Belac was too urbane a negotiator to burst out with an instant rejection but it was very close. Icily controlled, he said, “That’s not acceptable, under any circumstances, Excellency. As I have made clear, I have already gone to considerable personal expense and effort, committed myself to great expense with other people. In the business I follow, everything depends upon personal reputation.”
And why you’ve no alternative but to agree, thought Rivera. He said, “Which was why the thirty-five million was advanced, surely!”
“An advance on account,” Belac said, unsettled now. “And from it I have extended other advances on account, accounts that my suppliers expect me to honor in full and on time.”
“Exactly!” Rivera said as the hook jarred upward. “Your suppliers expect you to fulfill your commitments on time, I expect you to fulfill your commitments on time. We’re in agreement then!” It was the moment for the patronizing attitudes to be reversed. It was the overextended Belac who would have to dance to the tune he played, accepting what payments he chose to advance. Rivera knew from other deals how these men worked, interchanging and swopping weaponry, the word-of-mouth agreements having rigidly to be met. And how violently disputes were resolved, if they weren’t. He remained curious at Belac’s apparent hesitation over the VAX equipment, feeling a stir of unease. Did the Belgian intend to supply it? Or merely to provide enough of the other things to make a substantial profit but leave him exposed for the difficult but essential computer? A further, essential reason to withhold the money.
He’d been loo confident of die limitless money continuing, Belac admitted to himself. Now he was trapped, with timed deliveries that had to be paid for. Desperately, vowing somehow to repay in kind the smirking bastard sitting opposite him, Belac said. “Without another advance of thirty-five million, everything collapses. My suppliers simply won’t deal with me.”
His voice had lost its smooth, imperturbable tone. He waited, but the Cuban said nothing. Practically pleading, Belac said, “I have given personal guarantees. Payments are arranged on fixed dates. We agreed you would immediately cover any additional, necessary expenditure, for God’s sake!”
Make up the shortfall from your own funds; you’re rich enough, thought Rivera. He said, “I’ll advance the next thirty-five million, less the ten percent withholding, to protect my delivery being on time.…” He allowed just the right degree of hesitation. “Or would you have me change the whole arrangement? Withdraw some of the requirements from you and spread them to other dealers: the VAX computer particularly, if you are finding that difficult.”
“No!” Belac said too quickly. If that happened, some of the subsidiary dealers with whom he’d made arrangements would realize the purchases were being spread and would imagine him to be in difficulties, which he was. And would be in greater difficulty when they demanded their money immediately, frightened he had a cash shortage. What Rivera was allowing him—$31,500,000—would just be enough to cover the commitments for which he’d given his word. Still too quickly, he went on, “I agree to the arrangement.”
“I’m glad we’ve had this meeting,” the ambassador said. “I feel it has clarified a number of points.” The main one being that you can’t contemptuously treat me like some cigar-chewing peasant.
“I think so, too,” Belac said, wanting to recover. “I think there are other points that maybe need clarifying, too.”
“Such as?”
“That mutual trust we spoke about,” Belac said heavily. “I think it would be very unfortunate if there stopped being mutual trust between us.”
“So do I.” An open threat, Rivera recognized, uneasily.
“It would be regrettable for any other sort of penalties to be considered by either of us, don’t you think?” Belac said.
“I’m not sure I’m following this conversation,” Rivera said. His voice remained quite firm, he decided, gratefully.
The Belgian sat regarding the other man without speaking for several moments. He said, “It is important that we understand each other.”
“There’s no misunderstanding on my part,” Rivera assured him. “I sincerely hope there’s none upon yours.”
“There won’t be, from now on,” the Belgian said.
The encounter concluded, Belac’s departure duly noted by the CIA surveillance team, witli Rivera firmly believing himself to be the victor.
Which he had been, far more than he knew.
Belac had done nothing about obtaining the American-manufactured, American-equipped computer system listed among the top ten items barred from export to any communist country.
Belatedly Belac approached a hi-tech consultant in California through whom he had previously dealt—always by telephone or letter—for technical advice upon such things. And upon the consultant’s advice Belac finally did approach Sweden. The company was named Epetric, was headquartered in the very heart of Stockholm, and was regarded as the most amenable to rule bending as well as one of the best hi-tech corporations in the country.
Precisely because it was such a state-of-the-art organization as well as being so amenable to rule bending, Epetric was prominent on the list of suspected technological infringers not just in the CIA but in the U.S. Customs Service as well. The combined pressure of both agencies resulted in Washington warning Stockholm that unless they did more to control the technology flood. Swedish industries, and particularly companies like Epetric, would be denied by federal legislation the legal American computer exports upon which the industry, worldwide, depended.
Stockholm resented the threat but could not deny the hemorrhage, and the cabinet decided that the country had to show itself a less open technological doorway.
Nine months before Belac approached Epetric—months, in fact, before there had ever been contact between the Belgian and José Gaviria Rivera—Swedish customs investigators had succeeded in suborning an informant within the contracts and finance department of the Epetric company.
His name was Lars Henstrom.
Paul Rodgers felt life was sweet; sweet as a little nut. Sweeter in fact. What was sweeter than a little nut? Angie maybe. She sure as hell was sweet; tits she had—no silicone, either—made those bimbos in the skin mags look like grandmothers or bag ladies. And not just the tits. Rodgers, who’d bucked a few in his time flying in Nam and then for Florida, before it went bust, reckoned there hadn’t been a trick invented in the sack that Angie didn’t know; guessed she might have invented a few of them.
And not just the joy of Angie, since he’d wised up. There was the paid-for-cash condo in Naples, as an investment, and the paid-for-cash beach house where they lived at Fort Lauderdale, and the paid-for-cash Jaguar XK6, the latest convertible model, and those discreet safe-deposit boxes in Miami and Tampa and Dallas and New York, everything nicely spread around, solid as those unquestioning banks. Yes sir, life was sweet; sweet as a little …
Rodgers didn’t bother to finish the thought, frowning at the cumulus buildup ahead, a boiling, churning foam of blackened cloud already split apart by lightning. The forecast—the best he could get, that was, before lifting off from the dirt strip outside Cartagena—had warned of occasional seasonal turbulence. Sure as fuck this wasn’t occasional seasonal turbulence. This was a full-blown storm, the kind that every so often strutted the Caribbean, blowing down the tarp shacks and uprooting a tree here and there and giving those vacationing jerks paying $300 a day the hurricane story of a lifetime when they got back to Des Moines or Billings. Except that it wasn’t a hurricane. Just an awkward fucking storm just when he didn’t want one, right in the way of where he wanted to go.