Guy Novel

by Michael Ryan

  During Sheed’s and Angela’s presentation, Clarke had looked increasingly like his head was about to pop off his neck like a cork.

  “This is a complete distraction,” he said vehemently. “Our problems are with Iran and Hezbollah, not bin Laden. He’s a freelancer, a spoiled brat terrorist financier. All he’s got is money. He’s probably going to fade away by himself. He’s not a general, he has no army, he has no nation behind him, much less one the size and strength of Iran. Get serious, Folsom. There’s no comparison between bin Laden and Iran. We need to concentrate our resources on Iran.”

  “I think we are, Richard,” Clinton said. “Didn’t Congress just approve a billion dollars of emergency supplementals to upgrade security for airlines and military bases? The CIA and FBI got a bonus too. And, as I recall, a gentleman who walked into our embassy in Eritrea mentioned that al-Qaeda currently has at least fifty sleeper cells in various cities around the world. That’s what we got for the million dollars we paid him compliments of the American taxpayer. What Folsom is proposing is off the books. What if he’s right?”

  “If he’s right, every intelligence agency we’ve got is wrong.”

  “They’ve been wrong before,” Clinton responded. “Folsom has not.”

  Clarke knew he had lost and so did the rest of us. No one spoke for a moment, as if to acknowledge it. Of course, I hadn’t spoken at all since I made my last joke—a good thing, since I would have made a complete dick of myself. I felt like a junior college transfer at the Nobel physicists’ convention.

  Now that he had won, Sheed saw it was time for the caveat.

  “Mr. President, before you sign off on this, I must add that we don’t intend to ask Jalalzada to attack bin Laden’s compound. In fact, we won’t ask him to do anything. We just give him the money to spend as he sees fit. Of course he understands that if he doesn’t produce results in accordance with our interests he’ll never see another penny.”

  Clinton nodded, then came Sheed’s olive branch for Clarke.

  “Richard, I completely agree with you about Iran. The measures you’ve put in place to contain Hezbollah have been brilliant. A war with Iran would be an expensive disaster and you’ve devised an effective strategy to avoid it. But a war in Afghanistan would be worse. We wouldn’t be able to get out of there for ten years and a trillion dollars, minimum. Ten million for Jalalzada is .001 percent of a trillion. And as the president said, it’s not even taxpayer money.”

  “I don’t think we have any more to talk about,” Clinton said. “The money will be on your plane, Folsom. It will be unloaded for Angela at her destination. Angela, when you return I’d appreciate a personal debriefing,” he added, consciously parodying his lecherous reputation.

  This was obviously a routine Clinton and Angela had done before.

  “I never go anywhere without Folsom,” Angela said.

  “Or Mr. Wilder,” Clinton said, reaching across to shake my hand. “You’re a lucky man, sir. Have a lovely trip with this lovely lady. And don’t cut yourself on your cardboard knife.”

  Clinton and Clarke walked out of the room. I stood there dumbfounded. Sheed was fussing with his briefcase and Angela was laughing at me.

  “Could have been worse,” she said. “He could have asked for the name of your cologne. I was thinking ‘Men’s Locker Room,’ but we could brainstorm it before we market it worldwide.”

  “How . . .” I began.

  “The elevator has a scanner,” she said. “It’s automatic, as soon as you get on. I hate to think of how many low-level functionaries have seen me naked. If it detects anything, the elevator doors don’t open. I think it can release a range of noxious gases in there as well to brighten up your day. I just hope it never malfunctions.”

  “What a world you live in,” I said to her, without thinking.

  She looked at me intently, as if to consider exactly what I meant, then said nothing. We were a million miles away from each other. And probably always would be.

  “So you two take my plane,” Sheed said. “Clinton has a fund-raiser tonight at Barbra Streisand’s and offered me a ride. I’m taking Georges back with me, though.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “You don’t ever sleep.”

  “Not much,” Sheed replied. “Great job, Angela. As usual. And Mr. Wilder, you set the perfect tone with your jokes. As the president said, we could use you at all our meetings.”

  “Probably the best booking I’ll be offered this year,” I said.

  “I don’t think that could have gone more smoothly, do you?” Sheed asked Angela.

  “Clinton had made up his mind before the meeting started,” Angela replied. “I worry about alienating Clarke, but it was unavoidable. He doesn’t like to lose. He also will be listening to every word we’re saying right now, as you know. But I don’t think any of it will surprise him.”

  “I’m sure it won’t,” Sheed said, and with that he picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

  17.

  sheed rode up to the roof with Angela and me to say good-bye, then stepped back into the elevator and disappeared. His good-bye to Angela was characteristic: a hearty handshake. A hug would have been worse, I guess, since he barely reached her shoulders and, with her high heels on, she might have poked his eyes out with her breasts. He’d have looked like a ten-year-old hugging his mom. No way would Sheed ever subject himself to that. I had never met anyone so self-possessed. He had designed himself for maximum efficacy, part of which was his resolute placid dignity. If he suffered conflict and anxiety like every other human being who has ever lived, he masked it masterfully, and he made you want to act as calm and rational as he was by agreeing to whatever perfectly reasonable plan he proposed. Like me flying to an undisclosed “Middle Eastern capital” and secretly delivering $10 million to an Afghan mujahideen. What could be more reasonable than that? Especially since there were probably a good many people with very large guns who would prefer I didn’t. If Sheed ever got angry or frustrated or just let off a little steam, no one ever witnessed it. Maybe after work he chopped up pizza deliverymen in his basement and played Twister with the pieces or donned a monkey suit and partied with a tribe of horny bonobos, but what he seemed to like to do most was work because his work was the one manifestation of cosmic order left in the modern world as the millennium spluttered to its conclusion.

  His relationship to Angela was a mystery to me. He clearly admired and appreciated her, but affection? Desire? Paternal tenderness? Not in the deepest recesses of his brain. He did his job and she did hers—and together they prospered. If Sheed were her surrogate father or some other psychobabble replacement figure, it was not apparent. She seemed to have found the perfect arrangement—one that asked nothing personal of her—and the perfect profession, which asked her only to do and not to feel. Emotion in fact would be a hindrance in their line of work. It might make them nice instead of effective. I felt more than ever like an alien on their planet. Clinton and Clarke, Sheed and Angela—for all their personality differences, they belonged together. They were all relentless brilliant psychopaths, who felt no emotional bonds to anyone, including one another.

  But who was I to talk about “emotional bonds,” the notorious shitweasel who left his bride-to-be literally standing at the altar?

  The helicopter took us back to the plane and the plane took off immediately. We were hardly off the ground before Angela was on the radio in the copilot’s seat talking to whomever—Sheed no doubt, among others. Besides the pilot, who I had still not met, there was no one else on the plane. I realized Angela was the copilot, for this flight. Among her many talents, she apparently also knew how to fly jet planes. For some reason, this thought depressed me most of all. I supposed she’d be the Cordon Bleu chef, too, since Georges had gone with Sheed back to LA. But what was I supposed to eat now? I checked the refrigerator. Georges had made croissant sandwiches from the leftover filet de beouf au poivre and I wolfed down three of them while wandering about the pla
ne. He had tidied up everywhere but the bedroom suite. It looked exactly like I left it before the meeting with Clinton. Angela’s gun was still hanging by its strap from the closet door and her wispy bra-and-panties were still crumpled into a ball on the bed. They each presented problems for me. I couldn’t sleep with the gun hanging over my head—what if we hit turbulence and it bounced off and shot me?—nor could I sleep with Angela’s underwear, much less on it. I picked up the underwear no less gingerly than the gun and put them in an empty drawer together—the two faces of Angela. If she had luggage it wasn’t here, nor was the $10 million. Of course, I checked all the drawers and closets but they were empty. Then I stripped and crawled under the covers. They smelled of Angela. The whole bed smelled of her—her hair and flesh, her scent—which I hadn’t smelled since being in bed with her in Baja. It was like sleeping with her ghost, and made me feel all the desire for her that I never wanted to feel again, and I resolved to get through this delivery and away from her forever or die trying, which seemed all too possible.

  Blessedly I passed out and when I woke up Angela was standing next to the bed, still arrayed in her tailored black suit.

  “Robert, wake up, we’re landing in an hour,” I heard through the fog that filled my skull.

  “How can that be?” I asked. “I only just went to sleep.”

  “Yes, twelve hours ago. You didn’t even wake while we refueled. I brought you a coffee.”

  I sat up in bed and propped the pillow behind me, the bed sheet covering my lap. I was suddenly aware that I was completely naked, and that Angela was aware that I was completely naked. I took the coffee from her and thanked her.

  “Where’s my gun?” she asked.

  “It’s in the top drawer with your underwear. They’re becoming friends.”

  “How about us, Robert? Are we becoming friends?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t make a very good liar,” Angela said.

  “It’s kind of a silly question, isn’t it? We haven’t exchanged a personal word since you appeared at my place in your Muslim fashion statement.”

  “Would you like to talk about something?”

  “I’d like to talk about everything,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ll have the chance,” she said. “I’ve just been doing my job.”

  “Was it your job to fuck me all the way to Mexico?”

  Angela paused a moment before answering. She was still standing next to the bed, about a tenth of an inch away from me. She gave me a look like I had reminded her of something: sex. She said, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She reached for my coffee cup and gently lifted it out of my hand, brushing my fingertips with hers. It sent a charge right to my brain stem. She set the coffee cup on the counter and looked that look of hers at me, waiting for my answer.

  “I think you wanted to,” I said quietly.

  “And I want to even more right now.” She slid out of her tailored black suit and there she was in her Brazilian bikini with the butt-floss bottom, red as the devil himself. Happy memories of Malibu. Its effect on me was instantaneous.

  “Remember this?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately I do,” I answered.

  “Let me see,” she said, and slowly pulled the sheet off of me. “Oh, you have an excellent memory.” Private Wanky was standing at full attention, a fine soldier. If he stood up any straighter, he’d be saluting.

  Angela moved to the foot of the bed and reached down and pushed my legs apart and knelt between them.

  “You have the most beautiful cock in the universe,” she said.

  “That’s what my grandma tells me,” I said.

  That one surprised her (surprised me too). She laughed, nothing held back, the laugh I love. “Isn’t there anything you can’t make a joke of?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She smiled and sat upright on her knees and undid the two teeny shoestring bows that impossibly held her bikini on.

  “How about this?” she asked. She took me in one hand and straddled me and slipped me all the way inside her. I couldn’t make a joke of it, all right—nor of anything else, for quite some time.

  ANGELA MADE omelettes aux fines herbes in the galley kitchen and served them with fresh coffee and warm brioches that Georges had parbaked and frozen. She had put on the same white silk robe she had worn in Malibu and I watched it move like thick cream over the contours of her body as she cooked. I must have died and gone to heaven—weird heaven, but heaven nonetheless. Here we were setting up house in the airborne Vegas casino preferred-customer lounge. I wore my skivvies, the same pair I had been wearing for the last three days. They were starting to become a life form independent of me. Angela’s luggage—the same four big bags she took to Mexico—perched on chairs around a coffee table as if they were having a business conference, and a big cardboard box sat at their feet like a mastiff. A box packed with money, probably. Since neither the box nor the luggage were here before, I assumed they had been brought up from the baggage compartment during the refueling I slept through.

  Angela folded the omelette, flipped it, halved it, then slid the two halves onto plates and set one in front of me and sat down across from me with the other.

  “So did you learn to make this omelette at Le Cordon Bleu?” I asked.

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “I thought maybe you picked up your chef certificate on the side while you studied in Paris. Probably you also learned to juggle on the high wire and occasionally perform with Cirque du Soleil.”

  “I can barely balance on one foot and make toast,” she said. “This omelette is the one thing I can manage without setting the kitchen on fire. What other fantasies do you have about me?”

  “Lots,” I said, pointing to my skull. “Not a nice neighborhood. Never go there alone.”

  “Well, you behave fairly respectably. Most of the time.”

  “I’m almost grown up now,” I said. “By the way, it’s been more than an hour since you woke me and we haven’t landed.”

  “I exaggerated a little.”

  “So we weren’t landing in an hour. And that coffee you brought me—you were just trying to get into my pants?”

  “You weren’t wearing pants.”

  “Well, thank you. It was the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.”

  Angela smiled. “You’re pretty tasty yourself. Would you like to know where we’re going?”

  “ ‘A five-star hotel in a Middle-Eastern capital.’ ”

  “Is that what Folsom told you?”

  “Yes, did he exaggerate a little?”

  “Not at all. We’re going to a yurt in a Central Asian Republic.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “We’re landing—actually in about an hour—in Turkmenistan.”

  “Turkmenistan? I don’t even know where it is.”

  “Borders Afghanistan to the north. It’s the only place we can meet Ahmad. Believe me, I tried everywhere. That’s what I was doing on the radio for twelve hours. I’m sorry I couldn’t book us at the Four Seasons in Amman, but they’re having a little ‘unrest’ in Jordan at the moment, as is just about every other country in the region. We’re lucky this worked out. It’s not at all the way I like to do these things, but we should get in and get out safely and so should Ahmad, so that’s all that matters.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “None, really. I’m just more comfortable going under the radar, but Ahmad can’t be away right now so we have to go to him, or as close to him as we can. Which meant Clinton had to call President Niyazov and arrange a military escort for us and for Ahmad when he reaches the border. Niyazov agreed on one condition: we pretend we’re Saudis. So I’m wearing my hijab and you’re wearing this.”

  She reached into the chair next to her and held up this fall’s latest fashion line in Saudi menswear: a white ankle-length robe. The same as last fall’s fa
shion line and the previous fall’s fashion line for the last 3,000 years or so. I thought it was an extra tablecloth Georges had left for us.

  “A robe?” I said.

  “A ‘ thobe, ” Angela said.

  “Thobe?” I asked. “Or did you suddenly develop a lisp?”

  “Your first word in Arabic. We also have the tagiyah, the ghutra, and the agal.” She held up each one for display—a skull cap, a scarf, and a black cord, the three parts of the head covering. “As we girls know, the outfit is all in the accessories.”

  “I’m supposed to wear that,” I said flatly. “May I ask why?”

  “Turkmenistan foreign relations. Would you like to hear an interminable lecture on Turkmenistan foreign relations?”

  “Turkmenistan foreign relations make me hot. I’m not sure I could control myself.”

  “Then here’s the short version: oil. Turkmenistan has massive undeveloped oil and gas reserves. Everyone knows Americans invade for oil. Americans with a military escort make Turkmen nervous. Saudis don’t. Saudis need oil like you need a penis splint.”

  Then she picked up a pair of boxy underpants, too tight to be boxers and too long to be briefs, with an Arabic letter under the right butt cheek. I had never seen underpants like it.

  “Do Arabs have square butts?” I asked.

  “I’m happy to say I have no idea. You can’t see their butts through their thobes.”

  “What does the Arabic letter under the right butt cheek mean?”

  “ ‘ If you can read this, you’re driving too close.’ ”

  “All that with one letter?”

  “It’s the company logo, I think.”

  “How about my beard? Don’t Saudis wear beards?”

  “Oh yes, the best part.” She arranged on the table a little black mustache, goatee, and mouche in the shape of a face.

  “All right. Now I know you’re pulling my chain.”