The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (10 page)

"Still," David said, "how unusual is it for a Muslim to be so interested in cosmology or astronomy?"

"How do we know he's a Muslim?" Doug asked. "
Nasheed
isn't."

"He told you that?"

Doug shook his head. "No, but I've never seen him observing
salat
, bowing to Mecca, either.
Nasheed
does wear traditional garb to most social functions, though."

Curious, David went to the nearest cubical, adjusted the chair, and attempted to access the internet after waking its recessed Mac screen from sleep. "I wonder. . ." he began, expecting to be asked for a password, "if we can even. . ." He broke off when the familiar and simple Google screen appeared. He typed the name
Aazad
Baloum
, and clicked on the button marked
I'm Feeling Lucky
.

There were over three hundred hits. Most seemed related to
Aazad's
shipping business. The few that referenced his personal life seemed scant on details. The most often used words connected to his name were
mogul, tycoon, reclusive,
and
heir
, while the dozens of photos taken of him seemed to be official in nature, at state sponsored events. But there were others taken at charity functions, too, or getting in and out of limousines. In those he seemed to be taken by surprise, or attempting to hide his face with an upraised hand or by turning away. Photos of his wife, however, numbered in the hundreds, and included appearances in New York, in Hollywood, and on BBC sets in London.
Jamila
was movie-star beautiful, a petite and delicate creature with an exquisite complexion. She seemed the Arab counterpart of actress Grace Kelly, and her bio even stated that she had done some acting and commercial cosmetics modeling before being wed to 'reclusive shipping billionaire'
Aazad
Baloum
. Reputedly pregnant at the time of the wedding,
Jamila
had disappeared from public view for over a year as the couple sailed the world abroad a yacht named. . .

David stared at the screen in surprise. At the name indicated.

Ozymandias
.

Was that the original name for Big Dipper? He was about to see when Etherton pointed a finger down toward another name--that of their son.
Bakir
. David clicked twice on the name, copied it, then returned to Google's main screen, and inserted it, plus
Baloum
. There were over fifty hits for
Bakir
Baloum
. But David immediately zeroed in on the one
Bakir
himself had created: his YouTube identity. Clicking on it, David was taken to a channel named PB33AllTime. The profile photo on the channel's main page revealed
Bakir
as a mahogany-toned young man in his early twenties, with close cropped hair and lifeless eyes. The profile description read:

hey
vidos
and
freeks
,
i'm
23, and 33 in the
wolrd

all time playboys an players............enjoy
succka

David clicked on the most recent video, dated six weeks prior, but which nonetheless had over sixty thousand hits. It clocked in at seven minutes in length. The video had been taken by a hand held camera, with no attempt at stability. The self-shot clips were strewn together haphazardly, and gyrated wildly at
Bakir's
whim.

The first sequence was taken inside an Airbus first class privacy cubicle.
Bakir
was drinking a diet soda with one hand while he shot the video with his other. Repeated sweeps over his array of drinks, snacks, his telephone, and his television monitor playing
Family Guy
interspersed with raised glimpses into other cubicles, where oblivious businessmen slept or operated laptops.

"On board an Airbus
goin
' to Hong Kong fer some ding dong,"
Bakir's
unctuous, almost obsequious voice whispered as he turned the camera on himself.

Next was a clip taken inside a Lamborghini sports car weaving through traffic in jerky accelerations.
Bakir
made sure the viewer saw the emblem on his steering wheel, along with the high tech blue dash. Then he scanned the road ahead and to the side, revealing that he was driving amid the skyscrapers of downtown Hong Kong. Finally, he propped the camera into a niche between dash and windshield, aimed back at himself.

"Ya
tink
you-a playa, I show you a playa, fool," his now glib and smarmy voice schooled.

Bakir
inserted a CD into the car's stereo, blasting gangster rap as his head bobbed to the beat. Then he reached for the camera, and pulled it all the way toward his open mouth, into blackness.

The next clip followed a Chinese porter shuttling a large leather bag across red carpet, along a luxuriant hallway with gold leaf trim. They came to a wide dark wood door marked Presidential Suite, and the porter waved a card across the tiny red eye to the right. There was a click, and then he opened the door, handing the card to
Bakir
with a bow. Still filming,
Bakir
did not tip the porter, but instead moved into the suite, taking in the opulent furnishings, the tapestries, the high-ceiling thousand-crystal chandelier, the ebony bar, the circular revolving bed, and then the bathroom with its two commodes and three sinks, its glassed-in shower island and sunken hot tub. Finally,
Bakir
picked up the controller which lay beside a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates. He aimed it at a far tapestry, which parted to reveal a wide window overlooking the city center.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" the porter's voice was heard from behind, from where the man obviously still stood at the door.

Bakir
let the camera angle fall to the floor as he walked back to the entrance. "Here, take it," he commanded, and handed the camera to the porter. "Follow da hands, follow da hands!"

The porter complied, following
Bakir's
hand as it went to his wallet, and rose, opening and then skimming through bills.
Bakir
fished out a hundred dollar bill, returning the wallet to his pocket. Then he held the bill with the forefingers and thumbs of both hands, stretching it, snapping it several times in front of the lens.

"Beg,"
Bakir
said.

"Sir?"

"Beg, beg, beg!"

"I'm sorry, sir." The camera wavered until it aimed again at the floor, limply now. Then it was taken roughly away.

"Okay, okay,"
Bakir
complained, angling the lens again at his one free hand, which now held out the bill.

There was a pause before the man took it.
Bakir
immediately lifted the view to the man's face, but by then he was turning away.
Bakir
stood at the door, filming the porter as he pushed his golden cart down the hallway. The man did not turn back, although
Bakir
watched for it, snickering, zooming in on the back of the man's head until he disappeared.

Bakir
slammed the door shut onto darkness. Then suddenly it opened again. But this time a beautiful Asian girl stood there. The girl did not know she was being filmed. The angle was from below, now, aiming up.
Bakir
waved her into the room with his only free hand, and as she entered one could see that the suite itself was what enthralled her. She walked toward the window, which was now dark.
Bakir
followed her shapely form with camera lifted, zooming on her as he did. Then, with a swishing blur,
Bakir
aimed the camera into his own face. He lifted his exaggerated eyebrows twice, grinning. "Fools," he said, lowly. "Ya f-in' dumb-ass
fooooools
. . ."

He was staring full-face and tipsily into the lens as the video ended. The screen within the screen went dark, except for a red button asking
Replay?
Two other of
Bakir's
twenty-five videos were shown as options. One was titled
ski bunnies i have loved
, and the other
wild
nite
at the
ritz
.

Etherton placed a hand over David's as he was about to click on another video. "I don't think you should," he said.

"Why not?" David asked.

"How do we know
Aazad
doesn't have tracking on these computers? Cookies. Keystroke monitors." He paused. "Although even at
Nasheed's
place the internet is controlled by
Etisalat
, so I'm surprised we have access to these videos at all."

"Isn't
Aazad's
brother head of
Etisalat
?"

Doug nodded, then pointed toward the screen. "Try something for me."

"What?"

"Type sex dot com in Google search."

"What?"

"Do it."

David did it. The screen refreshed, indicating two hundred sixty-five thousand plus hits.

Doug opened his hands. "There you go.
Aazad
is not limited by
Etisalat
. He has full access."

David cut off the computer. "What does that mean?"

"Well, it might indicate he's not Muslim, for one thing. But what do I know?"

David shook his head. "What happens now?"

"Now?" Doug smiled. "Now we pretend to be
Bakir
Baloum
, with keys to the kingdom. Only with a better vocabulary."

An evening meal, served at the end of a multicolored stone dining table with seating for ten, consisted of three courses, beginning with a shrimp cocktail followed by a swordfish steak served with risotto and mixed salad greens, and ending with a cold cucumber soup. For dessert they requested crème
brûlée
and espresso. An hour after the meal found them in the pool's adjacent Jacuzzi, where an electronically raised waterproof television tuned to CNN revealed little progress was being made in uncovering the perpetrators responsible for the aerial attacks. A full U.S. military investigation was underway, including satellite imaging of the desert surrounding Dubai--with hints that Iran might be involved--but the talking heads being interviewed, including the commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, General Richard Markham, could promise nothing more than further cooperation with the UAE in ferreting out the puzzling truth. Meanwhile, funeral services for Swann's family were being planned for Monday.

Etherton placed a second cell phone call to
Shakil
Nasheed
in China, which again went to voicemail. Closing his phone after recording his message, Doug looked across the illuminated surface of the chilled yet roiling water, then asked, indicating the sky, "Doesn't Mars seem dim these days?"

David tilted his head back into the molded cradle behind him, feeling the full force of the jets that messaged his neck. He focused on a steadily shining white dot, at the edge of visual perception, amid the few twinkling stars in the still-darkening heavens overhead. "Be almost a year before it begins to brighten again," he said, recalling the relative cycles of the inner planets.

"Mars, the planet of war," Doug mused. "Did its departure mean peace, though?"

David didn't answer. He knew Doug was kidding. An atheist and skeptic, Etherton believed only what he could see with his own eyes, and sometimes not even that. Ever since his days at Cal Tech, Doug had reportedly posed rhetorical questions that suggested his amusement at widespread faith in religion, spirituality, or the supernatural. To him, all the reputed phenomena of near death experiences, remote viewing, witchcraft, angels, and astrological signs or ancient hidden secrets held the same validity and deserved respect as believing in the Easter Bunny. What mattered was what could be repeated in the laboratory, or confirmed in other observatories. So David felt reluctant to attempt describing his own experiences, or expressing his opinions, even if he could. Anything bordering the metaphysical was nonsense to Doug. Any perception of hidden truth would also be suspect. The video they'd seen of
Aazad's
son had produced little effect in Etherton, although it had a chilling effect on his own bout with the past. Seeing
Cashman
and Innes would be the ultimate test, and in the meantime he reminded himself that he no longer needed to envy such a life, or fear its opposite. But if there was any secret to achieving this view as a permanent possession, he suspected it lay in experiencing a total eclipse of jealousy and doubt by bringing into view a shadowy reality of such gravity and magnitude that any guilt over the military use of his patent or anger over the exploitation of his mother evaporated into it entirely. Only by perspective, by point of view, angle, posture, or line of sight, would the pivotal epiphany come. And as with any eclipse, he needed to be at the right place at the right time.

~ * ~

Breakfast was served on the veranda, and consisted of Eggs Benedict, Belgian waffles, and a tray of assorted homemade pastries with coffee and fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. Doug made his third recording onto
Nasheed's
voicemail before they took a jet ski tour of the Pacific ocean, around the Hawaiian Islands, then down the California coast and Mexico all the way to Chile. The estates they passed were as diverse in architecture as their pretended countries of origin. One mansion resembled Disney World, complete with a fairy castle. Another was a sprawling Spanish hacienda, with a horse corral and stables. Still another appeared Mayan in influence, the main house being a pyramid topped by a solar reflector resembling the eye on the back of an American one dollar bill. David wondered if any of the islands incorporated animatronic
velociraptors
, such as those in Dubai's Restless Planet theme park, or if any of the islands yet to be developed planned a hotel similar to the underwater
Hydropolis
, so visitors could sleep with the fishes while their lives, along with their Gucci and Cartier jewelry, were guaranteed safe from rioting Asian construction workers.