outnumbered?”
“I can probably handle it, if I can stay awake. I need more sleep these days than I used to.”
Rashid led the way after another glance at the bearded Jew. The number one professional criminal in the United States, supposedly! In prison, he had been so lacking in definition that he had seemed to blend with the walls. An interesting man, all the same. But what did he want? Surely not money alone? During the violence at the end, he had turned his face aside, his hands in his pockets. There were guards who had beaten him with bamboo rods. Apparently he forgot and forgave. He let somebody else kill them.
Upstairs, Rashid awakened one of his friends, a student named Sayyid, and told him to make coffee. Sayyid gave Gold a malevolent look, widening his nostrils. This one hated Jews when he went to sleep, and he hated them when he woke up, and in between he dreamed about strangling them and blowing them to bits with explosive. A second Arab, a Syrian pilot named Fuad Sabri, was asleep in a bedroom. Rashid would use him only if he had to.
“I begin to understand,” Rashid said. “The guns are not in your car. You unloaded them elsewhere.”
Gold nodded, and picked a chair in which he would have the wall behind him. “You’ll love them. Ten brand- new Thompsons, with the grease still on. Two hundred rounds of ammo. You’re going to want more. It’s standard. 45 caliber, look up a gun store in the yellow pages and they’ll sell you all you can carry, no questions asked.”
“Thompsons. I would like to see them.”
“When the time comes,” Gold said. “And I’m going to be cagey about that. Not that I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t trust us?” Rashid said, surprised.
Gold laughed. “You people are so strange. I never met anybody like you.”
Rashid opened his hands. “In what way are we strange? We want our country returned to us, nothing more. We are willing to die for this.”
“I’m not willing to die to keep it away from you, I can tell you that,” Gold said. “I just want to make sure you come through on your end of the deal. I know how you feel about handling heroin-”
“It will be consumed by Americans. Why should we care what Americans choose to inject into their bodies?”
Sayyid came in with the tiny cups. Rashid asked the Jew if he minded Syrian coffee.
Gold shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. I wouldn’t want you to think I like it. It’s like the Front for the Liberation of Palestine. I’d prefer to work with a Jewish organization, but in my case you’re the only game in town.”
They sipped ceremoniously.
“Ugh,” Gold said. “I mean, delicious. Now if we can talk business, I want to move up the timetable. I didn’t think we could get everything organized here in less than three days. But we’ve been making good headway and the sooner we get it over with the better, for both of us. I’m sorry to say I ran into some trouble tonight.”
“Of what kind?”
“Rashid, believe me, you don’t want to know. As far as I can tell, I took care of it O.K. But the longer we hold off, the more chance there is of that kind of thing happening. I’m too known. It’s not the cops I’m thinking about. We’ve got good protection there, as I told you. Our man couldn’t be in a better spot to look out for us. It’s the bondsmen. They took a bad bath with me, over a million bucks, and they’d like to get some of it back. Or some satisfaction if they can’t. They’re not in the business of killing people, but they know people who are. So do it tomorrow morning, Rashid. I urge you strongly.”
“Two of my men are still on their way.”
“A couple of kids. Hell, you’ve got seven, and you’re going to have absolute surprise, I mean absolute surprise. Because it’s the first time anything like this has ever happened in this hemisphere. You’ve got everything covered three ways. I don’t say you couldn’t still blow it, but right now I’d give you four to one odds, and in your line of work that’s a very good price.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got this skittery feeling. Do it twenty-four hours early, that’s twenty-four hours when things can’t go wrong.”
Rashid sipped the sweet, strong, brew. There was much, much that he wasn’t being told. Trust each other? Of course they didn’t, couldn’t. As for the heroin, Gold had made an acute political observation. Heroin was the wrong kind of contraband for members of an idealistic nationalist group to carry from the Middle East to the south of Florida. The Arab masses would find it a difficult thing to understand. Americans called it shit-a good name for it, Rashid believed. Dear God, the risk. Everybody in the U.S. was in a state of hysteria on the subject, suspicious, frightened. Of course Murray Gold, selling Rashid the scheme in those long conversations in the prison exercise yard, had maintained that the risk would be zero. When Sheik Muhammed al-Khabir of Dubat, on a semi-state visit to the Boca Raton mansion of his dear friend and business associate Harvey West of Union Petroleum, arrived at Miami International in his personal D-6, there was no conceivable chance that one of the American customs inspectors would take members of his party aside and subject them to a personal search. So Gold had maintained. But it is known that in the real world, the inconceivable frequently happens. Drug spies are everywhere. The risk might be negligible, but it wasn’t quite zero.
So Rashid had thrown Gold’s heroin away. He had emptied the bags into the Beirut sewer, and replaced it with quinine and ground chalk. This had its own dangers, but they could be identified and contained. It was a single-time transaction. They had no reason to establish a reputation for probity with Murray Gold and his dirty friends. In Ramleh, Rashid had become, unwillingly, somewhat fond of the old man, unquestionably a schemer of genius. And at the same time, of course, had despised him, and the way he put the security of his own skin ahead of the interests of his people. To cheat him would be a pleasure.
“Tomorrow morning,” Rashid said thoughtfully.
“At least you’re thinking about it. I honestly can’t think of any reason why not. Maybe those two guys you’re waiting for won’t even show up. Can we talk about this with just the two of us, Rashid? I don’t like the way your boy is looking at me. What does he drink before bedtime, blood?”
Sayyid understood English, though he spoke it badly. He looked down.
“Certainly,” Rashid said. “Sayyid can leave if you will let him hold your gun and search you to be sure you have no other.”
“Hell, let him stay,” Gold said irritably. “Why would I want to shoot you? I’d come out without a cent.”
“But no longer in an Israeli jail. Back in your native land.”
“I’m a hot property in my native land. I’d rather be somewhere else.” He set the cup back on the tray with a clink. “If you agree, this is the last time we’ll talk about it, so what we say now has to stick. Everything the same except one day earlier. I checked out the parking garage. It’s a good place to exchange cars. I thought of a couple of new points. Don’t drive anywhere with more than three of your guys in one car. Three total. You all look alike. I don’t mean really-by comparison. Everybody else can catch a bus down to Miami and taxi over.”
He went on talking for several minutes, sketching a diagram on the carpet with his finger. Rashid had questions. Gold answered patiently. He was looking older than when he arrived, and he was nearly asleep.
Rashid looked at Sayyid for an opinion. Sayyid, a doctor’s son, had come into the movement as a student at American University, and he had done several difficult and dangerous things while Rashid was growing fat and impatient in prison. He had been prudent up to the moment when the fighting started, then fearfully imprudent, a combination of qualities not usually found in one person. In the look that passed between them, it was agreed that the Jew would be faithful to the plan only so long as it served his purposes, but that this proposal had some merit. They were getting edgy after the long wait, the discussions, the postponements. To do the action at once, the following morning, would catch them at the peak of tension.
Rashid agreed, therefore, implying by his manner that he would prefer to keep to the original schedule, and was consenting only because the old man wished it. Gold nodded without surprise.
“Then we’re in business.”
Rashid accompanied him back to the dilapidated car. It would be fine, the Arab was thinking, if they had those guns now, and could avoid the touchy moment when they turned over a hundred pounds of worthless powder to a suspicious man who had lived all his life at the edge of violence. They would be seven, however. Gold would be two. Perhaps, even so, Rashid should think about arranging a diversion. In guerrilla doctrine, though a seven-to-two superiority was considered good, seven-to-nothing was better.
The Jew’s demeanor changed instantly as he approached the car. His fatigue dropped away. Stepping closer, he examined the splotched roof.
“What is it?” Rashid said.
