The Opium Prince Page 18

  The following Tuesday, Daniel received a message from Philip Kauffman, who now worked at a research desk in the Department of Agriculture on fruit orchards in the Midwest. He told a cautionary tale. During his time at USADE, he had exhaustively studied the Gulzar land, as he’d studied every field in Fever Valley. There was no payout there, he explained, reminding Daniel that the directorship was an easy post to lose when poor decisions were made.

  Though Seth had stopped talking to Daniel, he grew louder when he spoke with others, accentuating his selective silences. It worked. In Iggy’s office, he audibly lamented the lack of good leadership, contempt for expertise, and futility of a program he compared to a “sniper with no aim.” Daniel gave up trying to persuade him, and instead resorted to admonishing him for insubordination. Within days the veteran engineer was on probation, a decision Daniel explained only to Smythe.

  “Do what you have to do,” the undersecretary said.

  “So you have my back on Seth?”

  “Fuck Seth.”

  This sounded encouraging, so Daniel pressed on. “I want to revisit the question of using Agent Ruby. I’m asking again that we reconsider.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen. I thought this was settled. You got wax in your ears?”

  Daniel gave up. Even Greenwood didn’t have the power to stop Dannaco from testing Agent Ruby. That was, after all, why they were here. They owned the product, and Daniel couldn’t forge a file about its effects or its nonexistent history. He could only fight one battle at a time.

  After Seth’s probation was announced, the staff worked so silently it sounded like the typewriters were operating themselves. Farmers who had expected to soon be tilling food crops on Yassaman were given new guidelines. Daniel told Iggy to organize workshops and change the focus from wheat to corn, because he knew corn was easier to grow and the Gulzar soil was poor. Seed was ordered by the ton, hefty fees paid for swift delivery. Around the office, eyebrows rose and doors closed when Daniel passed. Elias called daily, insisting on an explanation for the change, which he’d learned about from the Ministry of Planning.

  “I don’t know anything Planning hasn’t already told you,” was all Daniel would say, and after a while he refused Elias’s calls. The last thing the journalist said to him was a threat veiled as a quip: “Remember this, Daniel. A good journalist is like an octopus: he blinds his enemies with ink.”

  Greenwood came and went, endorsing Daniel’s requests and justifying his conclusions. He clapped Iggy on the shoulder—never Daniel—and complimented secretaries on their dresses and their hair. One day he even flipped open his wallet and flashed a photo of a redhead he called his fiancée. After a while he came in with two-day stubble, a look at odds with his tidy hair. Within weeks, his class ring had loosened on his finger, and his watch no longer fit his wrist.

  When the destruction of the Gulzar field was only three days away, Daniel spent the afternoon in Fever Valley with his crew. The poppy workers of Yassaman were there, picking at leaves and petals, pulling up weeds, and occasionally glancing at Daniel. One of the men smiled. By now, Taj and his workers guessed their land would be spared, since the machines had crawled away. Taj must have seen the newspapers too, including one where Elias had written about USADE’s sudden change of plan and condemned the regime for its lack of control over American agencies. The most remarkable thing was that such a publication could exist at all. The last of the free newspapers had been shut down nearly ten years ago. Through Laila, Daniel heard that Elias had launched the paper with friends, hiding in different apartments, typing with the curtains closed, and printing as many copies as they could by bribing workers at another paper, then leaving them in stacks around the city.

  Daniel got into the pickup truck with his colleagues, Iggy at the wheel, and they pulled away from the Gulzar field. On the highway, they crossed a column of tanks moving as calmly as the Manticore. One of them was flying the Soviet flag, its hammer and sickle gleaming like an illusionist’s wink. It was what Daniel had seen the day Telaya died. While driving back to the camp with the nomads and Taj, he had passed a caravan of tanks, one of them flying the flag. That Russian advisers were present here was widely known, that they rolled along the highway in tanks less so. Long ago, Sayed Sajadi said: Russia is a bear that doesn’t hibernate. Never turn your back.

  The convoy was barreling toward the city. It was funny, really. The Russians didn’t understand that when it came to opium and religion, Karl Marx had it backward. Religion wasn’t the opium of the masses. Opium was the religion of the masses, making new converts every day of war vets and jazz stars and teens who mistook self-destruction for self-expression. Of so many of the workers who depended on it for their livelihood. Delivered through pills, pipes, and needles that the faithful shared, opium provided epiphanies that made its supply scarce against ubiquitous demand. Daniel wondered why he was here at all. He couldn’t get rid of the poppies, not really. All he could hope for was to move them somewhere else. All over the world, governments were trying to kill the drug trade by passing tougher laws, driving it underground. But underground—didn’t they know?—was precisely where roots took hold.

  20

  No one was answering the phone at the Menlow house in Los Angeles. Rebecca hadn’t called since the day she’d left. Daniel missed her. More than that, he was worried. On the third day, Walter finally picked up. He didn’t criticize Daniel for not coming; if he was angry, he was too consumed with grief to show it. He said they’d just let the phone ring for a few days because everyone was calling about Sandy and it had become too difficult, especially for his wife.

  “It’s fine work you’re doing out there,” Walter said. “Important work.” He passed the receiver to Rebecca. Her greeting was brief.

  “You’re not angry with me anymore?” Daniel said.

  “I don’t have the strength for anything except this right now.”

  Sandy would be buried the day before the destruction of the Gulzar field. That future date had become Daniel’s principal measure of time, the day all other days led to. Rebecca said she hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. She ended the call with a small good night. He held the receiver, wondering if she was really gone.

  Late that night, a caravan of vehicles headed toward Fever Valley. Daniel decided he would drive. It was time. The destruction of Gulzar was his responsibility. It felt both right and inevitable that he should lead the caravan. When Ian wanted to hitch a ride with him, Daniel found an excuse to say no. He wanted to drive alone. The car felt unfamiliar at first, like a strangely formed cage. When he carefully depressed the accelerator, she was there.

  Let’s go, she said.

  Daniel led, followed by Greenwood, USADE staff, and the Peace Corps contingent. Ian’s Citroën puffed away in the rear. It was eleven o’clock when they nosed into the small compound a mile from the fields, a cluster of apartments rented by Washington. The space was utilitarian and drab, with drop ceilings and linoleum floors. There was no air-conditioning, no granite facade with Daniel’s name etched in gold, but there was a stereo and a microwave in the kitchen. Iggy snapped an eight-track into the tape player. Buddy Holly filled the air. They found Budweiser in the fridge, clinking their bottles. Daniel sipped tea. Seth said nothing. Iggy talked nervously about the weather and everyone’s Christmas plans. Greenwood was silent, with no strength left to play the requisite games. Ian moved from table to table, laughing at things that weren’t funny and drinking with men whose names Daniel didn’t know.

  Shortly after midnight, he gathered his colleagues and led them through a rundown of tomorrow’s plan. They rehashed details they had reviewed a dozen times: the protective suits, the crop dusters, the evacuations. The film crew that would arrive in the morning.

  He wasn’t tired when he settled into his bedroom. He fished out a bottle from his overnight bag and drank until he didn’t know if he was asleep or awake. He spent the night on a
narrow bed and rose before the alarm rang. Day hadn’t broken when Greenwood, Iggy, and Seth loaded into his car, the others trailing as they made their way toward the fields. The men tried not to spill their coffee as they bit into pastries so dry they crumbled. Daniel’s mouth was parched, the whiskey still churning in his stomach. When Iggy made an effort at small talk, Seth grunted along. In the desert, a Kochi migration moved toward the road, men pulling animals and women carrying baskets while the children tried to keep up.

  Daniel’s group passed the Yassaman poppies glowing under the rising sun. Their petals had fallen. Next week, Taj’s harvest would begin. His land was upstream from the river, so Agent Ruby would flow away from his precious flowers.

  The poppy workers rose from the ground in the Gulzar field as Daniel’s convoy arrived. Through the open window, he heard a boy say, “Mama, I’m thirsty.” She told him the water in her bucket was for poppies, not people. They didn’t know that trucks would soon arrive and drive them away—Dannaco-Hastings and the State Department had insisted that all people be removed and kept out until the week after the dusting was complete. Daniel wondered why this was necessary if Agent Ruby was as harmless as they claimed.

  It seemed impossible that the Yassaman harvest would take place while Daniel cleared out the useless land nearby. This was not the Reform he had wanted when he’d come, but it was still a step forward, he hoped. Greenwood paced back and forth with his hands in his pockets, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. He checked his watch, likely impatient to fly home and never again be at the mercy of the man with that photograph. Daniel wondered if his own sins were as clearly etched on his face as Greenwood’s were on his.

  Then, in a single row, the trucks appeared. Soldiers jumped out, ordering the Gulzar poppy workers to get inside. The crowd huddled together in an attempt to resist.

  Why? they said. No.

  “Now!” the captain shouted.

  Squinting against shafts of morning light, Daniel climbed on the hood of his car. It was warm, the engine asleep under the metal. From his podium, he told the wary crowd that a chemical was about to be used, and they could soon return to harvest the field in peace. He wondered what his father had said when he’d stood before their predecessors, rallying them to fight the English. He had convinced them to risk their lives for a war, while Daniel couldn’t even convince them to save their own lives.

  It was easier to give them no choice, as the captain understood: he fired a warning shot in the air. If it frightened them, they did not show it, other than a few children who screamed. The adults spoke amongst themselves and began moving toward the trucks, which stood puffing exhaust into the clean morning air. Daniel jumped down from the hood and walked with the poppy pickers. Soldiers divided them into groups. A woman shouted that her son was being taken to a different truck, begging the soldiers not to separate them. The captain consented, reuniting the two. A hundred men, women, and children crowded into the open-air trailers, pressing their backs against the rails and each other. Soldiers latched the tailgates shut.

  Greenwood walked off to greet the van with the film crew. He told them they weren’t to tape anything yet and made sure all the microphones and cameras were off. They were to capture only the crop dusters, aiming the lens high, away from “the six poppies growing there” in the Gulzar patch. Dannaco would edit in whatever else was needed. As Smythe had said, it couldn’t be so hard to find footage of poppies. They would get their before-and-after shots—even if there was no real before and after. Donning their protective suits, everyone was silent as they waited for the crop dusters. The crew looked like astronauts with their white plasticky clothing and masks.

  The low-lying aircraft appeared at eight o’clock, wobbling hunks of metal under a vast pale sky. Dipping toward the field, the pilots unlatched the release vents. The planes slowed and discharged their poison, a white vapor. Daniel thought of the little Cessnas he had learned to fly in California, where the view was a sliver of paradise, canyons and water gilded by sun. When it was over, the crew returned to its quarters less than a mile away. The contrast between last night and this afternoon could not have been sharper. There was no Buddy Holly, no beer, no jokes.

  Refusing lunch, Daniel said goodbye to his colleagues and locked himself in his room. It was over. Maybe Agent Ruby would allow new crops to sprout the following spring, like Dannaco promised. They would do everything they could to fertilize the land just a few months from now. By late winter, planting could begin, and in the spring the corn would emerge. One day, maybe he would find a way to destroy the Yassaman field.

  The days passed, blending into each other. He called Rebecca nearly every day. He worked with his staff in the mornings, ate dinner alone, and avoided Ian as best he could. When almost a week had passed, the crew returned to the field. Agent Ruby had vanished into the dry earth of Gulzar. The poppies were dead, their petals, pods, and leaves scattered across the discolored land. The men applauded, Greenwood leading the charge with enthusiasm.

  Daniel went to bed at five o’clock in the afternoon, pulling the sheets high around his neck. It was done. He had struck a bargain, and the payoff had come. When he awoke, it was dark and the telephone was ringing. He ignored it, but moments later, it rang again. Eventually, he took the receiver off the hook. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. There was nothing to say. Now that it was over, and he had done what he could to save the poppy pickers of Yassaman, something had drained away, leaving an empty space. He heard footsteps bounding up the stairs, followed by a loud knock.

  “Daniel! Open up!”

  Iggy stood on the landing, face glistening under the porchlight. He was breathing heavily. “The Yassaman workers. They . . .” He shook his head.

  “They what?”

  “You didn’t answer your phone. Ian says you have to come right now.” Iggy closed his eyes for a moment. “Seth’s waiting in the car.”

  He stumbled through an explanation as they drove to the Yassaman field. When Daniel stood at its edge, he tried to understand what he was seeing. It was a completely different place than it had been before. Tonight, no one was sleeping at the edge of the field. The grandest harvest in Fever Valley was strewn with bodies. Stalks were flattened, flowers made red by blood. A donkey lay dead among the poppy pickers. Police cars lit the night with red and blue flashes. A handful of soldiers came and went with guns. Daniel saw Sergeant Najib from the police station. He stood motionless near the road, eyes fixed on the field. The wails of a child pierced the air.

  Police and soldiers moved deeper into the field, painting the horizon with their flashlights. Their voices seemed obscenely loud in the Yassaman graveyard. Scattered among the bodies were hardened puddles of worthless sap. Journalists walked around the flowers, as did doctors from a nearby charity.

  Daniel left the field behind. Faces blurred together until he saw the one he was looking for. Taj Maleki stood with his shoulders hunched and his back angled awkwardly. The khan was neither monster nor man, neither Manticore nor human, but a statue abandoned by its dissatisfied maker.

  Ian appeared in the crowd. His jowls were stubbly, face lined with shadows. “Jesus H. Christ. Most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen. Makes the gangs in Queens look like Boy Scouts.”

  He kept going, but Daniel wanted to hear from someone else. Taj had to explain himself. Why had he massacred these innocent people, when Daniel had fulfilled his demands? He felt like not only a liar and a criminal but a fool. He should have sought advice from agha or reported everything to the authorities. He cursed himself for his hubris and mistrust.

  Ian kept talking. He’d been woken by colleagues when police came by the compound, asking for the Americans. It was Ian who called the local Doctors Without Borders, a contingent that worked closely with the Corps. When they arrived, there was only one person left alive—a single child. That was something, at least. A survivor. Everyone knew who had done this, Ian said.
He pointed to the horizon. “Take a look.”

  And then Daniel saw. Tied to a gangly bush, blowing in the night wind, was a red flag, a gold star sewn on the fabric. A poster was nailed to the trunk. It read, we demand land and a living wage. if you don’t listen, more will die.

  So this was why the police and army had come in such numbers. Not because the nomads were dead, but because the Communists had come to sabotage an American-led project of the Ministry of Planning. He looked toward Taj, whose gaze was inscrutable.

  “Tell the soldiers whatever you can,” Ian said. “They’ll want to know if you’ve ever seen anybody here scoping the place out, or if your crew ever heard anything.”

  “There was nothing.” But Daniel spoke with the soldiers anyway. He spoke to Sergeant Najib, too, who scribbled details in his yellow notebook, his arrogance gone.

  21

  After an hour, the scene was winding down. The few civilians who’d come to see the carnage returned to their cars, mules, and wagons. Daniel rode in Ian’s car, Iggy and Seth behind them. He and Ian sank into the sofa in his room. Its stuffing protruded like the sickly shrubs dotting Fever Valley. People sometimes described rage as white- or red-hot. But the rage inside Daniel was neither of these. It wasn’t blinding, either. He had never seen more clearly. These men who, like the Russians, made both Communism and atheism into sinister caricatures, had done the unspeakable. It was one thing to be godless, but another to be soulless.

  Ian filled two glasses with water. “Why was your weird buddy there?”

  “Who?”