by Morris West
“You are swimming in dark waters here, Carl. France is not America. The Côte d’Azur is not Coney Island. Oh, yes, I know you have more gangsters and crooks than we do, but ours is a different mode—how do you say it?—a different idiom. I live in Nice. I run a modest art gallery, but even I make my contributions to the Corsicans who run everything right along the coast from Ventimiglia to Marseilles. It’s dressed up as a voluntary contribution to the Traders’ Association Promotional Fund, but it’s still protection money. And if you think you don’t need protection, they’ll teach you very quickly that you do. This disappearing trick you talk about doesn’t surprise me at all; but you’re not talking about amateurs here. They traffic in people all the time, all over the world: girls, boys, drug mules, illegal immigrants, criminal types on the run. The moment you step into their territory you’ll be as conspicuous as a bug under a microscope. And they’ll squash you without a second thought.”
“But do I have to be conspicuous? All we’re talking about here is a travel agency. I’m a traveler, looking for an exotic holiday.”
“You’re a traveler without a history. A man without a shadow.”
“So we create the history. It’s the oldest routine in spy novels. Even professionally it works. I’m an artist; I can create respectable pastiches in any style I want. You can represent my new work under my new name.”
“But don’t you see, that puts you in exactly the same position as your brother-in-law. You’re a new person, yes; but you’re a person nobody knows. You can drown without a ripple. And even I can’t shed a tear for you because I don’t know, do I?”
It was too grim a thought to dismiss lightly. We talked it over as we trudged through the river mist toward the hotel. Arlette was too much a hardhead to accept easy assumptions.
“Can you guarantee that your family or your business associates won’t drop a word out of place? Can you be sure that international computer records at frontiers, in banks—in travel agencies, for instance—match all along the line? If they don’t, lover, you’ll be hung out to dry with the laundry.”
“Everything I’m doing is a calculated risk.”
“Calculated on what?”
“On Larry himself. Unless these people see him as a real prize—not just as a tourist with exotic tastes—they have no reason to move against him or to expect an intruder like me.”
“Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” She was already burying herself in the bed. “They’ve spotted him as a mark. They’ve hooked him into the service network. His funds are already lodged in Geneva. He may be smart enough to play their game and quit when he’s ready, but he’s targeted already, make no mistake. Now come to bed, lover. Let’s not waste the rest of the night on things we can’t change until tomorrow!”
Arlette is a happy and enthusiastic lover, so it was easy to stifle the dark imps of foreboding; but when I woke at four in the morning they were perched on my pillow, mocking me. Arlette was sleeping, as she always did, deeply and calmly. I clawed myself into a dressing gown and went into the lounge, closing the door behind me.
In New York it was ten in the evening of yesterday. My father, I knew, would still be up, reading in his study. I called him. He answered instantly.
“You’re up late, my boy!”
“I just woke up. I needed to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I suggested you call Corsec and tell them their contract is in trouble. Have you done it yet?”
“Not yet. I hate to hurry into hostile action. Why do you ask?”
“I think I have a use for them.”
“At a much revised price, I hope.”
“At my price, which we’ll negotiate after I tell ’em about the foul-up in Paris. Then I want to commission them on my own account, so Strassberger isn’t involved. The company can pay me later—ex gratia.”
“Do you want to tell me what you have in mind?”
“I’d rather not.”
“As you choose, of course. Now I have something for you. I want you to remain in your hotel suite until midday. You’ll have a visit from a certain Oskar Kallman. Receive him in private and listen carefully to what he tells you.”
“Who is he?”
“An old friend, well regarded in high places, although he’s retired now. By the time he’s briefed you fully, we’ll have funds at your disposal with Morgan Guaranty in Paris. Call me after you’ve talked with Oskar. Oh, one other thing. Madi was much cheered by your call. She’s working tonight on the matter you discussed.”
“Dr. Levy is doing the same thing.”
“I’d like to meet that woman one day.”
“That’s simple enough. Ask Madi to arrange it. I’ll have to leave you now. I have another call to make.”
“Good night, Carl. Telephone me after you’ve spoken with Kallman!”
I opened my briefcase and fished out the Corsec card on which Giorgiu Andrescu had written his contact number. I dialed it and waited through what seemed an interminable series of switching operations. Finally Andrescu himself answered with a noise of chatter in the background. He sounded irritable.
“Who is this?”
I told him. He was immediately attentive.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Strassberger?”
“I need some special service, George. And I need it billed to me personally, not to Strassberger.”
“That’s easily arranged.” He laughed. “Your credit’s good.”
“I should tell you, George. Corsec’s credit is a little tarnished. I’m telling you as a friend because I don’t want the same problem on my job.”
“What happened, for Pete’s sake?”
I told him at length and in detail about the hostile reactions in Strassberger’s Paris office. He listened in silence until I had delivered the final punch line.
“So as soon as I hit Paris, I was faced with the real possibility of a walkout by senior staff and the specific instance of one person who admitted lying because, and I quote, ‘I didn’t like the gorilla who was asking the questions.’”
Giorgiu Andrescu swore explosively and obscenely. He was too bright to give me an argument. He apologized.
“I’m sorry. We were asked to work fast. We had to scratch up an investigating team in a hurry. The man who led ’em is a hard-nosed interrogator but not a leader or a diplomat. The foul-up is clearly my responsibility. I’ll write your father a letter of explanation and apology and we’ll discount the charges. Now, please keep talking while I move to my desk. Tell me what I can do for you.”
“When we met in New York, you told me that with a free hand, you could deliver much better information.”
“I remember the conversation, yes.”
“In your records you’ll find the acronym SVEEO.”
“I remember that too.”
“The initials stand for a Milan travel agency: Simonetta Travel, Europe and Overseas. It’s run by a man called Francesco Falco. It has branches in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. They specialize in exotic destinations and specifically advertise a service for wealthy dropouts. I believe that Larry used their service in Paris and Milan. My question is—”
“Don’t ask the question.” Andrescu cut in brusquely. “The answer is, yes we can. We can tell you who, when, where, how much. You fax me everything you’ve got. I’ll get some action moving right away. Where are you staying?”
“Le Diplomate, but I may have to move shortly. I may be signing up myself for a trip with Simonetta—in which case it would be nice to think you were following my bouncing ball on your charts as well as Larry Lucas!”
“Give us departure dates and transport details; we’ll do the rest.”
“Next question: Who handles it and how much?”
“I’ll handle it myself. Strassberger is important to us. You’re important. I’d like to clean the slate.”
“And the cost? This is me, solo, remember.”
“Give me half a minute.”
He was back on the li
ne in twenty-five seconds.
“Fifty thousand on signing, fifty each on the closing of each case, yours and Lucas’s, plus twenty-five thousand in each case for delivery of a live body. That’s everything, capped at two hundred thousand.”
“No extras? No overheads?”
“None at all.”
“You’ve got a deal. I’ll remit the first funds tomorrow, bank to bank. Do you want me to sign a contract?”
“In this case, better we don’t. You can’t really give me an effective list of requirements. I can’t specify how we’ll meet them. So we’re both working by guess and by God.”
“What’s the first step?”
“You send me everything you have on Simonetta Travel. We’ll start immediately building our own file. I wish we’d known this ten days ago.”
“You could have—except you had a gorilla asking the questions.”
“Don’t rub it in, please! We’ve got a team of juvenile geniuses running our electronics, but we’re still recruiting our investigating staff from auditors and the offices of district attorneys. Old Romanian proverb: ‘The best wine is drunk from golden cups, but you still need mules to haul the barrels.’ Besides, we’re starting fresh, remember? I assume this cancels out the handshake deal your father proposed?”
“It does.”
“Then I’ll expect your fax and I’ll get busy.”
“I’m sorry if I spoiled your party.”
“Party? That’s not a party. It’s work time. We’re surfing and trawling the networks for information. We’ll be doing the same for you very soon. You’ll be surprised at what we can turn up when we put our minds to it.”
As I set down the receiver, I was vividly conscious of the irony of the situation. Here we were, the Strassberger clan and all our extended family of friends and retainers, committing our lives and our money to the search for a man who had, of his own free will, in his own wisdom or unwisdom, opted to leave his wife and children to make a new life for himself alone.
Every great city in the world has its own garbage dump of disposable humanity—men, women, children of all ages. All the money in the world could not buy them out of their bondage of poverty, ignorance, and dead-end despair, but we could alleviate some of it, give hope to a few, save some at least from an extension of horror.
Yet here was Larry Lucas, playing his loony tune, dancing his crazy jig, and leading us all on his merry dance to nowhere. It made no sense at all. It was, if you stared at it long enough, a blasphemous abuse of the privilege which our family enjoyed, and which we might at this very moment be putting to better use.
“Come back to bed,” said Arlette from the doorway. “I’m cold, and you look angry enough to start a fire. Let’s do a little heat exchange, eh? Afterward, if you must, you can explain about these four-in-the-morning phone calls!”
In those small, dark, vulnerable hours of early morning, I felt a special gratitude and a new surge of affection for Arlette Tassigny. I was, let me say it plain, beginning to be afraid. I was resenting Larry because he had exposed me to fear and made me ashamed of my spoilt, protected self. Arlette understood. Her passion restored my damaged self-respect, bolstered my wavering courage.
Long after dawn, when we sat over coffee and croissants, she told me in her terse, pragmatic fashion, “You’re easy to read, Carl. You’ve been brought up in the nice, tidy, controllable world which your father built for you. You left it, but you were able to set up an equally tidy world for yourself: scholar, artist, well-organized gypsy with markets for his wares. Now that world’s out of joint. You’re scrambling around in strange country—and suddenly it hits you that your brother-in-law may not be worth all the trouble he’s giving you.”
“Do you believe he is?”
“Listen, Carl! You took on this job. Right or wrong, ready or unready, you’re stuck with it.”
“You don’t think I’m ready, is that it?”
“I told you last night, you’ve got a lot to learn. Don’t be angry. It’s true. Up till now, you’ve managed very comfortably to ignore the needy of the world. I don’t think you have any right to start drawing distinctions between them. Larry is family. You’re asked to find him, not deliver a judgment on him. You made promises which maybe you shouldn’t have made, but you have to keep them. Because we’re friends and I love you more than a little, I have to keep you honest. You understand that, I think?”
I understood it, but the taste of the truth was sour in my mouth. I had no argument against it. I wanted no contest with Arlette. I kissed her and thanked her and set her on her rounds of the galleries. She promised she would be back at the end of the day and bring her luggage with her. I was absurdly pleased at the prospect. Never before had I felt so great a need of her presence.
5
AT TEN-THIRTY THAT MORNING, the man called Oskar Kallman presented himself at my door. My first impression was that he was a beautifully groomed specimen in late middle age. His gray hair had been trimmed by a first-rate barber; his lean, tanned face was freshly shaven. He was wearing a gray suit, cut by a Savile Row tailor, with a bow tie and a fall of blue silk handkerchief at the breast pocket. His accents in French and English were Canadian. His eyes were shrewd, his smile open and friendly. He carried a small but expensive leather briefcase. His handshake was firm and dry.
“I’m Oskar Kallman. You’re Carl Emil, and you’re the image of your old man—but just for the record you’d better show me some identification.”
I opened the room safe, took out my passport, and handed it to him. He studied it closely for a moment, then laid it face down on the coffee table. He sat down. I sat facing him and waited in silence. He explained briskly.
“Your father and I are old friends. In the cold-war days I worked for Canadian Intelligence. Strassberger was one of our several bankers. Your father proved himself a man of singular discretion. He asked no questions about the operation of our accounts. He executed the orders we gave him with good sense and understanding. I’m a document man by training. A lot of lives depended on the acceptability of my papers: identity cards, passports, family histories, professional dossiers, everything. I was—come to that, I still am—very good at it. However, I’m retired now. I accept occasional assignments only. I’ve invested in a perfume enterprise, quite near where you live. So, that’s me. My name isn’t Oskar Kallman, but it serves me well enough in part-time activities.
“Your father telephoned me. He explained your situation and the dangers of your involvement with this Simonetta Travel organization. He expressed the view that you needed complete cover—a whole new identity, in fact. Do you agree? Please don’t hesitate to argue the matter. It’s your life on the line.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“You’re the professional. How does my plan look to you?” I asked him.
“As far as I can see, you don’t have a plan. You’ve just got an idea.”
“I think it’s more than just an idea.”
“Convince me of that.”
“Item one: I already have a flexible identity. I’m a temperamental artist, who wants to broaden his horizons. I read about Simonetta in a hotel magazine. It sounded like an interesting starting point for my travel inquiries.”
“But their routing and your first choice may lead you a thousand miles away from Mr. Lucas.”
“That brings me to item two: I am hiring an international security firm, which Strassberger employs, to tap into the computer systems of Simonetta Travel and see if we can identify any one of their clients as Larry Lucas.”
“I like that. Go on.”
“My father is lodging funds for me with Morgan Guaranty. They’ll be sufficient to make me a possible target, like Larry.”
“In my view you’re very much alike. Each of you is going like a lamb to the slaughter.”
“For different reasons.”
“I don’t know either of you well enough to comment on that. Certainly you’re both waving money around like dru
nken sailors.”
“It’s bait for the bears.”
“Maybe.” He frowned dubiously. “However, the essential person in all this is you: your own capacities and instincts, how flexible you are, how comfortable you can be with a new persona. Before we go any further, I’d like to examine this question with you. It isn’t a game, you see. It isn’t just a piece of acting. It’s a surgical operation. You’re divested of one self. You acquire another. You will experience trauma. Contrary instincts will begin to work in your unconscious mind. There will be moments when you will feel caught in quicksand, when you will know that you can kill yourself in the struggle to find a foothold. I could tell you a lot of stories about such cases. I won’t bore you with them; but the message is constant. You will face some kind of crisis in your own identity. You will risk becoming a casualty, as your brother-in-law has done.”
It was a curious moment. In a few minutes this dapper fellow had confronted me as an authority figure. I saw myself sitting before him meek and dumbstruck, incapable of protest. Finally, I found words to assert myself.
“You talk of trauma and crisis. If the identity you provide for me is comfortable enough, why should there be trauma?”
Oskar Kallman smiled and shook his head.
“It isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. On the one hand the client must be comfortable in the suit his tailor makes for him. On the other, any deception creates a fault line in the personality. Under extreme stress it will crack along that fault line. Of course, one hopes that such extreme stress may be avoided…Now take off your jacket and tie. Stand over there against the blank space between the pictures. Just relax and look straight at me.”
He opened his briefcase, fished out a camera, and took a series of flash exposures. Then he put the camera back in his briefcase and brought out a manila folder, which he laid beside my passport.
“Now let’s be comfortable and discuss this great sea change. You were horn in the United States and educated there and in Europe. You’ve visited Canada on a number of occasions. You speak French comfortably, with a pronounced regional intonation. I think a Canadian identity would sit quite well on you. We could construct a biography which would fit the major circumstances of your life—and which, therefore, would be easier to sustain. The documents for it are easy for me to obtain. Also, and most importantly, it provides a reason for your change of lifestyle, your desire for exotic locations and fresh experience. The Canadian climate is harsh, the light is bleak, the landscape often unutterably boring, yes?”
