“It won’t be long, I promise. And your hotel?”
“No hotel,” Sanchez said and smiled. “I also value privacy. But the number is 35-24-471.”
Kek marked it down. “You’ll hear from me.” He set the pencil back on the desk and led the man by the arm down the corridor to the front door.
Señor Sanchez glanced about as if in the hope of seeing the lovely lady again, as if sight of her might at least partially compensate for the failure to leave with Huuygens firmly committed, but the soft lighting of the hallway merely illuminated the paintings and nothing more and the doors leading from it were all firmly closed. He paused a moment at the outer door, waited while Kek unlatched and opened it, and then wet his thin lips with the tip of his tongue. He looked as if he were hoping a few extra words — possibly one more argument — might change the other’s mind and close the deal on the spot; but he also seemed to realize it was not possible. He drew a deep breath.
“Until later, m’sieu,” he said, and his sadness seemed genuine.
“Until later,” Kek said pleasantly, and closed the door behind him. The man in the hallway heard the lock snap shut; he sighed again and turned toward the elevator.
The cognac was back on the bar, the glasses refilled. Anita sat on a bar stool watching the men, one long, well-formed leg tucked beneath her, the smoke from her cigarette curling about her face, causing her to half close her eyes. André reached over for his glass and snorted indelicately.
“Luis Sanchez giving me a helping hand! What a story!”
“He didn’t want you to starve,” Kek explained and grinned.
“Let him worry about his grandmother starving,” André said flatly and dropped the subject. “Ten thousand American and all expenses, eh? You see how it goes? If I got an offer of a job like that, it would be for ten francs and bus fare. Still,” he added, thinking about it, “they’d probably be getting gypped, because I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to go about it.” His eyes came up. “How in hell do you smuggle a whole suitcase through customs without having them open it?”
“Easily.” Huuygens waved the matter aside. “That’s the least of the problems.” He frowned across the bar. “André, what do you really know about this Sanchez character?”
“You mean, other than the fact that he practically supports me?” André smiled sourly. “Well, I know this much — you name it, and if it’s illegal, he’s involved in it. Black market, prostitution, fencing—”
“Narcotics?”
“He’s in everything. Narcotics included.”
“He said the suitcase wouldn’t hold narcotics. He swore it.”
André almost choked on his drink. He set his glass down on the bar and stared at Huuygens in astonishment.
“Have you been listening to me? Or to that ten thousand dollars? He swore it didn’t hold narcotics? That almost convinces me it must. My friend, you can trust Luis Sanchez about as far as you can kick the Arc de Triomphe.” He considered his words and amended them. “Uphill, that is. Barefoot.” He thought about it some more and added, “Against the wind.” He returned to his drink, sipped, and then put the glass down, a smile forming on his face. “Still,” he went on slowly, his eyes glistening in good humor, “there’s no good reason why the suitcase couldn’t be opened and checked. Even if it’s locked.” He rubbed the tips of his fingers on his jacket lapel suggestively and winked across the bar. “I don’t want to brag, but I used to be pretty good at that sort of thing in my early days. I can’t have forgotten all of it.”
Kek smiled at him. “The thought also occurred to me, but what happens when we open it and find it’s not what he claims it is? Tell the man we caught him fibbing? That’s a pretty serious insult to a Spaniard, you know.”
“I know,” André said sympathetically and smiled.
“Besides, by that time I would have agreed to take the case through customs; and I hate to go back on my word. It would be a very unpleasant situation.” He changed the subject. “Who does this Sanchez work for?”
“Sanchez?” André shook his head. “Nobody. He works for himself.”
“Not in this deal,” Kek said. “I’m sure he’s not the top man. He made me his offer of ten thousand dollars, and that was that. You could almost hear the wheels going around in his head when I walked him to the door. He would have given his arm to have upped the ante and closed the deal then and there. But since he didn’t” — he raised his shoulders expressively — “it seems obvious he wasn’t authorized to.”
“Well,” André said slowly, “if Sanchez is just a junior partner in the deal, then it has to be a very big deal, indeed. Luis Sanchez doesn’t usually play second fiddle to anyone.” He looked at Kek. “So he says the suitcase doesn’t hold narcotics. What story did he make up? Gold?”
“He wouldn’t have said that.” Anita entered into the conversation and the two men looked at her with interest as she leaned over, brushed ash from her cigarette, and then leaned back again. André was intrigued by her statement.
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because,” Anita told them calmly, “he said the suitcase weighed thirty pounds or a bit more. Take away the weight of the suitcase itself, no matter how light it is, and what do you have? With gold worth about five hundred dollars a pound?” She shrugged. “He’d be paying more than half just to get the stuff past customs. I don’t imagine he’s in business just to keep Kek in cognac...”
Kek smiled at her proudly and winked at André.
“Not to mention,” he added, “that gold is as easily converted to currency in Argentina — if not more easily — than in Spain. And with currency you simply put it in your pocket and walk through almost every customs in the world. Even me.” He shook his head. “You two don’t understand. It isn’t that he didn’t tell me what was in the suitcase — he did. It’s just that I don’t believe him.”
Anita paused in the act of lighting another cigarette. “What did he say?”
Kek smiled. He stared into his glass as if seeking answers to Sanchez’s credibility in the amber depths of his drink, slowly swirling the liquid. The ice cubes clinked against the glass musically and then subsided, bobbing lightly on the surface. His eyes came up.
“He said the suitcase contained documents — old parchment land grants originally given by the Spanish crown for lands that constitute most of what is now the city of Buenos Aires. He went on to say they had been stolen long ago but that these parchments prove that his friends — his clients, I should say — legally own most of the town.” He smiled. “It isn’t such a bad story, when you think about it. It’s just crazy enough, just far-fetched enough, to be almost believable. And if he dreamed it up on the spur of the moment, the man is a genius.”
“Only you don’t believe him,” André said.
“No. For one thing, thirty pounds of parchment would cover quite a few grants, and considering that the entire part of Argentina that now includes Buenos Aires was included in one grant, it weakens his story, don’t you think?”
Anita grinned mischievously. “Maybe they wrote big.”
“Then, even assuming he has a thirty-pound piece of sheepskin, there’s the fact that until the end of the eighteenth century any land grant for what is now Buenos Aires would have been an insult to the receiver; that area was considered worthless. It wasn’t until 1776, the year of the American Revolution, that the final grant was given, the final legal grant, the one that had the real value; that was when Spain created a new viceroyalty from the overall viceroyalty of Peru and made Buenos Aires its capital. Which, in case you’re interested, was done to protect the districts along the River Plate from the Brazilians—”