“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.
Ten
“Rotspon?” the sommelier asked.
I nodded. Red wine flowed into crystal glasses. Around us, wealthy patrons of the Schabbelhaus, Lubeck’s most exclusive restaurant, dined in sedate ease. With the typical stubborness of Lubeckers, they permitted themselves only furtive glances at Vera, who looked as if she were born to wear low-cut evening dresses. Her blonde hair was piled high and decorated with a single emerald. Her lively smile showed none of the awe most Americans have in European restaurants, especially in places like the Schabbelhaus with its sixteenth century luxury. Vera was plainly no ordinary Mafiosa. We brought our glasses together in a mutual toast.
“Prost, Raki. And congratulations.”
“And the same goes to you, my partner.”
“I said we’d be good together,” she sipped her wine, as we ate artichoke hearts in Bearnaise sauce.
Our waiter appeared with a silver tureen and dished out wine-simmered veal à l’ancienne. An errant drop of juice spotted the edge of Vera’s plate, and he dabbed it off with a napkin held ready for the purpose. Rotspon, actually a French wine imported by the Lubeckers for centuries, was a little heavy for the veal, and I ordered a white Traminer, spicy and aromatic.
“Something tells me you’ve ordered wine here once or twice before,” Vera remarked while the sommelier vanished toward the cellar.
“No. It’s simply a matter of knowing what you want.”
“You always seem to know that. You’re like a one-man computerized army. DeSantis isn’t even in the same league with you. I should have realized that when we started out.”
“Well, Vera, now you know.”
“But, I still know almost nothing about you. Were you born rich or poor? Were you a smuggler or a mercenary soldier, or both? We’ve traveled through Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, and now Germany. How is it you speak every language? When I tell them about you, they’ll say you’re too good to be true.”
“Is that bad?”
“Unusual, Raki.”
“Then let’s say I’m unusual.” I chose to ignore the rest of her questions.
The Traminer arrived with fresh glasses. By then, Vera was holding my hand with an intimation of another kind of treat when we returned to our hotel room.
On the way to the hotel, though, we stopped at the Petrikirche cathedral and went up the tower for a panoramic view of the city of Lubeck. It was late afternoon and a cool breeze off the sea blew around the high spire.
“You’re finally going to tell me why we came to this city?” Vera asked after the guide had been paid and went on his way down the tower staircase.
“Just look around.”
Lubeck is the most medieval of all Germany’s major cities. The Petrikirche dates from the thirteenth century. The town’s best known landmark is the Holstentor, a dark, massive gate with twin dartlike spires standing in the middle of the central plaza. The Holstentor is famous enough to adorn the German 50 mark note. The town is crammed with narrow streets and tall, graceful houses also many hundreds of years old. At one time, Lubeck was the powerful capital of the Hanseatic League, and it retains a fierce independence. No army ever took it by siege. Hitler never visited, choosing even at the height of his fuhrership not to chance his popularity here. Typically, Willie Brandt was from Lubeck and ferried from there north to Norway to fight Hitler. Just as typically, Lubeckers still insist on calling Brandt by his pre-Resistance name of Herbert Frahm.
“I see a lot of interesting examples of medieval architecture,” Vera said. “What else should I see?”
I pointed over the city to the north. On the horizon was a green ribbon of water.