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By Root 901 0

otherwise, and now the voice was back, and there was no Eddie to be the focus for his anxiety and anger. A streetwise man who'd gotten this far through the complex equation of brain and guts and instinct, he trusted that last quality most. Now it was telling him things that he didn't understand, couldn't reason out. Tony was right. It could just be a matter of clumsiness in the processing. That was one reason they were setting their lab up in east Baltimore. They could afford that now, with experience behind them and a viable front business setting up in the coming week. So he drank his wine and settled down, the rich, red alcohol soothing his abraded instincts.

'Give 'em until tomorrow.'

* * *

'So how was it?' the man at the wheel asked. An hour north of Bloodsworth Island, he figured he'd waited long enough to ask the silent petty officer who stood beside him. After all, they just stood by and waited.

'They fed a guy to the fuckin' crabs!' Oreza told them. 'They took like two square yards of net and weighted it down with blocks, and just sunk his ass - practically nothing left but the damned bones!' The police lab people were still discussing how to recover the body, for all he knew. Oreza was certain it was a sight he'd take years to forget, the skull just lying there, the bones still dressed, moving because of the water currents... or maybe some crabs inside. He hadn't cared to look that closely.

'Heavy shit, man,' the helmsman agreed.

'You know who it is?'

'What d'ya mean, Portagee?'

'Back in May, when we had that Charon guy aboard - the day-sailer with the candystripe main, that's who it was, I'll bet ya.'

'Oh, yeah. You could be right on that one, boss.'

They'd let him see it all, just as a courtesy that in retrospect he would as soon have done without, but which at the time had been impossible to avoid. He could not have chickened out in front of cops, since he, too, was a cop of sorts. And so he'd climbed up the ladder after reporting on the body he'd found only fifty yards from the derelict, and seen three more, all lying facedown on the deck of what had probably been the freighter's wardroom, all dead, all shot in the back of the neck, the wounds having been picked at by birds. He'd almost lost control of himself at that realization. The birds had been sensible enough not to pick at the drugs, however.

'I'm talking twenty kilograms - forty-some pounds of the shit - that's what the cops said, anyway. Like, millions of bucks,' Oreza related.

'Always said I was in the wrong business.'

'Jesus, the cops look like they all had hard-ons, 'specially that captain. They'll probably be there all night, way it sounded.'

* * *

'Hey,Wally?'

The tape was disappointingly scratchy. That was due to the old phone lines, the technician explained. Nothing he could do about that. The switch box in the building dated back to when Alexander Graham Bell was doing hearing aids.

'Yeah, what is it?' the somewhat uneven voice replied.

'The deal with the Vietnamese officer they got. You sure about that?'

'That's what Roger told me.' Bingo! Ritter thought.

'Where they have him?'

'I guess out at Winchester with the Russian.'

'You're sure?'

'Damned right. It surprised me, too.'

'I wanted to check up on that before - well, you know.'

'Sure thing, man.' With that the line went dead.

'Who is he?' Greer asked.

'Walter Hicks. All the best schools, James - Andover and Brown. Father's a big-time investment banker who pulled a few well-tuned political strings, and look where little Wally ends up.' Ritter tightened his hand into a fist. 'You want to know why those people are still in sender green? That's it, my friend.'

'So what are you going to do about it?'

'I don't know.' But it won't be legal. The tape wasn't. The tap had been set up without a court order.

'Think it over carefully. Bob,' Greer warned. 'I was there, too, remember?'

'What if Sergey can't get it done fast enough? Then this little fuck gets away with ending the lives of twenty men!'

'I don't like that very much either.'

'I don't like it at all!'

'Treason