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.