Turasan offered his cigarettes. The King accepted one and let Turasan light it for him. Then Turasan sucked in his breath a last time and smiled his golden smile. He shouldered his rifle, bowed courteously and slipped away into the night.
The King beamed as he finished his smoke. A good night's work, he thought. Fifty bucks for the pen, a hundred and fifty to the man who faked the white spot and etched the nib: three hundred profit. That the color would fade off the nib within a week didn't bother the King at all. He knew by that time Turasan would have sold it to a Chinese.
The King climbed through the window of his hut. 'Thanks, Max,' he said quietly, for most of the Americans in the hut were already asleep. 'Here, you can quit now.' He peeled off two ten-dollar bills. 'Give the other to Dino.' He did not usually pay his men so much for such a short work period. But tonight he was full of largess.
'Gee, thanks.' Max hurried out and told Dino to relax, giving him a ten-dollar note.
The King set the coffeepot on the hot plate. He stripped off his clothes, hung up his pants and put his shirt, underpants and socks in the dirty-laundry bag. He slipped on a clean sun-bleached loincloth and ducked under his mosquito net.
While he waited for the water to boil, he indexed the day's work. First the Ronson. He had beaten Major Barry down to five hundred and fifty, less fifty-five dollars, which was his ten percent commission, and had registered the lighter with Captain Brough as a 'win in poker.' It was worth at least nine hundred, easy, so that had been a good deal. The way inflation is going, he thought, it's wise to have the maximum amount of dough in merchandise.
The King had launched the treated tobacco enterprise with a sales conference. It had gone according to plan. All the Americans had volunteered as salesmen, and the King's Aussie and English contacts had bitched. But that was only normal. He had already arranged to buy twenty pounds of Java weed from Ah Lee, the Chinese who had the concession of the camp store, and he had got it at a good discount. An Aussie cookhouse had agreed to set one of their ovens aside daily for an hour, so the whole batch of tobacco could be cooked at one time under Tex's supervision. Since all the men were working on percentage, the King's only outlay was the cost of the tobacco. Tomorrow, the treated tobacco would be on sale. The way he had set it up, he would clear a hundred percent profit. Which was only fair.
Now that the tobacco project was launched, the King was ready to tackle the diamond…
The hiss of the bubbling coffeepot interrupted his contemplations. He slipped from under the mosquito net and unlocked the black box. He put three heaped spoons of coffee in the water and added a pinch of salt. As the water frothed, he took it off the stove and waited until it had subsided.
The aroma of the coffee spilled through the hut, teasing the men still awake.
'Jesus,' Max said involuntarily.
'What's the matter, Max?' the King said. 'Can't you sleep?'
'No. Got too much on my mind. I been thinking. We can make one helluva deal outta that tobacco.'
Tex shifted uneasily, soaring with the aroma. 'That smell reminds me of wildcatting.'
'How come?' The King poured in cold water to settle the grounds, then put a heaped spoonful of sugar into his mug and filled it.
'Best part of drilling's in the mornings. After a long sweaty night's shift on the rig. When you set with your buddies over the first steaming pot of Java,
'bout dawn. An' the coffee's steamy hot and sweet, an' at the same time a mite bitter. An' maybe you look out through the maze of oil derricks at the sun rising over Texas.' There was a long sigh. 'Man, that's living.'
'I've never been to Texas,' the King said. 'Been all over but not Texas.'
'That's God's country.'
'You like a cup?'
'You know it.' Tex was there with his mug. The King poured himself a second cup. Then he gave Tex half a cup.
'Max?'
Max got half a cup too. He drank the coffee quickly. 'I'll fix this for you in the morning,' he said, taking the pot with its bed of grounds.
'Okay. Night, you guys.'
The King slipped under the net once more and made sure it was tight and neat under the mattress. Then he lay back gratefully between the sheets.
Across the hut he saw Max add some water to the coffee grounds and set it beside the bunk to marinate. He knew that Max would rebrew the grounds for breakfast. Personally the King never liked re-brewed coffee. It was too bitter. But the boys said it was fine. If Max wanted to rebrew it, great, he thought agreeably. The King did not approve of waste.
He closed his eyes and turned his mind to the diamond. At last he knew who had it, how to get it, and now that luck had brought Peter Marlowe to him, he knew how the vastly complicated deal could be arranged.
Once you know a man, the King told himself contentedly, know his Achilles heel, you know how to play him, how to work him into your plans.
Yep, his hunch had paid off when he had first seen Peter Marlowe squatting Woglike hi the dirt, chattering Malay. You got to play hunches in this world.
Now, thinking about the talk he had had with Peter Marlowe after dusk roll call, the King felt the warmth of anticipation spread over him.
'Nothing happens in this lousy dump,' the King had said innocently as they sat in the lee of the hut under a moonless sky.
'That's right,' Peter Marlowe said. 'Sickening. One day's just like the rest.
Enough to drive you around the bend.'
The King nodded. He squashed a mosquito. 'I know a guy who has all the excitement he can use, and then
