The Devil's Game Read online

  Ellis turned to Haverner. “Sir,” he exclaimed, “isn’t your idea to … Well, you know … You must have some rule against collusion. I mean, splitting the pot seven ways. That’s better than one hundred and forty thousand dollars apiece. Not bad for two weeks spent in a tropical paradise! You don’t want that, so—”

  “I want to see what you do,” the Ramses head answered on a note of such calm as to sound above all wants. “My detectives’ reports, which are more thorough than you probably realize, make me deem a seven-way collusion impossible. You personally, for example … But no, I mustn’t give out information that might put one player at a disadvantage.” Julia spoke slowly. “Suppose everybody tell why they came.”

  “Might’s well, seeing you’ve already let your reason out,” Matt said from behind a smile that could have meant wry compassion.

  “Have I?” Her features were taut but her tone most soft. Silence stretched. Gayle broke it, perhaps in desperation. “Mr. Haverner, I can’t read law and contract language.” A nervous titter. “I can’t even balance a checkbook. If a leader in the game tells me I got to do figures, I’ll holler, ‘Unfair!’ Could you please explain how that whatsie about the prize money works?”

  The old man took another sip. “I went to considerable trouble there,” he replied. “In order to keep a million dollars after taxes, if given them in a straightforward way, a North American would have to receive an amount that would strain even my resources.” A sardonic note: “When a nation elects to be simultaneously the Empire and the Welfare State, it must expect to pay for its amusements. Sr. Cruz, being a Santa Anan, would theoretically be taxed at a lower rate. But in fact he’s in such disfavor with his current government—”

  “Not mine!” Orestes flared.

  Haverner was not annoyed. “In any event,” he said, “I feel sure you too would prefer a hard currency, Sr. Cruz. Certain items are most readily purchased in the United States … Well, my problem was how to eliminate income tax.

  “The method is simple in principle, though much high-powered talent was needed for the execution of it. Santa Ana is among the many countries with which the United States has a treaty forbidding double taxation. If you pay taxes to one government, you do not pay them to the other. Most such treaties limit the exemption, but not this one—an oversight with which I had a little something to do, years ago. From Washington’s viewpoint, it encourages Yankee technicians to accept work in friendly underdeveloped nations.”

  “Yankee agents,” Orestes said.

  Blandly, Haverner ignored him. “Now the law of Santa Ana, in order to attract philanthropies, provides that foreign nationals employed as directors—full or associate—as directors of such organizations here, … that these people pay minimal income taxes. In fact, this is graduated inversely to the amount of capital invested by their groups in Santa Ana.

  “Some of you may have heard of the Haverner Foundation. It’s a perfectly lawful nonprofit organization, recognized as such by all governments concerned, which carries out both scientific and humanitarian projects. For example, it’s provided housing for mainland workers who used to live in hovels; it’s undertaken medical and psychological studies, which include today’s affair. … Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, sir!” Matt whooped. “You’re a great man, Mr. Haverner!”

  “I do follow you in truth,” Orestes said. “You get more out of the workers if they live in better kennels; your genetic research produces trees that wear out the soil faster than ever before—Oh, yes.”

  Gayle’s breath hissed. Larry barely smiled. Byron took some wine, looking embarrassed. Ellis and Julia flickered glances back and forth from host to guest. Matt managed so say, “I know your kind, Cruz—” and Orestes frigidly to answer, “So does Mr. Haverner. I was only explaining to the rest of you—” before the unruffled old man interrupted them.

  “In your case, Sr. Cruz, any monies due you will be paid in the Republic of Hidalgo, where the Foundation also operates under similar rules and whose government has no interest in you … or a mildly favorable one, considering which party is in power there. But the payment will be in Swiss francs, just as for every other winner.” He nodded. “Swiss francs, as specified in your contracts, because the dollar does not look very durable of late, does it? Winners may leave their winnings in Zurich, or convert them piecemeal to any other currency, or all at once, whichever they prefer. The amount will, however, be the exact equivalent of one million United States dollars, at the rate on the day your game ends.” He leaned back, contemplated his fingernails on the table, and continued, “A million dollars hardly ever means ‘a million dollars’ these days. Winners will be appointed to the board of directors of the Haverner Foundation for a ten-year period at salaries which, over that ten years, add up to whatever sums they have won. They will, though, draw the entire amounts due them at once, as a nonretumable advance; and they’ll be given no duties. The Santa Anan tax on such income, under such circumstances, will be approximately one dollar per year—a total of ten dollars, and not one cent owed to the United States … or, of course, Hidalgo.”

  “That could raise a big stink,” Byron murmured.

  “I do advise discretion,” Haverner said. “Conceivably this will cause amendment of the treaty. But that can’t affect those who’ve already, quite legally, earned their money and paid their tribute. And as for myself, I don’t care if a loophole of mine gets plugged. I can always find more or—likelier at my age—die and be done.”

  He spared whatever protestations they might have felt were called for by blinking at Ellis and proceeding. “You have studied the contract and the attached legal information, Mr. Nordberg. Do you agree the instrument is safe and sound? That, once signed, it will be irrevocable, independent of my own death, disability or change of heart?”

  Hesitation dwelt for an instant behind the bifocal lenses, until: “Yes, sir. I don’t know why I should give my competitors free advice, though.”

  “You’ve just done that,” Julia said dryly. “You’ll play the game, won’t you?”

  After a while Gayle seemed once more to feel she must end silence. Midday flamed beyond the blinds. Air-conditioned, the room was cool, a shadowiness of hardwood floors and mahogany furniture in Colonial style. On one pale plaster wall hung a faded painting of a boy, a girl, and a scroll that read “Arturo Principe de Galles y su Esposa la Infanta Catalina de Aragon” —a legend as dim, failing, forgotten as their hopes. Outside, a mockingbird fluted.

  “We … we talked about … telling each other why we’re here, why we want—need—money,” Gayle said. “It’d make things kind of friendlier, wouldn’t it?”

  Haverner showed faint mirth. Matt was noncommittal, Ellis totally impassive, Julia more tense than before. Orestes frowned. Byron nodded slowly. Larry smiled. It was he who drawled, “I daresay we overlap, some of us. Like, we’re broke. I don’t mind admitting I am—and, worse, I’ve got an expensive ambition.” He cocked an eye at Orestes. “Maybe not as expensive as what I suspect yours is, Sr. Cruz. But still, it wants a lot of bucks.”

  “What is it?” asked the Santa Anan, word by word.

  Larry shrugged. “Call me a boat bum. I want to build my own schooner, and take aboard the right crews—in succession, I suppose, because this is for the rest of my life.” Some would have called his grin boyish, some childish. “Broadminded broads among ’em, yes.”

  “What will you do thereafter?” Orestes inquired.

  “Cruise the world.”

  “Nothing else—for a lifetime?”

  “Well, I’ve got ideas about shipping occasional oceanographers and marine biologists and such, and trying my own hand at science.”

  “We should have a talk about that, Mr. Rance,” Ellis proposed.

  Anger broke through Matt’s shell. “Behind everybody’s back? Oh, no, you don’t!”

  “And how would you figure to stop us, Flagler?” Larry responded in genial contempt. “For your information, I hold a black b
elt in karate.” To Ellis: “However, I kind of doubt we’d find a lot in common, Mr. Nordberg. What do you care about the oceans?”

  “We can discuss that later,” said the man from Minnesota. “No,” said Larry. “I’m not taking orders”—a prickly look at Matt—“but I’m not after trouble either, like what comes from rousing everybody else’s suspicions. We’ll discuss things right here or not at all.”

  Ellis’s gaze darted around the table. “Very well,” he clipped. “Shall we state our reasons, then? Is that agreed?”

  The right side of Julia’s mouth tugged upward. “Why not? We can’t spend two weeks totally fenced off from each other. And the biographies, the motives—data to take into account, in planning our challenges, hm?”

  “You start, baby, if that’s how you feel,” Matt said.

  Julia considered the old man. “You know about us, Mr. Haverner. Will you hold us to the truth?”

  “I fear not,” he answered softly, and regarded them one by one. “You see, the game has already commenced.”

  There was another stillness.

  Julia sighed, before lifting her spine in defiance. “Never mind,” she said. “I guess I have let my own cat out of the bag. Okay.”

  Staring into the luminous blankness of the blinds she went on, flat-voiced: “I’m married. We live on Long Island. My husband’s a very new lawyer, doesn’t earn much yet, has a long commute—but Manhattan’s no place to raise a kid nowadays. We have one. A girl. Name of Kilby. Six years old. Three years ago, her kidneys failed.” She paused, as if gathering strength. “A transplant—from an accidentally dead child, because Malcolm, my husband, Malcolm and I weren’t suitable—a transplant didn’t take, and left her so frail that a second attempt would probably kill her. So she’s kept alive by regular treatments on a dialysis machine. Not one of those new portable units, nor a standard sort owned by us and used at home, which would have made the expense bearable. The complications following that transplant would make it too dangerous. She goes to the hospital three times a week, and already once it was only the equipment there for emergencies that saved her. The cost is well over thirty thousand dollars a year. It may go higher if she comes to require additional therapies. In that case, we’re helpless. We’ve used up our resources by now: insurance, savings, borrowings, charities, begs. Yet we don’t count as paupers whom the government would underwrite.” Her head lifted together with her voice. “And that’s not going to happen, either. We’ve been through enough as is.”

  Byron registered distress. Larry gnawed his lip. Matt flushed with a somehow offended expression. Ellis frowned. The scowl on Orestes might have been aimed at a personal enemy.

  “Oh, God,” Gayle said into the emptiness, “I’m sorry. If I win—alone I mean—Julia, I’ll help. You dig?”

  “I do,” Ellis told her. “You’re fishing for a collaborator.”

  “I am not!” Tears came forth. Gayle rubbed them. Julia reached out to pat her hand.

  Byron Shaddock turned reflective. “Hm. I imagine secret agreements. Well, since presumably you’ve no way to prevent them, Mr. Haverner, doubtless you have no rule against them.” The host barely nodded.

  It was a diversion from the awkwardness of a minute earlier. Likewise was it when Larry squeezed Gayle’s shoulder and asked, “So what’re you after? Just a life of ease?”

  “A life, anyhow,” Her words were barely to be heard. “I … I … I’m sick of being poor.” She clenched fists on lap and plunged ahead. “Okay, I’ve got no talents, except maybe I could be a good artist if I wasn’t always tired from what grubby jobs I can find…. When I remarried, my alimony stopped, and my second husband, that bum, you might as well try getting blood from a banker, after we split up—” She forced a smile. “Your boat, Larry, that sounds exciting.” He held his peace.

  Matt Flagler stirred. “Sure, Gayle, I understand.” He beamed while she fished a handkerchief from her purse and sniffled into it. “Me, I’m out of a job myself, and I’ve gotten tired of always being somebody else’s man, you know what I mean? Six years I spent in that pisspot—uh, ’scuse me—that dump Vizcaya, managing a casino … belonged to the Family, my wife’s in the Family, know what I mean? … The Family had this here casino. Then came the goddamn stupid revolution, the goddamn colonels—” His excitement was waxing. “They got reform like pimples; they closed us down in 1977, and then what could I do? Hang on, that’s all, hang on. Yeah, try raising an American family anywhere on—” His fist thumped the table; the fork rattled on his plate. “The restoration last year, the sensible people back in power, yeah, sure, now the casino could open again. Only Papa—Papa Delvecchio, my father-in-law—he dropped dead back in the States, and had no sons to stick up for his daughter, and the Family picked somebody else. Me with a wife and four kids! You call that loyalty? Gratitude?”

  He jerked to a halt, glowered around, took forth his pack of cigarettes and lit one. As the ashes developed, he dropped them on the remnants of this meal. “Okay,” he said, subdued. “Okay. I told you. You tell me. Be fair, huh?”

  “You did not tell us why you stayed in Santa Ana during the reign of the junta,” Byron observed. “Possibly the U.S.A. is still too hot for you?”

  “Shuddup,” Matt retorted. “Shuddup. Why’ie you here?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of you, Mr. Shaddock,” Ellis said. “You’re independently rich, besides being the son of a Senator and … What’s a million to you?”

  “The game,” Byron admitted. A waitress arrived to refill his glass. He tasted. “A fine vintage, Mr. Haverner. Too bad we drink it distracted like this…. Yes. The game. I wasn’t told the details in advance, of course. But I was given to understand a no-holds-barred—competition was being arranged down here.” He bowed and smiled toward his host as he sat. “It’s more fascinating than I hoped.”

  A tic danced in Orestes’s cheek. “And how will you spend your prize, should you win?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Byron answered. “Put it into a genuine charity, perhaps.”

  “Like mine?” Julia’s smile came and went. “I warn you, I have no shame.”

  “Yeah, real charity’s a thing between man and man,” Larry said, “not a check you write to some outfit whose president makes more money than you do, because that way you can take a cut off your income tax. If I win, well, I can do without their Christing or their off-key trumpets, at Christmas and Easter, but I’ll pass a few bucks on to the Salvation Army. That’s real. It doesn’t help Humanity; it helps Joe and Bill and Jane when they’re down on their luck. The rest of the organizations can go whistle.”

  “You quite through with the sermon?” Matt said.

  “What’s your aim, Sr. Cruz?” Byron asked politely.

  “You may as well know. The revolution.” Orestes used thumb and forefinger to pull lips back from teeth. He pointed to the gaps where several had been. In the same level tone as before, he continued, “Two of those rotted in my jaw when I was a boy. How was I to afford dental care? Where I was, I had never heard of it! The rest were knocked out in prison, when I was being interrogated after the so-called restoration.” To Haverner: “I am not grateful to you. The old families that have come back to what they think is power are your puppets, and your CIA’s. You got me sent to Tanoa as a ‘condition of probation,’ for me to entertain you. Eh? Meanwhile my brothers are being shot, flogged, clubbed in the testicles, left starving among lice and cockroaches. I am going to win this game, Mr. Haverner, and I am going to spend the money on guns and propaganda and liaison with my brothers in Cuba, Africa, around the world.”

  Having got where it was bound, the matter-of-fact explanation stopped.

  “To be sure, to be sure.” The old man seemed, again, mildly amused. “You can trust me to honor my commitment if you win, though you may need a cover story for the Foundation’s regular administrators. Why not? After all, supposing your glorious revolution succeeds, which it possibly may, and stays incorruptible, which is beyond possib
ility—I won’t live long enough to be affected.”

  Orestes gulped air. Ellis Nordberg stared at him, and when he himself spoke his own breath was uneven. “You mean, you really mean you … you’d give that kind of money … to support terrorism? By all that’s holy, then I’ve got to be the winner!”

  “And what is your purpose?” Julia demanded.

  “A business investment,” Ellis told them. “What makes you liberals think business is a zero-sum game? We create jobs, don’t we? We mine minerals that’d otherwise lie unused till the sun grows cold. We, hell, you, Mr. Haverner, you plant fruit trees where nothing but jungle was before …”

  He put a hatch cover on his vehemence. “Rance, you mentioned being interested in oceanography. All right. So am I. It’s the coming thing. The next frontier. Oil, metals, tide motors, scientific fisheries … food, plastics from plankton, seaweed … A clear million today, put into the right shares and the right people, could be a clear billion in another ten years. You might ask me for a job if I win.”

  “Looks like I’ll have to win,” Larry said. “I prefer breathing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Phytoplankton supply fifty percent of the earth’s oxygen, and already they’re contaminated. I don’t care for oil slicks either. And I do like whales and elbow room.”

  Ellis’s face bore a short-lived regret before he laughed. “Oh. An eco-freak. I’m disappointed. I thought you had more imagination, Rance. I really did.”

  Larry’s own restraint broke. “Could be you were right the first time. Because you know, Nordberg, I may just apply that imagination. Come my turn, I may just figure out a game that will kill you.”

  The pack was new; the cellophane crackled as it was tom; Anselmo shuffled skillfully before his master started the cards withershins around the table. He reshuffled after each cut. Aces were high, suits ranked as in bridge.

  Julia Petrie: deuce of diamonds. Triumph flared in her eyes; she was virtually certain to be the last, thus to have the most time for preparing her scheme. On the other hand, she would have the maximum chance to be eliminated before her turn came. She blanked expression out of her face.