Dance of Death

by John Case

  “Just you,” the Russian said, his breath like smoke in the freezing air.

  Wilson hesitated, then gestured for his bodyguards to wait. They looked disappointed. And thoroughly chilled. Other than a sweater that Zero had acquired on the ship, they were wearing the same clothes they’d worn in Baalbek. T-shirts and jeans. Cheap jackets.

  Sucks to be them, Wilson thought, and kept walking. A gust of wind brought tears to his eyes.

  Inside the hangar, a medium-size cargo plane, more than a hundred feet long and almost as wide, occupied the entire space. It was painted a gray-blue color that Wilson guessed would make it hard to see from the ground.

  “Golden oldie!” Belov exclaimed. “Like me!” He laughed. “Antonov-seventy-two. I get from Aeroflot, ten years now. Very good plane.”

  “How much does it carry?” Wilson asked.

  “Ten tons, metric.”

  “Nonstop?”

  Belov scoffed. “No way. Not even close. Not even with extra tanks.”

  “So we have to refuel.”

  Belov nodded.

  “Where?”

  The Russian smiled. “Sharjah.”

  Wilson thought about it. “That’s kinda out of the way, isn’t it?”

  The Russian looked surprised. “You know Sharjah?”

  “I know where it is,” Wilson told him. Hakim had mentioned the place at dinner, and Wilson looked for it on a map in the lounge aboard the Marmara Queen. One of seven sheikhdoms in the Emirates, it was a patch of sand on the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran. Which put it about two thousand miles southeast of the hangar they were standing in.

  The Congo, on the other hand, was southwest. And that’s where they were going.

  Belov smiled. “We’re in Sharjah two hours, maybe three. Not to worry.”

  The Russian cocked his head for Wilson to follow him around to the rear of the plane, where a hinged cargo-loading ramp disappeared into the fuselage. Nearby, a pair of battered forklifts sat amid a dozen containers, some sealed, some open. The Russian handed him a typewritten list on a single sheet of onionskin paper. There was no letterhead, just the word CEKPET stamped in ink at the top of the page.

  Wilson studied the list, curious about just what it was he was delivering to Africa. “‘Cekpet’?”

  “‘Secret,’” Belov explained. “I don’t have English stamp.”

  “And this?” Wilson asked, pointing to an entry.

  “Stabiscope? Special binoculars, with gyroscope! On vibrating platform, is stable like rock. Good for helicopter, APC. Tank, too. Come! I show you.” He grabbed a crowbar that was leaning against the wall, and led Wilson up the ramp and into the plane.

  The fuselage was cavernous, with belt-loader tracks running along the floor under wooden palettes held down by tensioning buckles and cargo nets.

  Wilson glanced at the list. “What’s this?” He pointed to the entry for thirty Strela-2s.

  “Manpads.”

  “Which are what?” Wilson asked.

  “Missile. Like Stinger.” To illustrate, he rested the crowbar on his shoulder. Aiming at an imaginary plane, he squeezed off an imaginary shot. “Hold like bazooka,” he said. “Pull trigger, and … boom!”

  “And this … ‘special kit’? What’s that?”

  “Poison kit,” Belov said. “Four kinds, all by mouth or DMSO. So watch what you eat, and don’t touch!” He chuckled, then grew serious again. “ECC: tastes like shit, but no one ever complains. One taste, convulsions. Number two: THL. Forty-eight hours, mouth to morgue. So, have time to leave. Then heart stops. Number three is CYD: liver dies, kidney dies. Four hours, maybe six. Last one? MCR. Ugly way to die! Organs decompose. Totally. They open you up, inside looks like soup, so obvious foul play.”

  “And the DMSO …”

  “Is solvent. Mix with poison, put on keyboard, doorknob, rifle, whatever. One touch, right to bloodstream – tits up.”

  Wilson glanced around. “When do they finish loading?”

  “Tonight. When pilot get in. Very important he get balance right.”

  “And this is everything?”

  It seemed to Wilson that Belov hesitated before he nodded.

  “What?” Wilson asked.

  “Is small thing …”

  “In a deal like this?”

  “Yes, yes! Is small thing. I show you!”

  The Russian went from pallet to pallet until he found what he was looking for. Using the crowbar, he pried up the lid on one of the boxes. “Look!” he said. “These African guys, they want Russian RPGs, but … no way, José. Impossible, even for me! So, I substitute Type Sixty-nines. Chinese made. Not bad. And cheaper.”

  Wilson stared at the gunmetal-gray cylinders. “What if they don’t want them?”

  “If they don’t, I take them back. Is five percent off bottom line. No problem. Customer always right.”

  “Actually, it’s seven point one percent,” Wilson told him.

  Belov frowned. “How you figure?”

  “It’s arithmetic. You need a pencil?”

  Belov looked at him for a moment. And blinked.

  They came to the first in a series of checkpoints about two miles from the airport. Soldiers in olive-drab camouflage were dragging a striped wooden barrier back and forth across the two-lane road, questioning drivers, waving them on. Nearby, a concrete blockhouse stood by the side of the road, its foundations soaked in mud, its walls filigreed by gunfire. Smoke curled from a rusty stovepipe in the roof.

  There were a dozen trucks and cars waiting in line, up ahead of them. Wilson felt the Escalade slow as one of Belov’s bodyguards leaned out the window, shouting angrily and waving a gun. For the first time, Wilson saw that the car’s windows were about an inch thick.

  From a wooden hut on the other side of the barrier, an officer emerged. Seeing them, he straightened almost to attention, and saluted.

  Belov saw that Wilson was impressed. “Fender flags.”

  Wilson nodded. “I meant to ask; where are they from?”

  Belov chuckled. “From here. Nowhere. They’re company flags.”

  Wilson gave him a questioning look.

  “Is bullshit government here,” Belov said. “Like Wild West. So Sheriff Corporation steps in. Makes law. Owns things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Airport. Hotel. Kentucky Fried. Mercado. Telephones. Electricity. Everything that works.”

  “And you’re, what? The president?”

  Belov scoffed, and shook his head. “Small fish.”

  Wilson thought about it. “So where are the big fish?”

  The arms dealer shrugged. “Deep water. Red Square.”

  Wilson nodded, then turned his eyes to the landscape outside. The sleet was changing to snow. Flakes the size of quarters floated toward them.

  “Lagos,” Belov added, seemingly to himself. Then he flashed a wolfish grin. “Geneva … Dubai.” He laughed.

  “I get the picture,” Wilson told him.

  “Virginia Beach …”

  Tiraspol turned out to be a forlorn anachronism of the Soviet era. Whatever charms it might once have had, had long since disappeared, bulldozed into oblivion by communist urban planners. In their place stood block after block of soulicidal apartment buildings, concrete warrens ablaze with graffiti.

  “So, what you think?”

  “I think it looks like shit,” Wilson replied.

  “Looks like? Is!” Belov chuckled.

  They entered a roundabout with an enormous statue of Lenin at its center. Nearby, a couple of soldiers stood in the cold, smoking cigarettes beside a tank. They eyed the Cadillacs warily, then looked away.

  “Hotel just ahead,” Belov said. “Not bad. Like fucked-up Intercon. But one night only, so … no big deal. In morning?” He answered his own question by cupping the palm of his hand, then flattening it out in what looked like a Hitlerian salute. “Flaps up.”

  Wilson felt his stomach growl. “You know someplace to eat?”

  “
Hotel. Chinese restaurant. Not so bad.”

  “I was thinking I’d get something to eat, maybe take a walk.”

  Belov shook his head and chuckled. “Maybe not,” he said. “You get lost, Hakim kills me.”

  “You could draw me a map.”

  Belov rolled his eyes. “Map is problem.”

  “Why?”

  “Is crime!” Belov declared.

  “What is?”

  “Map! In Transniestria, having map is crime.”

  “You’re kidding,” Wilson said.

  “No. Map is big security issue. Anyway, you don’t have visa. So, is better you stay off streets.”

  “I could get one, couldn’t I? How hard could that be?”

  “Impossible!” Belov told him.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re here,” Belov told him. “Without visa. So –”

  “– is crime.”

  Belov grinned. “Exactly. Cops ask questions. Anyway, Transniestrian visa is only good for eight hours. Day-trip for Ukrainians.”

  “That’s it?”

  Belov nodded. “Yes, ‘it’! Better you stay off street.” Wilson started to object, but Belov cut him off. “I know. This is pain in your ass, but …” The arms-dealer raised his hands, as if he were surrendering. “So much I can do only.” By way of ending the conversation, he donned the pink earphones, lay back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  The manager was waiting for them in the lobby of the Red Star Hotel, a concrete cube with mouse-gray carpeting. Behind the front desk, a heroic haute-relief of Elena Ceauescu hung from the wall.

  To Wilson’s eyes, the hotel had the ambience of a Day’s Inn, but the manager was impressive. Snapping his fingers like castanets, he summoned a posse of elderly bellboys, who hurried over to stand at attention beside each of their bags.

  Greeting Belov with a warm handshake and a quiet joke in Russian, the manager waived the formalities of registration. Going over to the desk, he picked half a dozen keys from a rack on the wall, and began handing them out. One to Zero, another to Khalid. A third to Wilson.

  On Belov’s advice, they avoided the elevator (which was subject to electrical outages) and followed the bellboys up the stairs to the second floor.

  To Wilson’s surprise, the room was fine. Large and comfortably furnished, it had cable TV and a small desk next to the window. Atop the desk was a neatly printed card with instructions on how to access the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection for “only” thirty euros an hour.

  He was about to do just that when a wave of fatigue washed over him. Sitting down on the bed, he ran a hand through his hair and thought about taking a shower. That would wake him up. But the mattress was as soft as goosedown could make it, and the hotel quiet as a stone. Lying back on the pillows, he closed his eyes, and listened. The wind was like a bellows, gusting hard, then dying. It threw bits of ice at the windows, making a ticking sound that was barely audible. And then, nothing.

  When he awoke, the room was dark. But it wasn’t late. Not really. Rolling out of bed, he crossed the room to the minibar and broke the seal on the door. Inside, he found a couple of bottles of Slavutych Pyvo, which looked like beer.

  And was.

  Picking up the remote, Wilson snapped on the TV, then flicked through the channels until he found one in English. It was a live feed from Iraq. Half a dozen kids were kicking the shit out of a dead soldier, lying next to a burning Humvee while a mob danced in what looked like a pool of blood. In a voice-over, President Bush counseled the world that democracy was “hard work.”

  Wilson snorted.

  Meanwhile, images flashed upon the screen. More smoke, this time from a suicide bombing in Kabul. Men running with stretchers. Women and sirens wailing. Nervous soldiers looking on through identical pairs of polarized Oakleys, M-16s at the ready, guns pointing at heaven. Then a trauma ward. A man on the floor, looking as if he were bleeding out, a woman thrashing in pain –

  This is nothing, Wilson thought. This is bullshit. If they think this is bad, wait’ll they get a load of me.

  The idea made him smile. It’s like an orchestra, he told himself. The mayhem on the tube was the visual equivalent of the noise that an orchestra makes as it gets ready to play, with each of the images corresponding to an instrument being tuned. The cacophony was massive and uncoordinated, a traffic jam of noise and violence. But then – soon – the conductor would tap the podium with his baton, and the first note of every symphony would descend: silence.

  Then the storm.

  Wilson took a long swig of Slavutych. Duty called. He hadn’t checked his messages since he’d left the ship. He plugged his laptop into the telephone, and waited for the computer to boot up, musing all the while on the idea of himself as a kind of conductor. An artiste! If you listened hard enough, you could almost hear the applause, people shouting Maestro! Maestro!

  He clicked on the Internet Explorer icon, went to my.yahoo.com and signed in. Clicked on Mail, clicked on Draft – and there it was, a single note dated two days earlier, the address line left blank:

  I can’t find Hakim.

  Fifteen

  Tiraspol-Sharjah

  THE ANTONOV RUMBLED down the tarmac, flaps at attention, the plane shaking and shuddering, roaring toward liftoff. A wall of pine trees loomed behind the fences, growing taller and taller and then they were gone. The plane’s vibrations faded to a pulsed thrum as Tiraspol dwindled beneath the wings, a toy slum in a wintry landscape.

  Sitting in the cockpit with Belov, the pilot, and the engineer, Wilson relaxed as the plane banked to the south. The Russian lighted a cigar, puffed mightily, and cocked his head toward the engine on the port wing. “Exhaust! You see?”

  Wilson glanced out the window, where a stream of turbulence poured over the wing. “What about it?”

  Belov made a graceful gesture with his hand, creating a sine wave in the air. “Russian genius puts engine on top, not under wing – so makes possible short takeoffs. Also, landings! Crappy fields, this is no problem. In Africa, I’m using grass airstrips, always. So … is big deal. Normal plane, no way.”

  “What’s the trade-off?” Wilson asked.

  Belov shrugged. “Not-so-big plane. If I have Antonov-twelve, I haul twenty tons – not ten!” He waggled a finger in the air. “But then I need good runway, mile long, plus.”

  Wilson looked out the window. As the plane climbed, he could see the engine on the left side of the plane. It was sitting on the leading edge of the wing, and he could see the exhaust flowing over the ailerons.

  “Okay if I go back – check out my friends?”

  “Sure! Is okay!” Belov said. “But no cooking!”

  Wilson stared at him. “What?”

  “No cooking! What you don’t understand?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Belov shook his head. “Look at floor! Sometimes Arab peoples, they think because it’s metal, no problem! I’m telling you, they don’t know shit. So you tell them: no cooking.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  Unbuckling his seat belt, Wilson got to his feet. Through the window, he could see the Black Sea stretching toward the horizon. “How long to Sharjah?” he asked.

  “Five hours,” Belov told him. “Maybe six.”

  The pilot turned to him. “Sometimes, we have problems in Iraqi airspace.”

  “What kind of problems?” Wilson asked.

  “F-16s.”

  Leaving the cockpit, Wilson walked back to where Zero and Khalid were seated on folding metal chairs, bolted into the side of the fuselage. They were smoking cigarettes, and each of them had a Diadora bag in his lap. On the floor in front of them was a dull black scar where someone had tried to cook dinner.

  Wilson glanced around.

  “Everything okay?”

  Khalid chuckled. “He’s scared shitless,” he said, nodding at Zero.

  “Well …” Wilson paused. “Lemme ask you something.”

  Khal
id’s eyebrows shot up, as if to say, Shoot.

  “You make any calls last night?”

  Khalid frowned. “No,” he said. “I call no one. Him, too! No calls.”

  “What about the Internet?” Wilson asked.

  The plane hit an air pocket, and Zero turned white.

  Khalid’s frown deepened, then softened into embarrassment. He was thinking that Wilson was upset about the hotel bill. So he blamed his friend. “Yeah,” he said, confessing on Zero’s behalf. “He goes on pussy dot com, when I’m in the shower, y’know? Five minutes, maybe ten, I’m in the shower. When I get out, I see what he does, I make him get off.”

  “No problem.”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes –”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Wilson told him. “What I wanted to know was, you hear from Hakim? You get any e-mail from him?”

  Khalid shook his head, looking relieved. “No,” he said. “We don’t get nothing from Hakim.”

  They touched down in Sharjah a little after three.

  Exiting the plane was like leaving a theater in midafternoon. A wall of heat fell on them, and the sky went off like a flare. Wilson fumbled for his sunglasses, squinting so tightly he might as well have been blind. Pools of oil, real or imagined, glittered on the tarmac. In the distance, a cluster of bone-white buildings shimmered in the molten air.

  “Dubai,” Belov said, raising his chin toward the horizon. Behind them, a small truck began to tow the plane, heading for a hangar at the end of the runway.

  “How long are we here?” Wilson asked.

  “We leave tonight. You hungry?”

  “I could eat,” Wilson said.

  “Good. Come. I get you dinner jacket.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Dubai. Couple miles.”

  “What for?”

  “Tea,” Belov replied.

  “Tea?”

  “With sandwiches!” Sensing Wilson’s skepticism, the Russian gave an apologetic shrug and said, “In Moscow, I am taking you to whorehouse. Have ashes hauled, no problem. Here? In Arab country? Is tea.”

  Wilson had never ridden in a Bentley before. It was nice.

  As was Burj Al Arab. Built to resemble the sail of the world’s biggest dhow, it stood about a thousand feet offshore at the end of a concrete causeway that linked it to Jumeirah Beach. Belov bragged that it had the tallest atrium in the world, the highest tennis court, the most expensive rooms –