Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  “Behjars, and yeah, that was me.”

  “Hey, wow, man, that was like rilly great stuff.” The kid was grinning and stuck out his hand enthusiastically as he introduced himself. “Jefferson Carleby, just call me Carl,” he said, eyeing me with deference. No doubt in a moment he’d confess he’d cut his milk teeth on my live reports. “What happened to you after that? I mean I haven’t seen you do much else since—”

  “I got promoted to Broadcast Editor. Went to a feed-in desk. This’s a one-time special assignment only.”

  “Aww, man, that’s awful,” he said. There were more sympathetic heads nodding in unison at my tale of contrived woe. “That’s typical, waste of talent. Shit, I grew up on your stories…”

  I entertained Carl & Co. with a few amusing Press Club anecdotes I could have rattled off in my sleep, and Carl repaid the favor by bringing me up-to-date with some of the newest electronic toys for journalists. Kids are always up on the latest gizmos, and Carl enjoyed impressing one of the aging legends. I was happy to let him press a couple of the gadgets on me as tokens of his esteem. I would have been more interested to know how he got them through Khuruchabjan Customs. But they might come in handy, especially here.

  Halton followed me around at a suitable, casual distance, his holocamera suspended on his chest, where it was ready to snap up to his eyes whenever I gave the signal to start shooting. He’d recovered his self-composure, and traded some laid-back shoptalk with a couple of the kids. Once I strolled within earshot to eavesdrop. Bullshit about places and people he’d never been or met, liberally spiced with cinematographic jargon. But very smooth, believable bullshit. Get it out of books.

  Typically, the notables all kept the press waiting well after the appointed hour, but finally we were all allowed to troop in and get our footage of Western dignitaries in ridiculously tight suits and dress ties, or equally tight military uniforms garnished with decorations for obscure achievements, as they shook hands with their Eastern counterparts dressed up in their best beads and bed sheets and grinning just as hypocritically.

  I saw very few of the men who had been powerful influences on the new government that took over just after the last war. The political tide swept strangers in and out of power with an almost seasonal regularity. The only one I recognized who recognized me didn’t seem overly thrilled to see me waggling fingers at him in a friendly-like greeting. He’d been on the opposing side a few changes back, bitterly feuding with the very men he was now obsequiously gladhanding and flashing teeth with. Given the chance, I knew, he’d as soon stick a knife in his buddy’s belly without a twinge of conscience. Khuruchabjan politics is not for the faint-hearted or scrupulous.

  Once we’d wasted enough slipclips on this crap, we got to film silent servants dressed in actually tasteful clothes seat this collection of creeps at a long table heavily supplied with ornate saltshakers every two inches in honor of the Assistant to the British Foreign Secretary, a chinless, fidgety man who looked like this was the first time he’d ever sat above the salt in his entire life. There were, naturally, no wives present.

  Sheikh Larry had taken over his kingdom at a young age. He was now about twenty-three or four, still trying to grow a mustache, dark and thinly handsome with a practiced sneer of disdain on his face as he gravely shook hands with men he knew despised him. He’d learned to treat the press corps like the best of them; when he was on camera, they didn’t exist. Sort of like the guys in black in Kabuki theater who move the props around; you’re not supposed to notice them. He was still camera-sensitive enough to pose very carefully, shoulders back, chin high, get my good side, guys.

  But he had a healthy respect for us news rats, and while we were leaning up against the back wall, HoloPaks humming at low speed just in case anything more exciting happened than someone dropping gravy in his lap, another contingent of servants passed around trays of canapés and drinks for the press.

  There wasn’t going to be much happening until sifter dessert, so I leaned back and washed down another couple of heavy-duty aspirin with a glass of Khuruchabja’s pride, Chateau du Vieux Mouton. Or maybe it was Faux Moufette, but it was still awful. Nothing is quite as bad as unfermented ersatz wine. Yuck. I’d asked one of the waiters for hrarak, a sort of peppery drink made from dates and aniseed, a specialty of the mountain people of Khuruchabja. He looked at me as if I’d asked for a glass of horse piss.

  We were waiting for the after-dinner part of the festivities, when we were all scheduled to retire to a truly huge and hideous hall in the palace so that various reporters could chat with the dignitaries of their choice. This, I assumed, was where and when I was going to meet Sheikh Larry. But I snapped to my senses when I noticed some aide-de-camp type stroll casually up to the dining table and discreetly whisper something in the Boy King’s ear. The kid paled, then nodded his head a fraction. A quick glance around the press pool told me I was the only one to cop to the change, the rest of the children too cranky and bored. It was past their bedtime.

  The aide stood aside, and Larry picked at his food apathetically for a moment before he stood up. “My cherished and esteemed friends,” he said, “please excuse me for one moment, if you will. A minor matter requires my attention.” Which is usually diplomatic code for “Back in a sec, I gotta take a leak,” and he walked slowly and calmly out of the room.

  Nobody else seemed to think this was anything to be concerned about, but I nonchalantly signaled Halton. We meandered closer to the entrance of the dining hall. I caught a quick peek out at Sheikh Larry engrossed in heated conversation with his aide and another man, this one dressed in the plainer, more serious uniform of a professional military officer, before one of the servants closed the door with an aggrieved look directed at me.

  “I do believe,” I murmured to Halton, “there has been a slight change in our program.”

  Sure enough, Larry didn’t come back. The aide returned with flowery apologies, and the dignitaries fluttered around a bit, not quite certain of what the protocol was at that point. Reporters, suddenly aware that the night was going to be a complete bust if they didn’t get something in the can, hastily badgered their selected targets before Sheikh Larry’s butlers arrived with hats and coats for the kiddies and genteelly kicked the press pool out.

  “Would you care for a lift back to your hotel?”

  The limo pulled up next to the sidewalk outside the firmly locked palace gates where Halton and I had been standing, me frantically trying to hail a cab for the better part of an hour. What few taxis I’d seen had sped up as they passed, the Presidential neighborhood more dangerous with trigger-happy paranoid guards than the darkest ghetto alley. Most of the other kiddies had already given up and grumbled off on foot. I wasn’t up to walking all the way back to the hotel, although I was giving serious consideration to putting a few streets between us and the Palace gates.

  A polished black window hummed down to reveal a smiling, affable sort of chap with an exquisitely posh English accent. I’d seen him seated amid the British camp during dinner, not really able to tell by the saltshaker his level in the government hierarchy. He wasn’t wearing one of the wedding-cake uniforms, just a simple gray silk business suit, rather plain, really, by comparison.

  I stole a look at the driver, a reflex our friend Samat had instilled in me. The chauffeur could have been a robot, an impassive, dark Semitic type with wraparound sensor glasses that matched the limo’s smoked bulletproof glass.

  “To whom would I owe the favor?” I asked. He could have been Jack the Ripper, and I wouldn’t have cared. The PortaNet was too heavy and my body too tired and aching to be so picky at midnight.

  He smiled more broadly. “To no one, I assure you. It would be my pleasure, and I confess, it is I who would be indebted, if you are indeed the same Kay Bee Sulaiman who covered the previous Khuruchabjan conflict.”

  “Indeed I am,” I said. God, if he didn’t open that damned car door in a few more seconds, I was gonna start singing “God Save the K
ing” and asking for crumpets with my tea. Desperation time.

  He signaled the driver, who got out and smartly opened the door for us. The limo was a brand-new model with an old-fashioned design, arranged so that we could sit facing each other. I climbed in and sat down gratefully, trying not to make my problem too obvious. The car pulled away and we cruised down a mostly deserted Qaiyara Avenue, as insulated from the sound and smell of the outside world as if we’d been in a private plane thirty thousand feet above it.

  “May I introduce myself?” The Brit in the two-thousand écu sterling suit extended his hand. “My name is Thomas Andrew Hollingston Clermont,” he said. I was waiting for “the Third,” but apparently he was an original model. “I’m in the British Consulate’s Public Relations office as an advisor to Mr. Hoyle.” Mr. Hoyle was the Assistant in the British Foreign Office, who had sat with a stiff upper lip plastered on top of his overbite after his host had so unceremoniously run off. “I recognized you in the palace, and couldn’t help taking advantage of the chance to meet you, our mutual professional interest being what it is.”

  We shook hands. Halton gave Clermont his name, adding “GBN photographer,” and we finished the round of pleezed-ta-meetchas. As I was the senior correspondent, Halton would sit back and play respectful rookie, watching with his eyes open and his mouth shut.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I said.

  “Not at all,” Clermont said. I caught him looking speculatively at my shiner, but he was, at least on the surface, too polite to ask any pointed questions.

  I wasn’t. “So maybe you could tell me what His Excellency was so upset about?”

  Clermont raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t notice His Excellency appeared to be upset,” he said. It was hard to tell with that supercilious public school accent if Clermont was being arch or not.

  “Well,” I said, “it sure looked to me like he had a king-sized bug up his ass when he was conversing in the hallway with the major.”

  Clermont’s eyebrow looked like it would crawl all the way up his forehead and fall off the back. Gee, Mom, did I say something wrong?

  “You’re certainly observant, Mr. Sulaiman, which I should have expected, considering your reputation,” he said. At least he wasn’t doing the usual government two-step shuffle. “Actually, I suppose it will be common knowledge by tomorrow morning, in any case. I see no harm in telling you now. His Excellency has had a death in the family.”

  For a bereaved man, Sheikh Larry had looked more scared and pissed off than sad.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “Anybody close?”

  “His youngest wife, Khatijah.” Clermont sighed theatrically. “Such a pity, really. Beautiful girl, good family, educated, bright. His Excellency was very fond of her, although they’d only been married a few months.” He paused, then said in Markundi, with a perfect accent, “Yah hawalla illâahch,” adding, “A great loss,” just in case I didn’t understand.

  Suddenly, I had this creepy feeling. Like, I knew exactly what Mrs. Sheikh looked like. Probably last seen wearing a very nice tailored suit with a tacky hole in it. And I had an even creepier feeling that this fortuitous ride wasn’t coincidence, either. Clermont was watching me with studious calm.

  “Yeah, a real shame. Was she sick long?”

  “Khatijah?” Clermont laughed, a refined chuckle. “Never in her life. She was a born athlete. I believe she met His Excellency at Oxford, where she was a member of the equestrian club.” He did his melancholy-sigh number again. “No, it appears to have been an unfortunate automotive accident. Her car was hit by a truck and forced off the road. The truck driver’s tire blew out, and he lost control of the vehicle. Both Khatijah and her driver were fatally injured when their car turned over. The national police are investigating the site now, and I’m sure there will be a complete announcement by the Palace tomorrow.” He brightened slightly, as if he’d just had a thought. “I don’t suppose any other journalists know yet, which puts you a step ahead of them, doesn’t it?”

  I was still digesting the news. Larry was going to some length to cover up the nature of his wife’s death. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Sure looks like an exclusive to me. Thanks a lot, Tom.”

  He blinked rapidly a few times over his plastic cordial smile, and let the familiarity pass. “My pleasure.” The limo pulled up to our hotel.

  “Please—” Clermont pressed a business card into my hand as we were shucking the PortaNet and HoloPak out on the sidewalk. “I’d be honored if you should choose to ring up the British Consulate during your stay here. If there’s anything we can help you arrange, do call on us.” He smiled with a calculated, shy look. “I’ll be forthright in telling you we could use all the PR we can get—we’re not a large contingent here. This is, after all, Khuruchabja. I certainly have the utmost respect and admiration for the work you did here during the war, and can’t tell you how pleased I am you’ve returned. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again. Perhaps we can be of mutual benefit. I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward.”

  “Not at all, Tommy. We’ll keep in touch. Cheers, luv.”

  Ta-ta and all that. Off he went, and I looked at his business card like it had a particularly vicious strain of infectious virus smeared all over it. Jeez, creeps come in all sizes and packages.

  “He was lying,” Halton said quietly as we trudged across the spacious lobby to the elevators.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I said. “Not even I have to have nano-enhanced senses to guess that. The question is, about what? He certainly made it a point to tell me all the juicy details, didn’t he? Question is, why?”

  I fumbled with the lock to the room and took two steps inside before Halton grabbed me by the arm. I looked at him questioningly. “It’s still early,” he said, not looking at me. His eyes were studying the room. “I have a couple of questions on the HoloPak. Would you mind having a coffee with me before we turn in?”

  I glanced around the room. Nothing seemed out of place.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “We can leave the equipment here.” Halton’s voice was casual, but his entire body had gone as alert as an Irish setter quivering with one paw up and nose pointed at invisible poultry hiding in the bushes.

  We dumped our stuff and went down to a coffee shop around the corner, a smoky, dingy place half-filled with unshaven men staring lethargically at us with droopy eyes. The coffee came in two chipped demitasse cups, thick black mud heavily spiced with cardamom and raw sugar. A radio on a shelf over the bar played a selection from the Markundi hit parade, a thin, wailing ululation accompanied by a ghabah’t flute. It would never make the Top Forty, but it covered our conversation.

  “The room has been searched,” Halton said, once the brooding kid who brought the coffee had shambled away.

  “You made that fairly obvious,” I told him. “What I want to know is, how could you tell, and why did you make such a point of leaving the equipment?”

  He sipped his coffee, eyes scanning the room. I got the feeling that if I’d asked him later to sketch each face he’d seen that night, he could have done it with as much precision as a holoshot. “I know the room was searched because things are not exactly in the place I put them.”

  “What about the maid? They do clean rooms here, y’know.”

  “The maid would not have taken such care to attempt replacing my bookreader, or your jacket, in precisely the same place and way.“’ That made sense, in a kind of paranoid way. “I wanted to leave the equipment, because they will want to search that, too. While we are here, they are in the room, looking.”

  “‘They’? ‘They’ who?” He shrugged. All this secret agent stuff was making my already raw nerves even worse. “Then what the fuck are we doing sitting here instead of someplace where we could see who ‘they’ are?”

  “Because if we can see them, they can see us, and then they would not examine the equipment.”

  I sipped my own coffee. It was cooling rapidly, the thick, cloying tast
e making my mouth feel fuzzy. “Maybe I don’t want them examining my equipment.” I was just feeling cranky and argumentative, that’s all.

  He looked at me speculatively. “Is there anything illegal hidden in it?”

  “No.”

  “Then they won’t find anything. I’ll have to do a more thorough search, but if they’ve returned, we can assume the room has been bugged.”

  “I assumed the room came that way already,” I pointed out. “They usually do, this part of the world. Phone I’m sure is wired.”

  “Phone’s only a wiretap, not an open monitor,” he said calmly. “I crippled everything but the phone last night. It’s all ordinary equipment, old Chinese manufacture. Cheap junk malfunctions all the time—it’s not unusual. But if they heard us leave the equipment, we’ll know the room’s been professionally miked.”

  I looked at him, unintentionally staring at the part of his face concealing the microflake. He smiled, that phony, thin smile. Not even a dimple showed.

  “I want to crack that goddamned flake, Halton. I find it just awfully weird that we’ve been here over twenty-four hours and nobody’s managed to ask me nice for it.”

  “Without an AI reader, I doubt it will be possible.”

  Great. But, I was thinking, all I was supposed to do was deliver Halton, and split. Arlando had made it clear I wasn’t supposed to play secret agent, and all the extra fun and games so far had only gained me a lot of pain and aggravation. So why did I want to delve any deeper and risk really getting hurt?

  Because, jerk, even though I’d retired my Kay Bee Sulaiman secret identity and jockeyed a desk for twelve years, I still had illusions that I was first and foremost a journalist. It was my job to sniff out the news, and there was a lot the newsmakers were trying to hide while using me at the same time. My pride had been injured, never mind other parts of my tender body.