The Laughing Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

at every opportunity for changing my situation, and I’ve chosen the best one.”
    “Give me a piece of the plan. Anything.”
    “First of all,” he said, “we’ll go to Uganda for my wedding.”
    “Oh, God. Should I feel somewhat enlightened, or further confused?”
    “Right. I’m engaged.”
    “Not for the first time.”
    “But for the last. I told you—I’m a new man.”
    “Is that what I’m here for? And nothing else?”
    “It’s important that we keep things need-to-know and take things one step at a time. Nair, please, you’ve got to trust me. Remember—once or twice, didn’t we make a lot of money?”
    “We made a lot of money for guys in their twenties. Now we’re grown-ups. We should be getting rich. Are you asking me to settle for less?”
    “I’m not asking you to settle for less.” He gathered himself, so to speak, around his bottle of Guinness, and went to his depths to collect his words. “Here is my promise to you: we are going to get rich.”
    His eyes were steady. I believed him. Or anyway I was tired, tired of the struggle to disbelieve. “Good enough,” I said.
    “So now, let’s go. Let’s have some dinner with my fiancée.”
    As we rose from our seats, I took in the group of possible Russians—now Michael had me doing it—all of them youngish, poised, and trim. I heard one say, “Are ya lovin’ it!”
    Michael left his sandwich. I drained my glass and surrendered to the hour. After all, I was getting paid for this.
    *   *   *
    As soon as we’d ordered our drinks at the Bawarchi—we’d come early; Davidia hadn’t arrived—Michael started picking at a point. “Who contacted who?”
    “I had your address at Fort Carson, so you must have contacted me first, or I wouldn’t have known your whereabouts.”
    “Yes, yes—but after more than a year of silence between us, I had a letter from you that was forwarded from Fort Carson at the beginning of August.”
    “Forwarded to what location?”
    “And then I answered you, and I said, ‘Come to beautiful Sierra Leone!’”
    “Maybe this time around, I contacted you first. Is any of this important?”
    “Everything’s important.”
    Judging by the throng of Europeans, we could expect good food here. It was a spacious Indian place on the outskirts of town, on the beach—open-air, excepting a thatched roof—with a cooling sea breeze and the surf washing softly within earshot. The beach was fine white damp sand, like table salt. In fifteen minutes it would be too dark to make it out.
    Michael’s suspicions touched everyone. Now he pointed out a middle-aged Euro at the bar. “CIA. I know him.”
    “I can only see his back.”
    “He was the head of the skeleton staff at the embassy in Monrovia. I knew him then.”
    “You? When?”
    “When Charles Taylor held the East.”
    “You would have been—thirteen? Twelve?”
    His face came under a cloud. “You don’t know about my life.”
    In an instant the day ended, night came down, and the many voices around us, for the space of ten seconds, went quiet. A few hundred meters away the buildings began, but not a single light shone from the powerless city, and the outcry coming from the void wasn’t so much from horns and engines, but rather more from humans and their despairing animals. Meanwhile, waiters went from table to table lighting tapers in tall glass chimneys.
    And as soon as they’d made everything right, Davidia St. Claire entered the scene, slender, elegant, wearing an African dress. She had the usual effect of one of Michael’s women. He wouldn’t have had one who didn’t. Even in the Third World he managed to find them, at fashion shows and photo shoots, at diplomatic cocktail parties—at church. The gazes followed behind her as if she swept them along with her hands.
    Standing up for her, I knocked my chair over backward. Michael, sitting, extended his foot and caught it with his toe, and I was able to set it right before it clattered to the