Oil Slick Read online

  Millions were spent on misleading advertisements indicating that most of the oil was supplied by the Middle East, while the American oil companies actually had enough stored in Venezuela to keep America flooded for years. Tankers laden with oil lined up just outside the harbors, while children groped their way to school in the dark, because walking safely in the light would cost a few extra drops of oil. Walking safely in daylight meant a different time system that a country starved for oil could not afford. And the tankers waited out in the ocean for prices to go up a little more. Tankers filled and bobbing low in the water waited while American mothers buried their children who were killed walking to school in the dark.

  And to counteract the growing rage, oil companies ran more advertisements implying that foreign policy was responsible for the shortage of oil—though if they got a rise in price, why then, all of a sudden, the oil worries would be over. And by the way, explained the public relations newspaper ads, the oil companies have record profits this year only because last year wasn’t good enough; just look at the millions we spend for public commitment…

  The millions spent, the public relations ads did not mention, were for the public relations ads themselves. One could not turn on a television set at night without seeing fairy tales about what a public benefit the oil companies were. Why, birds and fish, if you were to believe the ads and commercials, just couldn’t live without those wonderfully clean and cosmetic wells sunk into the belly of the earth that the animals—in fact, everyone—has to live on.

  Dr. Smith thought about this, thought about workers laid off from their jobs and children dying in the darkness and the oil companies willing to sell out the nation’s armed forces, and he knew the oil companies also might be behind the murders of the scientists.

  A foreign country? Our own oil companies? He just didn’t know enough to even guess. And gnawing at him was the mystery of fat and thin, and the two old whores who remembered someone probably Korean was paying them to claim two bodies. Why had to he done that? Obviously to send some kind of message. Probably that he was a Korean. But to whom was the message directed?

  For the first time in many years, Smith was defeated. He had nothing. Nothing except Remo and Chiun, and he had no target to turn them loose against.

  He thought again of the young children killed in the pre-dawn darkness and he decided to turn Remo loose. Find out what he could and stop what he could. It was all Smith had right now.

  But when Smith reached out for his best shot again, it was not he who had his hand on the trigger.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COLONEL BARAKA DISCOVERED THE REAL employer of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar incidentals—two, with a capital European T, on a night that gave him more horror than he had ever felt in his four years as president of Lobynia. He felt as helpless as the day he had discovered that the French had secretly sold the latest engines for the Mirage to Israel and had shipped him the old ones. The Revolutionary People’s Free Arab Republic had purchased the new Mirage jet bodies but not the engines. Baraka’s air minister had assured him that it would not matter because the people would never know. Colonel Baraka hanged his air minister quietly, in an unused hangar, and did not tell the people that their new planes were inadequate to bomb Tel Aviv the next day.

  But this was the new night of his helpless horror. Out of his entire army, Baraka had found fifty men who would serve as commandos to make secret night strikes inside Israel. They had completed their training and were now to undergo night exercises, a secret assault against caves outside the capital city of Dapoli which were like those in the Judean hills. The French ambassador was there with Baraka to see how the Jews would be slaughtered. For the exercises, these slaughters would be simulated, of course, since the last few Jews who had lived in Lobynia had either escaped the country or had their throats cut by screaming mobs. The colonel had remembered the black writer who, when he met an Arab in Tel Aviv whose running water did not always function well, commented that he knew what it was like to be an Arab at the hands of the Jews, the implication being that he didn’t like Jewish landlords.

  “He should try being a Jew at the hands of an Arab,” laughed one of the colonel’s cabinet and Baraka had smiled. As prizes from the last war the Arabs had lost, his cabinet had noses and ears from Israeli prisoners of war that had been presented as gifts from Iraqi, Syrian, and Moroccan soldiers. When Colonel Baraka had been offered a nose, he had slapped the Syrian ambassador.

  “Do you think the Jews will fight less hard after this useless butchery, you fool?”

  Later he had commented that he knew the Islamic cause would triumph because “all the human excrement is on our side. We will always have them outnumbered.”

  Now searchlights played along the dry caves outside Dapoli and the commandos weaved their way among the rocks. A general announced the plan for the mock attack. The set was this: the Israeli government had fled from Tel Aviv. Trapped in the caves, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and General Sharon were begging for mercy. If they were not given mercy, they would wipe out Mecca with an atomic rifle provided by the pig United States.

  This was the scene set through the scratchy megaphones in the sandy black night under the clearest sky the French ambassador said he had ever seen. Gray forms climbed up the sides of the rocks, ropes lowered, men grunted. The general explained through the megaphone that the exercise problem was to get the Jews before they destroyed Mecca with their atomic rifle. A surprise attack.

  “But, Colonel,” said the French ambassador, sipping an overly sweet almost almond-tasting soft drink because alcohol was outlawed in Lobynia, “if you had the Israeli cabinet trapped in the caves, wouldn’t your war of extermination be complete? Why would you have to pursue them?”

  “I don’t want to exterminate the Jews or even eliminate Israel, if you must know the truth. The best thing we’ve ever had has been Israel and the best thing they’ve ever had has been us.”

  “I don’t understand. With all due respect, Colonel, why does Israel need the Arabs?”

  “Because without us, they would have a civil war within five minutes. There would be factions within factions within factions, and rabbis would stone socialists who would shoot at generals who would shoot everybody else. Mark me, the Jews are a contentious people and the only thing that holds them together is the threat of extermination. This is true.”

  Seeing the stunned look on the ambassador’s face and not knowing whether it was because of the simulated screams from the caves, Baraka continued, “Hitler created the state of Israel and we keep it going. Without Israel, the word Arab would hardly be used. It would be Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Hashemite, Sunni, Lobynian. But not Arab. That is why, while we still have Israel as our unifying force, I want to merge countries. If peace with Israel should break out tomorrow, you could kiss the Arab cause good-bye. We would never advance technologically or socially. Never. All of us as peoples are doomed without Israel to fight.”

  The ambassador smiled broadly. “You are very wise, Colonel.”

  “To be wise, Mr. Ambassador, is merely not to be as stupid as everyone else. That was what our king said to us, but he was a fool and now we have no king.”

  “That’s not a Lobynian statement, you know,” said the French ambassador, “and it’s surprising that the saying should reach here. According to some French royalty, there was a house of assassins who…”

  Suddenly a pitiful shriek came from one of the illuminated caves. The colonel and the ambassador were seated on the back of a flatbed truck with other dignitaries, holding their almond-flavored drinks. Their talking ceased, making the scream sound even more piercing in the abruptly silent night that smelled of the fumes of parked trucks and newly oiled weapons of war.

  The caves were less than seventy-five yards away and they could see clearly a commando, his arms apparently tied behind his back, spin into the entrance of the cave. His shriek became a loud moan and then the moan became a pitiful little sob which did not stop.
No one moved and everyone saw why it appeared from the front as if his hands were tied behind him. Spinning around in delirium, he showed all of them that this hands weren’t in the back either. Someone had cut his arms off.

  There was silence and then Colonel Baraka ordered doctors up to the man and a hundred voices were shouting orders.

  “Aargh.” Another moan filled the night as another commando crawled to the entrance of the cave and stopped. Then there was a groan, and nothing. A head came rolling out of the cave like a leather-bound melon and bounced down the Lobynian basalt and it was then that everyone realized that the second man who had crawled out of the supposedly empty caves had no legs.

  “Attack, attack,” yelled the commander of the Islamic commandos before he ducked behind a searchlight. Everyone else took cover, until someone started firing at the cave and then the desert opened up in an explosion of automatic and semiautomatic weapons that whined into the cave and plastered the rocky rise, killing another half-dozen of their own commandos.

  When it was over, when the last pistol plinked away in the night, when the colonel had smacked enough soldiers in the back of the head and kicked enough behinds to stop them from making asses of themselves in front of foreigners by dissipating their ammunition like unseasoned troops, it was discovered that fifteen of their number had been killed by mutilation. And not by a knife, because a knife sharp enough to sever joints did not leave stringy strands of flesh.

  Quickly, the mutilated were loaded into the ambulance that had accompanied the exercises for effect, presumably to take the bullet-riddled bodies of Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and General Sharon to the nearest garbage dump. But now the ambulance, which contained no medical equipment because someone had forgotten to load it, was to carry real Arab commandos to the hospital.

  “Like a bird with swiftness, oh driver, carry our brave fallen comrades to glory and to Dapoli,” cried the commander. Seeing that the lazy driver had fallen asleep again, he ran—his feet sinking into the soft white sand—to the macadam road where he found the driver was not sleeping after all.

  His head was tilted over his chest; his neck had been snapped. Pinned to his shirt was a note in an envelope.

  The envelope said: “To be opened only by Colonel Baraka.”

  The note was delivered to Baraka, who did not open the envelope but had a jeep driver take him back to the capital alone. Everyone else stayed in a large group, their weapons drawn. They did not leave until dawn, and then only in a long convoy that started off slowly but ended with vehicles racing in a disorganized string on the road to the capital that cut a black line through the arid wasteland.

  Back in the old king’s palace, Colonel Baraka read the note many times. Then he took off his military uniform and, wearing the burnoose of his father and his father’s father, got into a British Land Rover and headed out into the desert.

  Out deep into the desert, the colonel drove, past the giant oil depots far to the left, where all Lobynia’s oil eventually wound up for distribution, and then south along an uninterrupted black macadam line, a road that was always soft from the flat hot sun of the day. The sand was uninterrupted by a farm, by a home, by a factory. Not even a tree interrupted this land.

  And yet the colonel knew that should one foreigner make this land fertile, plant one tree, drill and find water, plant and harvest a crop, there would be a national outcry, especially because the foreigner had done what Lobynians couldn’t. Good, thought the colonel. If there were only some way he could plant another Israel closer to home. Work on his people’s jealousy. Look what Israel had done for Egypt. It had goaded them into performing its first halfway competent military action since the defeat of the Hittites thousands of years before Christ. But if Egypt had erased Israel, Egypt would have returned to slumber.

  From competence in military life would come competence in industry and in farming. It was Lobynia’s only hope. And he, Colonel Baraka, was the only man who could bring it about. Without conceit or vanity he recognized this as simple truth. It was necessary, therefore, that he stay alive, and that was why he now drove into the desert.

  So imperceptibly that one had to look far ahead and be on one of the many small rises to realize it, the road curved. It was really a constant curve, but such was the desert and the human eye that the road appeared straight with a curve at the very end.

  It was still dark as Baraka’s Rover slowly changed direction around the curve. On his right were what his people called the Mountains of the Moon. Foreigners had given them a Latin name, and thus the world knew the mountains as it wished to know them. But Baraka knew them differently; he had been lost there once as a young officer.

  He had stumbled into a mountain tribe and had given food in exchange for directions. Nothing was free in these mountains.

  When he gave more food, the wise man of the tribe had insisted upon giving “an extra direction” for the extra food. A prophecy. But, said the wise man, the prophecy would take some time to deliver. Baraka must wait for it.

  Baraka had politely excused himself and left. The directions had proved accurate.

  Years later, a ragged boy had appeared at a late night barracks meeting.

  Baraka had heard a scuffle outside the tent where a meeting of military leaders was being held. He ran outside, pistol in hand. A guard was wrestling with a boy. When the colonel demanded to know what the fuss was about, the guard explained that one of the mountain people had gotten into the barracks area. The guard was trying to contain the boy, while keeping his nose as far away from him as possible.

  Baraka could see that the boy’s face was dirt caked and his hands and feet were black with travel. And the travel this boy had made, marked deep in his face, would subtract many a year from the far end of his life.

  “A message, oh Baraka. A message. For the extra food, an extra direction,” cried the boy.

  Baraka ordered the guard to release him. The boy fell to his knees to kiss the colonel’s feet but Baraka raised him to his feet.

  “Someday this will be a land where no man will kiss another man’s feet,” Baraka said. The generals had now emerged from the tent behind him and were looking at the boy. One whispered to another and then they all knew. This was the boy from the tribe of prophecy. One general said he was happy to see such a dirty creature, because at least everyone knew he wasn’t from King Adras; everyone who served the king dressed well.

  “Oh, Baraka, this then is the prophecy repaid unto you over these many years for the sustenance you gave.”

  “Speak, boy,” said Baraka.

  “Oh, Baraka, move tonight, for your enemy’s wings are filled with the wine of destruction and you shall sit upon the great throne.”

  The generals hushed their conversation. How could anyone have known they were in the tent planning a revolution against King Adras?

  Baraka looked at the boy. Finally, he said, “I will sit in no throne. I will not rule this land. But I will serve it.”

  One of the generals snorted a contemptuous laugh, noting the convenient timing. Baraka had been arguing for an immediate revolution; many of the generals had wanted to wait. And now this prophecy came, saying immediate revolution. Had the colonel ever really been lost in the mountains he wondered.

  A blood rage seized Baraka, and even as he drew his pistol to shoot the laughter off the face of the general, he knew that this time his rage served his good fortune, though this was usually just the opposite in others.

  Baraka fired one shot into the mouth, and squeezed the second off at the nose. It caught the falling general in the right eye, which popped like a blood-filled balloon.

  “Those who are not with me are against me,” Baraka snarled, and thus that night the military took over the Lobynian government. What else could they do except follow a man who had a gun and was willing to risk his life, particularly while the king was in Switzerland with an air force chief of staff he wouldn’t risk flying with.

  When the king had not returned, the people�
��s revolution was secure. A secret joke in some circles said that a man named Callahan from Jersey City had done more to change the history of the Middle East with a bottle of Seagram’s Seven than all the Mirage jets that ever took off. Which was none of them.

  That had been four years ago. It had been, Baraka remembered, a hot night, unlike tonight; he shivered in the open vehicle. He drank from a flask of water. Its warmth tasted good to him. At a large stone marker, he turned right. He had ordered this road built, ostensibly to create a gigantic religious crescent, but actually to give the mountain tribe an easier way to travel to Dapoli. He did not want such a journey to be a toll on one young boy’s life again. To the best of his knowledge, no members of the mountain tribe had ever set foot on the road.

  The Land Rover bumped across the rock and sand. It felt good to be out of the endless smooth hum of the main highway.

  Fifteen miles along a very dry wash, wet perhaps twice a year, he felt something jump into the slow bouncing Rover, grab him by the neck, and jerk him from the wheel. When he landed he could not stand up. His legs were numb from sitting for hours. He felt a rifle touch the temple of his head and someone took his pistol. He smelled the exhaust of the Land Rover that stood idling in the sand.

  “Do not move, European pig,” said a voice above him. When he turned his head to see who had said such a thing, he felt the muzzle of the gun press it down again into the dirt.

  “I am Bedouin, Arab,” said Baraka. “I am son of Bedouin and grandson of Bedouin, for ages upon ages and generation upon generation.”

  “You look like European. Italian.”

  “I am not. Not one drop of Italian blood,” said Baraka hopefully. “I come searching for the wise man.”