Chapter 13 Candelabra in Bogota - 4

In the Café de Paris on the Place de France in Tangier, Dolph Lazarus let out a leisurely sigh and sat comfortably in a wicker chair. "Have a martini (note: a cocktail of gin, vermouth and bitters.)?" Reber shook his head. Lazarus ordered a pink martini for himself--a drink he'd only recently changed his habit--and a mint tea for his partner.He started talking about gold, in Yiddish.Gold was multiplying in Tangiers, he said; gold was coming from all over Europe, even Switzerland—after all, the Russians were in Vienna at the moment, but who's to say that Switzerland's neutrality could keep them there forever?What's more, the gold markets in Paris and London have stopped trading, plus inflation...

"Boy, do you know what inflation is?" "Yes," Reber replied indifferently. He spent his eighteenth birthday on the way from Marseille to Tangier on the Immortal.After arriving here, Lazarus booked two rooms at the Minza Hotel.Taking advantage of his partner's appointment, Leiber walked alone along the Pasteur Avenue.He stood on the lookout, from which he had a splendid view of the Straits of Gibraltar and Malabata Point; and he went as far as Gran Soko. "Are you listening to me, boy?" "yes." "I don't think you're listening. There's money to be made here, Reb. There's three Jews in the council of the International Condominium. I've met with one of them, and they're about to decide to put undeclared deposits in The incentives in place were extended to gold, which meant that anyone, whether resident or foreigner, could store unlimited quantities of gold without paying taxes. In France alone, there are thousands of people because Inflation and dreaming of gold. For example, do you know the difference between the price of a gold bar in Zurich and the same gold bar in Lyon? Two hundred thousand francs. We can use Tangiers as a base and use small Airlifts of gold by plane, using the old airfields of the French Resistance.  …”

"I can't fly a plane." A waiter, who was at least seventy-five years old and could speak a dozen languages, brought them the medicine and a pack of cigarettes that Lazarus asked for.Lazarus's bright little eyes were still fixed on Reber's face. "You're in a bad mood, boy?" Reber remained silent.The two gray eyeballs turned to meet the other's gaze.Lazarus smiled. "You don't have a penny, no home, no place to go. You might starve without me. I taught you everything. I even brought your first woman into your bed. Yes No?" "right."

"Have you and Anerevich ever killed anyone?" Before coming back to see Dorff, Reber wandered the market for a while, and on his way back he crossed Law Street to the entrance of the Botanic Gardens of Mendubia, where hibiscus was abundant and several were thought to be extinct. Eight hundred years old Nagarjuna, he saw the man and recognized him immediately, even though the man was wearing civilian clothes, even though he had grown a mustache and relatively long hair.The man threw his coat over his arm and, wiping his neck with a handkerchief, accosted a few English sailors adoringly, who were arguing with a money-changer.That man was not Erich Steyr, nor Hochreiner.

Reber, who had a "pretty good memory," had seen him only once four years earlier, in Belzec, on July 17, 1942.That man was walking past rows of Jews who had just been escorted from Lviv, speaking in almost impeccable Yiddish, asking all of them to write letters to their families, to reassure their families, to tell them, They were not mistreated, saying their exile was actually not all that horrible... "You didn't answer me," Duo Fu said. "No." "You mean, you didn't kill anyone? Reber shook his head with a smile. "I mean I didn't answer you."

Lazarus picked up the box of "Philip Morris" cigarettes that the waiter had just delivered along with mint tea and martinis. "I've talked to a few people in the market. They call it 'ufumu' in Italian, which means smoke. They say you can pay a lot of money for this business." The first business trip in the second half of October was paid for by Dolph Lazarus.They made ten more trips, each time with the same destination: Spain.The method is actually very simple, as long as you can get a boat.Light yellow cigarettes produced in the United States are nominally a transit commodity in Tangier, and the price here is 30 francs per pack. If they want to be shipped out legally, they only need to declare a legal port of destination for imported tobacco, usually Malta.They would negotiate with Spanish buyers from Valencia a place of delivery by sea, outside territorial waters, or the Spaniards would run the risk of encountering the customs agents of the Franco government.There was little risk in this venture, and the profits were considerable: a pack of cigarettes bought for thirty francs in Tangiers could resell for fifty or sixty francs.Sometimes they have to pack fifty boxes in a ship, that is, 25,000 bales, and they can spend five or six hundred thousand francs, or four to five thousand dollars, in one trip.It's no wonder there's so much competition surrounding this deal that hasn't yet fallen into the hands of the mobsters.Among the various smugglers, several ex-Royal Navy officers, a future French minister, some British and Italian nobles, and even a gang of female sailors who were all gay and sailed under the flag of the queen were pushing each other. , not giving in.

After six transactions, Leiber was able to repay Lazarus' initial investment. "You don't have to," Dove said, "I didn't ask you to." "I think it's better that way," Leiber replied simply. During their conversation there was a Frenchman named Henri Arte, who had always dreamed of a life of adventure and had come to Tangier from Nice for this purpose.Alter and Klimrod met by chance when they were standing in front of the bookshelves of Optimus Prime's bookstore.The man from Nice, who studies history, struck up a conversation with Reb first—about a book the tall young man was leafing through.

That was Spengler's "The Decline of the West" (Note: Spengler (1880-1936), a German philosopher and historian. He believed that history was just a process of cycles and alternations of several independent cultural forms. The defeat of Germany in the Great War was regarded as the "decline of Western culture".), Reber almost finished the book.During their long talk on the loggia of a nearby coffee shop, the thirty-year-old Alter was astonished to discover that the young reader of Spengler's works was only eighteen; but Reber was in the cigarette business. This fact aroused his great interest.He himself has some new ideas in this regard, and even imagines a "light yellow cigarette road" to transport cigarettes from Tangier to the coastal areas of France and Italy, where a pack of "Philip Morris" or "Cut Sternfield" could fetch a hundred francs...

"And if, instead of fifty cases at a time, five hundred or a thousand cases, or even more--it's just a matter of the boat--then the profits will soon reach staggering numbers. Earn it a year A million dollars is not wishful thinking." Alter, to his own amazement, had long and persistently tried to persuade the young man to join him in the partnership.The young man was clearly indecisive.Certainly not for lack of guts or ambition.It seems there is another reason. "Is it your Irish friend? Because of him?" "Not exactly." "If you want," said Art at last, "we can do it as a three. Although..."

He didn't like Dolf Lazarus (he knew him only as O'Shea, which was the alias Lazarus had used throughout his time in Tangier), and was actually a little afraid of him.Two or three times Art had overheard him having lively conversations in English with suspicious-looking Italian-Americans who mentioned Hemmie Weiss, Meyer Lansky, Lepke Buchart, or Le Ki Luciano spoke of the names as soldiers of old spoke of their officers, and Art was feverishly thirsty for adventure, but within the limits of reason, a man like Lazarus-O'Shea seemed to him He has been "out of the grid" in the past, just as this man and the young Yubrech seem to him to be an unsuitable pair of partners, both unsuitable and dangerous.

In short, Alter's attitude is like a big brother.He himself didn't know why. There was no way he had anything to do with the Langan incident.He was just a witness of that event, not directly yet. "They're Dutch," said Lazarus, "one's called Langen, and one's called De Groot or something like that. One of them has a merchant captain's license. And don't we need a real captain?" We were talking about crossing the Mediterranean this time, and not just waving to the chicks along the coast of Spain. As for the rest of the crew, there was one Maltese and three Sicilians." "And us." "Yes, and us. There are eight people in total. We may not have enough manpower to carry nine hundred boxes, but there will be a group of people to help when we get there." "Where are we going?" "Sicily. To one of the bays west of Palermo. Do you disagree, lad? You think we're going to play this kid's game all the time? Now we're going to get real. Come on, I'll take you there Meet those two Dutchmen..." Henri Alter was already sitting in a Parisian coffee shop with a friend of his, a customs official from Corsica, who was giving a lot of ideas as an expert on how he could get the most out of the The advantages offered by Tangier's international status.Art saw Klimrod and Lazarus coming, and sitting a few steps away next to two men in their mid-thirties with their backs turned to him.He saw Klimrod's gray eyes grimly fixed, once widened, and he noticed that Klimrod made an odd movement—bending his body so that his head was almost fully under the table. , and re-tie a shoelace that has not been loosened.Then he sat up, again with a calm expression.Art glanced at Lazarus-O'Shea, realizing that he, too, had noticed.After twenty or thirty minutes, the two strangers got up and left... Dove whispered in Yiddish, "Don't put on a show in front of me, boy. I saw the look on your face. Do you know one of those two guys?" Leiber spread his fingers resting on his thighs, as if he saw God in them.Finally he said: "At least one of them is not Dutch." "which one?" "Langan." Dorff's eyes shone like two cold blue diamonds behind the lenses of his glasses.He threw a bill on the table, paid the bill, and stood up. "We need to get out of here quickly." He bought a two-tone Packard convertible two months ago.He got behind the wheel and steered the car toward Malabata, Reber sitting next to him.They didn't exchange a word all the way, but when the car reached the lighthouse, Lazarus turned off the engine and got out to walk to the verandah, which overlooked Tangier, the Atlantic Ocean, and Spain at the same time. He moved so quickly that he seemed not to have made a movement at all, but a Colt automatic pistol that he had carried in his left hand was now in the palm of his right.He fired a shot, and a seagull in flight was shot down.Dolph smiled. "When we first arrived in Tangier, I asked you a question. Have you and that idiot Anerevich ever killed anyone? You didn't answer me then." With astonishing agility the man got into shooting position again, and this time there was another seagull on the beam of his pistol.But this time he didn't pull the trigger. "Do you want to kill that Langan, Reb?" "I don't know," Reber said quietly. Dorff's hand moved; the Colt had returned to its place inside his jacket, in the belt behind his right hip. "Go back, lad. We'll go for a run along the Sicilian coast with de Groot and your friend Langan. I don't think even that de Groot is Dutch. He's probably one of them." One of them. Even though Langen said he was Dutch in Tangier, do you think a real Dutchman would be led by the nose? Or he got involved in another way. There are even SS in Holland military……" He was so affectionate to the young man for the first time since they were together, and he put his arm around Reb's neck and led him back to the Packard wagon "My boy, take my word for it, you can't kill him in Tangier anyway. You and I were seen with him, and Tangier is not a small place. On the contrary, a man killed in Sicily is not Strange..." He started the car with a smile on his face. "You can finish him there, Reb."