by N Lee Wood
Without moving from his place, Halton grabbed them all in a neat sweep. He then held them out toward the king, and I saw they were five silver dinar coins. I saw the advisor’s eyes bulge in surprise. The Boy King laughed with delight.
“Now bend one,” the Sheikh commanded.
Halton held one up with thumb and two fingers, bending the thick coin into a perfect right angle. After handing that one to the king, he bent another, then straightened it back into shape. Not even a stress line showed where the coin had been crimped.
“Man, this is rilly great!” Larry said elatedly. Halton looked at him, silently impassive. I closed my eyes.
Next thing you know, the kid would be ordering him to sit up, roll over, fetch. Play dead. I was trembling.
Sheikh Larry was speaking to me. I opened my eyes, willing myself to remain calm. “Your Excellency?”
“I said Mustafa will take you back to the waiting room. Both of you. I’ll be holding court in an hour, which you will film.” He wasn’t asking. “So be ready.”
Mustafa bowed to the little bastard, and we trotted out behind the old man back to the same ma’gâlees we’d already spent hours admiring.
Halton sat inanimate, carved from marble. I felt miserable. “I’m sorry, Halton. Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
His head turned slowly, as if someone had forgotten to oil it recently. The dead expression was back in his eyes. “What for?”
“For signing the goddamned papers. For not telling His Excellency to go screw himself.” I felt my short nails digging into the palms of my hands, they were clenched so tightly. “For letting you down, Halton,” I finished softly.
“It was not unexpected, Kay Bee. I realize nothing else could have been done,” he said without energy. “You didn’t let me down.”
“Now what are we going to do?” I hated the forlorn sound in my voice.
“We?” That made me glance hard at him. “There is no ‘we,’ Kay Bee. You’ve signed over the title. I belong to His Excellency now.” His tone was completely devoid of any human emotion. “I assume you will continue your work as a journalist, and I will become His Excellency’s bodyguard. I’m no longer your concern.”
It was as if he’d dumped a tub of cold water over my head. I stared at him, realizing that strange plastic look was back. His eyes were bland, vacuous, and his mouth had frozen back into that goddamned bogus half-smile.
“No longer my concern…” I repeated thickly. Anger seeped up through the ice. “That’s it? After all the shit you’ve put me through, asking me to help you, I sign a lousy piece of paper and you’re no longer my concern?”
He regarded me silently. “Yes,” he said finally.
“It was all for nothing. All of it, even at the madja’?” I hissed between clenched teeth. “This is your idea of friendship?”
For a moment, I thought I saw a crack in the shell, a hint of strain in his eyes. Then it was gone.
“I sincerely hope it was not for nothing,” he said firmly. “Please believe me, I’m very grateful you were my friend.”
Were.
I sat back slowly, refusing to look at him. I listened to the sound of blood pumping in my ears, counting heartbeats.
Past tense.
“Okay, fine, if that’s the way you want it,” I said slowly. “Fuck you very much, Halton.” He didn’t react, and we sat without speaking until Mustafa returned for us. Halton adjusted the HoloPak, ready to shoot, and I had the PortaNet ready.
We were escorted to one of the biggest rooms I’ve ever seen. A gold domed ceiling towered overhead; a double row of slender columns kept the roof up. Cathedral-huge and octagonal, it was bisected by a long carpet in a native Oriental design that ran the length of the hall, terminating at one end with a raised dais.
At the top, the Magnificent Servant of Allah, the Beloved and Glorious Leader, Monarch and Commander-in-Chief of all Khuruchabja, His Exalted Excellency Sheikh Larry sat with his forearms positioned on a large gilt-and-green velvet chair like a teenaged pharaoh carved in ice, his face arrogantly impassive, frozen in a regal scowl. His hair had been slicked back neatly, and he had changed from his T-shirt and jeans back into another of his wedding-cake military uniforms, this one generously festooned with ribbons, medals, various baubles, bangles, bright shiny beads, the works. I half-expected the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to start singing hosannas from Dolby speakers.
On the three lower levels from the throne, various robed men sat on cushions, as orderly as if they’d been placed in position by a choreographer. At ground level, a crowd of more than a thousand men filled the hall on either side of the wide carpet, with enough room left over for twice as many more. Some wore immaculate qaftans and richly embroidered qabahs, with gold-thread burda-ts covering their shoulders. Others were seated cross-legged in Western business suits and ties under their kaffiyehs. Behind, with increasing degrees of shabbiness, hundreds more filled the hall, until those pressed at the very back of the hall, next to the huge entrance, were dusty al-wabahr straight off the desert, the musty smell of old sweat and sheep dung still permeating their robes.
I had the PortaNet hooked into a standby relay channeled through a multilink satellite to some bored feed-in editor monitoring a dozen other such dull transmissions all at the same time. If Larry had some exciting surprise proclamation up his sleeve, at least we’d have it live.
Halton had the HoloPak up and running as we marched across a marble inlaid floor. As we approached the royal personage, he smiled disdainfully, a practiced pose, his shoulders wedged firmly back, head held high so as to look down his thin, curved nose at the flyeyes poking from either side around the top of Halton’s head. We were seated about halfway down the dais, to one side. At a distance of ten feet we were out of the way but still positioned at a satisfactory angle to film. Larry’s good side, I noticed.
We proceeded to film about three hours of Larry holding court, Arab-style, listening quietly to complaints, nodding and frowning thoughtfully, then dispensing justice however he saw fit. One by one, or in groups of three or whole clusters, men stood, walked to the foot of the dais and began arguing heatedly among themselves until Larry had had enough, judgment was made and written down in a ludicrous big vellum book, and the plaintiffs retreated with varying degrees of smugness or dissatisfaction on their faces.
As much as I disliked the kid, I had to admit he was a decent administrator. Hot disputes over government regulations between opulently robed civil service officials devolved to arguments over banking laws and company contracts by men in business suits and kaffiyehs. Merchants disputing delivery and inventory rivalries were eventually supplanted by villagers quarreling over goats and camels, all sides claiming various degrees of kinship with the Boy King and his corresponding obligation to decide in their favor. How he could keep the boredom off his face was beyond me. But the spoiled brat had vanished, replaced by the haughty young ruler expertly balancing the demands of justice with the need for expedience. Impressive, but dull. Not a prime-time grabber.
I had to suppress a yawn, standing to one side next to Halton, the PortaNet humming to itself. My mind was elsewhere, thinking of where I could make a private call to Arlando, changing my flight schedule to get out of Khuruchabja. I’d done my bit. To hell with the rest of this cloak and danger bullshit. To hell with Sheikh Larry and CDI’s backstage manipulations. To hell with the microflake and Somerton and Clermont.
To hell with Halton.
So I wasn’t paying attention when a particularly raggedy-looking fhalell’h walked up the aisle on trembling legs to stand before his regal lord and master. Having spent the past hour listening to other peasants just like him bicker vociferously over fences and water rights and which son got what number of lambs and whose family hadn’t paid what dowry price, I didn’t imagine this grubby little man had anything of overwhelming importance to petition.
He seemed terrified, eyes rolling whitely in a deeply tanned face, drooping mustache on a quivering lip. For the fi
rst time, Larry smiled—a warm, open expression—as if to calm the man’s fears and encourage him to speak his mind. The peasant abruptly fell to his knees, forehead pressed to the step, babbling nonsense. One of the ministers started to stand, ready to remove the hysterical man, but Larry waved him back with a peremptory flick of his hand. The minister sat back, annoyed, as the peasant scuttled on hands and knees closer to the king. Larry leaned forward, as if to better hear the terrified man’s gibbering.
“Allah ahk’bahr!” the man suddenly screeched, straightening up with a half-meter-long pigsticker clenched in his fist. He lunged toward the Boy King barely a foot away.
And was brought up short by Halton’s hand clamped around his wrist. From a good four meters away, Halton had ripped off his HoloPak and sprung across the distance to block the man’s attack, the tip of the blade stopping short a fraction of an inch from Sheikh Larry’s throat. He twisted the assailant’s wrist sharply, the knife clattered to the floor, and the man ended up on his back with Halton’s knee planted firmly on his chest.
After a second of stunned silence, the hall erupted in pandemonium, the would-be assassin screaming incomprehensibly over the din of panicked noise. Adrenaline was pumping through me as I had the PortaNet blipping directly into GBN’s news-feed, my journalist’s instincts taking over before my brain could figure out what was going on.
“An assassination attempt in Nok Kuzlat has just been thwarted,” I said into the relay, yelling to be heard over the chaos, scrambling with the other hand at the fallen HoloPak transmitting only stampeding feet. “In a dramatic—” Suddenly I stopped.
Ministers on either side had tripped over themselves falling backwards, as if they’d been blown over by the breath of a cyclone. Larry was pressed back into his ornate chair, eyes wide and astonished, but, I noticed, not frightened. Halton was staring up at the kid, poker-faced, the assailant still writhing in his grip and howling. And I saw, unheard over the cacophony, Larry laughing heartily.
So be ready.
It had been a setup.
I cut the transmission without another word. I could almost hear GBN’s feed-in editor cursing me from half a world away. I took two steps toward Halton, when a couple of olive-green military guards emerged from the mayhem to form a protective shield around him and the king, blocking my view.
Driven along with the crowd, I was being forced back by the guards shoving people with the side of their machine guns. The shrieking “assailant” was dragged away, and the king had vanished. I fought to swim upstream of the crowd being hustled out the doors, but ended up with the rest, outside the locked palace gates.
On the street, the crowd grew thicker, gossipers anxious for the news from eyewitnesses eager to embellish, at the top of their lungs, their assorted tales of near-assassination and a miraculous rescuer. I pushed my way back toward the armed guards stationed on the other side of the iron gate.
“Kay Bee Sulaiman!” I was shouting over the noise, waving my press credentials at one of them. “GBN News! I had an appointment with His Excellency…!”
The guard grinned nastily. “Go away,” he ordered.
“My optics man is still in there!” I was pointing toward the palace, my voice hoarse from shouting.
The guard pulled back the bolt on his machine gun meaningfully, an ominous solid thunk. “You go away now. J’ahkzhil!” he shouted back, still grinning. The barrel of the gun was pointed at me.
Right. Hey, no problem.
I went.
EIGHTEEN
* * *
ISPENT THE REST OF THE WEEK IN THE HOTEL. Alone. His Excellency’s palace didn’t return my calls. The kid had what he wanted, I could go whistle Dixie. I didn’t even have an optics guy anymore, and Halton still had the HoloPak.
I called Arlando on a secured line to bitch and moan, which made me feel like shit and didn’t achieve much, either. What could I tell him, anyway? I’d done my job, delivered Halton, even had an exclusive, such as it was, on the so-called assassination attempt.
I was stuck here, he spelled out in words of one syllable. That was that. For crying out loud, Kay Bee, you’re supposed to be a journalist, so make the best of a bad situation. Be a pro.
At least he had the grace not to tell me to stay out of trouble.
There were any number of other reporters and optics men staying in the Grand Imperial, so I puttered around buying drinks, such as they were, and putting out a couple feelers for a freelancer. Then I sat in my room waiting by the phone. To pass the time, I downloaded some files out of Cairo Relay’s archives onto the PortaNet, studying the possibilities of who l could hit Clermont up to interview.
The hotel’s TV system was an old-fashioned internal cable, with very new jammers filtering out all but the most tightly beamed satellite feed. Not even one of Carl’s toys could get any of the Western news channels through the hotel’s jammers with any degree of clarity. I had to settle for the meager Nok Kuzlat local news on a bad Chinese holoset set at low volume, at uneven intervals between the interminable prayers and two-year-old soccer matches.
The Boy King’s sensational survival made the top of the hour, the anchorman gushing with equally effuse praise for Allah, His Excellency and Halton, who had been honored by being immediately offered the job of His Excellency’s personal bodyguard, for which he was so obviously qualified. There wasn’t even a good holoshot of the rescue, just the endlessly recycled GBN picture of the kneeling assassin seconds before he jumped the king, then a reeling blur of noise and sound as the HoloPak hit the ground when Halton jumped.
The assailant had been promptly tried and publicly executed. They did have wonderful footage of that. Good lighting. Nice sound.
I got a nibble from a freelance holo-optics buddy of Carl’s who was also staying at the hotel, and made arrangements on the phone with him while finishing up the tenth archive clip from Cairo to make my choice of political prisoners I might finagle an interview with.
There weren’t many who were suitable for the kind of piece I had in mind; most of them were the usual out-of-favor hydrophobic clerics advocating terrorism as the only legitimate catalyst for change, in whom the vast majority of GBN’s viewing public had little interest or sympathy for. The rest were routine smugglers, murderers and thieves, run-of-the-mill common criminals, with only the barest veneer of political oppression about them, waiting years for Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, fleeting and fatal as it was. The Boy King didn’t keep that many troublesome political prisoners romantically languishing in his dreary dungeons. He seemed to prefer having those few liberal dissidents, doctors, college professors and, yes, journalists who annoyed him, promptly shot instead. Keeps the public entertained while cutting down on the overhead.
I’d settled on an elderly ulema who had been in jail for more than five years for certain unkosher religious views, a bit too popular and frail to have executed without a PR scandal, when the latest Khuruchabjan news flash playing in the background caught my eye. The anchorman was replaced by a superb holoshot taken by one of Nok Kuzlat’s very own.
Nathan R. Mitchell, a dastardly British national working for an unscrupulous Canadian export company in Nok Kuzlat, had been arrested for attempting to bribe a number of our virtuous, upstanding Khuruchabjan officials over a contract grant. The cheerful voice-over described the degenerate Brit’s heinous crimes as military officers hustled the suspect down the office building steps, hands cuffed behind him.
The lens zoomed up for an excellent shot on his pale and drawn face, hollow eyes staring back at the camera in disbelief. Then he was shoved roughly into an official car, cameras, PortaNet microphones and HoloPaks waving around the car as boxes of “evidence” followed the culprit into the back seat.
It was Elias Somerton. The second.
I had to root through the junk accumulated in the hotel room to find the card Clermont had pressed into my hand.
The British Consulate’s line was busy, and I kept the phone on constant redial until I
got through.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Thomas Andrew Hollingston Clermont, please.”
“May I ask who’s speaking?” The phlegmatic young man at the other end could have been interchangeable with any number of other lowly government receptionists in embassies around the world.
“Kay Bee Sulaiman.” I didn’t bother with the “GBN News.”
“One moment, please…” He put me on hold while the screen showed a panorama of green English hillside, bursting with flowers and lush trees, a river trickling merrily in the dappled sunlight. Haydn’s “Water Music” played in the background.
The glum receptionist returned. “So sorry, Mr. Clermont is in conference and cahn’t be disturbed. Would you care to leave your number, sir?”
I did. His meeting must have lasted all day, since by the time I called for the third time, he’d gone home, and the embassy receptionist was veddy apologetic—he couldn’t possibly release Mr. Clermont’s confidential home number, please ring back in the morning.
The next morning, I didn’t bother making the call, knowing full well Clermont was going to be in conference regardless of what time I called. Leaving the PortaNet in the hotel room, I carried another of Carl’s little devices, a miniaturized recorder, the mike pickup disguised as a button on my shirt, the chip disk hidden in my belt buckle. The chip itself, he’d assured me, was protected against crippling devices like the Raid box.
Downstairs, I had the desk call a taxi, eyeing one of the watchdogs reading a newspaper in the lobby as I waited. Finally, I walked to where he was seated and stood directly over him. He looked up in ill-concealed uneasiness.
“Where’s your partner?” I asked.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
The taxi pulled up, and the imitation Mameluke doorman opened the lobby doors and looked at me expectantly. I looked around the lobby with exaggerated care.