attempt to give a sample of one.
We went into a small, windowless office crowded between two others that appeared empty. A middle-aged American woman was seated behind a metal desk. She appeared normal and reasonably attractive until she spoke; then her scarred gums showed that she had once had two or three times the proper number of teeth—forty or fifty, I suppose, in each jaw—and that the dental surgeon who had extracted the supernumerary ones had not always, perhaps, selected those he suffered to remain as wisely as he might. She asked, “How is it outside? The weather? You see, I don’t know, sitting in here all day.”
Ardis said, “Very nice.”
“Do you like it, Hajji? Have you had a pleasant stay in our great country?”
“I don’t think it has rained since I’ve been here.”
She seemed to take the remark as a covert accusation. “You came too late for the rains, I’m afraid. This is a very fertile area, however. Some of our oldest coins show heads of wheat. Have you seen them?” She pushed a small copper coin across the desk, and I pretended to examine it. There are one or two like it in the bracelet I bought for Ardis, and which I still have not presented to her. “I must apologize on behalf of the District for what happened to you,” the woman continued. “We are making every effort to control crime. You have not been victimized before this?”
I shook my head, half-suffocated in that airless office, and said I had not been.
“And now you are here.” She shuffled the papers she held, then pretended to read from one of them. “You are here to secure the release of the thief who assaulted you. A very commendable act of magnanimity. May I ask why you brought this young woman with you? She does not seem to be mentioned in any of these reports.”
I explained that Ardis was a coworker of O’Keene’s, and that she had interceded for him.
“Then it is you, Ms. Dahl, who are really interested in securing this prisoner’s release. Are you related to him?”
And so on.
At the conclusion of each interview we were told either that the matter was completely out of the hands of the person to whom we had just spent half an hour or an hour talking, that it was necessary to obtain a clearance from someone else, or that an additional deposition had to be made. About two o’clock we were sent to the other side of the river—into what my guidebooks insist is an entirely different jurisdiction—to visit a penal facility. There we were forced to look for Kreton among five hundred or so miserable prisoners, all of whom stank and had lice. Not finding him, we returned to the F.I.D. Building past the half-overturned and yet still-brooding figure called the Seated Man, and the ruins and beggars of the Silent City, for another round of interrogations. By five, when we were told to leave, we were both exhausted, though Ardis seemed surprisingly hopeful. When I left her at the door of her building a few minutes ago, I asked her what they would do tonight without Kreton.
“Without Harry, you mean.” She smiled. “The best we can, I suppose, if we must. At least Paul will have someone ready to stand in for him tonight.”
We shall see how well it goes.
I have picked up this pen and replaced it on the table ten times at least. It seems very likely that I should destroy this journal instead of continuing with it, were I wise, but I have discovered a hiding place for it which I think will be secure.
When I came back from Ardis’s apartment tonight there were only two candy eggs remaining. I am certain— absolutely certain—that three were left when I went to meet Ardis. I am almost equally sure that after I had finished making the entry in this book, I put it, as I always do, at the left side of the drawer. It was on the right side.
It is possible that all this is merely the doing of the maid who cleans the room. She might easily have supposed that a single candy egg would not be missed, and have shifted this book while cleaning the drawer, or peeped inside out of curiosity.
I will assume the worst, however. An agent sent to investigate my room might be equipped to photograph these pages—but he might not, and it is not likely that he himself would have a reading knowledge of Farsi. Now I have gone through the book and eliminated all the passages relating to my reason for visiting this leprous country. Before I leave this room tomorrow I will arrange indicators—hairs and other objects whose positions I shall carefully record—that will tell me if the room has been searched again.
Now I may as well set down the events of the evening, which were truly extraordinary enough.
I met Ardis as we had planned, and she directed me to a small restaurant not far from her apartment. We had no sooner seated ourselves than two heavylooking men entered. At no time could I see plainly the face of either, but it appeared to me that one was the American I had met aboard the
I followed her, and found her laughing not three doors away from the entrance to the restaurant. The change in her could not have been more startling if she had been released from an enchantment. “It is so funny,” she said. “Though it wasn’t then. Come on, we’d better go; you can feed me after the show.”
I asked her what those men were to her.
“Friends,” she said, still laughing.
“If they are friends, why were you so anxious that they not see you? Were you afraid they would make us late?” I knew that such a trivial explanation could not be true, but I wanted to leave her a means of evading the question if she did not want to confide in me.
She shook her head. “No, no. I didn’t want either to think I did not trust him. I’ll tell you more later, if you want to involve yourself in our little charade.”
“With all my heart.”
