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indicate the telephone. 'Her husband died last month ... a decent sort: a
printer ... well, you can hardly respond to his death by asking her if she
wants to sell her husband's stamp collection.'
I nodded.
'And now,' said Frankel, 'she's phoning to explain that a Paris dealer called
in to see them, was shocked to hear that her husband had died, offered to
advise her on the sale, and wound up buying the whole eighteen albums for five
thousand francs.' He ran his hand through his hair. 'About one quarter of what
I would have given her for it. She thinks she's got a wonderful deal because
her husband would never admit how much he was spending on stamps each month
... guilty feelings, you see.'
'You get a lot of that?'
'Usually the other way about: the husband with a mistress and an apartment in
the Victor Hugo to pay for. Such men tell their wives that they are spending
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the money on stamps. When that sort the, they leave me with the unenviable
task of explaining to the widow that the stamp collection that she thought was
going to pay off the mortgage, give her a world cruise and put their sons
through college, is just a lot of "labels" that I don't even want to buy.'
Those collections you are offered.'
'Yes, dealers from Paris don't just happen by when there's a death in that
sort of family. Worse, the widows so often suspect that I've been through the
albums and stolen all the really valuable items.'
'A stamp dealer's life is tough,' I said.
'It's like being Cassius Clay,' he said. 'I thump this desk and proclaim that
I'll take on all comers. You could walk through that door, and for all I know
you might be the greatest authority on Ballons-Montes or the stamps of the
Second Empire or--worse still--telegraph stamps or tax stamps. Everyone wants
an instant valuation and payment in cash. I've got to be able to buy and sell
from experts like that, and make a profit. It's not easy, I'll tell you.'
'Do you ever sell to Champion?' I asked.
'Last year I did. I had three very rare French covers. It was mail sent by a
catapulted aeroplane from the liner lie de France in 1928. It was the first
such experiment. They ran out of stamps so that they overprinted the surcharge
on other stamps. On these the surcharge was inverted ... It's all nonsense,
isn't it?' He smiled.
'Evidently not to Champion. What did he pay?'
'I forget now. Twenty thousand francs or more.'
'A lot of money, Serge.'
'Champion has one of the top ten airmail collections in Europe: Zeppelins,
French airships, balloon mail and pioneer nights. He likes the drama of it. He
doesn't have the right sort of scholarship for the classic stamps. And anyway,
he's a crook. He likes to have the sort of collection he can run with, and
unload quickly. A man like Champion always has a bag packed and a blank
airline ticket in his pocket. He was always a crook, you know that!'
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I didn't follow Serge Frankel's reasoning. It would seem to my non-philatelic
mind that a mobile crook would prefer classic stamps of enormous price. And
then he'd never need to pack his bag. He could carry his fortune in his wallet
everywhere he went. 'You didn't tell him he was a crook in the old days,' I
pointed out 'Didn't say that when he ambushed the prison van and set me free,
you mean. Well, I didn't know him in those days.' He drank the rest of his cup
of coffee. 'I just thought I did.'
He brought the pot and poured more for both of us. He spooned some whipped
cream on to the top of his strong coffee and then rapped the spoon against the
edge of the cream jug to shake the remains off. The force of the gesture
revealed his feelings. 'Yes, well, perhaps you're right,' he admitted. 'I must
give the devil his due. He saved my life. I would never have lasted the war in
a concentration camp, and that's where the rest of them ended up.'
'What's he up to, Serge?'
'You're out there in the big house with him, aren't you?'
'But I don't know what he's up to, just the same.'
This oil business,' said Serge. 'It will change the lives of all of us.' He
picked up the jug, and in a different voice said, 'Have some cream in your
coffee?'
I shook my head. I would not provide him with another chance to move away
from the matter in hand.
'I'm not a Communist any more,' he said. 'You realize that, I suppose.'
'I'd detected some disenchantment,' I said.
'Did the czars ever dream of such imperialism? Did the Jew-baiters dream of
such support? The Russians have us all on the run, Charles, my boy. They urge
the Arabs to deny us oil, they pass guns and bombs and rocket launchers to any
group of madmen who will burn and maim and blow up the airports and hijack the
planes. They brief the trade unionists to lock up the docks, halt the trains
and silence the factories.'
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I reached for my coffee and drank some.
'Makes your throat dry, does it?' he said. 'And well it might. Do you realize
what's happening? In effect we'll see a movement of wealth to the Arab
countries comparable to the movement of wealth from India to Britain in the
eighteenth century. And that generated the Industrial Revolution! The U.S.S.R.
has now become the biggest exporter of armaments in the world. Algeria, Sudan,
Morocco, Egypt, Libya--I won't bother you with the list of non-Arab
customers--are buying Soviet arms as fast as they can spend. You're asking me
if I help the Israelis! Helping the Israelis might be the West's only chance
to survive.'
'And where does Champion fit into this picture?'
'A good question. Where indeed! Why should the Arabs bother with a cheap tout
like Champion, when all the world's salesmen are falling over each other to
sell them anything their hearts desire?
'Don't keep me in suspense.'
'Your sarcasm is out of place, my boy.'
Then tell me.'
'Champion has promised to sell them the only thing their money cannot buy.' :
'Eternal happiness?'
'A nuclear device. A French nuclear device.'
There was a silence broken only by my heavy breathing. 'How can you know
that, Serge?'
Serge stared at me, but did not answer.
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'And if he delivers?'
Two hundred million pounds was mentioned.'
I smiled. 'You are taking a chance on me... suppose I went back to the house
and told Champion ...'
Then either he would give up the plan--which would delight me--or he'd
continue with it.' He shrugged.
'He might change the plan,' I said.
'I wouldn't imagine that alternative plans spring readily to mind for such a
venture.'
'No,' I said. 'I suppose you are right.' I reached into my pocket, found my
cigarettes and matches and took my time about lighting a cigarette. I offered
them to Serge.
He waved them away. 'You haven't told me your reaction,' he said.
'I'm trying to decide whether to laugh or cry,' I told him.
'What do you mean?'
'You've been overworking, Serge. Your worries about the Arab-Israeli war, the
oil crisis, your business, perhaps ... you think that they form a pattern. You
have invented a nightmare, and cast Champion as the arch-fiend.'
'And I'm right,' said Serge, but as soon as he said it, he realized that it
would confirm my diagnosis. He was a lonely old man, without wife, child or
very close friends. I felt sorry for him, I wanted to calm his fears. 'If
Champion can steal an atomic bomb he deserves whatever it was you said he'd
get.'
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Two hundred million pounds was mentioned/ said Serge, repeating the exact
words he'd used before as if it was a few frames of a film loop that never [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]