“I didn’t think the Congo mercenaries would accept Americans.”
“They wouldn’t,” Haynes said. “But by then Tinker was no longer an American. After his first five-year hitch in the Legion was up, he had the option of becoming a French citizen and grabbed it.”
A practiced listener, Mott only nodded.
“Steady was also back in the Congo then—doing good works for Mobutu Sese Seko, or the Supreme Guide, as he calls himself these days. Tinker and Steady had known each other before—from Nice in the late fifties. Some people think they met in Zaire but they didn’t. Anyway, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated thirty kilos of gold bars—”
“About sixty-six pounds,” Mott said.
“Right. And if you’re beginning to wonder how I know all this, it’s because I heard it through a thin wall when I was thirteen and supposedly asleep. Tinker and Steady were on the other side of the wall and well into war stories and a bottle or two of Scotch.”
“But if Tinker Burns and Five Commando were trying to dump Mobutu, why get in touch with Steady, who was, from what little I know, Mobutu’s chief image polisher?”
“You really want to discuss ethics?”
“Sorry,” Mott said.
“As I said, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated the gold. He needed a way to get it from Zaire into Uganda, which is next door in case you’re a little fuzzy on your African geography.”
Mott again said nothing.
“Well, the CIA had hired some Cuban pilots to fly and fight for Mobutu. They were a hard-luck bunch who hadn’t done all that well at the Bay of Pigs, which is where they’d last flown for the agency. Steady suborned one of the pilots—he was really quite good at suborning—and convinced him to ‘borrow’ a plane and fly to Watsa. There the pilot would secretly pick up a deserting officer from Five Commando. After he flew the deserter to Uganda for debriefing, the Cuban would be paid five thousand dollars. And that’s how Steady Haynes got Tinker Burns out of the Congo with a knapsack containing sixty-six pounds of gold bars. And that’s how Tinker acquired the capital to go into the arms business and possibly why Steady received that four thousand dollars every month.”
“What happened to the Cuban pilot?”
“Who knows?”
Mott nodded thoughtfully, spun around in his chair and stared out of his corner window. His view was of some other buildings very much like his own. Over their rooftops he could watch the planes as they descended and rose at National Airport.
Still watching the planes, Mott said, “Did you know Steady’s written a book?”
He spun back around just in time to see Haynes nod. “He and Isabelle. His memoirs—or autobiography.”
“It’s copyrighted, of course,” Mott said.
“So?”
“He assigned the copyright to you in his will. Except for the old Caddy, it’s your sole legacy.”
“My own copyright. Imagine.”
“Bear with me,” Mott said. “Steady deposited a sealed copy of the manuscript with me two weeks ago when he made out his will just before he and Isabelle checked into the Hay-Adams. He said it was the only copy. Of the manuscript, not the will.”
“The phrase ‘only copy’ has always bothered me.”
“Me, too,” Mott said. “But in this case it may be true.” He paused, as if beginning a new paragraph, and said, “About thirty or thirty-five minutes before you walked through my door, I got a call from what I’ll describe as a very well connected lawyer.”
“Which means he’s an ex-what?”
“An ex-U.S. senator with a client who, he says, wants very much to buy the copyright to an unpublished work by Steadfast Haynes. Meaning, of course, that the client wants to buy and control all rights—print, tape, film, stage and so forth—to Steady’s manuscript. The senator wasn’t authorized to divulge the name of his client, but he was authorized to make an offer.”
“On something he hasn’t even read,” Haynes said.
“Exactly.”
“How much?”
“One hundred thousand.”
“Somebody wants to bury it deep.”
“Apparently.”
“Call him back and tell him the son and heir wants half a million firm and see what he says.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Then tell him the son and heir’s lined up some offshore development money and plans to write, direct and star in a feature based on his father’s unpublished manuscript.”
Mott stared at Haynes, not bothering to conceal the rapid reassessment his mind was making. “I thought you were a homicide cop.”
“I was but now I’m an actor.”
“I also believe you’re serious.”
“An actor’s job is to make you believe.”
“Steady could usually do that—make me believe almost anything. Note my stress on ‘almost.’ ”
“Then obviously I’ve inherited not only a car and a copyright but also a talent.”
“Take the hundred thousand,” Mott said. “That’s my best advice. If you try to squeeze them, you could be out a whole lot of money.”
“I already have a whole lot of money,” Haynes said.
“For some strange reason, I believe that, too.”
Mott fished a small key from his pants pocket and used it to unlock the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. From the deep drawer he removed a package wrapped in heavy brown paper that was bound with twine. The package was sealed in three places with red wax. Mott handed the package to Haynes, who read the hand-printed label that bore his dead father’s name and Berryville, Virginia, address. The package also bore $3.61 worth of stamps. The words FIRST CLASS had been printed on the brown paper wrapping in red ink.
“He went to a lot of trouble to mail it to himself,” Haynes said.
“Check the seals?”
“Unbroken.”
“It’s one of our enduring myths that to copyright something you’ve written you have to mail it to yourself,” Mott said. “In fact, anything anyone writes is automatically copyrighted. If you want to announce it to the world, all you need to do is write the word ‘copyright’ on whatever you’ve written, followed by the year it was written and your name. Want to know anything else about copyrights?”
“That’ll do,” Haynes said.
“Then you might as well open it and take a look.”
Borrowing a pair of scissors from Mott, Haynes cut the twine, broke the wax seals and removed the brown paper that concealed a Keebord stationery box. He lifted off the box’s lid. Inside were what happened to be three or four hundred sheets of twenty-five percent cotton bond. Haynes read the first page, which was the title page, and noticed that its letters had been formed by an electric typewriter, probably an IBM Wheelwriter. He handed the first page to Mott, who read it silently:
MERCENARY CALLING
by Steadfast Haynes
At the bottom of the page was a line that read: “Copyright 1989 by Steadfast Haynes.”
“You’re sure it’s valid—the copyright?” Haynes asked.
“Absolutely,” Mott said.
Haynes read the second page and handed it to Mott. This page read:
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
—A. E. HOUSMAN
While Mott was reading Housman, Haynes quickly leafed through the rest of the pages. Mott looked up from the lines of poetry to accept the manuscript’s third page. It read: “For my son, Granville Haynes, with faint hope that he will find it of great profit.”
When Haynes silently handed over the fourth page, Mott saw that it was numbered page one. Not quite halfway down the page and centered was: CHAPTER ONE. Below that was a sentence that read: “I have led an exceedingly interesting life and, looking back, have no regrets. Or almost none.”
Mott looked up from the page, his eyes puzzled, his mouth opened by surprise. “That’s it—the whole fucking thing?”