Boys from Brazil (3 page)

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 and 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.”

“Good, good.” The young man tugged at the zipper of his blue-and-white airline bag. He was wearing a short blue denim jacket and blue jeans; he looked to be about twenty-three, North American. “You are a big helper to me,” he told Tsuruko, fitting the recorder into the bag. “My magazine is very happy when I bring home a story about Senhor Aspiazu. He is the most famous maker of the cinema.” Reaching to his hip, he brought out a wallet and opened it toward the light.

Tsuruko watched, holding the balled napkin. “A North American magazine?” she asked.

“Yes,” the young man said, separating bills. “
Movie Story
. A very important magazine of the cinema.” He smiled brightly at Tsuruko and gave bills to her. “One hundred and fifty cruzeiros. Many thanks. You are a big helper to me.”

“Thank you.” She glanced at the bills and smiled at him, bobbed her head.

“Your restaurant smells like a good one,” he said, pocketing his wallet. “I am in much hunger while I wait.”

“Would you like me to get something for you?” She tucked the bills into her kimono. “I could—”

“No, no.” He touched her hand. “I eat at my hotel. Thanks. Many thanks.” He gave her hand a squeeze, and turned and went long-legging into the passage.

“You're welcome, Senhor Hunter,” she called after him. She watched for a moment, then turned and opened the door and went in.

 

They had a round of complimentary drinks at the bar, persuaded to do so less by the pleadings of the tuxedoed Japanese—who introduced himself as Hiroo Kuwayama, one of Sakai's three owners—than by the presence there of a novel electronic ping-pong game; and this proved so engaging that another round was ordered and drunk, and still another debated upon but decided against.

At about eleven-thirty they went en masse to the checkroom to collect their hats. The kimonoed girl, giving Hessen his, smiled and said, “A friend of yours came in after you, but he didn't want to go upstairs uninvited.”

Hessen looked at her for a moment. “Oh?” he said.

She nodded. “A young man. A North American, I think.”

“Oh,” Hessen said. “Of course. Yes. I know who you mean. Came in after me, you say.”

“Yes, senhor. While you were going up the stairs.”

“He asked where I was going, of course.”

She nodded.

“You told him?”

“A private party. He thought he knew who was giving it, but he was wrong. I told him it was Senhor Aspiazu. He knows him too.”

“Yes, I know,” Hessen said. “We're all good friends. He should have come up.”

“He said it was probably a business meeting and he didn't want to break in. Besides, he wasn't dressed right.” She gestured down her sides, regretfully. “Jeans.” She fluttered slim fingers at her throat. “No tie.”

“Oh,” Hessen said. “Well, it's a shame he didn't come up anyway, just to say hello. He went right out again?”

She nodded.

“Oh well,” Hessen said, and smiled and gave her a cruzeiro.

He went and spoke to the man in white. The other men, holding hats and attaché cases, gathered around them.

The blond man and the black-haired man went quickly toward the carved entrance doors; Traunsteiner hurried into the bar and came out a moment later with Hiroo Kuwayama.

The man in white put a white-gloved hand on Kuwayama's black shoulder and talked earnestly to him. Kuwayama listened, and drew in breath, bit his lip, wagged his head.

He spoke and gestured reassuringly and hurried off toward the rear of the restaurant.

The man in white waved the other men sharply away from him. He moved to the side of the foyer and put his hat and his briefcase, less fat now, on a black lamp table. He stood looking toward the rear of the restaurant, frowning and rubbing his white-gloved hands together. He looked down at them, and put them at his sides.

From the rear of the restaurant Tsuruko and Mori came, in colorful slacks and blouses, and Yoshiko, still in her kimono. Kuwayama hustled them forward. They looked confused and worried. Diners glanced at them.

The man in white curved his mouth into a friendly smile.

Kuwayama delivered the three women to the man in white, nodded to him, and moved aside to watch with folded arms.

The man in white smiled and shook his head sorrowfully, ran a gloved hand back over his cropped gray hair. “Girls,” he said, “a really bad thing has come up. Bad for
me
, I mean, not for you.
Fine
for you. I'll explain.” He took a breath. “I'm a manufacturer of farm machinery,” he said, “one of the biggest in South America. The men who are with me tonight”—he gestured back over his shoulder—“are my salesmen. We got together here so I could tell them about some new machines we're putting into production, give them all the details and specifications; you know. Everything top secret. Now I've found out that a
spy for a rival North American concern
learned about our meeting just before it started, and knowing the way these people work, I'm willing to bet he went back to the kitchen and got hold of one of you, or even all of you, and asked you to eavesdrop on our conversation from some…secret hiding place, or maybe take pictures of us.” He raised a finger. “You see,” he explained, “some of my salesmen formerly worked for this rival concern, and they don't know—the concern doesn't know—who's with me now, so pictures of us would be useful to them too.” He nodded, smiling ruefully. “It's a very competitive business,” he said. “Dog eat dog.”

Tsuruko and Mori and Yoshiko looked blankly at him, shaking their heads slightly, slowly.

Kuwayama, who had moved around beside and behind the man in white, said sternly, “If any of you did what the senhor—”

“Let me!” The man in white threw an open hand back but didn't turn. “Please.” He lowered the hand, smiled, and took half a step forward. “This man,” he said good-naturedly, “a young North American, would have offered you some money, of course, and he would have told you some kind of story about it being a practical joke or something, a harmless little trick he was playing on us. Now, I can fully understand how girls who are not, I'm sure, being vastly overpaid—You aren't, are you? Is my friend here vastly overpaying any of you?” His brown eyes twinkled at them, waiting for an answer.

Yoshiko, giggling, shook her head vehemently.

The man in white laughed with her, and reached toward her shoulder but withdrew his hand short of touching her. “I didn't think so!” he said. “No, I was pretty damn sure he isn't!” He smiled at Mori and Tsuruko; they smiled uncertainly back at him. “Now, I can fully understand,” he said, getting serious again, “how girls in your situation, hard-working girls with family responsibilities—you with your two children, Mori—I can fully understand how you could go along with such an offer. In fact, I can't understand how you
couldn't
go along with it; you'd be stupid not to! A harmless little joke, a few extra cruzeiros. Things are expensive these days; I know. That's why I gave you nice tips upstairs. So if the offer was made, and if you accepted it, believe me, girls: there's no anger on my part, there's no resentment; there's only understanding, and a
need to know
.”