“A lot,” I said, noting how heavily Corsaire was ballasted, which suggested her builder had been a cautious man.
“There is no time to be particular.” Halil spoke very softly, but there was an unmistakable menace in his voice. I wanted to argue with him, but felt curiously inhibited by a sense that any opposition to this man could provoke an instant and overwhelming physical counterattack. He seemed so utterly sure of himself, so much so that, even though his vocabulary had proved he knew nothing of boats, he nevertheless had spoken of Corsaire’s sea-going qualities as though his opinion was final. Yet his next question showed how much he still needed my expertise. “How long will it take you to cross the Atlantic with her?”
“Leaving from here?”
He paused, as if unwilling to admit anything. “From near here.”
“Going where?”
Again the pause. “She will go to Miami.” Where, I thought, her delivery skipper would be murdered; one more anonymous body which would be ascribed to the drug trade’s carnage.
“When will the voyage be made?” I asked.
“That does not matter,” Halil said disparagingly, though in fact it mattered like hell. Any Atlantic passage undertaken before the trade winds had established themselves would take much longer than if I waited till the new year, but I sensed this man was not amenable to detail and so I made a crude guess.
“Three months.”
“That long?” He sounded horrified and, when I did not modify the answer, he frowned. “Why not use the engine? Can’t you put extra fuel on board and motor across?”
“A boat like this one will only go as fast as her waterline allows.” Again I spared him the detail, and instead offered him a helpful suggestion. “Why not buy a big motor-yacht? One of those will cross much faster.”
He made no reply, but just lifted the cigarette to his lips and this time I saw that the fingers of his right hand seemed crooked, as though the hand had been injured and never healed properly. The hand shook, so much so that he had difficulty in putting the cigarette between his lips. Water slapped at Corsaire’s hull and reflected the sunlight up through the portholes to make a rippling pattern on the saloon’s ceiling. I was soaked with sweat, though Halil seemed immune to the close humidity inside the boat. He lowered the trembling cigarette. I thought he was considering my suggestion of using a motor-yacht to transport the gold, but instead he suddenly changed the subject, asking me whether I believed America would fight to liberate Kuwait. It seemed an odd question in the context, but I nodded and said I was sure America would fight.
“I hope so,” Halil said, “I hope so.” He spoke softly, but I sensed how badly this man wanted to see a great Arab victory in the desert. Was that why he had asked me the question, simply to satisfy his curiosity? Or was his query somehow related to this boat, and to my recruitment, and to a Stinger missile in a Miami warehouse? Those were questions I dared not ask. The truth of this operation, if it ever emerged at all, would appear in grudging increments.
Halil was still worrying that America would not give the Iraqi army its chance of immortal glory for he suddenly took a folded sheet of newsprint from his suit pocket. “Your politicians are already trying to escape the horrors of defeat,” he said. “Look for yourself!” He pushed the scrap of newspaper across the saloon table. It was a recent front page story from The New York Times which told how House Representative Thomas O’Shaughnessy the Third had introduced a bill to Congress which, if it passed, would forbid the employment of American military forces in the Gulf for one whole year. O’Shaughnessy was quoted as wanting to give economic sanctions a chance to work before force was used. “You see!” Halil’s voice was mocking. “Even your legislators want peace. They have no courage, Shanahan.”
I shook my head. “You know what they call O’Shaughnessy in Boston? They call him Tommy the Turd. They say he’s too dumb to succeed, but too rich to fail. He’s a clown, Halil. He’s in Congress because his daddy is rich.”
Thomas O’Shaughnessy the Third was less than thirty years old, yet he was already serving his second term in Congress. Michael Herlihy was one of O’Shaughnessy’s staff, helping the Congressman cultivate the IRA sympathizers in his Boston constituency. I suspected Michael had been behind one of Tommy’s early crusades which demanded that the British government treat IRA prisoners according to the Geneva Convention. The campaign had collapsed in ridicule when it was pointed out that the Geneva Convention permitted combatant governments to execute enemy soldiers captured out of uniform, which meant Tommy’s bill would have given American sanction for the Brits to slaughter every IRA man they took prisoner, but the proposal had never been seriously meant, only a proof to his constituents that Tommy’s heart was in the right place, even if his brain was lost somewhere in outer space.
I offered the cutting back to Halil. “Congressmen like O’Shaughnessy will make a lot of feeble noises, but the American public will listen to the President and, if Saddam Hussein stays in Kuwait, you’ll get your war.”
“May God prove you right,” Halil said, “because I want to see the bodies of the American army feeding the desert jackals for years to come. In the sands of Kuwait, Shanahan, we shall see the humbling of America and the glory of Islam.”
I said nothing; just held the cutting across the table until Halil leaned forward for it. He reached with his good left hand and, as he did, I suddenly knew exactly who this man was and why Shafiq was so terrified of him, and I felt the same terror, because this man, this unremarkable man, this ignorant stubborn man, this hater of America and self-proclaimed expert on boats, was wearing a woman’s Blancpain wristwatch.
He was il Hayaween.
The Blancpain watch was an expensive timepiece enshrined in a miraculously thin case of gold and platinum. Except for its small size the watch did not appear particularly feminine; instead it looked what it was: a delicate and exquisitely elegant wristwatch. It was also a very expensive wristwatch. I knew, for I had bought it myself.
I had bought it five years before in Vienna where Shafiq had met me in the café of the Sacher Hotel. It had been an early spring afternoon and Shafiq was lingering over a sachertorte until it was time for him to leave for the airport. We were probably talking about Shafiq’s favorite subject, women, when he had suddenly dropped his fork and cursed in Arabic. Then he switched to panicked French. “I am supposed to buy a gift! Oh God, I forgot. Paul, help me, please!” He had gone quite pale.
There had followed a desperate few hours as we searched Vienna for a jeweller who might stock Blancpain watches. I had derided Shafiq’s urgency until he explained that it was the legendary il Hayaween who had demanded the watch, and Colonel Qaddafi himself who wanted to be the watch’s giver, and then I understood just what the price of failure might entail for Shafiq. Yet our search seemed hopeless. Blancpains were not like other watches, but were genuine old-fashioned hand-made Swiss watches, powered by clockwork and without a scrap of contaminating quartz or battery acid, and such rare timepieces needed to be specially ordered. The shops began to close and Shafiq was nearing despair until, in one of the little streets close to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, we found a single specimen of a Blancpain watch. It was a rare specimen, it was expensive and it was beautiful, but it was also a woman’s watch. “Do you think he’ll know?” Shafiq asked me nervously.
“It doesn’t look especially feminine,” I said, “just a bit on the small side.”
“Oh, dear sweet Christ!” Shafiq liked to use Christian blasphemies, which he thought were more sophisticated than Islamic imprecations. “If it’s the wrong watch, Paul, he’ll kill me!”