taken belowdecks into the boat’s storeroom and shown the contraband that Poe and Washington were running. In the meantime, they sailed Turkey’s famed Turquoise Coast, slicing gracefully through waters the color of Suzy’s eyes, from whose pellucid depths fairyland rock formations and playful dolphins rose. They sipped Sol Glissant’s champagne, dined on fresh fish poached in grape leaves and served with capered sauces, and gazed at sunsets while Skeeter played on the salon piano, at Switters’s tipsy request, amazing bebop renditions of Broadway show tunes. Occasionally they talked shop, wondering among themselves, for example, at the arrogance and uncharacteristic stupidity of Israel’s Mossad in its recent bungled attempt to smack a revered Hammas leader inside Jordan.
“Goes to show you,” remarked Poe, “that cowboys are cowboys, whether Jewish or—”
“Goyboys,” suggested Switters.
“Cowgoys,” offered Washington.
“More champagne, Daddy?” asked young Anna.
Anna proved to be a slender sylph, with a galactically freckled, waiflike face, brown hair braided in pendulous pigtails, and breasts scarcely larger than her fists. She was innocently flirty, and Switters, when not drinking with the men, divided his time between going to absurd lengths to avoid ever being left alone with her and spying on her voraciously as she sunbathed, topless, on the afterdeck.
Because he was on water, Switters assumed that the prohibitive taboo was not in effect and that he was free to move about the yacht on foot. However, since he didn’t want to have to explain his situation to his hosts, he remained in the wheelchair. To honor the fates, he remained in the wheelchair even when no one was looking. He was heartened, nevertheless, for it occurred to him that should he fail to get the curse lifted, should worse come to worst, he possibly could spend the rest of his life aboard ship, be it a ship on the order of
In any event, in the early afternoon of their third day at sea, Poe had called him to the railing and pointed a manicured nail at a hazy, macaroon-colored horizon. “Hatay,” he said. “On the Syrian border. A dismal, camel- gnawed area whose only distinction aside from it being the site of Alexander’s victory over the Persians is that it was upon its uninviting beach that Jonah was supposed to have been coughed up by the whale. Nothing symbolic is intended, I assure you, but I regret to report that it’s the very spot where we are coughing you up. Tonight.”
“Hatay? Turkey? What’s? . . .”
“How you get from Hatay into northern Iraq is your affair. Frankly, considering your physical liability, I have my doubts that you can manage it at all. People whom I trust, however, assure me you have excellent qualifications: the languages, the experience, the courage, the cunning. They couldn’t vouch, of course, for your desire.”
“Well, I’m plainly uninformed as to the nature of the mission, but I can tell you that I don’t go to dances to sit on the sidelines nibbling fruitcake. I’m here to take the prom queen home. Moreover, I happen to be embarrassingly bereft of hard currency, and Mr. Plastic is pretending he doesn’t know me. This gig has got to be preferable to selling used electrolysis equipment over the phone.”
Again, Poe studied him curiously. Then he said, “All right. Come with me.”
The silver-haired
“My goodness,” said Switters, looking over the supplies. “You’re a regular little elf.”
Poe winced. “I’ve been called worse. ‘Traitor,’ for example. By the President of the United States and the chairmen of the intelligence committees in both houses of Congress.”
“Not to mention Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald and swarms of racketeering locusts in the pulpits and the press. Congratulations. One man’s treason is another man’s valor. At Berkeley, where I was in grad school at the time your book was published, you were celebrated and revered. As a matter of fact, though I have to admit I only read the reviews and not the tome itself, it was your book that inspired me to sign on with the company.”
If Poe had looked at him with curiosity before, those looks were nothing compared to the one he gave Switters now. “Pardon me? You joined the CIA because of a book that exposed it as an amoral, imperialist, bungling gang of money-wasters operating outside of and above the law?” He was starting to suspect that this man he’d been sent was crippled in mind as well as body.
“Why, yes. You made it irresistible. Because no other room in the burning house promised a more interesting view? Because every stand-up comic longs to play Hamlet? Because a big back has a big front? Because I believed my syrup of wahoo could sweeten its sulfur?” Switters shrugged. “It’s a trifle hard to explain.”
“Evidently.” Poe’s expression betrayed neither satisfaction nor confidence, and he enjoyed a long skeptical moment before shrugging, himself, and returning to the cache of—counteractives. “Those gas masks? There’re approximately two thousand of them. Not fractionally enough, but they’ll help. Your job is to get them to the Kurds near Dahuk.”
“Which Kurds? KDP or PUK?”
“Should such a choice become necessary, I’d favor PUK for the simple reason that the KDP is sponsored by the Iraqi government and therefore is in less danger of being gassed by it. Like all political parties everywhere, however, they’re both consumed with power and self-interest, so my preference is that you try to get the masks into the hands of those unarmed civilians whom both parties
In a parodying, theatrical gesture, Switters pounded his right fist against his left breast and exclaimed, “So it shall be written, so it shall be done!”
They had an early supper on deck, a leisurely meal in which Switters was restricted to a single glass of champagne. This was due to the fact that he would be needing his wits about him, but also because the last time he’d had his fill of the bubbly, he’d gazed into Anna’s face and told her that her eyes were like a morning mist on the fur of a squirrel. Or something along those lines.
The sun was low but the air was still balmy, and the sea was the shade of blue that black could have been if it hadn’t stepped over the line. After plotting the mission as best they could—it was a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operation—they entered into a conversation about jazz, cinema, and literature, a dialogue that hit a snag when Switters began expounding upon “the mythological and historical echoes” that resonated in the most overtly skimble-skamble phrases of
After that, Audubon Poe talked of his boyhood among the gentry of New Orleans and how, to further his ambition to become a professional chess player, he had taught himself Russian at fourteen, thinking it might give him some advantage if ever pitted against the grand masters, who all seemed to hail from Mother Russia. At seventeen he became the youngest spy in the history of the CIA, which recruited him to dig for Cold War information at international chess tournaments, and although he blew his cover by having a love affair with the wife of one of the Soviet champions, he later became a full-time operations officer. In that capacity he served the company loyally for years, until he found himself gradually disillusioned and sickened by Vietnam, the secret war against Cuba, the gratuitous lying to the American public, the support of brutal dictatorships, the coziness with the Mafia, and, in general, the overly indulgent interpretation of the “such other functions and duties” clause in the agency’s charter. Poe didn’t blame company cowboys as much as he blamed the Presidents who used them, often illegally, as instruments of a foreign policy whose main objective was to enrich the defense industry and get them, the Presidents, reelected. Nevertheless, his expose had badly dented the agency’s fenders—and forced him into a precarious exile.
“The company’s changed since your divorce,” said Switters.
“I hear they let black men be agents now,” said Washington.
“Black women, too. Only we call them ‘African-Americans’ these days.”
“Ja, ja, that’s right. I can’t keep up with all our name changes, man. Back in Harlem, we was ‘Negroes’ or ‘colored people.’ Then it got to be ‘blacks’ and ‘people of color.’ But ‘Negro’
