Mack Reynolds: The Best Ye Breed

“Fantastically. He was, the other day, recognized the head of state of all North Africa, by India. Who’ll follow her example, God only knows.”

“India? Why ?”

“Because she’s smart enough to jump on the bandwagon. North Africa is poor in textiles. United, the market would consist of tens of millions. India is desperate to export her cotton textiles.”

Paul Kosloff took in a deep breath.

He said, “So it looks as though El Hassan might make it. Where do I come in?”

His superior looked him straight in the eye. “You’ve been called the Cold War’s Lawrence of Arabia. You’re our most dependable field man in these cloak-and-dagger affairs. We want El Hassan stopped by fair means or foul.”

Paul Kosloff looked at him cynically. “So who are you going to send in to try the fair means?”

Sean Eugene Ryan awoke from no deep dream of peace. His mouth tasted as though rats had chosen it for a latrine.

He took a long moment to orientate himself, groaned a hungover groan, and stared up at the peeling ceiling. The room he inhabited was the smallest, the cruddiest, the most poorly furnished, in the third-rate hotel he called home. There were other things he called it as well. Sean Ryan had arrived at the end of the line.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and discovered that he had removed jacket and shoes but otherwise had slept in his clothes. He came to his feet and managed to make his way over to the cracked mirror above the washstand. He didn’t look any better than he felt. He hadn’t shaved the day before. He looked down and realized that he had just about enough soap for one more shave. He took up the water pitcher, went down the hallway to the bathroom, filled it and returned to his room. He drank about a pint of the lukewarm water and then steeled himself to take the risk of shaving.

He tucked the collar of his shirt in, noticing, without bothering to notice in particular, that the collar was dirty. He had worn the shirt for four days and should have known better than to sleep in it the night before. It had been his last clean shirt. Not that that had made a great deal of difference. It was frayed at collar and cuff.

He soaped up with the lukewarm water, carefully applying the lather. He took the blade out of the safety razor and stropped it in the palm of his hand. He couldn’t remember how long he’d used the blade but it was far from sharp.

He cut himself two or three times, a result of poor blade and shaking hand, washed the remnants of soap from his face and stood back and looked again. The view wasn’t reassuring. He remembered the night, years ago, when he had once spent over a hundred British pounds on vintage champagne—and snorted.

He didn’t know what time it was. Long since he had pawned his watch. Pawned? Both he and the pawnbroker knew full well that he had sold it. There would be no redeeming.

He’d have to get down to the dining room and see if he was still in time for breakfast. If he wasn’t, he suspected that it was going to be a hungry day. In an Irish hotel, at this level, one paid for bed-and-breakfast. A far cry from the Continental breakfast of coffee, croissants and marmalade, an Irish breakfast could tide you over for the better part of the day. You got two fried eggs, two or three rashers of bacon, largely fat, little lean, fried tomatoes, fried potatoes, several slices of thick, heavy toast and butter, along with your tea. Yes, if necessary, it would tide you over for the balance of the day. Perhaps you could invest in a couple of sweet rolls and another cup of tea, or even coffee, in the late afternoon, but you could live on the number of calories in an Irish breakfast. In his day, he had gone for a week or more, hell, a month or more, on less.

But for a moment he regarded himself in the mirror, after he had taken on his jacket and folded his collar out over the jacket top. He had two or three ties but they were so woebegone that he looked worse wearing one than without.

The jacket had once been excellent, a product of a period when he had money to blow. It was Donegal tweed and tailored to him perfectly—when he had weighed possibly a stone and a half more than he did now. But that was some years ago and now it was the only jacket he owned, so that he wore it daily—including such occasions as when he was in the drunk tank, or sleeping it off in an alleyway. He had patched it at elbow and at cuff with soft leather. And this he had done personally—no tailor for him. Sean Ryan, in his day, in the field, had learned to do his own sewing and did a quite respectable job.

For a moment, he dreamed. If he could only get a few pounds. If he could only get himself a new outfit, a suit, a snowwhite clean shirt, a decent tie, new boots. Why, then he could go out and look for a reasonable job. After all, he had been to college, he was a gentleman, a retired officer. He had more decorations than he could off-hand remember. He snorted at that one. He even had one decoration that took up an eighth of his chest, if worn. It involved a golden dragon. Had it come from the Nationalist Chinese or from Thailand?

But then he faced reality. How could he get his hands on a few pounds? Long since, he had borrowed from every friend, every relative, near or far, every remote acquaintance who was generous enough, foolish enough, or, face it, pitying enough, to help him. There was no one else left. But even if there had been, and he could have refitted himself, what credentials could he offer a potential employer?

What was your last post of employment?

I was the bodyguard of the Emir Alhaji Mohammadu, Kudo of Kano, Nigeria. Which was a polite way of putting it. He and two other whites, one an Italian, one a Greek, were the hatchetmen of the Emir, used on delicate occasions when the three hundred and some odd pound Emir did not wish to commit his fellow countrymen, though the Emir was far from a delicate man when it came to—ah—subversion.

And what was your position before that? Sean had to think twice. Yes, probably that romp in—what did they call the country now?—he forgot. Borneo, in the old days. It had been a bloody mess. Not exactly a job to reveal to a prospective employer in Dublin.

He had held off the moment long enough. He reached for his wallet and examined its contents. There were no contents, insofar as paper money was concerned. He fished into his trouser pockets and came forth with several coins, a few shillings, a few pence. Less than a pound in all. So he had suspected. He couldn’t have gotten as blotto as he had obviously been without blowing all on hand. It came back to him now. He had started buying himself Jameson’s, the best of the Irish whiskeys, so far as he was concerned, instead of sticking to the more plebian Guiness stout. He could afford whiskey about as much as he could champagne.

Sean Ryan had luck in the dining room. He was the last of the hotel’s guests to appear on the scene and Molly, the sole waitress, who also doubled as a chambermaid, was in the process of cleaning up. But for some reason, Molly had a soft spot for Sean Ryan. She brought him his breakfast.

Only the fact that he was still hungry from the day before made it possible for him to get it all down, over the rebellion of his hangover. But get it down he did, to the last crust of the heavy Irish bread.

On the way out, he put the proprietor off with his story of a check coming at the end of the week. Actually, it was the dole, though these days they called it unemployment insurance. Just enough to keep from starving, if managed, but hardly enough for a drinking man.

The hotel was located within sight of the Guiness brewery, the second largest in the world. The first largest was in England and also a Guiness establishment. Sean Ryan passed it and went up to Usher’s Quay, and turned right, paralleling the River Liffey which wound through Dublin as the Seine did through Paris. He headed in the direction of O’Connell Street and the center of town. He made his way to the Pearl bar on Fleet street and entered. The Pearl bar, which boasted in one back corner possibly the smallest urinal Sean Ryan had ever seen. It had once occured to Ryan that every playwright and poet in over a hundred years of Irish literature had relieved himself in that urinal, from Oscar Wilde to Brendan Behan, by the way of Sean O’Casey, Synge, and all the rest. It was a writer’s bar in the oldest Dublin tradition. No women allowed, of course. There was a tiny room off to one side where a man could leave his wife, if she wasn’t too particular about the drabs she associated with, and she could sit at a table and have half a pint, while he stood at the bar in the saloon proper.