The Russians sent a few of their people ahead to ensure the operation went smoothly, and it was those people Mordecai, Sweet, and some heavies were off to meet.ĭrinks were served. Marigold were to act as "fixers" - they were to arrange the meeting, arrange the transfer of goods, arrange for a boat that would pass customs, and help the Russians keep any rats off the cargo, in exchange for what Mordecai hoped was a sizable kickback. They were willing to pay what Mordecai could only assume was top dollar for Marigold's insight into St. They would, at some point, put the artifacts on a boat headed for the Gulf of Mexico, from which they were destined for South America. The Russians were the mob doing the smuggling, piggybacking on the vodka trade. "You ready to meet the Russians?" Sweet asked, slipping his gun into a holster hidden under his jacket. Nevertheless Sweet's word was God's and the plan rolled out, regardless of Mordecai's feelings on the matter. It was a bad time to extend business - Marigold had enough heat without any new undertakings. The new smuggling operation was stupid and he did not approve. It was something he strove to be, elegant. If nature made you a monster, well, it made you an elegant one."Įlegant- he liked that word. Congratulations, Mordecai, you're the impartial blade on which nature cuts the wheat from the chaff. It's a difficult truth most don't understand. "I don't think I can be both an Ubermensch and a monster," Mordecai said carefully. "There's a clever boy, an Ubermensch, exactly." It makes you - have you read any Nietzsche?" "It gives you the power to do what others cannot bear. It's a burden most of us carry but you do not, and you are stronger for it. "My boy, you're … you're a thing nature created to do a certain job in this world. Why hadn't he answered? Perhaps he'd forgotten the question?Ītlas nodded once and puffed on his pipe. These concepts Mordecai could not grasp were as obvious to them as water to a fish.Ītlas lit a cigar but didn't answer. Most people looked at him as if he'd grown two heads. He learned long ago to stop inquiring to anyone about the incomprehensible oddities of human behavior save a very few people. The man took his odd questions in stride in a way no one else did, not even Viktor. Mordecai always appreciated this about Atlas. Did that make him a monster?Ītlas considered this. He had no particular feeling about these deeds others deemed distasteful - they didn't plague him but he took no pleasure in them. He was merely able to do things that other people hadn't the will to do. He wasn't so much offended as puzzled by the accusation. "Am I a monster?" Mordecai later asked Atlas. Something a job shrieked that stuck to Mordecai before Mordecai stuck an icepick to the job. Well, not a riddle so much as a statement around which Mordecai built a riddle. It was a lack that served him well in his work, at least according to Atlas, who said as much one evening when Mordecai came to him seeking an answer to a riddle. Mordecai could look at a person, stare, study him, and have no more clue what was going on in that person's chest than he knew the contents of a sealed crate. It was, he supposed, part of the thing he was missing that most people had - empathy, they said. He long ago understood that these sensations were emotions, but never quite grasped how someone could name something happening in his body before he could.
How could Sweet, or anyone for that matter, tell him what he felt before he himself knew? That crumbling in the chest that made him short of breath, was that anxiety? All the time his body felt things his mind could not analyze. Statements like that always threw Mordecai for a loop.
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"I don't like filling you in on mere speculation," Sweet said, picking the ice out of his drink and chewing it in a way that made Mordecai's skin crawl.
He was the last to hear of the new venture. Mordecai Heller wasn't exactly sure when Asa Sweet's employer decided to thrust Marigold into artifact smuggling alongside bootlegging.