He studied his hands. I told him the speech was over and the floor was open for group discussion. He could talk if he wanted. He went on looking at his hands for a long time.
Then he said, “I made a mistake.”
“Wonderful. It was my mistake letting you talk. ‘I made a mistake.’ You ought to have that tattooed on your ass. You damn fool, you’ve made ten mistakes a day.”
“No. Just one. I read you wrong. Over and over and over. I had a fix on you before I went down to the Keys and you kept doing things to change my mind and I just wouldn’t let you do it. Am I making sense?”
“Sure.”
“I had this impression of you, I couldn’t let go of it. I’m still having trouble breaking the habit. The weapons aren’t going to Africa. There’s this sheikdom on the Arabian Gulf—”
“I get the point.”
“All right.” He looked up. “I wish I had a cigarette.”
“You quit.”
“I know. Hell with it. I read you wrong, that’s all. I never thought of killing you in South Dakota. In the barn, yes. The bottle was coffee laced with one of our new wonder drugs. I knew you’d want coffee. I was going to burn the barn down with you in it.”
“What about here?”
“I would have put you in the van. They’re loading it as a unit, they could have dropped you in the ocean. The ship’s here in Savannah, of course. They load at noon, they ship out by one. Nice timing, huh?”
“Very nice. You were going to handle the deal yourself? You weren’t afraid of a cross?”
“You mean by the buyers?” I nodded. “I thought of it. Not very seriously, but it did enter my mind. I think they’d rather pay the two million than lose a valuable contact. Oh, I knew you’d be insurance at the moment of exchange, but I had to pick the lesser of two evils.”
“Next time toss a coin.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” His eyes narrowed suddenly. “I’m not telling you all this because confession is good for the soul. I already figured that you’re not going to kill me.” A shaky smile came and went. “If I called this one wrong, too—”
“No.”
“Because if I did, then I deserve to die. No joke.”
I shook my head. “Why kill you? Because you tried to kill me? The hell, I damn near drowned you twice before we even got started. I don’t want to punish you. That’s not my line. With you dead I’m out a million dollars. I want the money. I didn’t do this for the money, not exactly, but now I want it. The only possible reason to kill you would be if you were still a threat to me. I don’t think you are. It took you a while, but you’re beginning to know who I am. I’m worth a lot more to you alive than dead, and so are you to me, so the hell with it.”
He thought it all over. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Go on back to your cabin. Knock yourself out with sleeping pills. We paid for the cabins, we might as well get some use out of them. We’ll have a busy morning. You may trust your Arab buddies, but I don’t. They may not realize you’re worth more to them alive than dead. Sometimes even bright people make that mistake. Don’t forget your gun. Go ahead, pick it up. We’re big boys now. I’m not going to shoot you and you’re not going to shoot me. And we both know it. Go get some sleep, George.”
He walked out the door, took a few steps, stopped, turned. He said, “Paul? I wish this never happened and I’m glad it did. You follow? I’m glad you’ll be in on it tomorrow. We might — who knows, we might even find things to do later on. When push comes to shove, we’re not a bad team. Right?”
I told him to get the hell to bed.
It was his turn to wake up first. He woke me around eight. “I thought of holding a gun on you as a gag,” he said. “But I figured you’d take it away from me and feed it to me through my ass.”
“Probably.”
“That’s what I decided. Get dressed, we’ll catch some breakfast.”
We walked across the road to a diner. We ate a lot of eggs, drank a lot of coffee. We went back to my cabin. He had bought cigarettes at the diner, and he smoked one after another while he drew me a map of the Savannah docks.
I guess I must have reached him. He told me the whole play, and he knew I could have pushed him right then and finished the deal on my own, and he also knew I wouldn’t. Progress.
I studied the map for a while. I said, “Okay, I’ve got it. Head into town, pick up a rental car. You’d better put on a suit. Bring the car here and we’ll load what we need. Everything else goes on the truck. Then you’ll drive down to the wharves. You’ll park — give me the map-you’ll park here, and—”
We ran through it. He made a few suggestions, some good and some bad, and we played with it until it came out right. He headed off to rent a car. I opened up the back of the van, closed myself inside. I opened a few crates until I found what I wanted. I put a nuclear grenade and a launcher on the floor of the cab.
There was a shopping plaza next door to the diner. I went into a drugstore and bought two candy bars and a wind-up alarm clock. I got back before George. I stuck the alarm clock in the drawer and ate the candy bars. Then I took off the trucker duds, put on my suit, and put the trucking clothes on over it. I looked a little bulky, but no one was going to take my picture.
I was loading the truck when he brought the car around. It was a compact, either a Valiant or a Falcon, I never remember which is which. “All they had,” he said. “It’ll do, won’t it?”
“Not if they pay off in singles.”
“Probably fifties and hundreds.”
“Then it’ll do fine.”
He offered to take the truck, but I said I would. He couldn’t argue without looking as though he was pulling something, which was ridiculous, but he wasn’t going to fight it. I told him to go on ahead, that I wanted the car parked and him in position before I took the truck out He stopped to have a look at the grenade and launcher.
“Jesus,” he said. “Sweet Jesus. Drive carefully, will you?”
“Nothing happens unless the pin is pulled.”
“Maybe their quality control is spotty. Drive carefully anyway, huh?”
He took off. I finished putting our waste material in the van — his overalls, our jackets, a few odds and ends. I was going to keep the Magnum and shoulder rig, but at the last minute I added them, too. Once we made the trade I wouldn’t need a gun, and meanwhile I had an atomic grenade, and it outranked the Magnum.
Then I went back for the alarm clock and climbed into the back of the van for the last time. I climbed back down a few minutes later, swept both of our cabins for prints — this last out of habit, there was no particular point to it. I stopped in at the office, but George had paid our tab in advance when we checked in.
I spent ten more minutes walking around the lot and taking big breaths. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but it was a beautiful day. Blue sky and a sun. And, for the first time in too long, warmth. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed it up there. Warmth. Heat from the sun.
I got up in the cab. I started the engine, flicked on the radio just in time for the news. Nothing. I killed the radio and made like a truckdriver.
His map was good. I only went wrong once, when a street I’d planned on taking turned out to be one way the other way. I found a street that was going my way and drove straight to the waterfront, then headed directly for our pier. I had wondered what kind of a ship you could drive a full-size van onto, and now I knew. It was all alone out there and it was big. It was flying the Panamanian flag. If all those ships belonged to Panama, she could declare herself Mistress of the Seas. Or share the title with Liberia.