Филип Керр - A Five Year Plan

‘I lived in New York for many years,’ explained the man with the flourishing mustache. ‘A dirty city, but also interesting.’

‘And you are, sir?’

‘I am Captain Lieutenant Eugene Luzhin, the executive officer on board,’ he said smoothly, and took a packet of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his boilersuit. ‘Do you mind if I smoke? Only it is forbidden when we’re on board the missile boat, and most of us are now desperate to get some fresh nicotine into our lungs. It’s been a week or two since we last surfaced.’

He did not wait for an answer, and nodded to his men, who took out their own cigarettes and began to light up. Even the man with the machine pistol. Luzhin did not offer Kate a cigarette, for which she was glad. Diplomacy might have meant she would have had to take it, and French cigarettes were too strong for her. These were as pungent as any she had ever encountered. It was small wonder that Frenchmen sounded so gravelly and sexy.

‘Captain Luzhin,’ she said.

‘Captain Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘The captain is still on the missile boat.’

‘Captain Lieutenant,’ she said, acknowledging his grinning correction. Was he still amused by her attempt to speak French? ‘I’m sorry sir, but is there something funny here? Something I’m missing?’

He exhaled a cloud of smoke as blue as a car exhaust and shrugged in that Gallic way they had.

‘Is that a yes or a no?’ she asked.

‘It’s just that I am not accustomed to a beautiful woman pointing a gun at me,’ said the captain lieutenant.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kate, glancing awkwardly at the Glock, and wondering where to put it.

‘That’s all right. As a matter of fact I was rather enjoying it.’ Puffing stylishly, with one eye closed against his smoke, he added, ‘It is like Humphrey Bogart in the film Casablanca, when this beautiful woman—’ He snapped his fingers as he tried to remember the name of the actress who had played Use.

It was Dave who supplied the answer.

‘Ingrid Bergman,’ he said. Catching Kate’s eye at last, he added, in a good imitation of Bogart, ‘Go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.’

Kate blushed with anger and pushed the Glock under the waistband of her shorts.

‘Now then,’ she said brusquely, addressing herself to the captain lieutenant. ‘These two men are wanted in the United States for piracy and drug smuggling. Hidden on this boat are 100 kilos of cocaine with a street value of twenty million dollars.’

The captain lieutenant whistled.

Even as she was making her explanation, Kate was wondering what could be in all the bulky black sports bags that were piled inside the boat. ‘But before we do anything else, I think we have to resolve the question of jurisdiction.’

‘A difficult matter,’ admitted the captain lieutenant. ‘I believe the Grand Duke is a British-registered ship. And this boat we are standing on. The Britannia. It is registered in the British Virgin Islands. At least that is what is painted on her stern.’

‘That’s true,’ said Kate. ‘But both these men are American citizens, and as such they should be tried for their crimes by an American court.’

Dave said, ‘You send me back to the States, and I’ll be facing a long prison sentence. Like I said before, go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.’

‘Is this another joke?’ she asked him angrily.

‘No, it’s no joke.’

‘Then why in hell are you grinning?’

Dave shrugged and looked for his missing watch.

‘We’re a long way from American jurisdiction,’ said the captain lieutenant. ‘May I remind you that these are international waters.’

Kate hardly wanted the two men as her prisoners. But there was something in Luzhin’s manner that made her want to win this particular argument. She said, ‘Nevertheless I insist that these two men be handed over to my custody. They’ll be held on board the Duke until we arrive in Mallorca, whereupon they’ll be immediately extradited back to the United States.’

‘Immediately?’ The captain lieutenant laughed again. ‘I hardly think so. These things take time.’

Dave said, ‘You’d really do that to me, Kate? After all that happened between us?’

‘Nothing happened between us. And just keep your mouth shut, unless you want to spend the rest of the voyage in handcuffs.’

‘Kate. Be fair. I can hardly stay silent about it, now can I? After all, it’s my ass that’s maybe going back to jail.’

‘You should have thought of that before you pulled this little stunt.’

‘And that’s your last word on the subject?’

‘Last word. Period.’ She added below her breath, but just loud enough for Dave to hear, ‘How I could have ever fallen for a crummy narcotics thief, I’ll never know.’

‘This was never about narcotics,’ Dave told her, still smiling, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

‘S’right,’ said Al. ‘We was after cash money on them other boats.’

‘You keep out of this,’ snapped Kate.

Once again Dave looked for his missing watch. Then he leaned toward the captain lieutenant and coolly lifting the executive officer’s forearm read the time on his watch. Like they were old buddies. Not that the Frenchman seemed to mind at all. Then Dave said something to Luzhin that Kate didn’t quite hear. Or perhaps didn’t understand.

‘I regret, I cannot accede to your request,’ Luzhin told Kate. ‘But I tell you what.’ He nodded at Al. ‘You can have him, the ugly one. And we’ll take the other one with us. That’s fair, isn’t it? Like the judgment of Solomon, yes? Half each, as it were.’ He nodded at one of his sailors. Straightaway the man threw away his cigarette, stepped into the cockpit and restarted the Britannia’s engines.

‘That’s the craziest idea I ever heard,’ said Kate. ‘If this is the way the French Navy does things—’

This time she caught the look that passed between Dave and the captain lieutenant and thought she could smell a rat. As if Dave had cut some private deal of his own. Maybe even bribed the guy.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘What’s going on here? You French—’

‘Who said anything about the French?’ shrugged the captain lieutenant, and flicked his cigarette across Kate’s shoulder into the water. ‘Not me.’

‘Well, if you’re not the French Navy, then whose damn Navy are you, Mister?’

Instinctively she started to reach for the Glock under her waistband. But the captain lieutenant smiled and caught her wrist in his own strong hand. Still smiling politely, he said, ‘ Pazhalsta,’ and took her gun away.

The Britannia nudged its way toward the sub, gently towing Calgary Stanford’s boat alongside. From the control station on top of the conning tower, another officer shouted down to a sailor standing on the foredeck of the sub. The sailor opened a deck hatch and tossed a line to the Britannia. As soon as they were tied off to the sub, the sailors aboard the yacht began to throw the Nike sports bags to the man standing on the foredeck, who dropped them quickly through the hatch.

When Kate turned to look for Jellicoe and Stanford, she saw that another sailor had boarded the Comanche and disarmed the two men. By then it was clear that Dave was in league with the men from the sub. He paid close attention to the loading of the bags and from time to time would make some obviously good-humored remark to the other sailors, in Russian.

‘Dammit, you’re Russian,’ Kate told the captain lieutenant.

‘Yes, Russian,’ he said grinning back at her. ‘So, it’s true what they say. The FBI finds out everything in the end.’