MAMista

by Len Deighton

  Singer turned over and closed his eyes. Sleep did not come easily to him. His wrist was wired tightly enough to draw blood. To escape the pressure of the wire he had to bend his knee. He had to bring his ankle close against his buttocks.

  When finally Singer did go to sleep he saw Charrington’s wife being blown to pieces. He saw the awful look in Charrington’s face. He came awake with a start that sent a jab of pain through his sore wrist. Even with eyes tightly shut he kept seeing her and kept seeing her child slipping and sliding on his mother’s blood. Gerald Singer was tormented with the idea that it had all been his fault.

  18

  WASHINGTON, DC. ‘One of the last obscene words.’

  Where else in all the world, thought John Curl, could you book a squash court for six o’clock in the morning? And have the club professional there to coach you? The same wonderful town where breakfast all day was the local speciality, and hotel doormen could readily tell you which way to face for Mecca.

  Despite his morning sessions in the squash court, and evening work-outs in the White House gym, John Curl had never been a health freak that the gossip writers liked to pillory. He wasn’t recognizably the man the cartoonists depicted with bulging muscles that sometimes became six-shooters or missiles or fighter planes, according to which aspect of the administration their newspaper was currently attacking. Yet Washington hostesses provided Evian water at his place setting, and had grown used to seeing him carefully scraping their beautiful beurre blanc sauce off the swordfish steak, and declining the crème brûlée in favour of an apple.

  It disappointed Curl that he couldn’t steer the President off dairy foods and steaks, and that he had made no headway in his efforts to replace those big whisky sours the President liked with the beet juice that Curl enjoyed each day at cocktail hour. Curl’s interest in the chief executive’s welfare did not end with dietary concerns. The chief was a man of painstaking scruples, great caution and almost unprecedented honesty but – Curl sometimes asked himself – were they the qualities most needed in the Oval Office?

  So Curl used discretion when talking to the President about some of the more Byzantine tasks of the security forces. One day perhaps he’d be thrown to the dogs. Such things had happened before. Curl accepted that as a hazard of his job. He’d already decided that if necessary he would nobly sacrifice both appointment and reputation for the President.

  Curl preferred the facilities at his athletic club. It was more exclusive. The members and staff here were considerate and respectful. His visits to the White House gym were too often interrupted by people who wanted to bend his ear about their work. The club was quiet in the mornings. The coach was fresh and gave him a really tough working-over. The club towels were better too. He was thinking about this as he buried his face in the soft white hand-towel that had been laid out for him in the locker-room.

  The coach departed up the circular staircase to the staff facilities. He called over his shoulder, ‘You’re getting too fast for me, Mr Curl. I’m going to need a little coaching myself the way you’re coming on.’

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll get my revenge,’ Curl said. He loved to win.

  Curl wrapped the towel round his neck. He liked to cool down before stepping under the shower. He looked around. There was one other member in the changing-room. ‘Just one at a time on that scale, buddy!’ Curl called to him.

  The man turned to see him. ‘Is that any way to talk to a member of the committee?’ He was not surprised to see Curl. It was very early: too early for middle management. Only the top brass got out of bed while it was still dark. Steve Steinbeck often saw John Curl here at this time.

  Curl leaned over him to better see the magnifier on the scale. ‘You’re winning the battle, Stevie.’

  When Steve Steinbeck had been a lieutenant-commander flying F-4s on Alpha strikes into Nam, he’d weighed one hundred and seventy pounds. But that had been a long long time ago. ‘Twelve pounds down,’ he said proudly.

  ‘Since?’

  ‘Memorial Day.’

  ‘You need a few games of squash,’ Curl said. ‘That bicycling you do will never raise your pulse-rate enough.’

  ‘Well, I still make private arrangements for raising my pulse-rate, John.’

  ‘I’m serious, Steve. Squash sets me up.’

  ‘I don’t come here to torture myself,’ Steinbeck said. ‘It’s bad enough having the massage.’

  Curl grinned. He didn’t have to weigh himself. His weight had hardly varied since his undergraduate days at Yale. He opened his locker, peeled off his T-shirt and threw it down for the laundry. ‘That new coach really gives you a run for your money,’ Curl said. ‘I can’t get near him: he humiliates me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Steinbeck said. ‘Everyone will be pleased to hear it. Let me know next time you give him a game, and I’ll sell tickets.’

  Curl said, ‘If you’re serious about your weight problem, Steve, there’s a guy no more than a block from your office. He’ll give you a series of treatments: injections, massage, the whole schmear. When I moved into the Executive Wing I made my entire staff go to him for a check-up – every last one of them!’

  ‘You’re a meddlesome mother, John.’

  ‘Everything paid for,’ Curl reminded him.

  ‘Well, I didn’t imagine even you would have the nerve to dock it out of their pay checks.’

  Curl smiled. Despite the banter he admired Steinbeck. This fellow – who seemed so easygoing – had been discharged from the Navy with severe injuries, then had clawed his way up to get a petroleum conglomerate in his tight grip. He wasn’t a chairman nor a president of any one of the companies in the conglomerate but it was common knowledge that the deals Steve made in a ‘smoke-filled room’ today would be some board’s decision tomorrow. Curl opened the door of the shower-room. Having stepped inside, he turned and came back as if suddenly getting an idea. ‘In fact, Steve, I wanted a private word.’

  Steinbeck nodded and took a box of cigars from his locker. He offered them to Curl who declined. Then Steinbeck selected one and put the box back. ‘They stay fresh in the locker,’ Steinbeck said. ‘I guess it’s the steamy air.’

  Curl felt like pointing out the big No Smoking signs on the walls of the locker-room, but this was not the time to remind him. ‘I suppose so,’ said Curl. He went to the door that led to the squash courts and looked moodily through its glass panel.

  Steinbeck searched through the collection of match covers in his locker – all bore the names of fancy clubs and restaurants – but all were empty. ‘Got a match?’

  ‘Yes.’ Curl knew he was being needled but he opened his locker and found some matches. In spite of being a non-smoker he always had matches with him. It said a lot about the sort of man he was.

  Steinbeck carefully lighted the cigar. His hairy chest, and his belly, made him look comical standing there in his undershirt and striped shorts. Men such as Steinbeck did not care what sort of image they projected. Curl knew many such men. He had never completely understood them. Maybe it had been the accident that changed Steve. The plane had toppled off the flight-deck when the steam catapult failed. The ship had sailed right over the wreckage. Steve had been skewered by a piece of the elevator. They had never found his back-seater, who had been Steve’s closest buddy. When his cigar was fully alight Steinbeck looked up expectantly.

  Curl slashed the air with his racket. He said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you for putting that stuff on your computer without identification. We could have had it done by some other laboratory but I wanted it done by someone in the business. Someone not involved in all the internal politics we’ve got in the West Wing right now. You know.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Steinbeck.

  ‘Then you are very lucky,’ Curl said. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Apart from the report from Houston when it arrives.’

  ‘John, a man doesn’t make sure the showers are not in use, and the
n walk across to the door and check that both courts are empty, before he says thank you.’

  ‘In my job you get like that,’ said Curl. He took a couple of swipes with the racket.

  ‘I don’t think so, John.’ Steinbeck knew what was coming. Curl had deliberately arranged this ‘chance’ meeting. Steinbeck felt like an actor playing a part in some preordained drama that he did not like. Yet he knew there was no escape. Questions would be put to him. He’d be consulted as though he were making decisions that would decide the outcome. But the truth was that Curl was going to tell him what the White House wanted; only a fool would defy Curl’s needs.

  Curl said, ‘You’ve seen the first reports and the fossils and the seismograms and that junk …’ Nervously Curl balanced a small black rubber squash ball on the racket, making it circle so it didn’t go over the edge. ‘You have looked at it all?’

  ‘Sure I have.’ Steinbeck looked at the ball and at Curl’s face. There was nothing to be read there.

  ‘It was good?’ Curl asked.

  ‘Where did it come from? Who are these people: Pan-Guiana Geological Surveys? I never heard of them.’

  ‘It’s a small independent.’

  ‘Run by the CIA?’

  ‘I’m not sure who runs it.’

  ‘I should have guessed,’ Steinbeck said. It was all going just as he’d known it would. The hum of the air-conditioning reminded him of the carrier, as did these grey metal lockers. The overhead blue fluorescent lighting was hard and pitiless. These conditions conspired to make him remember things he would rather forget. It was too much like the ready-room aboard the carrier the day of the ill-fated ‘cold shot’. His back-seater had borrowed a pack of gum. Steve had had a premonition that day too.

  ‘But it was good stuff?’ Curl persisted.

  ‘It was fantastic,’ Steinbeck said, but the tone of his voice didn’t match the extravagance of his words.

  ‘Do you want to quantify it in terms of money?’

  Steinbeck smiled. ‘How much is it worth, you mean?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘Not a nickel, John.’

  Curl didn’t respond. The reply convinced him that Steinbeck was committed to a decision of some sort. That ‘not a nickel’ was the beginning of the bargaining. Had he been going to say no, Steinbeck would have started off with warm congratulations, and then would have let him down lightly.

  ‘Not a nickel,’ said Steinbeck again. He snapped the band on his shorts and said, ‘You know, maybe I will have that guy’s number from you.’

  ‘My secretary will dig out all the details. He’s a nice guy; you’ll like him. And with those injections you just won’t want to eat more than the diet.’

  ‘You see, John, I have to consider things like siting, communications, government aid, tax holidays … And I have to know the quality of the crude.’

  Curl let the black ball drop to the floor. He tapped it downward a couple of times before whacking it hard so that it bounced back as high as the ceiling. As it came down again he caught it. ‘Are we talking nine figures, Steve?’

  ‘A hundred million is a lot of scratch. Let’s be realistic: I know what part of the world we are talking about. The boys who run my explorations department can write a street address for any seismogram and some pieces of rock. We’ve got to talk about political stability.’

  ‘I want you in there, Stevie, and so does the President. The way we figure it … well, nature doesn’t like vacuums. Someone will end up exploiting that field. I want it to be you; a guy we know and can talk to.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I mean it, Steve. I mean it sincerely. In fact I told the President that it was your company that made the find. I said the seismogram came from you. That way I was able to put it to the President that this should be all yours.’

  ‘You said it was my boys; but really it was your boys,’ Steinbeck said with mock innocence as though it was difficult for him to understand. It was as near to a protest as he dared go.

  Curl fidgeted. ‘It’s a small exploration company …’

  ‘Yes, you explained all that.’

  ‘Spanish Guiana. The government wanted a survey of the central provinces for an electric scheme.’

  ‘Oh boy!’ Steinbeck said. ‘And is the company that gets the contract for the electric scheme also going to be headed up by a guy that you and the President have taken a shine to?’

  Curl didn’t like such joshing. ‘We make strategic decisions; you fellows make commercial ones. We needed a chance to get photos and look around. Anyway, there is no electric scheme – there’s just oil.’

  ‘Yes, well I can see that having the local Reds sitting on a big oilfield would make bad vibes for some of the guys on the Hill.’

  Curl smiled coldly. ‘It would make your stockholders a little nervous too, Steve. A flow of cheap crude from some maverick competitor in Spanish Guiana, who wouldn’t play ball with your price-rigging, could upset a few of your long-term projections. Don’t deny it.’

  ‘You let me worry about the stockholders,’ Steinbeck said grimly. Any last trace of the ready-room was gone; Steve Steinbeck was strapped in tight with all systems tested and ready. ‘If Uncle Sam says go, I’ll go. But the board will need some reassurance.’

  ‘Long-term loans, you mean?’

  ‘Long-term loans, insurance … a chance to cross-collateralize with domestic fields. Without that kind of help it’s not worth the time and money trying to get at it.’

  With studied mildness Curl said, ‘That doesn’t sound like you, Stevie.’

  ‘At one time it wasn’t. But last year we lost eight men: engineers and survey workers. Remember? Those men were tortured and killed, John. I saw the families. Worst job I ever had in twenty years in the business. Latin America has got to be real tempting before I put my weight behind plans for new drilling there.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Well maybe that’s the saddest part of it. Our people get killed and forgotten so soon.’

  ‘Yes, it’s sad,’ Curl said, and after leaving a moment for reflection added, ‘but you’d go right ahead with some wild-catting?’

  Steinbeck looked at him doubtfully. He wished he didn’t so often have to deal with people who’d become overnight experts on the oil business. ‘I wouldn’t think we’d wildcat. This game’s become too expensive to let guys follow their hunches all over Hell’s half-acre. I’d be prepared to send a couple of mobile rigs to get more core samples and cuttings in the spots where the seismic results were positive.’ He tapped some ash into an old coffee can that he kept in his locker for that purpose. ‘When I have some kind of assessment about the density of the crude we can sit and talk.’

  John Curl had left his best card for the final play: ‘I’ve fixed it so you can do all the drilling you want.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the area marked on the photos.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The MAMista – the Marxist outfit – are prepared to do a deal. We have a guy talking with them. The terms are all set.’

  ‘How do you know so soon?’

  ‘The MAMista have a little local transmitter. We have a portable satellite communications set.’

  ‘Hallelujah, baby!’ said Steinbeck, who knew all about such toys. ‘With that you can talk to your boys in the field without going through the State Department.’

  ‘Or any other government agency,’ Curl said. ‘That’s top secret, Stevie. I just wanted you to know that what I’m telling you is kosher.’

  ‘I saw that piece in the Miami paper. Our office there sent it to me. CIA man kidnapped by MAMista terrorists. Is that the way it was done?’

  Curl looked at him without a change of expression.

  Steinbeck nodded to himself. ‘The million bucks they describe as a ransom is the first payment to the MAMista for this agreement. Neat, John, neat. What’s in the fine print?’

  ‘The crude comes out by the big highway. The MA
Mista check the tankers … eventually we’ll do a deal by the barrel.’

  ‘Inspect the tankers? The Commies?’

  ‘Don’t snow me, Stevie. We all know that you hauled right through the Cong in Vietnam and paid them by the truckload …’ He saw Steinbeck’s eyes narrow. Curl said, ‘That was before your time maybe. Anyway, this is better than that kind of deal. We’ll have helicopters and armoured personnel carriers on the highway. Your drivers stick to the road and there will be no trouble at all.’

  ‘Helicopters and APCs? Now you wouldn’t be thinking of charging me for a service like that, would you, Johnny?’

  ‘They would belong to you.’

  ‘Hold the phone, sport.’

  ‘Or more correctly they would be part of your deal with the Benz government in Tepilo.’

  ‘We bring the choppers and the APCs to guard the route as part-payment for mineral rights?’

  ‘Up to break-even point. It’s a sweet, gilt-edged deal, Steve.’

  ‘Another gilt-edged deal? Was I just born lucky?’ He puffed his cigar while he thought about it. ‘Why don’t you sell the Benz government the hardware?’

  ‘The Administration has taken a lot of flak about military aid to Latin America lately. We’d prefer a simple deal by which you protect your installation and your supply route. It’s more straightforward.’

  ‘Who’s going to be flying the choppers? Who’ll be sitting inside those APCs?’

  ‘Whoever you want. You recruit the personnel, we’ll supply the hardware.’

  ‘Now I’m beginning to see daylight. This is the message from the sponsor, eh? You are going to make me order all this junk from specified California factories. Keep a few voters at the bench.’

  ‘Benz can’t get enough hard currency to buy such items. It would be crazy for you to be wasting greenbacks to pay for mineral rights, when that money could be recycled into the US economy. You must see that.’

  ‘I see it all right. And I admire the timing.’

  ‘You make it sound like a conspiracy, Steve. It’s simply that everything came together like that.’ He put his racket away and closed the locker. ‘I’m going to take a shower and then go up for a massage. Are you ready?’