"Of course, I do want you to take Aino away for a while. She's young, and she would misinterpret this. Let's be very frank. These men I bought for us -- they are brutal men who kill and die for pay. They must be given rewards and punishments that they can understand. They're whores with guns."
"I'm always happiest when I know the worst, Raf. You haven't told me the worst yet."
"Why should I confide in you? You never confide in me." Raf pushed an ashtray across the desk. "Have a cigarette."
Starlitz took a Gauloise.
Raf lit it with a flourish, then lit his own. "You talk a lot, Starlitz," he said. "You bargain well. But you never talk about yourself. Everything I discovered about you, I have found out through other people." Raf coughed a bit. "For instance, I know that you have a daughter. A daughter that you've never seen."
"Yeah, sure."
"I have seen your daughter. I have photos. She's not like you. She's cute."
"You've got photos, man?" Starlitz sat up. "Video?"
"Yes, I have photos. I have more than that. I have contacts in America who know where your daughter is living. She lives with those strange West Coast women."
"Yeah, well, I admit they're plenty strange, but it's one of those postnuclear family things," Starlitz said at last.
"Would you like to meet your daughter? I could snatch her and deliver her to you here in the Alands. That would be easy."
"The arrangement's not so bad as it stands," Starlitz said. "They let me send her kids'books... . "
Raf put his sock-clad feet on the desk. "Maybe you need to settle down, Starlitz. When a man gets to a certain age, he has to live with his decisions. Take me, for instance. Basically, I'm a family man."
"Wow."
"That's right. I've been married for twenty years. My wife's in a French prison. They caught her in '78."
"That's a long stretch."
"I have two children. One by my wife, one by a girl in Beirut. People think a man like Raf the Jackal must have no private life. They don't give me credit for my dreams. Did you know I've written journalism? I've even written poetry. Poetry in Italian and Arabic."
"You don't say."
"Oh, but I do say. I will say more, since it's just the two of us. No Russians here at the resort yet, to set up their tiresome bugging networks... . I have a good feeling about you, Stalitz. You and I, we're both postmodern men of the world. We saw an empire break to pieces. That had nothing to do with silly old Karl Marx, you know."
"Could be, man."
"It was the 1990s at work. Breaking up is very infective. It's everywhere now. It's out of control, like AIDS. Did you ever meet a Lebanese warlord? Jumblatt, perhaps? Berri? Splendid fellows. Men like lions."
"Never met "em."
"That's a very good life, you know -- becoming a warlord. It's what happens to terrorists when they grow up."
Starlitz nodded It was a very dangerous thing to have Raf so worried about his good opinion, but he couldn't help but be pleased.
"You seize a port," Raf explained. "You grow dope. You buy guns. It's like a little nation, but you don't need any lawyers, or any bureaucrats, or any ad-men, or any stupid bastards in suits. You have the guns, and you have the power. You tell them what to do, and they run and do it. Maybe it can't last forever. But as long as it lasts, it's heaven."
"This is good, Raf. You're leveling with me now. I appreciate that, I really do."
"The press says that I like to kill people. Well, of course I like to kill people! It's thrilling. It gives your life a heroic dimension. If it wasn't thrilling to kill people, people wouldn't buy tickets to movies where people are killed. But if I wanted to kill, I'd go to Chechnya, Georgia, Abkhazia. That's not the trick. Any idiot can become a warlord inside a war zone. The trick is to become a warlord where people are fat and soft and rich ! You want to become a warlord just outside a massive, disintegrating empire. This is the perfect spot! I know I've had my little setbacks in the past. But the ninties are the sixtiess upside down. This time, I'm going to win, and keep what I win! I'm going to seize these little islands. I'll declare martil law and rule by decree."
"What about your three-man provisional government?"
"I've decided those boys are not reliable. I didn't like the way they talked about me. So, I'll short-cut the process, and produce very quick and decisive results. I'll take twenty-five thousand people hostage."
"How do you manage that?"
"How? By claiming that I have a Russian low-yield nuke, which in fact I don't. But who would dare to try my bluff? I'm Raf the Jackal! I'm the famous Raf! They know I'm capable of that."
"Low yield nuke, huh? I guess the old terrie scenarios are the good ones... . "
"Of course I don't have any such nuke. But I do have ten kilos of cheap radioactive cesium. When they fly geiger counters over -- or whatever silly scientific thing those SWAT squads use -- that will look very convincing. The Finns won't dare risk another Chernobyl. They still glow in the dark from that last one. So I'm being very reasonable, don't you agree? I'm only asking for a few small islands and a few thousand people. I'll observe the proper niceties, if they allow me that. I'll make a nice flag and some coinage."
Starlitz rubbed his chin. "The coinage thing should be especially interesting given the electronic bank angle."
Raf opened a desk drawer and produced a shotglass and a duty-free bottle of Finnish cloudberry liqueur. The booze in the Alands was vastly cheaper than Finland's. "Singapore is only a little island," Raf said, squinting as he poured himself a shot. "Nobody ever complains about Singapore's nuclear weapon."
"I hadn't heard that, man."
"Of course they have one! They've had it for fifteen years. They bought the uranium from the South Africans during apartheid, when the Boers were desperate for money. And they built the trigger themselves. Singaporeans will take that kind of trouble. They are very industrious."
"Makes sense to me." Starlitz paused. "I'm still getting a general handle on your proposal. Give me the long-term vision, Raf. Let's say that you get what you want, and they somehow let you keep it. What then? Give me ten years down the road."
"People always asked me that question," Raf said, sipping. "You want one of these cloudberries? Little golden berries off the Finnish tundra, it surprises me how sweet they are."
"No thanks, but don't let me stop you, man."
"In the old days, people would ask me -- mostly these were hostage negotiators, all the talking would get old and we'd all get rather philosophical sometimes... . "Raf screwed the cap precisely onto the liqueur bottle. "They'd say to me, Raf, what about this Revolution of yours? What kind of world are you really trying to give us? I've had a long time to consider that question."
"And?"
"Did you ever hear the Jimi Hendrix rendition of 'The Star-Spangled Banner?'"
Starlitz blinked. "Are you kidding? That cut still moves major product off the back catalog."
"Next time, really listen to that piece of music. Try to imagine a country where that music truly was the national anthem. Not weird, not far-out, not hip, not a parody, not a protest against some war, not for young Yankees stoned on some stupid farm in New York. Where music like that was social reality. That is how I want people to live. People are sheep, and they don't have the guts to live that way. But if I get a chance, I can make them do it."
Starlitz liked speed launches. Piloting them was almost as much fun as driving.Raf's had stolen from Copen hagen and motored it across the Baltic at high speed. Since it was a classic dope-smuggler's vehicle, the Danish cops would assume it had been hijacked by dope people. They wouldn't be far wrong.
Starlitz examined the nautical map.
'I shot a cop today," Aino said.
Starlitz looked up. "Why do you say that?"