“Two of my men are still on their way.”
“A couple of kids. Hell, you’ve got seven, and you’re going to have absolute surprise, I mean absolute surprise. Because it’s the first time anything like this has ever happened in this hemisphere. You’ve got everything covered three ways. I don’t say you couldn’t still blow it, but right now I’d give you four to one odds, and in your line of work that’s a very good price.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got this skittery feeling. Do it twenty-four hours early, that’s twenty-four hours when things can’t go wrong.”
Rashid sipped the sweet, strong, brew. There was much, much that he wasn’t being told. Trust each other? Of course they didn’t, couldn’t. As for the heroin, Gold had made an acute political observation. Heroin was the wrong kind of contraband for members of an idealistic nationalist group to carry from the Middle East to the south of Florida. The Arab masses would find it a difficult thing to understand. Americans called it shit-a good name for it, Rashid believed. Dear God, the risk. Everybody in the U.S. was in a state of hysteria on the subject, suspicious, frightened. Of course Murray Gold, selling Rashid the scheme in those long conversations in the prison exercise yard, had maintained that the risk would be zero. When Sheik Muhammed al-Khabir of Dubat, on a semi-state visit to the Boca Raton mansion of his dear friend and business associate Harvey West of Union Petroleum, arrived at Miami International in his personal D-6, there was no conceivable chance that one of the American customs inspectors would take members of his party aside and subject them to a personal search. So Gold had maintained. But it is known that in the real world, the inconceivable frequently happens. Drug spies are everywhere. The risk might be negligible, but it wasn’t quite zero.
So Rashid had thrown Gold’s heroin away. He had emptied the bags into the Beirut sewer, and replaced it with quinine and ground chalk. This had its own dangers, but they could be identified and contained. It was a single-time transaction. They had no reason to establish a reputation for probity with Murray Gold and his dirty friends. In Ramleh, Rashid had become, unwillingly, somewhat fond of the old man, unquestionably a schemer of genius. And at the same time, of course, had despised him, and the way he put the security of his own skin ahead of the interests of his people. To cheat him would be a pleasure.
“Tomorrow morning,” Rashid said thoughtfully.
“At least you’re thinking about it. I honestly can’t think of any reason why not. Maybe those two guys you’re waiting for won’t even show up. Can we talk about this with just the two of us, Rashid? I don’t like the way your boy is looking at me. What does he drink before bedtime, blood?”
Sayyid understood English, though he spoke it badly. He looked down.
“Certainly,” Rashid said. “Sayyid can leave if you will let him hold your gun and search you to be sure you have no other.”
“Hell, let him stay,” Gold said irritably. “Why would I want to shoot you? I’d come out without a cent.”
“But no longer in an Israeli jail. Back in your native land.”
“I’m a hot property in my native land. I’d rather be somewhere else.” He set the cup back on the tray with a clink. “If you agree, this is the last time we’ll talk about it, so what we say now has to stick. Everything the same except one day earlier. I checked out the parking garage. It’s a good place to exchange cars. I thought of a couple of new points. Don’t drive anywhere with more than three of your guys in one car. Three total. You all look alike. I don’t mean really-by comparison. Everybody else can catch a bus down to Miami and taxi over.”
He went on talking for several minutes, sketching a diagram on the carpet with his finger. Rashid had questions. Gold answered patiently. He was looking older than when he arrived, and he was nearly asleep.
Rashid looked at Sayyid for an opinion. Sayyid, a doctor’s son, had come into the movement as a student at American University, and he had done several difficult and dangerous things while Rashid was growing fat and impatient in prison. He had been prudent up to the moment when the fighting started, then fearfully imprudent, a combination of qualities not usually found in one person. In the look that passed between them, it was agreed that the Jew would be faithful to the plan only so long as it served his purposes, but that this proposal had some merit. They were getting edgy after the long wait, the discussions, the postponements. To do the action at once, the following morning, would catch them at the peak of tension.
Rashid agreed, therefore, implying by his manner that he would prefer to keep to the original schedule, and was consenting only because the old man wished it. Gold nodded without surprise.
“Then we’re in business.”
Rashid accompanied him back to the dilapidated car. It would be fine, the Arab was thinking, if they had those guns now, and could avoid the touchy moment when they turned over a hundred pounds of worthless powder to a suspicious man who had lived all his life at the edge of violence. They would be seven, however. Gold would be two. Perhaps, even so, Rashid should think about arranging a diversion. In guerrilla doctrine, though a seven-to-two superiority was considered good, seven-to-nothing was better.
The Jew’s demeanor changed instantly as he approached the car. His fatigue dropped away. Stepping closer, he examined the splotched roof.
“What is it?” Rashid said.
Without replying, Gold took off the glasses he was wearing and replaced them with another pair with thicker lenses. He touched the paint and then moved around the car to get another angle, with the light behind him. He hammered his fist on the roof and began to swear, in a voice choked with emotion, using rhetorical combinations that were unfamiliar to the Arab.
“I ask you again,” Rashid said. “Something is wrong. Please tell me. We are concerned in this also.”
“It could be bad,” Gold said. “Very bad.”
When Rashid tried his question again, the old man flared out at him. The Arab was a son of a dog, and copulated with his mother, using forbidden instruments and positions. He also ate shit. Rashid reminded himself again that the man was an enigma. There was real passion inside him, and enemies would be wise not to take him for granted.
“Why are you calling me these names?” Rashid asked. “Mother fucking? A really exotic practice. We had nothing to do with this, whatever it is.”
Gold continued to stare at the paint. “Mike Shayne,” he whispered. “That has to be who.”
“The conversation begins, finally. Who is Mike Shayne?”
“Trouble. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. The son of a bitch used a chopper on me.”
“A chopper? A sort of knife?”
“I kept hearing helicopters. But it was always right near an airport. I thought-”
Lines of concentration appeared around his eyes. He changed glasses slowly.
He half turned, turned back and said decisively, “Something you guys have got to do. You’ve got to kill somebody for me.”
“Indeed? This man Shayne? Why?”
“O. K.,” Gold was over his brief panic, and his tone was dry and businesslike. “Go back a couple of hours. I didn’t want to tell you because I know it’s going to make you nervous. Somebody did some guessing or had some fantastic luck, I don’t know which. I was spotted. I told you I took care of it. I thought I took care of it good. I haven’t had to hit anybody for a long time, but there isn’t that much to it, you pull the goddamn trigger and if your aim is right they fall over.”
“I’ve seen this happen.”
“I didn’t know Shayne was there, but he saw it. There I was with a dead body. I hope I’m not shocking you. I locked it in the car trunk and threw the key away. Cars come and go there, and the body wouldn’t be found till it started to smell. I was hoping to be on the other side of the Equator by that time. So Shayne called in, and the body was found tonight. I know it was Shayne because it was on the news, and I heard about it when I picked up the guns. I didn’t think it was too bad. I’ve had experience being tailed, and I know good and goddamn well I lost him.”