O'Farrell's Law (9 page)

“I will check back with my people,” Rivera promised. By how much, he wondered, had Belac overextended himself?

“And not just that,” Belac continued briskly. “I have two thousand jungle-camouflaged uniforms and three thousand of the latest type of army boot. Also practically an unlimited supply of infantry matériel—webbing, field equipment, stuff like that.”

“Again, I'll check.” Gently prompting, Rivera said, “What about the remaining tanks?”

“The auction is still to come,” the Belgian said. “I will be bidding, of course, through an agent.”

“And the electronic systems?” pressed the diplomat.

“I have already established through a Swiss
anstalt
the purchasing route with a company on the outskirts of Stockholm—”

Rivera refused him the escape. “We discussed the method at our first meeting.”

Belac nodded, in apparent recollection. “An order has been placed through Stockholm,” he assured. “Which brings us to the point of my coming here today—”

“Money?” cut in Rivera, again.

“The request is for a VAX-11/78,” Belac said, in another unnecessary reminder. “That's the system employed within the U.S. Pentagon itself! It is going to be very expensive; maybe more than we first budgeted for.”

“It's precisely
because
the VAX is the Pentagon system that we want it,” Rivera said.

“Expensive, like I said,” repeated Belac.

“How much?”

“I have committed a great deal of my own money, on the basis of our understanding,” Belac said generally. “I shall need another thirty-five million working capital at least.” He spoke as if the sum were unimportant. He looked at Rivera in open-faced, almost innocent expectancy.

Rivera smiled back just as innocently. “I am surprised at the need for such a large payment, so quickly after the first advance of thirty-five million.”

The arms dealer faltered, just slightly. He gestured toward the list between them and said, “I have just told you what has been purchased and shipped. Three vessels have had to be chartered. Commissions paid. Deposits made, for other material you want.”

“Like the VAX communication equipment?” Rivera persisted.

There was a further hesitation. “I may need the full time allowance there,” Belac conceded.

“Wouldn't you agree that on my part I have been very generous in the agreement we have reached?”

“Yes,” Belac allowed doubtfully, unsure of the direction the ambassador was taking, but not liking it, whatever it was.

“Particularly in not insisting upon there being a penalty clause understood between us, in the event of nondelivery of any of the items you've guaranteed to supply,” Rivera continued, laying more bait.

“Yes,” Belac said again. The Cuban was performing for his own benefit. In what public court did the fool imagine suing to recover any penalty sum?

“I think one should be established,” Rivera announced. “Here, today.”

“What have you in mind?” Belac asked, tolerantly going along with the diplomat.

“A percentage,” Rivera said. In the excitement of the moment Rivera was unable precisely to calculate the additional, interest-earning profit to himself, through whom all funding had to flow and in whose account any withheld money would remain, if Belac failed to keep to his own established timetable.

“I don't understand,” Belac complained, his complacency wavering.

“Our agreement was upon an expenditure of a hundred and fifty million?”

“Yes,” accepted Belac, fully alert now.

“Of which thirty-five million has already been advanced?”

“And spent,” Belac insisted at once. “Not only spent but greatly exceeded.”

“I propose there should be a ten-percent withholding upon all future advances, that sum to be paid as and when the articles for which it is committed are delivered.”

Belac was too urbane a negotiator to burst out with an instant rejection but it was very close. Icily controlled, he said, “That's not acceptable, under any circumstances, Excellency. As I have made clear, I have already gone to considerable personal expense and effort, committed myself to great expense with other people. In the business I follow, everything depends upon personal reputation.”

And why you've no alternative but to agree, thought Rivera. He said, “Which was why the thirty-five million was advanced, surely!”

“An advance on account,” Belac said, unsettled now. “And from it I have extended other advances on account, accounts that my suppliers expect me to honor in full and on time.”

“
Exactly!
” Rivera said as the hook jarred upward. “Your suppliers expect you to fulfill your commitments on time, I expect you to fulfill your commitments on time. We're in agreement then!” It was the moment for the patronizing attitudes to be reversed. It was the overextended Belac who would have to dance to the tune he played, accepting what payments he chose to advance. Rivera knew from other deals how these men worked, interchanging and swopping weaponry, the word-of-mouth agreements having rigidly to be met. And how violently disputes were resolved, if they weren't. He remained curious at Belac's apparent hesitation over the VAX equipment, feeling a stir of unease. Did the Belgian intend to supply it? Or merely to provide enough of the other things to make a substantial profit but leave him exposed for the difficult but essential computer? A further, essential reason to withhold the money.

He'd been loo confident of die limitless money continuing, Belac admitted to himself. Now he was trapped, with timed deliveries that had to be paid for. Desperately, vowing somehow to repay in kind the smirking bastard sitting opposite him, Belac said. “Without another advance of thirty-five million, everything collapses. My suppliers simply won't deal with me.”

His voice had lost its smooth, imperturbable tone. He waited, but the Cuban said nothing. Practically pleading, Belac said, “I have given personal guarantees. Payments are arranged on fixed dates. We agreed you would immediately cover any additional, necessary expenditure, for God's sake!”

Make up the shortfall from your own funds; you're rich enough, thought Rivera. He said, “I'll advance the next thirty-five million, less the ten percent withholding, to protect my delivery being on time.…” He allowed just the right degree of hesitation. “Or would you have me change the whole arrangement? Withdraw some of the requirements from you and spread them to other dealers: the VAX computer particularly, if you are finding that difficult.”

“No!” Belac said too quickly. If that happened, some of the subsidiary dealers with whom he'd made arrangements would realize the purchases were being spread and would imagine him to be in difficulties, which he was. And would be in greater difficulty when they demanded their money immediately, frightened he had a cash shortage. What Rivera was allowing him—$31,500,000—would just be enough to cover the commitments for which he'd given his word. Still too quickly, he went on, “I agree to the arrangement.”

“I'm glad we've had this meeting,” the ambassador said. “I feel it has clarified a number of points.” The main one being that you can't contemptuously treat me like some cigar-chewing peasant.

“I think so, too,” Belac said, wanting to recover. “I think there are other points that maybe need clarifying, too.”

“Such as?”

“That mutual trust we spoke about,” Belac said heavily. “I think it would be very unfortunate if there stopped being mutual trust between us.”

“So do I.” An open threat, Rivera recognized, uneasily.

“It would be regrettable for any other sort of penalties to be considered by either of us, don't you think?” Belac said.

“I'm not sure I'm following this conversation,” Rivera said. His voice remained quite firm, he decided, gratefully.

The Belgian sat regarding the other man without speaking for several moments. He said, “It is important that we understand each other.”

“There's no misunderstanding on my part,” Rivera assured him. “I sincerely hope there's none upon yours.”

“There won't be, from now on,” the Belgian said.

The encounter concluded, Belac's departure duly noted by the CIA surveillance team, witli Rivera firmly believing himself to be the victor.

Which he had been, far more than he knew.

Belac had done nothing about obtaining the American-manufactured, American-equipped computer system listed among the top ten items barred from export to any communist country.

Belatedly Belac approached a hi-tech consultant in California through whom he had previously dealt—always by telephone or letter—for technical advice upon such things. And upon the consultant's advice Belac finally did approach Sweden. The company was named Epetric, was headquartered in the very heart of Stockholm, and was regarded as the most amenable to rule bending as well as one of the best hi-tech corporations in the country.

Precisely because it was such a state-of-the-art organization as well as being so amenable to rule bending, Epetric was prominent on the list of suspected technological infringers not just in the CIA but in the U.S. Customs Service as well. The combined pressure of both agencies resulted in Washington warning Stockholm that unless they did more to control the technology flood. Swedish industries, and particularly companies like Epetric, would be denied by federal legislation the legal American computer exports upon which the industry, worldwide, depended.

Stockholm resented the threat but could not deny the hemorrhage, and the cabinet decided that the country had to show itself a less open technological doorway.

Nine months before Belac approached Epetric—months, in fact, before there had ever been contact between the Belgian and José Gaviria Rivera—Swedish customs investigators had succeeded in suborning an informant within the contracts and finance department of the Epetric company.

His name was Lars Henstrom.

Paul Rodgers felt life was sweet; sweet as a little nut. Sweeter in fact. What was sweeter than a little nut? Angie maybe. She sure as hell was sweet; tits she had—no silicone, either—made those bimbos in the skin mags look like grandmothers or bag ladies. And not just the tits. Rodgers, who'd bucked a few in his time flying in Nam and then for Florida, before it went bust, reckoned there hadn't been a trick invented in the sack that Angie didn't know; guessed she might have invented a few of them.

And not just the joy of Angie, since he'd wised up. There was the paid-for-cash condo in Naples, as an investment, and the paid-for-cash beach house where they lived at Fort Lauderdale, and the paid-for-cash Jaguar XK6, the latest convertible model, and those discreet safe-deposit boxes in Miami and Tampa and Dallas and New York, everything nicely spread around, solid as those unquestioning banks. Yes sir, life was sweet; sweet as a little …

Rodgers didn't bother to finish the thought, frowning at the cumulus buildup ahead, a boiling, churning foam of blackened cloud already split apart by lightning. The forecast—the best he could get, that was, before lifting off from the dirt strip outside Cartagena—had warned of occasional seasonal turbulence. Sure as fuck this wasn't occasional seasonal turbulence. This was a full-blown storm, the kind that every so often strutted the Caribbean, blowing down the tarp shacks and uprooting a tree here and there and giving those vacationing jerks paying $300 a day the hurricane story of a lifetime when they got back to Des Moines or Billings. Except that it wasn't a hurricane. Just an awkward fucking storm just when he didn't want one, right in the way of where he wanted to go.

“Shit!” Rodgers said with feeling. Briefly—but only briefly—life wasn't quite so sweet anymore.

The wise money said to fly around it. The engines of the DC3 were already chattering like they had teeth and twice he'd thought they were going to cut out altogether. Rodgers bet the entire fucking aircraft was held together with no more than string, spit, and chewing gum.

If he went head-on into what was up ahead, he was going to end up in the matchstick-making business and that wasn't the business he was interested in building into a career. Which course, then? Wise money again said even more abruptly to go eastwards, over Haiti, and hope he could get around the blockage and still cut westward to come down on the Matanzas airstrip.

Except the bastard Colombians had short-changed him on the fuel, knowing the gauge was faulty and that he couldn't really challenge them. It was fucking amazing: every run worth a minimum of $50 million, and they had to cheat on nickels and dimes.

Westward then? Less chance of being driven out into die Atlantic, with nothing between him, paella, and die bullfights of Spain but three thousand miles of empty ocean. But the Americans were shit-hot around the Gulf: not just radar on the ground but AWACs planes in me air and spot-the-druggie training forming a permanent part of all air-force and naval exercises.

The DC3 began to buck and shudder, the stick sluggish in his hands and me rudder bar spongy underfoot. Decision time. Rodgers turned west; there might be a lot of guys in white hats, but this way there was also Mexico, and if the fuel got crucial, there were more safe illicit airstrips than fleas on a brown dog.

Rodgers had always had a nasty feeling about having to ditch in the sea and get his ass wet. Besides, there was the cargo to think of: almost five hundred kilos of high-purity cocaine could be better used on dry land—even if it weren't the dry land upon which he was supposed to put down—than to clear the sinuses of the sharks and barracudas.

He still intended, if he could, to deliver in Cuba.

Rodgers kept right against the storm edge—able to see clear sunlight to his left, rain-lashed blackness to his right—riding the up and downdrafts, teeth snapping together with the suddenness of the lifts and drops. The ancient aircraft groaned and creaked in protest, those sounds overwhelmed by the crashing of the storm outside.