Double Dealing(8)

"Why'd you tell her your name, you fool?" a slightly deeper voice than mine said from behind me, harsh with reproach.

I turned from my thoughts to look at my brother, who was seated in front of the fire. We were in a valley, deep in the San Bernardino mountains along an mostly overgrown fire trail. The nearest towns were Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead, although there were some villages closer by that we avoided in order to not be noticed. While the snow wasn't very deep, it was cold in the cabin, and we'd made sure to lay aside a decent supply of firewood. We weren't worried about the local authorities, the area was rarely patrolled by the forest rangers, who were used to hunters and other nature lovers using the isolated cabins at irregular times. As long as we weren't causing a fire hazard, we'd be left alone.

"Felix, relax. We're just keeping her here a few days and then letting her go. I'll even give her the keys to the Jeep when we’re on our way out, she won’t be able to get the authorities involved in time. We'll be in Mexico before she even finds her way to Crestline or Lake Arrowhead. Even if she tried to use a cell phone, we're so deep in the mountains she won't get a signal. Which, by the way, she confirmed is not with her, but in her locker back in Los Angeles."

Felix, always uptight, glowered. He was good at glowering when he wanted to. "Francois, you made a mistake. Admit it."

"I admit I told a beautiful young woman my name, nothing more," I said, intentionally needling Felix. I knew, despite anything my brother might say, that part of the reason he'd taken Jordan with us was because of her looks. He always had been a sucker for brunettes, and Jordan Banks had one of the most striking shades of brown I'd ever seen, a rich shade that almost glowed with an inner light, like highly polished cherry wood. There were hints of red hidden in the brown, but not enough to really call it red. It was quite remarkable really.

Of course, Felix hadn't had the pleasure of seeing her up close and in person yet, immediately giving me the duty of putting Jordan to bed while he surveyed the take from the job. I’d been the one to see that underneath the oversized set of coveralls was a pretty, trim physique, highlighted by a nice set of what some of the women in my family would call "child-bearing hips.”Not overweight, but a woman who'd look great in a billowy skirt dancing barefoot around a fire.

"Felix, come now. She's awake, she's not going anywhere, and she's going to be our guest. She sounded like she doesn't have a concussion, but I’m not a doctor. Unless you want me to spend the next three days calling you nothing but brother, relax. Or do you intend on keeping her locked up in that bedroom the whole time?”

Felix shook his head and sighed. "This isn’t what we agreed to do on this job. We were to get in, get the swords, and get out."

"We got a decent bunch, we're not losing money," I replied. "Besides, I already saw the one you wanted. You sure on it?"

Felix nodded, his eyes already going to the one katana we'd grabbed that wasn't in just a blade form. A modern reproduction using ancient techniques, it was in Felix's eyes better than the blades that were hundreds of years old. He picked it up off the table and pulled it from its scabbard, studying the steel in the firelight. "You know, I could actually use this if I had to. It's barely worth ten thousand dollars on the open market," Felix said as he examined the edge. "Those others, if we kept them, I'd be afraid of damaging with the first swing. One scratch and there goes half a million dollars. Seven blades worth selling, Francois, and one for me. Three million total only. After costs, it wasn't worth the risk."

I nodded, not wanting to tell Felix that I too had picked out a sword for my own keeping, knowing he'd override me anyway. If we'd gotten out all twelve, including the Muramasa and Masamune, then it would have been nothing. As it was, that one blade was the difference between profit and loss on the operation. Buying a cabin in Southern California mountains, even one that was barely more than a large hunting cabin, cost a lot of money, and when you added in things like smuggling, the percentage of the sale our dealer would take, bribes to the right authorities to get the blades out of Mexico where we were planning to fly from . . . that blade wasn't to be mine. "Don’t worry. We’ll contact our agent tomorrow, and carry on with the rest of the plan."



* * *



I wasn’t feeling so confident the next day when I hung up the satellite phone with our dealer. Felix let me handle the business negotiation side of things, he was far too blunt for many of the men we worked with, while I seemed to have a silver tongue. All the negotiation skills I possessed, however, didn’t hide the fact that our contact wasn’t pleased. I understood, neither were we. The most difficult part was that during the conversation, he insinuated that because of our less than optimal haul, our extraction would be delayed. I finally had to remind him that if he delayed in getting us out of California, he'd only be delaying getting his hands on the blades we did happen to get. It wasn't like we could just magically transport ourselves back into the museum and smash the glass cases around the rest of the blades and then be gone in the blink of an eye.