“I’ve tried that stuff. Once. Tastes foul.”
“Not to Stossel,” I said. “Or a lot of other people. Most fair-sized liquor stores in the States carry the stuff. It took manpower and work — that was FBI work, of course. They staked out dozens of stores and in the end it led us to Stossel. He was tripped up by his preference for Polish vodka. I told him it was a weakness that would betray him again.”
“Has it?”
I was about to answer him when the phone rang. It galvanized me.
“Herr Dark?”
“Speaking.”
“My people — the doctors — they tell me there is no antidote.”
“They’re wrong,” I told him. “We’ve developed one.”
“I see.” There was no emotion in Stossel’s voice.
“West side, Checkpoint Charlie,” I said, “any time you’re ready. We’ll be waiting. Come alone, of course.” I smiled when I cradled the phone.
The smile wasn’t for Stossel; it was for Myerson.
Stossel came out at eleven forty that night. It was twenty minutes short of the deadline Myerson had given me. There was a satisfying symmetry in that.
Davidson put the handcuffs on him. Stossel was stoic. “How long do I have?”
“You’ll be all right now.” We rode toward the airport with Stossel squeezed between us in the Opel’s back seat. It was safe to tell him now. I said, “Actually it’s a benign poison. It has all the attributes and early symptoms of Luminous Poisoning but in fact it’s the reverse.”
“Our doctors told me it was incurable. I had terrible cramps.”
“I didn’t give you the poison, Stossel. I gave you the antidote. Like a serum. It contains similar properties.”
“You bluffed me.” He brooded upon his handcuffs. “Of course it was in the vodka.”
“Where else? I told you the weakness would trip you up.”
When I boarded the plane with Stossel I was savagely happy anticipating Myerson’s rage. On the ten-hour flight I ate five dinners.
Trust Charlie
I said, “Either cover up that mirror or let’s meet somewhere else.”
Myerson showed me his surprise, then pained impatience. “For Pete’s sake, Charlie. It’s an ordinary hotel room. Booked at random.”
“I’m still alive after all these years because I’m a practicing paranoid, all right?”
“For Pete’s sake.”
But we went down to the lobby and outside into the African sun, both of us in shirtsleeves against the heat. Myerson sneered at me.
We walked past a rank of ten-year-old taxis. At the open stalls vendors were selling passion fruit and mangoes and coconuts and what-have-you, all of it clustered with flies. We crossed the central square, dodging a spotty traffic of cars and trucks and sagging overcrowded buses; an armored personnel carrier growled past carrying a dozen soldiers who held automatic rifles in casual positions. Two of the soldiers were laughing. Myerson glanced up at the statue of the country’s president and his sneer seemed to droop. Pedestrians moved lazily through the noxious smoke thrown around by the ill-maintained vehicles: it will be quite a while yet before Africa becomes pollution-conscious.
Myerson led me through a narrow passage and we emerged at the corner of a stone customhouse that one of the colonial powers must have built long ago. It might have been the Germans or the Portuguese or the English — several nations had claimed the colony at various times; the building itself was too drab to identify its architects. Its walls were overgrown with bougainvillea.
We found a wooden bench under a palm tree. The earth sloped down toward a stone retaining wall that held back the sea — we had a good view across the crescent of the harbor. Coastal freighters were anchored out, lighters plying to and from them; there was a fair crowd of Indian Ocean junks, square sails furled. The saltwater smell was rich, pungent with raw sewage. A few people ambled past us (no one moved quickly in that heat), most of them Africans, some in tribal gear and others in burnouses and Western clothes; the occasional Asian, the even rarer European in flowered prints or khakis or department-store poplin safari outfits.
Myerson favored me with a sour dry gaze. “Will this suit you?” We seated ourselves.
Then he smiled, putting as many teeth into it as an alligator, and I felt alarm.
“I see you’ve enjoyed your vacation. You’ve put on at least forty pounds — anything less wouldn’t be noticeable on you. I really can’t afford to let you off the leash this way. You’ll eat yourself to death.”
I was overweight to be sure, and overage for that matter, but no more so than I’d been last time he’d seen me ten days earlier in Virginia. It was just his way of needling me.
I said, “It was a good holiday until you cut it short. I’ve still got eleven days coming to me.”
“Pull this off and you can have twelve.”
“That tough, is it?”
“Tough? No, I wouldn’t say it was tough. I’d say it’s impossible.”
“That’s the kind I like.” I grinned at him. “Anyway it’s desperate enough to get you out from behind your desk for the first time in I don’t remember how long.”
He squirmed. “We’re both on the line this time, I’m afraid.”
“In other words you’ve dropped the ball and if I don’t pick it up you’ll be thrown out of the game. I’ve expected this, you know. Sooner or later you were destined to foul up. Have you ever considered washing cars for a living? You may just have enough talent for it.”
“Let’s save the catcalls for another time, Charlie. This is serious. It could mean my job — and you know what that means to you.”
I did. If he goes I go. They want me out. If it weren’t for Myerson I wouldn’t have a job. I’d probably have to turn to crime to keep the juices flowing.
He said, “The impossibility is named August Brent. British parents but he was born here and he’s a citizen, one of the few. Under the old colonial regime he had a key job in the colonial exchequer. Educated at the London School of Economics. Since independence he’s been something like second-secretary to the Minister of Finance, some title like that — he’s a white man, after all, they couldn’t very well give him a cabinet post, but the fact is he’s been running the ministry. Until the terror.”
“And then?”
“When they started terrorizing the Asians and whites a few weeks ago he began to think about getting out. His mistake was in talking to too many people. The government got wind of his intentions to depart.”
Myerson looked out across the harbor. A graceful ketch was leaving under canvas; there was a racket of gulls. Soldiers in fatigues — armed — walked here and there by twos, quietly menacing.
Myerson said, “He was packed and ready to leave. He went out to buy something — airsick pills, something innocuous like that. The soldiers hit his house while he was out. On his way home he spotted them and had time to get out of sight but he knew the alarm was out, of course, and he made for the British Embassy but it was surrounded by troops. He backtracked and ended up on our doorstep. This was a week ago.”