The Devil's Dozen

Nine

Saarguemines was French. On the other side was Saarbrucken, Germany. Dividing the towns was a river and a railway customs station.

“I don’t understand,” Vera said for the hundredth time. “If we’re not bringing the opium in by the railroad car, what is so important about a shipment of almond powder?”

“Vera, if I thought I should tell you, don’t you think I would have by now?”

“I m sorry.”

She stepped out onto the balcony. Our hotel room overlooked the river. In the twilight, the river barges floated by the way they had for centuries, their cabins lit by oil lamps.

“Sometimes, though,” she added. “I think this railway car of yours is nothing but a decoy. Is that the case, Raki?”

She turned to face me in the electric glare of the bare bulb in our room. Vera looked as if she were near tears, and she never looked more desirable. I desired her, to put it simply. Living with her, making love with her had become part of my life. It was a lie, and lies come to an end, but while it lasted I welcomed it.

“Without the almond powder, there is no shipment.”

I joined her on the balcony. In the gloom beyond the balcony’s marble rail, in Saarguemines’ twisting streets was probably a car of waiting men. If I told her now where the opium was, the men would come up, kill me, and feed what was left of me to the river’s eels. Of course, there might be no car of men. The last double murder might have ended all contact between her and the Corsicans. No matter what her status with the American Mafia was, it might be that she was as likely to be hit now as me. Or maybe she was so in love with a Turk named Raki Senevres that she only wanted to help him.

The last possibility was the least likely.

I took Vera away from the balcony to the bed. Lying down, her hair a gold fan around her face, she watched as I undressed her. Her breasts spread slightly, touching her arms. Her nipples were pink and erect. She raised her hips as I pulled her pants off. Glints of gold shone in the soft triangle of hair on the Venus mound. I dropped my own clothes in a chair. She spread her legs slightly as I joined her.

“So I should trust you,” she whispered against my ear.

“Like I trust you.”

At the same time, two border guards, one French and the other German, dipped cups into bags of almond powder at the Saarguemines-Saarbrucken crossing. Each would taste every bag, I knew, dipping their scoops at increasingly deeper levels to make sure that in the shipment of sweet almond dust there was no hint of opium’s dreamy alkaloid bouquet.

Vera’s eyes closed. Her tongue ran over her teeth. I plunged farther. Her stomach rose to meet me, then fell away as I came halfway out. Vera’s fingertips sank into the tight curls of her triangle and pulled the lips wide.

The customs guards would roll the last bit of almond powder between their tongues and soft palates, then wash out their mouths in comraderie with a shared bottle of local wine. Each bag would then be bound and its documentation slip stamped with the customs stamps of the Republics of France and Federal Germany next to the customs stamps of Portugal and Spain. The bindings of each bag would be sealed by wire and lead impressed with the S-S mark of the Saarguemines-Saarbrucken station and the code numbers of both the French and German inspectors. The bags would then be dragged out of the inspection shed, over the station platform, and into the car. During the night, the car loaded with almond powder would be switched with all other inspected cars onto the track heading over the bridge to Germany.

Our hotel room was quiet, locked into a moment of time. Vera’s mouth remained pressed to my cheek. The climax was spent, but I stayed inside her, still hard, still feeling as much a part of a woman as a man ever can.

A metallic cry broke the distant night.

“What was that?” Vera asked.

“It’s the switching yard. They’re assembling the train for the early morning run.”

“Where to?”

I could feel her pulse quicken.

“From here it goes to Hell,” I said.

The next day was bright, with a sky as blue as a Teuton’s eyes. No Corsicans from Action delayed us on the French side of the river, and on the German side we were welcomed like any other tourists. Our Mercedes purred up a clean German highway to Cologne. Cologne is an industrial center, and Vera thought she had the answer to the system.

“There are 50,000 Turkish workers in this area. You have them bring in the opium here and in Munich. You probably process the opium to heroin here. The almond powder was nothing but a ruse to keep the Corsicans watching you instead of the shipment. I still don’t see how that helps you get the shipment to New York, but Cologne is the key.” I didn’t bother to reply.

We drove through Cologne and on north. Vera’s theory fell further and further behind us.

“I don’t get it. Why are we still traveling?”

“Look,” I pointed out the window.

Over rolling farming land, set so far away it looked like a toy, was an old steam locomotive pulling a train.

“The train? We’re still following that? But we’re going to Bonn, there’s nothing there.”

Vera was almost right. Bonn is the capital of West Germany. Other than that, Bonn could be a forgotten country town. It is sleepy and bucolic, too dull even for German legislators who prefer to commute from homes in more cosmopolitan Cologne. Bureaucrats, who can’t afford such style, live well outside Bonn in tidily planned suburbs. The foreign diplomatic corps finds what excuses it can to travel to Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg, in short, anywhere but Bonn.

Nothing ever happens in Bonn, especially nothing like crime. Berlin has the spy business, and Munich has sex.

“Bonn,” I told Vera.

We got a motel room near the center of the capital. Vera fretted, looking out the motel window at a “Keep Off The Grass” sign. People in Bonn do keep off the grass.

“Take it easy,” I reassured her. “You look like you’re related to the Krupps. I look like a foreign diplomat. We’re not so out of place. Haven’t you ever been in Germany before?”

“Berlin, the Alps.”

“Ah, wherever the international set congregates. A skier?”

“I’d heard Bonn was dead, but I never knew it was this dead,” she avoided my question, turning her back to me.

“You’re wrong. This is just where it gets exciting.”

Vera had more than Bonn to be nervous about. Mafia influence is centered in the Americas and Mediterranean Europe. The influence fades the further from those centers you go. Munich, in the south of Germany, is the last outpost of any Mafia power. Cologne, near the middle of Germany, is the last contact point with Munich influence. Bonn, north of Cologne, is out of reach. We were now in No Man’s Land. Vera’s last options were dead; she was on my side now whether she wanted to be or not.

In the motel room’s mirror, I watched her take a Sobranie from my pack and fight it. She blew out a steady stream of blue smoke.

“Okay, Raki, it’s your show.”

After supper, we drove out of town to Bonn’s airport. The airport is equipped with jet-length landing strips, implying a heavy stream of international traffic, but the terminal is small, and, it was almost deserted that evening.

“This is my idea of a slow town, when you drive out to the airport for excitement,” Vera joked.

“Good. Now, I am going in by the hangar gate. In twenty minutes the night flight from Cairo will be coming in with diplomatic pouches for all the Arab states. I am collecting those pouches, and I will drive out through the gate in a black Cadillac with diplomatic plates. You will follow the Cadillac at a distance. When I stop, wait until I’m alone, and then pick me up.”

I got out of the car and strided to the hangars. Vera gave me the satisfaction of a laugh that was on herself. It was a sweet sound and one I’d been waiting for a long time.

“Identifikation?” the green-uniformed guard demanded at the gate.

I handed him a diplomatic passport with my picture and the name of Political Officer Faisal Ben Sihd.

“You’re new here?” the guard studied my photo.

“Not that new,” I gave him a tone of rebuke as if he’d meant he couldn’t tell one Arab from another. He blushed defensively but still looked for my name on the list of authorized carriers.

“Come on, come on,” I prodded him.

“Your name isn’t here.”

AXE had paid well to have the name on the list. Was this going to be the one mistake that would bring the whole elaborate plan down?

“Give it to me,” I snatched his clipboard away and scanned the names. “There, you fool. You people have spelled it Feisal Sihid. Typical.”

Under my facade of arrogance, the sweat gathered on my brow. The guard was too cowed to notice. He opened the gate and almost dropped his submachine gun in the process. He never thought to ask why I hadn’t come with the embassy car.

The Cadillac belonging to the embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt was parked beside a fire truck. There were no Arabs present to give me an argument. The Arab Republic of Egypt Airline planes landing in Bonn were serviced by Lufthansa personnel. The driver who had brought the limousine from the embassy to the airport was gone, waiting in a park nearby for his last payoff. One of the traits of socialist countries like the UAR is that their embassy staffs are miserably paid or, as the CIA coins its euphemisms, “open to outside sponsorship.”

The red and white lights of the airport were spread out like a sparsely decorated Christmas tree. In five minutes, the running lights of a 707 appeared. The plane itself loomed out of the dark, as it landed in the roar of reversed turbines; I was already heading out onto the strip, following exactly the practice of the usual courier.

The ARE liner followed the luminous candles of a ground director and came to a halt like a great silver dog. A mobile ramp rolled up to the opening door, and the few night passengers disembarked glancing with sleepy curiosity at the waiting Cadillac. When they’d paraded past, I emerged from the limousine and ran up the steps.

“Where’s Ali?” the steward asked when I presented myself.

“The English flu.”

“You’re a liar,” the steward accused me. “I know Ali well. He’s out with some German girl, right? You can tell me.”

“But don’t tell anyone else,” I returned his male chauvinist smirk.

“That Ali,” the steward shook his head as he went to the baggage compartment. He came back dragging two canvas bags. He wasn’t laughing anymore. In fact, he was about to have a hernia to judge from the expression on his round face.

“What do you have in this bag?” he grunted. One of the bags sagged heavily against the side of the ramp.

I looked into the mouth of the baggage compartment as if Dr. Kissinger might be hiding in there.

“Codes,” I answered in a low voice.

“Aaahh,” the steward nodded, in on the secret.

I took possession of the bags. Each was of canvas and steel wire, closed at the top with a combination lock, and each was decorated on the side with the stencilled stripes and green stars of the UAR.

The weight was uneven — one bag was about thirty pounds and the other was over 200 pounds — and I slung the heavier one over my shoulder as I went down the ramp. At the Cadillac I found the steward indeed knew Ali well. Three Egyptian stewardesses sat happily in the back seat waiting for a ride into Bonn. They jabbered unhappily when I chased them out. I slung the diplomatic bags on the warmed seat.

The guard at the gate gave me no trouble. Diplomatic pouches are, except in extreme circumstances, immune to search. I could have been naked, and he wouldn’t have said a word, not unless he wanted to start an international incident. A white Mercedes coupe fell in behind the Cadillac as I rolled out the airport exit to the Bonn road. Vera let a few cars get between us as we entered traffic, then she followed, matching my speed.

Midway to the city, I swung the Cadillac off the main road into an area of mowed fields, creeks, and children’s playgrounds. On a bench, chainsmoking, was Ali.

“Everything is going well?” he sputtered as I opened the door and let him in. I told him about the steward and about the stewardesses.

“Inch Allah, everything is perfect,” I added and proved it with an envelope thick with German marks.

Ali ripped the flap open and flicked through the bills nervously. Venality out of the way, he became a patriot and checked the locks on the bags.

“You understand,” he said, “I wouldn’t do this if it had anything to do with the security of my country.”

“Naturally. Undo the bag, Ali. I won’t look.”

I heard a dial clicking. I could have told him the combination just from the sound, but there was no point in making a fool of him.

“It’s too heavy,” he groaned.

“I’ll do it.”

From the opened canvas bag I dragged a plastic bag stuffed with an ivory powder, 100 kilos of powder, $20 million of it.

“That’s opium,” Ah gasped.

“What did you think I was smuggling? Library books?”

“This is robbery,” Ali shook his envelope at me. “I should get much more.”

“If you’re lucky, and if you remain perfectly quiet, Ali, you will get more with the next shipment. Now, open the other bag, and redistribute the pouches so no one will ask why you arrived at the embassy with one full bag and one empty one. I am talking to you as a partner, Ah. I can talk to you in another way.”

Ah got the message. The envelope suddenly seemed adequate. He equalized the bags neatly, and I gave him a brotherly pat on the shoulder before he drove off. The psychology of a man like Ah was a simple one. There was no way of turning me in to Egyptian or German authorities now without making himself look bad, but with the next shipment he would — so he’d tell himself — get tough and demand more money. In the meantime, he would enjoy the rise in self esteem of being a dangerous character.

The Mercedes coasted up with its lights out. I threw the bag in the back, covered it with a blanket, and got in beside Vera.

“Now?” she asked.

“Now our railway car.”

I gave her the directions to Bad Godesberg, a small town south of Bonn.

We were there in ten minutes. Bad Godesberg was nothing more than a miniature hamlet with toy houses suffused by the blue glow of television sets. On its outskirts was a railway yard. A hurricane fence surrounded the yard but the fence had been broken through at a dozen different places by kids. In a night watchman’s faraway shed was the same mind-numbing hue of a television tube.

“You’re sure this is all the security here?” Vera wondered.

“Why should there be more? There’s nothing of value in this part of Germany but foodstuffs and manure. The natives say they spread the manure from Bonn.”

We parked, and I pulled the plastic bag out. Through one of the fence’s unofficial entries we climbed up the gravel sidebed of a track, into the yard.

There were five tracks in all, but I knew where the Bonn-Saarbrucken train would be sitting. With a dim flashlight, I found the car leased to Hauffman Ubersee Gesellschaft. I opened the door with my lessor’s key and hoisted up Vera and the bag. I closed the door behind us.

“So this is the car we’ve been following all across Europe,” she looked around. Twenty 100-kilo bags of almond powder covered the car floor. But for the customs stamps and inspection seals, the bags were exactly similar to the one I’d brought in.

“All across Europe so that they could be inspected as many times as possible by the most alert inspectors, Vera. That was the point.”

“How are you going to do the switch, though, Raki? Dump a bag of almond powder all over the car...”

I was already answering her question by making the switch. With a wire cutter, I snapped off the wire holding the inspectors’ seals on one bag of almond powder. The bag was still closed by its own elastic band. At the bank neck I inserted the tip of a penknife and cut around in a circle following the band.

“Hold this,” I gave Vera the knife.

Using both hands, I began pulling the sides of the bag down. What had seemed one bag was actually two, a heavy inner container with a thin outer skin. It was the outer skin, tattooed with customs stamps, that I peeled off. I held the bag of opium, and Vera pulled the skin up over it.

“How are you going to keep the outer bag on?”

I pulled up the band of the opium bag. The lower half rolled into my hands, revealing a tape that I removed. Underneath was an adhesive surface. She understood, helping me pull the outer bag snug as I fastened it to the underside of the band. When I let the band snap back the transfer was complete.

“And the seal?” Vera asked.

I bound the seal’s wire around the neck of the bag and brought the snapped sections together with a bond of cold solder.

“That won’t hold forever, Raki,” she protested. “Besides, any careful inspector will see its been cut.”

“It won’t have to hold forever,” I laughed. “Don’t you get it, Vera. All the careful inspections are over for these bags. They’ve been certified as nothing but pure almond powder, and the inspections from here on will be nothing more than a peek in the car to check the stamps. As for the handling, we’ll be doing it. The work is over, Vera. Everything from here on is fun.”

I dropped the bag of opium further back among the almond bags. There was no difference. The opium was anonymous and, better yet, stamped with the seal of approval. This was what the scientists in Special Effects hadn’t been able to figure out. They had searched for ways to hide 100 kilos of opium. The simpler, more effective method was to have the whole shipment right out in the open, but made so innocent it was beyond suspicion.

“You’ve done it,” Vera exulted. “It’s incredible. The German railroad will ship $20 million of opium for us in this car. Raki, I want to make love, now, here.”

Hurriedly, she pulled her sweater off. Her lush breasts hung as she leaned to step out of her pants. Before I could even start, she was undoing my belt.

I don’t know if it was the promised success or the money or the power that the system could bring, but Vera was urgently, amazingly aroused. In a second, at the touch of her fingers and hot mouth, I was too.

This wasn’t part of AXE’s masterplan. It was a strange, erotic bonus, a compulsion I gave in to. I laid Vera on the railroad car floor with a force that almost made it rock on its wheels.