Legends

“He threw questions at me for another twenty minutes and I fielded them. It was all very low keyed. At one point he got into a long discussion with the Egyptian, Daoud; for five or so minutes it was almost as if I didn’t exist. Then, without saying another word to me, the Saudi climbed to his feet and departed. I heard the motors of three or four cars kick into life behind the building and saw their headlights sweep into and out of the room as they headed deeper into the mato graso. Daoud signaled that the meeting had come to an end and ushered Leroy and me back to his Mercedes and we started back toward Foz do Iguaçú. The Egyptian told me I had made a good impression on the Saudi. He said I was to return to the United States and organize the purchase and delivery of the ammonium nitrate at mid month to an abandoned hangar off the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey.” Lincoln produced a page that had been torn out of a lined notebook. “The address is written here.”

Quest snatched the scrap of paper. “What about the Saudi and his radioactive waste?” she asked.

“Daoud invited me to return to Boa Vista on the night of the new moon to meet the Saudi and organize with him the delivery of the two hundred pounds of spent plutonium.”

“Describe the Saudi again, Lincoln.”

“It’s all in my mission report. His name was never mentioned, either by Daoud or by the secretary translating for him at the meeting in Boa Vista. I would estimate he was roughly six foot five and in his middle thirties—”

Quest cut in. “Guessing someone’s age has never been your strong suit. How old do you think the cutout was?”

“The hooker in the Kit Kat? I’d say she was in her late thirties or early forties.”

“Proves my point,” Quest told the wallahs who had crowded into her office to attend Lincoln’s debriefing. “The girl, the youngest daughter of an old Roman family, is twenty-seven. Her real name is Fiamma Segre. She’s been doing hard drugs for years—that’s why she looks old before her time. Go on with your description of the Saudi.”

Lincoln, resting his elbows on the cane stretched like a span between the two arms of the chair, closed his eyes and tried to summon an image of the Saudi. “He’s charismatic—”

“That’s a load of crap, Lincoln. What do we put on the advisory we send out to our stations? ‘Wanted, dead or alive, one charismatic Saudi.’”

Lincoln’s patience was wearing thin. He was bone tired—the car ride back to são Paolo and the flight back to the States had worn him out. The grilling by Fred and her wallahs was shaping up as the straw that would break the camel’s back. “I’m doing the best I can—”

“Your best needs to be better.”

“Maybe if he were to get some shuteye,” ventured one of the bolder wallahs.

Quest didn’t like to be second guessed. “Maybe if you were to get yourself a posting to another division,” she shot back. “How about it, Lincoln. Give us something concrete to go on. Rack your memory. I’m looking for what you didn’t put into your report.”

From a remote corner of his subconscious, Lincoln dredged up several details he had overlooked when he drafted his report. “Something’s very wrong with the Saudi—”

“Mentally or medically?”

“Medically. He kept scratching at different parts of his body—his upper arm, his chest, his ribs. He seemed to itch all over. His skin was sallow—at first I thought it was because of the dim lighting, but when he stood up to go he passed under a bulb and I saw that he really was yellowish. Another thing: He was sweating even though it wasn’t warm in the room. The perspiration on his forehead appeared to crystalize into a fine white powder.”

Crystal Quest sat back in her chair and exchanged looks with the M.D. on her staff who directed the section that provided psychological and medical profiles of world leaders. “What do you make of that, Archie?”

“There are several possibilities. The start of chronic kidney failure has to be one of them. It’s a condition that could go on for five, ten years without becoming life threatening.”

“He took pills,” Lincoln remembered.

“Small? Big? Did you notice the color or the shape?”

“Oval. Very big, the kind I’d have trouble swallowing. It was dark so I’m not sure of the color. Yellow, maybe. Yellow or orange.”

“Hmmm. If it is chronic kidney failure, a bunch of early treatments come to mind. Could be calcium carbonate and calcium acetate—both are big yellowish pills, oval shaped, taken several times a day to lower the phosphorus level of the blood when the kidney isn’t filtering properly. Diet would be critical—dairy products, liver, vegetables, nuts are high in phosphorus and would need to be avoided.”

Lincoln remembered another detail. “There was a bowl of nuts on the floor between us—he offered them to me but he never helped himself to any.”