David Dun - Overfall

Designed so that Arab dignitaries might appropriately entertain guests, it had complete daytime facilities so that men and women could be separately entertained. The upper two floors were bedrooms and game rooms and Western-style multimedia rooms. On the third floor there was one less bedroom and a library of sorts.

In keeping with Muslim tradition, the decor featured no artistic depictions of people or animals, lest they become objects of worship. Paintings were landscapes only, with one exception-pictures of the emir of Quatram. Perhaps veneration of the emir was a pardonable sin in Quatram. Despite four of his men behind the door and another eight at various points in and around the building and hallway, and the safe-passage guarantee of the general, Samir sat and watched the tremor in his hand, felt something like a peach pit in his esophagus, and suffered the raw acid of anxiety-driven esophageal-reflux disease eating his duodenum. He imagined red puckered holes growing in the lining of his stomach.

Samir’s anxious moments had grown so powerful that they frequently felt like pain. Often he considered putting a bullet in his head. To relieve the tension he took all manner of tranquilizers. By insisting to himself that his mind had been invaded and that his feelings were unreal and unjustified, he remained barely capable of making himself function. Despite the fear, he understood winning and losing, and he knew he was losing. Sheer force of will kept him in the chair where he had promised himself he would sit for twenty minutes.

When it got really bad, Fawd would apply the stuff from the laboratory on Samir’s skin. Its effect was almost instantaneous. The doctors couldn’t explain it, and were trying to discover some component of the oily substance that was the active ingredient. So far they could discern only that it must contain every herbal remedy known to man and certain trace hormones from an unknown source. It had obviously been carefully mixed by brilliant chemists determined to mask its individual components. Since the supply was limited and he was hoping for a long life, he used the magic potion sparingly.

Tonight he was the guest of General Al Mashriq, one of the emir’s many cousins. On the table next to him sat a report on missiles available from some warehouses in the Czech Republic. They were old but serviceable and he knew he could sell them. He had tried to study the technical details, but soon lost interest.

Occasionally he used his laptop computer to access his e-mail account via a server in Lebanon. This time he had an e-mail, sent through encryption software illegal in many countries. Not in Lebanon. Tediously he punched in the necessary letters and numbers until the mail document opened. It read:

We have not secured the merchandise. Complications. The butterfly apparently had it and the scorpion went after her. We aren’t sure what happened to the merchandise.

There were many defective packages upon our arrival. Concern that consumers may blame us for defects. Other southern gentlemen involved. Prospect of picking up the merchandise is now remote.

Can we shop at the other store?

Samir wanted to talk to his people, but his paranoia made him reluctant. He didn’t know who might be listening and had no scrambler good enough to guarantee security against the best intelligence services. The encrypted e-mail was pretty much foolproof, but even then he wrote only in silly allusions.

For days he had had men monitoring Chellis’s Canadian compound. There was no doubt that Anna Wade carried something that had great value to Grace Technologies. Samir’s people had followed her to New York, used listening devices, and by tapping her and her ex-husband’s phones learned she might have a data CD-ROM that was to be delivered to a world-renowned physicist.

From the opaque message in the e-mail it was clear his men had failed to take the CD. Before they arrived, there had been killing. And some other Latins were involved. His men were concerned about being blamed for the shooting. Now they wanted to go ahead and take Jason Wade, since they didn’t hold the CD as a bargaining chip. He knew from a separate message that they had planned to take Jeremiah Fuller, only to find he had died hours before, and they couldn’t secure his body or his brain.

Samir sensed the hand of Devan Gaudet at work.

Furiously he typed his answer.

Fawd stepped onto the balcony. “What are they doing?”

“Everything. Nothing. We need to take Jason Wade. What do you need?”

“The general has sent something for your nerves.”

“How does he know about my nerves?”

“With all due respect, during your meeting this morning you rose and walked around about one dozen times. Your eyes never stopped moving. Three times you caressed your side arm under your jacket. With all due respect.”

“So what does he send?” Samir asked.

“I will show you.”

A moment later he returned with an attractive blond Caucasian woman. She showed no dullness in her countenance; no dilated pupils. Intelligent blue eyes looked down at him with some interest.

“What do you do, or should I ask?”

“I am a masseuse. I calm nerves. I will relax you.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“Have someone bring in my things, please,” she said.

Just inside the balcony they set up a portable massage table.

“Please take off your clothes and lie on the table.”

Samir eyed her. He had enjoyed a few massages in his life. He supposed he could worry as well on the table as in the chair.

The woman appeared ready with her table and towels.

“Everybody out,” he said to his men.

Nude, he wrapped a towel around himself and told the woman she could turn around.

“What is your name?”

“Michelle. I go by Mindy.”

“Why did my friend the general send you to see a man twisted by his own nerves?”

“Because I’m white. Middle Eastern and Persian men seem to prize white women.”

“So what services do you provide?”

“I provide massage and companionship. If you choose to steal it, you can have sex.”

“I don’t take that from a woman. I am a wreck of a man anyway.”

“Let me see what I can do.”

As he lay on the table, the only things he could think of were the monkeys in Chellis’s laboratory. Chellis was making a monkey of him, using some sort of science fiction to instill a terror that nearly overwhelmed him. Samir imagined what a world leader who felt as he felt might purchase in the way of weaponry.

The massage was good, but the conversation better. Immediately, and almost miraculously, it seemed, he began to relax as he hadn’t since the day at the laboratory. It was as if this Michelle had the magic potion from Kuching. She was forthright and not at all slow-witted as he expected. As she massaged him, she told him her story: Her husband, a man from Quatram, had fled the U.S. with their child. She came to Quatram, tried to take the child back to the West, and was caught in Salice and put into slavery by the general.

The general had kept her for his own purposes. It was better than torture, so she worked with it and won his confidence. Samir liked her a great deal; something about her seemed to match something in himself. After the massage they talked and drank wine. Her tenacity with respect to retrieving her son was obvious. She was courageous, at least as clever about men as she was brave, and one other quality amazed him: her seeming inability to complain. Always looking ahead, thinking, plotting, never giving up, even in the face of disastrous circumstances.

At 2:00 A.M. she left, but they could easily have talked all night. It was only after she had left that he cursed himself for his own stupidity. She had to have been sent by Chellis with massage oil that contained the same stuff he had stolen from the lab.