‘How did you find him?’ I asked.
Litsi smiled. ‘I didn’t exactly. But I asked someone in France who would know... who could tell me what’s going on in the handguns world. Mr Mohammed is the result. Be satisfied with that.’
‘OK.’
‘Your name is Mr Smith,’ he said. ‘Mine is Mr Jones.’
‘Such stunning originality.’
The Marylebone Plaza hotel was about three miles distant from Eaton Square geographically and in a different world economically. The Marylebone Plaza was frankly a bare-bones overnight stopping place for impecunious travellers, huge, impersonal, a shelter for the anonymous. I’d passed it fairly often but never been through its doors before, and nor, it was clear, had Litsi. We made our way however across an expanse of hard grey mottled flooring, and took a lift to the eleventh floor.
Upstairs the passages were narrow, though carpeted; the lighting economical. We peered at door numbers, found eleven twelve, and knocked.
The door was opened to us by a swarthy-skinned man in a good suit with a white shirt, gold cufflinks, and an impassive expression.
‘Mr Jones and Mr Smith,’ Litsi said.
The man opened the door further and gestured to us to go in, and inside we found another man similarly dressed, except that he wore also a heavy gold ring inset with four diamonds arranged in a square.
‘Mohammed,’ he said, extending the hand with the ring to be shaken. He nodded over our shoulders to his friend, who silently went out of the door, closing it behind him.
Mohammed, somewhere between Litsi’s age and mine, I judged, had dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and a heavy dark moustache. The opulence of the ring was echoed in the leather suitcase lying on the bed and in his wristwatch, which looked like gold nuggets strung together round his wrist.
He was in good humour, and apologised for meeting us ‘where no one would know any of us’.
‘I am legitimately in the arms trade,’ he assured us. ‘I will tell you anything you want to know, as long as you do not say who told you.’
He apologised again for the fact that the room was furnished with a single chair, and offered it to Litsi. I perched against a table, Mohammed sat on the bed. There were reddish curtains across the window, a brown patterned carpet on the floor, a striped cotton bedspread; all clean looking and in good repair.
‘I will leave in an hour,’ Mohammed said, consulting the nuggets. ‘You wish to ask about plastic guns. Please go ahead.’
‘Er...’ Litsi said.
‘Who makes them?’ I asked.
Mohammed switched his dark gaze my way. ‘The bestknown,’ he said straightforwardly, ‘are made by Glock of Austria. The Glock 17.’ He reached unhurriedly towards the suitcase and unclipped the locks, ‘I brought one to show you.’
Beneath his educated English there was an accent I couldn’t place. Arab, in some way, I thought. Definitely Mediterranean, not Italian, perhaps French.
‘The Glock 17,’ he was saying, ‘is mostly plastic but has metal parts. Future guns of this sort can be made entirely from plastic. It’s a matter of a suitable formula for the material.’
From the suitcase he produced a neat square black box.
‘This handgun is legitimately in my possession,’ he said. ‘Despite the manner of our meeting, I am a reputable dealer.’
We assured him that we hadn’t thought otherwise.
He nodded in satisfaction and took the lid off the box. Inside, packed in a moulded tray, like a toy, lay a black pistol, an ammunition clip, and eighteen golden bullets, flat caps uppermost, points invisible, arranged neatly in three horizontal rows of six.
Mohammed lifted the weapon out of the box.
‘This pistol,’ he said, ‘has many advantages. It is light, it is cheaper and easier to make than all-metal guns, and also it is more accurate.’
He let the information sink into our brains in true salesman fashion.
‘It pulls apart.’ He showed us, snapping off the entire top of the pistol, revealing a metal rod lying within. ‘This is the metal barrel.’ He picked it out, ‘There is also a metal spring. The bullets also are metal. The butt and the ammunition clip are plastic. The pieces pop back together again very easily.’ He reassembled the pistol fast, closing its top into place with a snap. ‘Extremely easy, as you see. The clip holds nine bullets at a time. People who use this weapon, including some police forces, consider it a great advance, the forerunner of a whole new concept of handguns.’
‘Aren’t they trying to ban it in America?’ Litsi said.
‘Yes.’ Mohammed shrugged. ‘Amendment 4194 to Title 18, forbidding the import, manufacture and sales of any such gun made after January 1, 1986. It is because the plastic is undetectable by X-ray scanners. They fear the guns will be carried through airports and into government buildings by terrorists.’
‘And won’t they?’ I said.
‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘Approximately two million private citizens in America own handguns,’ he said. ‘They believe in the right to carry arms. This Glock pistol is the beginning of the future. It may result in the widespread development of plastic-detectors... and perhaps in the banning of all hand luggage on aeroplanes except ladies’ handbags and flat briefcases that can be searched by hand.’ He looked from me to Litsi. ‘Is terrorism your concern?’
‘No,’ Litsi said. ‘Not directly.’
Mohammed seemed relieved. ‘This gun wasn’t invented as a terrorist weapon,’ he said. ‘It is seriously a good pistol, better all round.’
‘We understand that,’ I said. ‘How profitable is it?’
‘To whom?’
‘To the manufacturer.’
‘Ah.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It depends.’ He considered. ‘It costs less to make and is consequently cheaper in price than metal guns. The profit margin may not be so very different overall, but the gross profit of course depends on the number of items sold.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘It’s calculated that most of the two million people already owning guns in America, for instance, will want to up-grade to the new product. The new is better and more prestigious, and so on. Also their police forces would like to have them. Apart from there, the world is thirsty for guns for use — private Americans, you understand, own them mostly for historical reasons, for sport, for fantasy, for the feeling of personal power, not because they intend to kill people — but in many many places, killing is the purpose. Killing, security and defence. The market is wide open for really cheap good reliable new pistols. For a while at least, until the demand is filled, manufacturers could make big honest money fast.’
Litsi and I listened to him with respect.
‘What about dishonest money?’ I asked.
He paused only momentarily. ‘It depends who we’re talking about.’
‘We’re still talking about the manufacturer,’ I said.
‘Ah. A corporation?’
‘A private company with one man in charge.’
He produced a smile packed with worldly disillusion.
‘Such a man can print his own millions.’
‘How, exactly?’ I asked.
‘The easiest way,’ he said, ‘is to ship the product in two parts.’ He pulled the plastic gun again into components. ‘Say you packed all the pieces into a box, like this, omitting only the barrel. A barrel, say, made of special plastic that won’t melt or buckle from the heat caused by the friction of the bullet passing through.’
He looked at us to see if we appreciated such simple matters, and seemingly reassured, went on. ‘The manufacturer exports the barrels separately. This, he says, ensures that if either shipment is diverted — which is a euphemism for stolen — in passage, the goods will be useless. Only when both shipments have reached their destination safely can the pistols be assembled. Right?’