The Consignment (11 page)

But Rossiter intercepted me midflight. He wrapped an arm over my shoulder and guided me across to share a celebratory drink with Trevanian. I didn’t feel like a celebratory drink with Trevanian or Rossiter or anyone else. I wasn’t even sure I could hold another drink down. But another glass was shoved into my hand, and I had to stand there smiling pleasantly, listening to the conversation between Trevanian and Rossiter while trying to keep my eyes from straying up to the ceiling. They kept straying there anyway. The damn fingerprints seemed gigantic, getting larger with every excruciating minute that passed. At last Trevanian started dipping into his well-worn supply of stories concerning the exploits of his private military company, the group around us began to grow, everyone leaning in for a touch of vicarious danger, and I managed to slip away.

I retreated to my office to do some real soldiering. I sat down and worried and waited. Most soldiering is waiting, something Channon first taught me. It’s not about the brief flares of violent action, it’s about using downtime constructively, staying ready, doing reconnaissance and planning, keeping up with the hard daily grind. While I waited in my office, the late afternoon turning to evening, I had plenty of time to reflect on how my carelessness could end up bringing Hawkeye crashing down.

My fingerprints, like the fingerprints of every Haplon employee, were kept on file, a standard security procedure that I’d never even given a second thought to. Now all Rossiter had to do was notice the marks, make the connection that they were fingermarks, and from that moment on, Hawkeye would be history. Even if he didn’t notice them right away, they’d still be there the next day, and the day after that.

Sitting at my desk, I had plenty of time, too, to think about Brad. Brad and the Congo and me. I touched my lip, it was bruised and sore.

The long day waned. At 6:00
P.M.
, the lights went on in the parking lot. Finally the celebration in Rossiter’s office broke up. People passed by my office, collected their coats, and came back down the hall and went home. I carried on waiting, watching from the window in my office. Trevanian and Lagundi left together in a Cadillac. Rossiter put his head in, told me not to feel sore, and said good-night. I watched as he departed in his Lotus. I waited some more. An hour later, I saw the Haplon security guard take a turn around the nearly empty parking lot, and I gave it another ten minutes, then I went along to the service room. I climbed up through the manhole and got myself back into position over Rossiter’s office. I lifted the marked tile, wiped off the prints with my handkerchief, then replaced it carefully. Returning to the service room, I wiped the soles of my feet, and my hands. I went back to my office and put on my jacket and tie. Down in the lobby, I said good-night to the security guard, then I crossed to my car and got in and drove out of Connecticut, over the state line into New York, where I stopped and got quietly drunk in a bar.

TWO

CHAPTER 13

It was days before the materiel had all been crated, ready for trucking down to the dock in New Jersey, and I spent most of that time just going through the motions of my regular routine.

At 6:30 a.m. I would rise, work out for half an hour, then shower and have breakfast, a meal that I invariably ate alone in that period. Then I would drive up to the Haplon plant and have a meeting with Gillian Streiss and the sales team before settling down to answer my e-mail, send off a few faxes, and make some calls. Lunch was sometimes a trip down to Manhattan to schmooze a client, but more frequently a round of sandwiches at my desk before the early afternoon call along to Rossiter’s office to discuss the state of play on various orders, placed and pending, after which I would go out to the main office and kick the appropriate butts. In the late afternoon I would try to get myself down to the firing range, with or without a client, and spend twenty minutes or more blazing away with the Haplon weapons.

And on the way home each evening I stopped at a phone booth, as ordered, and phoned Channon. These exchanges never varied.

Hello?

Red Hawk.

You okay?

I’m okay. Shipment schedule’s unchanged.

Call again tomorrow, he’d instruct me before hanging up.

Then, the day’s work finally over, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I would make my way home to Ellis Street, where it was increasingly clear I would not be truly welcome until my life changed in some fundamental way. In the meantime, I had no choice but to endure Brad’s silence and Fiona’s simmering anger. I’m sure Brad never mentioned our ridiculous tussle to his mother, but she seemed to pick up on the new distance between us, the natural counterpart of my continuing distance from her. I was still sleeping in the spare room.

So the morning when the materiel was finally trucked to the New Jersey docks, and I set off after it to supervise the loading, it felt like I was hitting the wall midway through an arduous and extremely painful marathon. There were six containers, and I’d fixed a cigarette-sized tracking device inside the internal frame of each one of them.

The ship was Ukrainian, its name,
Sebastopol,
and home port, Odessa, were embossed on the stern in large Cyrillic letters that were rusting. I left our truck drivers with the forklift guy and went and sat with the old stevedore by his prefab cabin to wait for Cecille Lagundi. She was supposed to oversee the loading with me. After a quarter hour, she hadn’t shown, so I wandered down the dock. There was a smell of diesel and old rope in the air, the smell of every port in the world. I threw some stones in the water, watched the birds wheel, and thought about Dimitri and some of the decisions he’d made, as a soldier and as a man. I thought about some of the decisions I’d made too. I told myself that when Hawkeye was over, I would do better. When I reached the Customs post, the uniformed officers were gathered around a portable TV watching a ball game. I loitered awhile, then turned and went back. By this time the giant straddlelift had unloaded the six Haplon containers. The last truck pulled out through the gates as I watched, and was gone. I put my head in at the stevedore’s cabin.

“She ain’t here yet,” the old guy told me. He nodded shipward, advising me to go aboard and have a word with the captain. “Speed those fellas’ work, you wanna get them started now. Shore crane’s ready when they are.”

The clock behind him said 10:50 a.m. We were due at the bank at 4:30 p.m. I still thought we had plenty of time.

I went aboard ship, climbing the gangway to the deck. The railings were draped with dirty canvas. A bare-chested guy was kneeling over a bucket, rinsing clothes in soapy water and hanging them over the air vents to dry. Another guy lounged at the railing and peeled an orange. What had once been white paint on the bulkheads was stained a dirty cream. It wasn’t the kind of scene I’d ever witnessed aboard a vessel of the U.S. Navy. When I asked to see the captain, the guy at the bucket looked me over and said something in Russian. The guy with the orange jerked his head up to the ship’s bridge.

When I turned in that direction, an officer emerged on the upper deck. He looked over the rails at me.

“How soon can you get the Haplon cargo loaded?” I asked, pointing to the containers down on the dock.

“You stay,” he ordered, then he withdrew into the bridge.

I leaned against the railings and watched orange peel floating on the water below, then I lifted my eyes to the Haplon containers. Once the materiel was loaded, the captain would issue me a bill of lading, and I’d return with Lagundi to meet Rossiter at the Manhattan bank where the diamonds were stored. There I’d give Trevanian the bill of lading. He, under Greenbaum’s expert eye, would weigh out the diamonds in payment. Once that was done, I was out. From that point on it was up to Rita Durranti to collate the evidence, and it was up to Channon to bring down the hammer. The close of Trevanian’s grubby career would coincide with the end of mine.

Someone behind me whistled, and I turned. That officer again.

“You are not consignee,” he said loudly.

“No,” I agreed, then I explained my position. I told him that the consignee’s representative had been delayed, but that she’d be along shortly. “If you call down to the stevedore, we can get started.”

He wasn’t interested. He disappeared into the bridge, and another ten minutes went by. The guy along the railings from me finished his orange. The other guy with the dirty washing emptied his bucket over the side. Then the officer reappeared, he shouted down to me that the shore crane wasn’t ready. He was jerking me around. I told him what the stevedore had told me, that the crane was ready whenever we needed it. I didn’t actually call him a liar, but he got the idea. It didn’t do me any good. He leaned on the railings, gazed over my head, and calmly informed me that we would wait for the consignee. As long as it took.

I got on my cell phone to Rossiter. After explaining the situation, I suggested he call Trevanian, get him to hurry Lagundi along. Rossiter’s blood pressure had been rising all week. The news about Lagundi’s tardiness didn’t go down too well. He bawled me out, reconfirmed the 4:30 deadline for our meeting at the bank, then hung up.

Returning to the dock, I settled down with a newspaper by the stevedore’s cabin and waited. I waited a long time. It was after 12:00 before I glanced up from the sports pages and saw Lagundi picking her way around the machinery by the warehouse. She was wearing a white slacksuit and dark glasses, and she had her trademark Gucci purse slung over her shoulder. She could not have looked more completely out of place if she’d tried. Shedding her glasses, she smiled as she neared. I rose without greeting her and went inside to tell the stevedore to get started.

After a round of calls up to the ship’s captain and down to Customs, the loading finally began at 1:00 p.m. At 1:30 p.m., with just two of the six containers aboard, the ship’s crew decided to break for lunch.

“For crying out loud,” I said when the stevedore told me. “So when do they get going again?”

“Two. Maybe two-thirty.” He shrugged like it was guesswork, then he went to speak with the crane driver.

Two containers in half an hour. There were four more to load. Assuming the stevedore’s guesswork was correct, we could have it all done by 3:30 p.m. I phoned Rossiter. He made some unprintable remarks, and reminded me that the bank closed at 5:00 p.m. He told me to be there. No excuses, he said.

A single Customs officer had been overseeing the loading. Now he went back to the Customs shed, and I went with him. I’d sent Lagundi along there earlier to get the paperwork done, but now when we got there I saw her sitting on her ass, browsing through back copies of the
National Enquirer
. There was a pile of the old magazines by her chair. The Customs guy went through to the back to see his colleagues.

I asked Lagundi, “Have they signed the clearance?”

She kept her eyes down. “Not yet.”

“Well, what’s the holdup?”

She ignored me. I took a step in her direction, then stopped when another Customs officer emerged from out back. As he collected some files, I called across, asking him when the Haplon clearance would be through. He checked the out tray and shrugged. Then Lagundi suddenly got up and went over and placed our documentation on the counter. The Customs guy glanced through it.

“Give us an hour,” he told me, flicking the papers. “The boss has to countersign these. He’s at lunch.” He retreated out back.

I turned to Lagundi, she was already flipping idly through another magazine. “What are you playing at?” I said.

“They will get done.”

“You’ve wasted time.” She flipped another page, and I said, “How long were you going to wait?”

She dropped the magazine onto the leaning pile of back copies, got up, and edged past me out the door. She headed for the johns over by the warehouse. I called after her to stay close, warning her that the loading should be done by 3:30, that I wanted to leave right after. She wiggled her fingers at me over her shoulder, then picked her way carefully around some giant coils of cable and disappeared into an avenue of oil drums and pallets.

“Client trouble?” a voice at my shoulder inquired, and I swung around. Rita.

Lowering my voice, I said, “I needed the clearance pushed through fast.”

Rita looked out toward the warehouse where Lagundi had disappeared. She remarked that my client didn’t seem overwhelmed with any urgency.

“You noticed.”

“What’s her problem?”

I shook my head. Anyone’s guess. Then I asked Rita how her own work was going. She’d wanted to record everything on the Port Authority’s CCTV, from the arrival of the Haplon goods to the loading. She figured video evidence might forestall any improbable arguments from the defense lawyers about the shipped containers not being the same ones Haplon had delivered to the port.

“We won’t make the Sundance Festival, but it’s taped. Lawyer-proof evidence.”

“No such thing.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she said. “Now how about you get the rest of it loaded so I can get back to town. I’m going nuts staring at these little black-and-white screens.” She got herself a Hershey bar from the dispenser and exited into a back room.

It was past 2:30 before the loading started again. I stood with Lagundi and the Customs guy as the crane trundled along the rails. It stopped and lowered the mechanized clamp to the container. The container rose, the crane motors whining loudly under the strain, then it crept out beneath the crane’s arm and stopped over the ship’s hold. Then it descended out of sight. Five minutes later, the empty clamp at the end of the crane’s cables rose slowly from the hold. I checked my watch. 2:45. I thought we’d make it. Just.

Then Lagundi made her big announcement. “I must inspect those,” she told the Customs guy, and she pointed to the three containers remaining on the dock. The Customs guy thought he’d misunderstood, she had to repeat the request twice. I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Trevanian inspected the equipment as it was loaded,” I said. “Customs inspected it too. Their goddamn seal’s on the containers.” She ignored me. She leaned into the stevedore’s cabin, told him to radio the crane driver, stand him down for a while. “Look, call Trevanian first,” I said, throwing out a hand in exasperation. “Speak to Customs. Everyone knows what’s in the containers. Here.” I gestured to the Customs guy standing beside me. “Show her the manifest.”

He angled his clipboard for Lagundi to see. She wouldn’t look.

“The red container first,” she said.

The Customs guy glanced from her back to me. The container’s contents remained Haplon property until the bill of lading changed hands. Until then, it was entirely my decision whether Lagundi got the requested access or not. Whether we got paid or not, of course, was entirely up to her. I got on the phone to Rossiter again, and this time he went berserk. He told me to hang up and wait for a call from Trevanian. Two minutes later I took Trevanian’s call. I explained Lagundi’s request, adding that if the Customs seals were broken they’d have to be replaced. More paperwork, and more time. Trevanian sounded every bit as wild as Rossiter. He told me to put Lagundi on, so I handed her my cell phone. She walked away down the dock, talking to Trevanian. I didn’t hear the conversation, but she seemed calm enough. When she returned after a minute, she gave me my phone and it rang in my hand. The caller this time was Rossiter.

“Let her do the fucking inspection. Trevanian can’t talk her out of it, Christ knows what’s on her mind. You got two hours.” He hung up before I could speak.

So that was it. When I gave the order, the stevedore arched his brow and went inside to radio the crane driver. The Customs guy went to get a tool to break the seal. Lagundi and I were left alone, standing on the potholed tarmac by the containers. She stared at the ship. She’d gotten what she wanted, but her poise and confidence seemed to have left her. Her thick lips were clamped tight.

“Something you want to tell me?” I said.

She wrapped her arms around herself, dropped her head, and walked off.

We got to the bank just after 5:00 p.m. Drawing up to the sidewalk, I wound down my window and Rossiter came over, shaking his head. We’d missed the deadline. The bank was closed.

“Jack’ll take you back to your hotel,” Rossiter told Lagundi as he opened the passenger door of my car to let her out. As she stepped onto the sidewalk, he added, “We’ll meet here in the morning, lady. See if we can’t do it right then.” She gave him a cool glance, then she went to join Trevanian by the locked door of the bank. Rossiter climbed into the passenger seat beside me. “You get the bill of lading?” he asked me.

I handed it to him. He folded it into his inner jacket, then craned around to watch Trevanian and Lagundi. They seemed to be arguing. Trevanian appeared to be giving her a piece of his mind. As we drew into the traffic, Rossiter faced the front again, we drove on a full minute before he spoke.

“What can you do about the woman?”

I looked across. I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. “What do you mean, ’do’?”