«I gotta problem, Abul. The dons think big and that’s good, but they’re not much for details and that’s bad.»
«The problem, please, my dear friend who has the eyes and the speed of the desert falcon—although, in truth, I’ve never been to the desert. Extremely hot, I’m told.»
«That’s the problem, pal. The heat… I’ve got a lot of bread buried in accounts all over the country under different names. Once I’ve got that job in Washington, and I’ll get it, there’s no way I can fly around some thirty-eight states picking up my cash, a great deal of which I’d prefer to keep private.»
«An absolute, I should think.»
«Definitely.»
«Do you have your bank account books?»
«All four thousand two hundred and twelve.» Vinnie had permitted himself an indictable grin.
«Ahh, the gaze of the camel holds more than can be gathered by the rumblings of its several stomachs.»
«Something like that, I guess.»
«Do you trust me, Vincent?»
«Sure, I’ve got to—just like you’ve got to trust me, capisce?»
«With certainty. The tail of the Bedouin’s dog wags in the triumph of its survival… Have you ever met a Bedouin? No matter, but let me tell you, they smell to high heaven in the marketplace.»
«The bank accounts? The books?»
«Sign several dozen for closure and collection and bring all of them to me. I have on my payroll an artist, a man of extraordinary talent, who can duplicate the signatures of anyone, living or dead, and has done so many times for considerable profit. I shall handle your portfolio myself, Vincent, a blind trust, as it were, under the aegis of one of the most respectable law firms in Manhattan.»
«All of it?»
«Don’t be ridiculous. Only an amount commensurate with the estate of a rather successful importer. The remainder you’ll really make money with, and I can assure you there’ll be no paper trail.»
Abul Khaki became Mangecavallo’s unofficial personal manager, with roughly four million in the market and seven times that amount in offshore holding companies. However, it was neither the serviceable friendship nor the service rendered that compelled Vincent to reach Abul. Quite simply, it was because Khaki had a greater in-depth knowledge of the global stock exchanges than any other person Mangecavallo knew, most of it garnered through illegal avenues, the rest through financial acumen. And of all men, Abul Khaki would keep his mouth shut. It was a given—his own survival eternally depended upon it, forget the Bedouin’s dog.
«I can’t believe this!» shrieked the Arab after Vincent had used one of the code names to get through to him—at the moment in Monte Carlo.
«Believe it, Abul, I’ll fill you in later—»
«You don’t understand. I wired ten thousand dollars’ worth of floral wreaths for your memorial service yesterday and signed it on behalf of myself and the Israeli government through my offices in New York!»
«Why did you do that?»
«Well, I’ve made a shekel or two with the Likud, and coupling my name with theirs might lead to further arrangements.»
«It can’t hurt,» said Vincent. «I always got along with the Mossad.»
«I would expect so … but you’ve come back from the dead! I’m beside myself with shock, my entire body trembling—I’ll lose every hand to the boot in baccarat, costing me hundreds of thousands!»
«Don’t play.»
«With three Greeks at the table with whom I do business? Are you mad?… What are you doing, Vincent? What is happening? The swirling sands of the desert are blinding my universe!»
«You’ve never been to the desert, Abul.»
«I’ve seen photographs—appalling, just as your voice is appalling to me as you speak now, from where I know not, but I must assume it isn’t ethereal.»
«I told you, I’ll explain later … after I’m rescued.»
«Rescued …? Thank you, dear Vincent, but I don’t care to hear another word. In fact, I insist upon it.»
«Then pretend it’s not me, just an interested investor. How’s the market doing in the States?»
«How is it doing? It’s gone quietly insane. So much subterfuge, so many secret negotiations—mergers, buyouts, controlling interests; it’s started all over again! It’s madness!»
«What do the oracles say?»
«They’re not talking, even to me. Compared to the market, Alice’s looking-glass world is a place of incontestable logic. Nothing makes sense—again even to me.»
«What about the defense-oriented companies?»
«As you Italianos say, they’re pazzo! When they should be drying up, anticipating equipment conversions everywhere, they’re reaching all-time highs. Moscow called me, both furious and frightened, asking me what I thought, and I had no answers. And my contacts in the White House tell me the President’s been on dozens of conference calls with everyone in the Kremlin, assuring them all that it must be the opening Eastern markets and the conversions because the Pentagon budget continues to be drastically cut… I tell you, Vincent, everything is pazzo!»
«No, it’s not, Abul. It’s perfect… I’ll be in touch, I gotta take a steam.»
Warren Pease, Secretary of State, was beside himself, in the outer extremes of anxiety. His left eye was at the moment uncontrollable, racing back and forth like a laser blip trying to center in on an elusive target. «What do you mean you can’t find General Ethelred Brokemichael?» he shouted into the telephone. «He’s under my orders—strike that—he’s under the orders of the President of the United States, who expects him to report to this max-classified phone number, which I have now given you at least a dozen times! How long do you expect the President of the United States to wait for a lousy brigadier general, huh?»
«We’re doing the best we can, sir,» said the frightened, exhausted voice from Fort Benning. «We can’t produce what isn’t here.»
«Have you sent out search teams?»
«To every movie theater and restaurant from Cuthbert to Columbus to Hot Springs. We’ve checked his logs, his outgoing calls—»
«Anything there?»
«Nothing productive, but certainly unusual. General Brokemichael placed twenty-seven calls to a hotel in Boston over a two-and-a-half-hour period. Naturally we reached the hotel and asked whether the general had left any messages—»
«Jesus, you didn’t say who you were, did you?»
«Only that it was official government business, nothing specific.»
«And?»
«They just laughed at the name—on four separate occasions. We were assured he wasn’t there and that they’d never heard of him—if such a person with that name existed.»
«Keep looking!» Pease slammed the phone down on his console, got up from his desk, and began pacing angrily about his office in the State Department. What had that damn fool Brokemichael done, where had he gone? How dare he vanish into the military-intelligence woodwork, where there were more cracks and knotholes than in the whole Sequoia National Park! What was he thinking of that permitted him to cut himself off from the Secretary of State?… Maybe he died, thought Pease… No, that wouldn’t help and might only complicate matters—still, if anything had gone wrong, there was nothing to link him to the eccentric general who had created the lethal machine that was the Suicidal Six. Warren had arrived at the army base with the proper papers, of course, but they were not in his name, and besides, he had worn a short red toupee that covered his thinning hair. As far as the Fort Benning entry and departure logs were concerned, a nondescript lower level accountant from the Pentagon had dropped in to pay his respects to the general… The red toupee, considered Pease, was really a stroke of genius, as even the political cartoonists made a point of his receding hairline. Where was that son of a bitch?»