Read Online Choke Point by Ridley Pearson - Free Book Online Page A

each other. He sits down slowly, perhaps painfully, and looks as if he could use help pulling closer to the table, but Knox fears humiliating him by offering.
    “I was wishing for a different waitress,” Knox says.
    “I can procure for you any girl you want. Certified clean.”
    Knox’s jaw muscles knot. “I’ll pass.”
    “Pussies soft as lambs. I can arrange it. Not the window girls. Much classier. Any age, any skin color.”
    Knox struggles to relax his fist, which has tightened beneath the table. He blames himself for starting the conversation. For an instant he visualizes the other man’s bulbous nose pushed through his face and into his brain, his blue eyes lifeless.
    Gerhardt Kreiger can procure
anything
. Knox knows this; he has purchased a variety of goods from him for nearly three years, one of his longest business relationships. But this is the first time Kreiger’s offered to pimp. Knox wonders if the wholesale business is that bad.
    He’d wanted to start with pleasantries but is reminded how unpleasant Kreiger can be. Instead, he jumps in, hoping to network his way into the rug business.
    “We need another gross of the Delftware dinner plates and salad plates, a gross of the beer steins and a half gross of the glass yards.”
    “So send me an e-mail.” Kreiger cleans the wire rims with a checkered cloth napkin, blowing on each lens. He orders a Grolsch as Knox’s Heineken is delivered. “Not that I do not enjoy you buying me a beer. And the company, of course.”
    Knox keeps his voice low despite there being no one within earshot. “Rugs,” Knox says.
    Kreiger studies him pensively. “Turkey. North Africa. I realize the quality Afghans have dried up temporarily, but that’s your country’s fault, not mine.”
    “Too many middlemen,” Knox says. “Prices are too high. Government’s too unstable. I need quantity and quality and not six Turks between me and the manufacturer.”
    Kreiger fights off a devilish grin and shakes his head. He waits for the beer to be delivered. They clink steins. He makes sure the waitress is another five strides gone. “I didn’t know you read Dutch.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “No, I am sure of it,” Kreiger says. He savors the beer and licks his mustache. He eyeballs Knox again, a mixture of cunning and respect. “You impress me, Knox. Such ambition.”
    Knox says nothing.
    “I do not picture you as the type to condone the manufacturing
methods
.”
    “Gerhardt, these are trying times. The euro zone is in recession, so it’s a buyer’s market. At home, we’re stuck with customers wanting everything for less, if they want anything at all. If I buy from the Mideast, the margins will kill me, and between the shrinkage and the bribes to longshoremen, there go the profits. By the time I see my container—hopefully sometime this millennium—I’m looking at pennies on the dollar. To hell with that. I need that ratio reversed. Your city’s got one of the biggest shipping ports in north Europe. If there are rugs being manufactured here—hand-tied, natural dyes, high-quality wool—and I buy from a single agent, as in you, I can trust the container to arrive with its original count and contents on time. Clean and simple, just as I like it.”
    “You do make a girl blush,” Kreiger said. “But who says the article was accurate? You know journalism these days.”
    “Hypothetically speaking,” Knox says, “there must be others like me . . . a market for high-end knockoffs.”
    Kreiger wipes foam off his mustache and grins wryly. “There’s always the UK. And you’d be surprised: the Russians will pay these prices. So much goddamned money there now. All of them wanting to be as Western as money can buy. St. Petersburg is a gold mine for these rugs. Anything north of Prague is a viable market at these prices.”
    Knox hears price mentioned and thinks only of the girls. Kreiger reads him.
    “Who says I would know anything