The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  Etherton smiled slightly at this. "Looks like you owe me twenty bucks," he said.

  "In your dreams," David muttered, and picked up his second ball. But in the act of picking up the ball it all felt suddenly unreal again as he stared down at the gold leaf incorporated into the trim beneath the shiny lacquered lane. The pattern of the leaf, he noted, resembled the pattern he'd seen along the top of the hotel hallway in Bakir's video. Was there a connection? Since Etherton had said little about the video, though, perhaps he hadn't noticed.

  Entranced, but feeling watched and pressed for time, he rolled his ball and missed.

  "By the way," Doug said afterward, taking his money, "Why did you stop out there on the jet ski?"

  "Stop?" David asked.

  "Was your engine flooded or something? Did you stall?"

  He thought about it, but wasn't sure how to explain. "I don't know," he said. "I just stopped for a minute. I guess I wanted to know where I was. Get my bearings. If you're always moving, it's hard to do that."

  Etherton's knit eyebrows indicated he was still processing the explanation when they heard the click of an intercom button being pressed. Then the voice of the Filipino butler announced, "Mr. Baloum has arrived."

  They rushed expectantly out and down the interconnecting hallway toward the front entrance. Passing a vertical window adjacent the tall double doorway, however, David saw that no yacht was tethered along the front dock. Then he heard another sound, a faint sweeping rotor stroke already fading from the rear of the house.

  They took the marble stairs two at a time up to the overlooking veranda in the back. Through the long rear window they witnessed a large blue and white helicopter powering down on the pad off to the left. The side doors opened, and then four men got out. One of them was Aazad. David studied the other three, trying to resurrect the various photos he'd seen of Innes and Cashman. But the trim physique and athletic gait of the men as they walked did not match the images and videos he remembered viewing. Innes was a short man with gray hair and--like Aazad--had a pot belly. Cashman was a lanky Jimmy Swaggart clone with coiffured blazing red hair too perfect not to be a very expensive toupee. On the other hand, two of the men who'd just emerged from the helicopter were blond, and resembled well dressed and agile bodyguards, while the third. . .

  "It's him," Etherton said. "Oh my God. And they're friends."

  David glanced at his friend, who seemed unexpectedly frozen before lifting one hand slowly to his chin in shock. "Who?" he asked. "Who is it?"

  For a long moment, Doug didn't answer, he just gaped at the men walking briskly toward them, Aazad in the lead, followed by the mystery man whose two burly companions took up the flanking rear. Then he said, without detectable intonation, "It's Gregg Swann."

  13

  The president of Swann International was a man in his late fifties, with long, thin brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. His face was tanned almost to the color of scorched bronze, and his narrow gold-rimmed eyeglasses could not contain the threat posed by his sharp blue expressive eyes. The rust colored short sleeved shirt he wore contrasted with the navy blue suits and black Henleys worn by his men. As he came to stand before them at the head of the ebony media room conference table, muscles rippled in his crossed forearms while the bulk of his body mass, concentrated across his wide shoulders and outstretched legs, seemed to tense. Svelte and powerful, he would have been the star performer at a company ball game, had he--remotely--any interest at all in playing games.

  Aazad whispered something into his ear, and left the room, never once looking at Etherton or David. The bodyguards spoke to each other in Russian, then fell silent, like a tag team whose opponents hadn't yet learned the ropes' tensile strength. They glared across the near side of the table in cold detachment as both geek astronomers sat beneath stone wall sconces turned full up into to the fierce magnitude of triple white dwarf suns.

  "Have you ever heard of a black swan?" Gregg Swann asked, his tone deceptively casual.

  Etherton fidgeted. "Excuse me?"

  "A black swan," Swann informed them, "is an event that is totally unanticipated, and which changes the rule book forever. No one can predict a black swan. It is a rarity in nature. So rare, in fact, that few plan for it, or even think about it. Yet when it occurs, and occur it does, there is a catastrophic shift, and many people suffer. This shift can be in the stock market, or in politics. It could even be in science or religion." He paused, looking between them with what seemed like regret. "My first black swan was anticipated by me. It was what made me rich. Had I not seen it coming, there would no Swann empire, no mixed use towers like those I conceived. Like any other fool, I would have blamed the economy, or the President, or bad luck, or fate. I would have prayed to God, asking Him why, and then gone out of my church to a big buffet at a steak house, along with all the other fat parishioners. A round of TV golf, and then back again for more of the same." He paused again, pursing his lips, as though to contemplate such a life. "I knew this day would come. I knew I wouldn't be able to predict the next black swan. No one can. But that doesn't mean I intend to let fate take me out without a fight." He motioned for his bodyguards to leave the room. "I've been informed that you know something about what has happened to me. Be very careful before you speak."

  Etherton opened his mouth, about to jump the gun, but then only licked his lips. After a moment, he met Swann's gaze, and said, "It's only a theory. There is nothing that we know for sure."

  David felt a cold twitch flash across his cheek at the word we.

  "Tell. . . me," Swann said, his own careful, understated words pressing the air between them.

  Etherton seemed inappropriately nervous in laying out his innocent theory that Victor Seacrest was somehow involved in the attack on the Burj Khalifa and Dynamic Tower. "I. . . don't really have any hard evidence for this, other than the woman," he concluded.

  "What woman?" Swann challenged.

  "The Japanese woman." Doug glanced at David. "He's seen her too. I've noticed her a lot in the building, but the one time we talked she didn't know when the El Haj closed, or how to access the observation deck just below the club, so I got the impression she wasn't a resident." Etherton paused, seeing Swann's growing impatience. "I mean, it's possible she's just a whore looking to score with rich men, but then I remembered, after the second attack, where else I'd seen her. Not with Nasheed, I mean, but with Victor Seacrest at a party over at the Armani Inn. I didn't mention it to David here because it was just one of those inconsequential intuitive associations everyone makes, no logic behind it at all."

  "You have her photo?" Swann asked.

  "No."

  "So both of you saw her at the same time?"

  "No, David described her to me. She has a small dragon tattoo above her left ankle." Etherton hesitated. "Listen, Mr. Swann, I was really sorry to hear about your--"

  "When was the last time you saw this woman?" Swann demanded, looking between them both.

  Doug lifted a forefinger toward David. "He saw her last, two nights ago."

  The real estate magnate sat down and lowered his head into his hands. Then he ran his fingers across the top of his head as he raised it again, looking off to one side. "Leave us," he said to Etherton, turning back.

  Doug left the room after exchanging a brief, blank look with David. David turned to face Swann, who now stared into space, his chin propped in his thumbs, his fingers folded together, elbows on the table. The eyes behind the glasses seemed moist, searching. David's first thought was not to say anything. That he did not know this man. But was that completely true? He remembered his own father, arriving late for his mother's funeral. They hadn't seen or spoken to each other in almost four years. Yet there had been tears in his eyes, too. Then, in less than a year, his father had committed suicide.

  "He who loses his life will find it," David said, remembering.

  Swann looked at him. "What?"

  "It's a verse my mother always quoted," he explained.
"I didn't know what it meant at the time, but I'm beginning to learn."

  Swann stared at him for a moment, then took off his glasses and pinched his nose. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "You wanted to ask me something."

  "No, I mean what are you doing in Dubai? Aazad said you're an engineer, here on vacation." He wiped his eyes with the heel of one palm, then replaced his glasses. "A systems designer in the field of optics." He paused, his eyes narrowing now. "What is that, exactly?"

  "I designed spectrometers for astronomical telescopes."

  "Past tense."

  "Yes, I'm retired."

  "So this isn't a vacation."

  David blinked, considering the question. "I'm not sure."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I'm still collating."

  "And do you believe your. . . colleague's theory?"

  "I don't know what to believe. I suppose it's possible, however unlikely. Does this man Seacrest hate you so much that he would finance something like this?"

  Gregg Swann changed the question by posing one of his own. "How likely is it," he asked, "that an engineer like yourself might, shall we say, assist in designing the guidance system for an unmanned drone aircraft? Given, of course. . . unlimited. . . funding."

  David considered his answer carefully, noting the transfixed manner in which he was now being observed.

  ~ * ~

  Just like that, it was over. But they were not done with Etherton. A water taxi was called for David, and he alone was to be shuttled back to the mainland. When he protested that Doug was his escort and only contact in Dubai he was told that Etherton would be in contact shortly. The butler was firm, but polite. Aazad, once again, was absent, although one of his Russian bodyguards stood nearby, with arms crossed.

  The water taxi driver was a Filipino girl just out of her teens. After maneuvering out and around the extreme left ray of the sun in The Universe development, they shot for a dock near the base of the Palm Jumeirah. Debarking the motorboat, David fished in his wallet among the dirhams and dollars there.

  "No," the girl said, waving one hand and shaking her head.

  "How about a tip?" David asked.

  She smiled, but again refused. Then she pointed toward a line of taxi cabs waiting beyond the dock. David glanced down at his Timex watch, then back out to sea, toward the right, toward The World. It was getting late. In a few hours, it would be dark. He thanked the girl and walked up the dock to a platform where he could see that the taxis were all Mercedes. The driver in the one nearest him jumped out, and came around to open the passenger door. He stepped closer.

  "Where to?" the smartly dressed Asian man asked.

  David hesitated, glancing one last time out to sea. Then he said, "The Hyatt."

  "Which one, sir?" the driver queried.

  "If there's one in the Deira district, near the gold souq, take me there. I think I need to buy a new watch."

  14

  The cabbie dropped him off near the corner of Beniyas and Al-Sabkha roads, within sight of Swann Tower. From its wooden latticed archway entrance, Deira's Gold Souq appeared to be a smorgasbord of chains, bracelets, belt buckles, chalices, and filigree gold art. Gold coins and watches were on display in more than a dozen of its many shops. The air was scented of perfumes from the nearby Perfume Souq, but he also detected the fainter odor of fish from more distant Port Rashid. In one spacious courtyard he found a traditional Bedouin dance in progress. Called the Ayyalah, it was accompanied by fluted oboe-like instruments known as mimzars. The dance was being performed enthusiastically for the early evening enjoyment of both men in white dishdashes and some more colorfully dressed women who mimicked the dancer's movements.

  Once, he almost settled on a thin gold watch with a simple face and black leather band. Since he'd first picked up and rejected a more expensive, heavy and ostentatious model, the shop owner seemed disconcerted as he simply walked away with a bow, not even attempting to haggle. Perhaps Dubai Mall, David told himself, mimicking what he imagined another shopper thought, passing through.

  Before he began a walking tour of the area, he rechecked his cell phone for missed calls. The time was indicated on the screen, so why did he even need a watch? Only to be rid of the Timex?

  Once inside the Dubai Museum, at the foot of Al-Fahidi Fort, he viewed a collection of 19th Century Arab weapons, including khanjar daggers and curved silver swords. Aerial photos of Dubai's development since the 1960s were on display there, along with a pre-oil-times collection of artifacts, and specimens of native flora and fauna. A tour of Sheikh Al-Maktoum the elder's house followed, and led to a walk along the dhow wharf next to Dubai Creek, where he wondered again about Etherton.

  Taking out his cell phone again, he held his thumb over the call button as he tried to imagine what was happening at Aazad's private compound. Beside him, old men with leathery faces nonetheless smiled at customers to their wares, which were piled onto the twenty or so now obsolete yet not inappropriate wooden vessels. Assembled as they were into a kind of ancient trading port, with goods from India and East Africa, the fifty meter al-bateels seemed a perfect contrast to the high rise skyscrapers of modern Dubai lined up along Sheikh Zayed Road in the background. It showed, better than anything could, what progress had been made by the rulers over the past two decades. No such a dramatic distinction existed anywhere that he knew, and it was even more awe-inspiring than anything planned at the mega theme park Dubailand, whose construction had been stalled only until the inevitable uptick in oil prices, already begun, refilled the river of money available to Arab investors.

  David was still pondering whether to close his phone when it rang. Pushing the answer button, he looked to his left, up the wharf, where a woman with a black shayla over her face was getting out of a Mercedes, perhaps extending her visit from Dubai Mall's twelve million square feet to a back-in-time evening junket into the history of shopping.

  "Hello?"

  "David?" Etherton answered. "Sorry for not calling earlier. Are you okay?"

  "Sure. What about you?"

  "All is well. Kinda tense for a while, but understandable. Where are you now?"

  "I'm at the dhow wharf in Deira, looking at the sunset."

  "Nice?"

  "Yes, very. Where are you?"

  "I'm waiting for a water taxi back to the mainland. Shall we meet back at the Swann in an hour?"

  David rubbed at his forehead with one hand, considering it. "Listen, Doug," he said, "I think I've outstayed my welcome. Maybe I should just stay at the Hyatt for a few nights, see the sights on my own. We can hook up before I leave for drinks."

  "We could do that," Etherton said, any note of disappointment strangely absent from his voice, "just like you propose." He paused. "But then you'd miss the big surprise, too."

  "What surprise?"

  "The party tomorrow night at the El Haj."

  "Party?" David asked. "What party?"

  He could feel Doug smiling into his cell, now. "Well, the one that'll be attended by your friends Innes and Cashman, of course."

  ~ * ~

  The Deira Hyatt did not cost $5000 a night, as once did the Burj al-Arab, or even the $2000 a night required for a sleep-over at the Trump Tower. It was not that he didn't have the money for it, but rather that, unfortunately, he also knew, somehow, that the unnecessary self indulgence would not help him apprehend what he still needed to know. As for meeting Innes and Cashman, that was another matter. If there was a reason he was here at all, it was to meet those two culprits. Aazad, coming through on his promise, and despite the intervening apprehension related to his distressed friend, had made no promise to appear in person himself at the party, so no doubt the bizarre duo would be disappointed by the billionaire's absence. But there was a ready excuse to be tendered at the end of the evening which would appear acceptable to any civilized person, gentleman or not: the preparation for a funeral.

  David ordered room service and tuned into the latest CNN
reports on the internal military investigation of the attacks in Dubai. As yet, no definitive evidence had been found which linked the U.S. Army, Navy, or Air Force to the assault. The fuselage of the two drone aircraft had been damaged beyond recognition, through explosion and heat, and although there were similarities to known and missing warbirds, the clues so far uncovered were inconclusive, however Al-Jazeera wished to spin it. As for the Dubai stock exchange, it was still reeling, despite an uptick in oil prices and the envy of the world. Nervous too about what tomorrow would bring.

  David felt the same nervousness, so he did not touch the lamb served with creamed spinach, nor the sautéed mushrooms. Instead, he contemplated the remote possibility that his patented optics system had somehow actually been used by the drone attackers in their night vision targeting instruments. He was just rejecting the idea, and tasting his room service meal, when a special bulletin came on featuring a CNN investigator claiming to have stumbled on a CIA memo that was a copy of a restricted email, yet discarded in the trash. The network then projected the memo onto the screen.

  To: TL418, United Arab Emirates

  From: DS672, Hoover Building

  Decrypt 747RP

  Unable to pinpoint identity unsub Skywayman. NSA culling

  known U.S. rogue anti-terrorists for technical expertise linked

  to wreckage evidence. NCIS running internal audit. Next

  report prior 2 PM EST, or as warranted.

  Question: has Langley a list of unsub’s probable targets within the Burj

  Khalifa yet, related to possible gains from this?

  To: DS672

  From: TL418

  Decrypt 330GN

  Don– No, still collating. Just received word that the USAF

  has an AWACS recon plane en route to the UAE. They’re

  requisitioning satellite surveillance of the ground, too, but