Swindler & Son Read online

  The problem now is, this isn’t my game.

  And as I watch Dieter and Bossman at work, I get the sinking realization it isn’t their game either. They’re into Round Three of a staring contest, snarling at each other and openly resentful of my intervention, so desperate to be in control, they clearly would prefer to kill us all (and die themselves) than be forced to cooperate. Fighting is their role, it’s all they know and all my alternatives, all my attempts to widen their horizons, only make them feel more imperiled.

  Because a roleplayer is only safe within the set confines of his role and, I realize now, every single person we’ve met is just a roleplayer in this game. We haven’t met a soul who can grant protection, only accept it. Even Rahim was so concerned to know who was protecting me. Dieter made Hastings nervous, the same way I’m throwing Dieter off his game of conquer or die, the only alternatives he’s able to consider. We’re all of us just dangling by the strings.

  It’s time to cut the cord.

  I need an outside force, someone who doesn’t even notice the stupid bloody game, who’s aware of the real danger here, someone who hopefully sees more in life than just a win column.

  The Iranians have us all boxed with the ship’s crew into a tight little group. Harry towers over the captain; I can barely see the man’s face because of that stupid oversized hat of his. I elbow him and whisper, “Do you have a plan to take back the ship?” and if a man could actually die laughing, I fear that’s what I’ve done to him. He’ll die happy, if nothing else, considering the guffawing and hacking and he and Harry elbowing each other, thanks a lot, pal. “You really think any of them are going to leave us alive once they get what they want?”

  Harry goes ashen-faced and the captain finally stops laughing. “I know,” he murmurs. “But we’re not fighters. Not against them.”

  My heart sinks. I understand, how could I not? These aren’t men, they’re not even warriors—they’re creatures, with their muscles and their arsenal and their steroidal antsy aggression. He’s listening but nowhere near self-nominating yet.

  RULE ONE: KNOW YOUR PARTNER. Think, Nicky! Who’s in front of you?

  Asian, mid-fifties, not physically powerful, in a world where physical intimidation is common. He won’t have had a lot of schooling but, in his world, a ship’s captain is still a powerful, responsible position. His crew may be underfed and overworked and some of them might have been taken on board against their will but they follow his orders and work as his team. He’s learned navigation, charts, radio, several languages (good English) and people management. In his world, he’s a formidable guy.

  And, at the moment, he’s deciding the fate of himself and his crew. He knows about the bomb in the hold and he can see the weaponry being laid out on deck before him. These are the biggest stakes he’s ever faced. He can’t get this wrong and there’s a hundred ways to go wrong here.

  RULE THREE: TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR.

  What does he need to hear?

  “Of course, you’re right. They’re the fighters, it’s all they know. So what if you let them fight? You’re the captain,” I improvise, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “You know this ship better than any man alive. You know the weak seams, the leaking compartments, which ladders are hanging by a thread and which corridors go nowhere. Lure them, a few at a time, down below. Make noise and slip away. Draw them down blind hallways and into places you can trap them. Lead them a merry chase. Confuse them. Use what you know to beat them. Save us all.”

  His mouth sets, his eyes go dark. What’s wrong with the pitch?

  “Why do white people lie all the time?” he asks. Just like that. No guile, no games, just letting it hang out. Tell me I’m wrong, he dares, then I’ll know you’re a liar! I can only imagine the litany of crap this poor man’s dealt with over the decades. “We not people to you,” he continues and what do I say to that? I stand dumbfounded.

  Sara leans in. “They do lie, you’re right,” she nods. “They lie to us, too, all the time.” I don’t think the captain’s much of a feminist—I doubt the issue comes up a lot on board—but this is Sara’s moment, she’s got his attention. “You’re not in their club and neither are we. But what I’ve learned about men, over the years, is that the ones you trust are the ones who ask for help, who admit they need it.”

  You and your crew,” I say, as simple as I can say anything, “are the only ones who can make this happen.”

  Now he looks me squarely in the eye. “And what do we need you for?” he says. “They don’t want us. Maybe they let us go.”

  “Maybe,” I question.

  “I know,” he nods. “Maybe not. But maybe.”

  He’s got a right, I guess. This is a challenge but, as I’d be reminding Harry, it’s also a buying signal. I need to close him, now.

  “Show him the case,” I tell Diamante.

  He pulls off his backpack, opens it, shows the captain the stacks inside and gives him a couple stacks to examine, which he stuffs inside his jacket.

  “Okay,” he repeats. “So what do we need you for?” Now that he knows where the money is…

  “That’s a nuclear weapon in the hold. If somebody hasn’t read the radiation signature yet, they will before the sun comes up. Even if you take back the ship, you’re going to need somebody to look the other way—” I turn to Diamante. “You have a picture of our prisoner?”

  Diamante pulls out his phone and displays his photo of grumpy Prince Yusuf of the Royal face and Cousin Mahmood, standing next to Sara and Harry.

  “We have friends,” I say. “We can work our way out of this—if we make it to shore alive.”

  “Give me suitcase.”

  “When we take the ship back.”

  The Captain starts conferring with his First Mate.

  The disarming finally concludes, leaving two members of each camp guarding the arms stash. Dieter, Bossman, Harry and I descend to the hold.

  Dieter’s not totally obtuse—as soon as he sees the lights, he knows there’s a problem. When he rounds the first turn and catches sight of Hastings’ Syrian treasure, he shrinks a couple of inches involuntarily. “Whoa!” is all that comes out but, from a block of granite like him, that’s a soliloquy.

  “Any excuses?” Bossman demands. “Any explanations for stealing our history?”

  “What did you tell him?” Dieter wheels on me.

  “He knew before we got here.”

  Dieter sighs and takes in the winged bulls, the mosaics and the face of Alexander—and here’s proof that even someone with zero aesthetic sense can’t help but be moved by the power of it. “Yeah, I don’t want to shoot this up.”

  “Dieter, I told you—this isn’t the punch line,” and I wag a finger for him to follow.

  Around to the next row, another uncrated container, a silver box like an old-fashioned refrigerator, lying on its side, Plexiglas windows baring banks of switches and diodes and blooming LED’s. Dieter is mute, unable or unwilling to engage, looking over the instruments repeatedly, trying to get the sums to come out differently. “What the fuck is it?” he says.

  “Either it’s a sixty-five-megaton device or I’ve seriously overpaid,” Harry shrugs. Suddenly, he’s nonchalant, reassured, confident. It’s as though he’s forgotten everything that’s gone wrong and we’re all just bantering in the office. “It’s my plan and my bomb.”

  “The plan may be yours,” says Bossman, “but the bomb is ours.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Before Bossman can answer, we hear shuffling near the doorway. Two soldiers—one Iranian and one American contractor—peek through the door, ostensibly checking on the safety of their leaders.

  “Maybe we should take this to the bridge?” I suggest. “Where there’s a closed door? Assuming you feel comfortable closing a door on them.”

  “I know my men,” Bossman says and Dieter shouts, “Me too.”

  “Good for you,” I say. “Which of you ordered them down here?”

&n
bsp; “They use their discretion,” Dieter says as we near the doorway, but clearly he’s uncomfortable with the pair standing there.

  “Right,” says Bossman, with the same body language. They make sure the hold is locked before we all head up on deck.

  Just before arriving, we squeeze past the First Mate and cook, supporting a vomiting sailor down the steps, this group escorted by two soldiers—one Iranian and one American contractor, each carrying handguns.

  “Does it worry you that your guys are working together without you?” I ask. Dieter and Bossman both answer ‘No’ immediately but they don’t look happy.

  On deck, Diamante’s deep in discussion with several sailors.

  -So you knew what was coming?

  Not a clue. It’s just one more vial of nitroglycerin bouncing around in the back of the truck to me.

  The sky is bleeding black to purple fog. The ship is moving slowly—we can hear the sonar ping but can’t see the waves a quarter-mile ahead.

  On the bridge, two Iranian soldiers man the controls. Bossman settles immediately into the captain’s chair. Dieter, resentful, takes the seat at the pilot’s desk opposite. Harry, Sara and I stand around the navigation table and Diamante leans against the communications rack, plugging in his phone to charge.

  “Those phones will be the end of your civilization,” Bossman says.

  “You use them enough, I see,” Sara says. Bossman has two on his belt and a Beats bluetooth headset in his ear.

  “We intend to be the end of your civilization,” he smiles, leaning back in his chair. “The bomb, as I say, is ours. We commissioned it several years ago, when the Obama talks stalled. The Supreme Leader approved the project as a contingency—it would have allowed us to catch up on lost time, if necessary. Of course, we made arrangements through middlemen. Then the talks picked up, we told our contact to store the device safely until we could decide the next step. He didn’t reply—the next we heard, he was dead. We knew the device was somewhere in Basra but no more than that.”

  “Why on earth did he move it through Basra?”

  “No one’s checking the radiation of packets leaving Basra,” Bossman explains. “And the only people who could move such a thing securely—without being raided or arrested—are the Americans. And most of them have no ideology. If you pay, they don’t ask questions. We waited until the device finally appeared the other day and took the ship as soon as it set sail.”

  “And doctored the shipping certificate to set the Paris police on us—”

  “We couldn’t have you interfering. We had no idea why you wanted it.”

  “I wanted to blow up Ras Tanura with it,” Harry mutters.

  “You what?” Dieter nearly bounces out of his seat.

  “I still think it’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a brilliant idea,” Bossman says, fascinated.

  “You can’t do that!” Dieter says.

  “Of course I can,” Harry argues. “It actually suits you both brilliantly. We drive the price of oil up tenfold overnight, leaving Iran as the last major supplier. And we start at least a decade of war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Since no sane politician would send American troops into another war in the Middle East, contractors like you, Dieter, would have to do the fighting.” Harry smiles. “War lines so many pockets, doesn’t it?”

  Bossman’s smile is ironic. “But it wouldn’t last. The West would crash-build solar, wind and nuclear. Then we would be on our own here, just another grubby local war.”

  “Yeah!” Dieter realizes, severely let down.

  Bossman shakes his head. “No, I have to bring the device home—and the relics!”

  “The relics are ours!” Dieter growls. “You’re not getting them without a fight!” The tension level is very high, suddenly.

  Harry purrs, “Of course, the other option is, you could steal it together,” and the air in the room shifts.

  “I can’t,” Bossman says. “Even if I wanted to. I have to deliver it to Bandar Abbas.”

  “Not if it was never here,” Harry says and I can see him firing on all synapses again. The man audibles better than Joe Montana. “The bomb was a false report. Djermajian sold you a bill of goods, stole your money and played you for fools.”

  “I cannot go home with such a result.”

  “You return home a hero of the Revolution for returning the cultural artifacts in the hold, wresting them from the infidels who tried to loot your heritage.”

  Dieter protests immediately. “That stuff is Mr. Woczynski’s!”

  “They are objects,” Harry says. “You can find replacements. The bomb is a one-of-a-kind. I know a man in Ras Al Khaimah, in the Emirates—right across the Gulf from Bandar Abbas—who would pay very very well for our shiny box in the hold. Hundreds of millions, probably.” He fixes Dieter in that over-the-glasses look of his and raises an eyebrow. “It’s a good trade. You might prefer to vanish permanently with your share of the money, somewhere Mr.—whatever his name is—will never find you.”

  Things get very quiet—which means, everybody’s thinking it over. If Harry’s brain can just hold together, we have a chance.

  “Is this a plan?” I whisper to Harry.

  “Not really,” he admits. “But, to Ras Al Khaimah, we’re at least heading away from Iran.”

  “I can’t assist in any attack in this region,” Bossman counters. We’ve quickly shifted from ‘no’ to defining our terms.

  “Ireland. Central Africa. The Philippines,” Harry intones. “There are so many places your bomb could find a loving home.”

  Why does good take endless struggle while awful takes seconds? The sky is lightening, the fog beginning to burn away. You can feel a consensus brewing.

  That’s when we hear gunfire—several short rat-a-tat blasts from down below.

  Bossman’s at the rail immediately, barking orders in Persian. Dieter is right behind him. “My men go too!”

  “I’m sending three, to check what’s going on.”

  “So three of mine go with three of yours—everything’s even, that’s the truce. Your guys pick up guns, so do my guys.”

  Bossman groans and amends his orders. Both groups of soldiers grab their weapons and rush below.

  “See? We work together!” says Dieter but Bossman shakes his head.

  “I serve Iran,” he says, as though that settles everything. “I don’t know if I can do this. I would still be responsible for what happens.”

  “We could bring in an expert to defuse the bomb at Ras Al Khaimah,” I say. “And give you the plutonium.” Harry and Dieter immediately look alarmed. “But then, Dieter would insist on keeping the other loot in the hold.”

  “Damn straight!” Dieter says.

  “I serve Iran,” Bossman reminds us. “Those treasures cannot—”

  “Which Iran?” Sara asks. “The Guard? The military? The elected government? The imams? Which imams? The ones who want to maintain Islamist purity or the ones who feel Iran needs to open itself somewhat to the West, to take its place among the nations?”

  “I have my orders,” says Bossman.

  “Who gave them?” I ask. “Do you know for sure you’ll be comfortable with what they do with the bomb if you take it back?”

  “I didn’t worry about those things when I took the mission,” he says.

  “You weren’t responsible for the consequences then,” Sara comments.

  “We’re drifting to port,” says the Iranian at the nav station. “Four points off the line.”

  “Correct for it!” Bossman snaps, irritated by the interruption. His expression hardens. “I still hold the ship. Once we dock, we’ll see what my superiors wish to do with you.”

  “Maybe we can have a show trial,” Harry says, clapping his hands.

  “Which of course,” I add, “would complicate Iran’s attempts to move past the sanctions and rejoin the world.”

  “Your President is blocking the door there,” Bossman says with open resentment. “We n
egotiated in good faith. We bent over backwards.” So an open Iran is what he wants. He’s declared himself.

  “Whatever the President suggests, Europe will want the opposite,” Sara pounces. “Unless there’s a show trial—that would surely create an international incident.”

  “The first country in history,” pronounces Harry, “to be drowned in tweets.”

  “This is not my decision to make!” Bossman raises his voice—he’s getting rattled.

  “It is now,” I say. “No matter what you do, any decision you make now has political repercussions. You tip the balance.” In his eyes, I see uncertainty and anxiety. This is a human being. “This is how we got here,” I tell him in as soothing a tone as I can manage. “We didn’t want to be responsible for this either.”

  “But now,” Sara says, “like it or not, it’s our decision to make.” That’s good, shifting the decision to ‘us,’ but Bossman isn’t ready to sign on just yet.

  “I—I can’t—” he stammers and then slams his hand on the desk. “Why aren’t they back yet?” he barks at Dieter, like he’s second-in-command.

  “Who?”

  “Our men! Where are they?”

  Dieter heads to the rail and, shaking his head, yells, “Vince! Take Neil and two of their guys and get below! Get this settled!” We hear the clatter of ammo belts being picked up and buckled, of rifles loaded and soldier boots echoing down the staircase.

  And, less than ten seconds later, more gunfire—and then silence. Which makes us all nervous.

  “You know, when I was younger,” I say—I think I’m talking to Bossman but it could be Sara or just myself, “I just wanted to win. I wanted to be a big man, have a really beautiful girl and power and money and God knows what, I don’t think I really knew what, just everything! I was ready to settle for having everything! And now I just want to get through to the end without breaking anything.”