Blood Is Dirt (33 page)

He clasped his hands, fingers tapped knuckles. The white rim around his mouth had gone. A man his age should be careful of a temper like that. I sipped my forgotten grappa. Franconelli picked up his forgotten cigar. He relit it and loosened off his dressing gown. He put a hand up his pyjamas and massaged his heart as if he knew he'd done it wrong. It revealed a thick hairy belly that had a layer of fat that filled the contours of muscle underneath. He put an ankle up on a knee. The fly of his pyjamas gaped and a short, thick, brutal penis emerged. He didn't notice.

I was too tired to move. I should have left but there was Carlo to come. It was after two thirty in the morning now. A car pulled up outside and Franconelli stirred. He tied himself up in his dressing gown again. A few minutes later Carlo brought Graydon and Gale in. They didn't look as if they'd been talking in the car on the way over.

Graydon was dressed in a paisley-design silk dressing gown with some yellow Moroccan
barbouches
on his feet and a pair of fuchsia-coloured pyjamas.

‘Carlo said it absolutely can't wait until a civilized hour in the morning,' said Graydon.

‘It can't,' said Franconelli, and Graydon's jaw muscles bunched. ‘You never seen Graydon in short sleeves, have you?'

I shook my head.

‘Show him, Graydon.'

‘What is this?' Graydon whined.

Franconelli nodded at Carlo, who was standing behind Graydon's chair in the absence of a seat. He hoisted Graydon by the collar and with one movement pulled the gown and the pyjamas off Graydon's shoulders. He had eczema rashes in the crooks of both elbows.

‘You started on your feet yet?' asked Franconelli.

Carlo let him go and Graydon shrugged his clothes back on, looking at Gale as he did so.

‘The
Red Solent,
the
Ohio Warrior,
the
Limnos III
and the
Mithoni VII,'
said Franconelli.

Graydon smiled.

‘I'll see you straight,' said Graydon.

‘You couldn't see me straight if I came at you on rails.'

‘A game, Roberto. Just a few million bucks. We understand each other.'

‘We don't,' he said. ‘You think I'm playing games with you?'

Wall-to-wall silence. Three-dimensional, double-density silence.

‘Your wife came here to beg for you,' said Franconelli.

Graydon didn't even look at her.

‘What does she want out of it?' he asked.

Franconelli laughed.

‘You got to know each other better than that. If anybody deserved each other it was you two. Maybe what they say about opposites is true.'

‘I don't remember
your
wife being
that
nice,' said Graydon.

Graydon couldn't resist it. That was his problem. An addictive personality. Looking basket-wise on the guillotine he still had to have his say. Franconelli saw that there was no talking to him. He walked over and slapped him hard across the mouth so that Graydon fell to the floor at the feet of the men on the sofa. He got himself up on an elbow. His hair was jogged out of place and blood coated his lip, which was swollen in a corner. With the veneer cracked he should have started looking smaller. Carlo put him back on his chair.

‘You're going to make a couple of phone calls,' said Franconelli. ‘One to your bank in Zurich to arrange a transfer of ten million dollars to your wife who has saved your ass. The second to your lawyer who is going to arrange for those four ships to be sold to one of my holding companies. I think four bucks should see the deal through.'

That breezeblock silence was back in the room. Six pairs of eyes would have weighed a lot on anybody else, but Graydon was built different and he let the silence go on until it was stacked to the ceiling, then he said:

‘I don't think I am, Roberto.'

Carlo drove me to Cotonou in my car. He started to tell me I should buy myself something with air conditioning then stopped and stuck his elbow out the window. He didn't want to talk about that—bored himself easily.

‘You don't like Selina, Carlo?' I asked.

‘I like her fine,' he said, slowing for a police roadblock. They waved us through. ‘But not for Mr Franconelli. She don't want to be his wife. I seen girls like that.'

‘She's doing him some good.'

‘No. You the man doin' him some good. This the first time he shaped up in years. We been runnin' around for those guys and they been fuckin' us in the ass for our trouble. Now Mr Franconelli wakin' up. You goin' to see something. I'm tellin' you.'

He might have carried on talking for all I know. My head dropped and I slept until we arrived on the outskirts of Cotonou at 6.30 a.m. I took him past the warehouse and then to my office downtown. I gave the
gardien
some money and told him to buy coffee and croissants and make a copy of the warehouse key for Carlo. I left Carlo in the office and went home.

Heike was still sleeping. Helen arrived, put one of her tooth-cleaning sticks in her mouth, and started sweeping the floor. I called Vassili and told him to get Mr K to call me in my office in half an hour and to tell Viktor to be there as soon as possible. I went back to the office and had breakfast with Carlo. At 7.30 a.m. the
gardien
brought the key, Carlo brushed himself off and left. Five minutes later Mr K called.

‘What happened?'

‘I had to go to Lagos,' I said.

‘Problem?'

‘Nothing's easy.'

‘It's solved?'

‘We're ready.'

‘A set of keys will be delivered to your office. They belong to a Renault 18 parked where the jeep was the other night in the Sheraton.' He gave me the registration. ‘You should be there no earlier than eight fifteen a.m. The goods and documentation are in the boot. Leave a message with Vassili when you have the car. I hope you still have the money.'

The line cut. Fifteen minutes later Viktor arrived. I sent the
gardien
out again for more breakfast. Viktor, in a loose-fitting short-sleeve shirt which he wore outside his jeans, laid a palm on the desk top and tapped it with his thumb. I asked him to stop. He went out on to the balcony, his Reebok sneakers squeaking on the floor. Time passed in rashers. The boy came back with some croissants
ordinaires
because the
au beurre
were finished. Viktor asked him to go and buy a
pain chocolat.
I opened some windows but the heat was everywhere. The caffeine made me sweaty and breathless.

There was a knock at the door. I shouted for the boy to come in. No answer. I opened the door and found an envelope leaning against the jamb. The car keys. The boy arrived with the
pain chocolat.

We left for the Sheraton, me driving, Viktor with the keys and spitting flakes of pastry from the
pain chocolat
over the front of the car. We pulled up alongside the blue Renault in the Sheraton car park. Viktor got out and slid into the driver's seat. We drove back to the house. I parked the Peugeot outside and got Viktor to reverse up to Moses's apartment. I opened the door. Viktor popped the boot on the Renault. There were four boxes in some kind of heavy-duty plastic with the nuclear insignia on each and a black vinyl briefcase. We lifted them out. They must have weighed around twenty-five kilos each. Viktor took the briefcase into the apartment and sat on the bed with the bedside lamp on. He lifted the documents out which were broken up into four batches, each one in a clear plastic zip-up sachet. All the typing was in Cyrillic script. I read off the codes on the sides of the boxes and Viktor placed a set of corresponding documents on each. He opened up the first sachet.

‘This is seven hundred grammes of Plutonium 239. It's originally from Tomsk-7 Western Russia. It's made up from eighteen batches.'

He flicked through all the papers, counting off the batches and checking a signature at the bottom.

‘These are all signed by Major-General Dimitri Lentov who runs the Tomsk-7 facility. This plutonium is made up from small consignments sent from Tomsk-7 to a research laboratory in Tblisi. Three hundred grammes here, two hundred and fifty there. Then as the product moves around the Tblisi facility, slowly, slowly it gets lost.'

‘So all the documents show is where the material originated?'

‘You can't get official documentation for material
stolen
from the Tblisi facility.
Ça, mon ami, c'est impossible.'

‘So the material could be bogus?'

‘Of course. If you were selling to a government, like the Pakistanis, say, they have a facility to check the quality of the goods. Here we just have copies of the documents of origin and the boxes to go on. The documents tell me this is genuine weapons-grade plutonium and to my eyes the boxes look genuine. What's actually in them? Ah, well. But let's not open them up.'

I left Viktor to his work and went upstairs to phone Mr K. Heike was up and eating. She was looking sharp, which made me nervous. If she knew what was downstairs it would be the end.

‘They said I have to eat,' she said.
‘Fe dois bouffer fort.'
She put an arm around my neck and kissed me. ‘Tense?'

‘Still.'

‘Don't be about me.'

‘I'm coming down from it.'

‘We should go away for a weekend. I should get some rest. We could go to Grand Popo, as long as they take all those gouty anchovies out of the
salade Niçoise.'

‘Sure.'

‘I'm drowning in your enthusiasm.'

‘Just a few things to sort out first.'

‘I won't ask,' she said. ‘What are you doing in Moses's flat?'

‘I thought you said you wouldn't ask.'

She sucked in air as if she'd cut herself with a knife.

‘Take a shower,' she said, ‘and call Bagado.'

‘He's called?'

‘Left messages. Two.'

‘I can't talk to him now.'

‘You don't look that busy.'

‘I'm taking a shower.'

‘All day?'

‘That was a public announcement.'

‘We're gratified.'

After the shower, even in new clothes, I still felt dirty. I found the icepick in the kitchen drawer and slipped it into my chinos pocket, which was just long enough to take it. I went back downstairs. Viktor had packed away the documents. I told him we had to move the product out. We packed it in the car again and drove down to my office.

They were killing another sheep outside on the concrete ramp below the balcony. I parked up next to the butcher who was hauling the guts out of the carcass. I trod in the blood as I got out of the car. My foot skidded away from me and I just saved myself from landing on my arse in it. In the office, my sticky shoe kissed the tiles and left perfect prints in the dust. Viktor sat on the client side of the desk while I called Lagos. Ben Agu answered.

‘Are you ready?' he asked.

‘I'd like to speak to the chief.'

‘I'm
handling the details.'

‘Let me speak to the chief, Ben,' I said, cheerfully. He hesitated and put the phone down. I heard the chief lumber across the room and sink into a leather chair which gasped.

He didn't say anything but breathed in a congested way down the mouthpiece.

‘I'm ready,' I said. He didn't respond. ‘I have some conditions.' He tapped the side of the phone and sighed. ‘You'll have to come to the warehouse and bring Selina with you.'

‘Not this time,' he said.

‘Yes, this time.'

‘Only when we complete the transaction.'

‘No,' I said. ‘It won't work like that. I want to see her every step of the way.'

‘You can talk to her now.'

‘I don't need to because you're bringing her with you tonight.'

‘Tonight?'

‘This isn't a business where hanging around is advisable.'

‘What time?'

‘Eleven o'clock. That should give me enough time.'

‘She'll go back with us.'

‘Of course.'

‘How many people will you bring?'

‘Just me and one other. Ben knows him. We don't want the world there.'

‘No, no. You are right.'

‘And your side?'

‘The three of us.'

‘And no arms.'

‘Arms?'

‘Firearms.'

The chief started laughing, slowly at first but he built it into a guffaw, a gut laugh, a tear-jerker, a bowel-loosener. There must be other people who would find that funny—tell a guy not to bring a pistol when you're selling him a nuclear bomb—but not me. I slammed the phone down.

I pulled the
gardien
up again and asked for more coffee. I put my feet up on the desk. The phone rang. I let the answering machine take the call. It was Bagado. I clasped my hands tight across my stomach. He said he knew I was there and shouted at me to pick up the phone. Viktor licked his lips. Bagado said he had important information on Napier Briggs. It was nothing that could help me or him now. I let Bagado use up tape. He clicked off after a minute. Viktor didn't inquire.

I paced the office and grew some sweat patches on my shirt. Distant music came over the traffic—drums, trumpets. The coffee arrived. I went out on to the balcony and breathed in some disgusting air. Viktor joined me. The music was louder. A straggle of people stopped at the roadside to watch. A phalanx of robed dignitaries preceded a coffin held aloft. A group of women followed supporting one of their number who was the distraught widow. The band played out of tune and time as if the man's death had destroyed the natural order of things. They walked to the junction. The traffic stopped. They crossed the road to the cathedral.

I went back into the office, drank coffee and put funerals out of my head. Viktor stayed out on the balcony. I called Franconelli and gave him the time for the product exchange. I told Viktor we had to kill some time.