“Yes, flippers. Two little flippers,” the dolphin who had mentioned the ships said, bobbing his head. “Big thing has many many flippers. Very long, very large, very ugly. Bad. Bad thing.”
“You can say that again,” Beka said in a grim tone. “It sounds like a bad, bad thing indeed.”
*
Hayreddin stared into the bottom of his glass so he wouldn’t reach across the table and tear out the throat of the frustrating Human sitting opposite him. Red wasn’t sure if it was the long years since he’d last visited on this side of the doorway, or simply that this particular male was even more obtuse than usual, but it seemed as though they were speaking two different languages.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “If we are to be successful pirates, we must have a larger ship and many more men. Your boat is too small for our needs. You will get us a bigger ship. What is the problem?”
Len drank from the beer bottle he held, then wiped his full lips with the back of a slightly grubby hand. Under a black cap, his hair was overlong and stringy, and his face was narrow, with deep set dark brown eyes and a scruffy beard. Hayreddin thought Len was an unimpressive specimen, even for a Human, but this what Red had to work with, so he would simply have to make the best of it.
“I’ve tried to tell you,” Len said. “There are no pirates anymore. Only a few Somalis in speedboats. I’m a smuggler, but it isn’t the same thing at all. I told you what happened on my last trip. Until I raise the cash to pay back the Russian mob, I can’t be spending money on a big ship or more men. We’re just going to have to manage with what we’ve got.”
Red held back a sigh. “And I have told you - with the help of the talisman and the kraken it controls - we can not only find my lost treasure, but also capture the boats of the wealthy and take the riches they hold. There will be plenty of money for a larger ship and more men, and without them, we will not be able to haul away our booty, or search for the treasure.”
He did not believe this Human when he said there were no more pirates. There were always pirates, although perhaps these days they went by some other name. But whenever there were those who had much, there were others who would willingly relieve them of it. It was the nature of men, as much as it was the nature of dragons to collect shiny precious objects.
It had taken more effort than it should have, but Red had finally convinced Len that yes, the talisman really was magic, and yes, Red could show him how to work it, but the stupid Human still seemed to be having trouble grasping the rest of the plan. (And of course, Red could not exactly tell Len that he needed to be the one to activate the talisman, because if Red did it, there would be Consequences.)
“We will take your small boat out today,” Red finally said in a decisive tone that made it clear he would accept no more argument. “We will find a likely target and you will summon up the kraken to attack it. If we cannot find such a ship, we will send the kraken in search of treasure on the bottom of the sea. Even if it cannot find my own great plunder at first, there must be other lost ships resting on the ocean floor. We will get the money we need for a larger boat and more men. And then we will show the world that there are indeed still pirates, and ones with a fearsome secret weapon at that.”
Len drank the rest of his beer in one long swallow. “Sure,” he said, not sounding at all suitably excited by the prospect. “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.”
The man was an idiot. Hayreddin was definitely going to eat him as soon as he no longer needed a Human partner.
*
The man was an idiot, Len thought to himself. Or delusional. Or both. Definitely dangerous as hell, and as far as Len could tell, perfectly serious about the two of them becoming pirates on the high seas with a crew of toughs at their command. Admittedly, this was Len’s childhood dream, and if anyone could pull it off, it was probably his new pal Red.
But still, it was as though the guy had never heard of the Coast Guard, or sending money by wire transfers to a bank in the Caymans instead of putting it on a ship in the form of gold coins and precious jewels. It was as if he’d slept through the last couple of centuries, for god’s sake. Crazy as a bag full of badgers, as Len’s grandmother used to say. He’d never known what the hell that was supposed to mean. Until now. Mean and dangerous and completely irrational.
Unfortunately, Len needed him, crazy or not. He had to get that money for the Russians soon, or it wasn’t going to matter that he’d hooked up with a guy who was just as likely to get him killed as he was to make him rich. And Len was out of any other, less insane, options.
Plus, there was that gold coin. That was real. And that huge octopus-squid thing that Red called a kraken, that had been real too. So now they were taking Len’s boat (which was not too small, damn it) out so Red could prove to Len that he really did know how to make the talisman work, and hopefully get them enough money to rent a bigger ship and pay some lowlifes to crew it for them. Oh, yay.
Len had considered the possibility that Red would just slit his throat and steal the talisman, but he kind of figured that if the big guy was going to do that, he would have done it already. For some reason, Red insisted that Len had to be the one to do the calling - sorry, “summoning” - of the mythological beast. He’d given Len some kind of convoluted story about only the true owner being able to use the magic or something. To be honest, Len hadn’t really been listening; he was just glad the large crazy man thought he needed Len as much as Len needed him. That would have to be enough, for now.
Either it was all a load of crap, and Red wouldn’t be able to show him how to work the damn thing, and Len would be right back where he started (screwed and desperate), or it would turn out that all his grandfather’s stories had really been true, and Len was living in some kind of freaking fairy tale. As long as it got him his money and saved his skin, he guessed he could learn to live with that.
Luckily, Len had one advantage that would work in their favor for playing pirate while they searched for Red’s huge stash. As a smuggler, Len knew lots of other smugglers, and had some idea of who used which routes to carry valuable goods, drugs, or even illegal immigrants. (They definitely didn’t want one of those ships. Hell no.)
Sure, in theory they all stayed out of each other’s business, because not doing so could get you killed. But hey, he was going to get killed anyway, if he didn’t fix his little two million dollar Russian problem, and he kind of figured that Red would have a lot fewer qualms than Len did about taking out whoever was on the ships they stopped, if that was the only way to keep their secret.
Hell, if Red was right about the kraken pulling the ships down to the bottom of the ocean and then bringing up the valuables, he and Red would never have to get their hands dirty at all. Plus any evidence would be deep underwater. Ships disappear; it happens. So maybe this wasn’t such a crazy plan after all. If they could really get the talisman to work.