Tanner's Virgin by Lawrence Block Page A

all the same.
    â€œIs bad sea. Not to worry that you sick.”
    His accent was hard to place. There was a Baltic undertone to it, and if I’d had to guess I’d have labelled him Finnish or Estonian.
    â€œYou American?”
    â€œIrish,” I said.
    â€œIrish. Hah.”
    He went away. An odd crew, I decided. One expects smugglers to be natives of the port from which they operate. On the south coast of England and the Isle of Wight, smuggling has long been a family occupation, with the tricks of the trade passed down from father to son over the centuries. It seemed odd that this particular smuggler would have put together a crew of foreigners. The Baltic giant was no native of Devon, nor was thedark man with the spade-shaped beard, who, now that I thought about it, had a definite flavor of Eastern Europe in his voice.
    Time passed slowly. Most of the men were downstairs, and I was torn between a desire to join them—obviously it would be warmer there, with the wind less of a factor—and the stronger desire to stay by myself. The channel crossing was something like eighty miles, and I had no idea how long it was going to take. The boat did seem to be traveling at a good pace, but I had no idea what that might mean in knots—or what knots meant in real miles per hour.
    I suppose we were halfway across when the Irishman sat down next to me.
    â€œI’m told you’re a kinsman of mine,” he said. “Where are ye from?”
    I looked at him. I couldn’t place his accent. “Then you’re Irish yourself,” I said.
    â€œI am.”
    That was no help. I said something about Liverpool.
    â€œAnd you’re after saying good-day to Mother England, are ye?”
    â€œI am that.”
    â€œNot one of those IRA lunatics, I hope.”
    â€œOh, hardly that,” I said. “It seems I wrote a check and put some other lad’s name on the bottom of it, do you see?”
    He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. He told me his name was John Daly, and that his home was in County Mayo, and he’d spent some good days in Liverpool. Just where did I live in Liverpool? And did I know this chap, and that chap, and—
    Someone called him about then, and he slapped me on the back again. “More bloody orders,” he said. “What you get when you take up with foreigners. They won’t keep me long, and I’ve a bit of holy water I’ll bring with me when I can. We’ll have ourselves a few jars and talk about the old place, shall we?”
    â€œAh, God save ye,” I said, or something like that.
    And God help me, I thought. Something rather odd was going on and I seemed to be somewhere in the middle of it, along with being somewhere in the middle of the English Channel. I wondered whether he believed I was Irish or whether he was playing along with me. I wondered if we would ever get to France. I wondered why the crew was composed of so many foreigners. I wondered whatever had prompted me to leave New York.
    A little while later I found out. The foreigners weren’t members of the crew.
    They were the cargo.
    I was feigning sleep again when I got the message. Evidently my act was a good one, because a trio of men in leather jackets passed me without notice and stood talking at the rail. The group did not include any of the men I had previously spoken to. With the steady roar of the wind, I could not at first make out any of what they were saying, but they did not sound English. Then the wind died down a bit, and it became evident that the reason they did not sound English is that they were speaking Russian.
    I caught a few words here, a few words there. They were talking about guns and supplies and explosives and revolution. I listened intently while the wind blewup and died down, blew up and died down again. It was extremely frustrating. My Russian is fluent, but with the noise the wind was making I would have had trouble understanding them