The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,104
you emptied out your apartment and moved right out of my life.”
“You know why.”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“He is the hope of my people, Bear-naard. And he is my destiny, even as Anatrurian independence is my life. I came here to be with him, and to…to strengthen his commitment to our cause. To be a king, to have a throne, all that is nothing to him. But to lead his people, to fulfill the dreams of an entire nation, that stirs his blood.”
Play the song, I thought. Where the hell was Dooley Wilson when you needed him?
“And then you came along,” she said, and reached out a hand to touch my face, and smiled that smile that was sad and wise and rueful. “And I fell in love with you, Bear-naard.”
“And once we were together…”
“Once we were together we had to be apart. I could be with you once and keep you as a memory to warm me all my life, Bear-naard. But if I had been with you a second time I would have wanted to stay forever.”
“And yet you came here tonight.”
“Yes.”
“Where do you go from here, Ilona?”
“To Anatruria. We leave tomorrow. There’s a night flight from JFK.”
“And the two of you will be on it.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll miss you, sweetheart.”
“Oh, Bear-naard…”
A man could drown in those eyes. I said, “At least you won’t have Tsarnoff and Rasmoulian and Weeks getting in your way. They’ll be off playing hopscotch with the gnomes of Zurich, trying to find a way into a treasure your guy already gave up on.”
“The real treasure is the spirit of the Anatrurian people.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said. “But it’s a shame you don’t have much in the way of working capital.”
“It is true,” she said. “Mikhail says the same thing. He would like to raise funds first so we will have money on which to operate. But the time is now. We cannot afford to wait.”
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Just wait here, okay?”
I left her on the couch in the living room and paid a quick visit to my bedroom closet. I came back with a cardboard file folder.
“Weeks had these,” I said. “He slipped them out of the portfolio along with the bearer shares, and I scooped them up this morning when I was in his apartment. I figured it was safe to take these because I don’t think he paid much attention to them. His whole orientation is politics and intrigue. As far as he’s concerned, these were just a propaganda device.”
She opened the folder, then nodded in recognition. “The Anatrurian postage stamps,” she said. “Of course. King Vlados received a complete set and passed them on to his son, and they have come down to Mikhail. They are pretty, aren’t they?”
“They’re gorgeous,” I said. “And this isn’t a set, it’s a set of full sheets.”
“Is that good?”
“They’re a questionable issue from a philatelic standpoint,” I said, “or else they’d be damn near priceless, considering their rarity. As it is, they’re still valuable. They’re unpriced in Scott, but Dolbeck prices provisional and fantasy issues, and the latest Dolbeck catalog has the full set at twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“So these stamps are worth over two thousand dollars? That is good.”
“If you’re selling,” I said, “you generally figure on netting two-thirds to three-fourths the Dolbeck value.”
“Two thousand, then. A little less.”
“Per set.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That is very nice.”
“It’s nicer than you realize,” I said. “The stamps are printed fifty to a sheet, so you’re holding fifty sets. That’s somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars.”
She stared. “But…”
“Take it before I change my mind,” I said. “There’s a man at Kildorran and Partners who specializes in this kind of material. He’ll either buy it from you or arrange to sell it for you. He’s in London, on Great Portland Street, and his name and the firm’s address are written down on the inside of that folder you’re holding. I don’t know if you’ll get a hundred grand. It may be more, it may be less. But you’ll get a fair price.” I extended a forefinger, chucked her under the chin. “I don’t know how your flight’s routed tomorrow night, but if I were you I’d change things and take a day or two in London. You don’t want to wait too long with those things. You might make a mistake and use one to mail a letter.”