The Opium Prince Page 15

  Coronation Day

  Today is the first day that Boy is helping with the poppy harvest. He does not know how long it has been since his mother died, but Nazook, who takes care of him, says it was years ago. He and Nazook are working alone in a mud hut near the field. He can hear the wind rustling through the red, purple, and white flowers and he likes to see them when he looks out the door. He has been living with Nazook for a long time now. Many New Year’s Days have passed. He is proud, because at last Nazook trusts him enough to let him help in the field. Boy takes the poppy bulbs from a basket, and with a small knife he slices them and coaxes out the sticky sap inside. The blade has to be cleaned between bulbs or it will stick. Some people just lick the blade, but Nazook says not to do this because you can get addicted to the sap. They dip the knives in water.

  Nazook says that at the end of today, if Boy has done well, he will help him choose a new name. A real name, one fit for a young man who does important work. Boy asks what happens to the resin after they are finished. Nazook tells him it will one day become “poder,” a powder that is brown, although the best “poder” in the world is white. People smoke it or put it in their veins in England and America. People who hate themselves enjoy such horrors, and it is all right if the infidels want to poison themselves. Boy does not understand how a person can hate himself when there are so many other people to hate, like people who would chase and beat up a boy for stealing a single orange.

  The mud shack is warm, and Boy wipes the heat from his forehead while he works. They don’t stop until it is dark. Nazook hums a song through his teeth as Boy’s stomach growls. There are blisters on his fingers, and he needed to go to the bathroom a hundred poppies ago. But he keeps working, never looks up. Slice the pod, get the resin out, put it in the basket. Slice the pod, get the resin out, put it in the basket.

  When the day is over, the bosses come to inspect. They feel the sticky brown stuff with their fingers and smell it, look at the pods to make sure everything has been scraped out. They give Nazook one green bill after another. These are not afghanis; this is the currency of foreigners. “Real money,” people call it.

  “Don’t worry,” Nazook says, stuffing the cash in his pocket. “For now, you share in mine. Later, they’ll pay you, too, when I tell them you are valuable.” Nazook throws his arm over Boy’s shoulder, and they walk to the Opel.

  This is the car Nazook was driving when he and Boy met for the first time. Nazook had seen Boy stealing grapes from a cart. “Hey, thief!” he shouted. Boy ran. He could almost feel the heat of the car on his back. He ran as fast as the day his mother died, his bare feet pounding the sidewalk and the street. The city was a blur of colors flying past him as he twisted and turned. He dove into an alley too small for a car and crouched behind two donkeys tied to a post behind a teahouse. “Hey, kid,” a man’s voice said gently. He looked up and saw the man he’d soon call Nazook walking toward him. The Opel, engine still running, blocked off the other end of the alley. “I’m not going to get you in trouble,” the man said. He squatted next to Boy. “You’re very fast.”

  Boy nodded. “I know the streets.”

  “You shouldn’t have to steal for food,” said Nazook. “If you come with me, I’ll buy you a good meal.”

  Boy was wary at first, but the man took him to a restaurant and bought him kebabs and rice and naan and cucumbers and talked to him about all kinds of things, laughing and asking questions. Nazook watched as he ate all of it, then bought him a big cookie.

  From that day on, Boy lived in Nazook’s house. He had never been inside one before and wondered if they were all like this. It looked like somewhere a king would live. Nazook said it cost a lot. Boy decided that day that he wanted to work with the poppies, too. He would never sleep in the alley again. He would live with walls. He would always, always live with walls. Sometimes he dreams that he lives in a garden with the children he used to run in the streets with as Boy. A wild, beautiful garden with tall walls around it.

  Boy is almost a man now. He tries to rub the resin off his fingers as they drive away in the Opel. Nazook stops at a very fancy restaurant to celebrate Boy’s first day in the fields. Before the meal comes, he says, “You did well. What shall we call you from now on?”

  Boy shrugs because he can’t think of any names. Nazook’s name means thin, but thin like a thing, not a person. They teased him for being skinny when he was a little boy, and the name stuck. “It’s too late for me,” Nazook said, “but not for you. What do you want to be one day?”

  Boy laughs and says, “I want to be king.”

  “Very well, then. Your name will be Taj Maleki. Your first name means crown, and your last name means king in Arabic.”

  “I could never be king! There’s already a king, and when he dies, then his son or his brother or his cousin will be king.”

  “Taj, any man can be king. He needs only to find people who are looking for one.”

  15

  On Monday morning, Daniel scheduled a staff meeting, bringing together Seth, Iggy, and a half dozen others. The conference table consisted of four plain desks pushed together. He asked questions and complimented his colleagues on their work. The men grew more relaxed and talked about the headway they had made—the workshops, training, and farmers who longed for new skills, equipment, and plans. Daniel nodded, thanking them. He loathed the story he was about to tell them, but it was the only one he could allow. He explained that the timeline for the Reform had changed. He showed them the same document he’d shown Sherzai. The air left the room.

  After glancing at the Gulzar report, Seth skidded the papers back across the table. Slumping in his chair, he drummed his fingers, peering at Daniel over his heavy glasses. Iggy asked questions, rubbing his brow now and then. “I don’t get it. Why can’t it wait?”

  Seth answered on Daniel’s behalf. “Because Daniel here says it can’t. Never mind that we’ve been working day after day, week after week, month after month on the Yassaman field. After he talked us into it.”

  “So you should be happy we’re postponing that,” Daniel said.

  “Can’t you tell that no one in here is happy right now?” Seth drew an imaginary circle around the room with his pen.

  “Quit it,” Iggy said, scribbling notes as he spoke. “Let’s stay calm.”

  They asked questions. Daniel answered. “I know it’s unexpected,” he said. “But we have to get working on this.”

  The men traded glances, the local farming experts and hydro engineers seeking an explanation from their American counterparts. Iggy shook his head in a small movement Daniel pretended not to see. He also ignored Seth, who was humming a tune through gritted teeth.

  “There’s a lot of work to do and not much time,” Daniel said.

  “And whose fault is that?” Seth muttered, scraping his chair across the floor as he rose.

  Daniel asked him to stay behind, wishing the others a productive day. “Do you have some kind of problem with me?” he said when they were alone.

  “There were a couple of things you left out of that presentation, that’s all.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what does Smythe think of all this? What does Sherzai say? How come he’s not here backing you up on this?” Sweat seeped through Seth’s shirt as his monologue gained pace. “And what about the money? I’ve been at this a long time, and this is going to cost a fortune. Redoing the equipment, digging channels and pipes bringing water from the river?”

  “It’s all been taken into account and worked out.”

  “What, over the weekend?” Seth snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”

  “You don’t need to worry about those kinds of decisions.”

  “No, that’s apparently your job, and you must take it very seriously. Everything was working fine—”

  “Everything was not working fine. I have reasons for switching gears.”<
br />
  “Is that what you call this? ‘Switching gears’? See, that’s not what I’d call it. I’m an engineer, so I understand how gears work, okay? Let me explain something. When you switch gears, you go from one to two to three. Or from forward to backward.” Seth moved his hands like he was driving a stick shift. “It’s a sequence. A closed linear system. This? What you’re doing here?” He tossed a glance at the door as if about to let Daniel in on a secret. “What you’re doing here is, you’re jumping right off the train and grabbing an entirely new set of gears on a different train going in another direction nobody’s ever heard of. We have a special term for that, but it’s pretty technical. We call it ‘fucking things up.’”

  “Your concerns are noted,” Daniel said.

  Seth stood with his hands on his hips, his tie hanging crookedly over his short-sleeved shirt. For once, he had removed his jacket, which lay crumpled on the table. “Kauffman would never have done this.”

  “Kauffman meant well, but things went wrong under him. That’s why I’m here, remember?”

  “No. You’re here because—”

  “That’s all, Seth.” Daniel returned to his office, his staff falling silent as he passed.

  Seth had asked what Smythe thought as if he’d known Daniel hadn’t told the undersecretary. Evidently, though, someone else had, because the Teletype was stuttering out a message from the State Department, and all the buttons on Miss Soraya’s phone blinked red as she shot from one line to the other, telling every caller that Daniel was unavailable.

  He locked himself in his office and drank the strong black tea she’d brewed. It was bitter and hot enough to burn. He beat back the temptation to pour himself a drink from the liquor cart. Miss Soraya held his calls for several more minutes, until he told her he was ready. The conversation with Smythe could only be described as catastrophic. It wasn’t Iggy who had alerted Smythe, nor any of the others at USADE. It was Sherzai. Daniel scarcely heard the words that poured forth from the undersecretary. Until this moment, he had imagined Sherzai might back him up, or at least wait until they had spoken again before doing this. But agha had not truly betrayed him: Smythe didn’t seem to know the file was a forgery. He only knew that Sherzai was against the new proposal. Daniel set the receiver down on the desk and leaned his head in his hands as Smythe’s voice thundered.

  According to Smythe, the great obstacle to the Gulzar Reform was not the Ministry of Planning, whose influence he called “as limited as my first wife.” Nor was it his own department or the committees in Congress. As long as the result was big, and could be filmed, a different field was not impossible. But Dannaco-Hastings’s contract gave them the right to withdraw their equipment. The final say lay with them, just as Greenwood had said, and Dannaco wanted more than a spectacle. It wanted a test, numbers and statistics that showed Agent Ruby could lay waste to acre upon acre of the most resilient plants, a pesticide that could be used by farmers and soldiers alike.

  “As for me,” Smythe said, “I need footage of a whole lot of poppies coming out of the ground. It doesn’t have to be the Yassaman poppies.”

  “There aren’t that many growing in Gulzar, sir. There won’t be enough for a show.”

  “There could be.”

  “How? We can’t transplant thousands of poppies and then yank them out for the camera.”

  “Footage of poppies can’t be that hard to find,” Smythe said. “Anyway, it’s a moot point. If your evidence doesn’t convince Dannaco, and it’s not going to unless Greenwood says the same thing you did, sayonara to this new plan of yours. That’s Japanese, by the way, and it doesn’t just mean goodbye, it means you’re deep fried. Do you follow?”

  “Can’t you put pressure on them? We’re the client, and we’re also the damn US government.”

  “Easy there. Sure, we can put pressure on them. But first of all, I don’t want to. Second, it’s a contract and it’s their equipment. You still listening?”

  Daniel was.

  “Third, they just gave a barrel of dollars to the Democrats, and Carter’s already gearing up for reelection. He’s been in office seven whole months, for chrissake. Time to start planning his next campaign. Fourth, follow the goddamn plan. Fifth—and this is important—let’s never talk about this again.” His parting words were about Greenwood. Daniel was to “entertain the kid, do whatever tourists do in countries where fun is illegal.”

  Miss Soraya came in with the telex, which was a more polished version of Smythe’s tirade, likely composed by one of his analysts. Shortly after, the intercom squawked, and Miss Soraya announced an urgent call from the Ministry of Planning. Daniel did not wish to speak to Sherzai. She told him it was someone else, a man whose name she wasn’t familiar with. Maybe Sherzai could not bear to speak with Daniel any more than Daniel could bear the thought of speaking to him. He told Miss Soraya to put the caller through.

  “My illustrious friend, what a pleasure to find you there. I so enjoyed your party.”

  “I don’t think you did. Don’t get me wrong. It was memorable, especially the part where I got to throw you out, but I think Mr. Greenwood scared you.”

  “He does cut a frightening figure, doesn’t he?”

  Daniel nearly laughed. But when Taj cleared his throat and emitted a chuckle, it sounded dry and strained. “I have faith in you.”

  “Like I said before, it’s not just about me. Even if I wanted to delay your inevitable and highly desirable ruin, you would have to blackmail a corporation with more money than the Saudi king.”

  “If I was foolish enough to do such things, I would have done them long before meeting you. I won’t be blackmailing anyone else.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “You will be.”

  Before Daniel could ponder what this meant, the khan added, “Again, I look forward to the privilege of your company on Wednesday at the Zoroaster.” The khan’s voice held a tremor, and he spoke more slowly than usual, as if every word was an effort. The more time passed, the more Daniel thought something had rattled him and that Greenwood may indeed have changed how Taj saw things. Daniel hung up. Sherzai called later in the afternoon, but Daniel could not speak with him. Sherzai left a message that Miss Soraya conveyed: he wanted Daniel to know that he had not discussed the anonymous source with Smythe.

  He mentioned none of this to Rebecca when he came home after a day of silences and worried looks from his staff. She knew enough. All day at the embassy, she had heard Sutherland’s side of a dozen telephone calls, which she mentioned to Daniel. The ambassador had spoken with people in Washington and here, and USADE was mentioned in every call, seeming to have disrupted the interests of an array of people on both sides of the world.

  “Is your new friend being helpful?” Rebecca asked as they sat down to dinner.

  “Not especially.”

  While Rebecca buttered her naan, Daniel told her that on Wednesday night, he would take Greenwood to the Zoroaster because Smythe insisted he be entertained, and visitors always loved the club, which featured drinks, dancing, and dervishes, a combination few had seen.

  “Great! I’ll ask Peter and Laila. I’m sure they’d love to come.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to go. Besides, it’s business.”

  “I don’t mind. We’ll stay out of your way.” Rebecca smiled weakly. “Are you worried we’ll cramp your style?”

  The thought of Taj in a room with Rebecca again made Daniel’s stomach twist. “I just think you might be bored,” he said.

  She turned her attention back to her toast, running the knife over it in a rhythmic, deliberate motion. “That didn’t stop you from bringing me here.” Her words hit him like a sandstorm.

  “I didn’t bring you. You came with me.”

  “I followed. There’s a difference.” After a pause, she added, “You don’t have to do any of this. Your father was just a pe
rson. A flawed, ordinary person, and you’re working yourself to pieces doing something you don’t know he would have wanted you to do.”

  Where was this coming from?

  “It’s what I want to do, darling.”

  “How do you do that? Make the word darling sound like an insult?” She looked sad, but then paused and seemed to change her mind. “I’m always on your side. No matter what.”

  These outbursts of affection, delivered at regular intervals these past few days, surprised him. She raised her glass and he did the same, but when they toasted the sound was muted and tentative, as if they both feared the crystal might break. They resumed dinner.

  “I have an idea.” Rebecca took his hands and pulled him to the parlor, leaving their food behind, and switched on the stereo. To the gentle cadence of a waltz, he drew her into a slow dance in the dimly lit room. They talked about ordinary things—her friend Rita’s engagement, the things they wanted to buy, and letters they needed to write. Daniel asked why she hadn’t played the Beethoven sonata in days, after rehearsing the piece for so many weeks.

  She thought before answering. “It was too hard.” She lay her head against his chest. “It just wasn’t worth it anymore.”

  “Some things aren’t,” Daniel said, pulling her closer. He had forgotten how much he loved dancing with his wife. When they returned to the dining room, dinner was cold.

  As it turned out, Rebecca was right about Peter and Laila, who were thrilled at the prospect of the Zoroaster’s dervish show, which neither had seen. Greenwood seemed more excited than anyone. On Wednesday night, the hired chauffeur steered Rebecca’s Ford from Dollar Djinn Lane at nine o’clock. The mood in the car was festive; Daniel squeezed into the back with Peter and Laila, who were drinking directly from a bottle of champagne that they handed to Rebecca in the passenger seat. She took a swig and let out a laugh.

  “Do we have any music?” Laila said. Rebecca looked in the glove compartment. It contained nothing but paperwork, a flashlight, sunglasses, and a city map. Daniel looked away. Before him flashed the Neil Diamond tape he’d meant to play the day of the crash. The album was ten years old. Just for You.