growing too dark to see his face clearly, but I didn’t have to. It was Maas all right.
CHAPTER 20
Maas waved at me cheerfully from the dock and climbed into the launch. One of the drivers let go of the stern line and the launch headed out into the Rhine, taking an oblique course upriver. I nudged Padillo in the ribs with my elbows. “Company’s here,” I said. He lifted his head and regarded Maas, who smiled cheerfully at us from his seat near the stern.
“Christ,” Padillo said, and dropped his head back down on arms folded across his knees.
Maas talked quietly with one of the men who had driven the Humbers. The other two men sat across the launch from us and smoked cigarettes. Each held a gun casually in his lap, pointing at nothing in particular. I decided that they could keep them. Burchwood and Symmes sat next to me and stared straight ahead. It was dark now.
The boat driver reduced his speed and angled the launch sharply to the left. Down river, a half-mile away, I could see the lights of the U.S. Embassy. They looked warm, inviting and safe, but they didn’t get any closer. I hadn’t really expected them to. The dark outline of a self-powered barge loomed ahead of us. It was anchored in the channel about fifty feet from the riverbank and sat low in the water as if heavily loaded. It was the kind of barge that you see plowing up and down the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, the family wash snapping merrily in the breeze. They are almost always family owned and operated. Children get born on them and old men die on them. The occupants sleep and eat and make love below decks in compact quarters located near the stern that are about the size of a smallish American house trailer. The barge we approached was about 150 feet long. The pilot of the launch cut the engine and we drifted, stern first, toward its bow.
Somebody shined a light on us and threw a rope, and the man in the stern next to Maas caught it and pulled us up snug to a rope ladder and wooden rungs. Maas was first up the ladder and he had trouble with one of the rungs. I hoped he would fall, but someone on the barge caught him and pulled him up. The two men with the guns were on their feet and one of them waved negligently at Symmes and Burchwood. They got the idea and went up the ladder after Maas. Padillo had raised his head from his arms and watched Symmes and Burchwood climb the ladder.
“Think you can make it?” I asked.
“No, but I will,” he said.
We got up and I let Padillo precede me to the ladder. He grabbed a rung and started to pull himself up. I boosted him from behind and some hands reached down and caught him under the arms and pulled. I started up and the strain knotted and twisted my stomach where the Chevrolet’s seat belt had cut into it. Some more hands, not particularly gentle, fastened on and helped me. The barge had its parking lights on for navigational safety and the only other light was from the flash that somebody kept shining around.
“Straight ahead,” a voice muttered in my ear, and I put my hands out and started to take some small careful steps in that general direction. A light suddenly appeared from an open door that led down into the living quarters. I could see Maas backing his way down the stairs, holding onto the rails. Burchwood and Symmes followed, then Padillo and I. I heard the launch pulling away. Only the two men with the guns remained, and they motioned for me to follow Padillo.
I turned into the doorway and started feeling for the steps below. I moved down slowly in the narrow passage until there weren’t any more steps. I turned around. We were in a room about seven by ten. The ceiling was barely tall enough for me to stand erect. There were two built-in bunks with brightly quilted covers along one side. Padillo stood slumped and listless beside them. I noticed that he was rid of most of the make-up devices and the hair piece. His face was back to normal except for the pallor of his skin. Burchwood and Symmes stood next to him.
Maas was seated at one end of a table that could fold up against the wall. He smiled and nodded at me and his knees knocked together nervously like those of a fat little boy at a party who has to go to the bathroom but is afraid he’ll miss the ice cream and cake. At the other end of the table was another chair, and behind that was a door.
“Hello, Maas,” I said.
“Gentlemen,” he said, and giggled and nodded his head some more. “We meet again, it seems.”
“lust one question?” I said.
“Of course, my dear McCorkle: as many as you wish.”
“You had a two-way radio working out of that Cadillac into the H umbers—right?”
“Correct. We merely chased you up the Autobahn into our little trap. Simple, but effective, you will admit?”
I nodded. “Mind if we smoke?”
Maas shrugged elaborately. I took out a package of cigarettes and gave one to Padillo and lighted them both from a pack of matches. The small door opened and a man in a gray-and-black hound’s-tooth jacket and gray trousers backed out of it. He was talking in Dutch to someone still in the other room. The back of his head was covered with long black shiny hair that almost but not quite met in a ducktail. He closed the door and turned around and his horn-rimmed glasses flinted in the light. He could have been fifty or forty or younger, but there was one thing certain: he was Chinese.
He stood before the closed door for several long moments, staring at Padillo. Finally he said, “Hello, Mike.”
“Hello, Jimmy,” Padillo said.
Maas had bounced out of his seat and was dancing attendance to the Chinese. “It went very smoothly, Mr. Ku,” he said in English. “There was no unexpected trouble. This is Symmes and this is Burchwood. The other is McCorkle, who is the business partner of Padillo.”
“Sit down and shut up, Maas,” the Chinese said without looking at him. Maas retreated to his chair and his knees started knocking together again. The Chinese sat down in the chair at the other end of the table, took out a package of Kents, and lighted one with a gold Ronson.
“It’s been a long time, Mike,” he said.
“Twenty-three years,” Padillo said. “And you’re calling yourself Ku now.”
