Adventures Page 11

  “Well?” I demanded.

  “If I had your money, or indeed if I had anybody's money, do you think I'd be staying in a place like this?” he said calmly. “You're welcome to search the premises, of course, but I can guarantee that you won't find anything except an exceptionally dirty shirt and a pair of socks with holes in them.”

  “What about my money?”

  “It was well spent,” he assured me with a smile. “You'd have enjoyed every shilling of it had you been in my place.”

  “I wasn't in your goddamned place!”

  “Well, yes, I was rather afraid you'd look at it that way,” he sighed.

  “Just how soon do you intend to make restitution, realizing of course that I'm going to be your constant companion until that happy moment occurs?” I said.

  “As soon as I can work out a few unpleasant details I'll be happy to pay you back, and with interest,” said Von Horst.

  “What details?” I demanded.

  “My dear fellow, I hope you don't think I'm in Casablanca for my health!”

  “Just what are you doing here?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I've been here for two months, working on the biggest deal of my life,” he said, lowering his voice. “But the Casablanca police know who I am, and I haven't been able to make a move without being watched. So here I sit, slowly going broke in this grubby hotel, less than half a mile away from a fortune that I could retire on. And the worst part of it is, there's a time limit on the damned operation! But sooner or later they'll have to relax their vigil, and then...” His voice trailed off.

  “Just how much is this deal worth?” I asked with as much lack of interest as I could muster on the spur of the moment.

  “At least fifty thousand pounds,” he said without hesitation.

  “That much?”

  He nodded—and then he stared at me kind of funnylike for a very long minute.

  “I wonder...” he said softly, still looking at me.

  “About what?” I said.

  “You know,” he said, more to himself than to me, “it just might work.”

  “What might?”

  “Jones,” he said suddenly, “forget about what I owe you. How would you like to make some real money?”

  “I imagine I could be coerced into it,” I admitted.

  “Good,” he said. “But we'll have to move fast. Can you be ready to leave the country in two or three hours?”

  “Ain't nothing around to stop me,” I replied.

  “Well, Jones,” he said, all businesslike, “I'm afraid we're going to have to trust each other, much as I dislike the thought of it. But unfortunately there is no way to avoid giving you the details of the plan. All I can do is assure you that such knowledge will do you absolutely no good without me.”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Three short blocks from here is a small Christian mission, run by two elderly German sisters and their middle-aged nephew. Inside the mission is a speaker's podium. On a shelf inside the podium is a copy of the Bible.” He paused for effect. “Jones, that Bible is a Jacobean Red Letter edition!”

  “That's something special?” I asked.

  “There were only six printed,” he said. “The sisters don't know what it is, so stealing it should present no great difficulty. But the moment I try to leave the country, or even the city, I'm going to be searched six ways to Sunday, and since I am not known as a religious man, sooner or later one of the gendarmes is going to send some telegrams to various religious organizations or antiquarian bookdealers, and then the shit will hit the fan.” He smiled. “However, no one will question a man of God who carries a Bible with him. You can walk out with it right under their noses!”

  “Sounds good to me, Brother Von Horst,” I said.

  “You are probably thinking that once I turn the Bible over to you, there is nothing to stop you from selling it and reaping the entire profits for yourself,” he continued.

  “Such a notion never crossed my mind!” I protested vigorously while crossing my fingers behind my back.

  “Well, just in case it does, let me tell you that forty-eight hours from now I intend to send a letter to the Moroccan government telling them what the Jacobean Red Letter Bible is, and grossly exaggerating how much it is worth. They will promptly put out a reward for its return worth considerably more than the book itself, and nine dealers out of ten will be more likely to turn you in for the reward than buy the book from you.”

  “So where are we going to sell it?” I asked.

  “There is an American collector who will be in Algiers exactly seven days from now,” said Von Horst. “He knows he'll be purchasing stolen goods, and is willing to run the risk that entails in exchange for getting possession of the Bible. You do not know his name, and he does not know yours. He will buy only from me. Have we got a deal?”

  I nodded, and shook his hand on it.

  “Good,” he said. “I will meet you ten minutes after dark.”

  “Here?” I asked.

  “No. They'll be watching this place.” He lowered his head in thought for a moment, then looked up. “Do you know where the Bousbir is?”

  “I'm sure I can find it,” I replied earnestly.

  “First lounge to the right, ten minutes after dark,” he said.

  I returned to the Bousbir, gave a couple of the girls one last strenuous coaching session, and waited for dark. Von Horst showed up on schedule, panting like he'd been running full speed for a while, and thrust a Bible into my hands.

  “That's it!” he said. “Don't try to hide it. Just carry it out in the open and act like it was any other book. I'll be creating a diversion while you escape with it.”

  “Fine,” I said, tucking it under my arm. “When and where do we meet?”

  “On the waterfront in Algiers is a tavern known as the Fisherman's Reward. Today is the ninth of August. You must meet me there on the sixteenth of August at precisely one-fifteen p.m. If you come early, you may attract undue attention, and if you're even five minutes late our buyer may lose his nerve and depart. Have you a reliable watch?”

  “Not since a little card game I got into in Johannesburg,” I admitted.

  He pulled a beat-up gold watch out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Take mine,” he said. “And try not to gamble it away.”

  “What's that little thing dangling from the chain?” I asked.

  “A rabbit's foot,” he answered. “For luck.”

  “Well, I hope it brings me more luck than it brought the rabbit,” I said. “I guess I might as well get started now.’

  He stuck his head out into the hall, then nodded and gestured that it was clear. A few minutes later I was on the main road out of town, heading toward Algeria.

  Just as I reached the outskirts of Casablanca I heard a lot of shooting and sirens and things behind me, but no one bothered me, so I kept right on walking. I stopped in the city of Fez long enough to buy another Bible that looked for all the world just like the Jacobean Red Letter edition, and made it to the Algerian border on the evening of the eleventh. The Moroccan and Algerian border patrols and customs officials searched me up and down and sideways, and spent the better part of an hour jabbering about the tooth of a lion or leopard or something, which made absolutely no sense to me, but they finally let me pass and I bedded down in Algeria.

  I hitched a ride on an oxcart into Ouahran and spent a considerable portion of the day exploring the scenic wonders of that exotic city, which didn't look a whole lot different from Casablanca except that it didn't have nothing to compare to the Bousbir. I stopped at the local library just before closing time, found the dustiest, most unused bookshelf in the place, stuck the Jacobean Red Letter Bible up against the wall behind a set of books about French civil law where no one would be able to see it, and continued on my way.

  I did a little vigorous preaching the next morning, and so amused a tribe of Berbers that they fed me and let me ride on horseback with them to the outskirts of Algier
s, where they pitched their tents. Since I didn't want to show up too early, I spent the next couple of days in the Berbers’ camp teaching them a somewhat sporting form of rudimentary statistical analysis having to do with the number twenty-one, and when I finally took my leave of them I took certain fond gold and paper remembrances with me.

  I arrived on the waterfront just before noon on the appointed day and quickly spotted the Fisherman's Reward, a seedy-looking dive with a clientele more in need of salvation than most. I spent the next hour walking around the area, checking Von Horst's watch every few minutes, and practically beating off a steady stream of street urchins who all seemed to be business agents for their older sisters.

  Finally, at exactly one-fourteen, I walked into the tavern and took a seat at an empty table in the back. Von Horst arrived about a minute later and joined me.

  “Have a good trip?” he asked in low tones.

  “No problems,” I said. “Where's our buyer?”

  “He should be here any second,” said Von Horst. “He's already put down some earnest money with a confederate of mine.”

  We ordered a couple of beers and waited in silence. When no one else had walked in by one-thirty, Von Horst went over to the bar and made a quick phone call. He came back to the table looking very upset.

  “Louis Blaine has been arrested,” he said grimly.

  “Our buyer?”

  He nodded. “The stupid son of a bitch got drunk last night and took a punch at the Prefect of Police.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked, starting to feel kind of uneasy around the edges.

  “We wait,” said Von Horst. “He ought to be out in a couple of weeks, and we'll try to set up another meeting with him. In the meantime, we'll live on his down payment. Have you got the book with you?”

  Well, as you can imagine, I wasn't in any hurry to let Von Horst spend two weeks examining the particular Bible I was toting around, so me and the Lord held a quick pow-wow to devise a course of action.

  “I don't want to wait,” I announced at last. “You know what these jerkwater countries are like. He could be in jail for years.”

  “There's really no alternative,” Von Horst replied. “I wasn't kidding about writing the Moroccan government. Right now that book's too hot to try to sell elsewhere.”

  “Well, it just don't seem fair that I should be stuck in this hellhole because your buyer went and did something stupid,” I said. “After all, I fulfilled my part of the bargain.”

  “I don't know what you expect me to do about it,” he replied irritably. “I'd pay you if I could, but I don't have the money.”

  “You've got the down payment,” I said. “How much was that?”

  “Five thousand pounds,” he answered kind of grudgingly.

  “That's more than twice what you stole from me back in Dar-es-Salaam,” I said. “Give it to me and we'll call things square. I just want to get the hell out.

  “It's a deal!” he said enthusiastically. “Let me have the Bible.”

  “Let me have the money first,” I said.

  He shrugged, pulled an envelope out of his pocket, and handed it over to me. I opened it, thumbed through the wad of bills, nodded, and stuck it inside my shirt.

  “Here it is,” I said, pulling the Bible out of my shirt and giving it to him. I held my breath as he gave it a brief look, but it was too dark in the bar for him to notice that it wasn't the Red Letter edition.

  “You're crazy, Jones,” he said, placing the Bible on the table next to his glass. “Within two weeks, three at the most, he'll be out and you could have had twenty-five thousand pounds.”

  “The Good Lord frowns on greed,” I said piously.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “Could I borrow some money from you, to get me through to ... ah...?”

  “Why not?” I said with a smile, giving him some of my Berber money. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It's a pleasure to do business with you, Doctor Jones.”

  “Same here,” I said, rising and shaking his hand.

  “By the way,” he added, “do you suppose a rich man like yourself would mind giving me my watch back?”

  I chuckled, handed it to him, and left the tavern. The second I got out the door I took off like a bat out of hell for the nearest ticket office, booked passage on a boat that was leaving Algiers in ten minutes, paid for it with my Berber winnings so as not to flash the five thousand pounds Von Horst had given me, and raced up the gangplank without being seen.

  As soon as we were safely out to sea I hunted up a deckhand and found out that I was aboard The Dying Quail, bound for the Cape after going through Gibraltar. It wasn't exactly my first choice of destinations, but with five thousand pounds in my pocket I wasn't too upset about it. And, along with the money, I still had the Red Letter edition of the Bible, which I figured on returning for in a year or two, when the gendarmes were a little less sensitive about such things.

  After spending a few minutes walking around the deck convincing everyone that I was perfectly calm and had nothing to hide, I went back to my cabin, locked the door, and pulled out the envelope. As I removed the money prior to putting it in orderly stacks and admiring it a little before dinnertime, a small folded piece of paper fluttered down to the floor.

  I picked it up, opened it, and read it as follows:

  11th August, 1923

  My Dear Doctor Jones:

  As you may very well have guessed by now, there is of course no such thing as a Jacobean Bible, let alone a Red Letter edition of it. I apologize for having fooled you, but since you have doubtless hidden it somewhere and substituted another totally worthless Bible in its place, I must confess that I don't feel quite as guilty as I otherwise might. This entire affair began when I first saw you back in Casablanca. I was under constant surveillance by the local police—that much, at least, was true—and I needed an accomplice who could take something out of the country for me. You really are not the most observant person I have ever encountered; I must have wasted five afternoons in that incredibly boring marketplace before you finally recognized me—and even then I almost lost you a couple of times while you were shadowing me back to my hotel.

  If you have read this far you have doubtless figured out that there never was a Louis Blaine. He is, of course, one of my professional identities, and I hereby will him to you, to use whenever you wish. He was, however, absolutely essential to the success of this operation, for without him you would have had no reason to show up at precisely one-fifteen, and thus I would have had no reason to give you my watch. Hidden in the rabbit's foot is the Lion's Tooth, the largest and most valuable diamond in Africa. I thank you for delivering it in such excellent condition.

  If you are reading this for the first time, I must assume that you have not yet spent any of the five thousand pounds I allowed you to swindle me out of. My advice to you is that if you must spend them you do so very carefully, as the print job is of an inferior grade and they are worth, if anything, even less than the Bible.

  Your obedient servant,

  Erich Von Horst

  About ten seconds after I put the letter down I got violently seasick for the first time in my life.

  Chapter 7

  MUTINY

  The Dying Quail didn't have much in the way of a passenger list, but on the other hand The Dying Quail wasn't all that much of a ship, so things kind of worked out even. I had heard that shipboard romances could be really memorable occurrences, but the only person who I could find on deck at night was a wrinkled old dermatologist from Korea who spent the better part of a week trying to convince me that contrary to popular belief the earth was really flat, or at the very least built along the lines of a gently pitched roof.

  The food was okay if you liked tuna. It was absolutely terrible if you didn't. I didn't, and by the third or fourth day out of port, I don't think anybody else did either.

  There was an elderly English couple who had just bought a cattle farm in t
he Transvaal area and spent most of their time fighting about whether to butcher them all on the spot or maybe get a little milk from them first. There was a scrawny blond Swede who never left his cabin except to eat tuna and then get rid of it over the side of the boat. There was a trio of German girls, round and firm and much too fully packed, who didn't speak a word of any civilized tongue and spent all their time taking pictures, not that the water off the Ivory Coast looked all that different from the water next to Liberia. There were a couple of East Indian men who would strip off all their clothes every morning, sit in the blazing sun all day with their legs crossed kind of painful-like, tell everybody not to eat hamburgers, and then go back to their rooms as soon as it was dark. We had a down-on-his-luck actor from Canada who kept reciting the more obscure soliloquies from Troilus and Cressida, and a writer from Paraguay who drank in most of his local color from a bottle of Scotch. And, finally, we had a stunningly beautiful belly dancer from Greece who apologized for distracting us but explained that she had to sunbathe in the nude because her audiences didn't like to see different shadings where various straps had been. Watching her body get an even tan was about as quick-moving a spectator sport as watching paint dry, but it did hold certain advantages over paint-watching when viewed in all of its many aspects, and it provided me with just about my only form of diversion during the first week of the voyage.

  The captain and the crew were nominally British, but I don't think more than half of them had ever gotten to within five hundred miles of London or Liverpool. The rest were swarthy, unwashed seamen who swore in Slavic tongues and spent a lot of time glaring sullenly at the passengers, who either ignored them or lectured them on the evils of eating beef. The captain himself was a jovial, balding little man with a red mustache, white knee-length shorts, a huge belly, and a driving urge for perfection that caused him to tell a joke thirty or forty times until he got it right.

  It was on our eighth day out of Algiers that the captain, whose name was Roberts, announced that he was sick and tired of talking to the crew and would be interested in picking up the gauntlet of any passenger who might care to challenge him to a game or two of chance. Well, the Indians probably couldn't have uncrossed their legs even if they'd wanted to, and the belly dancer was busy soaking up the sun, and the writer was too drunk, and the German girls couldn't understand him, and most of the other passengers were otherwise occupied, which meant that a few minutes later Captain Roberts and I were sitting across a table from one another, mano a mano, preparing for a little contest of skill involving a small stack of colorful pasteboards.