A Creature of Smokeless Flame Read online

  “Ah, that’s just how Foreign Ops people feel about Domestic Operations. Intra-agency competition, you know? Give him a few days, he’ll realize I haven’t lost any of my edge just from kicking my heels Stateside for a little over a year.”

  I thought back over the last fifteen months. “If ‘kicking your heels’ is how you describe being shot at, nearly blown up, and kidnapped into the middle of a war in another century, I hate to think what you’d consider a stimulating work environment.”

  “Ah, you forgot to mention the most important event of all. Getting married to a crazy topologist.” He wrapped one arm around me and drew me close for a long kiss. “I wouldn’t trade the past fifteen months for anything; they brought me you.”

  Fifteen months, that was one thing. But how, I wondered, did he feel about the prospect of spending the next fifteen or more years kicking his heels in Domestic Operations?

  8. A lovely place to set up a perimeter with trip wires

  The next day, Lensky went off on his own to the address Finch had given him, suggesting that Ben and I do some sightseeing and try to act like ignorant tourists. (“You’re certainly ignorant enough,” he muttered. I pretended not to hear him. His leaving Ben and me at loose ends was a gigantic gesture of trust after our fight in Germany, and I didn’t want to spoil it by unnecessary bickering.)

  Growing up in Texas turned out to have been excellent training for Mombasa. Oh, the hotel was air-conditioned, but the minute you stepped out onto the street the hot, humid air closed down like a stifling blanket. All around us I could see English and German tourists wilting before retreating to their air-conditioned hideouts for another cold drink. Ben and I weren’t quite so fragile.

  Ben thought this would be an excellent time to go to the beach. So did I, actually, but I felt guilty about getting Lensky here and then leaving him to do all the work. It seemed like the least we could do was roam around the city and try to find out something about Jeshi-la-Rashiduni.

  Given Fadiya’s first reaction to Mr. M., I felt it would be tactful to leave him napping at the hotel while we made our first approaches. This was an international port, after all; there must be a lot of people who spoke English.

  Maybe there were, but all I learned in that first morning’s work was that English-speaking locals did not want to talk about Jeshi-la-Rashiduni. In fact, once you mentioned that group, whoever you were talking to not only never heard of them, he also didn’t know anybody named Omar, never went to mosque except during Ramadan, and was about to leave town to visit his daughter who married an up-country (inland) civil servant. When we trailed back to the cool darkness of the Royal Court Hotel at noon I was the proud possessor of four such evasive runarounds and one native carving, a primitive mask almost as tall as I was.

  “Why you had to buy that thing escapes me,” Ben groused. “It won’t even fit in your suitcase.”

  “Shut up. I’ll figure out some way to get it home.” My own piece of authentic African art! Okay, it wasn’t easy to figure out exactly where it would fit in the condo, but I’d work it out. There was no way I was going to come back from this trip with nothing to show for it.

  The bartender at the Royal Court introduced us to two local customs: the shandy, and staying indoors between noon and sunset. Both seemed admirable to me.

  “A sandie- shansy – whatever – is a way to drink all the beer you want without getting drunk,” I explained to Lensky when he found us in the bar late that afternoon.

  He eyed me dubiously. “I’m not sure it works quite like that.”

  “Sure it does! See, you mix the beer half and half with this English invention called ginger-beer, which is totally non-alcoholic, and then you can chug a tall glass of the stuff while only drinking half as much beer.”

  “Uh-huh. And how many tall glasses have you inhaled?” He gave a pointed look at the empty glasses littering the tabletop.

  “Well, that was over a period of…” I started counting on my fingers but gave up. “What time is it now?”

  “After five.”

  I considered the arithmetic. Five minus twelve… negative number. Something was wrong here. “So, that’s… how many hours since noon?”

  Lensky laughed and pulled me up out of my seat. “Too many, and why didn’t you stop her, Ben?”

  “You married her,” Ben said, “you stop her. I couldn’t even keep her from buying this thing.” He reached under the table and brought out my prized African mask. Lensky staggered slightly at the sight.

  “That’s… impressive, Thalia. Why don’t you come upstairs with me now and let’s discuss what you’re planning to do with it?”

  “I want dinner. More lobster Thermidor!” I considered that statement briefly. “Well… maybe not lobster. I think it upset my stomach.”

  “Yeah, I bet something upset your stomach,” Lensky said. “Perhaps you’d better skip dinner in favor of water and Alka-Seltzer.”

  I would prefer to pass over the rest of the evening without going into the unpleasant details. Something – I blame the African sun – had given me a hellish headache, and my digestion was jittering around and complaining bitterly about something or other. Probably last night’s lobster.

  On the next day Lensky thanked me for my investigative efforts, bought a giant economy-size bottle of sunscreen, and put Ben and me in the hotel’s courtesy van bound for Nyali Beach.

  “I don’t even have a swimsuit!”

  “Finch assures me there are plenty of shops for tourists. You and Ben can both buy swimsuits, towels, whatever you want. Just, please, no more native art.”

  Nyali Beach wasn’t what I’d call close, but it was beautiful enough to be worth the long ride. And it wasn’t like we’d have to do it again; now that Ben and I had seen the place, we could just teleport there whenever we felt like it. I made a note of a couple of places where shops came together at an angle that would conceal somebody stepping out of an opening in the air.

  After some intensive shopping, and a few tense moments in a totally inadequate store dressing room while I slipped into my new swimsuit and Ben kept watch, I fell in love with the white sands and rolling blue water.

  “This,” I said happily while anointing myself with sunscreen, “is what international travel should always be like.”

  Ben was not quite so sanguine. “We could have gone to Port Aransas and had the same experience.”

  “Oh, come on. The ocean at Port Aransas is brown.”

  I could have been happy all day alternating sunscreen application, tanning, and splashing in the friendly blue waves that rolled gently to shore, but Ben thought we should go back at mid-day before we were both fried to a crisp.

  “I thought you liked beaches. Wasn’t that the whole point of your first major?”

  Ben had once confided in me that before the discovery of how we could apply topology, his life plan had been to major in marine biology, get a fellowship to graduate school in the same subject, and write his dissertation on some obscure marine invertebrate that flourished only in the Mediterranean. Dr. Verrick’s Honors Topology course had been the first crack in that plan; the discovery that he could apply topology to move tiny objects without touching them had been its doom.

  “And here you are, on a tropical beach, for work, on somebody else’s dime,” I pointed out. “Want me to get you some jars so you can collect marine life?”

  “Like they say, life is what happens while you’re making other plans… What about your plans?”

  “Working on a world-class tan?”

  “Back home.” Ben gave me a censorious look. “Thalia, this is a beautiful fantasy, but your real life is in Austin. Have you given any thought to Dr. Verrick’s suggestion?”

  I had been avoiding thinking about it, actually. Dr. Verrick’s strong suggestions were a major force of nature. My main defense against his psychological warfare was not letting his idea into my head in the first place. There was no way I could do what he wanted, anyway. I pointed this out t
o Ben. “You know that I’m not a leader. I piss people off.”

  “You also,” he said, “naturally take the lead whenever we’re floundering. Who organized the resistance to Steve Harrison’s CIA goons?”

  I was a bit surprised by his attitude. “You, ah, think Dr. Verrick’s right? I thought you’d have felt unhappy about it. Passed over.”

  “I,” said Ben, “am really not a leader. I’m a pure researcher through and through.”

  I pretended to throw sand at him. “Don’t malign my purity!”

  “Speaking of sex,” he mused.

  “Were we?”

  “Obliquely… How long do you think we’ll be here?”

  “As long as the job takes. Why?”

  “Annelise was thinking of flying into Nairobi for a quick visit.”

  I don’t know a lot of people who could afford to fly to East Africa for an impromptu visit, but Annelise’s father was apparently in that income bracket. After he’d provided a private jet to fly her and Ben back from India – long story – I’d stopped asking whether anything Annelise wanted was affordable in any normal sense of the term.

  “That would be nice for you.”

  “If she does come, I thought I could maybe take this weekend off and go up to see her.”

  “As long as nothing’s happening here, I don’t see why not.” It might be a good idea all round. Lensky would have to be less paranoid about him if Ben went off for a weekend with his girlfriend, wouldn’t he?

  Despite having a way to teleport back and forth now, we still had to take the van back into the city this once. The hotel driver kept a list of everybody he’d driven to the beach and he’d warned us that the hotel had a totally Nazi attitude about getting back exactly the same people they’d taken out. We didn’t want to make trouble for him, and we certainly didn’t need anybody asking how we’d returned without taking the van.

  Although not as fair as Ingrid, Ben is kind of a pallid Nordic type – light skin, light brown hair – and on top of that, he spends most of his life indoors. On the way back, it became clear that we had already stayed out too long for him. His forehead and nose were red and shiny, and he said his shoulders felt as though they were undergoing the same transformation. I was somewhat better off, having inherited Mom’s Greek skin as well as her hair. My olive complexion constitutes a first line of defense against sunburn, and copious applications of sunscreen over that seemed to have prevented any actual burns. I did feel dizzy and flushed, though. Should have bought a hat as well as a bikini.

  “I suppose you’ll want to spend the afternoon in the bar drinking shandies again?”

  My stomach gave one last flop. “Actually, I thought I’d stick to ginger-beer today. Or better, I’ll go back to the classics. Diet Cokes.”

  Brad was much happier when he came back to the hotel this evening, and so – thanks to my prudence – was I.

  It transpired that despite spending two days being given the Gospel of Mombasa According to Nelson Finch, his only real progress had been made through back channels.

  “Finch doesn’t seem to understand our need for a safe house – well, of course, he doesn’t think there’s anything for us to discover here, so he wouldn’t, would he?” Brad excused him. “So I’ve reached out to other sources and arranged for an American researcher here to rent a place big enough for all of us. He was quite cooperative once I made it clear that he could stay there too and that the agency would pick up the rent and other expenses.”

  “How do you know an American researcher in Mombasa?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t. I got his name through an anthropologist at the University of Chicago.”

  “Whom you know because…?”

  “Actually, I don’t. Your Dr. Verrick was good enough to put me in touch with him.”

  Dr. Verrick knew somebody at the University of Chicago? Somebody who wasn’t even a mathematician? “There are more things in heaven and earth, Thalia, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Brad said. He reads a lot.

  We didn’t check out of the hotel. Oh, well, if the CIA wanted to pay for two hotel rooms and a rented house, wasn’t my problem. The only difficulty was that we had to leave some of our stuff there so as not to look as if we were running out on them, and we didn’t have that much stuff to begin with. We all wore two layers of clothes the next morning, and I carried a huge flowery basket that Lensky had found in the hotel gift shop and that was big enough to hold all the toiletries and other small stuff we wanted to take to the safe house. On the way out, Lensky held us up while he had a long consultation with the concierge about getting my African mask packed to take home. Then he very earnestly asked the concierge to take a message if anybody called, because he’d asked several travel agencies about arranging a safari for himself and his wife.

  “I suppose that was all tradecraft?” I asked after the three of us had squeezed into a tuk-tuk – one of the funny little three-wheeled vehicles I’d glimpsed on the first day.

  Lensky grinned. “Disinformation.”

  Too bad. I’d kind of liked the idea of a trip out of the city to look at zebras and giraffes – even after Lensky pointed out that it would have to be a very long trip, because Mombasa wasn’t anywhere near the rolling savannahs and game parks that most people associate with Kenya.

  “And more tradecraft coming up. Just follow my lead.”

  He stopped the tuk-tuk and paid off the driver in the middle of a busy block lined with glass-fronted stores, then grabbed my wrist as soon as the driver was out of sight. “We’re crossing here!”

  “Wait!” I squeaked to no avail as he swung me out of the way of an oncoming mini-bus. I think it shaved the back pocket off Ben’s jeans as it passed. A few near-death experiences later, we arrived on the far side of the street. The shops here were less fancy and more interesting. Half of them were open to the street, and they displayed things like a pyramid of yellow cooking oil cans, a bin full of red peppers, those sacks of colored powder Ben had described. I tried to slow down to get a better look at the mechandise, but Lensky hauled me along mercilessly, and Ben followed so closely that he was practically treading on the backs of my sandals.

  We went around a corner, cut through an alley, and emerged in front of a hardware store on a similarly busy street. A young man in a battered sedan pulled up, nodded at Lensky and invited us into the car with a sweeping gesture. We all three piled into the back seat and the driver rejoined the stream of traffic.

  “Thanks, Victor,” Brad said.

  “The place is about half a mile from here.”

  “You can go straight there. I’m pretty sure we weren’t followed.” Brad turned to Ben and me and explained. “Diving through traffic wouldn’t work against any sophisticated operation, but it’s a pretty good way to cut out any amateurs trying to follow on foot. And you may not have noticed, but the place where Victor picked us up was on a curve that couldn’t be observed from either corner.” He was grinning, clearly exhilarated by the chance to use his training. I decided to be very, very nice and not even mention that Ben or I could have frustrated any attempts at following us with a simple topological camouflage.

  Victor turned down a narrow street whose pavement had seen better days – possibly during the British colonial period – and parked by a shabby little general store. He led us up a flight of steps at the side of the store. “The second floor is all ours,” he said, unlocking an iron grille and then a solid wooden door at the top. “I thought I’d take the room at the front – watching people interact in the street, it’s all grist for my thesis – and then here’s the kitchen and bathroom, and there’s a general living area and two more bedrooms.” He glanced at the three of us uncertainly. “Ah, will two bedrooms be enough?”

  Brad put his arm around me. “Thalia and I are married.”

  “Oh, is that going to be your cover? A honeymoon vacation, maybe? You’d better have the back room then, it’s bigger.” He scrutinized Ben. “You’d better be a friend of mine, v
isiting from Chicago.”

  “I don’t know much about Chicago.”

  “That’s all right, neither does anybody else in Old Town. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had to explain that no, I wouldn’t know somebody’s second cousin who moved to Los Angeles twenty years ago.”

  “What pretty window decorations!” I said when Victor opened the last door with a flourish. One entire wall of the room had windows from the ceiling halfway down to the floor, and the windows were covered by an elaborate curling grille of iron scrolls and arabesques that looked like beautiful black lace against the light.

  “Er— yes,” Brad said. He and Victor seemed quietly amused about something. Oh well, I’d find out what it was later.

  I peeked out through the grillwork and saw a small rooftop terrace. “That’ll be a lovely place to sit outside in the evenings.”

  “It’ll be a lovely place to set up a perimeter with trip wires,” Brad muttered, with a disapproving glare at the tree that leaned overhead and shaded most of the terrace.

  “And,” said Victor with the flourish of someone who’s saved the best for last, “there’s a back staircase at the end of the hall here, that opens right into Msikiti Mkuu – that’s Grand Mosque Road,” he explained for our benefit. “Prajapati’s store, downstairs, is on the edge of Old Town, but Msikiti Mkuu is right inside it. If you want to leave anonymously, you can just put on a bui-bui and stroll right out.” He gave our footwear a dubious glance. “Brad, you and your friend might want to invest in some plain sandals. There are plenty of Swahili women with big feet, but none of them wear black loafers.”

  “Bui-bui?” Ben repeated.

  “Those black bags the women wear,” I reminded him. “They’re a bit more complicated than that, but Fadiya showed me how to tie the head strings and tuck up the skirt and hold the veil, and I’ll be happy to teach you guys.”

  Brad seemed to have come to a decision while I spoke. “Right, then. Victor, could you pick up three bui-buis for us? Will you need our measurements?”