I was right, and Chandra was wrong.
He didn’t have all the feelings that lay behind the cold facts.
I spoke maybe a hundred words of Arabic, picked up in travels from Morocco to Iraq , but I felt at home in Riyadh . The city fitted my inner self. My first concert there had been back in ’88, when I was only nineteen years old. I had played the obligatory Tchaikovsky Number One in the brand-new concert hall, before a vast (and, I suspect, mystified) audience who had been dragged in from the streets for the inaugural concerts. Most of them were receiving their first taste of western music. That was the year the king decided to import European culture. Between the movements I had sensed a dignified and baffled silence.
That bizarre first exposure led to a genuine love for the city and its hospitable Najdi population. Over the past eighteen years I had taken engagements there whenever they were offered to me. Apart from anything else it allowed me to follow the fantastic change from desert to garden as ten billion gallons per day of fresh water gushed in from Dammam on the Persian Gulf .
Not only that, Riyadh had the best zoo in the whole world. The new Tokyo Zoo was the only competitor, but Tokyo didn’t have those hushed deserts to the north and west, less than a day’s drive away, where I could struggle mentally with tough nuts like the Hammerklavier, and decide how I was going to play them that night.
So here I was, maybe half a day ahead of the killer pack. But how was I going to take the next step? Scouse and Xantippe must have some idea where Leo had been heading, but I didn’t. Yet I had to get the Belur Package — and keep them from getting it while I stayed in one piece.
A nice problem.
My chartered plane had arrived at the airport north of the city at midnight . I hired a car, parked it at the exit to the rental area, wandered back into the arrival area, and settled down to wait. Each time that any plane with a stop in Calcutta came in to land, I went over to watch the passengers arrive in the lounge. And every couple of hours I risked leaving my inconspicuous post for ten minutes, to wolf down a sandwich or go to the bathroom. Naps were taken when I knew there was no flight due in the next hour.
Dawn at last. The passengers who straggled off in the chill morning light were paste-white and red-eyed, shuffling zombies sifting the piles of luggage for missing bags. In half an hour the last of them was leaving. An age until midday . Then I stretched, yawned, and dozed through a long afternoon. The glow of a fine evening streamed in through the high lounge windows, and finally the hush of desert night, lulling the activity in the airport. I had to prop my eyes open, and the lure of a hotel bed grew stronger and stronger. I went to the rest room, washed and shaved, and came back to my seat. Midnight again; cramps in my legs and back; imagined insults and bloodcurdling oaths from Sir Westcott about the way I was abusing my body. Worse aches as the second night wore on.
If my analysis of the situation were wrong, I was in for an uncomfortable couple of weeks.
Anywhere else but in an airport I would have been conspicuous, but here I was surrounded by dozens of weary passengers waiting for their flight, the one that had been delayed in London, Rome, Athens, Bombay, Moscow, Baghdad, Jakarta, or Sydney.
There was plenty of time for thinking, about Leo, Nymphs, and Ameera. I did a negligible amount of it. Other factors were taking over. The latest signs of sensory distortion had begun in Calcutta , when I was overtired after the drive from Cuttack . Now they came sweeping back, con brio, during the long hours of solitary waiting.
The towers of the flash distillation plants that took piped seawater from the Persian Gulf and turned it to drinking water and valuable solid minerals lay ten miles east of the airport. By day they had appeared to me like new temples to Allah, dazzling white spires and metal skeleton mosques rearing their heads four hundred feet above the desert while the watchful German engineers sat in the control rooms at their summit, infidel muezzin flooding the plain below with water instead of the call to prayer. Now, as midnight approached, the warning navigation lights on each tower glowed in the night, red eyes in the desert. They crept steadily closer until they peered in at me from outside the glass windows of the lounge, glowing tigers ten times my height. I was a homunculus in the dust beneath their paws as they pressed against the fragile panes.
I forced myself to look away, to concentrate on my hands in front of my face. This was what Sir Westcott had warned about back in Reading . I struggled to recall his fat, scowling jowls and brusque orders.
If you feel like you’re getting smaller and smaller, cram a couple of these pills down as fast as you can… get to a hospital…
Inside my head, the nerve cells were sprouting their long, threadlike axons, reaching out to couple and reconnect with a billion neighbors. The slow work of regeneration had been going on for months, but no results could come until near the end. As the neurons finally locked in to their matrix of shared pathways, information would begin to flow through the new lines: a tiny trickle at first, then suddenly a mind-breaking flood, a trillion items of data transfer between the lobes of my brain and Leo’s. When the flood came, I ought to be a patient at peace in some quiet hospital ward of a London suburb — not a stiff-limbed hollow-eyed ghost in a foreign airport lounge.
I heaved myself to my feet and picked up the little bag of necessities I had brought with me from Calcutta . If I drove carefully it was less than half an hour in the rented car to Riyadh ’s Yaghut Hospital . I had been there six years ago for a gamma globulin shot, when the hepatitis epidemic was running wild through the Middle East . There would be no traffic at this hour — it was almost three A.M.
Before I had taken two steps, there was a shimmer of green lights behind me. The big screen that provided arrivals information in Arabic and English was flickering again. Terminating passengers from the Manila-London flight were now clearing Immigration; intermediate stop: Calcutta .
I moved back to my favorite spot, a balcony above the main concourse. Passengers would look around them, but they seldom looked up.
If Pudd’n hadn’t been there, I would have missed them completely. Scouse was wearing flowing white robes to the manner born, and Zan, two paces behind, wore no makeup and the concealing black veil and gown of the chador. Their dark complexions matched those of the crowd, and they both blended well with the homecoming Riyadh businessmen and their wives. Zan had even adopted the slow, hip-swaying walk that looked so attractive in the women of the town.
But not old Pudd’n. He was half a head too tall and a hundred pounds too heavy. He wore a robe, but it didn’t help a bit. It was too short. Size twelve shoes and six inches of grey trouserleg were visible below the white hem, and his face was flushed and rosy as he carried their three bulky suitcases.
All three of them were looking around suspiciously and I was afraid that they might somehow catch sight of me. I kept well hidden behind a pillar in the lounge as they headed for the exit and piled into a taxi.
The dawn was just a glimmer in the eastern sky, but already there was a good deal of traffic on the road from the airport. I moved my rented car out onto the access road a few hundred yards behind them, and kept my distance. I had assumed that they would go first to a hotel, and catch up on missing sleep; then I could do the same, close enough to track their movements. But as soon as we came to the Medina Highway that led around the city to the west, the orange taxi left the road to Riyadh .
I followed.
The volume of traffic was picking up rapidly. Trucks and cars roared and reeled about me, and their sizes changed as I looked at them. In most cities of the world I would have been arrested at once for wild driving; here I didn’t stand out from the crowd. Put a sober Saudi citizen behind the wheel, and he becomes so macho that a new word is needed to describe his behavior. To yield right of way is unthinkable, and traffic lights are an insult to driving prowess. The flowerbeds that stood in the middle of the broad double roadway were scored by tire tracks, and in ten miles I saw three wrecks.
Soon we were passi
ng the vast grounds of the old royal palace of Nasiriya , where the zoo was now housed, and still we were heading resolutely west. Finally, a mile beyond the palace, we took the southbound exit and were in the most expensive suburb.
It was full dawn when the taxi pulled to a halt in front of a pink concrete house, pseudo-Moorish in design. Elaborate fountains played in the front garden. Three hundred billion petrodollars a year allowed the Arabs to indulge all their old fantasies about running water.
The road was busy, broad and curving, and lined with expensive parked cars. Houses along it were widely separated — more like imitation palaces than conventional western dwellings. I cruised slowly past with the traffic, parked a quarter of a mile farther on behind a big crimson Cadillac, and waited. Scouse, Zan and Pudd’n had emerged from their cab and entered the arch that led to the front garden.
It seemed I was in for another long wait. At the airport I had at least had food, drink, and some comfort. Here I was cramped in the front seat of a small car, watching the sun rise behind me and already feeling those desert rays at work on the metal roof. I passed the time trying to work out in my head exactly where I was in Riyadh . A mile from the Nasiriya palace put me quite a way from the city center.
The inside of the car grew steadily hotter. I was thirsty as well as dizzy, and knew that I would have to leave within another hour, whatever happened, or I would be too far gone to get to a hotel under my own steam. When I opened the car windows for air, tiny midges swarmed in and attacked my face and arms. I closed them again, started the engine, and turned the air-conditioning up to full blast. After a few minutes more I cruised a couple of hundred yards farther along the road, turned the car, and drove slowly back past the house.
Come on out, dammit. They had to come out, I knew that — their suitcases were still in the waiting taxi. The taxi driver was in no hurry. An import like all the rest of the Saudi work force, he was dozing in his seat, mouth open, black face peaceful. The midges didn’t seem to trouble him at all.
What in God’s name were they up to in there? Torturing the residents, if Zan had her way.
Their reappearance took me by surprise. I was leaning forward, adjusting the fan setting, and when I looked up they were back in the taxi. A fat man in a dark suit was leaning to talk to them through the open window. He waved his farewell.
**Mansouri.** The name came into my mind as I was putting the car into gear and easing forward to follow them. It was hard to be invisible in broad daylight, and I was obliged to keep well behind until we were into the crowded city center, near the line of the old west wall. After that it was a fight to keep them in view in the swarming traffic. I lost them for a minute, and when I saw them again they were outside the taxi and about to enter the Intercontinental Hotel. Zan had abandoned her chador in favor of a smart green blouse and skirt, long enough for modesty.
I gave them a couple of minutes free while I parked my car. This was a tricky bit. I had to allow them long enough to be out of the lobby before I went in there myself, but not too long to be forgotten by the staff.
“Remember the lady in the green dress who just came in?” I asked the man behind the desk in reception.
He was perhaps thirty years of age, with the eyes of an old man. They looked at me without any expression at all.
“I’m very interested in her.” I slipped a hundred pound note across the counter and it disappeared. “I know you’re not supposed to tell me her room number — but if you could call my room, and let me know when she comes again into the lobby…” I held up another note, but didn’t hand it to him.
He didn’t seem surprised. After a few years in a major hotel, he must have seen it all. There was a minimal nod of the head and he handed me my room key. His hand looked about three feet long. As soon as I got up to my room I drank a glass of cold water and swallowed one of Sir Westcott’s blue pills. As I did so I wondered who the hell Mansouri was, and how Leo knew him.
The bed in my room cried out to me to come and lie down on it, but I had lost half a day that way when I first arrived in Calcutta . The next few hours, when Scouse and Zan would be sleeping, were all the margin that I had. Their faces when they stood outside the hotel had not been those of happy and successful hunters. It was clear that Leo’s contact in Riyadh had not been at Mansouri’s house, and for the moment Scouse was stalled; but I knew he would be seeking the trail of the Belur Package again before nightfall.
By then, I had to be ahead of them. (By nightfall I would be ahead of them — but not in the sense that I intended.)
I turned on the cold shower and stood under it for ten minutes, until the chill had seeped in from my skin to the middle of my solar plexus. Then I changed clothes and left the hotel. Too bad if Zan wasn’t in a sleeping mood and decided to go for a stroll as well.
I had less worries about Scouse. He must have been travelling for three days straight, and he looked the way that I felt.
In the taxi to the British Embassy, I tried one more time to shuffle the pieces. Every way I turned them, they came up one tantalizing fragment short. There was Leo, picking up the Belur Package and skipping Cuttack one step ahead of Scouse and his thugs. Rustum Belur had been less fortunate — but he had not told them where Leo had gone underground in Calcutta .
I tried to reconstruct Leo’s pattern of moves. What would I have done next? Wait a few days, then try to get out of India and back to the United States .
Success at first. I reach Riyadh safely, without being tracked there; but then I find out that Scouse has the routes through Europe covered. And I have to get to Washington . People must be told what I’ve discovered.
It felt right so far. What next?
Think!
Leave the package in Riyadh . Where?
That’s the missing piece. Find the package, and you’ll also find out what it’s used for.
Think!
**Back through Europe with a false passport. Meet brother in London , tell him where I’ve left it in case I don’t make it to Washington .**
**Give him the message: the missing package has been hidden** — Where?
Memories not my own, not fully accessible. They sat there on the brink of recall. My head was full up, spurting random thoughts, everything but the one I needed. Sweating in the back of the taxi, all the old wounds waking; every stitch of Sir Westcott’s delicate needlework stung and burned with a touch of nitric acid. Kidneys, testicles, right leg, rib cage, eye, ear and skull conspired to torture me, until I sat mindless, gripping the cool plastic of the seat.
I was panting and shivering like a fevered animal. My brain was overloading and the feeling terrified me. Unless I could relax, it would spill, ooze its melting grey matter out of my ears and down my neck.
I fumbled in my coat pocket and swallowed another blue tablet — to hell with any glass of water — and looked at my watch. We were approaching the British Embassy, but already twenty-five precious minutes had passed since I had left the hotel. I was banking on at most six safe hours; after that Zan and Scouse would be ready to try something else.
The embassy lay southwest of the city center, in an area that had once been the most prosperous part of the town. Now it was just a little past its peak, with the hint of genteel and decaying opulence that exactly matched the British influence in this part of the world. I had made a point of dropping in on each visit to Saudi Arabia . Usually my main contact was the Cultural Attaché, but today the Science Attaché was my best hope.
I left the taxi waiting at the main gate. The embassy grounds occupied almost ten acres of sculptured gardens, and the slow walk past the military guards and along a cool, shrub-lined pathway did me good. By the time that I was sitting in the inner lobby and accepting the ritual offer of hot tea, the world was regaining some stability.
The little red-haired man who finally wandered out to meet me looked vaguely familiar. He stood in front of me and frowned, one hand fiddling with the side of his scrubby mustache.
“I s
ay. Aren’t you Lionel Salkind?” He shook my hand vigorously. “We didn’t know you were coming here to play this month — looks like somebody slipped up in getting the word out.”
“I’m not here for concerts.” Apparently most of the world hadn’t noticed that I had been smashed to pieces and out of circulation for six months. So much for fame.
“I’m here on other business,” I said.
“Pity. I’m Cyril Meecham. We met a year ago, when you played the Diabelli what-not, and then that thing with Parkinson. You remember it?”
That thing with Parkinson. I remembered all right, and he had put it very well.
Last year I had given a small private concert at the embassy, and the chargé-d’affaires, Parkinson, fancied himself as a violinist. I played the Beethoven Diabelli Variations, then together we tackled the Spring Sonata, Opus 24. The scherzo movement wore him out, and in the final rondo we went slower and slower, limping across the finish line, roughly together, after the longest last movement in musical memory. I remembered it all right.
“Mind you,” Meecham was saying. “I liked the concert we had with that other pianist, Schub, a lot better. Somehow seemed to be a lot more tuneful, if you know what I mean.” He sensed a possible lack of tact in his remarks, and waved an arm towards his office. “But come on in, and tell me what we can do for you. I’m surprised you’re not talking to Draper and the chaps in Culture.”
“I need some information about science.” I followed him into a panelled office with an oar hung prominently along one wall, and we settled down into creaking, leather-covered armchairs. “At least, I think it’s science. Can you tell me what introsomatic chips are?”
“Mm. See what you mean.” He stroked at his mustache again. “Can’t see you getting too much out of old Draper and his culture-vultures on that one. Introsomatic chips, eh? I could find you some papers on them, let you read all you want to. Mind you, some of that stuff’s hard going.”
My Brother Page 18
