Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

“Can Dieter expect special treatment?” Mario put in sullenly.

“Oh, Mario, please. You know that Dieter will be taken care of. A few days, a we^k or two at the most—well have him out of there. Don’t we always?”

“We don’t always get put in a Neapolitan jail,” Mario responded sulkily.

“That’s enough.” There was a distinct silence, and then Yosper continued on sunnily, “Now, as I’m well ahead of you, why don’t you both order? There’s excellent seafood here. Though not, of course, local.”

After a moment, Mario began ordering methodically from the most expensive items on the menu. He did not meet Yosper’s eyes, but the old man was only looking amused. Hake settled for a fritto misto and a salad, unwilling to load his stomach in the heat. When the waiter had gone, he said, “Is it all right to talk here?”

“We have been, haven’t we? Don’t worry. Mario will let us know if anyone is pointing a microphone at us.”

“Then let me tell you what I’ve done about our project. I told Mario that last night I found some interesting leads in the newspapers. This afternoon I went to the American Library and did a little research. There’s useful stuff. The most interesting is a new Islamic cult that preaches a return to purity, no intercourse with infidels, four wives to a man, instant divorce—for men, of course—and all the rest. Just like Mahmoud himself. It’s not here on Capri. It’s mostly in a place called Taormina, but there’s also a center in a town named Benevento. According to the map, that‘s up in the hills, not very far from Naples.”

Yosper nodded judiciously, mopping up his salsa verde with a chunk of bread. “Yes, that sounds promising,” he conceded.

“It sounds like just what I’m supposed to be looking for!” Hake corrected. “Or almost. I’m not sure that Curmudgeon wanted me to get involved with Islam. I got the impression that he was thinking more of some fundamentalist Christian sort of sect— What’s the matter?”

Yosper had put down his bread and was scowling fiercely. “I don’t want to hear blasphemy,” he snapped.

“What blasphemy? It’s the operation I’m assigned to, Yosper. My orders are—”

“Fuck your orders, Hake! You are not going to despoil the word of God. Stay with your Mohammedans, who the hell cares about their false idols? Don’t mess with your sweet Redeemer!”

“Now, wait a minute, Yosper. What do you think I’m doing here?”

“Following orders!”

“Whose orders?” Hake demanded hotly. “Yours? Curmudgeon’s? Or am I supposed to make up my own little trick-or-treat pranks like Mario, blowing fuses and setting fire to mailboxes?”

“You are supposed to do what you’re told to do by the officer in charge, which in this case is me.”

“But this mission—^” Hake stopped himself as the waiter approached, wheeling a table with a solid-alcohol lamp under a huge chrome bowl. By the time the waiter and the maitre d’ had finished collaborating on Mario’s fettuccine Alfredo, Hake had a grip on himself.

“All right,” he said. “How about this? Suppose I found some Christian revivalist to preach abstinence, to cut the population down? I know it would be slow, but—”

Mario chuckled. “In Italy?”

“Yes, in Italy. Or anywhere. Perhaps it shouldn’t be abstinence but birth-control, or even homosexuality—”

Mario was no longer laughing. “That’s not funny.”

“I don’t mean it to be funny!”

“Then,” said Mario, “it’s funny. Grotesque, even. Not the homosexuality, but your bigoted, out-of-date attitude toward male love.” He had stopped eating, and the look on his face was hostility and wrath.

Yosper intervened. “You two quit fighting,” he ordered. “Eat your dinner.” And after a moment he began a conversation with Mario in Italian.

Hake ate in silence, averting his eyes from both of his table companions. They did not seem to mind. Their conversation appeared to be about the food, the wine, the models who moved around the restaurant displaying furs, jewels and bathing suits—about anything and everything that didn’t include Hake. It was a lot like it had been in Germany, and Hake was beginning to have a bad feeling. What was going on? Once again, the situation did not add up. The mission that had been top-priority urgent in Texas did not seem to matter at all on Capri. What was he carrying this time?

For that matter, what was he doing in Italy at all? He did not fit into this expensive restaurant filled with the idle rich, or with the rich corrupt: Ex-oil sheiks in burnooses, black American dope kings, Calcutta slumlords and Eastern European film stars. Hake had not realized there was so much money in the world. Mario’s fettuccine cost as much as a week’s shopping at the A&P in Long Branch, and the bottle of Chateau Lafite he was washing it down with would have made a sizeable down payment on repainting the parsonage porch. Not just the money. Energy! He had become calloused to power-piggery, with all the jet fuel he had burned for the Team, but this! The illuminated sign outside the restaurant alone would have kept his heater going for weeks. And it was not even in good taste. The liquid crystal display showed a man in Roman peasant costume either trying to snap at a huge fish or trying to avoid it: the fish moved in toward his face, the man’s head bobbed away, and back and forth again.

Yosper leaned over and said, “Got over your bad mood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s a story behind that sign, you know.”

“I was sure there would be,” Hake said.

“Oh, come off it, will you? We’ve got to work together. Let’s make it easy on ourselves.”

Hake shrugged. “What’s the story?”

“Urn. Well, one of the Roman emperors used to live around here, and he took walks along this cliff. One day a fisherman climbed up from the beach to make his emperor a present of a fish he had just caught. It didn’t work out very well. The emperor was pissed off at being startled, so he ordered his guard to rub the fish in the man’s face.”

“He sounds like a mean son of a bitch,” Hake observed.

“That’s about the nicest thing you could say about him, actually. That was Tiberius. He’s the one who crticified our Lord, or anyway appointed Pontius Pilate, who did. There’s more to it. The fisherman wasn’t real smart, and when the guard let him up he wised off. He said, ‘Well, I’m glad I tried to give the fish to you instead of the other thing I caught.’ ‘Let’s see the other thing he caught,’ Tiberius said, and the guard opened up the bag, and it was a giant crab. So Tiberius had the guard give him a massage with that, and the fisherman died of it.”

“Nice place,” Hake said.

“It has its points,” said Yosper, eyeing two models displaying lingerie. “I hope you’ve been paying attention to them. Well! How about a sweet? They do a beautiful crepes suzette here.”

“Why not?” said Hake. But that wasn’t the real question; the question was why? And how? What was the purpose of this silly charade, and where did the money come from? Especially bearing in mind Mario’s remarks about his, expense account, what could possibly justify the tab they were running up in this place?

And would continue to run up—until the night ran out, it began to appear. Neither Yosper nor Mario seemed in the least interested in leaving. Finished with the crepes, Mario proposed brandies all around; after the brandies, Yosper insisted on a lemon ice “to clear the palate.” And then they settled down to drinking.

Toward midnight their waiters went off duty and were replaced by bar girls, a different one with every round and all pretty, and there had been a sort of floor show. The comedians had been pretty much a waste of time, being obliged to operate in half a dozen languages, but the strip-teasers were handsome women, a regular United Nations of them in a variety of colors and genotypes, and so were the models, hostesses and hookers who continued to stroll through the room. Hake provisionally decided that his guess about Mario’s inclinations had been wrong, judging by the way his attention came to a focus every time a new girl came near, but he was losing interest. He wasn’t just sick of being in this restaurant, he was pretty sick of Mario, too. The youth felt obliged to point out each celebrity and notoriety he recognized: “That’s the girl who played Juliet at the Stratford festival last year. There’s Muqtab al’Horash, his father owned thirty-three oil leases. He comes here to buy things for his harem off the models. Now and then he buys a model. There’s the President of the French Chamber of Deputies—” Hake felt he had been condemned to spend his life in this gaudy, raucous room that he was sick of, with Mario, whom he was sick of, and especially with Yosper, of whom he was sickest of all. The man just did not stop talking. And he was not your common or garden variety of bore, who will keep on regardless of blank expression or eyes darting this way and that, seeking escape; Yosper wanted full attention, and enforced it. “What’s the matter, Hake? Falling asleep? I was telling you that this is Italy. The national motto is Niente 2 possible, ma possiamo tutto. Everything’s illegal, but if you have the money you can do what you like. ‘S good duty, right, Mario? And heaven knows we’re entitled—”