On a Clear Day (13 page)

“Plato’s Cave,” Michael said.

“Yes, an interesting name for a Western group,” Sayeed went on. “The illusion of reality and all that. And you, of course, are Michael.”

“That’s good enough,” Michael said.

“Michael, we might have common interests, but I don’t know what they are,” Sayeed continued. “I came to England to see what this ‘convention’ was about. All my people tell me is that it was about beautiful people making pretty speeches. I missed the entire point of it.”

“No, you didn’t miss the point,” Michael responded. “You read the papers that came out of the conference and the papers leading up to it. You know what it was about. Why didn’t you join us? You’re young; you have an interest in the world and what we can make of it.”

“Is that what you’re about? Saving the world?” Sayeed turned to Muscle Guy. “Haven’t we heard about how Americans save the world?”

Muscle Guy chuckled to himself. Maybe itself.

“Sayeed—may I call you Sayeed?” Michael pushed a bit of pastry around with his finger as he talked. I felt he was growing more confident.

“Please.”

“Sayeed, we can sit here and posture all evening if that’s what you want to do,” Michael said. “Or we can come to a clearer understanding of our positions. The more we know about each other, the more likely we are to avoid conflicts.”

“Maged, explain to the Americans who we are!” Sayeed spoke without looking at any of his people.

Nervous Guy glanced at Sayeed, sniffed twice, and then took a pad from his jacket.

“We are an army of twelve thousand fighters,” he said. He paused to let his statement sink in. “Each of our warriors has an automatic weapon and a backup firearm. We have rocket-propelled grenades, artillery, drones, vehicles, and sufficient energy reserves to fight for seven years and six months. We do not expect anyone in the world to be able to stand against us unless they have a potent air force, such as the one we are developing.”

“Impressive numbers,” Michael said. “And something of a surprise.”

Sayeed laughed. It was a higher laugh than I’d thought he would have. Black Jesus cracking up over a joke on the hills overlooking Jerusalem. “What I like about Americans is your arrogance!” he said. “You believe only what you want to believe, and then you force the world to think what you think. Or do you think that I will now offer proofs to you? Give you my sources? Perhaps send you a copy of my diary? Is that what you want?”

There was a hint of anger in his voice.

Next to me, Anja laid her pencil down, the point facing
away from me. She was using the code we had agreed on, saying that Sayeed was lying, but about what?

“We don’t have your numbers, Sayeed,” Michael said. “Or your weapons. But we could get them—anyone could get them in today’s world—so why should we be impressed?”

“When you can change the hearts that beat within the peoples of North Africa,” Sayeed said, “I will be impressed. When you can change our history and the degradation we have suffered over the last seven decades, I will be impressed. When you wipe away the cheapness of our lives, then, and only then, will I bow to you!”

Anja turned the pencil. Sayeed was speaking from his heart.

Silence. Sayeed had taken the floor, and he commanded the room. Tristan was eating grapes. Drego stared down at his hands.

An idea. “Did you fly to England from Casablanca?” I asked.

“You are comic relief?” Sayeed looked at me. His lips flattened and turned into a sneer. He’d lost the moment.

“A simple question,” I answered. “It came to mind. I didn’t know it would be a secret.”

“We were flown directly from Menara Airport in Marrakech,” he answered. “A small fleet of private planes. Have you ever been to Menara Airport?”

“I’ve seen pictures of it,” I said. “Quite beautiful.”

“Michael, you should send your women as my guests,” Sayeed said. “They can learn something about a different culture.”

“I didn’t know commercial airlines were still flying out of Menara,” I went on, ignoring Sayeed’s sexist invitation. “Since the terrorist attacks a few years ago.”

“Terrorist attacks.” Sayeed looked away and then back toward the fruit in front of him. Carefully, he picked up a banana and slowly stripped away the peel. “What Americans love to do is to take away those layers of protection each man has until they reach the core, his basic humanity. Then they label it terrorist and destroy it.”

He bit into the banana.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that they’ve resumed flights into that airport,” I said. “If the women did want to come to learn something about ‘a different culture,’ how would we reach you?”

“You’ve managed to reach me tonight,” Sayeed answered. “Reach me again and I’ll arrange your flights.”

“Why did you only bring three of your staff to this meeting?” I asked.

“If I had known you would be here,” Sayeed said, “I would have brought more to see your great beauty. But you will come to my humble mountains, flown into Menara on planes that start from your Newark Airport, and I will show you the same army that took Spain in the eighth century. I give you my word on this.”

“The trouble with words, Sayeed,” Michael said as he twisted in his chair, “is that they are so cheap that almost everyone has too many of them.”

Sayeed was on his feet immediately. “I could slit your throats this evening and no one would ever hear of you
again!” he said. “You would be just another useless rumor that even your kind would soon forget.
Whatever
your kind is!”

Michael might have pushed Sayeed too much. We had walked into this restaurant unarmed. Most of the men in the restaurant were dark-skinned, perhaps even Sayeed’s men. I looked at Michael. He didn’t seem as nervous as I felt.

“Sayeed, I received a fancy pouch and a letter that said that you wanted to meet with
les Américains
without telling us what you want. Now we are here. Are you embarrassed?”

“Women are embarrassed, Michael, not warriors,” Sayeed said. “I wanted to see for myself the illusion you flash on the wall. No, I am not embarrassed. I have seen what I came to see, and dismiss it, and you, from the corners of my mind.”

“I guess I’ll have to try to forget you, too,” Michael said.

“One day, Michael, I will surprise you!” Sayeed sat down. “You will hear your doorbell ring, and when you answer it, I will be standing in front of your home with a smile on my face. Look at me. I know you are thinking that we are just another of your petty
favelos
. We know how you like them—brave little bands of struggling kids that you can dismiss from your mind. Play your songs as they disappear into the sunset. How romantic! We’re not like them. We have an army, the weapons, and enough fuel to reach you wherever you hide.
Wherever
you hide. And now, because I hate being bored, I will call this meeting over. Go home, and close your eyes, and enjoy your fantasies.”

Sayeed stood and his crew stood with him. More theatrics. They stalked out, trying to look angry. I felt myself relaxing. We hadn’t been killed.

I looked over at Mei-Mei. Her brow was shiny with sweat. Interesting. Drego was quiet. I looked at Tristan. Calm. At least on the outside.

Back to the hotel. It was dark and the streets glistened with rain. Javier was at the controls and Michael was describing to him what had happened at the meeting.

“It was very short,” Javier said.

“He just wanted to impress us,” Michael said. “He knew what he was going to do and say before he ever got there.”

“You thinking he’s just selling wolf tickets?” Drego.

“Yeah, more or less,” Michael said. “In the long run, he’s still in North Africa and there’s not a lot he can do to be effective against C-8. That’s the important thing. And they don’t really need him.”

“They came out and got into two limousines,” Javier said. “The first had Sayeed and three guys, and the second had guys with suspicious-looking bundles. Probably weapons.”

“You could tell which one was Sayeed?” Anja asked.

“All he needed was a drum roll,” Javier said. “He announced himself pretty well.”

Michael asked Anja what she had made of Sayeed.

“I think he was bragging about a lot of things,” she said. “But he believed most of what he was saying. The figures might have been off, but it wasn’t all lies. At least that’s what I got from him. That and a coldness. It was as if he didn’t have regular feelings.”

Michael said he thought Sayeed was mostly about bravado, and Drego agreed. Tristan just kind of grunted, and Mei-Mei rubbed Drego’s arm.

“Dahlia?” I could see just the outline of Michael’s face as we passed the London Hilton on Park Lane Hotel.

“I haven’t figured out why he came to the meeting yet,” I said. “I need to think about it more.”

“Did you think Sayeed was seriously thinking about slitting our throats?” I was back at the hotel, talking with Anja on the phone.

“No,” I lied.

“You’re lying,” Anja said. “I thought so too.”

In bed, trying to decide if I liked London or not, when the phone rang again. I thought it was Anja calling back, but it was Tristan.

“Where were you going with that stuff about the airport?” he asked. “That was just something to say, or …?”

“I was just trying to get at who was financing Sayeed,” I said. “Flying takes money. Or did he drive the distance? It would take about two and a half days to drive, but it would be cheaper. I’d just like to know.”

“You didn’t say anything to Javier,” Tristan said.

“Right,” I answered.

“You going to?”

I felt like he was confronting me, and I didn’t like it. But I said I would in the morning.

“Maybe tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it might be the only thing we came away with,” Tristan said. “He was defensive about it.”

Tristan hung up.

I had been fishing when I’d asked the question about flying, and I didn’t really know what to say to Javier. I called him and told him that Tristan thought I should mention it. Javier said he would check the flights out of Marrakech.

“There’s not a lot of traffic from that airport,” he said.

G
oing home! I had been away for eighteen years! Or was it less than a week? At the airport. Victor and two cool-looking guys in turtleneck sweaters met us for breakfast. Tristan ran down the meeting with Sayeed and said we didn’t believe his numbers or his organization.

“I tend to believe him,” Victor said. “And he scares me. He’s just ambitious enough to launch an attack anywhere in the world. He starts spouting history, stupid stuff mostly, and places himself squarely in the middle of some great adventure. People like that have a different sense of mortality than we do.”

“What do you know about his connections with C-8—are they real?” Michael asked.

“C-8 has real connections with everything in the freaking world,” one of Victor’s guys said. “I don’t think his bragging about him having access to money means anything. In your country, somebody from the Ku Klux Klan can say he had a connection with Martin Luther King because he tried to firebomb him.”

“Sayeed’s very much like the Sturmers,” Victor added. “He doesn’t have much going on outside the fame he gets from being a butcher, so he’s going to stay with it. The thing that bothers me is he’s getting louder, and C-8 is acting out of character, but they are still predicting economic growth.”

“You mean that they’re going to steal more!” Mei-Mei said.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Victor said. “It’s puzzling. We’ll keep working on it and sharing information with you. I hope we can rely on you to do the same?”

“Yes,” Michael said.

On the plane.

“Victor told me that Sayeed was flashing all over the Net about his meeting with us,” Michael said. “He didn’t have anything good to say about it, but just his flashing it is significant. He thinks he did all right.”

“Well, we certainly didn’t look good,” Mei-Mei jumped in. “They set the place and the time, and they controlled the conversation. We ate grapes and listened.”

“I’m thinking we should give ourselves a chance to analyze it,” Michael said.

“That’s French for ‘make stuff up.’ ” Drego. He and Mei-Mei were getting to be an act.

We were in a cabin that used to be called first class, when it held two people rich enough to afford it. Now it was called cram section, because we were all crammed into it.

“The Brits set up the meeting to assess what was going on in the world,” Michael said. “They have the best intelligence—”

“—which they aren’t sharing with anyone,” Drego reminded us.

“Which they aren’t particularly sharing with us,” Michael said. “But so far, it’s been the best. If all Sayeed has to celebrate is how he talked to the Americans, then we did all right.”

“Michael, let me ask you this.” Drego wet his lips. “How do you know that Victor isn’t making alliances? How do you know he isn’t looking ahead and getting his people ready to team up with a group of fighters? Like Sayeed.”

“I don’t know it,” Michael said. “But if I can’t know everything that’s going on, I’d better be damned sure I know who my friends are.”