“You burned the fucking money, is what you did,” Jorge said, between awe and dismay.
“To protect my friend against his error,” Vins reminded him, now beginning to pace the floor. The pacing was important; it brought watching men to higher alertness, more readiness to pledge a risk. “But what did I tell you both?”
“Something,” said Jorge, “about the danger of a little money, and the safety of much money.”
“I remember. I was not that drunk,” Mateo said, prepared to argue the point. “We spoke of the ways a man gains that kind of safety. We seemed to be largely in agreement.”
Vins stopped pacing and faced the two seated men, no longer smiling. “If you have lingering suspicions that this room has ears, listen now: how much money would it take for all of us to become disappeared ones, desaparecidos, on our own terms, with a villa and a complacent maid for the rest of our lives? But not, if we are wise, in Cuba.”
Now Mateo and Jorge did look at each other, more in puzzlement than friendship. Then Jorge named a figure. Mateo waited and named a higher one, which would have made Vins smile if he had been watching through one-way glass.
“Then you would certainly do it for,” he paused, and named a much higher figure. Jorge jumped. Mateo lost his slouch. Vins put his knuckled fists on the desk and leaned forward, letting the smile seem to arrive of its own volition. “The amount that could be yours is ten times as much.”
Jorge closed his eyes, shook his head, opened them again.
Mateo, laconically: “And whom must we kill?”
“Perhaps one man, perhaps none,” said Vins, straightening, hands on hips, a commanding presence. “And it may turn out that we return empty-handed. It depends on some things we may not controlbut each of us just may have the chance to retire among the anonymous rich. For a warrior, it is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Ten lifetimes,” Mateo said. “But you, el lobo? Why?”
Vins would not simply identify Maksimov by name, nor the power shifts initiated by the hated liberals of the Gorbachev regime. Too many “ifs” remained to talk politics with peons. But he could read a soldier’s face, and he no longer doubted the wisdom of his choices for a team. “No man reaches the top by pushing; he must be pulled up.”
“For that, a thousand thanks,” said Jorge.
“For nothing, Jorge, but I was referring to myself. And what happens if the man who is pulling you up, finds himself pushed from behind?”
“He breaks his ass and so do you,” said Mateo, making Jorge smile.
“And some men at the top actually jump,” Vins told them. “And if another at the top even suspects he intends to. jump, that other man will push him.”
“There are too many pushers in this world and not enough pullers,” Jorge observed.
“No man pushes me,” said Vins, with the wolfish grin that had inspired his sobriquet. “The only question is: may I pull you both?”
Jorge was first, but Mateo stood too, both of them making a gesture Karel Vins had taught them as a part of esprit de corps, a very old gesture, older than Czars, as old as Caesars. They stood erect, proud, right fists clenched over their hearts.
“I have already told you, but I repeat it now, and we will not speak of this again until we are driving on the last leg of this mission,” Vins said, just a shade more somber than threatening. “We have a mission, and it requires the movement of a great fortune. All this is approved, just as you were approved.”
“As you, too, were approved,” Mateo interrupted, smirking.
Vins caught his snarl inside and inverted it. “As I too was approved,” he agreed, perfectly aware that Mateo Carranza was already beginning to test the notion of equality. I may have to shoot this son of a whore yet, he thought. “We will pursue the mission, pay the money to a man for a piece of military hardware, turn that hardware over to certain authoritiesand try to recover the money. All approved; what is not sanctioned is what we just might do with the money afterward.”
For all his faults, Mateo had his flashes of insight. “I do not see why, Lobo, if we control the money to begin with, we do not simply disappear immediately.”
“The hardware it buys,” said Jorge, surprised.
“Fuck the hardware,” Mateo said with a smile.
“Because that hardware is an aircraft of absolutely crucial importance to world socialism and the Soviet Union,” Vins said tersely. “You will bear in mind that I am a patriot.” And this time his smile was unfeigned, lopsided, and a little sad. “But not the kind of patriot to have my ass broken for nothing.”
TWENTY-SIX
A night in Mazatlan had not improved the temper of Raoul Medina. He braced himself as Aleman, the driver of the Chevette, dodged another chuckhole on the winding road to Regocijo. The long bag with the tanks and flight helmet in Medina’s side of the footwell slid again until he clamped it between his feet. To fly five thousand miles in a day and then trudge from a lagoon to a town at the end of the day lugging SCUBA tanks, only to be balked by want of a lousy car! “They should have known the rental places in Mazatlan wouldn’t be open at night,” he fumed. His Spanish was fluent, though a little rusty.
Rodrigues, sitting in back with his long legs stretched at a slant, flicked the butt of his Delicado still smoldering from the open window. “I might have told them if anyone had asked me,” he said.
“Aleman, can’t you punch this thing harder?”
“Not if we expect to get there on four wheels,” said Aleman with a trace of brusqueness. On such a road, forty miles an hour was good time; fifty, suicidal. They had turned south from El Salto a half hour earlier and after that the road had become worse, the pounding on the Chevette’s suspension more fierce than Medina remembered but then, old Julio’s grandson had not been driving as hard as Aleman. Then, “Iglesia,” said Medina, spotting the superstructure of the ancient church through the lacy shade of trees. “We’re nearly there.”
He directed Aleman through the dusty whitewashed town of Regocijo even though the village was not the kind a sober man could get himself lost in, taking it slowly enough to avoid the dogs and barefooted children, then urged the driver on to the south. “Fifteen kilometers or so now,” he said.
“I understand miles, seńor,” said Aleman, easily wounded.
“Certainly; my regrets, Aleman.” After a night with these two, Medina knew that Aleman was older than he seemed, college-trained and insufferably proud of it. The lank Rodrigues claimed he had got his training in the jungles of Honduras and was well disposed toward the yanquis who had schooled him. Even better disposed toward the money, Medina thought, having known mercenaries in other countries. Rodrigues seemed typical of most of the breed, essentially a lazy man but tireless when he had to be, and he knew how to hide an Ingram submachine gun under his windbreaker by a sling.
Aleman’s similar weapon, as well as Medina’s, lay beneath the hood, wrapped in oilcloth and strapped to the engine oil filter with the ubiquitous black electrical tape. Half of all Mexican transport was literally held together with the stuff, Aleman had said. “I don’t think we need to go waving our Mac Tens under old Julio’s nose,” Medina said now, beginning to recognize landmarks near the airstrip. “He’s a good guy.”
“Mac Elevens,” Rodrigues said. “Ingram Mac Eleven, seńor.” He snapped his weapon loose and popped its narrow, boxlike magazine down, displaying them separately as Medina craned his head to see.
“Jesu Christo,” Medina breathed, “don’t tell me they’re different. I haven’t fired one in years.”
Rodrigues gazed fondly at the squarish, gray lines of the stubby weapon, with its wire stock folded so closely over its receiver that the entire murderous little brute could be slung between arm and rib cage with hardly a bulge. “This weighs less than a Ten, a little shorter. Less recoil. Safeties are the same.”