A fine grasp of detail, thought Nubar, reaching the end of the page. He paused to tug his skullcap more tightly around his ears as protection against the cold drafts sweeping fitfully through the cellar. Time to take a break for a little refreshment? Why not?
He took his canteen out of his rucksack and drank, feeling new warmth from the mulberry raki, at the same time absentmindedly nibbling off what was left of the wooden spout of the canteen, totally absorbed with the methodical reasoning of this informer. The report was unfolding with undeniable logic, and he could see that the informer was determined to do his duty, to tell the whole truth.
Nubar chewed and swallowed the wood.
Nubar read on, thoroughly captivated.
The informer was Persian, he said, and an adherent of the Zoroastrian faith, which he admitted one didn't seem to hear much about anymore. He had grown up in a remote hill tribe in Persia and he considered himself lucky to have been born at all, since the tribe had almost been wiped out by a cholera epidemic in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Living in those remote hills at the time was a young foreign lord who had fallen in love with a girl from the tribe. The epidemic had broken out only a few weeks after he met her and the girl had abruptly died.
Thereafter the young man had patiently nursed the sick without regard to his own welfare.
This legendary foreign lord was said to have been seven and a half feet tall. He had used a huge magnifying glass to examine his patients, so large his unblinking eye had been two niches wide behind it.
After making a diagnosis he, would then prescribe medicine according to the hours he read on his portable sundial, a monstrously heavy bronze piece which he wore on his hip. The foreign lord's knowledge of herbal remedies was unsurpassed, and without him no one in the tribe would have survived.
Nubar stirred uneasily. He had the sensation of being here, or somewhere, before.
When the epidemic subsided, continued the informer, the young foreign lord took his leave, never to be seen in those remote hills of Persia again. Quite naturally the thankful survivors in the tribe had come to revere this gentle and merciful giant as Ahura Mazda, chief of the gods of goodness in the ancient Zoroastrian pantheon, who had seen fit to sojourn in their hills in order to deliver them from the forces of darkness and death.
As a result, ever since, everyone in the tribe had been a profound believer in Zoroastrianism.
The informer was including this information, he said, to explain his unusual religious beliefs, which might otherwise be viewed as anachronistic and suspect in this day and age, and thereby bring into question his suitability as an officer-in-training for the UIA, said training to be concluded at the end of this report when he would qualify as a professional UIA officer on duty in a danger zone, Jerusalem, which would entitle him to receive special hazardous-duty pay, in addition to an officer's regular salary and full medical and retirement benefits.
Nubar grinned. He shook his head.
What was this brazenly self-serving attitude? Did this nonentity, this Zoroastrian squeezer of juice, really think he could promote himself in one short paragraph from a petty informer to a full-fledged officer's position in the UIA? Did he really imagine Nubar could be fooled so easily, even here in a cold damp cellar beneath the Grand Canal?
Nubar snorted. No, it hadn't quite come to that yet. Routinely, in his head, he dashed off another cable to Dead Sea Control.
ARE YOU MAD? HAS THE SUN DOWN THERE IN THAT DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD
BEEN GETTING TO YOUR BRAIN? NO, REPEAT NO, PROMOTION FOR THIS
ZOROASTRIAN CHARLATAN. MEDICAL AND RETIREMENT BENEFITS OUT OF THE
QUESTION AND NO HAZARDOUS-DUTY PAY FOR THIS SHIRKER. FOR ALL I CARE HE
CAN GO THE WAY OF THE LOST GREEK AND THE TWO OF THEM CAN RELIVE THE
PERSIAN CAMPAIGNS AGAINST GREECE AND THE GREEK CAMPAIGNS AGAINST
PERSIA. I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO BE DUPED.
NUBAR
SUPREME LEADER AND FIELD MARSHAL,
GENERALISSIMO COMMANDING EVERYTHING
That was better. Much better. He knew he couldn't be too careful. His control had to be absolute, discipline simply couldn't be relaxed for a moment. One instance of even the lowliest lackey promoting himself and everyone in the organization would see it as a sign of weakness on his part, at the top. Then all of them would begin promoting themselves and plucking grandiose new titles out of the air.
This dangerous tendency had to be stopped before it gathered momentum. A follow-up cable to Dead Sea Control was in order.
PRIORITY FROM THE VERY TOP. FREEZE, DOWN THERE. ALL PROMOTIONS BARRED
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GOING TO GET AWAY
WITH SOMETHING? WELL YOU'RE NOT. SIT RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE UNTIL YOU HEAR
FROM ME. IT MAY BE A HARDSHIP POST BUT IT'S THE ONLY ONE ANY OF YOU ARE
GOING TO SEE FOR A WHILE AND YOU CAN COUNT ON THAT. NO ANSWER
NECESSARY AND NO EXCUSES TOLERATED.
NUBAR
LEADER AT THE VERY TOP AND CHIEF OF ALL FORCES.
Suddenly Nubar frowned. Something the informer had said was troubling him, working at the back of his brain.
Yes, he remembered it now. He pursed his lips to whistle in surprise but of course he couldn't whistle. It was all coming back from those early historical reports, the background material on the poker game that had been sent to him when the UIA first began to operate in the Middle East.
A huge magnifying glass with an unblinking eye two inches wide behind it?
Menelik Ziwar, the unknown black Copt and foster father of Cairo Martyr, had allegedly used just such a glass when he was lying on his back in retirement in the sarcophagus of Cheops' mother.
But the magnifying glass hadn't originally belonged to Ziwar. It had been a gift from his dearest friend, an unnamed giant of a man who had worn a massive greasy black turban and a shaggy short black coat made from unwashed and uncombed goats' hair, both said to have been gifts from a remote hill tribe in Persia. This friend, mysteriously, had appeared from nowhere on Sunday afternoons to continue a forty-year conversation he was having with Ziwar over drunken lunches in a filthy Arab restaurant beside the Nile, the lunches ending toward sundown when both men jumped over the railing into the river for a swim.
A portable bronze sundial, monstrously heavy?
The one the giant explorer Strongbow had worn on his hip in the nineteenth century? The same sundial that was now on the wall of the former antiquities shop in Jerusalem where the poker game was being played? Chimes attached to it that sounded erratically, confusing time?
A giant in both cases.
