Philip Kerr - The Five Year Plan (1998)

She retrieved her wrist from his hand.

'Me? Sorry Captain Nemo, but I get claustrophobic taking a shower. No way would you ever get me down in one of those cigar tubes.' She went on glibly. 'So you see, even if I wanted to come with you, I couldn't. I'd be climbing up the walls in less than twenty minutes.'

'Then I guess I'd better be going.'

'It's what I've been telling you,' she said sombrely. 'You should never have done this, you know. You should never have stolen all this money. Maybe you can convince yourself it's just drug money and that it doesn't matter. One thief stealing from another and shit like that. But when you need guns to do it, then you're just as evil as the way the money was made. That's what counts. Nobody can build his happiness on another's pain. Next time you look in a mirror just see if I'm not right.'

'Evil?' He laughed. 'If you ever change your mind... Well, it's you I want to see Kate, not the police. I don't look in mirrors very much. Kind of got out of the habit while I was in prison. They don't have them in case you use the glass to make a point on yourself. But the sun. Now that's something I do look at, a lot. What I say is, why look for another light when there's one we already have? Good and evil? Don't be so melodramatic. You know, even the sun, the brightest thing in the solar system, has some black in it. Take a look at a picture of it sometime and see if I'm not right. When you do, you'll realize that those black spots are the sun's most obvious feature. And you know something else? Those spots, they affect everything, more than we'd ever suspected until quite recently. Nobody knows what causes them. Probably nobody ever will. But the next time you look at the sun, just ask yourself if I'm really as black a villain as you say. So long, Kate. It's been fun.'

Dave turned to walk out of the galley, and then remembered about Al. He said, 'By the way, you can take Al with you when you leave. Our partnership is dissolved.'

'No honor among thieves?'

'Just don't turn your back on him.'

Kate waved the handcuffs she had brought with her from the Carrera. Her own FBI set. Not the pair she was still wearing on one wrist. She said, 'I was saving these for you.'

'How did you do that anyway?' asked Dave. 'How did you get out of those cuffs?'

Kate smiled. 'Same way I got rid of my husband. I escaped.'

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.'

THE END