Roger Zelazny. The Guns of Avalon. The First Amber Pentology – Corwin’s Story: Book 2. Chapter 7, 8

Arthur was quite puzzled by the arrangement. A slight, white-haired man with a neat mustache, ex-RAF officer, Oxonian, he had begun shaking his head after the first two minutes and kept interrupting me with questions about delivery. While he was no Sir Basil Zaharoff, he became genuinely concerned when a client‘s ideas sounded too half-baked. It troubled him if something went sour too soon after delivery. He seemed to think it reflected back on him in some way. For this reason, he was often more helpful than the others when it came to shipment. He was concerned about my plans for transportation because I did not seem to have any.

What one generally requires in an arrangement of this sort is an end-use certificate. What it is, basically, is a document affirming that country X has ordered the weapons in question. You need the thing in order to get an export permit from the manufacturer‘s country. This keeps them looking honest, even if the shipment should be re-consigned to country Y once it has crossed their border. The customary thing to do is to buy the assistance of an ambassadorial representative of country X-preferably one with relatives or friends connected with the Defense Department back home—in order to get the papers. They come high, and I believe Arthur had a list of all the going rates in his head.

“But how are you going to ship them?” he had kept asking. “How will you get them where you want them?”

“That,” I said, “will be my problem. Let me worry about it.” But he kept shaking his head.

“It is no good trying to cut corners that way, Colonel,” he said. (I had been a colonel to him since we had first met, some dozen years before. Why, I am not certain.) “No good at all. Try to save a few dollars that way and you might lose the whole shipment and wind up in real trouble. Now I can fix you up through one of these young African nations quite reasonably-”

“No. Just fix me up with the weapons.”

During our talk, Ganelon just sat there drinking beer, as red-bearded and sinister-looking as ever, and nodding to everything that I said. As he spoke no English, he had no idea as to the state of negotiations. Nor, for that matter, did he really care. He followed my instructions, though, and spoke to me periodically in Thari and we would chat briefly in that language about nothing in particular. Sheer perversity. Poor old Arthur was a good linguist and he wanted to know the destination of the pieces. I could feel him straining to identify the language each time that we spoke. Finally, he began nodding as though he had.

After some more discussion, he stuck his neck out and said, “I read the newspapers. I am certain his crowd can afford the insurance.” That was almost worth the price of admission to me.

But, “No,” I said. “Believe me, when I take possession of those automatic rifles, they are going to vanish off the face of the Earth.”

“Neat trick, that,” he said, “considering I don‘t even know where we will be picking them up yet.”

“It does not matter.”

“Confidence is a fine thing. Then there is foolhardiness . . .” He shrugged. “Have it as you say then—your problem.”

Then I told him about the ammo and he must have been convinced as to my mental deterioration. He just stared at me for a long while, not even shaking his head this time. It was a good ten minutes before I could even get him to look at the specifications. It was then that he began shaking his head and mumbling about silver bullets and inert primers.

The ultimate arbiter, cash, convinced him we would do it my way, however. There was no trouble on the rifles or the trucks, but persuading an arms factory to produce my ammo was going to be expensive, he told me. He was not even certain he could find one that would be willing. When I told him that the cost was no object, it seemed to upset him even more. If I could afford to indulge in weird, experimental ammo, an end-use certificate would not come to that much—No. I told him no. My way, I reminded him.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *