The Opium Prince Read online

  Daniel hadn’t shaved since the accident—it had seemed indecent to concern himself with his appearance. When he looked in the mirror, he saw how unkempt he was after days of letting his beard grow. Under his eyes were purplish crescents. His shoulders were slumped. Rebecca stroked his arm. He straightened slowly and rubbed his face, then promised her he would shave.

  The house was warmed by the heat from the cook’s best recipes and the light of the summer sun. Daniel asked if he could help and took a tarnished silver vase off Ahmad’s hands. He sat in an Adirondack chair by the pool, the sun quivering on the water, and began to polish, growing calmer as he worked. The transformation was remarkable. Like the gemstones from his childhood, silver revealed its beauty only after diligent work. Across the garden, Rebecca was gathering flowers beside Laila, who had come early to help. The doctor wore jeans and a blouse, holding up a garment bag with her evening dress in it. He watched their graceful forms move across the blue-white light of the day and caught snippets of his wife’s laughter. Rebecca’s laugh was one of the loveliest sounds he knew, a crystalline trill like the high notes of her piano. He hadn’t heard the sound in months.

  When he was finished polishing, he could see his reflection in the vase. He felt the sun lift a weight from him with its warmth. Only now was he starting to look forward to tonight. He had always liked big gatherings, ever since he’d watched his mother throw parties for businessmen and diplomats, the smell of liquor and cigars lingering for days. All would be well. He could manage Peter Whitbourn. The history professor had once been a close friend, and the only man who could beat Daniel in a fair game of chess.

  Yes, everything would be fine. Taj Maleki’s threat was a bluff. Massacres didn’t happen here. Whatever Taj might be, he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t risk the punishment for mass murder, which was surely execution—if not by the blade of the law, then by the blades of the elders. When Telaya spoke, it was almost as if her voice was emanating from the silver.

  He’s been bluffing from the start, she said.

  Daniel hugged Laila hello before going inside. Neither of them mentioned her presence at the impromptu demonstration earlier. He went upstairs to the master bathroom and steadied his hand as he picked up the razor. He began to shave, carefully, not because he was afraid he might cut himself, but because he was afraid it might provoke Telaya. He tried to think of other things. He remembered Peter trying to sport a beard for a while before finally acknowledging that he looked ridiculous, after much teasing from Daniel, who’d insisted he couldn’t pull it off. Rebecca hadn’t liked it either.

  He stopped fighting against the question that had lurked in his mind all day. What had brought back his wife’s laugh? Daniel wanted to believe it was that they had made love. Another answer stared him in the face. The party was mere hours away, and Peter was set to appear after an eight-year intermission. If caring about his appearance had been indecent, jealousy was even more so. He lost control of the blade and slashed his right cheek. As he blotted the blood, feeling foolish, he saw blood blooming through a red dress, and she came back with a vengeance, a new cascade of grievances.

  My parents didn’t love me.

  Sometimes, Daniel forgot that Telaya hadn’t seen her tearful parents cradle her corpse. That for her, nothing more had happened after she closed her eyes on that scalding road. He was sure she was wrong. And what if she was wrong about Taj bluffing, too? Why was he listening to a ghost?

  He did need advice from someone, though. He would go see his friend Ian, whose work at the Peace Corps belied his past. Ian had once been a policeman and could help Daniel make sense of Taj. And Daniel would give no further thought to Peter and Rebecca. Some things weighed more than others.

  8

  “Go,” said Rebecca, when he asked if he could leave the preparations to her for a while. “Laila’s helping me.”

  He walked out into the impossibly bright day. The neighbor’s boy, Keshmesh, was on his balcony, dancing around and playing air guitar. He wore large, clunky headphones plugged into a cassette player. The boy had turned thirteen in June and fancied himself a grown man, though his lanky limbs suggested the awkward stage had just begun. When he saw Daniel, he grinned and performed his best Pete Townshend. Daniel waved. Normally, he would have beckoned the boy down and they would have talked about rock bands. Today, he kept walking.

  Less than a mile away, he reached Ian’s street. He could hear someone revving an engine from the corner. Cars had once been the sound of camaraderie and leisure for Daniel, but now the engine was the sound of pain. He walked into the open garage, where Ian was working on a Chevy, hood up.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” Ian said, wiping his sooty hands with a rag. He wore an apron that looked like it had never been washed. They went inside and he removed it, revealing a soiled shirt and a silver bolo tie that clashed with his tidy haircut, middle-aged belly, and Brooklyn accent. On another day, Daniel would have made a joke. But today it felt cruel, though not toward Ian.

  “I was just passing by.”

  “Not the weirdest thing you’ve ever done, Leinad.”

  Daniel was comforted to hear the nickname. Ian had turned Daniel backward because he said Leinad had a Celtic ring to it, and Celticization was an honor bestowed only on a friend. When Ian closed the door and shut out the day, it was like tumbling into a different world. Joan Baez played in the background. The house smelled of incense and potpourri.

  Daniel followed Ian across the foyer and into the living room, which was laid with the same marble tile as the rest of the house. The color was so bad it was funny. Ian’s wife, Pamela, called it “Matador Red.” It was crimson with white and dark lines sinewing through each tile, so the floor looked like freshly butchered meat pounded flat and covered with a glaze. There was no carpet, so it was impossible not to be aware at all times of Pamela, who came and went in a fusillade of heels. Daniel heard her negotiate the stairs and wondered how she didn’t fall and break her neck. She clapped when she saw him, showering him with pleasantries and scanning him head to toe. She wore frosted lipstick and a Formica smile. Her fingers ended in tangerine talons.

  “I’m getting ready for tonight. My polish is drying,” she said, waving her hands in the air. “I’ll leave you gentlemen alone.” With a flip of her studiously natural waves, she left. Ian had described her as one of the kindest, most loyal people he’d ever met, and Daniel wondered why she hid these qualities under an explosion of superficiality.

  Ian closed the living room door and switched the music off. From the wet bar, he produced two glasses. “Howzabout we preload for tonight?”

  He made cocktails, stirring the mixtures with long metallic spoons. Each time his wife’s stilettos came closer, growing louder and faster, the clinking of the spoons grew louder and faster, too, slowing when her footsteps faded. Marital synchronicity at its best. After much irregular mixing, Ian held the drinks triumphantly in the air. They were pink.

  “Something we found in the recipe book from Harry’s Bar, the joint in Paris that Bogie used to go to. Or Hemingway. One of those two.” He shrugged.

  They sat down in uncomfortable bucket chairs.

  “You look like you need something strong,” Ian said. “Or don’t you? ’Cause I can drink both.”

  “Something strong sounds about right.” Daniel took a sugared almond from a bowl and let it rest in his palm.

  “You look like crap,” Ian said. “You come by way of Bumfuck, Egypt?”

  “Just didn’t sleep too well.”

  They sipped in silence, Ian smoothing his new mustache between sips. Pamela’s heels clicked from one wing of the house to the other. She was in the library now.

  Soon, Daniel rattled the ice in his empty glass. “You got anything else?”

  “Glad you asked.”

  Moments later they were drinking whiskey and toasting to Johnnie Walker, whom they thanked for alw
ays being there for them. “I got six bottles from the embassy last week,” Ian said.

  Two drinks later, when his limbs and mind had grown heavier, Daniel said, “Ian, have you ever been trapped?”

  “You mean like in a building or something? Sure, back when I was on the force. Once.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Radioed for backup. Only thing you can do.”

  Daniel asked what he would do if no backup came. If you were really trapped, Ian explained, there was no way out if no one came to help you. “Unless you’re Houdini or something.” They sat in silence a minute before he said, “What gives, Leinad?”

  “I’ve got a situation to figure out.”

  “At work?”

  Daniel nodded. “I have to make a decision, and there’s no way to know what’s right. No matter what I do, it’s probably going to end badly. Really badly.”

  “Got it. A rock and a hard place kind of thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen. When you think you’re the only one who can deal with something big, that’s when you really need to reach out.”

  Daniel didn’t respond. He could feel Ian watching, waiting for him to say more. But he couldn’t tell him the truth. He couldn’t ask for advice about Taj, because then he would have to explain the rest. That he’d driven his car into a child because he was sick of listening to Beethoven. That he’d stood next to an opium khan while the man murdered a teenager. He could not say one thing without the rest, because these things had tangled together into a single mass.

  So when Ian asked again, “What gives, my friend?” Daniel responded, “It sure is a beautiful day.”

  Ian nodded slowly. “That it is.” Then, with a shake of his head, he changed the subject. “That Chevy back there? The owner thought it was beyond hope. It ain’t.”

  “Does it run?”

  “A little. But that’s the easy part. Hard part’s the sound. I’m useless with the radio. Good thing there’s never anything on, unless you want to hear funeral announcements or propaganda or music that sounds like the theme song for a snake dancing its way out of your ass.”

  “How’d it go with the Volga?”

  “Piece of crap, like everything the Russians make. Commies can’t build shit. There’s more of them in the city every day.”

  “Communists?”

  “Volgas. But now that you mention it, Commies, too. Russians all over the place.” Ian aimed the glowing tip of his Winston at Daniel. “The fan belt you replaced keeps slipping right back off like a hooker’s bra.” He laughed, pleased at his own joke, puffed up his cheeks, and exhaled. “You know my theory? Heartless dictatorships can’t make cars. Rockets, yes. Cars, no.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because cars are about heart.” Ian thumped his chest with his fist. “That’s where they come from. In every man’s heart, there’s a little place for cars. The heart has . . . what, four chambers? One of those is a garage.”

  Daniel couldn’t help but smile.

  “That’s only true for guys, mind you,” Ian went on. “A girl’s heart don’t have no garage.”

  “Maybe it does.”

  “A garage is for cars, not unicorns and rainbows.” Ian’s belly rose and fell as he coughed out that Brooklyn chortle, but Daniel couldn’t laugh, because buried in the fourth chamber of his heart was Telaya, the mirrors on her dress sparkling in the light like an explosion of crystals as she moved. “How’s the Corps these days?” he asked.

  Ian shook his head. “It’s different, that’s for sure. Pamela thinks it’s cool.”

  With three Peace Corps volunteers freshly elected to Congress, the Corps was indeed front and center, but everyone knew “cool” mattered less to Ian than to the much younger Pam. He was the oldest person ever hired by the Corps, and he let everybody know it. “I can’t complain,” he added.

  “Why would you? You used to be a policeman in a dangerous place. This must seem tame.”

  Ian set his drink down hard. “I’ll tell you something: it’s easier to face a thug with a gun than look a starving man in the eye.” He picked up his glass and emptied it in two gulps. “I’ve offered you help a hundred times.”

  “Peace Corps help? You think that’s any use against poppy growers?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “The government showers you with money and everybody talks about you guys, but my budget is so thin I can barely keep the office stocked with tea and no one knows who we are,” Daniel said. “Seems a little upside down, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, woe is me. Let’s not forget, you and I are both here because of who we know. You didn’t exactly fight your way to the top, my friend.”

  Daniel kept his answer down by drowning it in whiskey. It was bad enough having his staff question how he got his job. Whatever people said, he deserved his position in a way Ian did not. Having your socialite wife use her contacts to install you in the Peace Corps was not the same as earning a reference from a professor who had worked with the president of the United States, even if that president was Richard Nixon.

  In the study, Pamela was still on the phone. She made a sound that could have been one of laughter, sadness, or shock. Ian shrugged. “Seeing as the phones don’t work half the time, she goes in the study and picks up the receiver about ten times a day just to see if she can call somebody. It’s like she lives her life just to talk to people who aren’t here.”

  Daniel had little to say, because Rebecca rarely used the phone. She spoke to her parents on Sundays. Calls to friends were a monthly occurrence, if that. Instead, she wrote letters. Daniel wondered how many of those letters had been written to Peter Whitbourn. He reached for a cigarette.

  “If we’re going to keep smoking, we have to go outside. Pammy can’t stand the smell.”

  They stepped onto the terrace, flicking their ashes into a pot that housed an ailing palm. A cockroach watched them, perfectly still except for its antennae, which probed the air like a Russian listening device. Christmas lights still winked from the trellises because Pamela thought it might make the locals ask about American traditions.

  Some traditions are ugly, Telaya said.

  When Daniel ignored her, she threw an onslaught of questions at him the way children did when adults gave imperfect answers.

  Do people love their daughters in America?

  Parents love their kids everywhere.

  You’re not looking!

  Leave me alone.

  Are there nomads in New York?

  Yes, but a different kind.

  Do they move from place to place and sleep outside?

  Yes, but unlike you, they don’t choose to do so.

  Children don’t get choices.

  Ian proposed a toast to the cockroach, which he admired for its ability to survive a nuclear war. The men drifted from topic to topic. They talked about the Chevy, the recent invasion of bees from Iran, the victory of the National League in the All-Star Game. They had listened to the game at Daniel’s house at three o’clock in the morning, welcoming every American in the city, a few Englishmen, and a Japanese businessman no one recognized.

  “How’d the radio work out? The one you put in the Mercedes last week.”

  “It broke. The tape player, too.”

  “On the trip?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must’ve been glad. Becca was probably playing one of her hoity-toity tapes.” Ian rose and took Daniel’s glass from him. “You’ve had enough. Pace yourself for tonight.”

  They went back inside. Pamela had been in the living room; the coffee table was cleared now, revealing its design. At the center was a terra-cotta tile with a man-in-a-maze design, a stylized stick figure encircled by a labyrinth that started at his feet.

  “I’ll drive you back.” Soon, Ian’s Citroën wa
s sputtering along the road. He switched on the radio and President Daoud’s voice filled the car. He talked of drawing closer to America and Iran. While Daoud wasn’t a Communist, his cabinet was full of Soviet-friendly types who’d backed his coup when he took power. People who cared enough to be paying attention could see he wasn’t planning to give them as much power as they had hoped. At the same time, he’d pushed out religious men, arresting and executing Islamist clerics. Now he spoke of the future and of the inevitable, but he did not mention the most inevitable thing of all: that being left in the cold made devout men blaze hot as fire-breathing dragons.

  9

  Getting dressed for the evening, Daniel listened to Rebecca talk to him from the shower. She told him Sherzai had called and wouldn’t be coming. His leg was especially bad today, as it often was after the rain. Daniel hoped agha would spend the day tucked into his sandali, which would keep him warm and ease his aches. A low table covered with a quilt and with a coal brazier underneath wasn’t the most modern of methods, and Sherzai’s table was old, but it was still the most effective heat remedy Daniel had seen. He also hoped Sherzai’s absence meant Dannaco-Hastings’s wunderkind wouldn’t show up.

  “Laila is changing in the guest room,” Rebecca called out over the tumbling water. “You should see her dress! Very sexy.”

  Sexy was not a word Daniel associated with Laila. As a boy, he had wanted to love her in the way married adults loved each other, but sexy wasn’t the right word, at least not when they’d been twelve years old and dreaming of lives as grown-ups who would make a difference. Rebecca knew Laila had been his first crush, but instead of causing jealousy, it seemed to bring the women together, as if they shared an understanding of what it meant to know Daniel and be known by him.