Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (38 page)

“Goes to show you,” remarked Poe,
“that cowboys are cowboys, whether Jewish or—”

“Goyboys,” suggested Switters.

“Cowgoys,” offered
Washington
.

“More champagne, Daddy?” asked young
Anna.

Anna proved to be a slender sylph,
with a galactically freckled, waiflike face, brown hair braided in pendulous
pigtails, and breasts scarcely larger than her fists. She was innocently
flirty, and Switters, when not drinking with the men, divided his time between
going to absurd lengths to avoid ever being left alone with her and spying on
her voraciously as she sunbathed, topless, on the afterdeck.

Because he was on water, Switters
assumed that the prohibitive taboo was not in effect and that he was free to
move about the yacht on foot. However, since he didn’t want to have to explain
his situation to his hosts, he remained in the wheelchair. To honor the fates,
he remained in the wheelchair even when no one was looking. He was heartened,
nevertheless, for it occurred to him that should he fail to get the curse
lifted, should worse come to worst, he possibly could spend the rest of his
life aboard ship, be it a ship on the order of
The Banality of Evil
or
one like
Little Blessed Virgin of the Starry Waters
. The latter type, he
had to admit, was much more feasible, although it provided scant more space for
walking about than had his double bed in
Seattle
.

In any event, in the early afternoon
of their third day at sea, Poe had called him to the railing and pointed a
manicured nail at a hazy, macaroon-colored horizon. “Hatay,” he said. “On the
Syrian border. A dismal, camel-gnawed area whose only distinction aside from it
being the site of Alexander’s victory over the Persians is that it was upon its
uninviting beach that Jonah was supposed to have been coughed up by the whale.
Nothing symbolic is intended, I assure you, but I regret to report that it’s
the very spot where we are coughing you up. Tonight.”

“Hatay?
Turkey
? What’s? . . .”

“How you get from Hatay into northern
Iraq
is your affair. Frankly, considering your physical
liability, I have my doubts that you can manage it at all. People whom I trust,
however, assure me you have excellent qualifications: the languages, the experience,
the courage, the cunning. They couldn’t vouch, of course, for your desire.”

“Well, I’m plainly uninformed as to
the nature of the mission, but I can tell you that I don’t go to dances to sit
on the sidelines nibbling fruitcake. I’m here to take the prom queen home.
Moreover, I happen to be embarrassingly bereft of hard currency, and Mr.
Plastic is pretending he doesn’t know me. This gig has got to be preferable to
selling used electrolysis equipment over the phone.”

Again, Poe studied him curiously.
Then he said, “All right. Come with me.”

The silver-haired
précieux
(he
could be foppish even in jeans) had unlocked the storeroom, shoved aside cases
of champagne, crates of capers, and restaurant-sized jars of olives and pickled
artichokes, to reveal a ton or more of . . . well, there were land-mine
detectors and various devices for defusing or detonating mines, there were
camouflage paints, gas masks, fire extinguishers, transmitters for jamming
radio and radar signals, flares, bulletproof shields, water-purification kits,
and a refrigerator stocked with serums for inoculation against anthrax, sarin,
and other biological and chemical weapons.

“My goodness,” said Switters, looking
over the supplies. “You’re a regular little elf.”

Poe winced. “I’ve been called worse.
‘Traitor,’ for example. By the President of the
United States
and the chairmen of the intelligence committees in
both houses of Congress.”

“Not to mention Mayflower Cabot
Fitzgerald and swarms of racketeering locusts in the pulpits and the press.
Congratulations. One man’s treason is another man’s valor. At
Berkeley
, where I was in grad school at the time your book was
published, you were celebrated and revered. As a matter of fact, though I have
to admit I only read the reviews and not the tome itself, it was your book that
inspired me to sign on with the company.”

If Poe had looked at him with
curiosity before, those looks were nothing compared to the one he gave Switters
now. “Pardon me? You joined the CIA because of a book that exposed it as an
amoral, imperialist, bungling gang of money-wasters operating outside of and
above the law?” He was starting to suspect that this man he’d been sent was
crippled in mind as well as body.

“Why, yes. You made it irresistible.
Because no other room in the burning house promised a more interesting view?
Because every stand-up comic longs to play Hamlet? Because a big back has a big
front? Because I believed my syrup of wahoo could sweeten its sulfur?” Switters
shrugged. “It’s a trifle hard to explain.”

“Evidently.” Poe’s expression
betrayed neither satisfaction nor confidence, and he enjoyed a long skeptical
moment before shrugging, himself, and returning to the cache of—counteractives.
“Those gas masks? There’re approximately two thousand of them. Not fractionally
enough, but they’ll help. Your job is to get them to the Kurds near Dahuk.”

“Which Kurds? KDP or PUK?”

“Should such a choice become
necessary, I’d favor PUK for the simple reason that the KDP is sponsored by the
Iraqi government and therefore is in less danger of being gassed by it. Like
all political parties everywhere, however, they’re both consumed with power and
self-interest, so my preference is that you try to get the masks into the hands
of those unarmed civilians whom both parties
claim
to represent.”

In a parodying, theatrical gesture,
Switters pounded his right fist against his left breast and exclaimed, “So it
shall be written, so it shall be done!”

They had an early supper on deck, a
leisurely meal in which Switters was restricted to a single glass of champagne.
This was due to the fact that he would be needing his wits about him, but also
because the last time he’d had his fill of the bubbly, he’d gazed into Anna’s
face and told her that her eyes were like a morning mist on the fur of a
squirrel. Or something along those lines.

The sun was low but the air was still
balmy, and the sea was the shade of blue that black could have been if it
hadn’t stepped over the line. After plotting the mission as best they could—it
was a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operation—they entered into a conversation
about jazz, cinema, and literature, a dialogue that hit a snag when Switters
began expounding upon “the mythological and historical echoes” that resonated
in the most overtly skimble-skamble phrases of
Finnegans Wake
. “Nigh him
wigworms and nigh him tittlies and nigh him cheekadeekchimple,” for example.

After that, Audubon Poe talked of his
boyhood among the gentry of New Orleans and how, to further his ambition to
become a professional chess player, he had taught himself Russian at fourteen,
thinking it might give him some advantage if ever pitted against the grand
masters, who all seemed to hail from Mother Russia. At seventeen he became the
youngest spy in the history of the CIA, which recruited him to dig for Cold War
information at international chess tournaments, and although he blew his cover
by having a love affair with the wife of one of the Soviet champions, he later
became a full-time operations officer. In that capacity he served the company
loyally for years, until he found himself gradually disillusioned and sickened
by Vietnam, the secret war against Cuba, the gratuitous lying to the American
public, the support of brutal dictatorships, the coziness with the Mafia, and,
in general, the overly indulgent interpretation of the “such other functions
and duties” clause in the agency’s charter. Poe didn’t blame company cowboys as
much as he blamed the Presidents who used them, often illegally, as instruments
of a foreign policy whose main objective was to enrich the defense industry and
get them, the Presidents, reelected. Nevertheless, his exposé had badly dented
the agency’s fenders—and forced him into a precarious exile.

“The company’s changed since your
divorce,” said Switters.

“I hear they let black men be agents
now,” said Washington.

“Black women, too. Only we call them
‘African-Americans’ these days.”

“Ja, ja, that’s right. I can’t keep
up with all our name changes, man. Back in Harlem, we was ‘Negroes’ or ‘colored
people.’ Then it got to be ‘blacks’ and ‘people of color.’ But ‘Negro’
means
‘black,’ meant ‘black’ all along unless I’m mistaken; and maybe I’m thick,
living among the Swedes all this time—I mean, America’s a bouncy country
whereas the Swedes ain’t got that much bounce to ’em, you know—but I fail to
detect where they be a hell of a lot of
difference
between the terms
‘colored people’ and ‘people of color.’ Or between ‘Afro-American’ and
‘African-American,’ far as that goes.”

“The distinctions are subtle, all
right,” Switters admitted. “Too subtle for the rational mind. Only the
political mind can grasp them. I suspect there’s a bid for empowerment behind
it all, the power going to whoever seizes the right to coin the names. In a
reality made of language, the people who get to name things have psychological
ownership of those things. Couples name their pets and children, Madison Avenue
names the products that dominate our desires, theologians name the deities that
dominate our spirit—’Yahweh’ changed to ‘Jehovah’ changed to plain ol’ generic
‘God’—kids name the latest cultural trends or rename old ones to make them
theirs; politicians name streets and schools and airports after one another or
after the enemies they’ve successfully eliminated: they took Martin Luther
King’s life, for example, and then by naming their pork barrel projects after
him, took possession of his memory. In a way, we’re like linguistic wolves,
lifting our legs on patches of cultural ground to mark them with verbal urine
as territory that we alone control. Or maybe not.”

“Verbal wolf urine?” inquired Audubon
Poe incredulously. He had tucked a polka-dotted ascot into the throat of his
denim work shirt, accentuating the dapperness that seemed to originate from his
hair. “Anna, you must promise me you’ll never marry a man who uses phrases that
picturesque.”

Anna giggled in a manner that
suggested she thought it might be good fun to marry just such a man. Switters
averted his eyes, while Poe smiled ruefully and returned the conversation to
the CIA. “You say the company has changed. For better, you think, or for
worse?”

“It may be too soon to tell. About
the company and about the world in general.” Before Switters could say more—if,
indeed, he had any intention of continuing—a crewman approached and whispered
something in Poe’s ear.

“Blow coming up,” Poe announced when
the sailor departed. “Radio reports there could be seven-to eight-foot swells
throughout the night. Switters, I’m afraid we’re going to have to dump you
earlier than planned. There’re likely to be Turks up and about, though they
turn in early in these parts, but we can’t wait until tomorrow night, as we’ve
got a drop to make off of Somalia next week that we don’t dare miss. Innocent
lives at stake and so forth. If you’ll just get your gear together . . .”

“Happily,” said Switters, and he
meant it, although it’s debatable whether he would attribute his glee to the
prospect of action or to the fact that he was about to escape without making a
fool of himself—or worse—over Anna.

In any case, he had waved good-bye to
the girl from a safe distance, shook the manicured hand that had nearly punched
the breath out of the Central Intelligence Agency, and allowed the crew to
lower him, his luggage, his chair, and the burlap sacks containing two thousand
gas masks into a rubber raft. Skeeter Washington manned the oars (a motor might
have attracted attention) and manned them well. The wind was already
escalating, and between the darkened yacht and the rocky shore there was considerable
chop, but Skeeter slid over the crests and attacked the troughs as if mastering
a difficult composition by Thelonius Monk. Indeed, he was humming as he rowed.

“What’s that tune, Skeeter?”

“Huh? Oh, that? Just something new I
been working on. I thinking about calling it ‘Slida,’ thanks to you, man.
Americans won’t know what that mean nohow and the Swedes be broadminded about
such matters. If my record company in Stockholm don’t dig the reference, guess
I could call it—what was your Japanese word for it?—’Chitsu’? Unless you got a
better one.”

The raft pitched to one side and
caromed off a rock. Switters had to wipe spray from his eyes. “Well, you likely
would want to avoid the Welsh. In Wales, they say,
llawes goch
.”

“Say
what
? You jiving me? That
be ugly, man. Why, I wouldn’t go near nothing with a name like that.”

“A rose by any name would smell as
sweet,” Switters reminded him, then dug his left heel under the tubing to keep
from being jolted overboard. They were entering the surf now, and despite
Skeeter’s skillful maneuvering, the raft was lurching violently. “Vietnamese is
worse. In Vietnam they call it
lo torcung am dao
or
lo torcung am ba
,
depending on whether a baby is coming out of it or a man is going in.”