Swindler & Son Page 17

  “I still want everything,” Dieter says and I’ll give him credit for honesty.

  “I wanted to have fun all the time,” Harry says, smiling, “and, for the most part, I do.”

  Sara shrugs. “I wanted a pony.”

  “Why aren’t they fighting?” Bossman bubbles over. “Or why aren’t they back?” He rounds on Dieter. “Send everyone!”

  “I only got one guy left,” Dieter says. “You’ve got two plus the three here.”

  “Not the crew but send the rest down there,” Bossman says. Then he grabs Sara and me. ”And them too.”

  “Us?”

  “Leave her out of this.”

  “When I was young,” Bossman says, “I wanted respect. You are very good at—pulling at feelings, playing on my nerves, there’s another word—”

  “Opportunistic?” asks Harry. “Manipulative?” Don’t help me, dammit!

  “Manipulative, that’s the word,” Bossman nods. “You have a gift for this kind of game, but it is not useful. So I’ll make another game. Go find the crew. Convince them to surrender. If you cannot, be a human shield for my men. Either way, be useful.”

  “If I’m dead, you won’t get anybody to defuse your bomb or buy it. And you and Dieter’ll end up fighting it out. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I have my duty,” Bossman says and all I see is a stupid waste of decent material. “Get going.”

  Down into the bowels of the ship, prodded by guns at our backs. One of the soldiers gives Sara a white sheet that she holds in front of us as we descend stairs and ladders and prowl dark corridors, prompted by creaking doors and distant footsteps. We’re calling out that we want to talk, that we’ve come to negotiate but we get only our own echoes in response.

  “You could have tried harder to save me,” Sara complains.

  “And if I’d convinced him? You wouldn’t have had any grounds to complain about me.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  The truth is, I’ve never been so frightened in my life. I asked for this—I told the captain to lead them a merry chase and he’s doing it—but that still leaves Sara and me between two opposing lines of guns, and I can’t summon any sort of jaunty optimism for that. My hope now is that I get shot first. I don’t want to know.

  There’s noise, just ahead, in every hallway we enter. The soldier behind me has developed this annoying habit of poking me repeatedly in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle, pushing me toward the source of the sound. But when we arrive, there’s never anyone there. Once or twice we hear footsteps scuttling to the floor above; when we double-back up the steps to catch them, there’s no one in sight there either.

  After a few more false leads, the soldiers prod us forward, giving us a bigger lead so we can catch the brunt of any ambush.

  It’s goddamn spooky. The compartments are narrow and humid, the ceiling is low and clogged with the wires for every jury-rigged ‘improvement’ made to communications and technology in the last sixty years.

  Groans and creaks abound and any one might signal danger or not, a hungry sailor pointing a gun or a rat in a corner eating crumbs. Or somebody who knows the ship way better than we do, toying with us before skinning us for dinner. That thought has to be preying on the soldiers by now. They’ve gotten real quiet while the rifle barrel in my ribs is getting more insistent and painful, particularly when the boy misses and pokes me in the armpit instead. His hands aren’t steady, which is no comfort either.

  And then, we hear sailors—talking, scrambling and scraping noises just ahead. We rush forward and stop dead at a watertight passage, doors closed and levers thrown to the locked position. On the other side of the hatch, I hear gasps and muffled blows, like punches or kicks—kicking the floor? What’s going on?

  And then the noise is loud right behind us, making us all jump, right back where we were before we made this turn. The soldiers hustle us around in front of them again but I know we’re all thinking the same thing: How in hell did they get behind us without passing? And, of course, when we emerge to the central corridor again, there’s no one in sight.

  We keep moving but I keep hearing that poor sucker kicking the door, over and over in my head.

  “I know you don’t take orders,” I tell Sara. “But can you let me help you?” I say. “You said trust the man asking you for help—can you trust the man who wants to help you?”

  Though there’s probably nothing in the world she’s less likely to want, she nods, tightly and I realize she’s as scared as I am.

  No one’s rushing now. The soldiers hear the familiar noises and do their duty, check them out, but they’re spooked, thrown, tentative and cautious. It’s finally occurred to them that they’re not the masters of this universe and both the silence and the outbursts of distant noise are very unnerving, each in their own way. Several times, I jump at a sudden sound and find that stupid gun barrel up under my arm again.

  And then, we approach another watertight chamber, the hatches hanging open. And I see a hat hanging in the corridor beyond. The captain’s stupid oversized white cap bobs jauntily from a pipe against the wall, just on the other side of the exit hatch.

  And here again is that feeling of knowing, the feeling I had when I threw in with Harry, when I went for Sara, long before I knew how much she would mean to me. In the moment, again, I know.

  I stop short, like I did earlier when startled by a sound—and there’s that gun barrel, poking me under my armpit. This time, I grab the muzzle with both hands and shove it backwards with all my might. The stock strikes the soldier hard in the belly and he doubles over with a gasp.

  “Go!” I yell, grabbing Sara, the two of us bolting for the exit.

  “Stop!” our other soldier yells, of course. Which fills all the time necessary for us to trip over the exit door and fall through the hatch onto the really hard steel floor behind it.

  And suddenly, there are sailors all over the place, emerging from side compartments and slamming shut the watertight hatches we just exited—and, from what we can hear, the hatches on the other end, the entry doors to the compartment. Leaving our soldiers locked helplessly—and loudly—inside.

  “Open up! We’ll shoot!” they yell.

  The First Mate, towering over us, yells back. “Shoot! Doors steel! Ricochet yourself five times if you want to!”

  I help Sara to her feet.

  “How did you know?” she says.

  I point out the captain’s hat.

  “What if that’s his old one and he left it there years ago?”

  “Then we’re dead.”

  I get a look from her I haven’t seen before but wouldn’t mind seeing all the time.

  “You said you weren’t a warrior.”

  “I said we weren’t in a war.”

  One time—once!—in my life, I manage a good comeback at the right time and it almost gets drowned out by the pounding and yelling from behind the watertight hatch.

  “What’s going on?”

  The First Mate smiles apologetically. “We leave a bucket over the door. Slam door close, it falls. Ammonia and bleach. Good for clean floor.”

  “In a well-ventilated area,” Sara says as we hear gasping and feet pounding at the door, more and more weakly—and then silence.

  Spin

  -And that’s your story? You did it all to win back the girl?

  No, I thought of her in the middle. I did it all for Prince Rahim.

  -Oh please!

  Well, he’s the one who’ll gain from it, one way or the other. Harry always says, “Take credit.” Somebody made it happen, it might as well be me.

  We wait long enough to make sure the soldiers are good and knocked-out; then the sailors cover their noses and mouths with handkerchiefs, open the hatches and quickly remove the guns and ammo. They carry the slowly-reviving bodies to the brig, where the other twenty or so soldiers are arrayed on the floor like so many vomiting, moaning bags of laundry.

  By the time we meet up with the Captain a
nd climb the main staircase, we’re a formidably-armed group. Some sailors stick to one gun while others have confiscated as many as they can carry. I find myself toting up what these guns would be worth if I sold guns—I just can’t leave business at the office.

  We reach the main deck and peek out into early morning light, the remaining fog burning off quickly. The captain sends scouts, expecting a battle with Dieter and Bossman and the remaining soldiers on the bridge.

  Six sailors climb the superstructure around the bridge, prepared to swarm that outpost from all sides. But it isn’t necessary.

  They immediately wave us up the ladder. We arrive in time for a truly memorable knock-down, drag-out fistfight careening all across the bridge. Dieter curses much more colorfully than Bossman, but Bossman’s got a good left. None of his crewmen leave their stations to help him—but they aren’t paying much attention to their instruments, either.

  Which pretty much explains the ship running aground, a deep shudder followed by a ripping noise way below deck as the Mercury Venture slams into the beach. Just in front of the six or seven thousand early birds at the Sunrise Festival.

  -You’re saying this was just a coincidence.

  Not at all. This was Diamante’s plan. Pokemon Go.

  -Please don’t tell me that.

  Download a spoofer program yourself and see. While we were all arguing on the bridge and the crew was eliminating soldiers below deck, Diamante plugged his phone in to charge and laid it on top of the GPS unit in the communications rack. His spoofer jams the satellite GPS signal and replaces it with data of its own—just like it does when he’s hunting Pokemon. The trick, though, is to make the deception subtle enough that the crew doesn’t detect it. In this case, the spoofer just said the ship was off-course by four degrees, which nobody considered a big deal.

  -The spoofer made the ship drift to port?

  No, it told the instruments that the ship was drifting to port when it wasn’t. The navigator corrected for it and turned the ship four degrees to starboard. Driving it right into the beach at Qumrahdi.

  -You’re saying he planned all of that?

  I told you he was a smart guy. Look, from the moment we reached the ship, this whole thing was improv—I had my plan, he had his. Mine was maybe more haphazard than his.

  -It worked out very conveniently for you, though.

  I’ll admit the location was ideal, coming ashore just as Prince Rahim was on the spot, greeting the eclipse lovers.

  -Such convenience suggests design.

  Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t have a phone, I told you. Diamante’s was busy spoofing the GPS. And Yusuf was still locked up.

  -Your Sara had a phone. As did Princess Amina.

  That’s true, I suppose. If you want to base your prosecution on women gossiping on their cellphones, be my guest.

  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a happy coincidence that Rahim happens to be in the right place with your security team, who rush aboard the ship and find the crew holding twenty-some prisoners, a group of American defense contractors and a bigger group in the uniform of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. You of course secure the bridge, as any effective security force would, arresting Dieter and Bossman and his crew.

  -And you.

  I don’t remember anyone ever telling us we were under arrest. You escorted us back here to this compound, after I took Prince Rahim on a tour of the cargo bay.

  -[clears throat] Excuse me?

  Well, you were busy moving the soldiers off the boat and Rahim was absolutely fascinated by the Syrian archaeological treasures and the sixty-five megaton nuclear device. That one really threw him for a loop.

  -So you’re telling me that he received no warning?

  I’m not telling you that. I have no idea what happened after we left them all behind. But seriously—if Yusuf warned you that Harry Sandler was threatening your country with a homemade nuclear weapon, would you take that seriously?

  In the end, it doesn’t matter what he knew then. What matters is what he knows now. What also matters is that your security guys took the contractors and the Iranians off the ship in front of cellphone cameras.

  -No cameras. We cleared the beach first.

  You didn’t clear the hotel, did you? Sixty stories of big windows overlooking the site.

  -We stripped the soldiers to t-shirts. No one knows who they were.

  Right—just a bunch of really buff guys, some in Revolutionary Guard black Kevlar pants and some in American camouflage Kevlar pants, being led away at gunpoint—and a crew in Hazmat suits coming on board. I’ll guarantee you fifty good conspiracy theories on YouTube by lunch tomorrow.

  -I must say, I don’t see that this is good for any of us, you included.

  Excuse me. My job is to know the angles. Like I said, if not for this craziness, we’d already be in jail. Instead, we’re here, being interrogated by you. Why? Because this is a very big mess in a very public place. Rahim has to give a press conference soon and his answers better be satisfying.

  -Which puts you, as they say, on the hot seat.

  Au contraire. It puts you there.

  -I am a servant of my country. To me, this is not a game.

  I was a servant of my country until they nailed me to a wall in front of Congress for doing exactly what they told me to do. Of course, it’s a game! Anything with winners and losers is a game.

  -Everything has winners and losers.

  Incorrect. Games have winners and losers. Games can be rigged. Games have loopholes, they have favored customers. Real Life is chaos—no rules, no limits—but no loopholes either. Everybody pays. Everybody. We all die, don’t we? And at that point, all the games are just stupid.

  So now, since yes, we’re playing a game—let’s play smart! Rahim knows me for years—why aren’t the two of us having a simple conversation? He wants to be protected from this whole thing—so he’s put you in the middle.

  -I don’t—

  Don’t be stupid. This is an opportunity for you. You’ve just got to take care of him.

  -(pause) I don’t need your—

  Here’s how I see it—you tell me where I’m wrong. Rahim needs a story he can use and your job is to get it for him. Considering the players, your only choice is between Dieter’s story and ours.

  I’m assuming Dieter’s story is that he—an American contractor working in the region—somehow stumbled onto a plot by Harry, Sara, Diamante and me to smuggle a nuclear device and archaeological contraband out of the Gulf and he managed to foil it all by himself. Is that pretty close?

  -I said before, you answer questions, not—

  I mean, it’s the only story he can tell, given what’s known. My guess is, he barely spoke to you at all—he just assumed you would cover for him.

  -Uh, what makes you think that?

  Only everything I know about the guy. And I’m sure you’ve heard from Parker Meridien already, demanding the fix in Dieter’s favor. Because he’s one of their protected and I already have a history as a fall guy for Langley. Is that also close?

  -(shifting in his seat) Possibly.

  Of course it is—that’s their whole gig, shoving their cock-and-bull story down your throat because they’re the Masters of the Universe.

  Except, I think you’re going to shove their story back down their throats, because it isn’t the story that suits you best. Or Rahim.

  -(pause) Go on.

  The first problem with Dieter’s story is that Harry and Sara and I are already known associates of Prince Rahim. The hotel staff and several wealthy citizens of Qumrahdi saw us arrive in a very noticeable and very expensive vintage racing car, announced as a gift to Prince Rahim. An elite group of international bankers were convinced, reluctantly, to share their party space with us, specifically to accommodate close friends of Prince Yusuf. So Dieter’s story leaves a sizeable group of influential mouths you’d have to shut somehow and makes Prince Rahim look compromised by the same people you’d be accusing of m
ultiple crimes. You think he’s going to like that conclusion?

  -(cough) Go on.

  And, if you check with your media, I’ll bet you some reporter has already found out we arrived yesterday on an American military transport, with no flight plan and no paperwork.

  -How would someone find that out?

  Maybe women gossiping on their cellphones—who knows?

  The point is, if that gets to the media, the whole question of undocumented flights blows wide open. Remember the firestorm over the rendition planes? The questions wouldn’t only be about Wadiirah—the media would blow it up, like they always do, into a worldwide issue. So Parker Meridien might want to protect Dieter, but I suspect your ally, the US government, wants nothing to do with those types of consequences. You see my point?

  -(choking noises) Go on, please.

  Okay, the way I see it, we’re in the same business—collecting the facts and then telling stories that cover those facts in a useful, though not necessarily truthful, way.

  I’m sure Prince Rahim—and therefore, you—will like our story much better: Poor unfortunate known associates of the Prince, falsely accused of smuggling a bomb into Paris, discover a forged shipping certificate—I’ll forward you a copy as soon as you let us out of here—and trace it to the Gulf. We arrive here and expose a smuggling ring involving a rogue American security contractor, acting entirely on his own, for reasons of personal profit, with a team masquerading as Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers. You can say the Hazmat guys were called to the ship because of a faulty air conditioning unit.

  -That’s a bit flimsy, don’t you think?

  How about this, then? I give you access to several bank accounts in Dieter’s name and the address of a Russian in Cyprus whose money is in those accounts, on account of, he was supposed to take delivery of the Syrian relics—copies of his shipping certificates are in the ship’s manifest. You shake him hard enough, I’ll guarantee he’ll sell out Dieter in a heartbeat. Once the Americans see him and Dieter in bed together, they’ll cut Dieter loose without a breath. But you’ll have to deal with the fallout.