The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (11 page)

When Doug turned back west, toward Tahiti, David was about to follow, but let the engine throttle back instead.

An experiment,
he thought.

Wake dwindling, he drifted to a stop at a point off Chile. The idling engine seemed to protest the action, coughing and chugging. So he turned the key and let it die. Now he was adrift. He looked around, hearing only the diminishing roar of
Etherton's
jet ski, a plume of spray like a rooster tail behind it. He looked over at another manmade island beach, a row of trees hiding an edifice beyond the shallow aquamarine water. The jet ski bobbed softly in the gentle tide.
What was he looking for?
He heard the squawk of an unseen bird. He felt the hot sun on his face. After a moment the sound of
Etherton's
jet ski died too, cut off. He looked in Doug's direction, and saw his companion's distant figure, torso turned, face backward, expression unreadable except by posture.

My neighbors. . .Rod Stewart being one, David Beckham another, by the way. . .

With one final glance toward the hidden home, he restarted the jet ski's engine, and gunned the throttle. A moment later he was roaring westward toward the renewed plume before him.

By noon and before lunch, they played a few games of hand ball, which Etherton won, then took a swim in the pool. After consuming bison burgers with sweet potato fries, they retired to the den, first for billiards, then bowling. Doug's cell phone rang while they were rolling the tenth frame of a wagered game.

"Hello?" Doug said, then, "Oh, hi,
Shakil
, did you get my--" A pause. "Yes, terrible. . . no, we're doing fine. I'm with an old colleague, over for a visit. When are you coming back?" A longer pause, then a look of surprise and confusion. "I see. Okay,
Shakil
, I'll meet you at the airport on Monday, then. Have a good meeting." He closed the phone, slowly.

"What's wrong?" David asked, seeing Doug's now vacant expression.

"Nothing, it's just that he's not coming back until
next
Monday."

"What about the funeral?"

"He'll send flowers."

David lifted his bowling ball between them, chest high, as though it were a head. Looking at it, he said, "You didn't mention
Aazad
, again."

"I wasn't sure what to say about that. Now I guess it doesn't matter."

"Unless
Aazad
talks to
Nasheed
," David suggested.

"Why would he do that? They know each other, but I don't think they socialize much outside the science club."

"Whatever you say." David rolled his ball. It was nearly a strike, except for one pin on the back row which canted, almost tipping, then straightened in defiant non-conformity.

Etherton smiled slightly at this. "Looks like you owe me twenty bucks," he said.

"In your dreams," David muttered, and picked up his second ball. But in the act of picking up the ball it all felt suddenly unreal again as he stared down at the gold leaf incorporated into the trim beneath the shiny lacquered lane. The pattern of the leaf, he noted, resembled the pattern he'd seen along the top of the hotel hallway in
Bakir's
video. Was there a connection? Since Etherton had said little about the video, though, perhaps he hadn't noticed.

Entranced, but feeling watched and pressed for time, he rolled his ball and missed.

"By the way," Doug said afterward, taking his money, "Why did you stop out there on the jet ski?"

"Stop?" David asked.

"Was your engine flooded or something? Did you stall?"

He thought about it, but wasn't sure how to explain. "I don't know," he said. "I just stopped for a minute. I guess I wanted to know where I was. Get my bearings. If you're always moving, it's hard to do that."

Etherton's
knit eyebrows indicated he was still processing the explanation when they heard the click of an intercom button being pressed. Then the voice of the Filipino butler announced, "Mr.
Baloum
has arrived."

They rushed expectantly out and down the interconnecting hallway toward the front entrance. Passing a vertical window adjacent the tall double doorway, however, David saw that no yacht was tethered along the front dock. Then he heard another sound, a faint sweeping rotor stroke already fading from the rear of the house.

They took the marble stairs two at a time up to the overlooking veranda in the back. Through the long rear window they witnessed a large blue and white helicopter powering down on the pad off to the left. The side doors opened, and then four men got out. One of them was
Aazad
. David studied the other three, trying to resurrect the various photos he'd seen of Innes and
Cashman
. But the trim physique and athletic gait of the men as they walked did not match the images and videos he remembered viewing. Innes was a short man with gray hair and--like
Aazad
--had a pot belly.
Cashman
was a lanky Jimmy Swaggart clone with coiffured blazing red hair too perfect not to be a very expensive toupee. On the other hand, two of the men who'd just emerged from the helicopter were blond, and resembled well dressed and agile bodyguards, while the third. . .

"It's him," Etherton said. "Oh my God. And they're friends."

David glanced at his friend, who seemed unexpectedly frozen before lifting one hand slowly to his chin in shock. "Who?" he asked. "Who is it?"

For a long moment, Doug didn't answer, he just gaped at the men walking briskly toward them,
Aazad
in the lead, followed by the mystery man whose two burly companions took up the flanking rear. Then he said, without detectable intonation, "It's Gregg Swann."

The president of Swann International was a man in his late fifties, with long, thin brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. His face was tanned almost to the color of scorched bronze, and his narrow gold-rimmed eyeglasses could not contain the threat posed by his sharp blue expressive eyes. The rust colored short sleeved shirt he wore contrasted with the navy blue suits and black
Henleys
worn by his men. As he came to stand before them at the head of the ebony media room conference table, muscles rippled in his crossed forearms while the bulk of his body mass, concentrated across his wide shoulders and outstretched legs, seemed to tense. Svelte and powerful, he would have been the star performer at a company ball game, had he--remotely--any interest at all in playing games.

Aazad
whispered something into his ear, and left the room, never once looking at Etherton or David. The bodyguards spoke to each other in Russian, then fell silent, like a tag team whose opponents hadn't yet learned the ropes' tensile strength. They glared across the near side of the table in cold detachment as both geek astronomers sat beneath stone wall sconces turned full up into to the fierce magnitude of triple white dwarf suns.

"Have you ever heard of a black swan?" Gregg Swann asked, his tone deceptively casual.

Etherton fidgeted. "Excuse me?"

"A black swan," Swann informed them, "is an event that is totally unanticipated, and which changes the rule book forever. No one can predict a black swan. It is a rarity in nature. So rare, in fact, that few plan for it, or even think about it. Yet when it occurs, and occur it
does
, there is a catastrophic shift, and many people suffer. This shift can be in the stock market, or in politics. It could even be in science or religion." He paused, looking between them with what seemed like regret. "My first black swan was anticipated by me. It was what made me rich. Had I not seen it coming, there would no Swann empire, no mixed use towers like those I conceived. Like any other fool, I would have blamed the economy, or the President, or bad luck, or fate. I would have prayed to God, asking Him why, and then gone out of my church to a big buffet at a steak house, along with all the other fat parishioners. A round of TV golf, and then back again for more of the same." He paused again, pursing his lips, as though to contemplate such a life. "I knew this day would come. I knew I wouldn't be able to predict the next black swan. No one can. But that doesn't mean I intend to let fate take me out without a fight." He motioned for his bodyguards to leave the room. "I've been informed that you know something about what has happened to me. Be very careful before you speak."

Etherton opened his mouth, about to jump the gun, but then only licked his lips. After a moment, he met Swann's gaze, and said, "It's only a theory. There is nothing that we know for sure."

David felt a cold twitch flash across his cheek at the word
we.

"Tell. . . me," Swann said, his own careful, understated words pressing the air between them.

Etherton seemed inappropriately nervous in laying out his innocent theory that Victor
Seacrest
was somehow involved in the attack on the
Burj
Khalifa
and Dynamic Tower. "I. . . don't really have any hard evidence for this, other than the woman," he concluded.

"What woman?" Swann challenged.

"The Japanese woman." Doug glanced at David. "He's seen her too. I've noticed her a lot in the building, but the one time we talked she didn't know when the El Haj closed, or how to access the observation deck just below the club, so I got the impression she wasn't a resident." Etherton paused, seeing Swann's growing impatience. "I mean, it's possible she's just a whore looking to score with rich men, but then I remembered, after the second attack, where else I'd seen her. Not with
Nasheed
, I mean, but with Victor
Seacrest
at a party over at the Armani Inn. I didn't mention it to David here because it was just one of those inconsequential intuitive associations everyone makes, no logic behind it at all."

"You have her photo?" Swann asked.

"No."

"So both of you saw her at the same time?"

"No, David described her to me. She has a small dragon tattoo above her left ankle." Etherton hesitated. "Listen, Mr. Swann, I was really sorry to hear about your--"

"When was the last time you saw this woman?" Swann demanded, looking between them both.

Doug lifted a forefinger toward David. "He saw her last, two nights ago."

The real estate magnate sat down and lowered his head into his hands. Then he ran his fingers across the top of his head as he raised it again, looking off to one side. "Leave us," he said to Etherton, turning back.

Doug left the room after exchanging a brief, blank look with David. David turned to face Swann, who now stared into space, his chin propped in his thumbs, his fingers folded together, elbows on the table. The eyes behind the glasses seemed moist, searching. David's first thought was not to say anything. That he did not know this man. But was that completely true? He remembered his own father, arriving late for his mother's funeral. They hadn't seen or spoken to each other in almost four years. Yet there had been tears in his eyes, too. Then, in less than a year, his father had committed suicide.

"He who loses his life will find it," David said, remembering.

Swann looked at him. "What?"

"It's a verse my mother always quoted," he explained. "I didn't know what it meant at the time, but I'm beginning to learn."

Swann stared at him for a moment, then took off his glasses and pinched his nose. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"You wanted to ask me something."

"No, I mean what are you doing in Dubai?
Aazad
said you're an engineer, here on vacation." He wiped his eyes with the heel of one palm, then replaced his glasses. "A systems designer in the field of optics." He paused, his eyes narrowing now. "What is that, exactly?"

"I designed spectrometers for astronomical telescopes."

"Past tense."

"Yes, I'm retired."

"So this isn't a vacation."

David blinked, considering the question. "I'm not sure."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm still collating."

"And do you believe your. . . colleague's theory?"

"I don't know what to believe. I suppose it's possible, however unlikely. Does this man
Seacrest
hate you so much that he would finance something like this?"

Gregg Swann changed the question by posing one of his own. "How likely is it," he asked, "that an engineer like yourself might, shall we say, assist in designing the guidance system for an unmanned drone aircraft? Given, of course. . .
unlimited
. . . funding."

David considered his answer carefully, noting the transfixed manner in which he was now being observed.

~ * ~

Just like that, it was over. But they were not done with Etherton. A water taxi was called for David, and he alone was to be shuttled back to the mainland. When he protested that Doug was his escort and only contact in Dubai he was told that Etherton would be in contact shortly. The butler was firm, but polite.
Aazad
, once again, was absent, although one of his Russian bodyguards stood nearby, with arms crossed.

The water taxi driver was a Filipino girl just out of her teens. After maneuvering out and around the extreme left ray of the sun in The Universe development, they shot for a dock near the base of the Palm
Jumeirah
. Debarking the motorboat, David fished in his wallet among the dirhams and dollars there.