The proprietor just said three words in Turkish: “He is here.” And he hung up the phone.
But Heller was not drinking the water. From his pocket he had pulled half a dozen poppies! He put them in the glass!
Oh, how sweet, I sneered. He had bought the lie that this type was for the flower markets and he had picked himself a bouquet! Well, they do go in for a lot of flowers on Voltar. And come to remember, some of the estates on Manco — was it Atalanta? — specialized in breeding new varieties. Lombar had even once considered bringing seeds back and growing the poppies at home but he had been given pause by the fact that a new variety of blossom always produced enthusiasm amongst the flower fans and one could see these from air surveillance too easily. I also dimly recall there was some problem with a seed virus that attacked poppies. But anyway, Heller was indulging nostalgia. Probably homesick for pretty flowers.
He was certainly intrigued by them. He stroked their leaves as they sat there in the glass. He smelled them.
I lost interest in what he was doing and was suddenly very interested in how he looked. By peripheral vision, a big mirror was showing his image.
They had given him clothes too small! Even though they might not have had his size, I was certain this was intentional. The sleeves of the shirt and jacket were three inches too short. The shoulders pinched way in. They had given him no tie and he had just buttoned the shirt.
Now, Kemal Ataturk had made it against the law to wear Turkish national costumes and had forced the whole country into Western dress. He had even put people in prison for wearing the red Turkish fez. And as a result, the Turks, with no tailors for it, have since looked about as sloppy as anyone ever.
But Heller was worse!
He had gotten cement dust on him climbing that rock. He had evidently torn his jacket. He had mud on his shoes from the poppy fields.
He looked like a complete bum!
Where, I gloated, was the spiffy Royal officer now? Where were the shimmering lounge suits? Where was the natty working cover suit and the little red racing cap? Where was that fashion plate in Fleet full dress that would make the girls faint?
Oh, I gloated! Were our roles reversed now! On Voltar I was the underdog, the uncouth, the tramp. Not on Earth! I glanced down at my lovely gangster outfit. And then I looked back at Heller, a slovenly, dirty tramp!
This was my planet, not his!
And there he was, my prisoner. He had no funds to buy any clothes, to go anywhere.
“Heller,” I said aloud in gloating glee, “I’ve got you just where I want you. And in my fondest dreams, I never thought you could look that bad! A dirty, penniless bum in a stinking slum cafe! Welcome to Planet Earth, Heller, you and your fancy ways. Everyone does MY bidding here, not yours! Our roles have reversed utterly! And it’s about time!”
Chapter 11
What a stupid, untrained “special agent”!
Didn’t he realize the danger he was putting himself in? Yet, there he was, in the center of the planet’s opium trade, sitting in a cheap bar, a stranger in the place, a foreigner, his back to the door, and a bouquet of opium poppies in front of him! Just asking for it! And no way to get out of trouble if anything did happen. No connections. No friends. No money. And he didn’t even speak Turkish! What a child. I could almost feel sorry for him.
Heller sat there for a bit, looking at the flowers. From time to time he rearranged them.
Then he took one of them, a gaudy, orange blossom and idly began to pull off its petals. I wondered if he was nervous. I certainly would have been in such a spot as that!
An opium poppy has a big black ball in the center. Really, that’s the bulk of the flower. He had it stripped. He smelled it. Silly performance: fragrance comes from petals, not the stamen.
Heller put it aside. He took another flower from the glass. He got out a piece of paper. He laid the whole flower on half the sheet and straightened out its petals. Then he folded the paper over, covering it.
Then he took his fist and banged the package!
I really laughed. That isn’t the way you press flowers. You put them in between two sheets of paper and you gently let them flatten and you put it away to dry. You don’t bang it with your fist. He didn’t even know how to press flowers: he should have asked his mother!
He opened the paper and of course the whole thing was a complete mess. The huge center ball had simply squashed! That isn’t the way to handle an opium poppy. You gently scrape the ball and you get the sap and then you boil it and you have morphine!
He must have realized that wasn’t how it was done for he just emptied the squashed mess on the table, folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
He looked up. People had been drifting in: Turks of the area, dressed in their sloppy jackets, tieless white shirts, unpressed pants. Maybe twenty of them had come in, a strange crowd for this time of night. I realized that the word had spread. They just sat down at tables, not ordering anything, not talking, not looking at Heller. They seemed to be waiting.
Then the front door crashed open and into the room swaggered the two top wrestlers of the area!
Now, the Turks love wrestling. It is a national sport. They wrestle in any style. They are big and they are tough and they are good! So that was who Faht Bey had called! The wrestling champs!
The bigger one, a formidable hulk named Musef, swaggered to the middle of the room. The other one, named Torgut, sauntered over to the wall behind Heller’s back. Torgut was carrying a short piece of pipe.
About fifteen more townsmen came in behind the wrestlers, avid expectancy on their faces.
The proprietor yelped in Turkish, “Not in here! Outside, outside!”
“Be quiet, old woman,” said Musef insultingly.
The proprietor, faced with that growl and about three hundred pounds of famed muscle, got very quiet.
Musef walked over to Heller. “You speak Turkish? No?” He shifted to badly accented English, “You speak English? Yes?”
Heller just sat there looking at him.
“My name,” and Musef hit himself on the chest, “is Musef. You know me?”
With a slight incredulity, Heller said, “A yellow-man!” And indeed, now that I thought about it, Musef and Torgut did bear some dim resemblance to the yellow-men of the Confederacy. Not surprising, since the Turks come from Mongolia.
But it was the wrong thing to say. Musef snarled, “You say I yellow?”
There was a ripple through the audience as those who didn’t speak English got those who did to tell them what was being said. And then it had to be clarified for some that “yellow” meant “coward” in English. And believe me, eyebrows really shot up and eyes went round with anticipation. You could almost hear them pant.
Musef pretended to be outraged that Heller was not saying anything further. So he spat, “You want to fight?”
Heller glanced around. Torgut was hefting the iron pipe over by the wall. It was indeed a hostile crowd. Heller looked at Musef. He said, “I never fight…” There was an explosion of laughter in the room. Instantly Musef picked up the glass and threw the water and flowers in Heller’s face.
“I was about to say,” said Heller, “I never fight without a wager!”
There was more laughter. But Musef thought he saw a way to make money. After all, how could he lose with Torgut and an iron pipe back of Heller. “A wager!” guffawed Musef. Then, “All right. We wager! Five hundred lira! You,” he yelled at the crowd, “make sure that it gets paid!”