Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (3 page)

“What does that mean?” asked Farrell.

He hesitated and then, “It means that, incongruous as it may sound to you, it’s occurred to us—cynics, skeptics, and doubters that we are—that this sullen young woman you saw on film might have deliberately entered the wrong car—which she did, without hesitating. Or to put it bluntly,” he said, “we’ve wondered if she might have been expected.”

A startled Mrs. Pollifax said, “You’re not serious!”

“You really think that?” asked Farrell.

Carstairs sighed. “I have to remind you,” he said patiently, “that we’re neither a Traveler’s Aid Society nor a lost-and-found department; we take no one and nothing for granted, and advise you to do the same. Whatever she may be, she’s an
American citizen and it’s our responsibility to get her back. Just locate her if she’s alive and the State Department can handle the rest. Unless, of course, you can bring her back yourselves.”

With a glance at the clock on the wall he pushed back his chair and stood up. “I see that already I’m late for a conference Upstairs,” he said dismissively, and with a tight smile he shook hands with each of them. “Bishop will see you out. Happy hunting, Godspeed and good luck,” he added, and was gone.

“Well,
that
was abrupt,” Farrell said to Bishop.

Bishop shrugged. “It happens. He’s not as tough as people assume, you know, he worries.” Especially, thought Bishop when Emily Pollifax is concerned. No doubt Carstairs was suddenly remembering the nasty prisons in Syria: the Mezza in Damascus, for instance, and Tadmor just beyond the ruins of Palmyra, not to mention the fact that Mrs. Pollifax had returned from her last trip with a bullet freshly dug out of her arm. “It will pass,” he lied.

“And so must I,” said Mrs. Pollifax with a glance at her watch. “I believe there’s a car waiting for me somewhere, and the plane you sent for me this morning.” She rose. “See you Sunday, Farrell,” she told him with a smile.

And having said good-bye she went home to reassure Cyrus that Syria was merely a reconnaissance trip, a matter of making inquiries about a missing young girl named Amanda.

M
rs. Pollifax arranged for Mrs. Lupacik to cook dinners for Cyrus while she was away; the two had already become friends when Cyrus had occupied the living room with a broken leg while Mrs. Pollifax, at the same time, had lain in bed upstairs with a particularly virulent case of flu. Mrs. Lupacik, she remembered, has also proven very educational for Cyrus, being an expert on the plot and history of every existing soap opera.

After canceling her karate lesson, and the talk she was to give at the Save Our Environment club, Mrs. Pollifax said her good-byes, packed one suitcase and a carry-on bag, and at dawn met Farrell at Kennedy Airport.

“Cyrus pacified?” he asked sympathetically.

“Partially,” she told him. “He’s teaching law three days a week; he says he feels useful and is enjoying it very much, which is quite natural since, after all, that’s
his
world.”

Farrell nodded. “And this, my dear Duchess, admit it or not, is
your
world.”

She smiled. “I would hate to admit that,” she told him, “but it’s certainly more useful than raising prizewinning geraniums. Do you think I’m addicted, Farrell?”

“We all are,” he said cheerfully. “Why the hell else would we be here at dawn, prepared for another plunge into the unknown? Not to mention a long
long
flight ahead of us, and a stopover in London.”

She sighed.
“Very
long—I remember,” she acknowledged, and before boarding invested in six magazines.

I
t was late evening when Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell landed in Damascus. The plane from London had been delayed several hours due to fog, and when they disembarked it was to enter a dimly lit terminal almost deserted except for a few khaki-clad police leaning on rifles and observing the passengers with mild curiosity. Because of the fog and the delay there had been cancellations and the plane arrived half-filled; at Passport Control only one official was on duty, which led to a thirty-minute wait, after which, securing their luggage, they passed into the Arrivals hall. Here too there was the feel of late-hour desertions: the booths that would earlier have been manned by hotel representatives were mostly abandoned, leaving behind only bright signs describing the delights of the Cham Palace, the Meridien Hotel, the Sheraton, Semirames, and Umayyad.

As they approached the Information counter Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax were intercepted by a young man in tweed with a shock of red hair. “Pollifax and Farrell?” he asked.

“Sounds like a vaudeville team,” said Farrell. “That’s us, yes.”

“Jacoby from the embassy,” he told them, shaking hands. “Welcome to Syria, I’ve a car waiting.”

“So kind of you,” murmured Mrs. Pollifax, suppressing a desire to yawn.

With a brisk professional smile Jacoby said, “Since you are relatives of the late Miss Pym—”

Oh dear
, thought Mrs. Pollifax,
late Miss Pym?

“—we want to be of service to you in any way we can. We’ve scheduled a meeting for you—not in the morning; it’s nearly Monday already, you’ll want to rest, but Tuesday morning we’d like to go over with you everything we’ve done to find her. The ambassador will want to express his sympathy, too, if his schedule allows. You’re a close relative of Miss Pym’s?”

She exchanged an amused glance with Farrell. “Distant,” she said.

“Aunt,” put in Farrell firmly. “By distant she means she lived at a distance from, er, Amanda. No one,” he added reproachfully, “notified her at all. Of her niece’s disappearance.”

“We did inquire,” Jacoby said smoothly. “We did, you know. Here’s my car, I’ll put your luggage in the trunk.” With this done he handed them into the car and took his place behind the wheel.

“But it’s so
dark,”
said Mrs. Pollifax as they left the terminal behind. “Where are the lights?”

Over his shoulder Jacoby said, “This isn’t America, you know. There aren’t many lights
anywhere
at night except in the center of Damascus, although here and there on the outskirts merchants wreath their shops with strings of Christmas-tree lights—the prosperous ones who can afford it.”

“But enough voltage along this airport road to illumine picture

after picture of President Assad,” pointed out Farrell.

“Oh yes, you’ll find him everywhere. You’ve come, of course, needing closure on her mysterious disappearance?”

Closure … what an odd word
, thought Mrs. Pollifax, as if anyone could slam a door and say “It’s over.” It had a surgical sound that grated.

Farrell said piously, “We’d like to recover her body and bring her home.”

“Oh I doubt that,” Jacoby told them from the front seat. “She’s never been found, you know.”

This reduced them to silence; there was really nothing left to say, Jacoby having neatly disposed of Amanda Pym. It was a long drive, and a dark one; Mrs. Pollifax’s impressions were of traffic circles, almost no traffic, and the flat silhouette of the city ahead, and since it was dark and she had been traveling since dawn she found her eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Presently she closed her eyes and fell asleep until the car came to a stop and she opened her eyes to the brilliant lights of a hotel.

“Here you are—the Cham Palace,” Jacoby said. “I’ll come in with you and see that you’re registered.”

“No,” Farrell said sharply, and then, with an apologetic smile, added, “We can manage very well, thanks, you must be wanting your sleep, too. Thanks awfully.”

“A bit rude but clever,” suggested Mrs. Pollifax as they stood with their suitcases and watched Jacoby drive away. “And very necessary,” she added, turning gratefully to the welcoming lights of the hotel. Entering through wide glass doors they walked into a bright lobby with a tiled fountain in its center, surrounded by comfortable lounging chairs and green trees rising out of large, square planters.

“Beautiful,” she breathed. “Do you think our arrival’s being noted?”

“Let’s hope so—by
someone,”
Farrell said fiercely. “Carstairs did imply sources and resources—”

“But not what, who, when, or how,” she put in.

“No, which leaves me feeling extraordinarily helpless at the
moment, since we know absolutely no one here and Syria’s a big country.”

“In square miles, 71,498,” she told him proudly. “Population twelve million people and fourteen governorates. I looked it up before we came.”

“Twelve million people and we’re looking for just one?” he growled.

“We can always be tourists if no help arrives.”

“Don’t depress me,” he told her. “Let’s register and get some sleep—you know, what ‘knits the ravel’d sleeves of care’? Inspiration may arrive.”

At Registration their passports were carefully examined while a man in a trench coat leaned easily against the counter some distance away. When they left, bearing keys to rooms 401 and 402, Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw the man in the trench coat move to the counter to examine their names. The elevator bore them to the fourth floor; their rooms were next to each other but there was no inside door between them.

“We’ll have to pound on the wall if we want to talk,” said Mrs. Pollifax with a sigh.

“Or phone?” suggested Farrell.

Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. “I think not. There was a man in the traditional trench coat watching as we registered.”

“Ah, those damn trench coats,” murmured Farrell.

“Except they don’t always wear them,” she reminded him. “Let’s check the walls. You pound in your room, I’ll pound in mine.”

Once she had deposited her suitcase on the bed Mrs. Pollifax was tempted to laugh hysterically as she obediently pounded on her wall and was answered by a loud knock on the wall from room 402.

“Good,” she murmured, and opening her suitcase extracted pajamas, cold cream, and a hairbrush and went into the bathroom for a quick shower before retiring for her first sleep since she’d left home. Returning to the bedroom she was startled to see a coarse sheet of paper lying just inside her door; it had not been there before.

Quickly she picked it up. In block letters she read:
CITADEL IN SOUK OF INTEREST PLEASE AT 12 NOON MONDAY. DROP MAP ENCLOSED
. Below these words was a primitive drawing of a square surrounded by alleys or streets with arrows pointing to an X, presumably the Citadel.

She knocked on Farrell’s wall, hoping he’d not fallen asleep. There was no return knock on her wall; it came instead at her door, and she opened it to find Farrell there in a blindingly colorful Mexican serape.

“Come in,” she whispered. “Anyone in the hall?”

“Not a soul,” he whispered back and lifted one eyebrow questioningly until she handed him the note.

“Thank God,” he murmured, and in a louder voice, “Then you suggest we meet for breakfast, say, at nine-thirty for some sight-seeing? Find a taxi, I suppose, unless that’s too early for you?”

“Not at all,” she told him. “Remember what they told us at the desk: dinners are on the sixth floor, breakfasts on the first floor.”

He nodded. “First floor it is, then, at nine-thirty.” And with a grin and a salute he returned to his room, each of them retiring for the night with an infinite sense of relief: Carstairs’s sources and resources had found them.

M
rs. Pollifax was awakened only once, at dawn, by a distant muezzin’s call to prayer drifting across the city; for a few minutes she lay in bed listening to the melodic
“Allâhu akbar, allâhu akbar, allâhu akbar …”
And then her eyes closed. When she awoke again dawn was an hour old and she felt well rested but very much suspended between two worlds, a dangerous way to feel in a new country if one was here to meet a stranger at noon who might have news of an Amanda Pym. As an antidote she practiced a few Yoga stretching exercises, reread the note left under her door the previous evening, and after this felt ready to begin what she suspected would be a very interesting day.

Before meeting Farrell for breakfast she deliberately stopped in the lobby to make inquiries of the desk clerk. With a bright smile she said, “I need some advice.”