Rupen did not remarry, and most of his family and friends erroneously thought that it was because he was mourning Marge. In actuality, his period of mourning had ended on the day that Evelyn Mangold, Marge’s murderess, had been convicted of another, earlier murder in Troy, New York. He simply could see no point, since he never would be able to sire children, in taking unto himself another wife.
He tried going back to college, stuck it out for a year, then quietly withdrew, deciding he was now just too old. Succumbing to the blandishments of his father and brother, Kogh, he moved up to Fredericksburg and tried working in the executive offices of the Ademian Corporation. That was a bust, too, so Kogh and Bagrat took him out to the farm one weekend to fish, and outlined to him another proposition, one that needs must be detailed out of the hearing of Vasil Ademian.
“Rupen, Bagrat and me, we mean to start up a new sideline for Ademian Corp., but we need another body and we think you’d be the ideal man for the job. You can put up money and buy in if you want to or you can just work for us as a salaried employee—salary and commissions and expenses. It’s up to you, and I don’t give a shit one way or the other, because we’ve got enough backing to start, anyhow.” Kogh snapped his wrist and sent his lure flashing into a clump of weeds, then blasphemed in Armenian as he tried to reel in and snapped the monofilament line just above the leader.
“I tell you, I’m never gonna learn how to use one these damn spin-casting reels right!”
Handling his old-fashioned open reel expertly, Rupen sent the lure far, far down the slough toward the river, then reeled it back in a fast, jerky manner, hoping that it looked like the swimming of a small, injured fish. Apparently it did, at least enough for a black bass to rise to it. The conversation was not again taken up until the catch was boated and feebly flopping its last on a bed of ice in the bottom of the big Coleman cooler.
“We, me and Kogh,” said Bagrat, “we’ve already got the right licensing and all to buy guns at wholesale and import ’em and sell ’em in this country at wholesale or retail. Rupen, it’s millions of guns just laying around and rusting away all over the world left over from World War II, ammo, too, billions and billions of rounds of it. A man could come close to naming the price he was willing to pay for most of it, ’cause ain’t nobody in their right mind getting ready to fight a war today is gonna try and do it with no bolt-action rifles; they’re gonna want semiautos or submachine guns. 1 figger was we to offer the govermints that is stuck with all these old guns and ammo just a little over what a scrap dealer’d give ’em for the steel and brass and lead and all, they’d plumb jump at the offer.”
Of course, as Rupen quickly discovered in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, it was not anywhere near as simple as his brothers had thought. But he made out and the new enterprise made good, selling by mail out of their warehouse on the banks of the Rappahannock River, shipping out via freight. Rupen often reflected in later years that had his tatner known that the first major transaction of Souvenirs, Incorporated, had been the purchase of some thousands of stands of arms from the Turkish government arsenal, he would probably have immediately shot all three of his sons with one of those fine, if venerable, Mauser rifles.
More Mausers came from Ireland, from Spain, from Argentina, from Germany. From France came captured Mausers, along with Lebels; Italy sold Carcanos, Austria sold Steyr-Mannlichers, and Belgium offered tens of thousands of contract Mausers. Then, as Great Britain belatedly rearmed her army with semiautomatic shoulder arms, she made available at rock-bottom prices a veritable flood of Enfield rifles and carbines.
As the reputation of the firm and of Rupen himself became established, he found himself being offered and sometimes actually buying and shipping back to Virginia some rather esoteric items in the way of military arms, ammunitions, and related equipment. Also, well-heeled collectors in the United States and elsewhere took to placing name-your-own-price-but-get-it-for-me orders with the firm. The filling of these orders sometimes took Rupen to some strange and deadly backwaters of the world, but he usually came out with that for which he had gone in.
Despite all that had occurred since he’d first marched off to war in 1943, the Rupen Ademian who had come home from Korea still had been a rather insular, small-town American, speaking the languages of his youth—Armenian and English— plus smatterings of Italian, Japanese, and Korean, hardly aware of how much to tip a malire d* hotel and very often cheated while on R&Rs in Tokyo because of his difficulty with rates of exchange.
But the Rupen Ademian of 1960 was certainly not the Major Rupen Ademian, USA, of 1953. He had learned that he had an ear for languages and he now was fluent in enough tongues and dialects to make himself understood in almost any part of the globe that his nearly constant travels crisscrossed via airplane, ship, and all manner of other land and water conveyances. He had learned well the lesson that so few men and women ever learn—human nature is human nature, regardless of race, nationality, politics, or sex. He now knew just how much to tip a maftre . . . and how much to offer as bribe to a government minister, who often came more cheaply than anyone would have suspected.
While he continued to make purchases from hither and yon for the still-brisk mail-order business originally established, a good deal of his and the firm’s business of late had been more that of middleman between countries with goods to sell and countries with an urgent desire to buy them, despite alliances, treaties, or a political climate that would have rendered open negotiations either risky or impossible.
Presently, he was savoring a cup of strong tea with dark nim, having just seen off a large shipment of assorted handguns and ammo gathered from all over Europe and shipped from Hamburg for the Chesapeake Bay and the Rappahan-nock warehouse. The nucleus of the shipment had been a real find at this late date—cases of late-production but brand spanking new Lugers and Walther P-38s. His agents had also scoured up French MABs and Rubys, some Norwegian 11.25mm Colts, Swedish 7.65mm Brownings and 9mm Lahtis, Polish Radoms, Italian Berretta autos, and Glisenti revolvers, a few dozen Russian Nagant revolvers in poor shape, three different configurations of Spanish Astra pistols, some practically new 7.65mm pistols made by Femaru-Gegyver es Gepgyar of Hungary and stashed away God knew where in the sixteen or seventeen years since their manufacture, some broomhandle Mausers, and a thousand or so assorted flare pistols.
With the ship slowly moving out toward the North Sea, Rupen had telephoned his local message service and had been informed that a Herr Kobra wished most urgently to arrange a meeting at his, Rupen’s, convenience. Was Herr Kobra in Hamburg, by chance? No, but he was in Hanover and could come soon to Hamburg, could Herr Ademain make time and name a place, preferably a public place, to meet with him. So now Rupen sat sipping the rum-spiked tea and wondering just what nationality this Herr Kobra might be to choose such a nom-de-guerre.
* ‘Cobra’ * was a Portuguese word, of course, but that would be too simple. Besides, Portugal had no trouble getting modern arms from the West and had long ago sold him and other arms dealers its antiquated Mausers and Lugers. Indian or Pakistani? Maybe; there always was some variety of trouble brewing somewhere on the subcontinent with its unhomo-genizable mixture of races, creeds, tribes, and politics. But then cobras were indigenous to Africa, too, and all hell was going to kick off in various parts of that continent, and that damned soon, or Rupen Ademian had learned nothing in his almost forty years of life.
Southeast Asia, too, the whole damned peninsula, not to mention the multiple rebellions set to break out against the government of Indonesia. So Cobra was a good cover name. The man who had chosen to bear it could conceivably be from almost anywhere.
Then a waiter approached his table, diffidently. fc*Mein Herr Ademian, a Herr Kobra has telephoned and leaves word that he will be unable to keep his appointment with you. He says that he at your hotel will be in one hour.”
In his car, Rupen drew his cunningly concealed PPK and checked it carefully. Pulling up coat and shirt sleeves on his left arm, he examined the little razor-edged knife and the mechanism that would spring it into his hand. Finally, he very carefully checked out the custom-made “fountain pen” nestled among the others; this one fired a single 4mm explosive bullet and had saved his life on at least two sticky occasions in the past.