The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (3 page)

He remembered the images he'd seen, looking down at his screen. Prosperity gospel televangelists, like those his mother had given her last dime to before she died, claimed their Citation jets and silver Mercedes were 'entrusted by God.' They had the same expensive tastes as the trust fund billionaires who flew from Palm Beach (when the Season was over there), to join a cadre of former investment banking executives and golden parachute CEOs. Together, they all mingled with oil sheiks and European royalty who came to see and be seen at the
Crowne
Plaza, or at the Metropolitan Palace, or along
Jumeirah
Beach. He summoned recurrent anger at the memory of his mother's lost investments, but felt it only as an afterthought, a remnant of what he'd once indulged.
What was happening to him?

DUBAI, UAE

Population
: 1,792,000

Industries
: Oil, natural gas, finance, manufacturing,

international trade, boat building, pearl production.

Unemployment
: negligible.

Ethnicity
: Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Arab, Western Ex-pat

Religion
: Muslim, Hindu, Roman Catholic

Events
: Ramadan is followed by
Eid
Al-
Fitr
and
Eid
Al-
Adha
.

There are also concerts, plays, movies, art gallery showings,

tennis exhibitions, car rallies, ballet, wine-tastings, horse

races, yachting regattas, and golf tournaments.

Customs
: Meetings begin late, then proceed quickly. It is

customary to chat prior to talking business. Friday is a day of

prayer and rest. Never sit with your feet pointing toward

anyone. Do not shake hands with Arab women who do not

extend their own hand first. Handshakes between men involve

touching the heart with one's right palm after shaking. Do not

criticize. Dress conservatively. Normal business hours are

Saturday to Wednesday, 8 AM to 1 PM, and 4 PM to 7 PM.

Attractions
: Dubai World Trade Centre, Creative Art Centre,

Dubai Convention Centre, Dune Centre,
Jumeirah
Marina,

Indian Playhouse, Ballet Centre, Dubai Museum, Grand

Mosque, Sheikh
Saeed
Al-
Maktoum's
House, Wild
Wadi
Water

Park,
Wafi
Shopping Centre, Dubai Sports City, Encounter

Zone, Heritage Village,
Dubailand
, Restless Planet Theme

Park,
Deira
Spice & Gold Souk.

"What you reading?" the curious businessman beside him asked, following an interruptive lean and squint.

On impulse, David abruptly closed his laptop. "Nothing important," he said. He looked over at the man, feeling a surprising and spontaneous diffidence overtake his hostility at the violation of space. "Ever been to the Middle East?" he asked.

"Not hardly."

"Me either."

"Business trip?" the man inquired next, noting his pale blue dress shirt.

"I hope not," he said.

Then the curtain to first class parted, and he saw the stewardess who resembled April framed there, looking toward the rear of the plane. He followed her line of sight back to where the older flight attendant and a male steward had begun lumbering forward with a bulky silver food service cart. He imagined having their job, feeding random groups of needy passengers in such a confined space, all while traveling high above the clouds in a metal tube propelled to just under the speed of sound. What must it be like, he wondered, to always be moving, adjusting to shifting schedules, the eternal rush of air and whirr of engines framing the background as he vaulted forward through time and space with a minutely higher level of cosmic radiation streaming around him?

He more than wondered. He wanted to
know
.

When it was his turn, he ordered a gin and tonic. Decidedly, he declined the double plastic-wrapped snack.

~ * ~

The jet scheduled for the ocean-jumping leg of his trip boasted wider aisles, and a full complement of amenities. Another bonus, since he was now seated in first class on a Boeing 777 International flight, was an open bar. This time he favored
Baileys
Irish Cream, together with warm chocolate cookies. His seat mate was a Frenchman named Jean-Claude something, a corporate head hunter for a pharmaceutical firm.

"Tell me, if you would," David inquired, "what that's like?"

The man's big, pointed nose angled toward him like the barrel of a small bore shotgun. "How do you mean?"

He remembered reading somewhere that the French really didn't care what people thought of them, so the return question suggested puzzlement, not offense. "I guess what I'm asking is. . ." he began, then concluded, "what it's like to be
you."

Jean-Claude smiled, and turned back to his facing seat cushion, amused. At this David recalled that the French weren't obsessed with what a person did for a living, either. It was one of the reasons why he wanted to visit France after a stint in class and privilege obsessed Dubai--where itinerant Asian construction workers earned only $10 a day and lived in unsanitary dorms while native Arab residents were awarded a stipend of $55,000 a year for doing nothing.

"I mean your line of work," David further qualified his question, "is rather unusual, is all."

"Oh? And what do you. . .
do?"

"I design spectrometers and adaptive optics systems for astronomical telescopes."
Or rather I did.
"It involves the use of deformable mirrors phased to laser beams that create artificial guide stars by exciting sodium atoms in different layers of the mesosphere."

Jean-Claude's nose angled toward him once more, before being scratched. "And you expect me to top
that?"

~ * ~

On the next and final leg of his trip, from Paris to Dubai, he slept most of the way. He dreamt of being sent from Mumbai to Rome to recruit a mafia don to head a Bollywood studio. Vividly he imagined sitting next to a rotund, balding man in a gray suit, the door to the Citation rattling as if about to open. Benny
Hinn
sat opposite them, grinning maniacally. He woke to the rumbling of a food service cart as it plied the aisles of the Emirates Airlines Airbus on a final drink round en route to Dubai International.

Checking his watch, he reached for the air phone in the seat back in front of him, and, after engaging his credit card, redialed
Etherton's
contact number. The phone buzzed four times before a connection was opened and a familiar voice spoke.

"Hello."

"Doug! Hi. This is David
Leiter
calling."

"David?
" The voice sounded skeptical.

"Yeah, you remember me, I hope."

"Well, of course. What's up, buddy?"

"Me, actually. I'm in the air, approaching Dubai. Flight six thirteen out of Paris."

"You're kidding."

"I'll explain later why I'm not. Think you can meet me sometime, maybe show me around?"

"I'll do better than that. When does your plane arrive?"

"About an hour."

After hanging up, he lifted the shade on his window and studied the shifting patterns of clouds below. An occasional break revealed an arid, desolate landscape beneath. He leaned to rest the side of his forehead against the cool plastic frame of the window, and noted a tiny machined hole at the bottom of the inner layer of Plexiglas, guessing it had something to do with pressure balance. When the Airbus began its slow descent he scanned the horizon for bigger breaks in the clouds. There were none. But when the jet began to bank twenty minutes later, he looked out into the forward curve and saw open sky near the descending sun. Colors grew richer as shadows lengthened. Then, after a shudder of turbulence, the
Fasten Seat Belts
light came on, with an attending bell. A flight attendant clambered down the aisle, checking belts as the captain cautioned the landing--first in French, then in English. Minutes later the fringe of the cloud bank was reached, and long tendrils of vapor gave way to open space.

David looked down, and for a moment could not believe what he was seeing. A garden of immense flowers appeared to have opened ahead, blossoming from the sandy shoreline out into the sea. On closer approach three of the flowers resolved into trees whose symmetrical branches were laid out in the perfect pattern of a palm. Another resembled a globe of the entire world, beneath which other islands representing the cosmos stretched, including a crescent moon, rising sun, Saturn, Jupiter, and beyond these an entire spiral galaxy. All of these epic designs, he knew, had been accomplished by judicious dredging and filling over a decade, and at the bequest and oversight of Mohammed bin Rashid Al-
Maktoum
, a ruler so beloved he moved about the city without security escort.

Along the graceful limbs of the Palm
Jumeirah
, and the individual country islands of the World development, he could soon see miles of spectacular homes, marinas, hotels, and the Atlantis resort where singer Kylie Minogue had once been paid $4.4 million to perform at its gala opening. A fine metal thread that arched over to the resort at the head of the Palm Islands he judged to be the aerial monorail which had since been used by Madonna,
Shakira
, Celine Dion, Elton John, Aerosmith,
Amr
Diab
, and a host of other entertainers. But it was in no way the star attraction of the bold and defiant city. Next to all lavish developments meant to be appreciated from the air, he spotted a now inconspicuous dot suspended over the ocean: the
Burj
Al-Arab, long a signature hotel of Dubai, and one of the world's tallest and most expensive, rising like a sail from the water, with a helicopter pad and upscale restaurant dangling out on platforms near the top. Nearby was Jebel Ali, the world's largest manmade port. And further inland, he glimpsed for the first time the fabled
Jumeirah
coastal belt, west of Dubai Creek, where Business Bay faced an impossibly high silver spire, the world's tallest manmade structure.

The
Burj
Khalifa
rose like a modern Tower of Babel as the city's new signature exclamation point, and whose upper levels now aligned with his circling plane. Whether it was a monument to progress or to ego, he was reminded nonetheless of a verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I am
Ozymandias
, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

As his plane descended on final approach, he picked out The Emirates Towers, the Al
Garhoud
Bridge, Port Rashid, and the Dynamic Tower--whose every floor rotated independently. The crushed white shell beach below was now tinged with the glow of sunset, and further off to the south and east could be seen the rolling sand dunes of the Empty Quarter and the
Hajar
Mountains, red from both dusk and iron oxide.

He tried to imagine the striped hyenas, desert foxes,
oryx
, and falcons out there, somewhere. He did so not to resist the critical voice in his head. Instead, he let the voice play itself out in the background, signaling its greed and graft, its fear and loneliness like the disappearing sound of rushing air to a flight attendant. What he was left with was a kindled rush like exhilaration. Like if he could somehow just let go of the past, it would all become real.

Doug Etherton hardly resembled the man he'd known two years prior. The frumpy college professor look had given way to a stylish neatness, slick yet underplayed. Gone were the thick black-rimmed glasses from his thin, patrician nose. No pocket protector adorned a plaid buttoned down shirt, either. The shiny royal blue garment which now hung from his oddly straightened shoulders bore no pockets at all, and tapered inward below the ribcage to hug tailored black trousers that ended at
buckleless
sandals. His hair was longer and
unparted
, too, and a short professionally groomed beard did wonders for his weak chin. Doug looked at least ten years younger, almost viral, and obviously tanned, even in the artificial light crisscrossing the airport's garage tunnel.

 
"I'm here because the UAE is almost the last safe place left to look for funding," Doug responded to his second inquiry. "What's
your
excuse, my friend?"

David shrugged. "I don't know. Fate? I haven't been myself lately."

"So I heard. Or rather didn't hear. You just dropped off the map there, buddy, after they cancelled those last calibration tests on the WIYN scope."

"I guess I've been looking through the wrong end of the scope."
And now I want to see a different world, on a softer focus.

They arrived at a black Jaguar with tinted glass and flat black steel rims. David lifted an accusing finger at Doug's chest before getting in.