“Right,” Farkas said. Instead of using the keyboard at the table he simply beckoned to a waiter, who brought him, without even having to be told, a huge snifter containing a pool of some dark liqueur.
His regular tipple, no doubt, Enron thought. They must know him very well here.
“Pisco,” said Farkas. “Peruvian brandy. You would like it, I think. Shall I get you one?”
He signaled the waiter again.
“I’m not much of a drinker, thanks,” Enron said quickly.
“I’ll have one,” Jolanda said, leaning eagerly toward Farkas and giving him a luminous smile that roiled Enron’s insides with anger. She still had her last drink in front of her, only half-finished.
“You must come here often,” Enron said to Farkas.
“Practically every day. A very cheerful place, very friendly, and very pretty, too. If you don’t mind all the statues and holo portraits of El Supremo that they’ve decorated it with.”
“One gets used to that,” said Enron.
“Indeed.” Farkas sipped his brandy. “You have to hand it to the old tyrant, don’t you? The veritable reincarnation of some nineteenth-century banana-republic dictator, grabbing possession somehow of an entire satellite world and hanging on to it for all these decades. His own private empire. Assuming that he’s still alive, of course.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nobody ever sees him, you know. No one but his most intimate intimates. The governmental realm on Valparaiso Nuevo is absolutely secretive. For all anybody knows, Don Eduardo could have died ten years ago, and the news was hushed up. It would make no difference whatsoever in the way things operated here. It’s like in the old days of the Roman Empire, when sometimes the emperor would have been dead for weeks or even months, and the court officials kept everything going on their own without letting anybody know.”
Enron laughed, kicking the heartiness up about as high as was likely to seem plausible. “That’s a funny notion, all right. But there’s truth in it, isn’t there? As in any properly organized autocracy, the high officials of the court do all the interfacing with grubby reality, and the emperor stays hidden away out of sight.”
“And of course it’s all so much easier to do that now, when Don Eduardo can be called up electronically on any public occasion without the need to disturb the real Generalissimo in his lair.”
Enron laughed again, a lesser output of energy this time. He gave Farkas a cheery, slightly addled look, his best shot at appearing to be a little of a simpleton. “Tell me this, though, Victor—do you mind, my calling you Victor?—you don’t
“I have no idea, actually. I was merely speculating, you understand. But in truth I suspect he’s still very much alive.”
Watching Farkas carefully, Enron said, “It’s remarkable that he’s been able to hold on so long, if in truth he has. I would imagine there are many who would covet a lucrative little world like Valparaiso Nuevo, filled as it is with such highly desirable fugitives. That Don Eduardo has managed to avoid a coup d’etat up till now seems like a miracle to me, considering—”
Enron was looking for a reaction, and he saw one.
It was only the merest shadowy tremor, a quick involuntary twitch of the left side of Farkas’s face. It was there and then it wasn’t, and Farkas was smiling serenely, a polite show of interest and nothing more. He is very very good, Enron thought But he knows something. He must.
Farkas said, “As I pointed out, he’s entirely inaccessible. That must be the secret of his survival.”
“No doubt,” said Enron. Very cautiously he said, “Do you think the Generalissimo
“With the proper degree of planning the devil could push God Himself off the throne of heaven.”
“Yes. But that isn’t very probable. Whereas Don Eduardo—”
“Is mortal, and vulnerable,” said Farkas. “Yes, I think it could be done. I’m sure that there are those who are thinking about such a thing, too.”
Ah.
Enron nodded eagerly. “I agree. That surely is so. In fact,” he said, “I’ve actually heard rumors to that effect. Fairly trustworthy rumors.”
“Have you?” Still no more than an amiable show of interest. But, again, the telltale twitch of the lip.
“Yes, actually.” It was time to put some cards on the table. “An American group. Californians, I think.”
A distinct response from Farkas, one more twitch and a significant wrinkling of the eerie forehead. He inclined his head just a bit in Enron’s direction. It seemed clear that he understood now that a negotiation was taking place.
“Interesting,” Farkas said. “You know, I’ve heard some stories of the same sort.”
“Indeed.”
“Just rumors, of course. A takeover of the satellite, organized from—yes, California, I’m sure that was what they were saying.” Farkas seemed to be reaching into a dim, misty memory of something that he had heard that was not very important to him.
“The story is getting around, then.”
“As such stories will do.”
“Could one of the big companies be behind it, possibly, would you think?” Enron asked.
“Behind the story, do you mean, or the coup?”
“The coup. Or the story, I suppose. Either one.”
Farkas shrugged. He still was trying to make it seem as though all of this were merely hypothetical discussion, Enron thought. “Impossible for me to say. They would need backing, wouldn’t they, these conspirators?”
“Naturally. A coup d’etat is an expensive pastime.”
“Something that only one of the megacorps would be able to bring off, yes,” Farkas said. “Or one of the wealthier countries. Your own, for example.” A little more emphasis, suddenly, on that last sentence. The voice deepening: a verbal nudge in the ribs.
Enron chuckled. “Yes, I suppose we could put up the money for something like that. If we had any reason to, that is.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not really. No more than Kyocera-Merck does, I’d say, or Samurai. There are people here who are wanted for serious crimes against the state of Israel, certainly. Foreign spies, a few of our own more corrupt officials, and so forth. But there are plenty of retired experts in industrial espionage, also, and embezzlers, and peddlers of company secrets—people who have profited greatly at the expense of this megacorp or that and whose return to Earth for trial would be advantageous to the companies. I could almost see a joint effort being launched to extract the fugitives from this place: some big company and some prosperous country, let us say, putting up the funds together on a fifty-fifty basis. But of course all this is sheer fantasy, is it not?” Enron flicked his fingertips outward, a dismissive gesture. “There will be no coups d’etat here. This is a lovely little planet, and no one on Earth would want to harm it Besides, I understand that Generalissimo Callaghan has quite an efficient secret police. Everyone is watched here, I am told.”
“Very closely, yes,” Farkas said. “It would be hard to mount any sort of uprising here, except perhaps one that came from within: one that involved the court officials themselves.”
Enron raised an eyebrow.
Was Farkas dropping some kind of hint? Were Kyocera’s plans for taking this place over already advanced far beyond the notions of Mr. Davidov and his associates? No, no, Enron decided: Farkas is merely playing with speculative possibilities, now. If any such inner-echelon conspiracy of the Generalissimo’s close subordinates existed and Farkas were part of it, he would never risk talking about it in a public restaurant, certainly not with an Israeli agent but probably not even with someone he knew. He would try to keep the secret even from himself. That was what Enron would have done, at any rate, and he did not think that Farkas was any more rash than he was in matters of this sort.
But there was no chance to follow it up just now. Jolanda, who had watched the entire duel in silence, tapped Enron’s wrist and said, “The waiter is signaling you, Marty. There’s a telephone call for you, I think.”
“It can wait.”
“What if it’s our friend Dudley? You know how badly you want to hear from him.”
