The Mahboob Chaudri Mystery

by Josh Pachter

  “Someone has been smuggling spirits out of ASU, and this gate is the only way on or off the base. I am supposed to catch the criminal and put a stop to his activities. It is a matter of some urgency, I’m afraid. The government will not tolerate crime involving the non-Arab community, and, if the smuggling has not been stopped by midnight tomorrow, my superiors have been instructed to seal off this gate and allow no one on or off ASU until the situation has been satisfactorily resolved.”

  Sanders let out a low-pitched whistle. “That’s heavy stuff. You’re talkin’ about holdin’ the US Navy prisoner here?”

  “It is indeed a most serious state of affairs,” the policeman agreed soberly. “But I am hoping that I will be able to find out who is smuggling the spirits before my deadline is reached.”

  “Spirits,” Sanders repeated. “You mean liquor.”

  “The demon rum, I believe you call it. Dark rum, from a lovely tropical paradise some 20 times the size of Bahrain.”

  “Jamaican rum,” said Miller. “And somebody’s smuggling it off base? Why bother? Captain Craft just told us this place is so liberal compared to the rest of the Arab countries you can walk into your neighborhood package store and buy whatever you want.”

  “So you can. But the prices are quite high—much higher than in your American Class VI store here.”

  “Still, how much money can a smuggler figure to make?” Tom Sanders asked him. “I mean, our booze is rationed, you know? You can’t buy but one bottle of the hard stuff a week. I don’t care how much you can sell it for outside, you can’t make enough of a profit on a bottle a week to make the risk worth takin’.”

  “Ah, but our information is that the smuggler is taking two or three bottles of dark rum away with him per day. Or, perhaps”—he made a graceful gesture toward Dolly Miller—“with her. But I don’t want to hold you back from your excursion, especially since this may be your last opportunity to leave ASU for some time. May I?”

  The Pakistani looked quickly but carefully through Sanders’ camera case and Miller’s shoulder bag, then raised the wooden barrier for them. “Your driver will tell you the ride downtown costs two dinars or perhaps even more,” he called after them as Miller pulled open the back door of the first vehicle in line. “They always try that, though the rates are fixed for journeys within the Manama area. Don’t pay him more than one dinar, whatever he asks.”

  “Thanks!” the woman called back. “Hey, I’m Miller and this here’s Sanders! What’s your name?”

  “Chaudri,” the little policeman said. “Mahboob Chaudri. Have a pleasant afternoon!”

  * * * *

  Their afternoon was far better than pleasant. It was fascinating. They roamed the twisted alleyways of the suq with the eager excitement of adventurous children. This was the first time outside America for both of them, and they were determined to soak up as much of the strange Arabic culture as they could. They watched gray-bearded tailors hand-stitch jet-black abbas, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floors of “shops” barely three feet wide and deep. They wandered down streets lined chockablock with gold merchants and tinsmiths and incense sellers and dealers in redolent herbs and spices. They passed open-air teahouses whose pale-blue benches were filled with grizzled old men puffing dreamily on tall glass water pipes. They saw beggar women swathed in black on every street corner and heard the babble of a dozen unfamiliar languages everywhere they turned.

  It was a day of enchantment until, over milkshakes at the Aradous Coffee Shop, Dolly brought up the thought that had been troubling the back of both their minds.

  “This thing about the smuggler,” she said. “You know, if we could catch him before that deadline tomorrow night and turn him over to the captain, I bet that’d go a long way toward making up for the kimshee we got ourselves into this morning.”

  Sanders looked up from his half empty glass. “Him?” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

  “All right,” she blushed, “him or her. Whoever. But what do you think? We could sort of nose around, ask some questions, see what we could dig up. We’ve still got more than 30 hours before the deadline. What do you think?”

  “I think you gone crazy, Dolly, that’s what I think. You reckon we’re in trouble now? Well, you just go out there and start playin’ detective, girl, you’re gonna get us both in some deep kimshee and that’s for sure.”

  Miller’s excited expression sagged. She lowered her head to her straw and sucked on it dismally.

  “Hey,” said Sanders softly. “Hey, Dolly.”

  When she looked up, she saw him beaming at her. “What the hell,” he said. “Let’s go for it.”

  * * * *

  When their cab dropped them back at the ASU gate, there were four Pakistanis lined up on the other side of it, waiting to be searched so they could leave the base. Although they were all in civilian clothing, it was as if they were uniformed: all four wore tailored long-sleeved shirts and dark pin-striped trousers with widely flared cuffs, all were of medium height and thin, all had dark-brown skin, short black hair, and lively brown eyes, and each one carried a five-liter water jug of red plastic.

  It was obvious there was nothing concealed beneath their tight-fitting clothing, but as Sanders and Miller paid off their driver and headed for the gate they saw Mahboob Chaudri unscrew the cap from the first man’s jug and pour a thimbleful of its contents into a clear plastic cup.

  “You checking for that demon rum?” Miller asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” the policeman replied. “But as you can see, I am finding nothing but ordinary water.” He spilled the sample into the dirt and went on to the second man’s jug. “Every non-American working here at ASU is permitted to bring one jug of sweet water home with him each day,” he explained. “That is what I think you would call a fringed benefit of their employment. Outside, they would have to pay for sweet water—which is the only water in Bahrain that is pure enough for drinking—but because they work at ASU they may get it here for free.”

  He recapped the third jug and opened the last one. “This would be the simplest way to move the dark Jamaican rum off the base, which is why you are finding me checking. Without luck, though, I’m afraid. Everything is as it should be.” He threw the fourth small sample of water into the dust at his feet, capped the jug, and raised the wooden barrier to let his countrymen out and the two Americans in.

  “Well, listen,” said Sanders, “it can’t be a non-American doing the smugglin’, anyway, can it? I mean, liquor’s rationed here on base and only Americans have got ration cards.”

  “Your reasoning is certainly persuasive,” Chaudri agreed, “but I must check everyone who leaves the base through this gate. This crime, you see, is not a logical one, and how the criminal is smuggling the rum away from ASU is only one of the mysteries I have been instructed to solve. There is a larger puzzle.”

  The young newcomers leaned toward him.

  “Our information is that the dark rum appearing on the market here in Bahrain is definitely coming from ASU,” Chaudri told them. “But there is no dark rum available at ASU. The only rum sold here, even to the American holders of ration cards, is light rum….”

  * * * *

  The Class VI store was closed when they went there after leaving Chaudri, a heavy iron gate swung across the pale-green door and padlocked, so Miller and Sanders put off the inquisition they’d been planning and had dinner together instead. They ate at the Two Seas, a cafeteria-style restaurant where Pakistanis did the cooking, bussed the tables, and ran the cash register. There was no mess hall at ASU, so most of the military personnel ate their meals there. The food was good, the prices were low—and it was the only place on post that served food. Which made it the only place where any of them would be eating for an indefinite time, unless the smuggler could be apprehended within the next 28 hours.

  Both Miller and Sanders were eager to get started with th
eir investigation, but since checking out the Class VI seemed to be the obvious first step, they separated after dinner with an agreement to meet again in the morning.

  In-processing kept them busy for several hours after reveille, but they joined up at 1100 hours and headed for the Class VI. The store turned out to be a smallish room, the walls crowded with shelves of canned goods, snack foods, and such basic items as paper plates, plastic utensils, zip-lock bags for storing leftovers, shaving gear, toothpaste, and a modest array of over-the-counter medications. There was a single deep freezer packed with an assortment of frozen foods and a cooler for cheeses, lunchmeats, and chilled beverages. An even smaller second room held cases of beer and soda and several well-stocked shelves of wine and liquor. In one corner was a towering jumble of empty cardboard boxes and unopened cartons of surplus goods for which there was no display space available.

  The clerk was one of the four Pakistanis they had seen leaving the base the afternoon before, and—after browsing around for a while and verifying that there was indeed no dark rum being offered for sale—they walked to the counter where he stood writing a letter in a strange script that made no sense to either of them. A hand-lettered sign taped to the cash register identified him as Mr. Owais Gujarit, Manager.

  “Is that Pakistani you’re writing there, Mr. Gujarit?” Dolly asked him.

  The man looked up at them and grinned. “It is Pakistani, I suppose you could say, but it is not called Pakistani. It is called Urdu.”

  “Urdu,” she repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word and finding it somehow pleasing. Then she remembered the task at hand and let what she hoped would pass for a look of cool indifference wash across her face as she framed her first question.

  * * * *

  “I’ll get this one,” said Sanders and held up a hand to cut off Miller’s protest. “No, you bought dinner last night. Now it’s my turn.” He ripped open the velcro seal on his wallet and fished out a five-dollar bill.

  “One Cornish hen, one cordon bleu, two salad, two cola,” the young Pakistani behind the register chanted rapidly, keying in prices with a stabbing motion of his right forefinger. “Four dollar sixty, sir,” he announced, an instant before the total appeared on the machine’s digital readout screen in bright blue figures.

  Sanders dropped his change in the glass jar next to the register and they carried their trays across the busy dining room to the only remaining empty table.

  The room was filled with whispered conversations—most of those Miller and Sanders could hear were worried discussions of the government’s threat to close the base off from the outside world in only 12 more hours. The two ensigns ate their lunch in silence, chewing over the information they had just received as they chewed their food—Owais Gujarit, the Class VI manager, had been cooperative but hadn’t had much of interest to tell them. New stock came into the store once a month, on the same C-130 flight that had delivered Sanders and Miller to the island the day before. Each month’s shipment included two cases of light rum, but there had never been any dark rum delivered in all the four years he had worked there.

  “The thing’s impossible,” Sanders complained at last. “There’s no dark rum on sale over there in the first place, and even if there was there’s no way anybody could buy more than a bottle a week—and even if they could there’s no way to smuggle it out past that man Mahboob on the gate. I tell you, Dolly, it’s impossible.”

  Miller set down her fork. “No, it’s not,” she said calmly. “I know where the stuff’s coming from, I know how it’s getting off-base, and I know who’s doing the smuggling. What say we step over to the Captain’s office and see if he’s around?”

  * * * *

  But as luck would have it Captain Craft was having lunch with the admiral aboard the Navy flagship out at Mina Sulman, so, an odd glint in her eye, Miller suggested they stroll down to the gate and share her theory with Mahboob Chaudri instead.

  “Ensign Miller here’s solved your case for you,” Sanders greeted the Pakistani as he emerged from the guardhouse.

  “Has she indeed?” An air conditioner rumbled loudly inside the shack, but Chaudri’s forehead glistened with perspiration. “I am delighted. I have not been pleased about the approach of my deadline. Closing down access to ASU would be making for a very uncomfortable situation here, one I would be happy to avoid. And although I have been enjoying my time here, I must admit I am ready for a more active assignment.”

  Miller licked her lips nervously. “You mean this isn’t your regular job?”

  “Oh, dearie me, no. This duty generally falls to a natoor—what you, I believe, would call a patrolman. I am a mahsool, a detective. I was placed here when we first learned about the smuggling, and I will be reassigned as soon as you tell me who I am to arrest and explain the reasoning behind your accusation.”

  But a look of agonized embarrassment stole across Dolly Miller’s face.

  “What’s the matter?” Sanders turned to her in concern.

  She was hiding behind raised hands now and shaking her head.

  “Ah, I believe I understand,” Chaudri smiled. “I’m afraid Ensign Miller was about to name me as the ASU smuggler.”

  * * * *

  “It’s really the most logical solution,” he said, pushing steaming cups of tea toward them. They were sitting around a plain deal table in the cramped guardhouse, and the air conditioner’s roar almost overwhelmed his comforting voice. “Unless you happened to know that I did not report to ASU until after the smuggling had already begun. Without that one vital piece of information, it must have seemed obvious that I was the only person with access to the base who could leave it without being searched.”

  Miller lifted her head from her hands. “Thank heaven the Captain was out when we checked his office,” she said. “I feel like a big enough fool right now with you two knowing about this.”

  “What I don’t get,” said Sanders, “is how you figured Mahboob here was gettin’ his hands on all that rum in the first place if he’s stuck up here in this shack all day and he hasn’t even got a ration card.”

  Miller sighed. “I thought he had an accomplice, maybe—somebody who sneaked the stuff to him so he could take it away every evening when the gate closed down for the night and he went off duty.”

  “But they’ve only got light rum here on base and it’s dark rum that keeps turning up outside.”

  Dolly’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s the part I was positive I had all scoped out. It came to me while we were eating lunch just now. I was wondering why they call it cordon blue when there isn’t any blue in there at all. I thought maybe it starts out sort of blue and changes color while they’re cooking it.”

  “I took French at school,” Sanders said. “Cordon bleu means ‘blue ribbon,’ and the idea is—”

  “Changes color,” Mahboob Chaudri repeated slowly. He set down his cup and addressed Dolly. “Excuse me, please, Ensign, but are you saying that—?”

  “I’m saying I figured you were taking light rum away from the base and adding some kind of coloring to it to make it look like dark rum later on.”

  Chaudri washed a hand across his face. “In that case,” he said pensively. “In that case.” Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Can you be back here at five o’clock this afternoon? Both of you?”

  “Well, sure,” said Sanders.

  “I can,” Dolly nodded. “But why?”

  Chaudri flashed them a brilliant grin. “Because you have earned the right to be present when I expose the real ASU smuggler,” he said. “Is that reason enough, my friends?”

  * * * *

  Miller and Sanders were back at the guardhouse at five sharp. Mahboob Chaudri was waiting for them alone, but he refused to explain. “Allah is with those who patiently persevere,” he told them with a sparkle in his eye.

  A quarter of an hour later, the four Pakistanis they
had first seen the day before approached the wooden railing. Once again, each of them carried a red plastic jug of sweet water. The ensigns recognized two of the men as busboys who worked the luncheon shift at the Two Seas cafeteria. The third man was Owais Gujarit from the Class VI store, and the fourth was unknown to them.

  As he had done the day before, Chaudri poured a small quantity of the liquid from each jug into a clear plastic tumbler. This time, though, he seemed vastly more confident, and, rather than simply looking at his samples—assuming because they were crystal clear that they were in fact sweet water—he sniffed at each of them delicately and tasted them, knowing that one of the four would turn out to be not water, but colorless light rum. And yet, one by one, the four samples proved to possess the no-smell and no-taste of pure water.

  “May we go now?” said the fourth man.

  Mahboob Chaudri seemed not to hear him. “Impossible.” He shook his head stubbornly. “This is impossible. There is no other way for the rum to be leaving ASU, I would swear it. If the smuggler is not bringing it out in these jugs—”

  Then, all at once, the little policeman’s querulous expression cleared. “Ah,” he sighed. “Ah, dearie me, of course. I’m afraid that I will have to trouble you further,” he told the Pakistani civilians. “I must ask you to empty your jugs entirely.”

  One of the busboys said a word in a language neither of the Americans had heard before. Miller wondered if it might not be Urdu. Chaudri answered him in English, for their benefit. “I want to compare the weight of the empty jugs,” he explained. “I want to see if one of them isn’t rather heavier than the others. When I am finished, you will have to go back and fill them all over again. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I have had an idea, and I must know whether it has any validity.”

  With shrugs of exasperation, three of the four men uncapped and upended their jugs, spilling the expensive sweet water in the dirt at their feet.

  The remaining Pakistani stood there silently, making no move to comply with the mahsool’s instruction.