Read Online The Warlord's Son by Dan Fesperman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dan Fesperman
Tags: Fiction
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Leave it off. He cut my face, just a few minutes ago. He might still be out there.”
Najeeb glanced backward, seeing no one, then stared ahead into the darkness for Daliya, finally spotting her on the cushions against the far wall. As he drew nearer he saw tears on her cheeks, reflecting the glow of street lamps from the window. There was also something darker beneath her right eye, where she held a washcloth to her face.
He leaned down to touch her, console her, suddenly shaky himself. It was the most disturbing moment yet of an odd and disturbing day, but things were about to get worse. As his hands reached her quivering shoulders he saw a cream-colored envelope lying unopened on the cushion beside her.
It was just like the one he’d received that morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PEARL CONTINENTAL’S lunch buffet must have been just what the doctor ordered, because Skelly’s stomach rallied throughout the late afternoon and on past dark. By eight-thirty he felt sufficiently recovered to try a platter of Szechuan chicken at the Pearl’s Chinese restaurant, tweezering aside the hot peppers with his chop-sticks as a precaution.
The dinner cried out for a beer, but of course there wasn’t any, not there or at any other restaurant in Pakistan. You could order a drink in your room by calling a special number, but how much fun was that? So Skelly took the elevator to Peshawar’s one and only bar, a windowless room with a speakeasy atmosphere tucked away on the top floor.
An armed guard stood at the entrance by a small sign: “The Gulbar. Non-Muslim Foreigners Only.” Skelly nodded and pushed through, nearly choking on cigarette smoke. The place was tiny, with a dozen small round tables of brown Formica. The bartender, a local in a red vest, was watching a cricket match on an overhead TV, muttering with disapproval as a tiny white ball skipped toward a yellow mesh fence.
The tables weren’t even half filled, and Skelly surveyed the landscape for a familiar face. Two Japanese women were in the corner, probably TV hacks judging from the makeup. A pair of scraggly, chain-smoking Nordics in multipocket vests sat by the door. Then, from a table in the back, a fleshy American face smiled pinkly and called out his name.
“Skelly! So the rumors of your resurrection were true. Come on over!”
It was Sam Hartley, which didn’t surprise him a bit.
Hartley was a businessman, or that’s what he’d called himself since leaving the diplomatic corps twenty years earlier. Even in his government days he’d been something of a puzzle, a gregarious roustabout of dubious portfolio—economic liaison one year, cultural attaché the next. Now he was a glorified corporate advance man, going everywhere the multinationals wanted to set up shop but were still too timid to send in the regulars. If journalists were the Greek chorus for world strife, Hartley’s ilk were the talent scouts and stage mothers, impresarios of every subplot involving money or corporate influence. But his knowledge and connections made him the perfect source for gossip and rumor, and he was always eager to share as long as you never quoted him by name, perhaps because he often picked up more information than he imparted.
“Jesus, you old warhorse,” Hartley said. “How the hell are you?”
“Tolerable. And more than a little jet-lagged. Yourself?”
“Reasonable enough, considering. Shipped over last month on a day’s notice. Been waiting for the bad guys to blow town, just like everybody else. Jesus, Skelly, when was the last time? Manila? That botched coup?”
“I skipped that. Jerusalem, I think. Somebody had just blown up somebody else.”
“Well, that narrows it down. No, wasn’t it the assassination? The nut who shot Rabin?”
“Yes. Lobby of the American Colony. You were drunk, telling Kuwait war stories.”
“Yes. That awful Hilton the Iraqis trashed. No electricity or food. Had to walk fourteen flights of stairs. Jesus. Hack hotels I have
Najeeb glanced backward, seeing no one, then stared ahead into the darkness for Daliya, finally spotting her on the cushions against the far wall. As he drew nearer he saw tears on her cheeks, reflecting the glow of street lamps from the window. There was also something darker beneath her right eye, where she held a washcloth to her face.
He leaned down to touch her, console her, suddenly shaky himself. It was the most disturbing moment yet of an odd and disturbing day, but things were about to get worse. As his hands reached her quivering shoulders he saw a cream-colored envelope lying unopened on the cushion beside her.
It was just like the one he’d received that morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PEARL CONTINENTAL’S lunch buffet must have been just what the doctor ordered, because Skelly’s stomach rallied throughout the late afternoon and on past dark. By eight-thirty he felt sufficiently recovered to try a platter of Szechuan chicken at the Pearl’s Chinese restaurant, tweezering aside the hot peppers with his chop-sticks as a precaution.
The dinner cried out for a beer, but of course there wasn’t any, not there or at any other restaurant in Pakistan. You could order a drink in your room by calling a special number, but how much fun was that? So Skelly took the elevator to Peshawar’s one and only bar, a windowless room with a speakeasy atmosphere tucked away on the top floor.
An armed guard stood at the entrance by a small sign: “The Gulbar. Non-Muslim Foreigners Only.” Skelly nodded and pushed through, nearly choking on cigarette smoke. The place was tiny, with a dozen small round tables of brown Formica. The bartender, a local in a red vest, was watching a cricket match on an overhead TV, muttering with disapproval as a tiny white ball skipped toward a yellow mesh fence.
The tables weren’t even half filled, and Skelly surveyed the landscape for a familiar face. Two Japanese women were in the corner, probably TV hacks judging from the makeup. A pair of scraggly, chain-smoking Nordics in multipocket vests sat by the door. Then, from a table in the back, a fleshy American face smiled pinkly and called out his name.
“Skelly! So the rumors of your resurrection were true. Come on over!”
It was Sam Hartley, which didn’t surprise him a bit.
Hartley was a businessman, or that’s what he’d called himself since leaving the diplomatic corps twenty years earlier. Even in his government days he’d been something of a puzzle, a gregarious roustabout of dubious portfolio—economic liaison one year, cultural attaché the next. Now he was a glorified corporate advance man, going everywhere the multinationals wanted to set up shop but were still too timid to send in the regulars. If journalists were the Greek chorus for world strife, Hartley’s ilk were the talent scouts and stage mothers, impresarios of every subplot involving money or corporate influence. But his knowledge and connections made him the perfect source for gossip and rumor, and he was always eager to share as long as you never quoted him by name, perhaps because he often picked up more information than he imparted.
“Jesus, you old warhorse,” Hartley said. “How the hell are you?”
“Tolerable. And more than a little jet-lagged. Yourself?”
“Reasonable enough, considering. Shipped over last month on a day’s notice. Been waiting for the bad guys to blow town, just like everybody else. Jesus, Skelly, when was the last time? Manila? That botched coup?”
“I skipped that. Jerusalem, I think. Somebody had just blown up somebody else.”
“Well, that narrows it down. No, wasn’t it the assassination? The nut who shot Rabin?”
“Yes. Lobby of the American Colony. You were drunk, telling Kuwait war stories.”
“Yes. That awful Hilton the Iraqis trashed. No electricity or food. Had to walk fourteen flights of stairs. Jesus. Hack hotels I have
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