on his side. And Jaroslav, the Czech lawyer. But not too many people could know about it. Because Harry Lime was not going to turn the result of his operation over to the CIA. He was going to take Tanaka’s place and go private. Lime had lined up a German consortium, SpeerGruppen, to bid against Musashi. That’s why he was so eager to use me. I was unconnected, dispensable, disposable.

  At least, that’s what I think happened. Based on what people did, rather than what they said, since everyone was lying all the time. Why shouldn’t they? I didn’t really care about The Truth or making the world safe for General Motors or even about the Tavetians too terribly much. I cared about making Marie Laure happy and keeping Anna Geneviève safe.

  “I have half a million deutsche marks to fight my case,” I said to Gerald Yaskowitz.

  “How much is that in real money?” he asked me.

  I also had the names of five leading East European spy masters ready to go commercial and take their operations with them. That was an additional bargaining chip.

  On the flight home I read the first copy of the New York Times I’d seen in years. It sounded like the Mets were going to blow it again. There was a story in the financial section about Musashi Aerospace. It said that they were going to coventure aeronautics research with SpeerGruppen of West Germany.

  A Biography of Larry Beinhart

  Larry Beinhart (b. 1947) is an award-winning author of mysteries, nonfiction, and political essays. He is best known for his novel Wag the Dog (originally titled American Hero), which inspired the blockbuster film of the same name.

  Raised in New York City, Beinhart published his first book, No One Rides for Free, in 1986. A mystery about corporate corruption, it introduced the private investigator Tony Cassella, and won Beinhart an Edgar Award for best first novel. He returned to Cassella in You Get What You Pay For (1988) and Foreign Exchange (1991), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

  The book Wag the Dog was listed as one of the seven best modern political novels by the Christian Science Monitor, one of the five best books on public relations by the Wall Street Journal, and one of the thousand great books of the millennium by Capital Magazine. Barry Levinson directed the book’s film adaptation, titled Wag the Dog, in 1997. The movie starred Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, garnered much critical acclaim, and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

  Beinhart’s next novel was The Librarian (2004), a comic thriller about an archivist caught in a national conspiracy to re-elect a dimwitted president. He then published Salvation Boulevard (2008), a sharp-witted satire of murder and mega-churches, where the real mystery is the nature of God. A film adaptation starring Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan was released in 2011.

  In 1996, Beinhart published How to Write a Mystery, a well-reviewed guide for would-be Raymond Chandlers, and in 2005 he wrote Fog Facts, a nonfiction examination of information in the age of spin. Beinhart spent two years lecturing at Oxford University as a Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Scholar.

  Beinhart has won many awards, including an Emmy and a Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger, but has still not gotten over the joy he felt when No One Rides for Free was first published. He lives, writes, and works as a ski instructor in Woodstock, New York.

  Beinhart in 1951, at age four. His grandparents, Ephraim and Selde, look on while his father helps him ride his first bike.

  In his early twenties, Beinhart was a professional photographer in New York City. He honed his craft by sneaking into the darkroom at New York University to develop his photos.

  Beinhart and his wife, Gil, during their wedding in February, 1988.

  Beinhart in Aspen in 1989 with his wife, Gillian; sister-in-law, Kathy; and his baby daughter, Ana. During this trip, Beinhart developed the idea for his book Foreign Exchange, which is set in a ski town in the Austrian Alps.

  During a family visit, Beinhart sits with wife Gil (far left), his mother, his two-year-old son, James, and Ana, his four-year-old daughter.

  Beinhart and his son, James, in 1993. When he was young, James’s motto was “Why walk when you can ride?”

  Beinhart’s family at Oxford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, in 1995: Gil, friend Betty, daughter Ana, Beinhart’s mother Ann, Larry, and son James. When his family first entered the centuries-old university, Ana, aged six, took a look at the medieval architecture and asked, “Daddy, is the king of this castle dead?”

  Beinhart in Woodstock, New York, in spring 2002.

  Beinhart in Spain, preparing to speak at the Semana Negra conference for mystery writers.

  With thanks to all those who helped us on the way: Joy Harris at home; Karen Frankel at Nexus; Susie Chase-Motzkin, ski guru; Mike Meller in Germany; David, Mila and Dr. Slonim, Nika, Jaro and Jaroslav Prokopec in Prague; Saša Racz and Sandra Ferenčič in Yugoslavia; Micha Hajnàk in Budapest; Nancy Binkin in Rome; Yoshiro “Borro” Masaki in Japan; and especially IN MEMORY OF CHRIS COX, who died September 7, 1990, of AIDS.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, livin
g or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1991 by Larry Beinhart

  cover design by Brenden Hitt

  978-1-4532-5933-7

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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