She’d already opened her mouth to greet me with some secondhand Flaubertian sentiment, but I’d shocked her. “You don’t want that, Marid,” she said in her whiny voice.
“Not for me. It’s for a friend.”
“None of your friends do that, either.”
I stopped myself before I grabbed her by the throat. “It’s not for a friend, then. It’s for a goddamn enemy.”
Laila smiled. “Then you want something really bad, right?”
“The worst,” I said.
She bustled out from behind her counter and went to the locked door in the rear of the shop. “I don’t keep merchandise like that out,” she explained as she dug in a pocket for her keys. Actually, they were on a long, green plastic necklace around her neck. “I don’t sell Proxy Hell moddies to kids.”
“Keys are around your neck.”
“Oh, thanks, dear.” She unlocked the door and turned to look at me. “Be right back.” She was gone a minute or two, and she returned with a small brown cardboard box.
There were three moddies in the box, all plain, gray plastic, all without manufacturer’s labels. These were bootleg modules, dangerous to wear. Regular commercial moddies were carefully recorded or programmed, and all extraneous signals were removed. You gambled when you wore an underground moddy. Sometimes bootlegs were “rough,” and when you popped them out, you found they’d caused major brain damage.
Laila had stuck handwritten labels on the moddies in the box. “How about infectious granuloma?” she asked.
I considered it for a moment, but decided that it was too much like what Abu Adil had been wearing when I’d first met him. “No,” I said.
“Okay,” said Laila, pushing the moddies around with her long, crooked forefinger. “Cholecystitis?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t have any idea.”
“What’s the third one?”
Laila held it up and read the label. “D Syndrome.”
I shivered. I’d heard about that. It’s some kind of awful nerve degeneration, a disease caused by slow viruses. The patient first suffers gaps in both long- and short-term memories. The viruses continue to eat away at the nervous system until the patient collapses, staring and stupid, bedridden and in terrible agony. Finally, in the last stages, he dies when his body forgets how to breathe or keep its heart beating. “How much for this?” I asked.
“Fifty kiam,” she said. She looked up slowly into my eyes and grinned. The few teeth she still had were black stumps, and the effect was grotesquely ugly. “You pay extra ’cause it’s a hard-to-get item.”
“All right,” I said. I paid her and stuffed the D Syndrome moddy in my pocket. Then I tried to get out of Laila’s shop.
“You know,” she said, putting her clawlike hand on my arm, “my lover is taking me to the opera tonight. All of Rouen will see us together!”
I pulled myself away and hurried out the door. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” I muttered.
During the long drive out to Abu Adil’s estate, I thought about recent events. If Kmuzu were right, then the fire had been started by Umm Saad’s son. I didn’t think that young Saad had acted on his own. Yet Umar had assured me that neither he nor Abu Adil still employed Umm Saad. He had flatly invited me to dispose of her, if I found her too irritating. Then if Umm Saad wasn’t getting her orders direct from Abu Adil, why had she decided suddenly to take things into her own hands?
And Jawarski. Had he taken a few potshots at me because he didn’t like my looks, or because Hajjar had let Abu Adil know that I was nosing around after the Phoenix File? Or were there even more sinister connections that I hadn’t yet discovered? At this point, I didn’t dare trust Saied or even Kmuzu. Morgan was the only other person who had my confidence, and I had to admit that there really wasn’t any good reason to trust him, either. He just reminded me of the way I used to be, before I’d gone to work changing a corrupt system from within.
That, by the way, was my current rationalization for what I was doing, the easy life I was leading. I suppose the bitter truth was that I didn’t have the guts to face Friedlander Bey’s wrath, or the heart to turn my back on his money. I told myself that I was using my position deep in the pits of dishonor to help the less fortunate. It didn’t really shut up my guilty conscience.
As I drove, the guilt and loneliness amounted almost to desperation, and are probably to blame for the tactical error that came next. Maybe I should have had more faith in Saied or Kmuzu. I could at least have brought one of the Stones That Speak with me. Instead, I was counting on my n cleverness to see me through a confrontation with Aou Adil. After all, I did have two separate plans: First, I thought I might try bribing him with the D Syndrome noddy; and second, if he didn’t take to buttering up, my fallback position consisted of hitting him between the eyes with my full knowledge of what he was up to.
Well, hell, it sounded like a great idea at the time.
The guard at Abu Adil’s gate recognized me and passed me through, although Kamal, the butler, demanded to know what I wanted. “I’ve brought a gift for Shaykh Reda,” I said. “It’s urgent that I talk with him.”
He wouldn’t let me leave the foyer. “Wait here,” he said with a sneer. “I will see if it is permitted.”
“The passive voice should be avoided,” I said. He didn’t get it.
He went all the way down to Abu Adil’s office, and came all the way back with the same contemptuous look his face. “I’m to bring you to my master,” he said. It sounded like it broke his heart to accommodate me.
He led me into one of Abu Adil’s offices, not the same one I’d seen on my first visit with Shaknahyi. A sweet smell, maybe incense, filled the air. There were framed prints of European art masterpieces on the walls, and a recording of Umm Khalthoum playing softly.
The great man himself was sitting in a comfortable armchair, with a beautifully embroidered blanket over his knees. His head lolled back against the back of the chair, his eyes were closed. His hands were laid flat on his knees, and they trembled.
Umar Abdul-Qawy was there, of course, and he didn’t look happy to see me. He nodded to me and put one finger his lips. I guessed this was a signal not to mention any of the things he’d discussed with me concerning his plans to unseat Abu Adil and rule the old shaykh’s empire in his place. That wasn’t why I was here. I had more important things to worry about than Umar’s half-assed power struggle.
“I have the honor to wish Shaykh Reda good afternoon,” I said.
“May Allah make the afternoon prosperous to you,” said Umar.
We’ll see, I thought. “I beg to present the noble shaykh with this small gift.”
Umar made a small gesture, the little flick of the hand a lordly king uses to command a peasant to approach. I wanted to stuff the moddy down his fat throat. “What is it?” he asked.
I said nothing. I just gave it to him. Umar turned it over in his hand a few times. Then he looked up at me. “You are more clever than I gave you credit,” he said. “My master will be greatly pleased.”
“I hope he doesn’t already have this module.” “No, no.” He placed it on Abu Adil’s lap, but the old man made no move to examine it. Umar studied me thoughtfully. “I would offer you something in return, although I’m certain you would be courteous enough to refuse.”
“Try me,” I said. “I’d like a little information.” Umar frowned. “Your manners—”
“They’re terrible, I know, but what can I say? I’m just an ignorant beaneater from the Maghreb. Now, I seem to have uncovered all kinds of incriminating information about you and Shaykh Reda — about Friedlander Bey too, to be honest. I’m talking about this goddamn Phoenix File of yours.” I waited to see Umar’s reaction.
It wasn’t long in coming. “I’m afraid, Monsieur Audran, that I don’t know what you’re talking about. I suggest that your master may be engaged in highly illegal activities, and has attempted to shift the blame—”