"Who the f.u.c.k is she?"

"Chill it, Oscar. She is who she says she is. A surgeon working here under a contract with the UN. Officially."

"And unofficially?"

"She might be doing a little work for SDECE - for the French intelligence service."

"She"s a f.u.c.king spy!"

"She"s not a f.u.c.king spy, and you"re f.u.c.king stupid. She might be a source for the French, but chances are she isn"t even aware of it."

"What!?" He shook his head and gave me a reproachful look. Then he said:

"It usually goes like this: you have a friend. You have a beer with your friend and talk about what you"ve been up to, oh I drove down to Abidjan to get some shopping done and I ran into those two guys. Then the friend goes and writes a report. Got it? What did you think, that spies have I AM A SPY printed on their foreheads?"

"If she isn"t aware she"s being used, what was that crack about cars equipped with machine guns?"

He smiled thinly and said:

"I told you I drove armored cars for a living at one point. And like most sensible people, she doesn"t like guns."

"You like guns."

"I belong to the sensible minority that does," he said.

"Don"t bulls.h.i.t me," I said. "She sounded too suspicious. She didn"t meet you while you were driving an armored car, did she? She knew."

He let out an irritated snort and shifted his weight from one foot to the other and said:

"Yes, that"s exactly how we met, while I was driving around in a f.u.c.king armored car. Look, we can go over everything later. We can spend all afternoon and evening tomorrow, if you like. But right now I"ve got her waiting for me."

This I knew to be true; as we parted company with Mireille, Kross offered a.s.sistance in getting her shopping to her car. She wasn"t staying at the megahotel; she was just shopping there. Apparently, that was what a lot of whites did, belonging as they did to the local consumer aristocracy. That"s the aristocracy of our modern, democratic times: he who pays most is the most n.o.ble.

I stared at Kross for a while. Then I said:

"Okay. There are still a couple of questions I need answered tonight. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow I have the whole day to relax, right? Tonight."

"That"s my boy," he said. He actually reached out and patted me on my arm. "I"ll see you later." And he f.u.c.ked off, leaving me alone in my room.

It wasn"t a bad room to be left alone in; it definitely ranked among the top ten hotel rooms in my life. Like the other nine, it was built to international jetsetter standard, and could have equally well belonged in a hotel located in Paris or New York: true home away from home. The big bed"s carved headboard and a couple of pictures (antelopes loping through long yellow savannah gra.s.s, a very happy, young, very pretty African female with a bunch of green bananas) indicated the room, and its accompanying bathroom, were in fact located in Africa.

However, the bathroom - and particularly the s.p.a.ce-age toilet - were extremely unAfrican. Made of stainless steel, the toilet was a beautifully designed piece. It was the ultimate receptacle for jetsetter waste, and its oval promise was echoed in the stainless steel bidet under the opposing wall. Hygiene-minded jetsetters could hold mini-conferences in this bathroom, the bidet-sitter releasing a warm, comforting spray on the gonads as needed. It would be nice to immobilize Kross there, legs splayed right over the spray nozzle, then switch the water to boiling hot prior to asking a few questions. Question number one would ask Kross to explain what Mireille meant by mischief, no offhand remarks about driving armored cars accepted. Question number two would be whether we really were going to visit her.

I wanted to see her. I had lots of questions for her, too. Once she"d revealed herself as a surgeon, Mireille changed. It was as if bringing it up had reminded her of the right code of conduct for a professional woman. She became politely friendly with Kross, and friendly polite with me (I didn"t mind; I"d just noticed she didn"t wear a wedding band).

There were no further remarks about guns or mischief, and she didn"t retract or water down her invitation. When we were saying goodbye, she actually said "see you" to me. What was best, she hadn"t cracked a single joke about my name, looks, and the Academy Awards. I hadn"t been so smitten by a woman in a long, long time.

I groaned and sat down on the bed. This reminded me of the many useless hours spent in the room next to the toilet, so I moved into the armchair that had been thoughtfully positioned by the window. I couldn"t see the lagoon or the office towers. All I could see was night, with a scattering of lights both above and below. Even the moon had f.u.c.ked off somewhere else; it had better things to do than to be watched by Oscar Hansen. I cast a couple of longing glances at the mini bar, giving my willpower a good workout. I got up and walked around the room once again, stopping to prod a b.u.t.ton on the big hotel TV - much bigger than the one I"d had back in my world cla.s.s home. It burst into life with a spastic crackle, eventually rewarding me with a closeup of an unshaven man mouthing a big breast that had a nipple the size of the business end of the average liquor bottle. There were two fairly long black hairs growing next to the nipple: very unprofessional.

I switched the TV off, feinted towards the mini bar and ended up sitting in the armchair yet again. I sat there, drinkless, and looked at the night. It held no answer; night never does. Neither does the day, but it looks better. It looks as if there was an answer or two - somewhere.

I had a long wait. Kross returned late: my adjusted, re-synchronized watch told me it was nearly eleven local time. By then, I had added several questions to the original Kross list, the most pressing of which was, of course, the most common question asked by fellow travelers, or where the f.u.c.k have you been. But it became apparent that all questions will have to wait when he entered.

He brought two women with him, two good-looking hotel wh.o.r.es. They were both mulattas with long, snakelike braided hair: twenty-year-old modern Medusas wearing skimpy vinyl. One had white vinyl hot pants and a black vinyl vest. The other had a black vinyl miniskirt and a white vinyl bolero. It was impossible not to imagine them going down on each other. I said:

"Kross. What the f.u.c.k is this?"

"This," he said, "Is Angelique. And this is Monique. They both speak English. They"ve been around."

He put his arms around them as he spoke, and they giggled appreciatively. The three of them had been drinking or doing drugs or both. They were high, but they were in control. They were true professionals.

"h.e.l.lo," the white hot pants said to me. She was the slightly uglier one, but still very good-looking. They both had a shining if slightly creaky future in their chosen business. I said:

"I repeat. What the f.u.c.k is this?"

"I saw the way you looked at Mireille, and thought it was time for a little rest and recreation," Kross said. "We"ve worked so hard to get here. It"s all part of getting acclimatized."

If he had noticed, then so had Mireille. I swallowed and said:

"I thought you had a full day tomorrow."

"Don"t worry about me. I just have to make a couple of calls, and pay someone a visit. I"ll be done by the afternoon. Which one do you like better? I like Angelique."

He squeezed the hip of the black miniskirt and she let out a delighted yelp and bit him on the ear. He liked it. He said something French to the hotpants, and opened the door.

"Kross," I said, "Wait. For f.u.c.k"s sake. We were supposed to talk."

"We"ll talk tomorrow."

"Tomorrow when?"

"First thing. Crack of dawn - say, around eleven. I"ll give you a shout." He allowed the giggling Angelique to pull him out into the corridor.

The door slammed shut. I looked at Monique. She looked back at me. I asked:

"Would you like a drink?"
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She shook her head, grinning, and walked up to me. She got uncomfortably close and I moved a step back.

"My name is Monique," she said.

"I know. My name is Oscar."

"I know," she said, and stepped forward again. I stepped back. I said:

"Look, I don"t know if I"m up to this."

Her grin didn"t waver. She put a hand on her crotch and gave it a squeaky squeeze. She said:

"Then you can watch."