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the sheep pastures were brown and crisp. It didn’t help that the local Greeks and Turks struggled valiantly to steal one another’s share of the island’s water table.
    The strangest part of Cyprus was the island’s twenty-five-year-old cease-fire wilderness. The frozen battlefront of the Green Line slashed completely across the island, over hill over dale, straight through the divided capital, from one end of Cyprus to the other. The no-man’s-land—up to five miles across in spots—was lavishly lined with rusting land mines, corroding barbed wire, amateur trenches, and militia bunkers. The overgrown limbo was patrolled by UN blue-helmet troops, while rifle-toting Greek and Turkish draftees manned their rickety watchtowers.
    Thanks to many illegal sewage dumps, the Green Line was very well watered. It thrived because it was freed of the cruel burden of humanity. It was an involuntary wilderness, a kind of postmodern Neolithic. But even the Green Line had suffered in the pitiless weather: the impromptu forest had caught fire on several occasions, blowing land mines like popcorn and shrouding the whole island in smoke.
    The island’s overlords, Greece and Turkey, engaged in constant proxy culture war over their dual minorities. The Greeks possessed the louder propaganda machine, but the embattled Turks were closer to the homeland, and seemed to feel the outrage more keenly. The Turks were more tormented, more extravagant.
    During the evil summer some unsung genius in the Turkish environmental ministry had come up with a drought-rescue scheme. The Turks had created a modelfleet of giant polyvinyl water balloons. These blimplike contraptions were towed to Turkish Cyprus by big Turkish tugs, out of the Turkish ports of Antalya and Hatay. Pumped tight with fresh water, the monster plastic bags rolled and steamed to Cyprus like sea-shouldering whales.
    Local fire departments brought up their pump trucks, to add the water to the TRNC’s municipal tanks. So the imperiled minority in Turkish Cyprus possessed the living gift of Turkish water. Majority Greek Cyprus had to make do with water rationing, angry radio broadcasts, and Russian-surplus air-defense missiles.
    Naturally, there was a further wrinkle to the scheme. As it happened, the poppy-strewn area around Hatay could give the Golden Triangle a run for armed dope corruption. It hadn’t taken ten minutes for the locals to grasp the profound opportunities involved in bulk submarine transport.
    Starlitz, pedaling along peacefully past the outskirts of Girne, found the lucid Mediterranean twilight fading into luscious starry dark. At length Starlitz spotted a security blockade on a narrow beach road: bored Turkish paramilitary kids were checking ID. Starlitz dismounted and silently walked his bike past the roadblock. He then coasted down a sandy hillside to the beach. He carefully chained his bicycle to a concrete telephone pole, taking care to wrap the thick steel links through the frame and both the wheels.
    Starlitz meandered downhill to the tire-torn sand of the beach. The nighted sand was crowded with old cars, rust spotted and duct taped. Their trunks yawned open, and their occupants were doing a brisk business, by the mellow glow of their trunk lights and dangling kerosene lamps. Charcoal glows rose here and there, where entrepreneurs were selling lamb kebabs. These smugglers were all men, middle-aged hustlers mostly, in the local uniform of baggy gray pants, checkered shirts, belly-hugging woollen vests, and little cloth caps. Many were carrying shoulder-slung shotguns, but there was very little menace to the scene. It was just business.
    No one seemed surprised to see him. No one would arrive at a rendezvous of this sort without a good reason to do it.
    Starlitz was searching for his contact, a Russian emigré named Pulat R. Khoklov.
    He located Khoklov, not far from a loudly laboring tow truck. The big wrecker had its rear wheels jammed deep in the sand, fixed