The Consignment (12 page)

He seemed to consider spelling it out for me, then he changed his mind. He lifted a hand and raked the back of his thumb against his forehead. The corners of his mouth turned down. “Go left here,” he said, and I swung up the avenue. We cruised to his apartment in an uncomfortable, lowering silence.

CHAPTER 14

Saying good-bye to my son never was going to be easy, and when I heard that Barchevsky would be at the airport I almost decided not to go, just to say a private farewell at home. Fiona volunteered to run Brad down to the airport alone, but when it came to the point, I found that I couldn’t let them go without me. Driving down there, Brad sat in the backseat and received his mother’s last-minute advice and instructions with admirable forbearance.

While I parked, they went on ahead, I caught up with them again at the South Africa Airways check-in. Brad was talking with some bearded guy in the line. When I came up, Fiona introduced me, and that was my first meeting with Ivan Barchevsky.

“Ivan’s flying out with Brad,” Fiona told me. Unexpected news. She was pleased.

I asked him how far he was going.

“Mbuji,” Barchevsky replied, releasing my hand. “For my sins.” His smile was sardonic and dry. Folding his arms, he shoved his duffel bag toward the check-in with his foot. His beard was trimmed close, a mat of tight curls, the same silver-gray as his hair. His face was tan, it bore the lines of someone who’d been around the block a few times. He was in his mid-forties, but well weathered.

As we waited, the three of them talked about alluvial deposits and kimberlite pipes, and each time I tried turning the conversation to something that I could at least partway understand, Brad turned it right back. In his mind, my son was already out there in Mbuji-Mayi doing fieldwork, analyzing samples in some prefab bush laboratory. Finally I gave up and went to wait by myself in the cafeteria. Fiona joined me several minutes later, but we didn’t have much to say to each other. She kept glancing over her shoulder at Brad while I pushed my spoon around a cup of tasteless coffee. I told her not to worry, that Brad would be fine. She asked me what I thought of Barchevsky.

“Seems okay.” I’d been prepared to loathe the guy. “At least he’s got the balls to go out there himself.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he seems okay. Better than I expected.”

“What did you expect, an ogre? Some monster?”

I expected, I told her, the usual corporate nonentity, a bullshit MBA type in a suit.

“Well, he’s not.”

“Okay.”

“And what gives you the goddamn right to criticize anyway?” She leaned forward, her voice low but vehement. “Have you looked at yourself lately? You talk like you’re still instructing at West Point. You’re a salesman, for chrissake. Someone who sells guns.”

“You finished?”

“If there’s a bullshit MBA type here, it’s you. Get used to it, Ned. Lord knows, I’ve tried. I really have tried.”

She pushed away from the table, got up, and walked briskly to the rest rooms. I concentrated on the froth in my coffee. Brad’s imminent departure had contributed to Fiona’s outburst, but I couldn’t kid myself that her frustration and anger with me were anything other than real and deep. I was never going to look back on this moment and smile. The truth was, my marriage was sliding away from me with a momentum that was getting beyond my control. But midnight at J.F.K. Airport was neither the time nor place to face up to that thought squarely. I tried to put it out of my mind.

Brad and Barchevsky came over from the check-in. Barchevsky pulled up a chair. Brad dropped his hand luggage under the table, said he was going to get some tapes for his Walkman, then left us.

“He’d better get plenty,” Barchevsky remarked wryly. “He’ll need them.”

I asked if the mining camp was really that quiet.

“Dujanka? Deadly.” Barchevsky checked the plastic menu. “Half a dozen white guys you see all day long. Once you’re done being amazed by the stars—somewhere around night five—all you really want to do is get back to your own room and close the door. They still serving coffee?” he wondered, getting to his feet. While Barchevsky went to the bar, I watched Brad over at the music store. He was idling at the racks, killing time. Avoiding me. After a minute, Barchevsky returned with a coffee. “Fiona was saying you’re not so sure about Brad going out there.”

I nodded, then braced myself for the hollow reassurances. He sat down.

“If he was my son, I’d be concerned too,” he said. “The country’s a disaster. Nothing works, not even the goddamn army. We’re employing a private security firm to keep the peace near some of our camps. And corruption?” He made a face. “The place is the Africa of Africa. Unreconstructible.”

“You mentioned that to Brad?”

“Many times.”

“And Fiona?”

He took a pull at his coffee. “Look, when she asked me about work for Brad, I didn’t take it that seriously. She floated the idea, I just went through the motions. Then we had someone quit from the Dujanka mine. Brad jumped at the job. What was I supposed to say to him? Sorry, no job, your mom’s gotten worried? I laid the deal out for him, straight.”

“You told him the country’s stable.”

“I told him stable compared with last year. And it is.”

I looked at him. I asked him how many other geologists had applied for the job he gave Brad.

“Two. Both more experienced than Brad.” In other words, Brad was replaceable. He hadn’t been hired out of desperation. “Bottom line?” Barchevsky said. “It’s Brad’s job. I offered it to him, and he accepted. If I’d known you and Fiona weren’t all right with that, I probably wouldn’t have made the offer. But keep it in mind, it was Fiona who started the ball rolling.”

“Am I meant to be reassured?”

“I’m trying.” He smiled plaintively.

I wanted to dislike the guy, but it was hard. In his position, I probably would have done what he’d done. For sure I’d have felt less bad about it than he appeared to. After evading a couple of questions from him about my own time in Africa—Fiona had evidently mentioned my tour in Somalia—I asked him about security at the Dujanka mine.

“It doesn’t need any security. It’s in a safe zone, and the mine’s hardly big enough to warrant anyone’s attention anyway. Listen,” he said, “maybe I overplayed how bad things are. I didn’t want to give you any bullshit, Brad’s not going five-star. But my mines generally work. We’ve had some incidents different times. Last year was not good, but there hasn’t been any real trouble for six months. Even when things were at their worst, we never had any of our guys hurt. Broken fingers from the machinery, okay, but no one was ever attacked. Not by the rebels. Not even by the glorious Congolese army. Ever.”

“You normally reassure your employees’ families like this?”

He smiled. “Guys I employ, families aren’t normally an issue.”

Fiona came out of the rest room, she hesitated when she saw Barchevsky at the table with me. Then she pulled herself together and came over. Barchevsky finished his coffee. He touched his watch, saying it was about time for him and Brad to go through to Departures, so I went to fetch Brad. He was still in the music store.

“Time to go,” I said, stepping up beside him.

He selected a last cassette from the rack, piled it onto his forearm with the other tapes, then edged by me to the checkout. He asked me what I’d been talking about with Barchevsky. “Me?” he said.

“The Dujanka mine. Security.”

“Great. So now he thinks I’m a frightened jerk.”

“He thinks you’ll do a good job.” I placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “I do too.”

When Brad dropped the cassettes in front of the cashier and shrugged my hand from his shoulder, my jaw went tight. The cashier scanned the goods, and I took a moment with myself. Then I stepped around and packed the cassettes and some batteries into a carry bag. Since the incident in the garage, he’d avoided me whenever he could. We hadn’t eaten one meal together. He’d stopped coming down to the living room in the late evening for his usual dose of NBA on cable. My daily return home from work he took as his cue to withdraw up to the seclusion of his quarters above the garage, reemerging only after I left for work again the next morning. The truth is, all lines of communication between Brad and me were down. And now he was leaving for the Congo. I thought of all those times I’d been called away at short notice by the Army, bound for destinations unknown. Now I knew how Fiona must have felt in those days. I’d always taken her stoicism for granted, and my only excuse, looking back, is that there are some kinds of courage no young soldier is ever wise enough to understand.

“Here.” I offered Brad an envelope as we went to collect his hand luggage. “Something to tide you over.”

“Till what?”

“Your first paycheck.”

“I don’t want it, Dad.”

Folding the envelope, I pushed it into the carry bag with the batteries, warning him not to make a scene and upset his mother. At the table, he turned his back on me and shoved everything into his overnight bag. Barchevsky rose, making noises about going on ahead. He clearly meant to give the three of us some time together in private to say our good-byes, but Brad wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Wait up,” he told Barchevsky, and zipped up his luggage. “Just a second.” He went around the table to Fiona. She beamed at him, her eyes glistening. He put his arms around her shoulders and pressed his cheek against hers and whispered a few words to her. She squeezed him tight. He had to ease himself away before she let him go. Then she wrapped her empty arms around herself.

When Brad turned to me, my arms rose to embrace him, but he thrust out his hand.

“Bye, Dad.”

Checked, I glanced down at his open palm. I felt Barchevsky hovering awkwardly nearby. When I lifted my eyes, Brad’s gaze stayed firm. He was not going to weaken. So I took his hand.

“Bye, son.”

A brief clasp, then he released my hand and turned away. A few seconds later he had his overnight bag slung over his shoulder, and he was walking with Barchevsky toward the escalators, checking his boarding card. They were laughing at something together, while Fiona and I stood silent, watching them go.

CHAPTER 15

A light rain was falling outside, so Rossiter, Greenbaum, and I waited in the bank’s lobby. Rossiter was having trouble staying in his chair, he kept wandering to the glass doors, looking off down the street.

“They still on Africa time, or what?” He dropped into the seat beside me. “How far’s their hotel, three blocks?”

I suggested raising Trevanian on the cell phone, but Rossiter dismissed the idea. Rossiter had deliberately gotten us to arrive ten minutes late, some childish plan he had to demonstrate who was in charge of the deal. Ten minutes after our arrival, it was we who were waiting, and it was obvious his plan hadn’t worked out. Rossiter’s already dark mood was worsening. Beside him, Mordecai Greenbaum, who’d been sitting patiently, made the mistake of checking his watch.

“For chrissake,” Rossiter snapped in irritation. “You got somethin’ more important on?”

Greenbaum shot me a glance. I smiled sympathetically, but he didn’t smile back. If he hadn’t been on the hook at Customs, I figured he probably would have gotten up at that moment and walked.

Trevanian finally entered the lobby five minutes later. Rossiter got up and Trevanian came straight over.

“Has Cecille been in?” Trevanian asked, tossing his head toward the counter.

“You’re askin’ us?” Rossiter squinted. “What’s happened, she’s not with you?”

“She’ll be here.”

“We’re not damn well waitin’,” said Rossiter sharply. “She knew the time. If she couldn’t get her ass down here, that’s not our problem.” He brought out the bill of lading. “Now let’s count the stones, get this done.” Trevanian gave the bill a rueful look. He asked us to give him a minute, then he veered away to the counter. Rossiter turned to me, his color rising. “Go find out what the fuckin’ problem is this time,” he told me, waving Greenbaum back into his seat.

Trevanian had his head hanging down when I joined him. I leaned against the counter.

“You’ve misplaced Lagundi?”

“Temporarily,” he said.

“I thought you were staying at the same hotel.”

“She wasn’t sleeping in my pocket.” He signaled to someone behind the counter.

“At the dock yesterday, I got the impression she was screwing me around.”

He turned on me. “You want the deal, I want the deal. How about you just back off for five seconds while I sort this out.” Then the bank clerk arrived, and Trevanian asked him if Lagundi had been in. I pricked up my ears. The clerk said she hadn’t. “Since last week?” Trevanian pressed.

The clerk tapped at his keyboard and consulted the screen. “She came in yesterday morning.”

Trevanian sagged like he’d taken a punch in the kidney. He leaned on the counter for support a moment, then he turned and hurried toward the exit.

“Hey!” Rossiter shouted across the lobby.

“I’ll track her down,” Trevanian called over his shoulder. “I’ll phone when I’ve got her. A few hours.”

“A few fuckin’ hours,” shouted Rossiter, but Trevanian shouldered his way out through the door and kept going. Rossiter opened his arms in angry bewilderment and turned to me. I jogged over.

“Lagundi got independent access to the stones yesterday,” I told him. “Now Trevanian’s lost her.”

It only took Rossiter a second. “Holy fuck. She’s taken the stones?”

“You saw Trevanian.”

“Holy fuck.”

I looked at the door through which Trevanian had disappeared. “I think I should go down to the docks, check the cargo.” When Rossiter screwed up his face, I told him, “And I think you should take the bill of lading back to your apartment. Get it put away safe.”

“What are they going to do, steal it?”

“Look at it this way, Milton. We’re standing here with no payment. Lagundi’s gone AWOL, maybe with the diamonds. Meantime the Haplon materiel’s aboard ship, ready to go. If Trevanian or Lagundi gets hold of the bill of lading, you tell me. Where are we?”

He turned it over. Then he dismissed Greenbaum with a few peremptory words and led me out, left me at my car, and went to find a cab to take him and the bill of lading back to his apartment.

The rain had stopped by the time I got to the dock. Rita Durranti was waiting for me inside the gates. I’d called from my car to tell her what was happening, she hadn’t wasted any time getting out to join me. That wasn’t at all what I’d intended. Now she fell in beside me, skipping around the oil-slicked puddles.

I said, “I didn’t ask you to come down here.”

“And I didn’t ask you to come to my goddamn office.”

“Go back to your car.” She stayed beside me, we walked by the warehouse, then I stopped. “Rita, go back to your car. Go back to your office. When I’m done here, I’ll call you.”

“Not till I find out what’s going on.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Sure. After you’ve called Channon. And then you’ll only tell me as much as he wants me to know. Well, I’m not playing that game anymore, Ned.”

“Rita,” I called, but she kept on walking. I jogged and caught up to her. “This isn’t smart.”

“Nobody’s signed Lagundi in through the gates since the loading yesterday,” she said.

I looked at her. She wasn’t turning back. “What about Trevanian?” I asked, giving up.

“Same. But you’ll like this. Trevanian’s name rang a bell with the guard. He checked back for me. Trevanian was down here a few times when the
Sebastopol
first docked.”

“Seeing who?”

“The
Sebastopol
’s captain.”

“Why?”

“That’s not in the book.”

Under the terms of the sale, the “Nigerians” were buying the Haplon goods FOB, free on board, so there was no reason for Trevanian to see the ship’s captain before loading. While I chewed that over, Rita quizzed me about what had gone wrong at the bank. There wasn’t much I could add to what I’d told her when I’d called.

She seemed disappointed. “You never saw the strongbox?”

“No.”

“So how do you know it’s empty?”

“I don’t.”

“But you said she’d bolted with the diamonds.”

“I said that’s what I thought. At the time.”

“At the time?”

I glanced across. Not much got past her. “Trevanian came and went before we could talk to him,” I said. “Maybe it was just a performance he was putting on. If it was, he made sure he didn’t have to keep it up for too long.” Rita groaned at the thought of Trevanian and Lagundi playing games with us, stringing us along while they departed with the stones. If that’s what was happening, the whole operation was sunk. I said, “I don’t know what Trevanian’s doing, Rita. Maybe he was for real. Maybe not. Either way, I’ll feel a lot easier about it once we’ve seen in there.” I nodded ahead to the
Sebastopol
. It sat lower in the water, riding the tide, but otherwise nothing had changed. Wet washing still hung over the air vents.

We collected a Customs guy, the same one who’d overseen the loading. He told us he hadn’t seen Lagundi. When I described Trevanian, he shook his head, said he hadn’t seen anyone answering the description. He told us the
Sebastopol
was due to sail in forty-eight hours, then he accompanied us along the dock. As we reached the ship, Rita and I fell back a few paces and the Customs guy climbed the gangway ahead of us.

“We can’t let her sail now,” Rita said quietly. “If no one’s paid for the weapons, they’re still Haplon’s.”

“We could unload them.”

“Then where’s our case?”

I didn’t answer.

“God,” she said. “This is so not turning out right.”

We waited at the head of the gangway while the Customs agent went in search of the captain. Ten minutes later, he returned with the ship’s mate, a guy who was plainly not pleased to see me again. When I explained that we needed to see our cargo, the mate snorted dismissively.

“Any question about my rights here,” I said, “these people can put you straight.” I gestured to Rita and her uniformed Customs colleague.

The mate eyeballed me, I’d made an enemy, but he knew he had no choice. He finally relented and led us to the superstructure aft, then through a bulkhead door and down a steep metal ladder. The stench was appalling. In the unseen galley, someone was cooking meat, and the smell of frying fat was clogging the air in the narrow passage. Farther on, we passed several tiny cabins, there was a strong odor from the heads, an odor overlain with the acrid perfume of disinfectant. Rita, who’d been aboard more than a few ships in her time, cast me a look of frank disgust. At last, somewhere in the ship’s bowels, we reached an airtight steel door. The mate spun the wheel handle, pulled the door open, and led us single file into the hold.

The hold cover was off, and natural light came flooding in from above. The diesel-laced air was quite a relief after the fetid stench of the living quarters. Rita threw back her head and breathed as if she were surfacing from the watery deeps. I asked the mate if anyone apart from the crew had been in the hold since the loading. Instead of answering me, he went across to an open area in the center of the hold. A forklift was parked there, wet from the rain. “The African lady?” I asked. “Miss Lagundi?”

He jerked his head starboard. “There it is,” he informed me.

The six containers were lined up side by side, their sealed doors facing us. I beckoned the Customs guy forward. He walked down the line, checking that the Customs seals were intact, and matching the numbered tags against the details recorded on his clipboard. When he was done, he reported to Rita. Everything was in order.

“Satisfied?” she asked me.

I studied the containers. From the corner of my eye I saw the mate leaning against the forklift, watching me. Something was wrong.

“I want them opened,” I said.

Incredulous, Rita lowered her voice. “The seals haven’t been broken.”

“Assuming they’re the same seals.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Humor me.”

She consulted the Customs guy. When he told her it would take at least an hour and a half to have the containers opened, then resealed, plus paperwork, Rita drew me aside. We turned our backs on the others, conferring in privacy behind a pallet-load of bulging sacks. “If you seriously want to do this,” she said, “I can’t wait around. There’s a major meeting back at the office. People who want some answers about the department’s involvement in Hawkeye. When they hear the latest, the knives’ll be out. Probably for me.”

“They can’t pull you out now.”

“It won’t just be me. If they pull me out, the whole department’s out. Can you blame them?” She gestured around. “Look at this. You’re not even sure the materiel’s where you left it twenty-four hours ago. Can you imagine what they’ll say if I tell them that back at the office?”

“I’m covering the bases.”

“You’re worried as hell, Ned. Just like I am.”

She was right, but I couldn’t admit that to her. Maybe I couldn’t even truly admit it to myself. Instead, I asked her to at least wait until we’d opened the containers. If everything inside was in order, I said, she’d have at least one piece of reassuring news for her superiors. After a minute’s debate, she conceded reluctantly. The Customs guy went ashore and fetched a crimping machine, pliers, and six new lead seals, then he returned and set to work. By this time the
Sebastopol
’s mate had brought the captain down to witness the scene. The pair of them stood back by the forklift, silently observing.

When the door of the first container swung open, I stepped up and looked inside. The Haplon crates were stacked floor-to-ceiling, apparently undisturbed. The Customs guy helped me haul a crate from the top tier, we set it down and prised it open. The smell of packing grease wafted up. I pulled back the oilcloth and confirmed with my own eyes that a partially disassembled P23 was in place, untouched, packed tight. I studied it awhile, then I climbed up the wall of crates in the container, put my head into the empty space, and checked to see that the crates went all the way back. They did. I got down and refixed the lid on the open crate and hefted it back into its slot on the top tier. The Customs guy closed the container, resealed it, then we moved on to the next.

It took about an hour to do the same check right along the line. Every container was just like that first one, the Haplon materiel in place, untouched. When I finally signaled the Customs guy forward to reseal the final container, Rita stepped up beside me.

“Don’t be too pleased,” she said quietly. “We still haven’t got the goddamn diamonds.”

The fresh paperwork took over an hour, and Rita had long since returned to her office by the time I stepped out of the Customs office dockside. Stretching, I looked over to the
Sebastopol
. The captain and his mate were leaning on the railing of the upper deck, they stopped talking together when they saw me. I lifted my chin to them but they didn’t respond. They watched as I passed below them across the dock, then turned toward the gates. At the gate guardhouse, I looked back. They were gone. The only sign of life aboard the
Sebastopol
was a lone sailor, wearily painting the bridge.

I got in my car. The Ukrainian connection really bothered me. After the collapse of the USSR, the Ukraine’s emergence as a major source of weaponry and munitions for the developing world was common knowledge in the intelligence community. Even back when I was on tour in Somalia, the arrival off the coast of any vessel from the Black Sea was invariably followed by a swift escalation of hostilities as fresh supplies of Kalashnikovs and ammunition found their way to all sides in the conflict. Trevanian had specifically requested shipment aboard the
Sebastopol,
and I had no illusions he’d done it for the quality of seamanship on offer. The
Sebastopol
was a floating envoy from the world of unregulated trade, the world of seedy ports, flags of convenience, and commercial transactions that were barely distinguishable from crimes.

Though I’d known for days that the Haplon materiel was consigned to a Ukrainian vessel, it hadn’t occurred to me before that that might be a problem for us. Certainly not while the ship was still in port. After the events of the morning, I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t see any legitimate reason for Trevanian to have been meeting with the captain days before the loading. The Ukrainians were buyable, and Trevanian was just the kind of man who might want to buy them. It bothered me all right. But finally I gave up thinking about matters I couldn’t change, I put my key in the ignition. The passenger door of my car swung open. Cecille Lagundi slid into the seat beside me. She clasped her purse in her lap, stared across the parking lot through her dark designer glasses, and asked me if I was going into town.