Scorpio Page #4

then Strauss and Strauss and Strauss.

Vienna is the only city that puts

on yesterday's clothes for visitors.

Cross, it's been months

since I played any Webern or Berg.

And three years since I saw you, Cross.

I'm in trouble, Max.

Can I help?

Maybe you should first ask what.

It would only depress me

or maybe frighten me, Cross.

I need a messenger boy, Max.

Waiter!

- Yes?

- (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

Between rehearsals or should I go sick?

- You'll have plenty of time between.

- I see.

Could you do the bank today?

The old bank?

There's a teller there by the name

of Karoldy. He'll arrange everything.

He'll give you a key to

a safety deposit box.

In the box are three packages.

Bring them to me.

Okay. '!-

What are you doing this weekend?

I am off Friday till Monday.

Would you like to see Rome?

Rome?

I want someone to meet Sarah,

someone she knows.

If I can clear her

in the next few days, will you do it?

I need it bad, Max.

Do I take her to Maria's?

Danke schon.

Nothing.

He says he hasn't seen Cross for 20 years.

Didn't even know he was still alive.

You believe him?

Yeah, I'd say so.

Put a marker on him?

Try Stross next. 72, Porkornygasse.

We'll finish the others tomorrow.

You'll be here if anything bites?

I'll be here.

(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)

How did you get this?

A man asked for it to be given to you.

Man about 50, big, American?

Yes, but he was German.

Oh, yeah.

(BIRD CHIRPING)

CROSS:
You should have

done it in Paris, Jean.

The price wasn't right.

And now it is?

Yes, now it is.

I could kill you, Jean.

Take it, then, Cross.

It won't come around again.

CROSS:
Can we talk?

Sure.

(ELEVATOR RUMBLING)

McLeod name my sin?

He said you sold and had more to sell.

And you believe that?

Is it true? I want to know.

For your education? No, it isn't true.

Zharkov.

What about Zharkov?

He is the opposition.

I've known Zharkov for almost 30 years.

As an ally, as an enemy

and always as a friend.

We're both premature antifascists,

as they used to say in Washington.

But Zharkov hasn't sold out

and neither have I.

Then why does McLeod want you dead?

Why don't you ask him that?

I'm asking you.

You're looking for God's shining face,

aren't you, Jean?

Something to believe in.

Like a young girl

in a white Communion dress.

But you've got the soul of a torturer,

so your need is greater.

You lied to me, Cross, and you used me.

For that I'm going to kill you.

I never lied to you' Jean.

I used you, but I never lied to you.

(CAR APPROACHES)

Not my doing, Cross, I swear.

Don't trust McLeod.

He ordered you dropped twice,

Damascus and Marseilles.

That's why I gave you so much

information on each job,

something to bargain with.

You owe me, Jean.

Where?

He's up there.

You had him last night and you let him go.

That's how it looks in my report

to Washington,

unless you've got something to change it.

Dor says you didn't even try

to get a shot off.

Where the hell do you think you're going?

Never put your hands on me.

(DU UND DU PLAYING)

Cross, I'm off until Tuesday.

I want you to call Washington for me.

The number and the message

is in that envelope.

Okay. '!-

Repeat the message exactly as it's written.

Yes.

Call from a phone box.

You still don't have any questions?

What answers could you have

that would make any difference?

I love you, Cross.

And I you, Max. That's why I must

tell you there could be pain in this.

I have been inoculated.

You know, Cross,

I used to think

that the only music I would ever hear,

no matter what I was really playing,

was the music we played each morning

when the others went out to work.

Or the music for the selection,

when the lucky ones went into the showers.

Now I can hear Brahms...

And not crying.

But one image has never blurred.

Cross, you coming through

that gate and taking me home.

Oh, for...

(ALL SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

They're pulling in the net. Both sides.

They want you delivered, Cross.

I can't go back. You know that.

Not after this kind of a move.

Not even if the Soviets took the leash off.

But your wife...

I'll have her out in two days.

Do you know why McLeod hates you, Cross?

Because you are

one of Donovan's adventurers,

the last of the Knights Templar.

You don't stand up straight.

You have your hands in your pockets,

show no respect.

And tonight you are going

to get drunk with a Russian.

And we are going to get drunk, Cross.

What was it you used to say?

"Falling down drunk. "

(BOTH LAUGH)

Falling down drunk.

And then we'll get maudlin.

We will sing, I will cry,

and then I will tell you

some very funny stories.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

MAX:
Tell Mother

to take the books back to the library.

They are overdue.

Give her my love

and tell her not to carry things.

Just a man calling his mother, Mitchell?

Only two things don't wash, Mitchell.

He called a public phone in Washington,

and he doesn't have a mother.

(CHUCKLING)

His whole family died in the camps.

You didn't crosscheck each one, Mitchell,

and you cost me a day.

You are so damn quick

to write notes to McLeod.

Put that in, Mitchell.

I traced it back to a Max Lang.

He used a phone booth

in a cafe near the state opera house.

You knew that, Mitchell,

but you didn't go there.

Dead end.

It could have been a dead end.

But Lang needed more change.

He asked one of the waiters.

The waiter knows him.

He is a cellist, Mitchell.

And, even more important,

he was in the Resistance

when Cross was liaison.

The whole goddamn things redundant.

There are no more secrets.

At least, none worth stealing.

It's a lower form of life.

Its reason of existence is

its reason to exist.

What the hell are you doing?

(BOTTLES CLANG)

Jesus, Sergei.

You even hide things from yourself.

(LAUGHS)

Tell me, what keeps you from burning out?

Hmm?

You see before you

the last of a race of giants.

No, no, no. I mean seriously.

Seriously?

I still believe. I'm still a communist.

Communist? For Christ's sakes!

After what you've seen?

You've seen it turn brutal... inhuman.

No, Cross. I've seen men use it badly.

What about the trials? The purges?

Trials, purges, they are words

you have read somewhere, Cross.

My trial was so grotesque,

my hours of interrogation

so terrible that I was numb.

It was a kind of

frontal lobotomy without anesthetic.

And the labor camps,

where men, good communists' old fighters,

men who believed

in the dignity of man above all else,

were used as drought animals

to pull logs on frozen feet.

That this could be the result

of all I had committed my life to.

But, baby, at that moment,

didn't you realize what was happening?

At that moment I tried to

understand what had happened to me.

Most of us there were communists,

not Stalinists. That is why we were there.

Nothing had happened

to make me renounce myself.

I was still a communist.

Stalin couldn't take it away from me.

And now the dull, gray stupidity

that sends the tanks into Prague

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