"I was out," Idris said, laying clothes on the bed to be packed. "I took Dara and Helene to dinner."
"This was two in the morning," Harry said.
"We went to a club for dancing, after."
Harry said, "I had every intention of running him down with the Bentley."
"It arrived?"
"Yesterday morning. I started for him, I wanted to run over him, and he put four nines with that German gun of his through my windscreen, but into the left side, forgetting the Bentley is a right-hand-drive motorcar."
Idris said, "So you failed to shoot him."
"You have to imagine," Harry said, "how quickly this was happening. He did shoot the Somali lads with me, upstairs at his door."
"You shot at him?"
"Of course," Harry said. "We both seemed a bit anxious, exchanging shots in the hall. He went down the fire escape while I was hurrying to get the car. I saw him come out of the building and drove directly at him, flooring the Bentley and shooting from the window. When I missed again I kept going. It was that or stop to reload. But I did have him on the run."
"Now what?" Idris said.
"This isn't really my game," Harry said, "I'll probably leave for England in the next couple of days." He sat down to watch Idris packing.
"How was Dara, in good spirits?"
"She's always herself," Idris said.
"Which is to say what?"
"She keeps her eyes open, knows what's going on."
"I'm reasonably certain I could have got on with her," Harry the Sheikh said, "had my mind not been occupied by Jimmy Jama."
"You mean the price on his head."
"Well, that too."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I DON'T RECALL," BILLY SAID to Xavier, "if I told you I'm blowing up the gas ship tomorrow."
"I heard you were thinkin about it but nobody had an idea of when. You must have a good reason you want to get to it."
Billy said, "I'd like to hit the fucker while she's sitting there in the stream."
The two were stretched out in lounges on the hotel's sea-level pool deck, watching ships pass in the distance barely moving. Billy had on blue bikini briefs, his stomach trying to hide them, his hair a month wilder than when they'd met. Xavier thought Billy was cool in his way, how he knew everything and believed he could shoot up a highly combustible ship and not worry about getting away.
Xavier had on his silk-looking skimpy green trunks.
Billy had his binoculars resting on his stomach and a local map of the Golfo de Tadjoura, both of them smoking Billy's Havanas. Xavier liked the way Billy made judgments, cool about it in a way Xavier didn't understand, but most often was right how he saw it.
"So you think you'll do it tomorrow," Xavier said.
"I'll light up the sky tonight about dusk. Hit her in her sweet spots and take off. The weather's suppose to be like it is today."
"Hit it with your double-barrel rifle?"
"Firing armor-piercing incendiary rounds. You'll see a sight you won't forget."
"I can watch," Xavier said, "without leavin my lounge?"
Billy raised his binoculars.
"Aphrodite is sitting about twelve miles off, the other side of those islands, the Mouchas, I always thought a good place for pirates to lay in wait. Not anymore. There thirty, forty navy ships in these waters now."
"I was talkin to Idris," Xavier said, "after Dara spoke to him. He called to say good-bye. Said he wasn't sure what he would do now. Pirates shot and killed the Syrian captain of a Panama-flagged ship off Mogadishu. Idris thinks it'll bring enough heat to put the pirates out of business before long."
"He's hanging on by his fingernails," Billy said, "waiting for somebody to offer him a job."
"I told him," Xavier said, "he could always go back to sellin guns to warlords, once he does his R amp; R in Paris. I'm not gonna worry about Idris."
"He called Dara this morning?"
"Around nine," Xavier said.
"You had something you wanted to say to him, so she handed you the phone?"
Xavier turned his head to look at Billy staring at the gas ship through his binoculars. Xavier said, "Dara put the phone on the table and got back in bed." Xavier paused. "See, then I picked up the phone and talked to him."
Billy said, "You were staying there?"
"In the same suite?" Xavier said. "No, I had my own." He let a few moments pass. "But happened to be with her when Idris called. You got it straight now?"
"I had an interesting call," Billy said, "from the other Gold Dust Twin. Harry said he was wondering could he hitch a ride with us, we happened by any chance to be going up the Red Sea. You understand what he's doing?"
Xavier said, "Jama could be waitin for him at the airport. Harry wants to slip away in your boat."
"He said he'd get off at Suez. That is, unless I'm going on to Great Britain. That's what he called it. I told him we won't know where we'll be for a few days. I'm assuming," Billy said, "we'll be delayed. But once we're free to go we'll be heading toward the rising sun."
"Keep on round the world," Xavier said. "That takes pluck, man."
"Well, I've never been accused of lacking it."
He was quiet for a few minutes.
"Dara learned about the shooting last night from Idris."
"That's right."
"Then you talked to him."
"What you doin," Xavier said, "is beatin around to find out did I spend the night with Dara. You think I did?"
"It's none of my business," Billy said. "I'm only trying to get your story straight in my mind."
Xavier said, "It's best you don't try too hard." THE FIRST THING DARA said was, "You win," once she settled down and was herself again. "Boy, did you."
"But I'm not takin your money, even if it was a bet. I'm not a paid escort," Xavier said, up on his elbow so he could look at her next to him, the room light still on, no time being wasted when they came in. "I had some help from my friend Horny Goat Weed. I'm admittin to you it wasn't all me."
Dara said in her drowsy voice, "You have any left?" THEY WERE OUT ON the sea twenty-seven days alone and had flirted with each other some. They were in the hotel three days and did it with the light on.
Xavier went back to his suite thinking, Man, like he was ten years younger. Or even twenty years to the easy-does-it times. Girl, what's your hurry? You heatin up on me? Take and put my fire hose on the job. Breathing all that kind of cute shit in her ear.
He could not hear himself saying these things to Dara.
She'd had a few out clubbing, came back to the hotel to bang on his door and he knew looking at her it was gonna happen. She said, "Let's go to my room, okay?" Like she'd been thinking about it, seeing them doing it in her bed. It was fine with Xavier, feeling Horny Weed stirring in him. She was more girlish than he'd ever seen her, using moves on him, high-course she was high-but feeling good about it and being herself, he could tell.
This was the time and they let it happen, grooving to a big finish, and he thought, Now what? She gonna hide on me? No, she said, "You win."
After she came out of the bathroom, no longer girlish, she said, "I have to go back to bed, okay?" Putting on a face like she expected him to object. That's all it was, Dara being a tired little girl. Course she could come back to bed.
He wondered how it would work the next time.
You start thinkin about the future now, the first time in your life?
She looked around the bedroom for her nightgown talking about Idris and Harry's experience, Xavier staring at her naked, knowing she wasn't showing herself on purpose, for any reason, she was just letting herself show in a natural way.
That was a good sign.
Don't think about the next time. It would happen when it happened. Xavier, seventy-two years old thinking like a boy. XAVIER AND BILLY HADN'T moved from the hotel pool.
"What I was wondering," Billy said, resting his glasses on his stomach, "if you ever served on an LNG tanker."