The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  "I'm here because the UAE is almost the last safe place left to look for funding," Doug responded to his second inquiry. "What's your excuse, my friend?"

  David shrugged. "I don't know. Fate? I haven't been myself lately."

  "So I heard. Or rather didn't hear. You just dropped off the map there, buddy, after they cancelled those last calibration tests on the WIYN scope."

  "I guess I've been looking through the wrong end of the scope." And now I want to see a different world, on a softer focus.

  They arrived at a black Jaguar with tinted glass and flat black steel rims. David lifted an accusing finger at Doug's chest before getting in.

  Doug shook his head. "No, this is Nasheed's. Like most everything else I touch. You know, some of the richest sheiks and petro billionaires moved here from other Arab states because they hoped to escape political turmoil. Invest in a free zone. Lot of them were into owning the biggest, best, or most unique. But not Shakil. His mother is Pakistani. His father came from Oman right after Shakil was born, the year of independence from Britain. During Dubai's consolidation after the first Gulf war, the family started investing in real estate, back when it was cheap."

  "So he's, what, early forties?"

  "Yeah. He went to college at Princeton for a year, dropped out. But before figuring out he had no aptitude for math, he played with the notion of an engineering or astronomy major. Then his family fortunes blasted off and he pulled the ejection seat handle instead."

  "What's he worth?"

  "Since Daddy died? Four, five hundred million. Depends on who you ask. Not that I ever do. But you hear things. Money is all anyone talks about, especially with oil prices beginning to spike up again. He's given roughly twelve million to our foundation so far, but we've delayed putting his name on any actual buildings."

  "Why is that?"

  "What if that's all he wants? What if, when he gets it, he stops writing checks, citing the recession?"

  Etherton maneuvered the Jag onto Al Maktoum Road, quickly accelerating across three lanes of traffic lit an unearthly pale yellow by elevated vapor lights. Looking out at a high bank of facing concrete walls, David felt that an eerie transition was underway, as though the short tunnels and dizzying sweep of intersecting bypasses above them heralded another point of no return.

  "Did you have a hotel in mind in case you couldn't get through to me?" Doug asked him.

  "No, I thought I'd let fate decide that, too."

  Their Jag was suddenly passed by a Hummer, roaring by at over a hundred, then drifting perilously to the right toward an exit. Screeching tires signaled a careening deceleration at the top of the ramp.

  “What the--”

  “The natives are restless,” Etherton explained. “Emiratis are only five percent of the population now, but they’re mostly young and male, many still spoiled and bored. Street racing is their way to blow off steam. It’s why Dubai has the worst traffic accident record in the world. It’s also why Sheik Mohammed usually takes a helicopter.”

  When they finally left the lower expressway, it was like emerging from an x-ray chamber. Their selected exit connected with an elevated highway tall enough to bring into view the dazzling night skyline surrounding the business district, vibrant with light and life. Doug tuned in a radio station playing contemporary jazz. "Getting hungry?" he asked. "There's a party I know we can join atop Nasheed's condo tower. These things always have great buffets."

  "Sounds good," David replied, feeling hopeful for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  ~ * ~

  To see Dr. Douglas Etherton vault into the banquet room of the El Haj restaurant and nightclub like a song and dance man onto a vaudeville stage was startling. David lingered near the entrance's distraught host, though, while Doug scouted attendees for familiar faces. Only after repeated signals for him to join the revelers deeper inside did he succumb. With an apologetic bow and smile, then, he shuffled past the portal podium bearing an odd black swan emblem toward a vortex of laser light and funked out music, over to where several pairs of dancers, spotlit by a multi-colored strobe, gyrated in the center of a mix of laid back professionals--some men in turbans, some women in cocktail dresses.

  Arriving at the center of this room, situated atop one of Dubai's mixed-use high rises, he was introduced to three Arab men in turn, and followed their handshakes with a palm to the heart. Next came an Indian man, also in sandals, about whom Doug afterward whispered, "He's an upscale pimp. His girls run five hundred Euros a night and up. Although, these days, some do give discounts."

  "Is it legal here?" David asked.

  "No, just tolerated. Of course, by that I mean it’s commonplace."

  They found the buffet, got china plates, and went down the long gold serving station like teenagers at a town picnic. David tapped the stainless metal of the station. "Thought it was solid gold there for a second," he explained.

  Doug grinned. "Ionized steel. Silver, as a color, is not rich looking enough for Gregg Swann."

  They ladled out prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, and sautéed asparagus spears. Then they moved toward the balcony.

  "Who's Gregg Swann?" David asked.

  "Owns the building."

  "How high are we here?"

  Doug hooked a thumb. David followed him out, past the potted palms, toward the gilded edge, where a semicircular rail extended several feet further, presumably in case a tall and inebriated guest tipped past his center of balance. Although a drunk's gripping capacity was doubtful.

  "Fifty-five floors," Doug announced, bobbing his head downward for David to look.

  David looked up instead. Up at the blazing red spire that began ten feet higher, from the center of the roof, and penetrated the darkness above for what seemed two hundred feet or more.

  Doug saw where he finally looked, at the glowing globe set atop the spire, roughly twelve feet in diameter. "Yeah," he said. "It's an eyesore. At least to Victor Seacrest, who's always traded insults with Swann."

  "Who's Seacrest?"

  Doug pointed across the way, indicating a facing skyscraper, similar in height and fluted fringe except for the spire and globe. "That's Seacrest Tower. Swann got a variance near the end of his own construction, a year and a half ago, to add the club and spire, pushing higher than what was supposed to be identical buildings. All this besides blocking Seacrest's view of Business Bay and the Burj Khalifa, which was always expected but still a source of irritation. Hands were greased, to be sure. So as you might suspect, Seacrest wasn't a happy camper. Especially since the spire's shadow falls across his penthouse like some wagging finger."

  David looked down at last, to the traffic far below. "This kind of thing happen a lot?"

  "Oh, I'm sure. Even ex-pats play games with properties like they were chess pieces, with stakes that can seem like life and death. As in Miami Beach, you might say, back in the day when everyone was 'on the take' over zoning restrictions, and sweetening their deals with raw cocaine."

  David shook his head. "Egos."

  "Speaking of which, sheik Nazir El Habib still plans to build the world's biggest private yacht to inaugurate his shipbuilding empire next to Port Rashid."

  "Where does his money come from? Doesn't he know there's a recession going on?"

  "Not as much here, anymore. That’ll be even more an American thing, with gas prices heading north again. Besides, these guys love showing off that they're surviving, even if it means starving their workers. And anyway, the Chinese buy what we don’t. That's why Nasheed is in Shanghai for the week. I just hope he doesn't sell the family farm while he's there. Unless he wants to give us the money and move to some rice paddy in the provinces."

  Doug smiled wryly, spearing a piece of meat with his fork. Then he sat at a nearby bistro table to eat it.

  David joined him. "So you’re never going back to the mountain? Is raising donations your permanent job now?"

  The Kitt Peak Observatory director set down his utensil, and while chewin
g ran a hand back through his newly coiffured and tinted hair. Finally, he said, "It's not that I don't miss it sometimes. The research, especially. And some of the people. But I've got a good assistant, and anyway, this won't last. I'll be back grading project proposals before you know it. So I intend to enjoy this while I can." He gestured around them. "It's a trip. Private parties like this all the time, and for no reason at all. Just because it's Thursday night."

  "Like our Friday night, you mean."

  "Exactly. And if you're in, you're in."

  David munched on potatoes. "Is Ted Cashman in?"

  "Who?"

  He gulped before enunciating, "The televangelist."

  "Don't know him."

  "What about Jeffrey Innes, the Midwest Bank CEO?"

  "What about him?"

  David took in a breath, and let it out slowly. "Nothing. Forget I mentioned it."

  "Mentioned what?"

  "Only that, up to this moment in my life, since retiring, I may have had my bouts with paranoia." That's all.

  Doug chuckled nervously. "What?"

  "It's why I'm here. Until I figure out whether there's a chance I'll go back to it. I don't want to end up dead in that trailer."

  Doug's smile faded, replaced by a tacit look of fear, as if to wonder whether they’d both spoken too much.

  "What. . . trailer is that?" Doug finally asked, his hesitation suggesting he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

  ~ * ~

  After they finished eating, Etherton excused himself to use the restroom, and was almost immediately replaced by an unusually tall, slender Japanese woman in a green dress. The girl walked over to the edge, near the rail beside him. She looked out and then down at the street below, her shapely form hugged tightly by the light silk fabric of her evening wear. An older man came to the rail ten feet away, lighting up a cigar despite the heat, but neither of them failed to notice the small dragon tattoo above her left ankle.

  When she leaned out a bit too far, to look straight down, David warned, "Long way down."

  She straightened and turned slowly all the way around to face him, resting her arms on either side of her, along the edge. Her eyes shone emerald green by reflected light, as though she possessed secret knowledge about all sorts of men, including the one she now sized up.

  "American," she said.

  "Yes," he confirmed.

  "California."

  "Arizona," he corrected.

  "Ah." She placed a red fingernail at the edge of her rose-tinted lips. "Business or pleasure?"

  "Don't you know?" he asked, then watched as she smiled like a wild cat might smile. "Both, I think, in your case," he continued. "And what's that like for you?"

  She started to answer, but then looked off to her left, her green eyes lighting up with a tinge of reflected gold. David turned to follow her gaze--to follow the cigar man's gaze--to see a plume of fire descending from the upper floors of a sleek building that was taller than any other.

  The Burj Khalifa.

  Then they heard the explosion.

  6

  When the club shut down early on news that an accidental light plane crash into the world's tallest building had actually been an unmanned military drone, Doug and David descended to Nasheed's condo on the forty-eighth and forty-ninth floor of the Swann. There, they stood at the living room window and watched as smoke billowed from a spot two-thirds up the distant silver edifice. Circling helicopters spotlighted the structure, but even with Nasheed's tripod mounted refractor they couldn't see the pandemonium being reported around the base, due to intervening construction.

  Returning to the sunken media pit at the room's center, they sat on Nasheed's white leather sectional couch, and engaged a 72 inch flat screen TV lowered from a horizontal cabinet mounted in the ceiling. The English-speaking Pakistani host, hairpiece barely intact, lamented his station's attempts to obtain footage of the crash, reassuring viewers that no one else had it yet, either, and that as soon as anyone did, they would, of course, be first to air it. Skirting speculation as to the number of casualties, if any--(much less why a U.S. military drone was airborne over Dubai, or even how its explosive payload could have detonated on impact)--the host settled for describing traffic problems caused by the incident, intercut with live reaction from the street. He was rescued by a station chief, whose phone interview with the site's head construction foreman covered the fire suppression system employed at the tower. Over a montage of design images shown in slow succession, which revealed the progress of construction and then the opening ceremonies and fireworks along the massive high-rise, their disembodied voices bantered.

  Host: "So you'd say there's no chance of a collapse here, as with, say, other high rises?"

  Foreman: "None. Zero. The fire will be contained within the hour, if it hasn't been already."

  Host: "You sound pretty sure of yourself. But so was the captain of the Titanic. How do you know what you're saying is true?"

  Foreman: "I know everything about that building. I also know the stylobate platform size and the stasis balance rendered from the pilotis to the horseshoe arch of every Islamic facade in Dubai. And I will tell you, I don't care if that plane was full of jet fuel and dynamite, it would be impossible for it to compromise the building's integrity."

  Host: "So what's burning, over there?"

  Foreman: "Nothing. The fire's out."

  Host: "And the smoke we see?"

  Foreman: "Smoldering TV Guides."

  Host: "Thank you for that. Now, since you obviously know so much, would you be so kind as to tell us what else you know about the building, for the benefit of those newly visiting our fair city?"

  Foreman: "Like what, you mean statistics?"

  Host: "Sure. Whatever you feel is relevant. We don't want people to panic."

  Foreman: "Well, there's no need for that. And it's unlikely anyone died at that level, except maybe an unlucky janitor or two. Okay, then. The tower has an Armani hotel with a hundred-seventy-five rooms and a hundred-forty-four suites. There's also eight hundred luxury apartments, four pools, five restaurants, a spa and a ballroom. There’s an observation deck on floor one-twenty-four, with the top floor going up to one-seventy. Then there's an observation deck in the top third, and a private club above that. Where the drone penetrated was a conference area with no current bookings, I've just been told. All the materials used in construction are fire resistant, along with around seventy thousand tons of steel rebar."

  Host: "Seventy. . .thousand. . .tons?"

  Foreman: "That's right, just for the rebar. The core is concrete, unlike the World Trade Center. And we're talking about an unmanned drone, not a wide body jet with full fuel tanks. You would need a nuclear weapon to bring that building down."

  Host: "What if that's next? What if. . . this was just a trial run?"

  Foreman: "Why are you asking me? Because I have no idea who did this, or why."

  Host: "So you don't think it's an accident."

  Foreman: "I thought you didn't want people to panic."

  Host: "I don't. But I have to ask questions I believe people are thinking. Questions they want answers to."

  Foreman: "I think it'd be better to wait until the facts come in."

  Host: "Exactly. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for your insight."

  The station cut to a commercial for Coca-Cola. They watched it to the end before Doug hit the Off button, then retracted the TV up into its cabinet. "Sugar water is about all we export, anymore," Doug commented.

  "That, and paranoia," David said.

  Giving him a quizzical look, Doug finally suppressed a laugh. "Listen, I'll take the couch, you take the guest room. It's where I usually crash, unless Nasheed has another guest, in which case it's the Hyatt for me. With him usually picking up the tab, by the way."

  "There's a Hyatt here?"

  "Of course. There's probably a Days Inn, too. Although nowhere near Business Bay or Jumeirah Beach."

  "What about Nasheed's room,
when he's gone?"

  "You kidding? I'm not jeopardizing his hospitality. He's got every electronic toy conceivable in that room, too, and I'm guessing one of them monitors what goes on in there. Like with his women."

  "How many of those does he have?"

  "Quite a few, but none that sleep over much, thank Allah."

  David stood and stretched. "I think I may have met one of them. Japanese. Tall, slender, late twenties, with a little dragon tattoo on her ankle? She honed in on me right after you left. Saw me with you. Maybe. . . saw you with Nasheed?"

  "Like I said, quite a few. Who knows."

  He took a walking tour of Nasheed's framed photographs, tastefully displayed beneath track lighting along two walls. One was an aerial view of the still uncompleted Universe development below The World. "Nasheed thinking of buying a piece of the heavens while he's at it?" he asked. "Maybe one of the rays of the Sun?"

  "He's mentioned it."

  "You haven't really mentioned your own family situation yet, though."

  Etherton coughed. "Yeah? Well, maybe because it’s called divorce. And if you're wondering it has to do my coming over here for longer and longer stints, you're probably right." He paused. "Actually, we've been drifting quite a while. No rudder really, except our work." He sighed. “And, yes, she’s still a lawyer. Divorce lawyer, ironically. But she didn't crucify me, though. Used kid gloves. Even called me a kid. A child, I mean. For doing this. And our son, Ronny? He took her side, too. Can't say I blame him. Guess I had it coming for a long time, what with all the administration overtime I put in on the mountain. Not to mention scope time, when I could."

  David stopped in front of the gold framed close-up image of a sunspot, with hundreds of intricately whorled and contiguous convection cells staring up from the photosphere like dark eyes. "You were good," he said, recalling that even the smallest striations within such plasma cells measured a hundred kilometers across. "Enjoyed your work."