We were identical twins, with all the genetic correspondence that implied. If I allowed my thoughts to range unfettered, and forced myself to follow after them, I would arrive close to Leo’s destinations. The thoughts were easy; the hard part was to dare to act them out.
“Aren’t we all when we get half a chance?” We are, but some of us find it difficult to know a chance when it stares us in the face.
The clock on his desk ticked on. If he didn’t hurry, my chances might be reduced to zero. I was at the point of leaving the office to look for him when he hurried back in. His pleasant look had been transformed to one of anger and suspicion.
“Look, I don’t know what your game is here, but I want to tell you that I don’t care for it.”
“No game — I told you the truth. You checked that address?”
“Too bloody true I checked it. If my brother went there I think I’d disown him. That street address is the Maison Drogue. The man who lives there is Abdi Mansouri. He’s an ex-Iranian — and he’s the biggest drug dealer in the Middle East . Millions a week in illegal narcotics, and nobody willing to lift a finger against him.”
He slammed the directory he was holding down on the desk. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt for the moment, but you’d better have an awfully good explanation — or the Embassy Police will need a few words with you.”
My suspicions were turning one by one to certainties. I held up my hands to soothe Cyril Meecham. “I’ll explain what’s been happening — everything. But it will take a couple of minutes.”
He just glared at me.
“My brother was working for the American government, as some sort of freelance agent.” I spoke fast, and my mental fingers were crossed. I knew Leo, and my explanation was the only acceptable one that fitted his personality and moral code.
“He was in an undercover position, investigating organized crime in the East, and particularly the way that illegal drugs get from India to the West. He had been tracking something called Nymphs, a new drug, trying to see what route was being used for shipment — I think he realized they were coming through Riyadh .”
I paused. At the mention of Nymphs, Cyril Meecham’s face had turned white. He might not be a senior instrument of evil, but I would bet my Brahms that he knew more than somewhat about the use of Nymphs. Young Cyril had his own guilty secrets.
“I think my brother must have been in touch with this man, Mansouri,” I went on. “And he pretended that he was in the drug business himself. He had been working with a bunch of drug dealers in England , trying to see how their operations were run. Did you ever hear of somebody called Scouse — head of an English gang who imports drugs? He’s a sort of Liverpool Arab, speaks English and Arabic.”
Not too surprisingly, Meecham shook his head vigorously. He didn’t want that association at all.
“Never heard of him.”
“He thought my brother was a dealer in Nymphs. But then they heard of something that looked like a much bigger deal. They both went after it, but my brother Leo beat Scouse’s group to it. He escaped with it from India and came here. If anyone did manage to trace him, they would assume that he had brought the goods to show to Abdi Mansouri. But he didn’t go to Mansouri. I confirmed that this morning. He went somewhere else, and hid the package he had with him.”
While I was speaking, Meecham had been leafing through a fat binding of computer listings. He looked up at me, his face now skeptical and wary.
“I hear what you say, but I don’t believe it. You said that your brother was here six months ago, right? There’s no sign of any Salkind entering or leaving this country during that period.”
“His name was Foss — we were raised separately. And he could have been here travelling under a false name,” I added, as he looked again at the listing and shook his head.
“No Foss in here.” He slammed the directory shut again. “Look, Mr. Salkind, I’m doing my best to give you the benefit of the doubt — but it’s not easy. I’ve never heard such a bloody weird story in my life. You don’t want the Science Attaché, you want the flying carpets department.” His freckled face was turning redder. “As for the false name idea, we keep close tabs on all travellers with British passports travelling into and out of this country. There’s no way he’d get in with a false name and a false passport, and we’d not know it and record it.”
“He wouldn’t be here on a British passport. I didn’t mention it, but he’s a naturalized American, born in England . So that list of yours—”
I paused. Cyril Meecham had sat down hard in his chair. He was glaring at me with the old reserved-for-hopeless-idiots expression.
“An American? A bloody American? Why the hell didn’t you tell me that to start with?” His bushy eyebrows were stretching upwards towards his carroty hairline, and his voice went higher and higher. “Your brother is an American. All right. But then why waste my time with questions I can’t answer?”
He stood up again.
“Mr. Salkind, you’re in the wrong place. Did it never occur to you that you’ll do a damned sight better to take your tale of undoubted woe to where it belongs — to the American bloody embassy?”
- 16 -
I must have sat there gaping at him for half a minute. What Cyril Meecham said was so obviously right and rational that I couldn’t understand why it had to be told to me.
Imagine what I would do in Leo’s place, then carry it to action. Reasonable enough — but I had been too stupid or too exhausted to allow for undeniable real differences in our backgrounds.
On every trip to a foreign capital I made a habit of visiting the local embassy. They would give me good free advice on hotels, restaurants, and local tourist traps and rip-offs, and if I ever ran into trouble with the locals the embassy staff knew me and were ready to bail me out. Leo would probably follow my pattern abroad — but as an American citizen he would check in with the U.S. embassies.
Cyril Meecham let me use the phone before I left. The snake-eyed receptionist at the hotel confirmed that the young lady I was so interested in had not yet left her room — did I want to leave a message for her? I thought of Zan’s full red lips, of her agate eyes measuring my body as I sat on the bed in Belur’s house.
No thank you, no message; definitely no message.
But keep an eye open for her. I would call again later.
Hurry.
I emerged from the British Embassy into the full heat of early afternoon. Even this late in the year the sun turned everything to a shimmer of baked air. The southwest part of the city had been built before the sprinklers and abundant supply of fresh water turned Riyadh to a riot of lush garden greenery. There was still dust here, dust and lung-crippling clouds of photochemical smog from cars and trucks.
My taxi driver didn’t need any urging to drive fast — he wanted to find some shaded spot where the long wait for a passenger was more tolerable. We made the usual death-defying run through the network of narrow one-way streets and broad boulevards.
The American Embassy stood only a block from the old palace of Nasiriya . There was my real stamping ground, inside the palace walls where the original royal zoo had been extended to provide well-designed habitats for every beast that walked or swam the earth or ocean. The aquarium held a dozen fresh and salt water pools, hundreds of yards long, where the visitor could find everything from humpback whales to Lake Baikal seals. Lions prowled the pseudosavannah, and polar bears fished live cod from deep, icy waters. The estimates to create the new zoo ranged from hundreds of millions to billions, and its maintenance called for a permanent working staff of two hundred people.