Burr studied the tire tracks at his feet. Car or plane? He guessed there was a way of telling and was ashamed he didn’t know it.
“We’ve told Michael you’re a big Brit,” Strelski had said. “Like Winston Churchill’s aunt.”
“Bigger,” said Flynn.
“It’s Father Lucan and it’s Brother Michael,” Strelski tells Burr the night before, as they sit on the deck of the beach house in Fort Lauderdale. “Pat Flynn here calls the shots. You want to ask Michael something, mostly it pays to have Pat here do it. The guy’s a sleazebag and a screwball. Right, Pat?”
Flynn pulls a huge hand across his mouth to hide his gappy smile. “Michael’s beautiful,” he declares.
“And pious,” says Strelski. “Michael is very, very holy—right, Pat?”
“A true believer, Joe,” Flynn confirms.
Then, amid much giggling, Strelski and Flynn divulge to Burr the story of Brother Michael’s coming to Jesus and to the high calling of Supersnitch—a story, Strelski insists, that would never have had its beginning had not Agent Flynn here chanced to be up in Boston one weekend in Lent, taking a spiritual retreat from his wife and curing his soul with the aid of a case of Bushmills single malt Irish whiskey and a couple of like-minded abstainers from the seminary.
“That right, Pat?” Strelski demands, anxious perhaps lest Flynn fall asleep.
“Dead on, Joe,” Flynn agrees, sipping his whiskey and taking a huge mouthful of pizza as he benignly follows the full moon’s ascent over the Atlantic.
And Pat here and his reverend brethren have hardly done justice to their first bottle of malt, Leonard—Strelski continues—when in rolls the father abbot himself to inquire whether Special Agent Patrick Flynn of U.S. Customs would have the holiness to grant him a moment of counsel in the seclusion of his private office.
And when Agent Flynn graciously consents to this proposal, there in the father abbot’s office, says Strelski, sits this string-bean Texan kid with ears like ping-pong bats who turns out to be Father Lucan from something called the Blood of the Virgin Hermitage in New Orleans, which, for reasons known only to the Pope, is under the protection of the father abbot in Boston.
And this Lucan, Strelski continues, this kid with the ping-pong-bat ears and the acne, is into recovering lost souls for the Blessed Virgin through personal sanctification and the example of Her Apostles.
In the course of which uphill struggle, says Strelski—while Flynn giggles and nods his red face and yanks his forelock like a fool—Lucan has been hearing the confession of a rich penitent whose daughter has recently killed herself in a particularly disgusting fashion on account of her father’s criminal life-style and debauchery.
And this same penitent—says Strelski—in the extreme of his remorse, has confessed his soul so drastically to Lucan that the poor kid has taken his ass full speed to his father abbot in Boston for spiritual guidance and smelling salts: his penitent being the biggest fucking crook Lucan or anybody else has stumbled on in his entire life. . . .
“Penitence, Leonard, in a doper, that’s like a very short feast.” Strelski has turned philosophical. Flynn is quietly smiling at the moon. “Remorse: I would say that was unknown. By the time Patrick got to him, Michael was already regretting his brief lapse into decency and pleading the First and the Fifth and his sick grandmother. Also whatever he had said was off the record on account of his dementia and grief. But Pat here”—more smiles from Flynn—“Pat with his religion retrieved the situation. He gave Michael exactly two choices.Column A was seventy-to-ninety in a house of permanent correction. Column B, he could play ball with God’s legions, earn himself an amnesty, and screw the front row of the Folies-Bergères. Michael communed with his Maker for all of twenty seconds, consulted his ethical conscience, and found it in him to go for Column B.”
Flynn was standing in the tin shed, beckoning Burr and Strelski to come in. The shed stank of bat, and the heat sprang at them like heat out of an oven. There were bat droppings on the broken-down table and on the wood bench and on the collapsed plastic chairs around the table. Bats hugged each other like scared clowns in twos and threes, upside down from the iron girders. A smashed radio stood on one wall, beside a generator with a row of old bullet holes in it. Someone rubbished the place, Burr decided. Someone said, If we’re not going to use the place anymore, no one is, and smashed everything that would smash. Flynn took a last look round outside, then closed the shed door. Burr wondered whether closing the door was a signal Flynn had brought green mosquito coils. The printed writing on the paper bag said, Save the globe. Go without a bag today. Flynn lit the coils. Spirals of green smoke began climbing into the tin roof, making the bats fidget. Spanish graffiti on the walls promised the destruction of the Yanqui.
Strelski and Flynn sat on the bench. Burr balanced one buttock on a broken chair. Car, he decided. Those tracks were car tracks. Four wheels going straight. Flynn laid his machine gun across his knees, crooked a forefinger round the trigger and closed his eyes in order to listen to the chatter of the cicadas. The strip had been built by marijuana smugglers in the sixties, Strelski had said, but it was too small for today’s shipments. The dopers of today flew 747 transports with civil markings, hid their stuff in manifested cargo and used airports with state-of-the-art facilities. And for the run home they stuffed their planes with mink coats for their hookers and fragmentation grenades for their friends. Dopers were like anyone else in the transport business, he said: they hated to ride home without a load.
Half an hour passed. Burr was feeling sick from the mosquito coils. Tropical sweat was springing out of his face like shower water, and his shirt was wringing wet. Strelski passed him a plastic bottle of warm water. Burr drank some and mopped his brow with his soaked handkerchief. The snitch re-snitches, Burr was thinking: and we get blown apart. Strelski uncrossed his legs to make his crotch comfortable. He was nursing his .45 automatic on his lap and wore a revolver in an aluminum ankle cup.
“We told him you were a doctor,” Strelski had said. “I wanted to tell him you were a duke, but Pat here wouldn’t have it.”
Flynn lit another mosquito coil, then, as part of the same operation, leveled his machine gun at the door while he moved sideways in silent high strides. Burr didn’t see Strelski move at all, but when he turned he discovered him standing flat against the back wall, with his automatic pointed at the roof. Burr stayed where he was. A good passenger sits tight and keeps his mouth shut.
The door opened, flooding the shed with red sunlight. The elongated head of a young man, ravaged by shaving spots, peered round it. Ears like ping-pong bats, Burr confirmed. The scared eyes examined each of them in turn, resting longest on Burr. The head vanished, leaving the door ajar. They heard a muffled cry of “Where?” or “Here?” and a conciliatory murmur in reply. The door was shoved wide, and the indignant figure of Dr. Paul Apostoll, alias Apo, alias Appetite, alias Brother Michael, strutted into the shed, less a penitent than a very small general who has lost his horse. Burr’s irritations were forgotten as the magic seized him in its spell. This is Apostoll, he thought, who sits at the right hand of the cartels. This is Apostoll, who brought us the first word of the Roper’s plan, who conspires with him, eats his salt, blows the walls out with him on his yacht, and sells him down the river in his spare time.
“Meet the doctor from England,” Flynn said solemnly, indicating Burr.
“Doctor, how d’you do sir,” Apostoll replied in a tone of offended gravity. “A little class will make a pleasant change. I surely admire your great country. Many of my forebears are of the British nobility.”
“I thought they were Greek crooks,” said Strelski, who on Apostoll’s appearance had immediately adopted a stance of smoldering hostility.
“On my mother’s side,” said Apostoll. “My mother was related to the Duke of Devonshire.”
“You don’t say,” said Strelski.
Apostoll didn’t hear him. He was speaking to Burr.
“I a
m a man of principle, Doctor. I believe that as a Britisher you will appreciate that. I am also a child of Mary, privileged to enjoy the guidance of her legionaries. I am not judgmental. I give counsel according to the facts that are supplied to me. I make hypothetical recommendations based on my knowledge of the law. Then I leave the room.”
The heat, the stench, the clatter of the cicadas were forgotten. This was work. This was routine. This was any agent-runner debriefing his joe in any safe house in the world: Flynn in his plain cop’s Irish brogue, Apostoll with his courtroom lawyer’s truculent precision. He’s lost weight, thought Burr, remembering the photographs, noting the sharpened jaw and sunken eyes.
Strelski had taken charge of the machine gun and ostentatiously given Apostoll his back while he covered the open doorway and the airstrip. Lucan sat tensely at his penitent’s side, head tilted, eyebrows raised. Lucan wore blue denims, but Apostoll was dressed for the firing squad, in a long-sleeved white shirt and black cotton trousers, and round his neck a gold chain with a figure of Mary holding out her arms. His waved black toupee, artfully awry, was too big for him. It occurred to Burr that he had picked up the wrong one by mistake.
Flynn was doing the agent-runner’s housekeeping: What is your cover for this meeting, did anybody see you driving out of town? What time do you have to be back in circulation, when and where shall we meet next? What happened about Annette in the office who you say was trailing you in her car?
Here Apostoll glanced at Father Lucan, who remained staring into the middle distance.
“I recall the matter you mention, and it is resolved,” Apostoll said.
“How?” said Flynn.
“The woman concerned conceived a romantic interest in me. I was urging her to join our praying army, and she mistook my purposes. She has apologized, and I have accepted her apology.”
But this was already too much for Father Lucan. “Michael, that is not an accurate rendering of the truth,” he said severely, removing his long hand from the side of his face in order to speak. “Michael’s been two-timing her, Patrick. First he screws Annette, then he screws her roommate. Annette gets suspicious, so she tries to check him out. What’s new?”
“Can I take the next question, please?” Apostoll snapped.
Flynn placed two pocket tape recorders on the table and set them going.
“Are the Blackhawks still in, Michael?” Flynn inquired.
“Patrick, I did not hear that question,” Apostoll replied.
“Well, I did,” Strelski retorted. “Are the cartels still going for fucking combat helicopters? Yes or no. Jesus!”
Burr had seen people play good-cop bad-cop before. But Strelski’s disgust seemed alarmingly genuine.
“I make it my business not to be in the room when matters of that nature are discussed,” Apostoll replied. “To use Mr. Roper’s felicitous expression, it is his art to fit the shoe to the foot. If Blackhawks are necessary to Mr. Roper’s vision, they will be included.”
Strelski scribbled something angry on a pad. “Anybody got a date for finalizing this thing?” he demanded roughly. “Or do we tell Washington, wait another fucking year?”
Apostoll gave a contemptuous laugh. “Your friend must contain his patriotic ardor for instant gratification, Patrick,” he said. “Mr. Roper is emphatic that he will not be hurried, and my clients are in full agreement with him. ‘What grows well grows slowly,’ is an old and tested Spanish proverb. As Latin people, my clients have a very mature sense of time.” He glanced at Burr. “A Marian is stoical,” he explained. “Mary has many detractors. Their scorn sanctifies her humility.”
The to-and-fro resumed. Players and places . . . consignments ordered or delivered . . . money entering or leaving the Caribbean financial laundromat . . . the cartels’ latest building project for downtown Miami . . .
Finally Flynn smiled at Burr in invitation: “Well now, Doctor, would there be anything at all by way of an interest of your own that you might be wishing to pursue with Brother Michael here?”
“Well, yes, Patrick, thank you, there is,” Burr said courteously. “Being new to Brother Michael—and of course very greatly impressed by the quality of his assistance in this matter—I’d like to ask him first a couple of broad, background questions. If I may. More of texture, shall we say, than content.”
“Sir, you are most welcome,” Apostoll cut in hospitably, before Flynn could answer. “It is always a pleasure to match intellects with an English gentleman.”
Start wide and come in slowly, Strelski had advised. Wrap it in your British cotton wool.
“Well, there’s a riddle to me in all this, Patrick, speaking as Mr. Roper’s fellow countryman,” said Burr to Flynn. “What’s Roper’s secret? What’s he got that all the others didn’t have? The Israelis, French, Cubans, all of them offered to supply the cartels with more effective weaponry, and all of them except the Israelis came away without a deal. How did Mr. Richard Onslow Roper succeed where everybody else failed in persuading Brother Michael’s clients to buy themselves a decent army?”
To Burr’s surprise, a glow of unlikely warmth lit Apostoll’s scrawny features. His voice acquired a lyrical tremor.
“Doctor, your countryman Mr. Roper is no ordinary salesman. He is an enchanter, sir. A man of vision and daring, a piper of people. Mr. Roper is beautiful because he is beyond the norm.”
Strelski muttered an obscenity under his breath, but there was no stopping Apostoll’s flow.
“To pass time with Mr. Onslow Roper is a privilege, sir, a carnival. Many men, coming to my clients, despise them. They fawn, they bring gifts, they flatter, but they are not sincere. They are carpetbaggers looking for a quick buck. Mr. Roper addressed my clients as equals. He is a gentleman, but he is not a snob. Mr. Roper congratulated them on their wealth. On exploiting the asset that nature had given them. On their skill, their courage. The world is a jungle, he said. Not all creatures can survive. It is right that the weak should go to the wall. The only question is, who are the strong? Then he treated them to a film show. A very professional, very competently assembled film show. Not too long. Not too technical. Just right.”
And you stayed in the room, Burr thought, watching Apostoll inflate with his story. On somebody’s ranch or in somebody’s apartment, surrounded by the hookers and the peasant boys with jeans and Uzis, lounging among the leopardskin sofas and the megasized television sets and the solid-gold cocktail shakers. With your clients. Captivated by the aristocratic English charmer with his film show.
“He showed us the British special soldiers storming the Iranian Embassy in London. He showed us American special forces on jungle training, the American Delta Force, and promotion film of some of the world’s newest and smartest weaponry. Then he asked us again who the strong were, and what would happen if the Americans ever got tired of spraying herbicide on Bolivian crops and seizing fifty kilos in Detroit, and decided instead to come and drag my clients from their beds and fly them to Miami in chains and subject them to the humiliation of a public trial under United States law in the manner of General Noriega. He asked whether it was right or natural that men of such wealth should be unprotected.‘You do not drive old cars. You do not wear old clothes. You do not make love with old women. Then why do you deny yourselves the protection of the newest weapons? You have brave boys here, fine men, loyal; I see it in their faces. But I wouldn’t think there’s five in a hundred of them would qualify for the fighting unit I’m proposing to put together for you.’ After that, Mr. Roper described his fine corporation to them, Ironbrand. He pointed to its respectability and diversity, its tanker fleet and transportation facilities, its noted trading record in minerals, timber and agricultural machinery. Its experience in informal transportation of certain materials. Its relations with compliant officials in the major ports of the world. Its familiarity with the creative use of offshore companies. Such a man could cause Mary’s message to shine in the darkest pit.”
Apostoll paused, but only to sip
some water from the glass that Father Lucan had poured him from a plastic bottle.
“Gone were the days of suitcases packed with hundred-dollar bills, he went on. Of swallowers with olive-oiled condoms in their bellies being hauled off to the X-ray room. Of small planes running the interdiction gauntlet across the Gulf of Mexico. What Mr. Roper and his colleagues were offering them was trouble-free, door-to-door shipment of their product to the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe.”
“Dope,” Strelski exploded, unable to endure any more of Apostoll’s circumlocutions. “Your clients’ product is dope, Michael! Roper is trading guns for refined, processed, nine-nine-nine fucking cocaine, calculated at airstrip fucking prices! Mountains of the shit! He’s going to ship it to Europe and dump it there and poison kids and ruin lives and make megamillions! Right?”
Apostoll remained aloof from this outburst. “Mr. Roper wished for no cash advances from my clients, Doctor. He would finance all of his side of the bargain out of his own resources. He did not hold out his hand. The trust he bestowed on them transcended the normal trust of man. If they cheated on the deal, he assured them, they could ruin his good name, bankrupt his corporation and turn away his investors forever. Yet he had confidence in my clients. He knew them as good men. The greatest blessing, he said—the greatest guarantee of security from interference—was to finance the entire enterprise a priori out of his own pocket until the day of reckoning. That was what he proposed to do. He placed his faith in their hands. Mr. Roper went further. He emphasized that he had no intention of competing with my clients’ customary European correspondents. He would enter and leave the chain entirely in accordance with my clients’ wishes. Once he had delivered the merchandise to whomever my clients chose to nominate as the recipient, he would regard his task as done. If my clients were reluctant to name such persons, Mr. Roper would be happy to arrange a blind hand-over.”