Douglas said into his silence. “Sorry for that. I’m a little—I’m not myself right now.”
“Whoever you are, take my advice.”
Douglas sat in thought. A breeze sneaked through the shutters and stirred a tuft of his light brown hair; it rose shining in the slatted light and fell obediently back into place. “All right. I’ll talk to Tony right away, tell him to stand down, then I’ll fly myself to Nairobi.”
“I would prefer to go with you,” Fitzhugh said.
“Hassan is a busy guy, I might not get to see him today. I need somebody to mind the store.”
“You might need the moral support more.”
Douglas went to the mirror and brushed off his collar. In the reflection, Fitzhugh saw his knowing smile. “What you mean is, you don’t trust me to go through with it when I’m sitting there, eyeball to eyeball with him.”
“Very well. Yes, that’s what I meant.”
He turned around, the smile fading. “I got myself into this, I’ll get myself out.”
Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia
THE UKRAINIAN, a dark-haired man with coal dust on his jaws, arrived Sunday night, on the same Kenya Airways commuter that carried Phyllis Rappaport. The next morning Mary brought him to Dogpatch, where Dare waited with the Hawker’s records tucked under an arm. He steered his customer to the plane, which the ground crew had finished cleaning, inside and out, an hour ago. It looked so good that Dare was almost sincere when he said he hated to part with it. The Ukranian examined the interior, from the cockpit to the rear of the cargo bay, then did a thorough walk-around outside, tugging the flaps, inspecting the props, the undersides of the wings, the wheel wells. He frowned at a water jug and a few plastic bags that some sloppy ground crewman had left lying beneath the left wing, but the plane was in perfect condition. Going into the hangar, Dare presented the folder containing the aircraft’s maintenance records and documentation. The Ukrainian studied them as if he were cramming for a test.
“A lot of hours on these engines,” he remarked at one point.
“Completely overhauled—hell, damned near rebuilt. Mechanics finished up only yesterday. New O-rings, new props, the works.” Dare heard the overeagerness in his own voice and cautioned himself to sound a little less motivated. “Here’s the record of the overhaul,” he added, tugging at some papers, “but the best thing is to take her up for a little test drive. Take the controls, get a feel for her yourself.”
“I am not aviator. Businessman,” he declared. “But I will make offer now, then tomorrow, you fly me to Nairobi. Everything is okay, I will buy, we take care of paperwork, registration.”
“And the offer is—?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand.”
Dare bowed his head and let out a long, regretful sigh.
“Good price for Hawker-Siddley this old, this many hours,” the Ukrainian said.
Dare regarded the man’s face, with its three-day growth, its sharp, slightly Asiatic cheekbones, its black eyes like buttons, and knew he had no hope of getting his asking price, three hundred. He tried for it nonetheless. The Ukrainian dipped into his briefcase, pulled out a three-ring book of oversize checks, and asked Dare how to spell his name.
“Take or leave,” he said, handing over a check, dated for the following day. It was an old tactic, but the sight of the number 250,000 had the desired effect. They shook on it, then the man took the check back, saying he would hold on to it until tomorrow. If the plane performed as advertised, the money was Dare’s.
“We could fly to Nairobi right now,” Dare said. “Why wait?”
“I have here more business for today. Tomorrow.”
“So how do I do as a used-plane salesman?” he asked Mary after dropping their buyer off at the old Pathways camp, where he was staying.
“Better than you did as an airline executive.”
“Sweet thing! Honey bunch!” he said, clowning it up, bending his twang into curly-cues of sound. Sah-weeet thang! Hawnee buuunch! “That’s over and done. Come tomorrow, we’re gonna have us seven hundred grand in the bank. You ought to look a lot happier than you do.”
“The point is, I am now completely dependent on you,” Mary declared. “You’re my sugar daddy.”
“We’re gonna be man and wife. Property in common.”
“And that reporter—that doesn’t make me real happy.”
“Well, it does me. Wish I could be here to see Dougie boy’s face when that shit hits the fan.”
“Talking about her, do we still fly her today?”
“Hell, no. I ain’t riskin’ our investment, not for