I said: “And if I ever got in your way?”
He shrugged. “I’d stamp on you, big as you are, you must know that.” He looked at me broodingly and said: “Well, it was just a thought.”
He was suddenly very alert again, alert and suspicious. He looked at me in utter astonishment, and said: “Och, is that what this is all about? I was trying to figure out how you had the guts to walk right in here, and there it was laid out for me to see, and...” He broke off, angry and puzzled. “But you couldn’t have known I’d make you an offer like that? Were you just...just waiting and hoping I would? You’d better tell me that fast, Cain.”
Play it off the cuff, I’d said. And there it was, written in red ink all over the white starched poplin. Not the best crib in the world, but in the moments thought I gave myself I couldn’t think of a better one; and if there was a more promising way out of that cave alive, I should have found it by now. I sort of smiled slowly, and said:
“In the course of time I’d have made you an offer. When I was sure I could trust you.”
Now, that wariness was suddenly honed to a razor edge. He put the S-phone slowly to his mouth, flicked it on, and said:
“Still all clear, Jerry?”
Histermann must have told him it was; and he must have sounded puzzled about it too. Listening to the answer, too faint for me to hear, Loveless laughed. “No, I didn’t know either until ten seconds ago. And I’m still not sure that I know. But we might just have a major development on our hands.” He stared at me thoughtfully as he listened and then spoke into the receiver again: “No, a very interesting development that I want to think about a bit. Keep your eyes skinned, Jerry, this is the crucial time.”
He put the instrument down and looked at me long and hard, and said: “I’m an evil man, I suppose, if you want to call it that. I’m alone in the world, and I’m an uneducated sort of bastard by your standards. But one thing I am not, Cain, I’m not a fool. Now, tell me why the hell I just shouldn’t blow your head off right now.”
I said: “If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t look for a reason, would you? You said just now that maybe you needed a man like me, isn’t that enough?”
“No. It’s not.”
“You mean that remark was just squeezed out of you? A slip of the tongue?”
“I mean that maybe I got carried away. Aye, you’d be useful, there’s no doubt about that at all. Maybe I’m thinking that you’re even indispensable under the circumstances; you, or someone like you. Someone like you, Cain. All I really need is another man who knows a bit about this botulin stuff.”
“Try and find one who’s willing to go along with you, or not scared stiff of it. Why do you think no one ever used this stuff in warfare? It’s just too damn dangerous, that’s why. And you haven’t got the brains to use it properly.”
“All right, and it’s still not enough.”
There were plenty more arguments, and it didn’t take long to think of the one that would appeal to him most.
I said: “Then there’s more. Plenty more.”
“Talk.”
“All right, I will. You know that the Egyptians are busy wiping out the Sudanese as fast as they can?”
He shrugged. “Common knowledge. Go on.”
“Did you read last Friday’s Jeune Afrique?”
He shook his head. “I don’t read French. Just German and Portuguese.”
I said: “The Sudanese have put out a call for help. They want some mercenaries.”
He was a commander carefully examining each side of a problem, testing it for possible loopholes. He said: “What’s the rights and wrongs of it, I don’t know about the Sudan, not at the moment.”
I said: “You should, that’s also common knowledge. It used to be the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. When the British pulled out, it became the Egyptian Sudan. Now it’s trying to be the Sudanese Sudan. They want autonomy, and the easiest way for the Egyptians to put a stop to that is just to wipe them all out, and that’s what’s going on there at this moment; genocide. It is casually reported once in a while in all the newspapers, so how come you don’t know about it? You want Jeune Afrique’s latest figures? A hundred and thirty-five thousand Sudanese slaughtered in the last three weeks, and it’s been going on now for almost a year. Interested?”
He said: “Weapons?”
“The Egyptians have sophisticated modern weapons, the Sudanese have spears. Their army, such as it was, was practically wiped out in the first few weeks, only nobody in the civilized world bothered to notice that. Now they’re just about down to bows and arrows and spears.”
“And who’s got all the money?”
“The Egyptians, of course.”
“So I’m expected to fight for the poor bloody Sudanese and get paid off in cotton, is that it? That’s about all the Sudan is good for.”
I said: “And peanuts. They grow a lot of peanuts.”
He was angry now. “You’re not out of the woods yet, Cain.” (I was, for the moment at least, obviously). He said: “And I don’t like men who make jokes, life and death’s a serious matter. Who’s going to pay me?”
I didn’t want to offer him too plausible a possibility. I sort of shrugged, and said: “According to Jeune Afrique, they can raise the money. But more important, they’re offering concessions.”
“For cotton? Let them rot.”
“For gold.”
“Gold? In the Sudan?”
“Three fairly productive mines, two very good ones, and six or seven that might turn out very well indeed.”
“Who’s working them now?”
“A bunch of Frenchmen and Belgians, but they’re mostly in Egyptian-held territory now.” Time for the clincher. I said: “The upper Nile Valley, an ideal place for bacteriological warfare, wouldn’t you say?”
Now he took a long, long time to think about it. More on principle than anything else, he asked idly, trying to mask the urgency: “Who else knows you’re here, Cain?”
