Massawa

Chapter eleven of Microcosmia

Microcosmia

Chapter Eleven

Massawa

The café was spotless.

Old Harbor’s rhythm was in all things; in the practiced ease of tarbooshed waiters, in the exotic laughter of a dozen melding tongues.

But now and again activity would cease abruptly, and an icy silence envelop the scene. In the inner ring of tables, walnut-faced Algerians would lean to poker-faced Moroccans, who in turn leaned to hatchet-faced Egyptians. Their whispers would radiate to the outer ring. The signal would be passed by Nigerian traders, Somali tunny fishers, and Eritrean soldiers, who responded by tapping their respective timepieces, fish hooks, and military knives. The whole circle would close in, until the obscenely fair stranger was sure to break.

But the American would continue sipping his mint Darjeeling, at the same time shrugging deeper into his lame disguise. Vane was outfitted in that full-sleeved, deeply hooded, body-length garment known as djellaba. His clean pink feet were shod in cheap rubber sandals. The hood’s dingy gray confines only accented his race; those peeping blond locks and that perpetually peeling nose belonged to Capricorn, not to the equator. A leper would have looked less out of place.

Vane could only shrink so far. When the tension became too great he’d tear his gaze from the tiny cup to manfully meet his grizzled tormentors’ eyes--only to find them apparently lost in the day’s small comforts; nuzzling bowls of thick black coffee, playing dominoes, watching ships ply the harbor. Again he’d lower his eyes and peek between the lids, looking like a monk in a whorehouse. Vane was waiting, desperately, for a certain blind beggar to come tapping through the crisscrossing camels and jeeps; a granite-faced, single-winged beggar who’d be right at home with the flies, the Third world desperadoes, and the half-naked ragamuffins.

The sun was just grazing the skyline when the prayed-for tapping sat him up. Vane watched his beggar shuffling up the crumbling street, a pine cane chopping a path through the dancing hooves and darting shins. The old man’s head was bent as though from a lifetime of mindless prostration, a bleached tarboosh riding high on his woolly gray crown. Vane threw a handful of birrs on the table’s dainty lace and stomped through the patio’s mihrāb-shaped entranceway. In the street he was swallowed up by a black wave of beseeching humanity. He swatted his way through the scrabbling hands.

The blind beggar must have caught a promising nuance in the passing American’s gait, for he immediately turned and began tapping in pursuit. Vane cursed him and his family, and all his forebears and all their stock. But the beggar persisted, matching Vane’s towering insults with increasingly booming praises of Allah and Muhammad. The pair argued down a stinking harbor alley until they’d reached a well-shaded alcove between two leaning outbuildings. There Mudhead removed his tarboosh and extracted a fat white envelope. Vane thumbed the stacks of crisp new Franklins quickly: a hundred bills in each banded stack, five stacks in all. The topmost bills bore the distinguished stamp of Banke Internationale. Also in the envelope was a cable from Denise Waters, informing Vane that, per his broadcast request, one Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye had indeed been flown directly from Kahreb to Addis Ababa, had been photographed extensively, and had his fingerprints, dental work, and body scars scanned. With these vital statistics and Vane’s signature, the glum African was eligible to embrace unlimited funds directly from Banke Internationale, or small sums through a Honey agent dealing solely with the air courier. Mudhead, now sporting a small wrist-and-metacarpals cast and sling, had been jetted from the Ethiopian capitol and dropped off at the border. Left to his own devices with a sack full of local coins and bills, he had managed to get himself transported from the border, first by bus and then by crop duster, to the desert outside of Massawa. The plane owner’s sister’s eleventh cousin on her father’s side thereupon provided Mudhead with a sturdy little donkey and half a dozen runners. These scouts, all children, had scurried ahead on camel, bicycle, and foot, locating Vane with uncanny perspicacity and passing back directions for a harbor rendezvous. The entire operation, half-assed as it must have appeared to Honey’s link Tibor, took only slightly over seven hours and went off without a hitch. Pleased and eternally surprised by his saturnine second’s efficiency, Vane stuffed the stacks under his djellaba and followed him back out the alley.

Mudhead banged his cane metronomically, hammering out a path to a particularly decrepit section of Massawa. Here ancient brick buildings grew together like weeds, broken-down streets deteriorated to dank alleyways sloping into pitch. In the deepening twilight only a few lamps flickered fitfully. But he knew where he was going; he’d been here only half an hour ago, before rejoining Vane.

With whispers and Hamiltons he’d sought out the harbor’s ugliest brigands, all the while smacking away hands like flies. Those tens gave way to twenties and fifties as he bought his way to Massawa’s squalid heart, the one part of Old Harbor feared even by Franco’s well-equipped soldiers. Here lurked the guerilla-like, barefoot adults and children who, with daggers and Molotov cocktails, worked to undermine the military authority holding sway over every family-run business on the Red Sea’s African coast.

At the filthy funnel’s bottom, the dark street terminated in a depressed cul-de-sac containing a hatbox-shaped structure with a dirty glass face lit by three golf ball-sized bulbs. The place appeared to sag with the street, as if all north-facing matter were being drawn into its caving belly. Movement to either side accompanied their approach: shapes on the right that rolled quickly downhill, shapes on the left that hiked back slowly, closing the gap behind.

“Nice going, Mudhead. You just got us mugged. Big time.”

“Bossman not worry. In shadow only watchman. Big fish bottom sea. Shark circle, not bite.”

The collapsing building turned out to be an old movie house with a deserted lobby. A single yellow bulb partially exposed a mess of mildewed carpet and peeling film posters. There was a title in Arabic sprawled across the theater’s cracked plastic marquee. Vane nodded upward.

Mudhead replaced the dark glasses with his wireless spectacles. “One Who,” he translated awkwardly, “Terminate Two.”

“Terminator 2? In Arabic?”

The lobby doors cracked apart. Sounds of shouting and gunfire blew out. A small brown man slithered into the paneless booth. He scowled up at them. The cheeks under his bitter black eyes were covered with smallpox scars. One wing of his nose had been eaten away by syphilis. The mouth was a lopsided wound, whitely scarred at the corners as though by a pair of yanked fish hooks.

“Two,” said Vane pleasantly, flicking his thumb along a stack of bills. The little man watched the bills whir up and down before slithering back out. A momentary squeal of burning rubber, more gunshots. Vane grew aware of a heavy presence at his back. He smiled at Mudhead and nodded. “After you.”

A hard command in Arabic stopped them dead. They remained perfectly still while two pairs of hands thoroughly patted them down. Vane’s hood was pulled back. The stack of bills was plucked from his hand, the envelope lifted from beneath his cloak. He and Mudhead were propelled by fists on their spines.

Rather than feature a glass snack stand, as in American theaters, the lobby contained a grouping of small tables bearing urns, cups, and various boxes of African and Arabian teas. Vane got the impression that intermission was a gathering, a social function. The only recognizable word, stamped on an ancient steel dispenser, was Pepsi.

The two goons, large for Eritreans, wore cheap suits and white kaftans with a red dot on either side of a solid black vertical line. One stepped ahead to hold open the right-hand door while the other walked them through. Despite this man’s forceful guidance, Vane and Mudhead repeatedly barked their shins as they stumbled down the aisle. It was nighttime on screen. A poker-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger was explaining to Linda Hamilton the complexities of computer-versus-human warfare while driving a trashed police car. Their voices had been dubbed over in Arabic, and were completely out of sync with the lips. Hamilton’s voice sounded like Minnie Mouse, Schwarzenegger’s like a cab driver about to go postal. The audience consisted of only one member, sitting raptly in the center seat precisely midway between screen and lobby. Projected light caught the intricate gold brocade girding his snow-white fez.

Upon reaching the row directly behind this man, a goon took Mudhead’s elbow and walked him to the far aisle, then turned him about and walked him down the seated man’s row. Vane’s guard propelled him from the opposite side, until he and Mudhead were seated beside the man in the fez like competing girlfriends. The goons took seats directly beside their captives, arms draped around the backs of their chairs. It was all very close, and all very uncomfortable. The tight knot of five stared silently as bullets were plucked from Schwarzenegger’s synthetic back.

Vane felt a tickling at his left shoulder. He carefully rolled his head until he saw a stack of bills dangling six inches away. The man in the white fez pinched the stack gently and held it under his nose, his eyes remaining on the screen. He thumbed the new bills delicately while inhaling their fragrance. His eyes closed, and he appeared to shiver. He thumbed the bills again, muttered something to Mudhead’s guard. The guard looked back at the projection room and made a chopping motion with his left arm. The screen went dark immediately, but the house lights did not come up. The theater was now lit only by the thin strip of light separating lobby doors, and by a pair of tiny exit signs, one on either side of the screen.

The man in the fez returned the stack to the dangling hand. The hand disappeared. The man in the fez rose primly. He was of less than average height, mustached, wearing light slacks and a dinner jacket. That was all Vane could make out in the dark. The man cleared his throat. The guards rose as one. After a moment he cleared his throat again, this time with emphasis. Mudhead and Vane rose tentatively. The five men filed out to their right in a tight chain, turned left down the aisle, and marched quietly to the exit corridor.

The group halted in the corridor. Mudhead’s guard reached into the pleats where the curtain and wall met and pushed hard. There was a muffled rumbling. When the rumbling ceased the guard pulled aside the curtain to reveal a narrow passage. The five men edged into a large room behind the theater’s screen. Seconds later the place was lit dazzlingly. Vane’s envelope was returned. Both guards exited into the corridor. The section of wall rumbled back.

Lounging in the room were perhaps two dozen men, from scrappy teenagers to grizzled seniors, dressed in robes, in rags, and in street clothes. Many were barefoot. They wore turbans, skullcaps, or knotted towels. Their eyes were hungry black pools.

The room’s interior was a mishmash of tables and mats piled high with a wide variety of weapons and combat paraphernalia. There were Sten guns and M16s, bazookas and flame-throwers, German 9mm submachine guns and hand grenades, boxes of dynamite, flak jackets, flare guns. Lining the rear wall were bucket after bucket piled to overflowing with bullets of all calibers.

The man in the fez snapped his fingers. More than a simple signal, this was a quick but intricate display, almost a riff. The men and boys obediently moved back against the rear wall.

Vane fingered novelties as he browsed, his eyes gleaming under the floodlights like a kid’s in a candy store. Out of a box of odds and ends he plucked a bossed green minaret-shaped spyglass, pressed it closed, pulled it open, peered through the eyepiece at the shifting faces. “Far out.” He focused on Mudhead’s glaring mug, then swung the glass by its leather cord and placed it upright on the table. “Tell him we’ll take it.” Again he dug through the box, producing a ship’s compass, a broken old pocket-timepiece, and a small, elaborately engraved throwing knife. On a floor mat he discovered a pair of authentic knee-high goatskin moccasins in good condition. “Tell him we’ll take it all.” His eyes fell on a heavy spiral-bound mass, its deep red cover broken only by a broad black diagonal line and thick Russian characters.

“Come here, Mudhead.” Inside were exploded diagrams of what were certainly spy planes and attack helicopters. Text was in Russian, Chinese, and Arabic.

The man in the fez snapped his fingers like castanets. “Glass-e-fyed,” he lisped.

Vane nodded, whispering, “Can you decipher this?”

“Sloppy Arabic. But easy read.”

“Then tell him we’ll take it!” He stomped to a central table covered with stabbing weapons, brushing aside rusty bayonets and a chipped cutlass to expose a jile, the fifteen-inch dagger worn by ancestral Afar warriors. The blade was curved and extremely sharp; a sweet tool. He raised it to his eyes and smiled.

The man in the fez snapped his fingers in a wavy, mesmerizing pattern that concluded with the forefinger tensed horizontally like a bowed arrow. Out of the bunched beggarly figures came an old man with a false eye of solid gold. Deeply etched into that orb’s polished face was the legend al-Wakil, ensuring its security against theft by a follower of Islam. This man reached below the table and came up with a sensitively-worked, brass-ribbed calfskin sheath sewn into a heavily-brocaded sash. Gold Eye demonstrated how the jile was sheathed, and how the sash was worn about the waist and right shoulder. Vane smiled again. From then on this man was ever at his heel, wordlessly assisting his shopping while the man in the fancy fez watched politely, hands folded at the waist.

At last Vane moseyed over to Mudhead. “Ask him if this is the best he can do.” The man in the fez slowly rocked his head side to side, listening closely to Mudhead’s translation. His reply took forever.

Mudhead turned back. “Massawaman get whatever Bossman want. Anything. If price right any quantity. If price right rush order. Massawaman guarantee this. Police issue. Military issue. No order too big.” He gestured at the tables. “Small stuff here. Massawaman get remote bomb, police van, tar heroin, sloe gin, fast woman.”

“Tell him thanks but no thanks. Just ask him about boats. Anything seaworthy.”

Mudhead translated again. This time the man laughed, and appeared to speak glowingly. Mudhead nodded. “No Massawaman not have boat, or not know someman have boat. Father, brother, uncle, son.” His hand swept the room. “Seaman.”

Following Mudhead’s gesture, Vane’s eyes fell on a few wooden steps melting out of an unlit corner. He raised an eyebrow. “This place has an upstairs. Ask Mister Congeniality what he’s hiding.”

The man in the fez didn’t wait for a translation. He snapped his fingers all over the place while jauntily leading his guests and men up the gently winding steps. The loft was crammed with larger objects: winches, intact and partly dismantled jet skis, gutted outboard motors in waist-high racks. The room smelled heavily of grease and fried motors. Ropes and cables hung from the walls, along with spear guns, crossbows, gas masks, and grappling hooks. The men stepped around the equipment carefully.

Against the far wall stood a series of rolling clothes-racks. These racks, tightly pressed together and draped with protective sheets of clear plastic, bore military uniforms of every rank, interspersed with camouflage field wear and various articles of Middle Eastern dress. Under Fez Man’s rock-hard gaze, Gold Eye delicately peeled the plastic sheets aside. Vane casually thumbed through the articles until he reached the black silk robes of a Turkish sheik. He was flabbergasted. With the utmost delicacy he slipped it from its rack, cradled it in his arms. The material flowed over his forearms like water. When he looked back up his eyes were wet with awe.

The man in the fez was one big smile. He snapped his fingers urgently. Gold Eye hopped behind the racks and reappeared a moment later wheeling a full-length mirror.

Vane removed his jile and slipped the robes on carefully, tied the fringed sash at his waist. The robes fit as though tailor-made. Gold Eye’s hands appeared in the mirror, holding a matching black silk turban with the girth of a medium-sized pumpkin. A vacant silver inset, its six prongs like seizing talons, was centered in the turban’s stiff bulbous face.

There came a single snap of fingers, dramatic as a whiplash.

Gold Eye looked down grudgingly. One hand vanished under his kaftan and reappeared holding a serrated three-inch throwing knife. In a breathtaking motion that made Vane’s knees cross, Gold Eye slipped the knife beneath his robe, slit a leather testicle pouch, slid the knife back out and returned it to the kaftan. His free hand now supported a beautifully-faced, deeply luminous sapphire. Gold Eye brought the turban to his mouth. The man had precisely two teeth left in his head, a lower molar and an upper canine, and he used these to bend opposing prongs over the inserted stone. He then crowned Vane like the homecoming queen. The American put on his jile and stared raptly at his reflection. He tried on his shades, modeled himself at different angles, propped his head so that the overhead floods shone dramatically on the magnificent sapphire. Finally he spun around, his mouth hanging, to see the whole room grinning. The man in the fez gave him two thumbs up. Vane, fighting back tears, turned to Mudhead. “Tell him,” he choked, “tell him it’s time to talk business. Ask him if he knows Franco’s routine.”

At mention of the name their host clenched his fists. His mouth worked soundlessly, his eyes fixed on Vane while Mudhead explained their plan. Slowly his features softened. His response was muted, but with sharp inflections. Mudhead nodded over and over.

“Bossman make friend. Bossman need, Bossman get.”

“Excellent.” Vane stepped up crisply, handed over the envelope. “Tell him this is just for starters.”

The man did not look at the envelope. He merely handed it back and bowed deeply. After a passionate speech he threw his arms around the American and hugged him like a long lost son.

Vane squirmed out. “What in Christ’s name did he just say?”

Mudhead was nodding vigorously. “Praise Allah, Bossman! Money no good here. This matter war!”

“Tell him I’m honored he’s on my side.”

After the translation the man bowed again, but this time the room froze. He and Vane stared hard at one another, for the longest time. Finally the man in the fez snapped his fingers in a complicated series of clusters, his eyes still locked with Vane’s.

Gold Eye slid over. The two spoke back and forth with the urgency of jackhammers. They ceased abruptly, stared crazily at Vane. An instant later they were at it again. Once more they stopped to stare.

“Why,” Vane whispered, “is my stomach fluttering? What the hell are they jabbering about now?”

“Massawaman discuss Bossman.”

“I can see that, Sherlock. And if they stare any harder, I’m gonna start blushing like a schoolgirl.”

Mudhead clucked and shook his head. “Bad move. Mudahid advise Bossman try more John Wayne, less Shirley Temple.”

The men ceased their bickering. A gentle smile lifted the corners of Fez Man’s moustache. He faced Gold Eye and the two bowed formally. Fez Man glided up to Vane and Mudhead as Gold Eye drifted back to the scruffy group of lounging men and boys.

The man in the fez addressed Mudhead and Vane alternately. The silver in his smile caught the light of floods as he sadly nodded and shook his head.

“Don’t tell me,” Vane muttered. “There’s been a change in plan.”