of the veranda where they removed the mask.
“Greetings, Ms. Donata,” Kalatis said in his most pleasing accent “I am delighted to see you once again.”
Ms. Patricia Donata was thirty-six years old. She had a law degree from Stanford; she was a certified public accountant Her occupation seemed to be… consultant She had small bosoms, but very long legs of which she allowed you to see an abundance. She also had cold water in her veins. Kalatis found her to be an astute and more than capable representative of her clients.
They sat on the veranda, and as usual the representative was seated so that she saw rather more of the interior of the large spaces of the house than of the coastline. Kalatis took no chances. They had drinks. Kalatis put away his cigar. There was a quarter of an hour of small talk, no business, as Kalatis reacquainted himself with the pleasure of watching Ms. Donata. She had a lovely face with something of a hint of Asia about it, full lips with mandarin red lipstick. Her black hair was shoulder-length. She was a little nervous, he thought, but was handling herself very well in spite of it He thought her very sexy and did not try to hurry their meeting.
Finally he said, “Well, I know you have been in Houston for several days. I apologize for causing you inconvenience, but since this transaction is considerably larger than those we have arranged before, it required some extra accommodation on everyone’s part I have had to talk to many people such as to yourself, and it has had to be done all in a short space of time.” He smiled at her. “Has everything been handled to your satisfaction?”
She set her drink on the table in front of her and clasped her hands in her lap.
“I have to say,” she said in her unadorned and familiar California manner, “you did it up right, Panos. The logistics were handled beautifully. It relieved the nervousness of a couple of my clients when you sent people out there to work with their own security groups. I don’t normally travel with thirty-two million in cash. Everybody liked the way your people in Houston handled it.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “And I was also pleased that you were able to allay the fears of some members of your consortium.”
“When you’re working with eight different personalities, businessmen with strong egos, it takes patience and savvy-and you have to put up with a lot of shit-to get them to agree on anything,” she said, providing herself with a nice, oblique compliment.
Yes, Kalatis thought, but they finally agreed to cough up the cash, didn’t they. Ultimately greed, not Ms. Donata’s patience and savvy, got the best of them. The magnetism of the sexual appetite, Kalatis knew, was not even in the same league as the pull of greed. Offer a man a three hundred percent return on his investment, and he will follow you panting into hell for it If the percentage points are high enough, nothing is sacred, nothing is forbidden.
Kalatis looked at her with an expression of commiserate understanding.
“This kind of investment makes everyone… cautious… he said. “But you must remind your clients that this time we are buying in commodity volume. Metric tons. That is why their waiting time is shorter. They can check their accounts in sixty days.” He smiled. “I think they will be satisfied.”
“Have all of your consortia come through as you anticipated?*’ she asked.
It was a bit of a pushy question, but Kalatis wrote it off to her personality. She was, in short, a bitch.
“Exactly as anticipated, I am glad to say.” He held up one hand and counted them off by fingers, beginning with his thumb. “Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, Washington, D.C., and”-he held up the index finger of the other hand-”New York. Everything as planned. No surprises. It took the better part of a year to arrange this so that everyone who wished to participate could do so with as much assurance as possible.*’
“Does all the product come from the same region in Afghanistan?”
Ms. Donata was a curious woman, but he also thought she must find her role gratifying and rather found some adventure in using words like “product.” Well, she should be gratified. She had put together a collection of businessmen who twice before had trusted him with their millions. And now for the third time. She had been a very clever woman, the arrangements for this venture had been complex-by Kalatis’s design-but she had handled the negotiations astutely and creatively. Really an admirable achievement for such a young woman.
But in sixty days, Ms. Donata*s life would become a living hell. Everything she saw now, all that she had schemed for and accomplished through the shadow ways of Panos Kalatis, would vanish overnight, and she would be ruined.
So he did not mind indulging her sense of amusement at this time. It was like playing backgammon with a woman who, expecting to marry a prince in the morning, was unknowingly whiling away the last hours before her execution. There was a peculiar kind of stimulation that came from entertaining a woman whose imminent ruin was certain, but unknown to her. It gave her an air of fragility that he very much enjoyed. Yes, Ms. Donata had been a clever woman indeed, but she should have been a little cleverer still.
He told her glib lies of the mujahideen and poppies, of pack trains out of the mountains of the Badakhshan and Hazarajat, of Deh Khavak and Kamdesh and Asmar. He told her enough for her to believe that she could believe what she heard. He often saw this sort of worldly naivete in Americans who grew up in the United States and never left it, middle-class people who lived middle-class lives, and for whom an adventure was to move to a middle-class neighborhood in a different city. Having seen nothing of the world except the evening news, they were gullible and easily deceived. They might be well educated, as Ms. Donata surely was, but it was an education gotten among the homogeneity of people just like themselves. It was like being a well-educated sheep.
After a while the conversation turned to more benign topics, as a maid-Kalatis had thought that under the circumstances a woman was wanted for this job-brought out some small finger sandwiches and replenished their drinks. They talked of places they had traveled. They were killing time. Below them on the dock-there was the audible shuffling of feet and an occasional dull, hollow thunk as someone bumped a hull or pontoon-as the last twelve million dollars of her thirty-two million dollars in cash was being loaded from the plane to the cruiser. The previous twenty million dollars had been transferred in smaller increments during the course of the last few days.
Kalatis was suppressing a premature euphoria. He was very near to concluding a nine-year project True, he had not planned this particular venture until just the last twenty months-when he saw how incredibly eager American businessmen were to abandon legitimacy-but it had issued from the larger picture, an exercise that he was already looking back on as his American years. The money. My God, the money these men were willing to part with in a calculated gamble to triple what they already had astonished and delighted him. But cogs and wheels were still turning elsewhere, everything was synchronized to terminate simultaneously, and while so many diverse events were still pending he did not let his mind dwell too long on the sweet potential of his rewards.
His thoughts returned to the task at hand as Ms. Donata was beginning an anecdote about Vail. And down below on the docks millions of dollars from the West Coast were about to depart from the South Coast, to points far removed and unknown… except to Kalatis.
Chapter 56
Gilbert Hormann pushed Panos Kalatis out of his mind. It was growing increasingly easy to do with every passing moment.
He had been working late at the office, a regular occurrence especially when there was a shipment to Colombia in the offing. The door was open to his adjoining private apartment where he had been to pour himself a drink half an hour before. His personal line in his apartment rang, and he walked in and picked it up expecting to hear his wife ask how much later he was going to be.
It was Kalatis. The Greek said he was rushed. He said he had just gotten the documents required for the Colombian shipment-these were counterfeited bills of lading and other forms that had to be filed with governmental agencies in order to be able to export significant quantities of sulfuric acid and acetic anhydride. Kalatis wanted Gilbert to have the documents tonight, and he was going to send over someone with them, just to drop them off. Gilbert knew there was no use arguing that he was just about to leave.
He hung up the telephone and looked at his watch. Kalatis had said the documents would be there in half an hour. Great Gilbert had been only minutes away from quitting for the night anyway, and the telephone call had broken his concentration. He turned off the light in his office and walked into his apartment There was a small
