Читать книгу Night Trap - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 25

It was a day of the kind they make tourist brochures about, the bay deep blue and sparkling with the sun; toward Capri, the water looked greener, and the boats heading for the island trailed crisp, white wakes. In the other direction, Vesuvius seemed unthreatening behind a thick rim of beachfront development.

Petty Officer First Class Sheldon Bonner was not impressed. He liked Vesuvius well enough—enjoyed checking it out each time a sea tour brought him here—but “See Naples and Die” sounded stupid to him. The volcano looked a little dimmer today, he thought—more smog, more people down along the bay, more cruddy towns. But what he liked about Vesuvius was its lurking menace, and one day, he was sure, it would crack open again and pour ash and lava down on all the crud, and the bay would be cleansed and the air would be clear again. That would be worth seeing.

“Hey, Boner.”

A body joined him in the line. He didn’t even look back to see who it was. He grunted.

“Hey, Boner, gonna get some?”

“What else do you think we visit this shithole for?”

“Great pussy here, huh, Boner?”

“So-so.”

“You’re a fucking cynic, you know that, Boner? Your old lady know you got such high standards in pussy?”

Bonner carried on these conversations without thinking. Most talk, he had found, was done on autopilot. Men lived their real lives someplace else, hustling each other about what great sex they had, or what bad sex they had, how drunk they were last night, how they were mistreated, misunderstood, ripped off by the system; inside, they were thinking about other things entirely. He, for example, was thinking about money.

The line lurched forward and a speaker boomed out, “Boat away.” He gave his name, started down the ladder. Below, a boat was just moving away from the ship, the water opening between them a deeper, blackening blue. He descended into shade and felt cold.

Another boat nudged up and men began to file aboard. Bonner followed, clutching his toilet kit.

“You been this place before?” the E2 next to him said. Bonner remembered him from the hangar deck, a kid just out of high school.

“Lots.”

“It true they got a guy with a humongous prick at Pompeii?”

“Depends what your standard of comparison is.”

The kid laughed and turned red. He started to tell Bonner how he and his buddies were going to rent a car and drive to Pompeii and see the porn. Bonner tuned out. It was no good telling them that the train was a lot cheaper and easier. It was no good telling them the porn was stupid. It was no good telling them anything. They were young. Let them get ripped off by the Italian car rental agency, screwed by every gas station and trattoria; let them pay some ancient Guinea a hundred times what he was worth to be told a lot of bullshit about Pompeii. They were young and stupid—and in three to five years, they’d be out of the Navy or they’d be on their way to passing him by. They’d be headed for chief, and he’d still be a POI.

Sheldon Bonner, POl-For-Life. He thought of it as a title. He’d been busted twice, come back both times to POI, knew now he would never rise beyond it. The hotshots got their promotions on the backs of people like him, who made them look good. Were they grateful? Not a chance. They got the promotion, changed the uniform, hung out with their own kind and laughed at him behind his back. He knew. He’d had buddies who’d done that.

“Hey, you see that guy?” The kid nudged him. He was jerking his head toward a young man just coming aboard. Officer, Bonner thought, even in the civilian clothes. Behind him was a huge black man Bonner recognized as a super chief.

“What about him?”

“That’s my skipper’s son. Isn’t that amazing?”

He looked to be a perfectly normal, snot-nosed j.g., from all that Bonner could see. “What’s fucking amazing?”

“He’s the skipper’s son.”

“I’m not amazed.”

“He came in on that S-3 that took the net four nights ago. Maybe you didn’t hear.” He sounded suddenly apologetic, as if he had just realized that what was wonderful to his novice eyes bored the shit out of an old man like Bonner.

Bonner grunted. He didn’t much care about officers. They had almost nothing to do with him. He resented them, but this was simply a fact of life; everybody who wasn’t an officer resented them. But it was a given, part of their world, like the law of gravity. He watched as the super chief seemed to surround the young officer, protecting him. Old Dad had seen to that.

“Nice to have somebody to wipe your ass for you,” he said. The boy snickered. It wasn’t officers Bonner really resented, it was hotshot enlisted like this super chief, clearly younger than Bonner, already making better money. This one, he supposed, got there by being black.

“We’re the biggest minority in the fucking world,” Bonner said.

“Who?”

The boat separated itself from the carrier. The breeze freshened as soon as they swung away. Bonner shivered, then put his face up as they swung into sunlight. “White guys,” he muttered.

Did he really believe that? Bonner was never quite sure what he believed. Other people seemed to have fierce, clear beliefs, but he was aware only of large areas of dislike or grievance or distrust. The White Power guys, for example; they really believed all that, but when he talked to them, they sounded bananas. He knew guys in the Klan; they were out of it, too, he thought. No, what he hated about the Navy, about the world, was something so huge, so unexplainable, that you couldn’t make a cause of it. It was, finally, himself alone, and then this huge Other. That was the enemy. All that.

Not that he didn’t think that black guys got ahead these days because they were black. They did. Also women. But those were just parts of it, just little bits you could see of something huge and hidden.

What he was sure of, what he really knew, was that nobody ever got anything without being crooked somewhere. Find a rich guy, he’d show you a crook. The difference between people with money and people without money was that the ones with hadn’t got caught.

“Hey, man, is this Naples really as bad as they say?” the kid said. He looked nervous. He was like a young chicken, waiting to be plucked. He touched something in Bonner, maybe his attachment to his son.

Bonner began to talk to the kid about Naples. He gave him good advice, even though he knew it was wasted.

“Use a fucking condom. The whores here have AIDS for breakfast.”

Alan Craik let Senior Chief Petty Officer Gibbs shepherd him to the door of the Hilton. Gibbs apparently considered it his duty to keep watch over the skipper’s kid; this could have annoyed the hell out of Alan, but he decided not to let it.

“I think I can get through the front door by myself, Chief.”

Gibbs grinned. He was an enormous man, almost too big for the Navy’s specs. “Naples’s a dangerous place, Mr Craik.”

“Yeah, but the Hilton isn’t. Thanks for babysitting me.”

Gibbs grinned. Alan found the grin patronizing.

“Chief, I used to live in this town. Granted I was only nine. Kids learn a lot. Capisce?” Gibbs looked skeptical. “My dad was assigned to NATO here. I used to live—right up there.” He pointed up toward the Vomero, hardly visible now between the high-rises. He tried out the Italian he had been practicing in secret, the dimly remembered language of childhood. “Ero un’ piccolo scugnizz’ americano; ho vista tutto, tutto, d’accordo?” He made it a joke, laughed, although what he really remembered was that this was where his parents’ marriage had fallen apart. Not because of Naples, but because of the Navy.

“Okay, okay, Lieutenant. Take care, you hear?”

The big man ambled to the curb, then darted into the traffic and was across the street and gone.

Alan went through the doors and into the lobby that seemed familiar because it was international, therefore almost American, in the style of the American century. The woman at the concierge’s desk was stunning, bringing back all of Naples to him in an instant: not a girl, a woman, ample, a Sophia Loren face. Like the maid when he was nine, his friend, who had taught him Italian because she spoke no English. Teresa. Married to a little shrimp of a man who abused her.

“Per favore, signora.”

“Yes, sir?” She wasn’t going to let him speak Italian, he saw.

“A guest named Hoyt? Initial K?” Had Kim been able to get here?

“Twelve-thirty-one, sir. The telephone is right through there.”

His knees felt weak. He hadn’t seen her for six weeks. She had been a new experience for him before he sailed, a poor little rich girl with an appetite. Now, heading for the phones, he was thinking that maybe those nine days were a fiction; maybe he remembered them wrong. And then there was what his father had said about Kim—implying that she was stupid, a bimbo, an easy lay.

But she was here. He had sent a message, and she had jumped on a plane and come.

“Kim? Alan.”

“Oh, God! Come on up!” She giggled. “I’ve been shopping.”

When she opened her door, he saw what she’d been shopping for. They hardly managed to get the door closed before they were at each other.

PO1 Bonner picked his way around the pimps, dodged the plain-clothes cops, and gestured away the child pickpockets who were waiting for the carrier’s crew. He changed twenty dollars at the booth by the dock, causing a black-market money-changer (probably a cop) to assume a look of deep grievance; then he walked quickly up away from the water and headed into the first tobacco store.

“Camels. And a carty di telyphono.”

“Bene.” Bonner dropped fifteen thousand lire and the man counted the correct change. Bonner believed that every Italian would cheat him if given the chance, but he never gave them that chance, and he believed they knew it. It was part of his idea of himself that he had to project an image of toughness and knowingness, or the world would cheat him.

“Gratzy,” he said. The man only nodded.

Every minor crook and sex merchant in southern Italy would be there to greet a major American ship, he believed. The streets of Naples teemed with criminals, anyway, he was sure; today, their numbers would be multiplied—dwarves pretending to be children, mothers who had made cripples of their children to start them on a life of begging, men got up as nuns, transvestites there to lure naive kids into alleys. Bonner was walking through a city of tricksters. It was like this wherever he went; as a result, he never enjoyed himself.

He walked through a narrow street of shops and came out into the great piazza in front of the old Bourbon palace, then along the front of the palace. A few other sailors were already sightseeing there; these were the nerds, the serious ones, what Mattingly called the jerkoffs; one of them even had a guidebook and was reading to his buddy. Bonner walked along behind them. He passed the statues of the Bourbon kings, elevated above him in niches, below each one a stone rectangle and a kind of curb at the bottom. He passed the third of the four kings, and no one watching him could have said for sure whether he looked down and saw the chalked circle on the small curbstone, but when he had walked the length of the palace he turned, without changing his pace, and angled across the piazza, along in front of the curving porticoes that are a little like those of St Peter’s in Rome, and headed into the Via Chiaia. And nobody watching him could have known that seeing the chalked circle had him seething with resentment, for he seemed the same impassive man.

At the far end of the Via Chiaia is a vast old movie theater that was once a bomb shelter, cut into the soft tufa of the hillside. Inside, it is always cool and damp, and the place smells of mildew and cats. Yet it has the virtue of being open most of the day and night, so that men like Bonner can do their peculiar business there. (Other men and women do other, also peculiar, business there.)

Bonner bought a ticket and climbed to the second level. He passed the first men’s room he came to and went on much farther than seemed sensible in a movie patron, finally stopping at a smaller, almost hidden toilet far around toward the screen. There, he pissed, then lingered by a basin, combing his flat hair, his bag guarded between his feet, until a fat man in a dirty T-shirt went out. The only other occupant was in a stall, stinking the place worse than the mildew and the cats. Bonner bent quickly and felt under the second basin from the wall and removed something that he found at the back, slipped it into his pocket and went out. He did not stay to see the movie.

He checked into a hotel a block back from the tourist streets, a little place that was as plain and clean as a newly cut board. He had got it out of a tourist guide that promised to save you a hundred dollars a day. Bonner had lots of such guides; he made a little money on the ship renting them out—Naples, Monaco, Bahrain; it was well known that Bonner could tell you where to stay and where to eat for a minimum of ripoff.

He’d stayed here two other times, but they didn’t remember him. Why should they? he asked himself. Better that they didn’t.

The room was only big enough for the bed and a TV; the bathroom was no bigger than a closet, everything in it molded out of plastic, as if they’d just dropped the unit into place. Shower, no tub. No free shampoo or lotion or any of that shit. But clean.

Only when he was in the room with the door locked did he take out what he had collected in the men’s room. He unfolded a sheet of paper. His lips moved a little as he read the instructions written there. His anger showed in his face now. He read it again, then tore it into bits and slammed into the tiny bathroom and flung the pieces into the toilet.

The message had said to burn the paper when he was done, but everything in the bathroom was plastic and he was afraid of what the flame would do. And who the fuck was going to glue the pieces back together in the Naples sewer? “Kiss my ass,” he said aloud as he flushed the toilet.

Still, there was no question of his disobeying the message. He left his toilet kit on the sink and, seeing that he still had fifteen minutes, turned on the TV and watched an American horror film, dubbed into Italian. He’d seen it before, something about American kids saving the world from Dracula. In his experience, American kids couldn’t save a gnat’s ass from a spiderweb, but it probably sold movie tickets to tell them they were the hope of the world.

At five after ten, he went out.

Bonner knew the Galleria Umberto, but he’d forgotten how to get there, so he did some wandering and actually asked somebody for directions before he found it, then was astonished that he’d forgotten how easy it was to find. He went in, crossed the vast terrazzo floor under the vaulted glass ceiling and found a chair at one of the cafés there. A waiter waved him to come closer, but he shook his head and stayed out there in the middle. Not that he liked it out there. What he liked was a corner, or at least a wall that he could put his back to. But the instructions were to sit in the middle. So they could check him out, he knew. He knew all that.

The Galleria was like a church, he thought. Like one of those big, over-decorated Italian churches you’re supposed to fall down and vomit over because they’re old. Still, the Galleria had its good points: you could get a coffee or a beer in there and stay dry; you got the feeling of being outdoors because of the glass ceiling; you could see everybody who came and went.

“Coffee,” he said to the now angry waiter.

The waiter shot something at him in Italian. Of course the guy spoke English; they all had a little English, Bonner was sure. But he was making his point by speaking Italian because Bonner wouldn’t sit close to the kitchen so he didn’t have to carry anything so far. Instead, Bonner was sitting out here in Siberia, in the middle of the huge pavement.

“Can’t understand you, sorry,” Bonner said. “No capeesh.”

The waiter hissed something.

“Coffee, I want coffee. Just bring me coffee. Black, okay? A little sugar. What the hell. Sugar-o. Okay?”

The waiter spat some more words, of which Bonner understood “espresso.”

“Sure espresso, fine, molto benny. And some sugar-o, okay?”

Surprisingly, it came with two packets of sugar, and it was very good. The waiter had decided to dazzle him with service. He even brought the international Herald-Tribune. It was yesterday’s, but what the hell? The news was just like home—bullshit. Bush was doing this, the Democrats were doing that, the economy was up or down or sideways; what the hell?

Bonner sat there for more than half an hour. He read the newspaper a little, but mostly he sat there with his hands folded over his belly, looking around the Galleria. There were several floors to it, and each one had a kind of arcade and places for people to look down to the vast floor where he sat. They had something interesting to look at, he thought—a few people coming in one entrance and going out another, using the Galleria like a street; him, sitting there, obviously an American; more people drifting in and taking tables, morning break time. The Italians, he thought, spent most of their lives on breaks; no wonder they were broke.

At nine minutes after eleven, he crossed the floor and went out a different entrance, as he was supposed to do. There was a payphone. It rang.

“Across the street from you will be a taxi with flame painted on the hood. Get into it.”

And there it was.

And he did as he was told, cursing them for making him do it.

She sighed. “See Naples and die.”

“Jesus Christ!” Alan blew out his breath. “Wow.”

She held him tighter. “I love you so much.”

They lay silently together, timeless. “Say you love me,” she said. He whispered it into her hair. “You need practice,” she said. He could tell she was smiling. He raised his head and looked down at her. “It’s true,” he said. “I find it hard to say.”

“It gets easier with time.” She was still smiling. She kissed him. “Let’s just stay in bed all week and when we’re starved we’ll tell them to bring us champagne.”

“Not all week, Kim.” He hadn’t told her yet. He had thought there would be a good moment. “I’ve got to report to the boat day after tomorrow.”

“No, you don’t.” Something steely, also new, sounded in her voice.

“Yeah, I do. There’ll be a plane at Capodichino to take me. See, they started their liberty three days ago, while I was—”

“Well, you’ll just have to be real sick. Or tell them you’re doing charity work with an American woman who’ll die otherwise.”

He laughed. “Right! Compassionate leave. No, the Navy’s understanding, but not that understanding.”

“I won’t let you go.”

“Sweetie, they cut a set of orders for me. I have to get back to my own ship.” He kissed her. “Be good. Please.”

“I hate the Navy.” A tear trickled down from the corner of her right eye. “No, don’t—” She avoided another kiss and twisted aside under him, escaped and ran to the bathroom for a tissue, with which she started to dab her eyes.

Naked, Kimberley Hoyt looked as if she had been put together from male fantasies. She was very large where men wanted size, very small where she was supposed to be small. She had honey-amber hair that she wore long, and it blazed around her face like a sunburst. She was, in fact, the very woman most of the men of the carrier hoped to meet in Naples, and only Alan would.

He rolled over on his back. “Let’s have a great day together,” he said. “Kim? Okay?”

She burst into tears.

He went to her and they clung together, naked. When she was quiet, she said into his shoulder, “I think I don’t know you very well. It scares me, you going away and going away—I thought we’d have—time—”

“I have to.”

“Why? Why?” She flung her head back and stared at him. “Is it your father?”

“I signed on. I’m committed.”

She put a hand on his bare chest and began to move it back and forth, back and forth. She looked at the place as if she would learn something there. “I want you committed to me,” she said.

The taxi driver said nothing the whole trip, which wound around Naples in an apparently incoherent way, first up toward the Vomero, then down again, then well out toward Mergellina, then back. Bonner did not try to make sense of it. He supposed they were being followed to make sure that Bonner hadn’t brought a tag from the ship. He could have told them he hadn’t. He’d checked. He supposed the taxi driver was one of them, and that if Bonner didn’t check out he’d turn and he would have a silenced nine-millimeter and he’d go pfft! with it right into Bonner’s chest.

Oddly, most of what Bonner thought he knew about this business he had got from movies. If he’d known that the taxi driver was really only a taxi driver, he’d have been deeply confused.

Finally, the driver turned back up toward the Vomero, and, halfway up, pulled over to the side and motioned for Bonner to get out. It was a road, not a street; there was a weedy verge and some trash, but nothing close by like a house or a café. Bonner got out and stood there. He was going to ask if he was supposed to pay, when the driver reached back and slammed his door and drove off.

Bonner found himself on a curve, from which he could look down over the rooftops and terraces of several apartment buildings. The other way, across the road, there was a wall, and, above it and set well back, more apartments. It was an isolated place in the midst of the city. He looked down the road and saw nothing; glancing up, he saw, where the road curved out of sight, a small bulge of green and a bench.

“That’s it,” he muttered aloud. He began to trudge toward it. The sun was brutal. Bonner did not like this uphill walking in the heat. His anger bubbled up again like heartburn, and he told himself again that he’d really let them have it for calling him in again so soon. They’d had a deal! Well, he’d give them an earful. He rehearsed the sullen speech he had been making up during the long taxi ride.

The sounds of the city came up to him—motorcycles, horns, a couple of women shouting. The view opened wider as he walked; he could see the palace, the Castel’ dell’ Uovo, then the bay and the carrier riding out there at anchor. A civilian ferry was tied up next to it, taking on more liberty personnel. It looked like a toy next to the ship.

He walked on, sweating, hating this part of it, which always upset him and made his gut surge. He’d have a bad night, he was sure, up all the time with the crud. Nerves. He was breathing heavily, too, from the climb. At last he came to the bench, and he stood there, and up ahead about fifty yards he saw a car pulled over. The door opened and a man got out.

Bonner sat on the bench. There was a green metal railing around the little grassy bulge in the road. It was a wonderful viewpoint. He could see the carrier, Vesuvius, the castle, half the city, rolled out from his feet like a figured carpet. It was a great vantage point. But frankly, Bonner wouldn’t give you the sweat off one ball for the greatest vantage point in the world.

He turned and looked at the man. He didn’t try to hide his surprise. “Carl!” he muttered.

“A long time, Sheldon.” The man sat down on the bench. He was small, nondescript wore glasses that were only glasses and had no style. He was the only man in the world who called him “Sheldon.” His courtesy seemed based on a respect that was, itself, almost more valuable to Bonner than money. No one called him “Sheldon.”

“I didn’t know it would be you, Carl.” Already, he was apologizing, nervous; they always managed to do this to him, even though they must have had lots more to be nervous about than he did. How did they do that? It threw him off, to have Carl there. He had thought it would be some stranger.

“Please accept my apology for interrupting your liberty this way, Sheldon. I know how unfair it seems to you.”

“Oh, hey—that’s okay, Carl—” He had his speech rehearsed, even down to an explosion of anger. Now here Carl was, a really important man, apologizing for the whole thing.

“I wouldn’t call you out except for something very important, Sheldon. I want you to believe that.” Carl bent a little forward, his voice urgent. He was wearing warmups and a light nylon jacket and kept his right hand in the jacket pocket, but Sheldon didn’t think anything about that, because Carl was the man who had recruited him and was a very high official and must have dozens of people to do dirty work if there was any to be done. Carl, in fact, was one of the two people in the world whom Bonner trusted. The other was his son.

“There have been some changes,” the man called Carl said. He spoke in a flat, Americanized accent without any trace of his origins. “I have made a change. And so I wanted to share this with you and see if the change fits into your strategies. To see whether you would say yes or no to this change.”

“What kind of change?” Bonner hated change.

“You see, Sheldon, we had a problem. A structural problem. I know, you see, that you feel you have not been paid well. I was trying to find money for you, I mean the kind of money that you deserve, in a place where there was no money to be had. What I mean is, there is no money there any more. I am not immune to money myself.” He smiled, as if this humanizing trait were a source of wonder. “I wasn’t being paid enough, either, my friend. There seemed to be an assumption that I would work for love. Of what, I ask you? History? A corrupt system? It seemed to me contradictory that they impose the ‘free-market economy’ and then ask me to do without. So—”He turned more toward Bonner, his right hand still deep in his pocket. “I’ve changed employers, Sheldon. I want you to come with me.” He smiled. “I’m afraid I must have a yes or no today.”

“Changed to who?”

“Who has money?”

Bonner looked into his eyes. “The ragheads,” he said. “Or the Japs, but you wouldn’t go there. The ragheads?”

“They’re very excited about you coming with me. ‘What can you bring?’ they asked me. I told them, some of my stars, like you. You most of all—my star of stars. My best!”

Bonner grinned, but his gut was churning. A change would mean relearning everything, he was sure. New people, new codes, all that shit he hardly understood as it was. “I dunno,” he said.

“I hope you say yes,” Carl murmured.

“Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t you, Carl. You’re the best, you’ve never let me down. But jeez, this last two years—” Bonner made a face. Carl was the very one he had wanted to complain to, and now here he was and Bonner was tongue-tied. He tried to stare at the castle so he wouldn’t see Carl’s eyes, and he said quickly, “I think somebody’s been skimming my money. There just hasn’t been enough!” Bonner jerked his shoulders, then his head. He made a futile gesture with his left hand, the hand closest to Carl. He laughed nervously, then tried to rush at the prepared anger. “They’re nickel-and-diming me, I can’t live on what I’m getting! It’s insulting, is what it is. I’m taking the risk and they’re paying me like minimum wage, like I’m bringing them goddam burgers or something instead of what I am.” He had begun to stammer and he stopped, leaned back into the hard wood of the bench. He rubbed his forehead. “My taxes on my house are more than they paid me last year all put together. I told the guy in Norfolk, the pudgy guy, I need some things. They may not mean much to you; to me, they’re important. I need a new boat. He as good as said I’d get one. Then, nothing!” He had actually worked himself up this time, and he let the anger burst out. “They’re cheating me!”

“I’m glad we’re having this talk, Sheldon.”

“I think they’re skimming my money, taking a lot for themselves. Can we go over the figures for last year? You may not know what—”

Carl held up a hand. “Precisely why I’m here, Shel. The very changes that I’m talking about! I can’t tell you how glad I am to have this frank talk with you. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

They both looked up and down the road. Bonner then looked over his shoulder at the wall across the pavement. It was a well-chosen spot. They could see anybody coming a long way away; the car was nearby, and he supposed there were other watchers; and if they had to, they could go over the railing and down the hill in front of them. It was steep but not impossible and would lead to a maze of streets.

“This is a good place,” Bonner said.

“I told my new employers what you did fourteen months ago. They were very excited. ‘We must have him, we must have this man.’ They’ll pay.”

“Ragheads?”

“Iran.”

“Oil money.” Bonner made a face. “The money’d have to be good. My expenses are enormous, Carl. I can’t be nickel-and-dimed!”

“Precisely my point.”

“How much?”

“They’ll raise the regular amount to a thousand a month. But they are a different people from you and me. You must not be put off, Shel, if now and then their requests seem a little … quirky. The thing is, you know, they want to know everything and they don’t know anything at all! For example, they asked me to get from you the liberty ports of your ship.”

“For Christ’s sake, it was in the fucking newspaper!”

Carl laughed. “But they don’t know that! Humor them.”

“They don’t sound very professional.”

“We will train them. And they will pay. Good money. They like to pay per delivery, bigger sums but for achievement. They are motivators.” He leaned forward. “Yes or no, Sheldon?”

“I need big bucks, Carl. I’m in debt.”

“I can get you twenty-five thousand for something good. They want to pay you that kind of money, believe me; they’re dripping with oil, they like paying for quality. Persians are like that.”

“I haven’t got anything right now. We agreed, I’d lay low for a year! Christ, I risked my balls getting the IFF for you. And then your people nickel-and-dimed me. Why didn’t you jump when you had the IFF?” IFF: identify friend or foe. It had taken him weeks to steal, and it had represented a new level of treason, a line being crossed.

“We think alike. No wonder I like you, Sheldon. As it happens, I brought the IFF out with me. I never turned it over in Moscow. It’s what I’m taking to Tehran. My bona fides.”

“Did you tell them I was the one delivered it?”

Carl nodded.

“They oughta pay me a bonus.”

“They don’t think that way.” He smiled. “But I do. There’ll be a little gift for you in your account this month. Out of my personal money.”

“You don’t have to do that—!”

“I insist. But I must have your answer. Yes or no?”

Bonner looked at the castle, not seeing it, thinking only of himself and his grievances and his money. Money. Well, if Carl could get him more money—”Sure, why not?”

Carl smiled. “I am so glad.”

“Let’s talk about the money.”

“Good! Money.” Carl relaxed. Bonner was flattered that his agreement seemed to mean so much to this important man. Carl’s hand came a little out of his pocket. “I want to give you more money, my friend. Because you have done such good work. Now, I’ve told my—our—new employers that you must have more money or they’ll lose you. But they would like something from you soon—a sign, a gesture. A commitment. Later, there will be something else. We will come to that. But for now, the short term, they think you can help them. What have you got? Unique to Iran, I mean.”

This was new to Bonner. He didn’t normally work in this way, being asked for specific things, right now; rather, he specialized in technology—not news but plans, models, parts, all things that took time. This new approach made him uneasy. “There’s scuttlebutt we’re on a joint ops with another carrier, it’s up in Palma right now. We’re going through the Canal first, to Mombasa then Bahrain. They follow in a month, then the word is we’ll hit somebody. Some guys say Iran, revenge for that bomb in the German club.”

“Yes? That’s good. That’s what they like. Can you confirm that?”

He shook his head. “I know the A-6 squadron’s doing low-levels because I heard the pilots talk. Plus they’re doing refueling with S-3s from the other carrier. So, you know, we could be way down the Gulf and still hit Iran.”

“Or Iraq.”

“Yeah, but there’s no reason. Iran, everybody says we owe them one. For the German club.” He wriggled on the bench. “Frankly, Carl, I think we owe the fucking ragheads one for that. That could’ve been me, sitting in that club when they bombed it.”

“So, one A-6 squadron and refueling from the other carrier. And?”

“Cover, that’s all. It’s small.”

“A surgical strike, then. You don’t know where. But you will know—won’t you, Sheldon?”

“I—I—That’s not my—modus operandi. I don’t like that shit. I’m a specialist.”

“But, for once, I think we must work this way. The Iranians want a gesture. Between you and me, they would like to test the IFF before they surprise your Navy with it—specifically, they want to test using the IFF to target missiles. We have given them the system; they have the technology; what they will need is the frequency.”

“We change it all the time.”

“I know.” Carl joined his hands. “But if you put a prearranged frequency into the aircraft, and the Iranians targeted their missiles for that frequency, then they should be able to shoot down the aircraft. Shouldn’t they?”

His face became stubborn. “It wouldn’t work.”

“I insist it would.”

Sheldon turned his head toward Carl, daring him to contradict, angry again. “The first thing they’re airborne, they make a test pass and flash IFF. If you put in a different frequency they go negative and they abort. Great idea! A whole squadron makes one pass around the carrier and lands. Brilliant.”

Carl’s face darkened and his hand slipped back into his pocket. “Think of something, then, Sheldon. Your future depends on it.”

“What the hell!”

Carl shrugged. “They want results.”

“They’re Nazis. Fucking lot of Nazis!”

Carl merely looked at him. “Think of something.”

Bonner looked up and down the road. It would be almost a relief to have some NCIS goon walk in on them. No, it wouldn’t. It would be the end of everything. Carl, he knew, was his only chance to make it big.

“One aircraft,” he said. “One aircraft, you might get away with it. Some of these hotshots, they’ll lie when they test the IFF, because they don’t want to scrub. Especially a real mission. Some of these guys piss themselves they’re so hot to go. Like—” He was thinking fast. “The skipper of the A-6 squadron. A fucking kamikaze. He wouldn’t abort if the wings fell off his fucking aircraft.” He shifted, began to get interested. “And if it was only one, see, they wouldn’t trace it back to whoever put the codes in. A whole squadron, Christ, they’d know in three seconds it had to be something like the IFF, even if you could get around the test run. They’d put every sonofabitch who has access to the aircraft on a polygraph. Or they wouldn’t even have to. They got us all on lists, computers. Big Brother is watching.”

“Can you do it?”

“Me! Get some other sucker.” Bonner folded his arms. “That’s not my specialty. I’ve never done stuff.”

“Can’t you do it?” Carl’s voice was soft and pleading, almost feminine. “Sheldon, I need you to do it. Only this once.”

Bonner started to whine again. “I’d have to find out which plane he’s gonna fly, and that can be tricky; then I gotta get at the plane, but I gotta nick the gun that inserts the codes and reset it. It’s too much!”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I’m not a saboteur! I’m a—a—” He shrank into himself. “Specialist.”

“I need you to do this for me, Sheldon. For both of us. The Iranians will be charmed to shoot down the CO of an attack squadron. They will love us! We will have years and years with them, Shel.”

“I need more money.”

Carl frowned. “I might get you thirty-five. I can try. I promise I will try.”

“That’s it? Tops?”

Carl nodded.

Actually, thirty-five was more than he’d dared think about. He owed about fifteen. Still, it would be a horrible effort. His gut would be a mess until it was over. He continued to object. “You’d have to get the frequency to me. So I’d know what to set in the plane. I’d try to give you the target. The timing’s all wrong.”

“I’ll have a frequency for you when you put into Mombasa. Then you should know the rest by the time you reach Bahrain.”

“What if we make the hit before we get to Bahrain?”

“We’ll take that chance. These people understand that such a thing is not easy. They have a good idea what the potential targets are, anyway.”

“I oughta get my money either way.”

“That is understood. I think there will be a bonus for a confirmed kill. Yes, I think it is a very good idea, this one. They will be able to test their system and the Navy will have no idea it has happened. Then, the next time—” He fluttered his fingers in the air like disintegrating aircraft.

Bonner felt sweat trickling down his ribs. “I’ll be shitting bricks until it’s over,” he said.

“Yes, but when it’s over, think how good you’ll feel. Money, Sheldon!”

They spent some time talking over the details, and the longer they talked, the more familiar it seemed to Bonner, therefore the more workable. This was a trick he would have to play on himself, making it familiar, so that after a few days he would not come to with a start and remember that he was going to do this thing, feeling his colon lurch. Actually, even now, once he got a little used to it and the chill of fear had passed, he liked the planning, and he liked sitting here with this important man, who had been a big gun in Moscow and now was going to be a big gun in Tehran. He liked being wanted. And he liked the money.

“How is your son?” Carl said when they were done.

“Good. He writes, like, once a month.”

“He is still in the satellite communications school?”

“Yeah. Four months, he comes out, he’s an E5, one bump down from his old man.”

“Tehran are very interested in him. They are mad for communications technology. You will speak to him?”

“The time isn’t right. When it’s right, I will.”

“Maybe, the slow approach, Sheldon—little by little—”

“Don’t tell me how to handle my own son! I’ll do it. In my time! He’ll come around. I gotta put it to him just right—father and son, doing it together. He’s very idealistic. He doesn’t know I do this, I’ve told you that. I’ll bring him around, but—Just don’t tell me how to handle my own son.”

“Well—Of course. It is a wise father who knows his child—eh?”

They walked up the hill to the car. Carl told him a taxi was waiting for him around the next curve.

They did not touch. Carl put on sunglasses, as if he were withdrawing his personality. “You must bring your son in, Sheldon. It will be worth—lots of money. Eh?”

The car pulled away, and Bonner was left feeling suddenly isolated on that sunny stretch of road, with the city close by but somehow unreal, as if it was unpopulated, as if he was the only man on earth. He had no idea how close he had come to dying.

He walked up the hill, sweating again, and found the taxi. On the back seat was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Bonner went back to his hotel and turned on the television and began to drink. It was only early afternoon, but he was content to sit there, watching the bright colors, hearing the language he did not understand, a man more comfortable with his loneliness than with any other companion the teeming city could offer.

He began to plan how he would turn his son into a spy.