Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  And this time, Halton was with me. He sat across the table, eating a plate of various s’ambusihks, meat pastries with pine nuts, with his oversweetened coffee. I was sticking to my goat cheese and mashed-bean breakfast, this time with a bit of yogurt.

  We were about halfway through our meal when a shadow fell across the table. I squinted up into the vague silhouette standing over us, a thin man in a white linen jacket, carrying a briefcase, the shade of a broad-brimmed hat hiding his eyes.

  “Kay Bee Sulaiman?”

  “And you are… ?”

  “Elias Somerton.” Then I recognized the English voice from my telephone call. I’d been expecting him.

  I snorted. “Lost some weight, there, Eli old boy?”

  “Mind if I join you?” Without waiting for permission, he pulled a metal café chair up to the table, sitting between Halton and me. He squinted at my black eye while I continued to eat as if he didn’t exist.

  The waiter ambled out, irritated at the growing number of idiot infidels defying sunstroke. “Sh’aakhudh qahwâa, suukkahr qahwâa,” Somerton said haughtily, his accent even more atrocious than mine. I noticed he didn’t bother with saying “please,” overplaying the last of the British Em-Pah bit, I thought. He didn’t see the kid’s sardonic salute, or at any rate, he ignored it. The waiter took his time bringing Somerton his coffee, “light on the sugar.”

  “I believe you have something that belongs to us, Mr. Sulaiman. We‘d like it returned now.” He rested his briefcase on his knees, balancing it on the table edge.

  Showtime. I shoved some cheese and bread into my mouth and chewed, speaking around it. Somerton winced slightly. “What, you want me to give Halton back already? I thought you folks wanted me to hand him over to Sheikh Larry.”

  I didn’t look directly at Halton, but I could see him from the corner of my eye. He wasn’t reacting in the least.

  “That is not what I was referring to,” Somerton said coldly. He looked at my bruised face suspiciously. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I ran into a doorknob,” I said, this time grinning around a mouthful of mashed beans and yogurt.

  “Must have been a rather tall doorknob,” he snapped.

  “I like walking around on my knees. You meet a better class of people that way.”

  Halton sipped his coffee, unconcerned, uninvolved.

  “Let’s skip the games, Sulaiman, shall we?” Somerton said, and shifted the briefcase on his knees slightly.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Let’s.” I swallowed and signaled the waiter, who sauntered out lazily. “Would you please take Mr. Somerton’s jacket and briefcase to the check desk?” I asked him in Markundi, handing him twenty-five Khuru rials. The kid beamed. Somerton look alarmed. “It’s far too hot to be wearing a jacket, and you look most uncomfortable balancing that case, Eli old buddy.”

  Halton was looking up at me now, his face impassive. Funny thing, I was beginning to think I understood what was going on behind that bland expression.

  “Really, it’s quite all right, never mind…” Somerton was trying to brush the waiter away. The kid grinned hugely, enjoying not understanding either Somerton’s English or his flustered Markundi, while trying to snatch the briefcase away from him.

  “Give it to him, or we have nothing to discuss,” I said in Spanish, the only foreign language other than Arabic that I can speak with any degree of fluency. Somerton glared at me. I wasn’t sure if he understood Spanish or not, but he gave up, and allowed the waiter to strip him of his coat and case.

  When the kid had gone, I reached into the pocket of my own rumpled jacket hanging on the back of my chair, and placed a small cube in the center of the table, next to my package of Gitanes. Switched on, it steadily blinked a tiny yellow light.

  “What’s that?” Somerton scowled at it.

  “It’s what we in the newsbiz call Raid. It kills bugs. Dead.” It was one of the toys I’d gotten from Carl during the Boy King’s aborted party. If anyone had a spikemike pointed in our direction, the Raid would spray an enveloping buzzing field in a two-meter radius, totally masking our conversation from outside ears. As an extra added feature, any electronic cooties Somerton was carrying would suffer instant and permanent death. Pretty ordinary stuff, really, one of the other new kids on the block had assured me offhandedly. The fancier ones fed bland, randomly generated conversation into the masking field. A lot of journalists carry them these days for private interviews.

  “All right, Sulaiman. If you’re quite finished, shall we talk?” Somerton’s feathers were all ruffled and he was red in the face. He looked aggravated, not scared.

  I smiled, looked at Halton and nodded. Casually, he dropped his hand onto Somerton’s knee under the table. Somerton jumped slightly, startled, then froze as Halton squeezed just enough for Somerton to feel the sheer power in the fabricant’s hand clamped solidly to his leg. Somerton’s face paled. Now he was scared.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s talk. I have something you want. You have something I want.”

  “What would that be?” Somerton had regained his composure, but his hand shook as he sipped his lightly sweetened coffee. He put down the cup, his other hand dipping casually toward his waist.

  “Keep both hands on the table where I can see them, please,” I warned him. He set his hands, palms down, on the café table with exaggerated finesse. “C’mon, Eli. What else would I want? Information. Someone else was interested in the little extra package you folks sent along.” I pointed to my black eye. “They were very impolite. Rude people piss me off.”

  I waited, and his eyes widened, shifting from me to Halton and back. Ah. So he did know about the dead bodies in the abandoned café. And I’d just told him who killed them. “I have no idea who you’re talking about, Mr. Sulaiman,” Somerton said slowly. “They certainly weren’t anyone from our offices.”

  I looked at Halton. His fingers gripped Somerton’s knee a little harder. Somerton inhaled sharply. “Halton will crush your kneecap, Eli old chum, if I’m not happy with what I hear.”

  “You’re CDI,” Somerton accused Halton. “You’re not supposed to be operating outside company regulations.”

  Halton looked at him innocently. “I’m not. Check the rules.”

  I chuckled and leaned forward toward the disgruntled Englishman. “Look, Eli, I’m getting tired of being ordered around and roughed up, while you people expect me to just put up with it. I was ‘asked’ by your offices to chaperon Halton to Nok Kuzlat in exchange for some very minor journalistic considerations. I was not asked to smuggle illegal trinkets. Some rather unpleasant people beat the living shit out of me, something else no one mentioned was going to be part of the agreement. Unfortunately, they weren’t in any condition to explain anything when we left. One of them, I believe, was a close personal friend of our boy Larry.”

  Somerton simmered, his face florid, but remained silent.

  I picked up my cigarettes and leaned back in the chair as I shook one out of the pack and lit it. “Now, I would like some answers to a few questions myself. Why don’t we start with who you are, and what you want.”

  “You know who I am,” Somerton growled, cautiously. He flinched reflexively as Halton picked up his coffee with his other hand and sipped. “And you know what I want.”

  “Cut the hokey spy shit,” I warned him.

  “CDI. The microflake.” He spat the words out.

  “Your name really isn’t Elias Somerton, is it?”

  He took a breath, and glanced at Halton. “I wouldn’t tell you that if you had him break both kneecaps.”

  I shrugged. “Not important. But maybe you can tell me why, when I was asked to accompany Halton, didn’t anybody happen to mention the microflake.” A muscle spasmed in his stubbornly clenched jaw. “If you don’t tell me, Eli, I won’t bother with your kneecaps. I’ll just destroy the flake.”

  That got his attention. “That would have very serious consequences for you, Sulaiman.”

  “
Not as bad as it would be for you, I think.” I blew a stream of smoke into his face, a la Bette Davis. Or in this case, maybe, Errol Flynn. He grimaced and blinked rapidly. “Tell you what, I’ll just speculate, and you let me know if I’m getting warm. I think you probably really are CDI, but you’re part of some kind of schism within the company… Or you’re working on your own, completely outside official authorization.” I waited a few heartbeats. “Or maybe you’re a double agent.”

  Somerton sat stone-faced. I looked over at Halton and raised one eyebrow questioningly.

  “Double agent,” he said, not looking at Somerton. He picked up his last square of meat pastry with his free hand and took a bite.

  Somerton’s face drained completely of color, realizing suddenly that while Halton could indeed pulverize his knees, the real reason Halton’s hand was on him was to read his body through the sensors in the fabricant’s skin. He started to stand, and gasped as Halton kept him effortlessly pinned in the chair. Somerton sat quietly for a moment, struggling to recover his self-possession. With his spine straight, he sipped the last of his coffee and set it down on the saucer with considerable care.

  “Who besides CDI are you working for, Eli old friend?” I asked serenely. He kept his eyes down, staring at the empty cup. I sighed theatrically. “Do I really have to run down a list of possibilities until one of them pops up three cherries on the Halton-O-Meter?”

  Actually, when I’d arranged this possible scenario with Halton, he’d warned me that once Somerton realized what was happening, the level of adrenaline being pumped into his system would cloud any readable signs, making it difficult to ferret out answers. Doubly so, since it wasn’t direct skin-to-skin contact. I’d have perhaps one shot at jolting Somerton off his rails, and hoped he bought Halton’s invincibility act.

  “Besides, that’s time consuming, and the more resistant you are, the more likely I’ll be unwilling to give you back your toy. Do I make myself clear?” I inhaled on my cigarette again, hoping I looked cool and nonchalant.

  Finally, Somerton looked up, his eyes rimmed red, mad as hell. “Yes,” he said. “Quite clear. Shall we make a gentleman’s agreement? I’ll tell you what you want to know. Within reason, you understand. Then you give me the flake.”

  “There are no gentlemen in the espionage game, Somerton,” I said, grinning. It was a line from a classic TV holo, but I don’t think Somerton had ever seen it. He didn’t get the joke. Maybe he really didn’t know. “But if you answer my questions, I’ll give it serious consideration. Who are you working for besides CDI?”

  He hesitated. “Mossad.”

  “He’s lying,” Halton said, indifferently.

  “It’s the truth,” he insisted, jaw set in anger.

  Oh, shit. If Halton was mistaken, then this little game would be over.

  “Halton sez you’re lying, Eli old sport. Now why would he say a thing like that?”

  Somerton swallowed. “It is true…” he said, signs of panic starting to show around the edges. “In a way.”

  Bingo.

  “What way?”

  “The Israelis have had cells penetrating every government and opposition organization in the Middle East for decades, and plenty in Europe as well,” he said, almost babbling. “We proposed a mutually beneficial arrangement and they agreed with us that the powers pulling the strings behind the Sheikh to control Khuruchabja had to be stopped. You’re right about a schism inside CDI. We used it to infiltrate CDI via Mossad channels in London. The United States doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Khuruchabja, but the EC does. Once we were inside CDI, it was arranged for some of us to be assigned to work with the British Consulate in Nok Kuzlat.”

  “Who is ‘we,’ Eli? Interpol? MI6?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he hissed through his teeth, his calm façade completely gone. He leaned toward me, his face twitching as Halton painfully reminded him of his knee’s vulnerability. “But if you give that flake to the wrong people, I can tell you it’ll start something that will make the last war here look like a skeet shoot.”

  “And you’re not the ‘wrong people’?” He sat back, refusing to answer. “Okay, so maybe you can tell me if Khatijah was working for you.”

  “No,” he said slowly, weighing how much this information was worth. “She wasn’t.”

  “CDI?”

  “No.”

  “Her husband?”

  He snorted. “No.”

  “Shit, Eli,” I said, disgusted. “How many sides are there?”

  He smiled grimly, the color starting to come back into his cheeks, his self-control revived. “This is the Middle East, Sulaiman,” he reminded me. “How many sides do you want?”

  “How about the one on the side of the angels?”

  His smile vanished. “You have no idea what you’re meddling in,” he said, shaken. He didn’t seem to care about his knee right at that moment.

  I stabbed the butt of my cigarette out, and leaned toward him. “I didn’t ask to meddle in the first place,” I said, a bit more vehemently than I had intended. “You spook assholes got me in the middle of this. Now, why don’t you tell me why it was necessary to bring such a specialized AI flake like that into Khuruchabja?”

  “Where’s the microflake?” he demanded, suddenly obstinate.

  I nodded to Halton. I thought he was going to do the disgusting finger-up-the-sinus trick again, but even I was surprised when he slowly smiled, exposing the flake held delicately between clenched front teeth. I wanted to laugh with delight, it was such a great theatrical touch. The kid was learning.

  Somerton stared at it, and sank back defeated. He took a deep breath. “All right. CDI didn’t send the flake, because they don’t know about it,” he said. His voice was toneless. “We knew they were sending a fabricant, and thought if we sent the flake along with him, we could get it back from you before he was turned over to the Sheikh. You’d go along with it without too much objection so long as it seemed like part of the original plan. But, somehow”—he rubbed his eyes tiredly with thumb and forefinger—“somehow, it got out that the flake was on its way, and Khatijah’s faction thought you were both CDI agents. She’d no idea CDI was sending a fabricant.”

  He looked at Halton speculatively, as if silently asking if Halton had really killed all those people single-handedly. He didn’t inquire. We didn’t enlighten him.

  “So once again, CDI has screwed up,” I said bitterly. “You’d think you guys might have learned a lesson ten years ago.”

  “We did. But the politics have changed somewhat since you were here last,” Somerton retorted, ignoring Halton’s hand on his knee.

  “I keep up with the news,” I said dryly.

  “Only if you know what the real news is,” Somerton returned. I was beginning to like him. Grudgingly. “What you and I both know,” he continued, “is that the West gave up years ago on their Holy Grail for a permanent peace in the Middle East. Now the industrialized world ‘keeps peace’ here by doling out rewards for their client countries who toe the party line, and severely penalizes any that make them uncomfortable. It keeps our oil interests from being impaired. Little Khuruchabja, a hotbed of fundamentalist Muslim hostility, has been kept dicking around for the last ten years, the so-called ‘moderates’ arguing with the so-called ‘conservatives’ about how many angels can dance on the head of Muhammad’s prick.”

  Wrong religious analogy, but I got the idea.

  “As long as their arguments remained internal, and they only murdered each other, the security and well-being of external states was assured. Any time there has been a sign that one side or the other is getting the upper hand, a few judicious prods here and there keep the balance even.”

  “The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and CDI keeps Khuruchabja as a nice solid stake poised over the heart of Islam.”

  Somerton nodded, an almost wry humor in his eyes. “And the dream… or the nightmare, depending on your point of view, of a united Islamic front remains
just that, a dream.”

  “And your side… wants what?”

  I was asking him to try and convert me. He knew it.

  “The West’s interest, and CDI’s interest in an American hegemony, has always been maintaining the status quo. Keep the Khuruchabjan Islamics busy snarling at each other’s throats so they don’t become any real threat to First World interests, but just rabid enough to make their oil-rich neighbors nervous. A fourteenth-century country is easier to control than a twenty-first. The Mufti of Nok Kuzlat has been foaming at the mouth the past few years trying to whip Khuruchabja into becoming the crux and cradle of yet another Islam military jihad, unite all of Islam and crush the imperialists along with their Zionist cronies into oblivion.” He smiled dryly. “Rivers will turn red with our blood, snakes will crawl through our skulls, the usual medieval zealot’s wet dream. Whilst he can get various downtrodden Muslims to all agree they hate the Zionists’ and imperialists’ guts, he can’t get them to stop fighting amongst themselves long enough to do any serious damage.”

  This was an old, sad story I was all too painfully aware of. He seemed to read it on my face.

  “What has changed, if not the shepherds, are the sheep. It’s no more possible for the Islamic world to return to the Golden Age of Muhammad than it would be for Europe to turn back the clock and resurrect the Renaissance, or America to give it all back to the Indians. Younger Khuruchabjans still live within the traditional tribal-family culture, but their awareness of the outside world is a thousand times more sophisticated than their fathers’ ever was.”

  “‘How you gonna keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen gay Paree?’ ” I said.

  “Something like that, yes. The clerics can rant and rave all they bloody well want, but their children have gone to Western schools, they travel, they have faxeroxes and computers and holo satellite dishes. Their exposure to the West is unpreventable. But yet they’re still Arabs, still Muslims. They’re torn trying to find a way to reconcile their faith with their desire to join the First World on an equal footing.”