‘Hard day at the office?’
‘A zinger.’
‘So what’d you make me drag my ass out here for?’
I tapped the steering wheel with the floppy.
‘A three-and-a-half-inch floppy, wow. You haven’t gone and pirated your latest computer game for me, have you, Bruce?’
‘You show this to Roberto Franconelli and he’ll take a couple of rubber truncheons and beat a tattoo on Graydon’s testicles until they’re the size of pumpkins.’
‘That sounds a little strong for my purposes,’ she said. ‘Graydon’s an asshole but I don’t want him killed. You got anything fluffier?’
‘Graydon’s not going to part with ten million dollars for a soufflé.’
‘I was thinking more sponge less hardtack.’
‘Then you’ll have to kiss Roberto’s ass and make him see that maybe Graydon’s been a little out of line and should get his knuckles rapped. That maybe he should pay a little fine to his wife and give the capo back what he’s ripped off plus interest.’
‘You’re sounding a little pissed.’
‘If you had balls and they were in the vice mine are in, you would be too.’
‘I’m not sure about this, Bruce. This is sounding kinda...’
‘I’m going to Franconelli’s with this floppy. You can come with me and plead for Graydon’s ass or you can let me fly and watch Graydon get weaved through a cattle grid. Let’s go and make a phone call.’
‘You mean now?’
‘It’s tough being pushed around. Believe me, I know.’
‘But I didn’t push you around.’
‘No, but it’s my turn now, and I’ve chosen you.’
We got out of the car and walked to the lobby. Gale put a call through to the Franconelli household. He wasn’t up. Carlo didn’t want to wake him. Gale held the phone in a limp wrist and gave me the ‘too bad’ look. I tore the phone out of her hand.
‘Carlo, this is Bruce Medway. Gale and I want to talk to Mr Franconelli. It’s inconvenient, I know, but tell him there’s a life involved. Tell him it’s Selina Aguia’s life. Right? You understand? Capice, or whatever you guys say?’
I held the line for a good seven minutes. Gale smoked two cigarettes and took the nails of one hand down to the half moons. Carlo came back on and told us to come up straight away.
I followed Gale to Roberto’s house. It was in a secure street similar to the Strudwicks’. Carlo had phoned down to the guards to admit our two cars. We drove through the steel gates and up through the usual heavy-security situation to the house.
The house was a square block, a bunker that looked as if it had the strength to take another ten floors on top. The windows were all barred and shuttered. The front door was steel with shipyard rivets and no knocker. Carlo met us and took us upstairs to Franconelli’s office.
Roberto was sitting on the corner of his desk clipping the end off a cigar. He was wearing blue silk pyjamas, a yellow silk dressing gown and black velvet slippers with gold crests on the toes.
There were two other guys sitting on a low black leather sofa. They had guns clipped to their belts. They propped their faces up with their fists, stretching their mouths to the size of mental patients’. Carlo shut the door behind us. Franconelli lit his Havana with an extra-long match.
‘All of you wait outside for a few minutes. I want to talk to Mr Medway alone,’ he said, and blew out the match with smoke from his mouth.
The door closed behind them.
‘You drinking tonight?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Grappa? It’s all I got up here. The whisky’s down.’
‘Grappa’s fine.’
‘Before we talk business,’ he said, uncorking the grappa, ‘I want to ask you something.’
He poured the drinks in small shot glasses. We saluted each other.
‘What did Selina tell you about me?’ he asked.
‘That I should even think of coming to your house at this time of night asking for help?’
‘She tell you I was soft on her?’
‘She said you were interested.’
‘Just interested?’
‘She said you might be in love with her. But she’s still young, Mr Franconelli. Maybe she was mistaken.’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ he said, and walked behind his desk and sat in the leather scoop chair in front of his PC. ‘She tell you about my wife and daughter?’
I nodded. He smoked at the ceiling for a few moments.
‘I look at you, Mr Medway, and I can see that there’s something going on. You’ve got a life going on. There’s something burning, something pushing you. I’ve looked at myself these last four years, more the last year, and I see nothing but a dead man. I smoke, I drink, I eat, I do business. Nothing more. Then I meet Selina and I find what’s been missing. But you’re right. Carlo’s right. She’s young. She’s younger than my daughter. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I want you to tell me if I’m making a fool of myself. You understand what I’m asking?’
‘Carlo doesn’t like Selina?’ I asked, trying to smooth myself out for the lie that was coming.
‘He’s afraid for me, I think.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘As far as I know you’re not making a fool of yourself.’
‘That’s good,’ he said, looking pleased. ‘Now we can talk business.’
He pressed a button under the lip of his desk. The others filed in and took seats. There were just about enough for all of us in the room. Franconelli poured a grappa for Gale. Carlo and the boys sat dead-eyed.
‘Where’s Selina?’ Franconelli asked me.
‘Chief Babba Seko’s house.’
‘You said she’s in trouble. Why?’
‘Because of this,’ I said, and threw the floppy on the desk.
He turned on his computer. Opened a drawer and took out a pair of heavy-rimmed specs. He checked the floppy for details of the programme and copied it on to his hard disk. The BASOLCO accounts came up on to the screen.
‘I have these same accounts. You going to tell me what it means?’
I told Franconelli what Graydon and the chief had been doing since his wife had died, since they’d seen him getting distracted, since they’d seen him starting to go down.
There was an extraordinary physical change in the man. Before he’d looked human, the blood slick around his veins, his face heavy but impassive, his eyes shrewd but compassionate. Now it was as if I could see the arteries narrowing, the blood thickening, the pressure rising. His arms and pectorals shook. His carotid popped out in his neck. The pressured blood began to do strange things to his face—purpling it, darkening it. The purity of his anger left him with a white rim to his mouth, a thin white line around his liverish lips. He blinked at the heat coming off his eyeballs.
‘Now, Roberto...’ started Gale. I held up a hand.
The young men on the sofa tensed. A half smile appeared on Carlo’s face and he stretched his neck as if his collar was chafing. Franconelli stormed around the room, torrential Italian pouring out of him as if he was an actor rehearsing lines for an opera. Carlo followed him with approving eyes, his body still. Franconelli’s fist was opening and closing as if he was pumping his own, thick, enraged blood around his body. He stopped in front of me.
‘Why’d she do this?’
‘I think you asked her to, Mr Franconelli.’
‘I asked her. I tell her to tell me to... fucking language. Non parla Italiano?’
‘No.’
‘I told her to look at the oil. That’s all.’
‘I don’t think you did.’
‘And you!’ he roared, turning on Gale. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘She’s come here to ask for leniency.’
‘You come here to plead for your husband’s ass?’
‘I’ve come here to beg you, Roberto,’ said Gale, catching hold of the tempo fast.
‘Beg me for what? Not to kill that fucking bastard hus
band of yours?’
‘I know...’
‘Gale is part of the reason Selina broke into the chief’s system.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s sick of Graydon...’
‘She’s sick? I’m sick. Graydon. Fucking man,’ said Franconelli, using his fingers to show us that Graydon liked to stick himself with needles and pump himself up.
‘Gale asked us to find information on Graydon so that she could leave him. She can’t live with a man like that.’
‘No. Nobody can live with a man like that,’ he muttered. He spoke in Italian to Carlo who stood up and walked over to Gale.
‘Bring him here, now.’
‘Roberto,’ said Gale, standing up, ‘don’t kill him. I’m begging you not to kill him.’
‘I give you my word,’ he said, ‘I won’t kill him.’ They left the room. ‘What does she want?’
‘She wants enough money to be able to leave him.’
‘Like how much?’
‘Ten million dollars.’
‘You know, that stronzzo, he could give five times that and it would be nothing.’
‘Selina’s situation is more complicated,’ I said, wanting to get out of here, away from these people. ‘I was sent this package today.’
I threw the polystyrene block on to the desk. Franconelli looked at it. His body stilled. He made a decent show of opening the box but I knew, at that moment, that it was his. He had sent the box. He knew what was inside.
‘What is it?’ he asked, but I wasn’t convinced.
‘It’s the mouth of a man called Napier Briggs.’
‘Who is he?’ he asked, and that was enough for me. Franconelli knew Briggs better than his own aunt.
I told him how Napier Briggs had been found and waited to see if he would keep the lie going.
‘And what does this have to do with Selina?’
‘Briggs was making himself dangerous to the chief, so they killed him. Now they’re threatening me. They’re holding Selina and threatening me to make sure things go smoothly.’
‘What things go smoothly?’
Now I knew why Franconelli had sent the package. He was listening to me with every cell of his body. Right down to the dead skin on the back of his heels he was listening to me. He wanted to know what was going on. He knew there was something and that it was important but he didn’t know what. He’d thrown Napier’s mouth into the works to raise some information. Franconelli straightened himself as if he’d realized he was looking as hunched as a toad.
‘She’s arranged for him to buy six and a half kilos of Plutonium 239, ten kilos of red mercury and a half kilo of Californium 252.’
‘She’s selling him a bomb?
‘Just the ingredients.’
‘Has she gone crazy?’
‘She’d planned it so that the chief would lose some money. Something has gone wrong. Now the chief is threatening. I need your help to get her out.’
‘Why does she want to cheat him?’
‘You should ask her that yourself. I’m the paid help. She doesn’t tell me everything.’
‘What are you doing with her?’
He knew who I was and what I’d been doing. If I wanted his help I had to keep my mouth shut. Franconelli leaned over the desk at me, looming dark and turbulent like the coming rainy season.
‘I’m helping her.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s paying me.’
‘You don’t look like the kind of man to sell nuclear bombs to people.’
‘I’m poor. She said he wouldn’t end up with any product. Now it’s out of control and I need your help.’
It had been his mistake to make out that he didn’t know Napier Briggs. Now he couldn’t ask the question he wanted to ask without looking a fool and Roberto Franconelli was not in the business of looking foolish.
‘Chief Babba Seko,’ said Franconelli, pushing himself back off the desk, ‘is a man who is coming to his moment.’
I told him about the proposed exchange at Ben’s brother’s warehouse in Cotonou.
‘Carlo’ll go with you when he comes back. You show him the warehouse,’ he said, and wrote down some numbers. ‘You call me when you’re fixed up.’
‘How can I guarantee that the chief will come with Selina?’
‘You make him come,’ he said. ‘Where’s the money?’
‘With me.’
‘Recognize your strengths, my friend. You’re the principal now. Lay down your conditions for the exchange. Who’s supplying?’
‘A Russian. But the goods will come via me.’
‘Then you’re the one in control. Tell him he has to be there.’
‘He’ll be suspicious. He’ll know I’m trying to get Selina out. The exchange is only for the first half of the product.’
‘Why?’
‘The Russian wants it that way.’
‘Let him be suspicious. He’ll bring his men to the warehouse. But maybe he’s made a mistake doing the business in Cotonou. He’s got a private army here. He’ll only have maybe six to ten men there.’
‘He said Nigeria’s too dangerous at the moment.’
‘True,’ he said, and sat at his desk again. ‘So, you tell him what you want. We’ll wait for your call. The rest is for us.’
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.
&n
bsp; 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.’
Chapter 28
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.
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