The Artificial Mirage (21 page)

“I know. But you don’t have to live here. There are other places. Many Saudis are emigrating now.”

“This is my home. I have responsibilities to my tribe.”

“What about those guys you sold?”

“They were not in my tribe.”

“Well, you may not believe me, but I admire what you did,” Charlie said when he was finished pouring.

“Oh, no. Admiration is not for that.” Saleh put up his hand in protest. “This is simply business. Before I sold insurgents to the Americans, I had eight jobs.”

“Eight jobs?”

“But I didn’t work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I applied for all the jobs. As a Saudi, I received four times the salary of an Indian. Saudization—you know about this?”

“I’ve heard it mentioned.”

“Well, I took the eight jobs. Then, I found some Indians to do the work—simple janitor work. And I paid them half again as much as they would have made if they were hired normally. These were corporate jobs—and besides, everyone was doing it. It’s much more difficult now.”

“I admire what you did.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t wait to be told what to do. This place you have here with the birds and the flowers and this maze—not too many people get to live like this.”

“Charlie, life is not so simple. With money or without it, I have always been rich. This is the secret, my friend.”

“Yeah, maybe. I had to learn the hard way.”

“But you learned.”

“Oh, yeah. I learned. So you like to bet on the camels?”

“No, I do not believe in betting.”

“Why not?”

“Too many variables. And also—I don’t trust those robot jockeys. Especially since there are so many hacking incidents.”

“If you can’t trust an underfed Pakistani kid, who can you trust?”

“You Americans love your illusions. You like to believe that the world is supposed to be a fair place when you know that it is not. Why is that?”

“Oh, I think that’s a topic for another time, Saleh.”

“Perhaps, my friend. Perhaps.”

“Why did you tell me all of this stuff, Saleh?”

“I wanted you to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Oh…I’m not sure. You should probably go now.” He snapped his fingers next to the microphone on his earpiece, and a man in Pakistani dress came running out of the main house with four leather satchels on his shoulders.

“This is the hash? I get another thousand dinars for this, right?” Charlie said.

“Of course, my friend. As we discussed. The Krug is already in the trunk.”

“This is starting to sound familiar.”

“Do not be concerned, my friend. You are in Saudi Arabia now. They will not bother you. Even if there is a checkpoint, the police will be more concerned with the water bottles on the floor.” He pulled out a stack of dinars from his thobe pocket and handed it to Charlie.

“I don’t know, Saleh. Even with the triple payment…”

“Many would kill for this opportunity.”

“And I’d prefer to not get killed.”

“Here is your itinerary. It has all of the local maps to get you there.” Saleh waved his hand and flicked them to Charlie.

“Super.”

“We shall meet again, my friend,” Saleh said before turning abruptly on his heels and walking back to the main house.

As Charlie drove back along the winding, muddy road, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the Falcons were still following the same pattern and taking no notice of him as he left. After nearly getting stuck twice, he got on the paved road and followed the indicators for the highway. Some teenage boys were hanging around the corner of a falafel shop in starched white thobes that were frayed at the cuffs and baseball caps the colors of the Jamaican flag. He selected the first destination on the map Saleh had given him. The car turned left, and he saw black flags surrounding a shopping plaza with AR icons declaring in English graffiti that it had once been a Shiite shrine before it had been bulldozed over by royal decree. From Qatif, the car drove through the residential sprawl of Al Khobar and Dammam. Concrete houses painted a uniform light brown were surrounded by matching concrete walls. Soon he was in the Al Khobar CBD. As he approached the street that ran parallel to the corniche, local news bulletins scrolled down beneath the kiblah in the upper right corner of the windshield in Arabic and English. He flicked it away. Men were walking slowly hand in hand, gazing out across the Arabian Gulf to the distant lights of Manama. A husband and wife prayed prostrate facing Mecca on a grass embankment that gave off a bioengineered glow that no traditional grass could ever achieve.

He brought up Lauren, and her head and shoulders filled the windshield as she raised her head and eyes in her trademark style before creasing her mouth with a scintillating grin. “Did you miss me?” she asked.

“Always,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

26

H
arold resented being anywhere but a cloistered bar in Manama on a Friday afternoon, but the double payment made it worthwhile. The more money he had, the more life he had. He had added up the numbers in his head again and again, and it added up to a life off the grid buying black-market HIV meds, somewhere he wasn’t sure where, back in China. The Hummer, the ID, the salary—all of it would be gone in a few months. It was an hour’s drive to Abqaiq, but first he needed to go to a mall.

The concrete slabs of the Central Al Khobar Mall rose out of the desert on the side of the highway like a concrete mausoleum for dinosaurs. The floodlights made it seem like it was daytime. Neon and pastel AR advertisements for shoes and jewelry fluttered like flags across the windshield as he approached the attached mosque with purple LED swirls and dots spiraling up its minaret. He drove through one of the main entrances and clicked on the Mall Loop icon that turned over control to the mall’s intranet so the Hummer would circle the mall until a space became available.

Weaving his way through the slow-moving cars on the loop and across two medians, he entered the mall. The familiar moan of prayer time began reverberating through the slabs of brown and black marble that glistened like water across the wide empty space between shops and extended up to the stained-glass apex. He passed cafés with open sections for single men and one-way mirrored glass encapsulating the family sections like reversed aquariums. Shopkeepers had begun dimming their lights before closing up for prayer time. A stream of men in white thobes ambled to the mosque, but some remained behind, strolling around and window shopping.

All the women were covered from head to toe in their black abayas. Their heels clicked and their hips swayed beneath their tapered black garments adorned with costume jewelry designs of endangered birds. Most species had been culled in the last bird-flu outbreak originating in the oases in Mubarrez and Hofuf; Harold used an AR app to watch one of the birds
fly around. Above their heads were halos of dragons and fish and random snippets of English like “friends are special,” but contact information was forbidden. Only the men were allowed to display their names and network affiliations, which oscillated slowly in three-dimensional patterns with cartoon characters and Arabic script announcing their tribal affiliations. The eyes were the only physical attribute the women revealed, swathed in opulent layers of purple and green and blue nano makeup that rippled like oil on ocean waves.

The Arabic script above a woman nearly as tall as Harold twisted and twirled like strands of DNA; its three-dimensional message folded in and out of itself like a mobile suspended from the ceiling, which made it impossible for him to use a translation app. He found himself drawn to her presence. She winked at him from a distance so far he only noticed it with enhanced AR vision.

“I am Zen Daddy 5872.” Harold spoke softly in English in a voice message, indicating the basic disposable avatar ID fluttering above his head. Voice was much more difficult for the religious police to hack than data, but not impossible.

“Meet me up one level,” she replied in a voice message. He knew this meant to meet her on the ground floor. He made his way to the escalator, keeping his distance and making sure he wasn’t seen staring at her.

On the ground floor, the woman walked briskly for a minute and then slowed to a stroll next to an incense and perfume shop that was burning a combination of frankincense and something else in a large oversized burner at its shuttered entrance. She stood over it and inhaled and looked back over her shoulder before resuming the clicking of her heels. Harold entered the shop. The shopkeeper, a Saudi man in a starched white thobe with plasma-screen cufflinks, flicked him a brochure promoting a new generation of genetically modified frankincense. Casually, he looked out of the shop entrance and saw she was lingering. He was reluctant. Some of the newer scents could be thousands of riyals for a few grams, but the man quickly explained they were made in a factory. He flicked the forty-three riyals to the Saudi from his Saudi bank account that had just been reactivated since he reentered the country. He walked out of the shop toward the clear waterfall that descended from the top floor and into a secluded vestibule area that was under construction. She walked up to him and grabbed the neatly wrapped bag of frankincense and tossed it in the corner.

“I am sorry my ass is small.” Harold read the turquoise English subtitles above her head. She spoke a gentle Arabic that sounded like a baby cooing. He
brushed aside a slew of AR cartoon characters holding placards offering discounts on baby clothing and vitamins. Her ass was small like a stealthy gazelle’s, but it was what he preferred. He pulled up her feather-light black abaya and pulled down her pink jeans in one movement and plunged into her as he held her by her neck. Just before he thought he was going to climax, he looked at the reflection in the glass door and saw her yielding eyes and angular face containing the placid contentment of an oryx. Her lips parted slightly as she thanked him in English without looking at him. Gently, she dismounted and started walking away.

He held onto his pants and ran after her. “Hey,” he said with a hushed shout.

“Yes?” She turned back with a joking smile and dropped to her knees like a black caterpillar and worked methodically. He looked over and saw a man in a thobe and shumagh without an igal to keep it in place on his head. A holographic badge on his chest suddenly flashed like a siren in AR, signifying his authority as a Mutawa. But he was unaccompanied and unprepared. Harold backed away from the woman and approached the Mutawa with a smile and a hand extended for a handshake before running past him. The Mutawa looked stunned by such an unnatural act of disobedience. The woman let out a climactic sigh and simultaneously gave a muffled short round of applause with her black silk gloves as Harold kept running.

The curb outside the main entrance was lit up with a long line of purple LEDs that matched the ones on the spires of the opposing mosque. Harold followed a blue AR cord that wound its way through the parking area and led right back to the Hummer. He glanced back at the heavily panting Mutawa, who was slowed down by his sandals. He took in the delicate mixture of desert dusk air and exhaust as he scrambled toward the car. He could see it inching its way behind a white Cadillac around the circular ramp two levels up. An AR ad for an oil-trading seminar flashed across his vision. He felt his body shiver from the evening temperature drop. There was enough distance between him and the Mutawa for him to make it. He made a run for it up the staircase in the corner. The Mutawa would have to guess if he went up or down. He ran up one floor toward the car and snapped his left fingers. The locks clicked open. He popped the trunk and climbed in above the customized compartment. He would have to wait.

27

T
he narrow street was lined on both sides by high concrete walls topped with razor wire. The windshield HUD indicated a left turn into the Marquis III compound. There were no physical or AR signs, but Charlie saw an opening in the wall on his left and a security gate farther in. The ancient bomb bots sniffed and examined the underside of his car, buzzing and screeching as they made their way on tracks that followed a preprogrammed routine examination. He proceeded down the single-lane entrance road flanked by a twenty-foot-high wire fence lined with opaque green plastic. The lane followed a large elliptical spiral around the compound and ended in the parking area in what seemed to be the center.

He got out of the car, drenched in floodlights, and listened to the birds shrieking in the cherry trees kept alive by the constant gurgling of water metered out through the black hoses that curled around the bases of their trunks. He picked a cherry from one of the trees and chewed on it as he looked around. He was still outside of the compound. A white concrete wall the same height as the green plastic stood before white buildings five floors high with white columns and rose vines flowing down their sides. He walked through stacked rows of concrete barriers and tugged on the heavy white bomb-proof entrance door. Slowly, it closed behind him. He was in a brightly lit room with a ceiling full of white LEDs and polished white marble covering the floor and walls. He tried to open the next door, but it was immovable.

“Identification,” a voice sounded over an intercom. The voice was Indian.

“Open it,” the voice said as he held out his passport. Charlie looked around, but he couldn’t see a camera.

“Purpose of visit?”

“I’m here to see Walter Stevens.” Charlie sounded out his response, still feeling unsure the voice wasn’t a program.

“Wait, please.”

“OK,” Charlie said. A minute passed before he heard a pleasant chime, and the door in front of him clicked open.

“Welcome. Please enter,” the voice said.

Charlie pushed the door open and was impressed by how heavy it was. On the other side of the door were a large garden and a cobblestone roundabout with a fountain in the middle. A smiling young Indian guard in a blue security uniform drove up to him in a golf cart with a big smile. “Welcome, sir,” he said. Charlie slid into the back seat. It wasn’t more than three minutes before the meandering journey through oversized tropical plants and flowers and ferns and weeping willows came to an end under a glass awning with apparent cast-iron fittings on the side of the artificially aged stone building. Ivy crept up from the right side and above the entrance and up to at least the third floor.