Garden of Beasts

dough.”
    “You’re not going to chisel him.”
    “Sorry,” the businessman said, not looking the least contrite.
    “Well, in that case, Cyrus,” the Senator called, “good luck.”
    “We’ll keep our fingers crossed for you,” Gordon added.
    The businessman stopped, looked back.
    “I’m just thinking what might happen if Schumann finds out you not only tried to kill him but you stiffed him too.”
    “Knowing his line of work and all,” Gordon chimed in again.
    “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “He’ll be back here in a week, ten days.”
    The industrialist sighed. “All right, all right.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a booklet of bank drafts. He tore one out and started to write.
    Gordon shook his head. “Nope. You’re going to go dig up some good, old-fashioned scratch right now. Now. Not next week.”
    “Sunday night? Ten thousand?”
    “Now,” the Senator echoed. “If Paul Schumann wants greenbacks, greenbacks’re what we’re going to give him.”

Chapter Forty-Three
    They were sick of waiting.
    During their weekend in Amsterdam, Lieutenants Andrew Avery and Vincent Manielli had seen tulips in every color imaginable and looked at plenty of fine paintings and flirted with page-boyed blondes who had round, rosy faces (Manielli, at least; Avery being contentedly married). They’d enjoyed the company of a dashing Royal Air Force flier named Len Aarons, who was in the country on his own intrigues (about which he was as evasive as the Americans). They’d drunk quarts of Amstel beer and cloying Genever gin.
    But life on a foreign army base wears thin fast. And, in truth, they were also tired of hanging from tenterhooks, worrying about Paul Schumann.
    Now, though, the waiting was over. At 10 A.M. Monday morning the twin-engine plane, streamlined as a gull, flared for a moment and then touched down on the grass field at Machteldt Aerodrome outside of Amsterdam. It settled onto its tail wheel and slowed, then taxied toward the hangar, weaving in a zigzag since the pilot couldn’t see over the raised nose when the plane was on the ground.
    Avery waved as the sleek, silver plane eased toward them.
    “I think I’ll go a few rounds with him,” Manielli shouted over the sound of the engines and prop wash.
    “Who?” Avery asked.
    “Schumann. Do some sparring. I watched him; he’s not as good as he thinks he is.”
    The lieutenant looked his colleague over and laughed.
    “What?”
    “He’d eat you like a box of Cracker Jack and spit out the prize.”
    “I’m younger, I’m faster.”
    “You’re stupider.”
    The plane eased up to a parking strip and the pilot cut the engines. The props coughed to a stop and the ground crew ran out to chock the wheels under the big Pratt & Whitneys.
    The lieutenants walked up to the door. They’d tried to think of something to get Schumann, a present, but couldn’t figure out what. Manielli had said, “We’ll tell him we gave him his first airplane ride. That’ll be his present.”
    But Avery had said, “No. You can’t tell somebody that something you’ve already done for them is a present.”
    Manielli figured the lieutenant would know this; married men knew all about the protocols of giving presents. So they bought him a carton of Packs o’ Pleasure—Chesterfields—which had taken them some effort, and expense, to find in Holland. Manielli now held it under his arm.
    One of the ground crew walked to the door of the plane and pulled it down. It became stairs. The lieutenants stepped forward, grinning, but stopped fast as a man in his early twenties, wearing filthy clothing, stepped into the doorway, hunched over because of the low clearance.
    He blinked, held his hand up to shelter his eyes from the sun, then climbed down the stairs. “Guten Morgen. . . . Bitte, Ich bin Georg Mattenberg.” He threw his armsaround Avery and hugged him heartily. Then he walked past him, rubbing his eyes as if he’d just awakened.
    “Who the hell’s he?” Manielli whispered.
    Avery shrugged and then stared at the door as other men emerged. There were five altogether. All in their twenties or late teens, in good shape, but exhausted and bleary-eyed, unshaven, their clothes tattered and stained with sweat.
    “It’s the wrong plane,” Manielli whispered. “Jesus, where—”
    “It’s the right plane,” his fellow officer said but he was no less confused.
    “Lieutenant Avery?” an accented voice called from the doorway. A man a few years