Hans Eiger falls to the floor and I can see that he knows what has happened and some kind of why and it hurts more than dying.
So that’s one down and two to go.
As like a contractual rider on my deal with Evil Hansel I had to tell him I was going to cut a deal with François Leclerc too or I could not depend on his reaction in the moment. He didn’t like it much but he said his emotional distress was covered under the original deal and I said that was real professional and threw in a trip to the studio experience as an ex gratia.
—
So then later I go meet Frankie Leclerc in the Bear Gardens and I say:
“You want that billion in emeralds without a leash, François? Because I will give you that.”
“You cannot.”
“That is not a no.”
So we have lunch.
Yeah we have lunch in a little place down by the river. Me and the modern-day Nazi.
I eat Galgenspieß with Frankie Leclerc. Frankie is not a good man. He hurts people for ideological reasons and his ideology is a bunch of racist puke. This is what it means to be first of the Seven Demons. You eat mixed grilled meats on a spiked gibbet that looks like a gallows with a guy like that.
With rice and spiced fruit, which is double crap because it’s really better with frites.
We eat lunch and we come to a deal. I take out Eiger, Leclerc will handle the guard team and then walk. He gets the emeralds. We get whatever. That is the extent of our deal.
See, if you’re a contractor you need a client, and after all Frankie was always Mr. Client. There’s optics in this situation, I tell him, matters of perception. You do not want to be creating a perceptual issue not at all.
Demon makes a deal with the devil. Film at eleven.
—
It doesn’t take very long for Leclerc’s men to finish off Eiger’s security men and they are not tender about it there is some splat and some splash. Evil Hansel watches the whole thing like it doesn’t really mean very much and perhaps it doesn’t. He looks at me for a while and I give him the nod: yes I remember the rest of the deal yes I will deliver. Yes there has been enough assassinating our forefathers now that is enough enough.
Because I mean really haven’t enough people died today already?
Eiger’s wristwatch glows in the dark as the system finally acknowledges what Eiger knew some minutes ago: he dead.
Message sent. Green light.
Back in Bern in the cigar shop the little guy gets the message. He gets up out of bed and he plugs the memory stick into his computer and sends the text file to the place he’s supposed to send it and then he goes back to bed.
I wait a minute longer.
Then I put my hand on the final door and I say:
“Open sesame.”
The door opens.
Doc says: “You fucked up my plan and you made your own plan for the fucking robbery.”
“I did.”
“You made a deal with fucking Leclerc.”
“He was Mr. Client. He was always Mr. Client.”
“You stepped on my work with this bullshit.”
“I did. For reasons.”
“When we are out of here I am going to fucking kill you Jack.”
“You’re going to be pissed with me but you will understand.”
“Will I.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that will make it better or worse?”
—
And that is that for the bank. It is only a bank after all, the hard part is always people.
I mean, that is not all, that obviously we have to bring lots of watertight cases out of the vault and drive them in little golf buggies along the corridors back to the main entrance and then we get them down the mountain using the cable car just like Doc said we would. We bring a bunch of boxes for ourselves also with much diamonds and bonds and monies. More than three quarters of what is there we just cannot goddamn carry.
All the same we have robbed the bank just like we were contracted to do by Eiger and then when Eiger turned out to have betrayed us we found a new client and now we will split the take with the new client and that is the end of that job. It was not quiet I guess I mean people will know we were here, but since the quiet thing was Eiger’s stipulation—
This is what winning looks like I guess.
Four Demons and a reserve go down the mountain in silence.
We don’t talk about Rex, and Doc stands at the far end of the cable car and looks out at the night and does not speak.
—
Leclerc is waiting down in the valley and he is very polite. Very professional and content he has everything he wanted from this hire. He gets revenge and he gets to polish his bastard medals and be associated with a loud, splashy situation where he was wronged and the wronger is gone and he looks cool. His oh-so-modern Fascist cred will go up and he will no doubt recruit many disenfranchised European youths to his righteous cause that is bullshit but bullshit is the soul of politics. I read where he has strong support as a political hero in some parts of Hungary and Poland. He is like a Fascist Carlos the Jackal I guess and do not tell me that Carlos was okay really because he was not. There are assholes across politics sometimes you do deals with them.
Very sensible François does not try to betray us. Profile like this, moment like this, no telling how people would read that. Maverick behavior, unreliable behavior. Kind of thing gets you enemies you never even know about.
I tell him we will go and
