Greg Bear: Quantico

The fat man opened the door to the Range Rover and dangled the hood from one hand, smiling. ‘There are too many bats around here,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is because there are so many insects.’

Iraq Year Minus One

The red plastic beads on the curtain rattled like finger bones in a cup.

The man who stepped down into the coffee house had yellow hair. He wore sunglasses, as did almost every man in Baghdad, a city of thieves, killers, and merchants. Fine dust swirled from his shoes as he pushed them through a double brush set in the bricks. For a moment, he turned up his nose and frowned as if possessed by some noble doubt, and his temple and cheek were lit by a false hope of rubies. A hero, obviously-an Englishman perhaps-tall and slender and possibly strong, though that was difficult to judge beneath the baggy cut of his linen coat.

Ibrahim Al-Hitti watched from the small round table and pulled in his polished black shoes, not wishing them to be trampled. There was little room in the basement, few tables and fewer customers. A one-eyed cousin of a cousin owned the establishment and had been persuaded it could be used on occasion as a place of personal business, not to be asked after. He would literally turn a blind eye to any activities. That plump and ill-dressed relative now stood behind the small black bar surrounded by a rising cloud of steam from an old espresso machine imported, so he boasted, from Italy. The steam frightened two horseflies seeking refuge from the outer heat. They buzzed and batted until settling on the plaster wall beside a small fogged mirror. The air in the basement café was humid and hot like the rest of Iraq this time of year, a climate fit for sordid talk and deeds.

Al-Hitti had been born in Yemen but had spent most of his youth in Egypt and England. He had no love for Iraq and he did not like Iraqis in general. This part of town, near Firdos Square-allegedly cooled by breezes off the Tigris-was frequented by businessmen mostly and the secretaries and office workers of Shiite clerics. Businessmen he despised. Of clerics he held no opinions.

Though a Muslim and a Sunni, Al-Hitti was of that pragmatic sect that had proliferated in the Middle East in the last century-a nonaligned brotherhood most interested in diverting the rivers of power. Religious passions had divided Muslims for too many centuries and only made them weak. What would bring them together and restore lost glory were the cool efforts of the mind, working to enact difficult, some would say sordid deeds.

The tall man removed his sunglasses, unafraid to reveal his face. Al-Hitti saw immediately that he was American, not English-they were as different in step and behavior to his discerning eye as Ethiopians and Somalis. So this was the one whom he was scheduled to meet. It was an appointment he had not looked forward to. A disappointment.

He enjoyed playing with English words.

And he was even less happy now that he saw that the man he would have to kill was in fact a decent-looking fellow with strong features and even a respectable tan . That English word, tan , appeared in his head, surrounded by half-naked women. This irritated him.

The American caught his eye and stepped forward, walking lightly around the tables to the rear of the shop. To Al-Hitti he offered his right hand and in low, mellow tones introduced himself. His name was John Brown. He was from Massachusetts-a silly, sneezing sort of name for a place. His Arabic was of the Cairo variety and surprisingly good.

‘You are just as I imagined you,’ Al-Hitti told the American, a lie. He had imagined instead a small, furtive man wearing loose clothing.

‘Is it so?’ the American said, and pulled back a flimsy wrought-iron chair to sit. They both measured out tiny smiles.

The cousin arrived to take their orders. He pointedly ignored the American, turning his good eye from that part of the room. John Brown did not seem to mind.

As Al-Hitti waited for a glass of thick sweet tea, he examined the American closely. Their silence drew out. His first impression had been one of quiet strength, a man who would appeal to women. But Al-Hitti’s deeper instincts made him less certain. There were telling lines in the American’s face and a determined sadness that reminded Al-Hitti of an old fighter-not a soldier, who could be casually cruel and blame others, but a mountain guerilla, used to working and living alone for months and having no one to blame but himself.

John Brown’s appearance was made more striking by the fact that he had one blue eye and one green eye. Al-Hitti had never seen such a thing.

The American put his hand to his chest. ‘Before you decide whether or not to kill me…’ He reached swiftly into his coat pocket and pulled out a heat-sealed plastic packet full of beige powder.

Al-Hitti reacted as if stung by one of the horseflies. He pushed back, eyes wide, and his chair banged into another chair. ‘What is this?’

‘A sample,’ the American answered.

‘Complete?’ Al-Hitti asked, his voice rising in pitch.

The American raised his chin. ‘Not yet. Soon.’

Al-Hitti refused to handle the package until he saw his courage was in question and that the American was rapidly losing confidence. It was probably fake, anyway. Anything else would be too much to hope for. He took it. The plastic was beaded with sweat from the American’s hands, but inside, the powder was miraculously fine and light, clinging and dry.

A handful of a hundred thousand miseries.

‘Tell your scientists, or your graduate students at university, to examine it with great care,’ the American instructed. ‘It will behave like a gas, penetrating everywhere if not properly handled. They will tell you that it is pure and that it has been genetically modified, but it is not complete. Not yet. Try it on someone you wish dead. Let your subject breathe a few grains, or swallow it, or touch it to his skin. In time, examined in the dark, his lesions will glow green and then red. These inserted genes are proof that we can do what we say.’

Al-Hitti could not help avoiding the tall American’s gaze. There was something about the blue eye that reminded him of the sky over a desert waste.

Al-Hitti leaned forward. ‘What sort of proof is this, just a package of powder extracted from the soil of Texas, where a steer has died, perhaps? How can we believe the rest of your story?’ Al-Hitti held the package out between two fingers. ‘I hear this is easy to make. That is what I am told.’

‘Believe what fools say,’ the American said, ‘less the fools they.’ He brought forth a small knife, pulled open a blade, and laid it on the table between them. ‘Rub it on your skin like baby powder. Let’s breathe it together.’

Al-Hitti shrugged too quickly, hiding a shudder. ‘We are not here to piss up a wall.’

‘No,’ the American said.

‘When will the final product be ready?’

‘When money is made available. I will conduct my own tests and you will do yours. Then, next year…Jerusalem.’

‘There are very few Jews in Iraq. Saddam no longer protects them, and the clerics…’ He lowered his eyelids. He was getting ahead of himself, like a cart before a horse.

‘Until the gene sockets are filled, as specified, Jews need fear this no more than you or I,’ the American said. ‘And no less.’

‘Who is paying for what you have done so far, a Wahhabi?’ Al-Hitti asked with quiet anger. ‘May he die in the bed of an incontinent pig.’ Al-Hitti did not like Wahhabis. What they had done to maintain their hold on power had killed many of his best men. Now, all Saudi Arabia was in turmoil. Just retribution had finally arrived.

The American noiselessly pushed back his chair. He looked down on Al-Hitti.