by Ben Bova
“And staffed,” said Ilyana. “Those are mostly our people out there, dealing at the gaming tables, working in the restaurants and shops and, uh ... therapy centers.”
“She means Hell’s Belles,” Sam explained.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this!” I shouted.
“Too late, old pal. Now it’s time to pay the piper.”
I started to answer, but hesitated. All right, Sam had snookered me into this, true enough. But the complex was built. Everything was working fine. It could become a major tourist attraction and a big moneymaker for Rockledge. I reasoned that if I bailed Sam out on this stupid loan, it would be only on the condition that he relinquish all his interest in the resort. Rockledge would have the complex free and clear, which was exactly what the CEO and I wanted.
“How much money are we talking about?” I asked.
“Fifteen billion,” Sam said.
Before I could faint, Ilyana said, “Eighteen billion. You forgot this afternoon’s interest.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right.”
“Eighteen billion?” I screeched.
“Tomorrow morning it will be twenty point six,” Ilyana said sweetly. “The interest mounts rather steeply.”
“How steeply?”
“Forty percent,” Sam answered.
“Compounded semi-daily,” Ilyana added.
“That’s usury!”
Her smile turned pitying. “Rockledge owns a credit service that charges almost as much.”
“It’s still usury,” I insisted.
“Nevertheless,” she said, “that is what is owed. Sam doesn’t have the wherewithal to pay it, so you must.”
“Me? When elephants fly! Why don’t you just kill the little sonofabitch and be done with it?”
Ilyana made a little pout. “What good would killing Sam do? We want the money you owe us, not a corpse.”
“Besides,” Sam chimed in, “Ilyana and I are thinking about getting married, settling down. Right, hon?”
She blew him a kiss. The little rat! He’s romancing this Mafia princess to save his own skin while he’s putting my neck on the guillotine!
Ilyana turned back to me. “I’m afraid you must pay, Mr. D’Argent. You are Sam’s partner, after all, and responsible for his debts. Surely a giant corporation such as Rockledge can afford a few billions.”
“Over my dead—” Again I stopped myself short. Maybe she didn’t want to kill Sam, but I didn’t know how she felt about murder in general.
“Mr. D’Argent,” Ilyana said, almost pleadingly, “don’t make this difficult for us and for yourself. You must pay. Otherwise your board of directors will never return to Earth. Alive, that is.”
“You ... you’re threatening the entire board?”
“And their spouses, I’m afraid,” Ilyana said, nearly managing to look sad.
“My wife ...”
“Your spaceship will have a terrible accident when it leaves the Moon. There will be no survivors.”
“And no witnesses,” Sam added, almost cheerfully.
I glowered at him. “You’ll be a witness.”
“Ah, but I’m going to be married into the Family,” Sam said. “Right, Ilyana, my precious angel?”
She blew him another kiss.
Then she got up from her chair like a beautiful python gliding up a tree and said, “You two gentlemen will want to talk this over, I know. Sam, darling, please call me when you’ve decided what you’re going to do.”
Sam nodded vigorously. Ilyana went to the door while we both watched her, half hypnotized by her graceful beauty.
She opened the door, then turned back toward us. “Oh, by the way, the chairman of our board is staying at the hotel here and would like to meet you both this evening.”
“The chairman of your board?” I echoed.
“Yes. In bygone years he’d be called the capo di tutti capi. Or perhaps the Godfather.”
She smiled sweetly and left the office, closing the door behind her without making a sound.
For several moments Sam and I were absolutely silent. At last I said, “She must be marvelous in bed.”
“How would I know?” Sam replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence. “For all I know, she’s still a virgin.”
“You mean you haven’t—”
“Not one finger. If I even tried to, a dozen goons would drag me off to her Godfather, who would hang me by my cojones and use my head for batting practice.”
I groaned. “Sam, Sam ... how did I ever let you talk me into this?”
“That’s not important now. The problem now is, how are we going to get out of this?”
He had a point.
I couldn’t go to my CEO and ask for twenty billion dollars. The half-billion I had funneled to Sam had been a major strain. And I couldn’t face their Godfather without having the twenty billion to hand over to him. As I sat there sweating, Sam drummed his fingers on his desk.
“I’m pretty sure they won’t kill you,” he said at last.
“Pretty sure?”
“What good would it do them?”
“It certainly wouldn’t do me much good,” I groused. “Nor my wife. Nor the board of directors.”
“Let me think about this,” Sam said, scratching at his red thatch of hair. “There’s gotta be a way out.”
I thought of the line from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.”
My wife and I were scheduled to have dinner with the CEO, his wife, and several key board members at Hell Crater’s finest restaurant, The Fallen Angel. Ordinarily an invitation like this would have been a step toward promotion, perhaps even an opportunity to join the board. I should have been overjoyed and eager with anticipation. Instead, as I put on my tuxedo that evening and struggled with the shirt studs, what I felt was anxiety bordering on dread.
I explained to my wife that I had to have cocktails with Sam Gunn and a few of his associates before dinner. She frowned with distaste, but accepted the situation.
“Business before pleasure,” she said grandly. Then added, “So long as it’s not monkey business with that little womanizer.”
Sam’s reputation was known everywhere, even among corporate wives. Especially among corporate wives.
The Godfather’s suite was only a few doors down the corridor from our own. I gave my wife a peck on the cheek while she was deciding which of the necklaces laid out on the dressing table before her would be best to wear with the gown she had bought earlier that afternoon. She barely nodded as I took my leave of her. Good thing, too, because Ms. Chang opened the door to her Godfather’s suite when I pressed the buzzer. She was wearing an ankle-length sheath of glittering metallic black, its skirt slit up to her shapely hip. If my wife had seen her, real hell would have broken loose over my head.
Ms. Chang gestured me into the suite’s thickly carpeted sitting room. Four rather lumpy-looking men in dark suits looked me over as if they had X-ray eyes. No one spoke a word. I stood uneasily by the door for a moment. Then in came Sam from the adjoining room, with the Godfather at his side, both of them in tuxedos.
He didn’t look Sicilian. I mean, he wasn’t a heavy, swarthy, sour-faced man. Not at all. Don Guido Alexandreivich Popov was as slim as a saber blade. His thickly luxuriant hair was a light sandy blond; his eyes a piercing light gray. He wasn’t much taller than Sam, and several centimeters shorter than I. Yet he radiated power, a self-assurance that comes from having enormous resources at your command.
Ms. Chang performed the introductions. Popov’s handshake was firm without being blatantly muscular. His eyes searched mine as he smiled and said, “So where’s my twenty bill?”
I must have blanched, because he laughed and added, “I don’t expect it this evening. Relax. Have a drink.” His voice was slightly scratchy, rough, as if his vocal cords had been damaged.
As he directed me toward the bar, Ms. Chang said, “Actually, it’s twenty point six billion.
As of the opening of business tomorrow morning.”
Popov shrugged. “Twenty, twenty point six, let’s not quibble.”
One of the dark-suited thugs slipped behind the bar and poured him what appeared to be a tumbler of spring water. Sam asked for a pinot grigio and Ms. Chang ordered vodka, neat. I needed a whisky, badly, but I decided that I should keep my head clear.
“I’ll have the same as Mr. Popov,” I said to the man behind the bar.
He glanced at Popov, who smiled and tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m used to drinking grappa,” he said. “Are you?”
“Grappa?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s the Italian version of acetylene,” Sam piped up. “You can use it to burn through bank safes.”
Popov laughed, a grating, painful sound. “Maybe you’d prefer something else, Mr. D’Argent.”
I settled for sparkling water.
Popov gestured me to a chair by the window. He took the one opposite me while Sam and Ms. Chang nestled in the love seat between us.
He took a sip of his drink. “I need it for my throat. Soothes the vocal cords.”
Or burns them out, I thought. But I kept my thoughts to myself. Sam sat by Ms. Chang’s side, grinning like a schoolboy on a date with the prom queen. The musclemen in their dark suits stayed back by the bar, silent as ponderous wraiths. An uncomfortable silence enveloped the room.
“So,” Popov said at last, “how are we going to resolve this situation?”
“I don’t see how you can expect Rockledge Corporation to pay a debt that Sam’s run up,” I said, as firmly as I could.
“He’s your partner,” said Popov. “You’re legally responsible.”
“We never approved the loan he took from you.”
“Makes no difference.”
“It does, legally.”
“I guess it’s a little unusual for you,” Popov granted, “but it happens all the time in my business.”
“It’s not that unusual in the legitimate world,” Sam said. “It’s the ‘deep pockets’ ploy. Go after the guy with the deepest pocket of money.”
Popov nodded and beamed at Sam like a prospective Godfather-in-law.
“But Rockledge didn’t incur this debt.”
Popov shrugged.
“It would ruin my career if I so much as asked my CEO to pay it.”
He shrugged more elaborately.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” Popov replied. “I had hoped to avoid making a mess.”
“You can’t murder the entire board of directors!” I said. “You’d never get away with it. And what good would it do you, anyway?”
Popov sighed patiently, then ticked off on his fingers, “One: We’ll get away with it. We make a business out of getting away with things like this. Rockets blow up sometimes. It’ll be a tragic accident. Two: Rockledge will have to find a new CEO and a whole new board of directors. Guess who owns enough Rockledge stock to take control, once the old board is out of the way?”
I felt stunned. “You? You wouldn’t! You couldn’t!”
“He would and he could,” Sam said. “Trust me on that.”
“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw a ... a... a herd of buffalos!”
“Now, now,” Popov said placatingly, “let’s not get emotional here. We’re talking business.”
“You’re talking murder.”
“But it’s business, not personal. I’ve got nothing against you, personally. This is strictly business.”
Sam’s face suddenly lit up. “But suppose that, instead of business, we made it a sporting proposition.”
“What do you mean, Sam?” Ms. Chang asked, shifting slightly on the love seat to rub against Sam like a purring cat. It was enough to raise my already high blood pressure an extra few points.
“Uncle Guido,” Sam asked, “have you ever played cards for a twenty-billion-dollar stake?”
“Twenty point six,” Ms. Chang murmured.
Popov stared at Sam as if he didn’t understand what the little devil was talking about. Then a slow smile of recognition crept across his craggy face.
“Double or nothing?” he asked.
Sam grinned. “Why not? What’ve we got to lose?”
Before I could object, the two men shook hands on it.
Popov got to his feet, and the rest of us did, too. “I understand you have a dinner engagement, Mr. D’Argent.”
“Yes, I do, but—”
“Enjoy your dinner.” He turned to Sam. “What do you say to meeting me in Dante’s Inferno at midnight, Sam?”
“Okay by me.”
“Double or nothing,” Popov reminded us.
“Okay by me,” Sam repeated.
Of course it was okay by him! He’d be playing with Rockledge’s money!
Dinner that evening was the longest, dreariest, most nerve-racking meal I’ve ever had. I couldn’t eat a bite, but nobody seemed to notice or care. My wife and Mrs. CEO were seated next to one another and chattered away happily. The CEO himself sat at my other side and made broad hints about how I was about to take a big step up the corporate ladder. Even his wife allowed that if I made it to the board of directors I could sit beside her. I thought to myself that getting higher in the corporation merely gave me more leg room when I hanged myself.
I couldn’t let the board of directors get on that rocket that Popov was going to blow up. It would be easy enough to keep my wife and myself off it; I could always claim that I had some details about the resort to take care of. But how I could keep the CEO and the rest of the board off the rocket without telling them of the fix that Sam had gotten me into? It would be bad enough to confess that I’d put the corporation into this mess, but to admit that it was Sam Gunn who’d led me by the nose into it—that would be unbearable.
And there was Sam, the miserable little rat, with the exquisite Ms. Chang at an intimate candlelit table for two, far on the other side of the restaurant. They seemed totally absorbed in each other.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, I told myself. Excusing myself from the table while the dessert course was being served, I made a beeline for the men’s room. It was positively opulent, but I had no time to
admire the faux marble paneling and asteroidal gold plumbing fixtures. Locking myself into a booth, I slipped my phone off my wrist and called Popov.
He was apparently still in his suite, and still in his tuxedo. In the wrist phones minuscule screen I couldn’t see if anyone else was in the room with him.
Popov smiled when he recognized my face. “Mr. D’Argent.”
“I have a proposition for you, sir,” I said, without preamble.
“A proposition?”
I took a deep breath and plunged in. Popov listened in silence. Finally, when I was finished, he nodded solemnly.
“I’m wary of Sam Gunn, also,” he said, in his harsh, painful rasp. “I don’t believe his intentions toward my niece are entirely honorable.”
“He’s about as honorable as Jack the Ripper,” I said.
Popov pursed his lips. “This will break my Ilyana’s heart.”
“Better now than later, when Sam betrays her.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said slowly.
It took several more minutes, but at last he agreed to my proposition. Then I placed a quick call to Rockledge’s legal department, back at corporate headquarters on Earth. The chief counsel didn’t like being disturbed during her dinner hour, but once she heard what I wanted her to do she willingly agreed to do it.
“We’re partnered to S. Gunn Enterprises?” she yelped. “You’d damned will better get out of that deal!”
By the time I got back to the dinner table, everyone was having coffee and liqueurs. It was past eleven PM when my wife and I finally got back to our hotel suite. The phone’s message light was blinking, and before I could get to it my wife called out to the phone to play the message.
Sam’s impish face came up
on the screen, looking dead serious for a change. “Pierre, monjouer aux cartes, can you come up to my office right away? It’s important. Any time before eleven-thirty. Please.” And his face took on such an expression of distress that my wife looked troubled.
“The poor man looks as if his heart is going to break,” she said.
More likely his gall bladder, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Has he found out about my deal with Popov? I wondered.
“I’m not going to Sam’s office,” I grumbled. “Not at this time of night.”
“But he said it’s important.” My wife has her faults, and one of them is a soft heart. Show her a picture of a puppy or a kitten and she’ll buy whatever’s being pushed. Sam was playing the puppy, of course. I realized that he must know more about me and my wife than I had ever suspected.
Grumbling, I went through the motions of phoning him back; no answer. Not even a video mail system where I could leave a message.
“You’d better go to his office,” my wife said. “And quickly, it’s nearly eleven-thirty.”
I got as far as the elevator at the end of the corridor. Sam was waiting for me there, his woebegone look replaced by an expression of impish glee.
“I didn’t think you’d want to miss the big card game,” he said, waving his hand in front of the elevator’s heat-sensitive call button. He didn’t know a thing about my Popov deal; he was grinning like a kid playing hooky from school.
“My wife—”
“I’ve sent her a bottle of champagne with a note apologizing for taking you away from her,” Sam said cheerfully. “She’ll be asleep in twenty minutes, half an hour at most.”
Before I could say another word the elevator doors slid open. Two of Popov’s grim-faced thugs were already in it.
“Come to escort me to the game?” Sam said to them. “How thoughtful the Godfather is!”
I had no option except to go with Sam up to the main floor, with all its .garish lights and arcades, and into Dante’s Inferno.
The casino was strangely empty. Popov’s people had closed the gaming center to the general public—meaning Rockledge personnel. Sam and I, followed by the two silent, stone-faced goons, threaded our way through tables for roulette, craps, blackjack, all covered by gray plastic sheets. The slot machines and video games were dark and still. Most of the overhead lights were off: the casino was draped in shadows, mysterious and somehow threatening.