I saw no compelling reasons to throw away a chance at a gig for the government of a wealthy Arab sheikdom. “I could be available for such a project, depending on a few things. When would you want me to begin?”
“As soon as possible, as time is of the essence. With these sums of money at stake, principals who sensed an impending investigation could disappear on short notice, so we need the element of surprise in our favor. Could you come to Kuwait, say, by the end of this week?”
“May we broach the matter of remuneration? This would be a consulting project, so I would have to bill you at consulting rates…”
“Mr. Jake, set your mind at ease. Kuwait can afford the best, which is why I have contacted you in the first place. And we naturally expect to pay for the best. How does… ?” He suggested a figure large enough that I’d have gone to Kuwait for it by yesterday if necessary.
We sketched out a travel schedule and a rough plan of attack. I’d jet out from LAX, spend several weeks on the project shuttling among Kuwait, Spain and London conducting interviews, inspecting businesses and examining records. Then I’d report my findings to Mr. Fawaz. Ever since my India misadventure I’ve kept my life prepped for short-notice jaunts of indeterminate length, with people I can click in to look after the house and mail, cover bills and so forth. I’d have to cancel a couple of short-term jobs and postpone some others, but none was a drastic disruption. There was enough time to bid Dana Wehrli a fond good-bye. And I’d be able to put in a few hours at the library researching some background on Kuwait. The situation was as much a “go” as most of my work.
“By the way,” said Mr. Fawaz as he took me to the door, “when you pack you should bring along, in addition to business and everyday attire, some clothing suitable for outdoor adventures.”
“What kind of adventures?” I asked.
“Hunting. We Arabs are very keen on hunting, you know. We may find time for a hunting expedition. You needn’t bring firearms, of course. We can supply anything in that line you need.”
“What would we hunt?”
“Oh, many things. The barren sections of my country harbor all manner of wild beasts. You’ll see when you get there. It’s desert land, of course, and this time of year is very hot. Keep that in mind when you assemble your kit.”
*
The day was still young, and it was still gorgeous, so I took Sunset back to the beach. It was on that section of Sunset where it merges with Beverly Glen —I’d pulled to a stop at the light where the two roads part company when—WHAM! Some jerk rear-ended me. It was a Cadillac, I saw in the rear view mirror, and the driver was getting out. I got out too and went back to survey the damage. He’d crumpled my rear bumper in pretty badly. I noted some damage to the body beyond that, and he’d wiped out the rear lights on the passenger side.
The other driver, hands on hips and looking exasperated, surveyed the front end damage he’d incurred. He drove an older, forest-green Seville in classic-car condition. He turned to me and said, “I’ll need the name of your insurance company so I can file a claim, and I’d like to see your driver’s license.”
“Excuse me, friend,” I said, “but you rear-ended me. I’ll be the one filing the claim here.”
“I can see how you might interpret the situation in that way,” he said, “and I sympathize deeply. I can appreciate that you are very upset about this, as any average person would be, and you have every right to be. You may not be thinking clearly right now. That often happens at accident scenes. People get disorientated and they look for someone else to blame.” The guy resembled Ted Danson from back in the Cheers days. He wore new Ralph Lauren workout togs with expensive running shoes to match, and he sported a deep sunlamp tan.
“I’m thinking perfectly clearly right now,” I said. “I was at a dead stop, and you ploughed into the back of my car.”
“Are you sure you weren’t backing up?” he asked solicitously. “People with automatic transmissions often do that unconsciously. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No, I definitely was not backing up. Are you crazy? I’d have had to be going 10 miles per hour to cause that damage.” I looked back at his car. Another man sat on the passenger side. He was large, but he had a friendly face.
“Now, now, there’s no reason to be so hostile. Are you sure your bumper wasn’t damaged already? See here,” he said, stooping down and pointing at a scratch. “This looks old. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was there before.”
“There wasn’t a scratch on the car before you hit it,” I said. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to give me your particulars and the name of your insurance company… just a sec.” I went back to my car to get something to write on. He followed me, and when I turned to him he was affecting a semi-karate stance.
Gimme a break. I took a decisive step right up to him, and he relaxed and backed away a pace. “Look,” he said, “if you submit this claim, my company may raise my rates or even cancel me. Why don’t we just call it even—no harm, no foul? My car’s as damaged as yours. See how we’re blocking traffic. We’re annoying all these drivers, keeping them from going about their business. You don’t want to be thoughtless like that, do you? Let’s just go away and forget this ever happened.”
“You’re the party at fault, and my car sustained quite a bit of damage. What your insurance company does is no concern of mine, as long as they cover the damage. Look, either give me the information, or I’ll take your license number down and report you as a hit and run.”
“There you go, being hostile again,” he said. “Everybody is so ego-involved these days.” He looked down at the Patek Philippe on my wrist and snickered, “It’s not that you can’t afford it.”
I’d had enough. I copied down his license plate number, then went around to the passenger side of his car and tapped on the window. The other guy rolled it down.
“Yes?” he said.
“Your friend is being recalcitrant. I’d hate to do it, but if I have to report him as a hit and run, I’ll need your name and contact info as a witness.”
“Sure,” he said. He fished out his wallet, extracted a card and handed it to me. He was an L.A. homicide detective. “Don’t worry. It won’t come to that. He gets like this occasionally, but he’s essentially a sympathetic, caring person.” He opened the door, got out and stood up. He was a bear of a man, but seemed a strangely motherly one. “It’s not working,” he said to the driver. “Just give him the info, and let’s get going.”
The driver huffed over, pulled his wallet out of a side pocket in his workout pants and showed me his driver’s license. I copied down the number, his name and contact info. “If you’re going to be such an anal-retentive…here,” and he handed me a business card. “Will this do?”
“It’s fine, we’re good,” I said. I gave him my name, address and insurance company. “Thank you. Sorry it happened.”
“Don’t mention it,” he sniffed. “I hope it makes you feel good about yourself.” We got in our cars. The light was red, so as I sat there I looked at his card. He was a… “forensic psychologist”? The hell’s that? Oh well, I thought, it’s L.A. Who knows?
The light turned green. I continued down Sunset. He’d been in the wrong lane so he waited for a break in the turn lane, then continued south on Beverly Glen. My car drove all right, but the bodywork wouldn’t come cheap. The bump might have even totaled the car for what insurance would cover. If so it would be a good excuse to upgrade the Cherokee. I was getting tired of it anyhow.
Part 2: Arabian Nights
Monday, July 23, to Thursday, July 26, 1990
The schedule Fawaz laid out left me little prep time. The next morning, I called my insurance agent. He told me to get an estimate from a body shop. The nearest one was in Santa Monica, and that errand absorbed half the day. The news was not good. As I’d feared, the car was actuarially totaled, so I’d have to sink some of my
own money into it to get it fully repaired, if I wanted to keep it. It was drivable for the time being, so I put that decision off for when I returned in three or four weeks. I spent the afternoon rearranging my looming schedule. No bodyguarding or escorting jobs needed to be canceled. A couple things could be put on ice for the duration I’d be away, and that left one that I could put to bed before I left town if I hit it hard. I did, and by mid-evening, I’d squared it with the client.
Tuesday morning I spent a couple hours in the library boning up on Kuwait. The basics were simple enough. It was a small Arab country situated on the northwestern tip of the Persian Gulf, pinched between Iraq to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south. The population was around 2,000,000, the majority of them foreigners. Kuwaitis enjoyed free education and health care, as well as housing subsidies and other benefits and allowances. The foreigners, apparently, did the dirty work. Oil money paid for it all. As Fawaz had said, Kuwait had vast petroleum reserves and they pumped a lot. That accounted for the bulk of their economy. Kuwait had no industries or agriculture to speak of; they exported oil and imported everything they needed, except dates.
The government was essentially a monarchy headed by an Emir of the Al Sabah tribe. The country had previously been a province of the Ottoman Empire, and following World War I it became a British protectorate. Their oil business boomed in the ‘50s, and in 1961 Kuwait achieved independence from Britain. I combed back issues of The Economist for the scoop on the current situation.
Kuwait didn’t appear much in the news—just some mentions in stories about the international oil business, some disputes with Iraq about their mutual border and about alleged poaching from Iraqi oil fields. Generally it seemed that Kuwaitis kept to themselves, a little country that was prosperous, peaceful and caused no trouble for anybody. Life in the Gulf region had been relatively quiet since Saddam Hussein claimed victory in the Iran/Iraq war in August ‘88. Except for the horrendously hot summer weather in the Gulf it wouldn’t be a burdensome assignment, I concluded. Some travel, some interviews, some sleuthing, then present my findings and come home. I spent Tuesday afternoon scurrying around making arrangements for my place to be looked after for the month I’d be away and running through my departure checklist.
Dana Wehrli came by around dinnertime for our last night together for several weeks. By now it had become a ritual: a nice dinner and drinks, a jog on the beach in good weather or else a movie at the Malibu Theater. Capped off by long goodbye kisses, both good night and good morning. But that evening she was subdued, a definite contrast with her usual perkiness. She’d graduated from Promises a few weeks previously, and that experience still affected her.
“It really got me thinking,” she said. “I’d been taking those meds, and the next thing I knew I was letting everything go while I frantically tried to find doctors who would prescribe me more pills. I even did some street buys. Scary. You have no control of your life any more and you get paranoid, afraid they’ll arrest you or something. I knew I couldn’t go on like that, so I checked in to Promises. They detox you first thing. That’s kind of rough but they handle it well, and the detox isn’t the most important part of the treatment anyhow. They put you through a lot of counseling and therapy, getting at why you got addicted, what’s going on in your life to lead to that, what you can do to avoid it in the future. They do groups. Man, I thought I had troubles until I heard some other people’s stories.”
“Did they come to any conclusions?”
“They’re not that definite. They want you to figure it out for yourself, so you’ll accept it better. What I realized is, as much as I like being a producer, that job at ABC was driving me crazy. I’d hung around there too long until I was a total burnout.”
“How so?”
“It’s a one hour weekly time slot that has to be filled, okay? And it’s a sort-of news show. There’s all this pressure to come up with new and timely material, scoops if possible, week after week after week. Then you have to meet the deadlines, and they’re iron-clad—no network will tolerate empty air, and they hate to re-run stuff. You have to rush everything, cut corners, pass up potentially good material, leave stuff out, cram the story into the time slot they give you, and then the executives and the lawyers swoop in and dictate last minute changes, which you have to readjust the whole segment for. And everything has to fit with their politically correct politics, which you have to intuit, as they’ll never tell you outright what’s bugging their butts that week. And of course you’re competing with all the other producers for airtime so you can get promotions and raises and better assignments. That means a lot of politicking and in-fighting among the staff in addition to everything else.”
“It’d drive me crazy, no doubt,” I said. “What are you thinking of doing about it? Did Promises give you any plan of action?”
“They don’t tell you, you tell them. What I figured out I have to do is change jobs. I’m a good producer, everybody agrees on that. I talked to Eddie about it. His production company doesn’t have any openings right now, but he said he’d put in a good word for me with some indie outfits. Indie companies are involved in most of Hollywood’s films these days, so there’s a lot going on. I’d have to learn the movie business, but I think my TV experience would translate pretty well. The work schedules wouldn’t pull me in so many directions at once. I’d have more time to stay focused and do a better job. I’ve been at ABC way too long, and at the very least this would be a welcome change of scene.”
“I’m sure you’d do great. Red carpet, here she comes. Any time frame in mind?”
“I’ve had one interview, and it seemed promising. I’m working on a couple more. Who knows? Maybe by the time you come back in a month I’ll be launched on a whole new career.”
“That would be two things for us to celebrate,” I said, and I told her how much they were paying me.
“Wow!” she said. “Who do you have to kill for that much money?”
“Whirlybird, you know I don’t kill people for a living.”
“Just saying… this Kuwait place has a lot of money?”
“More than they know what to do with.”
“I’ll drink to that,” she said. She poured the last of the champagne into our flutes. It still had a little fizz. “Here’s to having more money than you know what to do with. May it be our fate!” We clinked glasses, drained them and decided we’d stayed up late enough for a going-away evening.
*
My flight to Kuwait City left the next day, Wednesday afternoon, arriving me there late Thursday. Fawaz during our Sunday meeting suggested a hop on a private Kuwaiti jet leaving that same day. It would have been the most convenient option and no doubt promised sheer luxury, but I turned it down. As kind as his offer was, I told him apologetically, if I were going to investigate high-level financial mischief I’d best arrive anonymously and keep a low profile. I reminded him of the element of surprise angle he’d mentioned, and that was the convincer. He had me booked on Lufthansa, first class all the way. I faced nineteen hours in transit over eleven time zones, but at least I’d ride in comfort. I’d be wigged out for a few days after I got there, after which I’d dig into the serious work.
Wednesday morning I checked with my bank first thing. Funds had been wired to my account, an amount I would have hesitated to ask for, and that was just the upfront. I was beginning to wonder if they expected more than I could deliver. Well, I’d do my best. They couldn’t very well ask for the down payment back, and even if that was all I got, it was enough. I finished up getting packed and arranging last minute things, humming a happy tune. At noon I had a cab run me down to LAX.
*
Nothing much to say about a Lufthansa flight. If I’m destined to spend most of a day in airplanes it’s my conveyance of choice. As usual, things went right, nothing went wrong, and first class was comfy enough that I arrived in Kuwait City reasonably well-rested but way out
of tune with the clocks.
Fawaz was waiting for me by the gate with a couple helpers, and they led me through the spacious, modern concourse. The terminal seemed oddly busy, some families in traditional Arab robes and niqabs, some in western garb, bustling to departure gates. Crowds teemed around ticket counters, men urgently pushing and nudging and imploring while their wives rode herd on their broods while guarding high-piled luggage carts.
“A lot of activity for this time of night,” I remarked.
“Well, you know how it is, vacation time and everybody wants to get away for the weekend,” Fawaz said.
He had the juice to steer me around the usual customs and passport control routines. “Don’t worry, it’s taken care of,” he assured me. “My assistant will clear your passport with the authorities and return it to you later. My car is out here. My men will see to your bags.” We stepped through the glass doors into searing heat. “Over here,” he said, and we went straight to a silver BMW 535 sedan parked right out front. “Keeping with the idea of a low profile, I brought a car that wouldn’t be conspicuous.”
We got in—thank goodness he’d left it running with the air conditioner going—and he spurted away from the curb into the traffic. Like in most less-developed parts of the world, drivers in Kuwait either were fast and aggressive, or they never got where they’d hoped to go. Until we reached the main road, that is. There we bogged down among a mass of luxe cars, in which his ride was indeed low profile, small potatoes compared to the Rollses, Bentleys, Cadillacs, Mercs, Jaguar sedans, Land Rovers, Maseratis, Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
We came out of the airport at least moving along. The jam on the other side of the road was bent on crowding into it. Heading southbound toward town the cars and vans, many of them heaped with dunnage, crawled along. Traffic going in our direction wasn’t nearly as heavy.
“I’ve arranged for you the customary one month business visa,” he said. “That should suffice for the assignment at hand. It can be extended if necessary, of course.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 45
