Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

“Baynes didn’t try to interfere?”

“He was out of town. My colleagues went through the Department of State.”

“Pear Blossom,” I said, “can I come out this afternoon for my three hundred million?”

“Two hundred ninety million dollars,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Can I get it today?”

Pear Blossom looked petulant about it. I could see how it hurt her actuarial soul to part with that kind of money. She’d been boggled when Mourning Dove agreed to my terms, even though she must understand the drug market well enough to appreciate the impact endolin would make. “Mr. Belson,” she said, “Lao-tzu is paying you over sixty thousand dollars an ounce for endolin. I feel we should attempt to market before…”

“Come on, Pear Blossom,” I said. “You know I get the money when your embassy gets the endolin. Our embassy. There are forty-five thousand milligrams in a pound. You’ll recover half your investment in six months. You have an exclusive on imports. You’ve got a bargain.”

She shrugged wearily. It was the first human gesture I’d seen her make and my heart warmed to her. “Come on, Pear Blossom, honey. It’s going to double the business for you. You’ll be a company hero. Don’t weaken.”

And suddenly I was astonished to see her, there on my big viddiscreen, smiling at me. “Okay, Mr. Belson. I’ll have your check ready.” What nice teeth she had!

Pear Blossom had thawed enough to be downright agreeable. She congratulated me in Chinese and gave a demure bow as I took the little plastic check. The weather was getting cool and she wore a tight lavender sweater and Synlon jeans. “Pear Blossom,” I said, “how’d you like to join me for breakfast?” We were sitting in her big antiseptic office. Behind her desk was a huge photograph of the Chinese Olympic Soccer Team.

“That would be pleasant,” she said, almost bowling me over. I really hadn’t expected it. “There’s a cafeteria on the second floor.”

It was about ten-thirty in the morning and we had the room to ourselves. I had figs and a pot of green tea; Pear Blossom had coffee and a danish. After we’d finished I looked for a few moments at the array of photos of bright pill bottles on the walls and then smiled at her. “You really look good in that sweater,” I said.

Insensitive as Pear Blossom might seem, she appeared to be alert to the vibrations in my words. “Oh?” she said, coolly.

What the hell? I thought. “You’re really a very dandy looking young lady,” I said. “It’s a nice fall day outside. Why don’t you let me take you for a spin in my taxi?” Pear Blossom was probably in her late twenties; it occurred to me I hadn’t touched the firm skin of a really young woman in a coon’s age. Her jet-black Chinese hair shone in the fluorescent lights and her skin was flawlessly white.

Unfortunately, at my question her eyes had turned to something resembling Belson obsidian. “Mr. Belson,” she said, in the voice you use for lunatics, “what do you have in mind?”

I almost backed off, but I felt I’d be damned if I would. “Sex,” I said.

She put her little white hands firmly on the table and leaned toward me, speaking very distinctly. “ You old man ,” she said in the crispest English I’d ever heard. “You crazy, arrogant old man. I don’t want your body touching mine.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, grabbing what composure I could from what was flying out every window in the big room. I could see myself in her eyes: a clumsy old Caucasian wanting to soil her body with lecherous hands.

“I’m going back to my office, Mr. Belson,” she said, as distant as Fomalhaut. She got up and walked off, paying my check as she left the cafeteria.

I guess humility is good for you, if it can be kept to short bursts. It took me about three minutes to recover and remember how I really wasn’t a dirty old man and that my body was in terrific shape. Besides, I was rich, and gentle, and good with children. I was helpful to the downtrodden. I made excellent fettuccine. Ruth liked me. Anna probably loved me. Isabel ditto, if she still remembered me. I’d cured Myra.

I took the check out of my shirt pocket and read the figures again. I began to feel better.

I hadn’t bought Chinese securities for years, had never held a seat on the Peking exchange, and knew next to nothing about how to beat Chinese income taxes. But I didn’t want to put my money in anything American, for fear of Baynes’s tying it up. I’d have to get a Chinese lawyer, a Chinese broker and a Chinese accountant, for openers, and I didn’t want to spend the time right then doing research. I’d done a thorough study of gold about five years before, and there is nothing more comfortably international. What I did was take a quick look at current prices, sigh a little, and buy two hundred fifty million worth of Chinese gold. That meant a new number would be placed on a list in Zurich. The simplicity of gold always scares me. Thirteen thousand four hundred a troy ounce. All it’s really good for is filling teeth.

The other forty-eight million went into three bank accounts: one Chinese, one Japanese, and one—for sentiment—Scottish. Using the Chinese account and my Chinese name, I bought a five hundred thousand, paid-up American Express card, for traveling.

Back at the hotel that afternoon my passport card was already in the phone slot, with a scowling hologram of my face on one side and the crimson symbols for the People’s Republic on the other, together with the usual date and place-of-birth information and warnings against travel in Russia, Cuba or Brazil. I slipped the card into my billfold, called Miyagawa and Sumo, and told them I wanted to speak to Mattie.

They put her on immediately. She came on the screen as a stocky, no-nonsense type in her mid-fifties, with glasses and closely cut hair. There was a matronly toughness to her, but her voice was soft. “My agency finds no record of a Friends of the Poor,” she said, straight-out. “How do you account for that, Mr. Fine?”

I’d figured that might happen, since Miyagawa and Sumo had time to check it out.

“Look, Ms. Hinkle,” I said, “I’ll be straight with you. I’m not Aaron Fine, I’m Ben Belson. I want you to beat L’Ouverture Baynes so I can get my spaceship back.”

She peered at me through her glasses for a moment, impassively, and then said, “That’s pretty blatant, Mr. Belson.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “Illegal in every way.”

“I understand you’re not even an American citizen.”

“That’s right, too,” I said. “They took it away from me.” I decided the best defense was no defense at all. She’d have to make up her own mind, if she wanted me to buy her the election.

She pursed her lips and thought about it a moment. “Mr. Miyagawa said you spoke of several millions.”

“Fifty. I can let you have it in gold. Five million at a time. I’ll give you a number of an account in Zurich; you have it transferred where you want it.”

“People get long prison terms for less,” she said.

“That’s the truth,” I said.

“How can I know you aren’t setting me up for just that? How can I know this phone call isn’t being recorded?”

I was lighting a cigar as she said these things. I took a big puff and then set it in a hotel ashtray. “Well,” I said, “you can never be sure. Anyway, I don’t think my phone is tapped. To answer your first question, why would I want to set you up for anything? So Baynes could beat you? You know as well as I do he’s already got you beat.”

She pursed her lips again, in a schoolteacherly way. “I have other enemies,” she said.