Филип Керр - A Five Year Plan

They came out of the galley and stepped back onto the aft deck, where Al was still held between the two Russian sailors.

Seeing Dave again, he said, ‘Hey Dave, you’re not planning to leave me here?’

‘When you’re back in Miami, Al, I don’t advise you try a career reading people’s minds. There isn’t any plan. Not any more.’

‘After all we’ve been through?’

‘I’ll always think fondly of you, Al. Right up until the moment when you were planning to kill me.’

Kate walked back to Al and quickly snapped the cuffs on his wrists. Turning to look at her, Al said, ‘I hope you’re as tough as you think you are, girlie. Because I’m gonna enjoy tellin’ people your sordid little story.’

Kate flashed Dave a narrow-eyed look. He was still in earshot. She said, ‘That’s what it is, all right. A sordid little story. It’ll make a change from all the other sordid stories we get in my line of work.’

‘Bitch.’

‘You know something, Mister? I’ve gained a special understanding of the criminal mind. It’s my considered opinion that mostly — and this includes you, sport — you’re all criminal and not much mind.’

When Kate and Al were back aboard Calgary Stanford’s boat, and they had let go the line attached to the Britannia, Dave climbed onto the hull of the submarine. As soon as the last sailor had left the boat, he took his own submachine gun and emptied the clip at the Britannia just along the waterline. As the boat started to sink, the rest of the sailors climbed down the deck hatch until only Dave and Gergiev were left standing on the foredeck.

’Zhalost,’ sighed Gergiev. He patted the wallet in his breast pocket, and added, ‘ Uminya balit zdyes.’

‘Hmmm?’

‘I said it’s a pity,’ repeated Gergiev, in English. ‘It give me a pain right here. In my wallet. All that cocaine.’

When Dave answered, his eyes were not on the yacht sinking into the sea with the cocaine and the three dead bodies, but on the one already cruising slowly away. The one with the real fortune aboard.

‘You’ll get over it,’ said Dave, and waved to Kate.

She did not wave back.

‘Given enough time, you can get over anything.’