“We can bring in your combat cars,” Raul said, looking at the factor beside him.
“There’s excess capacity on all the TST ships that land on Cantilucca,” Ramon amplified with a giggle. “Empty coming in, but it can be full if there’s something we want to bring in.”
“Don’t talk about that!” Suterbilt snapped. He glanced from son to father, clearly angry but aware that the pair of gangsters didn’t view the situation as he—a nominally honest businessman—did.
Quite obviously the factor was cooking Trans-Star Trading’s records by showing lower cargo tonnage than the hulls’ actual capacity. By so doing, he cheated his employers of shipping charges and—more important—permitted the L’Escorials to avoid port duties which should have been paid to the Marvelan Confederacy.
The ships that carried undeclared gage off Cantilucca traveled part-empty coming in. As Ramon had said, that unlisted volume could be filled with Frisian troops and equipment.
“If it’s possible to bring in the cars, that would speed up the operation,” Coke continued smoothly, as if the byplay among the locals meant nothing to him. “I’m estimating forty days with combat cars, but using infantry alone would add considerably to the completion time.”
“A million-two in thalers,” Suterbilt said, wincing. He stared at his hands.
“Roughly,” Coke agreed. “With combat cars.”
“The deal still has to be without the Bonding Authority,” Raul said. “You know that, don’t you?”
Coke gave a nod as tight and enigmatic as that of the factor a few moments before. “That does leave a problem, doesn’t it?” he said.
Raul looked at Suterbilt. “Pay him,” the old man said. “Pay him—”
He glanced back at Coke. “Ten days, that’ll be enough, won’t it? On account, an earnest of our good faith.”
“I can’t raise that—” Suterbilt objected.
“I can’t commit my superiors,” Coke warned. “I can only recommend by message capsule….”
The Old Man waved at Coke. “Yes, yes,” he said, “but with the money in hand, there won’t be any trouble about the deal.”
Ramon giggled. “‘Money talks, nobody walks,’” he said, quoting an aphorism old when Croesus struck the first coin.
“I don’t have,” Suterbilt said angrily toward Raul, “we don’t have that kind of money available now. The warehouse burned, don’t you remember?”
“It’s still collateral so far as TST is concerned,” Raul said. He waggled a wizened fist in Suterbilt’s face to emphasize the point.
“Borrow the money from the company accounts on Delos, that’s easy enough.”
“And we’ll repay it out of the Astra stockpile,” Ramon added complacently. “Nobody will know the difference.”
The factor grimaced but did not speak.
“We’ll be kings with Astra out of the way once and for all!” Raul snapped. “And there’s no choice anyway. If we don’t move now, how are we going to pay the men with the gage gone?”
Suterbilt raised his hands to his face. He gripped his cheeks with a trembling violence that Coke watched in concern, wondering what the factor was going to do next.
Suterbilt slammed his palms back down on the table. “All right,” he said. “All right! I’ll raise the money.”
He glared viciously at Coke and continued, “But it will take five days, maybe six, because of transit time to Delos. I can’t write you a valid draft out of the funds available here on Cantilucca!”
Matthew Coke nodded calmly. “I’ll inform my superiors of the pending circumstances,” he said.
Coke should have been enthusiastic at the success of his mission. True, a survey team leader couldn’t commit the FDF; but this was a perfectly workable deal, a good deal. Cantilucca would provide live-fire experience for relatively green forces, just the thing Camp Able was looking for.
The trouble was, Coke kept seeing the red-clad thug with a powergun thrust against the cunt of the whore his fellows were beating. The gunman could have pulled the trigger as easily as not, on whim; and the next time, he or another of his sort likely would do just that.
Matthew Coke was making sure that the set of circumstances which made such behavior possible continued.
Angel’s private cubicle was at the end of the bunk room filling most of the L’Escorial building’s second floor. He paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Look, El-Tee,” he said, “it’s not a palace I got here. Ah—maybe we could go somewhere else, find a bar or something.”
Margulies snorted. “It could be pretty bad, Angel,” she said, “and I’d still have lived in worse. You know that, because part of the time you were there.”
“Yeah, well, this is no great shakes,” the man repeated, but he opened the door.
She had seen worse. There’d been the militia barracks on Typer where the locals relieved themselves in one corner of the room in which they lived, slept, and ate. That was the only military installation Margulies could recall being dirtier than this room of Angel’s.
She hadn’t regarded the Typer Militia as being real soldiers. Neither, obviously, was her one-time comrade here.
No feces, and perhaps no urine. But the smell of sour vomit was overpowering, and the originally white sheets on the bed were so dirty that they had for the most part a gun-metal color. The common barracks from which Angel’s room was set off was in far better shape, though the number of troops bunking in it had been doubled or tripled in the recent past.
“Look,” Angel repeated. “We better—”
Margulies pushed him casually inside and followed. “You were going to get me a drink,” she said as she closed the door behind them. “Stop dicking around, hey?”
“Yeah, I …” he said. This must have been the first time in quite a long while that he’d been straight enough to appreciate the reality of his existence. His shoulders slumped as he looked at the fetid ruin around him.
The back and one leg of a chair protruded from a pile of garments. Margulies lifted the chair and shook it, then kicked the filthy clothing aside to make room for her to sit down. “When we last talked,” she said in a casual tone, “you were talking about buying a tract of land where you grew up.”
“Aw, fuck it, Missie, I’m no farmer,” Angel said. He seated himself on the edge of the bunk and met her eyes for the first time since they came upstairs. “I left here when I was fifteen. Engine wiper on a starship, then I did some soldiering on Wellbegone. Got in with the Slammers, then the FDF. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said I was going to raise gage. I think I just wanted to be fifteen again.”
He bent and groped first beneath the bunk, then within the bedding proper. He came up with a bottle. It was unlabeled. The ten centimeters’ depth of fluid within had a pinkish tinge.
“Ah …” Angel said. “Do you really want a drink? I don’t have glasses.”
“No problem,” Margulies said, taking the bottle from him. The liquor was harsh. The pink color suggested flavoring, but the only taste she noticed was that of raw alcohol. She returned the bottle, wiping her lips with the back of her free hand.
“Or there’s gage, of course,” Angel offered with false perkiness.
“Naw, not for me,” Margulies said. “But you used to prefer it to booze, didn’t you?”
Angel got up and rested his hands on the window ledge. The glass was painted black and reflected the light of the single fixture overhead.
“I really stepped on my dick, Mary,” he whispered to the glass. “I went out, I looked at land, and it all came back to me, starving and scrabbling and bored, bored to fucking tears all the time I was a kid. That was why I left. And it’s worse now, the syndicates take twice the bite they did when I left.”
He turned and looked at his former lieutenant again. “And I looked around the security troops and I thought, these clowns, they’re not fit to be recruits to the Slammers.”