Boys from Brazil

by Ira Levin

  The cigarette case came back to him, from silver-haired Hessen, blue eyes bright in his gaunt face. “What a wonderful thing to possess!”

  “Yes,” the man in white agreed, nodding, “I’m enormously proud of it.” He put the case down beside the papers.

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Farnbach asked.

  The man in white put his snifter aside and said, “Let’s get down to business now, boys.” Tipping his cropped gray head, he pushed his glasses lower on his nose and looked at the men over them. They faced him attentively, cigars poised. Silence took the room; only a low whine of air conditioning persisted against it.

  “You know what you’re going out to do,” the man in white said, “and you know it’s a long job. I’ll fill you in on the details now.” He leaned his head forward, looking down through his glasses. “Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,” he said, reading. “Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.”

  He sat back and looked at the men again. “Why must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?” He shook his head. “Not now; later you can be told that. But this I can tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation to which I and the leaders of the Organization have devoted many years, enormous effort, and a large part of the Organization’s fortune. It’s the most important operation the Organization has ever undertaken, and ‘important’ is a thousand times too weak a word to describe it. The hope and the destiny of the Aryan race lie in the balance. No exaggeration here, my friends; literal truth: the destiny of the Aryan people—to hold sway over the Slavs and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow—will be fulfilled if the operation succeeds, will not be fulfilled if the operation fails. So ‘important’ isn’t a strong enough word, is it? ‘Holy,’ maybe? Yes, that’s closer. It’s a holy operation you’re taking part in.”

  He picked up his cigarette, tapped ash away, and carried its shortness carefully to his lips.

  The men looked at one another silently, awed. They reminded themselves to draw at cigars, to sip brandy. They looked at the man in white again; he ground his cigarette in the ashtray, looked up at them.

  “You’ll be leaving Brazil with new identities,” he said, and touched the briefcase at his side. “Everything’s here. Genuine stuff, not forgeries. And you’ll have ample funds for the two and a half years. In diamonds”—he smiled—“which I’m afraid you’ll have to take through customs in the uncomfortable way.”

  The men smiled and shrugged.

  “You’ll each be responsible for the men in one or a pair of countries. You have from thirteen to eighteen assignments each, but a few of the men will already have died of natural causes. They’re sixty-five years old. Not too many of them will have died, though, as they were in excellent health as of their fifty-second year, with no signs of incipient disorder.”

  “All the men are sixty-five?” Hessen asked, looking puzzled.

  “Almost all,” the man in white said. “That is, they will be when their dates come around. A few will be a year or two younger or older.” He lifted aside the paper from which he had read the countries and numbers, and picked up the other nine or ten sheets. “The addresses,” he told the men, “are their addresses in 1961 and ’62, but you shouldn’t have any trouble locating them today. Most are probably still where they were. They’re family men, stable; civil servants mostly—tax examiners, principals of schools, and so on; men of minor authority.”

  “They have that in common too?” Schwimmer asked.

  The man in white nodded.

  Hessen said, “A remarkably homogeneous group. The members of another organization, opposed to ours?”

  “They don’t even know one another, or us,” the man in white said. “At least I hope they don’t.”

  “They’ll be retired now, won’t they?” Kleist asked. “If they’re sixty-five?” His glass eye looked elsewhere.

  “Yes, most of them will probably be retired,” the man in white agreed. “But if they’ve moved, you can be sure they’ll have taken care to leave proper forwarding addresses. Schwimmer, you get England. Thirteen, the smallest number.” He handed a typewritten sheet to Kleist to pass on to Schwimmer. “No reflection on your abilities,” he smiled at Schwimmer. “On the contrary, a recognition of them. I hear you can turn yourself into an Englishman of whom the Queen herself wouldn’t be suspicious.”

  “You do know how to flatter one, old man,” Schwimmer drawled in Oxonian English, fingering his sandy mustache as he glanced at the sheet. “Actually, the old girl’s not all that bright, y’ know.”

  The man in white smiled. “That talent might very well prove useful,” he said, “though your new identity, like all the others’, is that of a German national. You’re traveling salesmen, boys; maybe between assignments you’ll have time to discover a few farmers’ daughters.” He looked at his next sheet. “Farnbach, you’ll be traveling in Sweden.” He handed the sheet to his right. “With fourteen customers for your fine imported merchandise.”

  Farnbach, taking the sheet, leaned forward, his hairless brow-ridge creased by a frown. “All of them elderly civil servants,” he said, “and by killing them we fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race?”

  The man in white looked at him for a moment. “Was that a question or a statement, Farnbach?” he asked. “It sounded a little like a question there at the end, and if so, I’m surprised. Because you, and all of you, were chosen for this operation on the basis of your unquestioning obedience as well as your other attributes and talents.”

  Farnbach sat back, his thick lips closed and his nostrils flaring, his face flushed.

  The man in white looked at his next clipped-together sheets. “No, Farnbach, I’m sure it was a statement,” he said, “and in that case I have to correct it slightly: by killing them you prepare the way for the fulfillment of the destiny, et cetera. It will come; not in April 1977, when the ninety-fourth man dies, but in time. Only obey your orders. Traunsteiner, you’ve got Norway and Denmark.” He handed the sheets away. “Ten in one, six in the other.”

  Traunsteiner took the sheets, his square red face set in a grim demonstration: Unquestioning Obedience.

  “Holland and the upper part of Germany,” the man in white said, “are for Sergeant Kleist. Sixteen again, eight and eight.”

  “Thank you, Herr Doktor.”

  “The eight in lower Germany and nine in Austria—make seventeen for Sergeant Mundt.”

  Mundt—round-faced, crop-headed, eyeglassed—grinned as he waited for the sheets to reach him. “When I’m in Austria,” he said, “I’ll take care of Yakov Liebermann while I’m at it!” Traunsteiner, passing the sheets to him, smiled with gold-filled teeth.

  “Yakov Liebermann,” the man in white said, “has already been taken care of, by time, and ill health, and the failure of the bank where he kept his Jewish money. He’s hunting for lecture-bookings now, not for us. Forget about him.”

  “Of course,” Mundt said. “I was only joking.”

  “And I’m not. To the police and the press he’s a boring old nuisance with a file cabinet full of ghosts; kill him and you’re liable to turn him into a neglected hero with living enemies still to be caught.”

  “I never heard of the Jew-bastard.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  The men laughed.

  The man in white handed his last pair of sheets to Hessen. “And for you, eighteen,” he said, smiling. “Twelve in the United States and six in Canada. I count on your being your brother’s brother.”

  “I am,” Hessen said, lifting his silver head, the sharp-planed face proud. “You’ll see I am.”

  The man in white looked around at the men. “I told you,” he said, “
that the men are to be killed on or near the date given with each one’s name. ‘On’ is of course better than ‘near,’ but only microscopically so. A week one way or the other will make no real difference, and even a month will be acceptable if you have reason to think it will make an assignment less risky. As for methods: whichever you choose, provided only that they vary and that there’s never any suggestion of premeditation. The authorities in no country must suspect that an operation is under way. It shouldn’t be difficult for you. Bear in mind that these are sixty-five-year-old men: their eyes are failing; they have slow reflexes, diminished strength. They’re likely to drive poorly and cross streets carelessly, to suffer falls, to be knifed and robbed by hoodlums. There are dozens of ways in which such men can be killed without attracting high-level attention.” He smiled. “I trust you to find them.”

  Kleist said, “Can we hire someone else to take an assignment or to help with it? If that seems the best way of bringing it off?”

  The man in white turned his hands out in wondering surprise. “You’re sensible men with good judgment,” he reminded Kleist; “that’s why we chose you. However you think the job should be done, that’s the way to do it. As long as the men die at the right time and the authorities don’t suspect it’s an operation, you have a completely free hand.” He raised a finger. “No, not completely; I’m sorry. One proviso, and it’s a very important one. We don’t want the men’s families involved, either as co-victims in any sort of accident or—in the case, say, of younger wives who might be open to romantic overtures—as accomplices. I repeat: the families aren’t to be involved in any way, and only outsiders used as accomplices.”

  “Why should we need accomplices?” Traunsteiner asked, and Kleist said, “You never know what you’re liable to run up against.”

  “I’ve been all over Austria,” Mundt said, looking at one of his sheets, “and there are places here I’ve never heard of.”

  “Yes,” Farnbach groused, looking at his single sheet, “I know Sweden but I certainly never heard of any ‘Rasbo.’”

  “It’s a small town about fifteen kilometers northeast of Uppsala,” the man in white said. “That’s Bertil Hedin, isn’t it? He’s the postmaster there.”

  Farnbach looked at him, his brow uplifted.

  The man in white met his gaze, and smiled patiently. “And killing Postmaster Hedin,” he said, “is every bit as important—correction, as holy—as I said it was. Come on now, Farnbach, be the fine soldier you’ve always been.”

  Farnbach shrugged and looked at his sheet again. “You’re…the doctor,” he said drily.

  “So I am,” the man in white said, still smiling as he turned to his briefcase.

  Hessen, looking at his sheets, said, “Here’s a good one: ‘Kankakee.’”

  “Right outside Chicago,” the man in white said, bringing up a stack of manila envelopes between spread-open hands. He spilled them onto the table—half a dozen large swollen envelopes, each lettered at a corner with a name: Cabral, Carreras, de Lima—a snifter was snatched from the sliding rush of them.

  “Sorry,” the man in white said, sitting back. He gestured for the envelopes to be distributed, and took his glasses off. “Don’t open them here,” he said, pinching his nose, rubbing it. “I checked everything myself this morning. German passports with Brazilian entrance stamps and the right visas, working permits, driver’s licenses, business cards and papers; everything’s there. When you get back to your rooms, practice your new signatures and sign whatever needs signing. Your plane tickets are in there too, and some currency of the destination countries, a few thousand cruzeiros’ worth.”

  “The diamonds?” Kleist asked, holding his Carreras envelope in both hands before him.

  “Are in the safe at headquarters.” The man in white homed his eyeglasses in their petit-point case. “You’ll pick them up on your way to the airport—you leave tomorrow—and you’ll give Ostreicher your present passports and personal papers to hold for your return.”

  Mundt said, “And I just got used to ‘Gómez,’” and grinned. The others laughed.

  “What are we getting?” Schwimmer asked, zipping his portfolio. “In diamonds, I mean.”

  “About forty carats each.”

  “Ouch,” Farnbach said.

  “No, the tubes are quite small. A dozen or so three-carat stones, that’s all. They’re each worth about seventy thousand cruzeiros in today’s market, and more in tomorrow’s, with inflation. So you’ll have the equivalent of at least nine-hundred-thousand-odd cruzeiros for the two and a half years. You’ll live very nicely, in the manner befitting salesmen for large German firms, and you’ll have more than enough money for any equipment you need. Incidentally, be sure not to take any weapons with you on the plane; they’re searching everybody these days. Leave anything you’ve got with Ostreicher. You’ll have no trouble selling the diamonds. In fact, you’ll probably have to drive buyers away. Does that cover everything?”

  “Checking in?” Hessen asked, putting his attaché case by his side.

  “Didn’t I mention that? The first of each month, by phone to your company’s Brazilian branch—headquarters, of course. Keep it businesslike. You in particular, Hessen; I’m sure nine out of ten phones in the States are tapped.”

  Traunsteiner said, “I haven’t spoken Norwegian since the war.”

  “Study.” The man in white smiled. “Anything else? No? Well then, let’s have some more brandy and I’ll think of an appropriate toast to speed you on your way.” He picked up his cigarette case, opened it, and took out a cigarette. He closed the case and looked at it—and bringing his white sleeve to its inscribed face, briskly polished it.

  Tsuruko bowed and thanked the senhor. Tucking the folded bills down into the waist of her kimono, she slipped past him and hurried to the serving table, where Yoshiko was nesting together small bowls of drying leftovers. “He gave me twenty-five!” Yoshiko whispered excitedly. “What did you get?”

  “I don’t know,” Tsuruko whispered, crouching low, putting the leaning cover onto a rice bowl beneath the table. “I didn’t look yet.” With both hands she brought out the wide flat red-lacquered bowl.

  “Fifty, I’ll bet!”

  “I hope so.” Rising, Tsuruko hurried with the bowl past the senhor and one of his guests joking with Mori, and out into the hallway. She zigzagged her way through the other guests—handing shoehorns to one another, bending, crouching—and shouldered a swing-door open.

  She carried the bowl down a narrow flight of stairs lit by wire-strung bare bulbs, and along an equally narrow corridor with walls of plastered lath.

  The corridor opened into a steamy jangling kitchen where antique ceiling fans slowly turned their blades over a hubbub of waitresses, cooks, and helpers. Tsuruko in her pink kimono carried the wide red bowl among them; she passed a helper quick-chopping vegetables, and another who glanced up at her as he hauled a tray of dishes from a dripping glass-walled washer.

  She set the bowl on a table where boxes of mushrooms stood stacked, and turning, took from a canvas hamper of linens a used napkin, which she shook out and spread beside the bowl on the metal tabletop. She lifted the bowl’s cover and put it aside. Within the red bowl a black-and-chrome tape recorder lay, a Panasonic with English-marked controls, the sprockets of the cassette in its windowed compartment smoothly turning. Tsuruko hovered a hand above the buttons, then lifted the recorder from the bowl and set it on the napkin. She folded the napkin-sides up around it.

  Holding the wrapped recorder to her bosom, she went to a glass-paned door and took hold of its knob. A man sitting close by sewing at an apron looked up at her.

  “Leftovers,” she said, flashing the napkined shape at him. “An old woman comes by.”

  The man looked at her with tired eyes in a pinched yellow face; he looked down at his sewing hands.

  She opened the door and went out into an areaway. A cat sprang from garbage cans and fled toward a far-off passage end of streetlights a
nd neon.

  Tsuruko closed the door behind her and leaned into darkness. “Hey, are you there?” she called softly in Portuguese. “Senhor Hunter?”

  A figure hurried from the side of the passage, a tall lean man with a shoulderbag. “You do it?”

  “Yes,” she said, unwrapping the recorder. “It’s still going. I couldn’t think which button turns it off.”

  “Good, good, no difference.” He was a young man; his fine-featured face and crinkly brown hair caught the door’s light. “Where you put that?” he asked.

  “In a rice bowl under the serving table.” She gave the recorder to him. “With the cover leaning against it so they wouldn’t see.”

  He tilted the recorder toward the door and pressed one of its buttons and another; a high-pitched twittering sang. Tsuruko, watching, moved aside to allow him more light. “Near of where they sit?” he asked her. His Portuguese was bad.

  “From here to there.” She gestured from herself to the nearest garbage can.

  “Good, good.” The young man pressed a button, stopping the twittering, and pressed another: the voice of the man in white spoke in German, distantly, an echo surrounding it. “Very good,” the young man said, and stopped the voice with another button. He pointed to the recorder. “When you begin this?”

  “After they finished eating, just before he sent us out. They talked for almost an hour.”

  “They leave?”

  “They were going when I came down.”