Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Virgin

“Tsigarette?”

Not that either, I said. Nothing just now, but thanks all the same.

“Is bad sea. Not to worry that you sick.”

His accent was hard to place. There was a Baltic undertone to it, and if I’d had to guess I’d have labelled him Finnish or Estonian.

“You American?”

“Irish,” I said.

“Irish. Hah.”

He went away. An odd crew, I decided. One expects smugglers to be natives of the port from which they operate. On the south coast of England and the Isle of Wight, smuggling has long been a family occupation, with the tricks of the trade passed down from father to son over the centuries. It seemed odd that this particular smuggler would have put together a crew of foreigners. The Baltic giant was no native of Devon, nor was the dark man with the spade-shaped beard, who, now that I thought about it, had a definite flavor of Eastern Europe in his voice.

Time passed slowly. Most of the men were downstairs, and I was torn between a desire to join them – obviously it would be warmer there, with the wind less of a factor – and the stronger desire to stay by myself. The channel crossing was something like eighty miles, and I had no idea how long it was going to take. The boat did seem to be traveling at a good pace, but I had no idea what that might mean in knots – or what knots meant in real miles per hour.

I suppose we were halfway across when the Irishman sat down next to me.

“I’m told you’re a kinsman of mine,” he said. “Where are ye from?”

I looked at him. I couldn’t place his accent. “Then you’re Irish yourself,” I said.

“I am.”

That was no help. I said something about Liverpool.

“And you’re after saying good-day to Mother England, are ye?”

“I am that.”

“Not one of those IRA lunatics, I hope.”

“Oh, hardly that,” I said. “It seems I wrote a check and put some other lad’s name on the bottom of it, do you see?”

He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. He told me his name was John Daly, and that his home was in County Mayo, and he’d spent some good days in Liverpool. Just where did I live in Liverpool? And did I know this chap, and that chap, and-

Someone called him about then, and he slapped me on the back again. “More bloody orders,” he said. “What you get when you take up with foreigners. They won’t keep me long, and I’ve a bit of holy water I’ll bring with me when I can. We’ll have ourselves a few jars and talk about the old place, shall we?”

“Ah, God save ye,” I said, or something like that.

And God help me, I thought. Something rather odd was going on and I seemed to be somewhere in the middle of it, along with being somewhere in the middle of the English Channel. I wondered whether he believed I was Irish or whether he was playing along with me. I wondered if we would ever get to France. I wondered why the crew was composed of so many foreigners. I wondered whatever had prompted me to leave New York.

A little while later I found out. The foreigners weren’t members of the crew.

They were the cargo.

I was feigning sleep again when I got the message. Evidently my act was a good one, because a trio of men in leather jackets passed me without notice and stood talking at the rail. The group did not include any of the men I had previously spoken to. With the steady roar of the wind, I could not at first make out any of what they were saying, but they did not sound English. Then the wind died down a bit, and it became evident that the reason they did not sound English is that they were speaking Russian.

I caught a few words here, a few words there. They were talking about guns and supplies and explosives and revolution. I listened intently while the wind blew up and died down, blew up and died down again. It was extremely frustrating. My Russian is fluent, but with the noise the wind was making I would have had trouble understanding them whatever language they spoke. On top of that they seemed to be speaking a dialect of Russian with which I was not familiar, so that of those words which were intelligible there were some I had trouble understanding.

Still, I got the gist of it. They were on their way to some country where the groundwork was already being laid for a revolution.

They were set to overthrow a government.

When they went away, leaving me with no idea of just what government they were overthrowing, or when, or why, I pulled the mackintosh over my head and thought about frying pans and fires. It occurred to me that all of this was some extraordinarily involved put-on concocted for my benefit. This was a tempting theory, and in a way it made as much sense as anything else. Because why on earth would a batch of Russian agents be sneaking across the English Channel in a smuggler’s boat? And what government were they going to overthrow?

“Ah, there ye are!” It was Daly, my Irish friend, with a leather-covered flask in his hand. He sat cross-legged beside me, opened the flask, and took a long drink. “Bedad, there’s no better remedy for the cold.”

He sighed and passed the flask to me. “Slainte,” I said, and drank. It wasn’t just what my stomach had in mind, but by now I was used to the roll of the sea. Besides, the hell with what my stomach had in mind. A good draught of Irish whiskey was certainly what my mind had in mind, and right now that seemed the most important consideration.

He said, “Bloody Rooshians and Ukrahoonians and God knows what-all.” He took another drink and passed the flask to me again. I drank. “The lads ye have to work with in this bloody business. A couple of fine boys like you and myself, there should be a better place for us than this slogging old tub and this mucking ocean. Sure, and half an hour more and we’ll be in France.”

“A long way from County Mayo,” I said.

“Too far to walk, eh?” We laughed, and he had a drink and I had a drink. “Oh, a good long walk from County Mayo, and more than a hop skip jump from Liverpool, too. But France is still a damn sight closer to home than Afghanistan, I’d say.”

I went numb. I said, “How did you know I was going to Afghanistan?”

He looked at me, and I looked at him, and that went on for longer than was entirely comfortable. “Bejasus,” he said finally. “Then you’re for it, too, are ye?”

“Uh-”

“Those bloody Rooshians. Here we are like McGinnis and McCarthy, two Irishmen in on the same show and neither bloody one knows that the other one’s there. Do ye believe it now? Have ye ever heard its like?”

Oh, I thought, stupidly. He hadn’t meant that Afghanistan was a long ways from Ireland for me to be. He had meant it was a long ways from Ireland for him to be. Which meant that he and the bloody Rooshians were on their way to just that spot, which in turn meant that I suddenly knew what government it was that they intended to overthrow. And which also meant, now that I had opened my idiot mouth, that he thought I was a part of the group, bound for the same destination with the same purpose, and-

Oh.

“And here’s everyone saying you’re only a paying guest the captain was greedy enough to take on, and you not knowing about us or we about you. Why, I’ll let them know how things stand.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“What, and contend with these foreigners meself? Let the bleeders know from the start they’ve two Irish lads to deal with.”

“Have another drink first,” I suggested.

“Have it for me,” he said, passing me the flask. “I won’t be a minute.”

I took a long drink, shuddered, capped the flask. I had made a grave mistake, but now that I thought about it I could see how it might work out for the best. If they were really a crew of spies and saboteurs en route to Afghanistan, and if they were fool enough to accept me as one of their own, things might be infinitely easier. I could forget about the headaches of border-hopping. I’d just tag along with them, and when the whole bunch of us got to Afghanistan I could slip away and find Phaedra while they were busy billing and couping. I didn’t know very much about the government of Afghanistan, but I’ve long felt that most governments are better overthrown, and if they put up with slavery, that makes them even better candidates for a coup d’etat. So if my shipmates would get me into the country, they were then welcome to do as they pleased with it.