Authors: David DeBatto
“She asks them if they would like to hear a monster story,” Cela said, translating as the woman spoke, leaning forward conspiratorially,
gesturing broadly with her expressive hands. “Once upon a time, a monster lived in a jungle near a volcano. He is picked up
in a truck accidentally and goes to the city, and when the sun comes up, he runs and hides in a bakery.”
MacKenzie leaned in, even though she didn’t understand a word. The queen mother had an animated, dramatic speaking style.
“So when the baker comes,” Cela translated as the woman spoke, “the monster hides in a flour bin. He is only so big, like
a bush baby, but with long scary teeth. So the baker scoops it up accidentally, because she does not see it, and then she
puts the monster in a cake mix, and then in the oven, but the monster is from the volcano, yes? So it likes the heat in the
oven and falls asleep and wakes up inside the cake.”
The children giggled.
“Do they have birthdays and cakes in Liger?” Mack asked. Cela shook her head.
“We tell them about what the children in America do,” she said. “Some of them hope to go to America. So the monster wakes
up and hears children singing the birthday song, and then he hears the little girl tell her mother, ‘Mother, give me the knife
and let me cut the cake, because I’m old enough now, I think. Nothing will go wrong.’ She pokes the cake with the knife and
the monster giggles because it tickles.”
The children tittered again.
“And then a child at the party dips his finger in the frosting and the cake giggles again. Oh, no—what will happen next? So
all the children at the party lean in, and then the birthday girl puts the knife in the cake… and then… the monster
jumps out of the cake and shouts, ‘Hey now, what is it that you’re trying to do to me?’ And the children run away!”
The camp orphans screamed with delight, laughing and hugging each other in mock fear.
“But then they come back, the children, and they are angry, and they say, ‘You bad monster, you ate all our cake—give it back!’
And the monster says, ‘I will get you another one,’ so he goes back to the bakery and returns with a great big cake and he
says, ‘Now children, here it is, but I cannot guarantee that there isn’t a monster in this one, too.’ And the children, no
matter how much they want to, they cannot eat it because they are afraid, and so they leave, and do you know what? The monster
eats the second cake too!”
Again the children howled. The storyteller waited until they had quieted down.
“And do you know what the moral of the story is?” the narrator asked them. They shook their heads. “Well,” Cela translated,
“there are two. First, just because there is a monster in the first cake doesn’t mean there’s a monster in the second one.
That is the first moral. And the second lesson is, never listen to a monster, because they do not tell the truth.”
She brought out the cake, which was made out of mud, and then the child who was being honored blew out the candles, and the
others clapped.
It was all MacKenzie could do to keep from crying.
DeLuca was in his room at the Hotel Liger in Baku Da’al, standing on the balcony that overlooked the central market, when
his SATphone chirtled. The central market was closed for the night, a handful of colorful canopies and umbrellas lit from
below by dim light bulbs or the glow of television sets powered by gas generators where the merchants lived in their stalls.
As he answered his phone, the lights of the city extinguished themselves in unison, save those powered by generators, Baku
having power only for two hours of electricity in the evening and two in the afternoon. On the phone, Zoulalian explained
that all was well, and that an agent of Rahjid Waid had met his plane to take him to the IPAB training camp. He wasn’t sure
when he’d get a chance to report in next.
“My driver doesn’t think much of the recruits they’re getting,” Zoulalian said. “He used an Arabic word that translates more
or less as ‘hillbillies.’ Personally, I always thought the concept of ‘Islamic brotherhood’ was a contradiction in terms.
They don’t get along any better than anybody else. Anyway, if you’re a veteran from Iraq, you’re pretty much golden around
here. Thanks for getting Khalil on the blacklist—it can only help. By the way, I don’t know if it means anything, but my driver’s
never heard of John Dari. Maybe the guy’s keeping his head down even inside the brotherhood, but I found that odd. Gotta go.”
The next call came from MacKenzie. DeLuca wasn’t surprised to hear that Evelyn Warner was in country—she was the sort of person
who went wherever she damned well wanted to go, one of those people the Pentagon hated, always insisting on showing, in her
television news reports for the BBC, the cost of war in human terms, the collateral damage, “all that kid-crying-with-no-pants-on
shit,” as DeLuca’s former commander in Iraq had called it, adding, “Why don’t they ever talk about the good that we do?” That
commander had resigned when an investigation indicated that he’d given his men an order to fire on a group of Iraqis who were
trying to surrender, including an eight-year-old boy; now the guy was showing up on Fox News, talking about “the good that
we do.”
DeLuca found Evelyn Warner a bit more credible. Perhaps it was because he’d spent twelve hours being held hostage with her,
and another twenty-four crossing the Iranian border with her, but he knew her to be brilliant and resourceful and good company,
even with her hands flex-cuffed behind her back and a bag over her head. There’d been an attraction, but that was all. Mack
told him what Warner had said about John Dari.
“Could you run the name ‘Stephen Ackroyd’ for me?” Mack said. “He’s a journalist I met here. It’s not a lead, I think. I’m
just curious.”
DeLuca used his CIM to Google the name, but nothing turned up. He sent Walter Ford a quick e-mail, asking him to run a more
thorough search, then went down to the bar, taking the stairs when he remembered that the elevators weren’t working.
The hotel bar was in the corner of the ground floor, open-aired on two sides, filled with wing-back rattan chairs and leather
sofas polished from use, potted palms, rattan footstools, a terra-cotta-tiled floor, woven grass rugs and African masks on
the walls, the walls painted a lovely periwinkle blue, offset by trim painted a high-gloss white. There was a monkey cage
the size of an elevator car by the door to the lobby, empty, and a wall of bookshelves where travelers were free to take a
paperback they hadn’t read yet on the condition that they leave one they had. A second large cage containing two huge blue
parrots sat by the front door, where the parrots served as greeters, though neither seemed particularly hospitable today.
The hotel front opened onto a large veranda with broad low eaves to protect against the tropical rains, the view blocked by
a bank of sandbags six feet high, and a concierge’s desk manned by four soldiers carrying machine guns, but other than that,
the lounge retained its colonial charm, accented by the candle globes on the tables and bar. There were bamboo groves and
fragrant flowering plants, the yard in front of the hotel landscaped with date palms and fan palms and bird-of-paradise and
hypernic plants within its walls, the palms shading small circles of Adirondack-style chairs, unoccupied.
There were two bartenders, both young men in white shirts. When DeLuca asked if the kitchen was still open, he was assured
that it was, so he asked for a menu. He ordered chicken, only to be told that they were out of chicken. He tried the rock
lobster, but they were out of that, too.
“What’s the special of the day?” he asked.
“Beefsteak,” the bartender said softly.
“I’ll have that, then,” he said.
“I am sorry, but we don’t have it,” the bartender apologized.
“Do you have any food at all?” DeLuca asked.
“No,” the man said.
“All right, then,” DeLuca said. “I’ll just have a Guinness. That’s a meal in a glass anyway.”
The bartender smiled.
DeLuca moved to a poker game in the corner of the room where six middle-aged men were playing Texas Hold ’Em, a large loose
stack of paper Zudas in the middle of the table, next to a kerosene lantern, its wick turned up just to the point where it
was starting to smoke. He stood behind an empty chair for a few minutes, watching. Finally a white-haired man in a black short-sleeved
shirt spoke with a South African accent.
“If you’re waiting for an invitation, you’re not going to get one,” he said. “If you want to lose all your money to us, you
must do so of your own free will—otherwise you’re going to think we’re taking advantage of you.”
“What’s the buy-in?” he asked.
“One million Zudas,” a second man said. “Which, I believe, is about one dollar and thirty-eight cents, American.”
“Pretty steep,” DeLuca said, sitting down. The man in the black shirt threw in his cards and offered DeLuca his hand to shake.
“Tom Kruger, Fox News,” the man said.
“Don Brown, World Bank,” DeLuca said, shaking his hand and giving him a dollar to change. Rather than count, the man simply
grabbed a handful of bills and handed it to DeLuca.
“World Bank,” Kruger said, as if he were impressed. “That means you have deep pockets, Mr. Brown, because I happen to personally
know that the World Bank has well over a jillion Zudas in its reserves, and I intend to win them.”
“Roddy Hamilton,” the dealer next to him said, offering DeLuca his hand. He had a British accent, in his early thirties, thin,
with a long neck, big ears, close-cropped hair, and a prominent forehead. “
London Times
/Associated Press. And this is Robert, but don’t tell him anything because he’s a spy.”
The man he called Robert said nothing. He was slightly paunchy, slightly slouched, and listing to the left, dressed in a blue
striped oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a navy vest, unbuttoned, the tie around his neck loosened
and askew, his eyes watching the cards behind horn-rimmed glasses, in his late forties, but he seemed older, wearier, with
good hair and more of it than he deserved, in DeLuca’s opinion.
“And don’t talk about women,” the man next to the CIA agent said with a German accent. He was about forty, with blond hair,
and he wore wraparound black sunglasses. “He just got a ‘Dear Robert’ letter from his wife saying she was leaving him. And
now the poor fellow is alone and overweight and he drinks too much and he’s stuck here in Baku Da’al in a career that is going
nowhere. And he’s ugly.”
“Spoken with the depth of compassion you Germans are so justly known for,” Robert said. “Does Reuters actually pay you a salary,
Kurt, or do they just expect you to loot and pillage to support yourself?”
The fifth player was the oldest, perhaps sixty, wearing purple plaid pants, a maroon and yellow rugby shirt, and a blue seersucker
sport coat, his reading glasses dangling from a chain around his neck, large bushy eyebrows and gray hair swept back from
his face. He was drinking sweet vermouth and lime from a large pilsner glass and appeared to be completely sloshed, his eyes
glazed over but twinkling all the same.
“Elliot is with
Connoisseur
magazine,” Roddy Hamilton said. “Your fellow American. Doing a story on the wine industry of Liger, of which there will be
nothing left by the time he’s polished off the national inventory.”
“
Connoisseur
?” DeLuca said. “Really?”
“Something of a mix-up,” Elliot said. “Some press junkets are better planned than others. You now know the five remaining
white men in Baku. Our Arab friend here is Hassan bin-Adel, but don’t bother him—he has a hard time concentrating when he’s
about to bluff.”
The sixth man looked up from his cards but didn’t say anything.
“He’s with Al Jazeera,” Elliot said. “Didn’t smoke or drink until he met us, but look at him now—one of the boys. We’re so
proud of him.”
“You are the son of Satan and will die a thousand horrible deaths at the hands of the jihadi martyrs,” Hassan spat. “And by
the way, Arabs never bluff. Are you going to deal the cards, Roddy, or are we going to simply
chat
the night away?”
Hamilton dealt. DeLuca folded a six-ten off-suited. The flop turned red queens and the seven of clubs.
“Any of you guys know a guy named Stephen Ackroyd?” he asked. “I met him in Port Ivory.”
A chuckle spread around the table.
“You met Grasshopper?” Hamilton said, betting one hundred thousand Zudas.
“Thank God he’s all right,” Kruger said, calling the bet. “I was afraid somebody would have made him into a casserole by now.”
“He’d be very tender, wouldn’t he?” Kurt said, licking his lips in a mocking fashion. He tossed his cards violently into the
pot. “What do you say, Elliot—does your magazine have any good recipes for pretentious young writers?”
“Sucker tartare,” Elliot said, looking at his cards again before betting. “You really don’t want to overcook them, because
they’re already half-baked.”
“Oh, good one,” Kruger said sarcastically. “Mr. Brown, we tease because we love. Mr. Ackroyd has the unfortunate habit of
telling people they’re not doing their jobs, without ever having done one himself. I think he grew up with too much money.”
The turn was a ten of clubs, the river an ace. Hamilton won the pot with a full house, queens over aces.
“If you see him, tell him we miss him,” the German said. “Tell him we need him to give us more of his advice. Tell him this
time we promise to fold our hands when he’s bluffing instead of calling him because we knew every time what he was doing.
If you play cards with him, Mr. Brown, watch when he starts blinking his eyes rapidly. It means he’s lying.”
When DeLuca sat out a hand to get another beer from the bar, the man he knew only as Robert joined him, signaling to the bartender
that he would pay for DeLuca’s beer and wanted one for himself.
“I hope you’re not staying long,” he said to DeLuca. “Not to sound unfriendly, but this place is a hellhole—I wouldn’t wish
anybody to stay long. Bob Mohl.” He offered his hand. DeLuca shook it.