Swindler & Son

by Ted Krever

  “No deal’s a good one if you don’t survive it. Give me your phone.” She does and I dial the number on the cert.

  Miraculously, it picks up. No greeting but the line is open.

  “My name is Millard Hastings,” I say. “I have a shipment on board that I want to re-route. Can you help me with that?”

  “We don’t go no place but—” the voice cuts off suddenly and I hear other voices in the background. I hear ‘Hastings’ several times and then the voice returns. “You wanna make change, it costs money.”

  “Fine.”

  “Lotta money.”

  “I’ve got a lot of money.”

  “I mean a lot a lot.”

  “Yes, no problem.”

  “How I get it?”

  “I want to check the shipment, make sure everything is the way I set it up.”

  A pause. Chatter in the back. “You come to the ship now?”

  “Yes.”

  Where you coming from?”

  “Qumrahdi.”

  He gives me coordinates and says they’ll wait two hours. “Bring money and we see.” Then he hangs up.

  Diamante stares at the app on the laptop screen. “They’re turning around. But once they get the money—?”

  Suddenly, it’s Harry who’s talking. “This wasn’t just money—they weren’t interested until they heard Millard Hastings.” He gives me the gnarly eye. “Why are you Hastings?”

  “He owns that warehouse complex in Basra. I’ll bet he’s got three or four containers on the ship. At least, he’s a name they know. They know he has money.”

  “So what do we do?” Sara asks.

  “What do they want? Those are HARRY’S RULES. Hopefully, they’re just sailors who found the bomb and want to sell it to the highest bidder. We get there first with cash in a suitcase and convince them to sell it to us. If they weren’t open to the idea, they wouldn’t be turning around, would they?”

  “What if it goes bad?” Yusuf asks. “You can’t just leave this to chance.”

  “That’s correct,” Sara says. “We can’t leave anything to chance. That’s why we’re locking you in the back room.”

  “You can’t—”

  Diamante’s checking with me—Sara looks a lot more certain about this than I am. I nod and Diamante motions with the pistol for Yusuf to lead the way.

  “I won’t go! Mahmood, stop them!”

  Cousin Mahmood could be a real issue, if he decides to resist. Instead, he strikes an odd pause, a moment of total helplessness, before throwing a glance at…Princess Amina, who shakes her head.

  “Sorry, brother,” Amina says. “I’ll let you out once it’s over.”

  “What? You can’t do this!” Yusuf yells.

  “You see,” Sara says, “all you boys ever want to do is fight, like that’s ever solved a problem in the history of the world. Amina and I have discussed it and we’ve had enough.” She stares her laser vision right at me. “We’re going to solve this without fighting.”

  Cousin Mahmood and Diamante stash Yusuf in the backroom, oversee Flunky changing the room’s lock code using an app on his phone, check to see that the door is truly locked, then Diamante takes the phone and key card from Flunky.

  “Give him the phone back,” I say, “just long enough to call the desk and turn off the phone in that room.”

  “I’m a Prince of the Royal Family of Wadiirah!” Yusuf yells from behind the door. “You’ll pay for this!”

  “Yes, but we’ll pay later,” Sara says.

  I wander over to Princess Amina, who’s taken a seat outside Yusuf’s room. “And when this is all over,” I tell her, “I’ll do my best to make it right with your Uncle Khalil.”

  Her face goes cold. “I don’t think you will,” she says. “Families depended on him. When he failed them, when he was disgraced, he cut off his own hand. It was appropriate, but I don’t think you can make that right.”

  And there you feel the air go out of the room. There’s no drama in the sound of her voice—the story may be history to her, maybe crazy ancient family history—but she knows what she’s saying. The taste is bitter going down. Across the room, I see Harry’s face collapse. We’ve gone a lot of years without being confronted with the consequences of our actions. But now, here they are and, in a way, all the more awful for being so deadpan.

  ~~~~

  An hour later, we’re on a seaplane, circling the Mercury Venture and bracing for landing.

  -Who’s in the party now?

  Harry, Sara, Diamante and me.

  -Unarmed?

  Unarmed. I’m not giving them reason to kill us. My conviction is that most people don’t kill without reason.

  -You’re an optimist.

  At least I tried it once.

  As we climb the ladder to the heaving deck, a group of sailors watch us from above, clutching their guns uncomfortably. That discomfort would be more reassuring if they looked like they’d eaten well recently. It’s hard to reason with a hungry man. They frisk us as we come onboard. Sara knees the first one who tries it and the next is logarithmically more respectful.

  The captain is a bit smaller than most of his sailors; long wisps of greasy dark hair sprout from beneath an oversized once-was-white sailor’s cap out of an old movie. He watches quietly from the bridge until we’ve all been given the once-over. I try to catch his eye, just to signal good faith but he won’t make contact.

  And then, the door at the base of the bridge opens and we’re surrounded by soldiers in black. These boys look plenty comfortable with their automatic weapons. I recognize the uniforms—Iranian Revolutionary Guard, black-on-black, kidnapper’s ski mask, only the eyes and mouth exposed. The darkest of the dark, the truest of true believers, forming a very proper tactical formation around us in seconds. Just the way they step into position would quell most revolutions.

  Once they’re in place, from the doorway comes Bossman. Nobody has to tell us he’s the Bossman—the stillness, the focus, those bright, creative, cruel eyes say it all.

  “Who’s Hastings?” he says in just the commanding voice I expect.

  Decision Time: Is this somebody I play with or somebody I level with? Big stakes if I guess wrong.

  “Well, nobody actually,” I say, wincing, but this doesn’t faze him at all.

  “You’re acting for Hastings?” he says.

  “We all are,” Sara says quickly.

  For the first time, he pauses to take us all in. We bring a smile to his face, but not a friendly one. “So, you’re—a democracy?” he asks. Clearly, this is a laugh line.

  “We’re a team,” I say.

  “Congratulations,” he answers, the smile now chilling. “You all come down into the hold with me—now!”

  I’ve never been on a real freighter, a real working ship, before and this one is clearly ancient. The smell of motor oil, curry and piss, the groaning of the hull and clatter of the mains, the damp corridors, jury-rigged wiring hanging just below the ceiling, all seem relics of an era long past. I expect Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet bantering below deck. Normally, that would be Harry and me, but at the moment, he’s neutered, empty—silent, head down, tail between his legs. I could know how he feels—but, right now, I can’t let myself.

  Three levels down and over to the cargo bay. Bossman throws open the hatch and leads us in. The place is brightly-lit, which in itself seems odd—cargo bays are made to be dark and dingy, someone’s gone to the trouble of bringing in lights. These guys have been on this ship a while.

  As we circle round the first row of containers, I realize the terrible mistake I’ve made.

  “Okay, Millard Hastings’ team—explain this to me!” Bossman demands.

  Planking from ten or more custom containers litter the floor. No routine enclosures, these—rubber-padded, beautifully-fitted-and-built, as they should be.

  Under the lights, stripped of their enclosures, stands Millard Hastings’ cargo for this trip: Handcut limestone columns five s
tories high. The pediment that sat atop them a thousand years before Christ, elaborate scenes of gods and men and mythical creatures, stories instantly familiar though I can’t remember ever reading one of them. Dazzling shimmering mosaics, cyclopses and humans and distant galaxies, in colors I’ve never seen before. Astounding creatures—winged bulls with men’s faces, hawk faces with women’s bodies— towering just below the thirty-foot ceiling. And more.

  “You know what this is?” Bossman demands.

  “You tell us,” Sara answers, but her voice is hushed, reverential. This display would inspire awe and humility in anyone who ever read a history book or looked twice at a piece of art.

  “These are the prototypes for the modern world,” Bossman says and is it possible to argue? “Tile from the greatest churches of antiquity. Sentries from the gates of heaven, maybe the same ones seen by Abraham in Ur. A statue of Alexander the Great, carved by a man who probably saw him alive. The sacred treasures of our culture. Not Iran’s culture, all our culture, the shared culture of the Middle East, of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world.”

  “Aleppo,” I murmur.

  -That wasn’t smart thinking, saying it out loud.

  If I’d been thinking, I never would have. It’s just reaction. Not that it matters, really—Bossman is livid already. It’s only clear now how tightly he’s been holding himself under control.

  “Maybe Aleppo, maybe Palmyra. Maybe a hundred other places. Does it matter?” His voice degrades quickly—the sound now is like metal scraping metal. “Syria’s destroyed anyway, who’s to say what was stolen and what destroyed? So why not loot the place for display in the homes of wealthy Americans?”

  Explaining they were looted for the homes of wealthy Russian oligarchs feels like nitpicking. If it wasn’t Woczynski, someone in the West or Japan surely would have made the same deal.

  “So?” Bossman homes in on me, challenging. “You have nothing to say? No defense? No excuses, no others to blame?” Sure I have—Millard Hastings is to blame, if only I hadn’t already decided to be him.

  It all makes sense, in the ghastly way life makes sense sometimes. Millard Hastings owns the warehouse complex where the bomb was. The Mercury Venture makes its pick-up from the complex—our one container and his who-knows-how-many. Our bomb and his History of the World as We Know It.

  We’re at a dead stop. Any plan I might have had is completely out of gas. And so am I.

  And then I hear Harry pipe up. He’s alive! And fighting, bless him, or at least trying to figure out how.

  “I’m not with Hastings,” he says, a bit hesitantly. “That was a story I made up to get on board.”

  Whatever end-around he’s got in mind, this doesn’t have a good effect. Bossman’s paranoia level definitely seems to kick up a notch.

  “Explain yourself—details!” he demands and Harry falls silent again, chastened. He’s reached for the kind of absurd outburst that has so often pulled us out of the fire at the crucial moment. But he conjures no magic this day. His heart isn’t in it.

  That’s when we hear rotors mashing and shouts from on-deck.

  Stealing a Ship

  We crowd into the landing outside the cargo bay, herded by Bossman and his troops.

  “Three parties!” he calls and clearly, this is a well-rehearsed drill. Two groups of soldiers rush off to the fore and aft staircases. We wait with Bossman and four others, counting off half a minute, and then begin the rapid sprint up the central staircase, to the deck of the ship.

  At the doorway there, two of his soldiers await, reporting in a burst. Bossman zooms in on me, not necessarily angry but very determined.

  “Your friends are outside. Westerners with serious weapons.”

  Huh? I’m totally thrown. Amina and Cousin Mahmood are keeping Yusuf from calling Rahim—who else would send Westerners with serious weapons?

  “They are deceived,” Bossman continues. “They have merely taken the ship’s crew. My men heard their helicopters coming and disappeared off the deck.” He listens to chatter on a previously-invisible earpiece and then says, “Go!” Is he speaking Persian or English? I’m totally lost but it’s not hard to figure out what he’s saying.

  His men burst from the hatches, pouring out of the fore and aft stairs, and swiftly complete the same ring they made around us when we came aboard. There’s shouting and a quick scuffle but then it all goes quiet and tense.

  Sara turns to me with her most serious face and says, “No fighting. You promised—”

  “All we’ve got here is people who live to fight.” I glance at Harry for support here—she’s asking the impossible. But he’s still lost among his own regrets.

  “Your specialty,” she persists, “is getting other people to decide that what they want is what you want them to want.” The way she says it, it sounds so complicated.

  “You said that was stupid. And morally wrong.”

  “Well, here’s your chance to convince me,” she answers and basically it’s Sara’s mic drop. Here’s your plan, buddy—make it stick.

  In the middle of the deck stand six soldiers in American desert camo and face paint—?

  “Lay down your arms and surrender peacefully—we outnumber you,” Bossman says.

  “You’ve got numbers but I’ve got the crew!” yells the American leader in a ridiculous Texas accent and I find myself hurtling out the door.

  “Dieter? What the fuck—”

  “Get out of the line of fire!”

  “No fire! No shooting, anybody!” I yell, stationing myself between the lines of soldiers and appealing to Bossman. “You can’t have a firefight here.”

  “We can be in Iranian waters within ten minutes,” he replies. “My crew holds the bridge.” Clearly, he’s aiming this at Dieter. “We will easily win any firefight—”

  “That’s not my point—you can’t fight here because of what’s in the hold.”

  “Is this Hastings?” he says, pointing at Dieter. “Is he responsible—?”

  “No—not that—I’m worried about the other shipment in the hold!”

  “Shipping Certificate 942 762 837,” Diamante recites, over my shoulder. “Construction equipment for Ras Tanura,” and judging by Bossman’s expression, this definitely rings a bell.

  “The certificate you doctored to get me thrown in jail in Paris,” I say and now the bells are chiming a chorus.

  “What are you doing with them?” Dieter demands in his usual sledgehammer tone. “Where’s my fucking Porsche?”

  “I’m not with—you’re here for the car?”

  “You bought it with my money! You used my company ID to transport it! Where is it?”

  Bossman, sensibly, ignores Dieter. “A firefight won’t set off a bomb.”

  “Not if it’s designed correctly,” I say again and I can see he understands my concern.

  “What are you talking about? Where’s my fucking 917?”

  “Who is this idiot and what does he want?”

  My fingers pause, tingling, at the rim of Pandora’s Box but, as happens so often lately, no answer occurs to me but the truth. Maybe I’m really too old for this kind of work. “That’s—it’s his shipment below.”

  “So he is Hastings?” Bossman says.

  “He’s Hastings’ man.”

  “I thought you were Hastings’ man.”

  “Why are you talking to him?” Dieter yells. “I’m one second from blowing this whole place to Kingdom come.”

  “Just let us get this straightened out,” I yell. “Then you two can kill each other!” They both look at me like I’m deranged but that’s not my fault.

  “I—used Hastings’ name to get on board,” I explain to Bossman. “But I’m here for…the other package.” Bossman’s eyes widen. “I was hoping we could buy it back but once I met you, I knew that wasn’t going to work.”

  “Three-two—?” Dieter ticks off the time. His boys level their guns and the Iranians do the same, facing each other at close range.


  I step up to the line again, determined, arms up in both directions. “Nobody shoots! Dieter, have your men put down their guns and the Iranians will do the same!”

  “We will not!”

  “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “Just long enough for all of us to go down into the hold,” I yell at Bossman. “Just long enough so everyone understands what’s going on down there. Once you both know what’s at stake, you’re going to want to talk, not shoot.”

  “That’s stupid!” Dieter says. “I always want to shoot! We’re soldiers!” And what I hear in my head is ‘warriors’—I find myself mouthing the word and see Sara catch me at it. And see that she remembers, that it has the same significance for her that it has for me.

  “Dieter, we’ve been talking about the shipment this boat picked up in Basra, just the other day, at Hastings’ warehouse.” I’m speaking slowly and enunciating, the way I would to a child, and dawn slowly breaks in that foggy mind of his. “A shipment these boys have already opened.”

  “Sssssshit,” Dieter hisses, with the same involuntary impulse that made me say ‘Aleppo’ out loud.

  “By the way, Dieter?” I wait till he refocuses on me. “That isn’t the punchline, either. Not even close. Have one of your men lay down his weapons and one of the Iranians will do the same.” I turn to Bossman and he reluctantly agrees.

  Dieter nods to one of his soldiers, who ejects the clip, puts down his rifle and unbuckles his pistol and ammo belt. Dieter nods more vehemently and the same soldier pulls open a patch in his vest and removes another pistol from a hidden holster there, then another small one from a compartment on his hip, a long knife from his thigh and several ammo clips from across his back. I realize this is going to take a while.

  The first Iranian soldier follows suit and, for half an hour, we dance the laborious synchronized swim of the psychotically paranoid.

  In the meantime, I’m furiously toting the odds and weighing the angles and the sums keep coming out bad, each and every way I can think of.

  I’m in over my head. For years, I’ve managed to rig the game in my favor—by now, I’ve taken that tilt for granted. But what comes clear to me in the moment is that I’ve always had a built-in advantage—I was always playing my own game. I chose the players and the stakes and the terms. I made up HARRY’S RULES to keep things in bounds. I dressed the marionettes, pulled the strings and never walked into a room without knowing first three ways out and their precise locations.