The Opium Prince Read online

  Laila’s voice pulled him back to the present. The others were silent, all eyes on him. “Daniel,” she said loudly, as if he’d lost his hearing. “Can you please pass the salt?”

  Ian reached across and plunked it down beside her. Daniel smiled and the guests stared as the waiters moved up and down the table like assembly-line drones. Ambassador Sutherland joined Rebecca in presenting the roster of Peter’s achievements. “He was one of our best advisers at the Treasury Department,” he said, describing Peter’s role in the Nixon Shock, which had ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold.

  The professor shrugged as if the compliments were too kind, but smiled in a way that suggested they weren’t. “I didn’t mind heading to Washington to do some real work. Getting my hands a little dirty.”

  “Very dirty,” Elias said. “Working for a crook.”

  “History will be kinder to Mr. Nixon than you think.”

  “When is your conference?” Daniel asked, wishing he hadn’t given in to Sherzai’s pressure to invite Elias.

  “Conference?”

  “The one in Tehran.”

  Peter dabbed his lips with his napkin. “I’m not sure of the dates.”

  Ambassador Sutherland turned to him. “You didn’t mention a conference.”

  “In any case, Kabul’s a nice place to visit.” Peter took a quick bite of food. “I haven’t been here since I wrote my last book, which was about gold and the end of the Ottoman Empire.”

  “The definitive book about gold and the end of the Ottoman Empire,” Rebecca added.

  “There’s a definitive book about that?” Greenwood laughed, the sound of a dolphin morphing into a mule.

  “If anyone can make that topic seem cool, it’s Peter,” Rebecca said. “He has a way.” When she spoke, Daniel pictured fragments of salt piercing through tightly woven fabric. Her sentence trailed off, and she laughed nervously, although her features fell and her shoulders slumped. If she regretted her words, then so be it. Daniel wasn’t inclined to give her the forgiving look she sought when she glanced his way.

  “They’re making good progress here, don’t you think?” Sutherland asked Peter, gesturing vaguely to the rest of the country.

  Peter didn’t respond, face more pinched than ever. As Sutherland filled the ensuing silence by explaining that this was his fourth assignment in the third world and how impressed he was with the locals, it was Elias who replied.

  “I’m glad you’re impressed,” he told the ambassador. Then he turned to Peter. “Are you impressed with us, too?”

  When there was no answer, he pushed on. “What’s the matter, Professor? You afraid we won’t be able to follow what you say?”

  Rebecca’s disdain was apparent on her face. Men like Elias were why she had first been drawn to Peter. In college, she had become disillusioned with the ideals of her generation, which were subsumed by salon socialism and the easy but unsustainable appeal of free love and drugs. What had begun as vision and optimism had brought leisure and narcissism; words like peace and brother were just fashionable argot, replacing the cool cat and hopped-up of the 1950s.

  Daniel tried to thaw the tension by raising his glass in a toast and welcoming his guests. Nine men and women drank to friendship and health. Elias then dug his elbows into the table and made a steeple with his fingers. He was about to ask Peter something more when the professor finally answered Ambassador Sutherland’s question about progress. “There was still a king last time I was here. The president is an improvement.”

  “Really?” Greenwood said. “Then you don’t know about all the pinkos and reds he’s surrounding himself with. Do you know what went on in the streets the other day?”

  Peter blinked rapidly. “Of course I know.” He made a sharp sniffling sound. “The Communists are an improvement.”

  Daniel wondered where this was coming from. Peter had worked for Nixon not because his career demanded it, but because he’d believed in the man, at least in the early days. Maybe he was saying things he didn’t mean to prompt reactions that amused him, like a cat toying with a lesser animal. But not everyone seemed surprised.

  Greenwood shook his head. “A lot of the professors at Harvard were pink. Or worse.”

  “And yet none of it rubbed off on you,” Elias said. “Probably didn’t even get close enough to the free-love chicks to let them rub off on you, either.”

  Greenwood chuckled uncomfortably, bouncing glances off the other men, none of whom gave him the reaction he wanted. When Sutherland displayed his diplomat’s skills by declaring Daoud a leader America could work with, Greenwood said, “That depends.”

  “On what?” Elias must have spat the words, because Greenwood wiped at his left eye. Daniel remembered Taj saying something about llamas and fought back a smile.

  “On whether he quits playing around with Commies and gets on board with destroying the poppies once and for all. They’ve got to go.”

  “The Commies or the poppies?” Daniel said.

  “Both.”

  “I say long live the Commies,” Elias said.

  A heavy silence laid itself over the table. Daniel could hear that car again.

  Pamela pointed a nail at the popcorn ceiling. “There’s a shoe store in town now that sells Italian brands,” she said conspiratorially. “Imported.”

  They all drank to progress as they traded rumors. Laughter lifted the atmosphere. It was the sound not of good cheer but of relief. In the warmth of wine and candle glow, Elias joined in the gossip long enough to claim that the best department store would soon carry lingerie, though it was a secret and a journalist never divulged his sources. He winked, eliciting sniggers. Even Rebecca shared in the indulgent chuckles.

  “I’ve been here three days and find the ladies as exotic as the cuisine.” Greenwood swept his hand over the silver-plattered food, finishing with a swirling motion. Turning to Peter, he added, “Am I right?”

  The attempt at camaraderie failed. The professor studied him with pursed lips. Greenwood fiddled with his tie clip.

  “Peter prefers California girls,” Daniel said.

  Greenwood smiled. “You can’t blame the man.”

  Rebecca dropped her napkin on the table and rose. She vanished through the swinging kitchen door. She returned with an apology, explaining that she’d forgotten to check on dessert. She looked different somehow.

  Ian tried to revive the gossip. A liquor store was to open downtown next to the shop with all the socks, he said to expressions of disbelief. It would pose as a candy store. He took his wife’s hand and said he looked forward to champagne on their anniversary, which was three months away. Pamela turned to Rebecca and said, “Darling, I forgot to ask about your anniversary trip. Did he treat you as you should be treated?”

  Rebecca nodded, staring at her food. “It was . . . unforgettable.”

  She could have told everyone that Daniel had given her custom-made jewelry, but she didn’t. He now knew why she looked different since her retreat to the kitchen. She had taken the earrings off.

  Greenwood raised his Sprite in the air. “Happy belated anniversary!” he said. He returned to the question of lingerie and probed Peter for details about the girls at UCLA, conceding that this was the single area where West Coast schools outranked Harvard.

  Daniel and Peter glanced at each other and ignored the slight. Tie Clip didn’t need to know that Daniel could have chosen any school he liked. That he’d headed to California because he’d grown up with sun-soaked deserts and dreamed of a place where desert and sea coexisted and you could leave things behind. Rebecca had wanted to flee her problems, too, which he guessed was the reason she had happily agreed to move here. She’d been born in California, a young place, and had longed for the weight of history. First, she’d lost herself in classical music, beginning with the Baroques before moving on to the Romantics of the nine
teenth century. But not until she’d come here had she understood what ancient really meant.

  “Speaking of trips,” Ian said, “I noticed the Krautmobile isn’t here.” He spoke with his mouth full. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  Daniel suddenly felt as if time had slowed and his guests had come only to hear him answer this question. He was grateful when Rebecca said, “A rock broke the windshield. You know how our street is.”

  “The streets are the least of our problems,” Laila said. “What we really need here are things like better medicine. More X-ray machines. The Communists can bring that.”

  No, they can’t, Daniel thought. When had they kept their promises to anyone? She ought to be embarrassed, spewing Russian propaganda that had all the depth of a Pine-Sol jingle. There was little to admire about the ogre to the east, with its five-year plans and blood-soaked imperialism. Communist Russia had done what every fascist regime had ever done. They had bastardized an idea to appeal to two kinds of people: those who felt downtrodden and those who felt superior. The downtrodden wanted a higher standard of living, and the superior liked to think they were on the side of the downtrodden. In his Santa Monica apartment in 1968, Daniel had sat and watched with his friends as the Russians crushed the anti-Communist rebellion in Czechoslovakia, the so-called Prague Spring. Twelve years before that, he’d listened on the shortwave radio with Sherzai as the Russians had violently quelled the same kind of rebellion in Hungary.

  How odd to see Peter nodding at Laila’s words. He had barely been able to stand the pro-Soviet slogans coming from the self-described enlightened left. The exuberance of McCarthyism and the Red Scare had been so sinister that some had jumped to the opposite side of the riverbank, stomping their feet in pro-Soviet indignation from the safety of their third-floor walk-ups, traded in by now for three-bedroom ranches. The rational center drowned, as it always did in times of crisis, when extremes ate up all the ground until there was no such thing as in-between.

  Exhaling, Elias ran his hands through his mop of hair as if hoping Laila would notice Peter’s was thinning. And yet, if she was looking for a fling, it was hard to compete with the casual inconsequentiality of a foreigner who was just passing through and who could do nothing to harm her local reputation. Elias knew too many people she would encounter at weddings, funerals, or the clinic.

  “America could get you all the stethoscopes you need,” Greenwood said, abandoning his efforts to discuss women.

  Laila started to respond, but Elias was like a Mustang at a light. “America’s help comes with strings attached.”

  “You ought to welcome American strings,” Ambassador Sutherland said.

  Tie Clip raised his glass and added, “They’re made of gold.”

  “Except they’re more like ropes than strings,” Elias said. Sauce dribbled onto his shirt, adding a new hue to his tie-dye.

  Daniel expected Laila to join in, but she was quiet, eyes on Peter. She took off her glasses and folded them beside her plate, smoothing her hair. For a moment, she seemed ready to loosen the scarf from her throat, but she changed her mind when Peter smiled her way. Rebecca was watching them both. She straightened, eyes darting about the room until they settled on a painting that suddenly fascinated her.

  “America doesn’t come like Santa Claus, sliding all groovy down the chimney and dropping off a free bag of gifts.” Elias’s voice grew louder with every sip. “It always wants something back.”

  Sutherland raised an authoritative hand. “Can the head of USADE please chime in here?” He spoke as if asking for a second serving of rice, modestly thankful and without guile. It was the tone of every diplomat Daniel had ever met, including Laila’s late father, an Iranian who had been stationed here after the war. Ambassadors were all so similar, it was like they shared a private nationality, an irony no one ever remarked on.

  Daniel gave an answer he thought Sutherland would like, one that had the advantage of being true. “The difference between America and Russia is that America wants something, but Russia wants everything. Moscow takes what it wants and puts up curtains and walls around it.”

  “True,” Ian said, placing his knife on the tablecloth.

  His wife nodded, her Cheryl Tiegs waves bouncing at the motion.

  Elias disagreed. “America makes walls and curtains of its own, and they’re worse because they’re not visible. You can’t protect yourself from what you can’t see.”

  Greenwood shook his head, but his eyes never left Elias. “I don’t get people like you. You—”

  Daniel interrupted. “Bob—can I call you Bob? What Elias is trying to say is that sometimes, America conducts its foreign policy like a Greek drama. All the violence takes place offstage.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t study much Greek drama in school. I was busy learning things that were actually applicable.”

  A server approached with a bottle of wine. Greenwood covered his glass and asked for another Sprite. “Besides, if the violence happens somewhere else, that sounds fine to me.”

  “Why don’t I find that surprising?” Daniel said. The car was right outside the gate now, snarling like a predator.

  Ambassador Sutherland locked eyes with Daniel. With a kind but studied smile, he said, “Remember who you work for, son.”

  “He works for the greatest democracy in the world,” Greenwood said. “And democracy is what this place needs.”

  “Democracy.” Elias spun a hand in the air. “Just because you’ve lived in one all your life, you think you know what it means. You think democracy will look the same way everywhere. It doesn’t.”

  A waiter struggled to open a soda can for Greenwood, who finally grabbed it and wrestled off the tab. The Sprite fizzed, overflowing. “And what would you know about it?” He wiped the spill with his napkin and drank straight from the can before pouring the rest into his glass.

  Laila didn’t care that the question wasn’t aimed at her, nor did she acknowledge Sutherland’s prolonged gaze. “I know that if you keep beating people over the head with democracy, they end up with a concussion. And you wonder why they can’t hear you anymore.”

  “Maybe we should talk about something else,” Rebecca said.

  Daniel felt his heart harden. What did she want to talk about? How glad she was to see an old lover? Or maybe the flaws in her husband, who had given her a thoughtless anniversary gift.

  To lighten the mood, Ian tried to coax Greenwood into drinking something more than Sprite. When he wiggled a bottle in his direction, Greenwood snatched his glass back and said alcohol was poison.

  “I hear you’re familiar with poison,” Daniel said.

  Greenwood said something he had likely wanted to say all night. “Agent Ruby isn’t poison. It’s a state-of-the-art defoliant, meant to target certain kinds of noxious plants without harming the integrity of the soil.” He sounded like he was reading from a brochure. “We’ve tested it, and it doesn’t harm people. Unlike alcohol, which certainly kills.” He looked pointedly at his host. “You would know about that. Didn’t your father die of . . .” Greenwood searched for the precise term. “Alcohol poisoning? Terrible tragedy. I was sorry to hear it.”

  Daniel had no cause to be surprised. A brief study of local history might have mentioned Sayed the war hero and the rumors of his fatal habit, despite Sherzai’s efforts to suppress the stories.

  “I meant no offense,” Greenwood went on. “Not every man has the courage to go to prison for what he believes.” When the others turned puzzled eyes to him, he added, “Mr. Sherzai told me all about it. How Sayed Sajadi fought the English in the big war of 1919, when he wasn’t even twenty years old. How he used his money to buy off British generals and German engineers and buy high-tech weapons from arms dealers in the States.” Greenwood rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “For that, you’ve got to have some serious cash.” He aimed a finger at Daniel. “And some
serious balls. Not a bad combination.”

  He continued, reminding Daniel that Dannaco-Hastings was giving him Agent Ruby for free in this “trial run.” Daniel thought of children sleeping on ruined fields long after the poppies were gone. “Free might end up costing us more in the long term,” he said.

  “It’s a done deal, whether you approve or not. Again, no offense meant.” Greenwood spoke casually, mildly distracted by the dessert preparations taking place nearby, waiters chopping pistachios at breakneck speed. Bringing his focus back to the table, he continued. “I’m sure you know, Daniel, but the people here really do want an end to the poppies. We had similar problems in Colombia, Peru . . .” He waved his hand to indicate the long roster of nations he’d singlehandedly lifted out of misery. “You’ve got to listen to the will of the people.”

  Peter watched him with contempt. When he spoke, he formed his words so slowly and sharply that his fellow diners stopped eating. “You don’t mean that, Mr. Greenwood.”

  “Then what do I mean?”

  “You mean nothing.”

  Daniel fought a smile. For that comment alone, he might have forgiven Peter all his sins. Greenwood seemed to try but fail to understand the professor’s words. “I don’t follow,” he said. Rebecca struggled to control her mouth, which threatened to break into a smile, while Pamela laughed like someone who had missed the punch line. As Daniel listened to what Peter said next, he knew there would come a day when he’d remember it, although he could not say why.

  “What I’m saying, Mr. Greenwood, is that the will of the people would likely frighten you half to death and would definitely be bad for business,” Peter said. “One day, the people you’re talking about will overthrow their governments and try to annihilate you in the name of their god, and when you finally understand that the end of the world will be brought about not by Communist dictators, but the will of the people, it will be too late.”

  The stillness that came over the party now was worse than the others. The music had stopped a while ago. As if on cue, the driver outside killed the engine.