Demon Box полностью

Still October 19, Saturday afternoon, only a few tense seconds having elapsed.

“Good morning, my friend,” says Marag, sifting his hand from the sleeve of his blue gellabia; “It is a good morning?”

I tell him it isn’t a bad morning for two in the afternoon and shake his hand. We look each other over for the first time in the daylight. He’s older than I thought, graying, but his eyes are as youthfully bright and black as his teeth are white. He’s smiling at me to see what I’ll do. There’s protocol at stake here on this sunny sidewalk: an acknowledgement that this is my main hash man could be a faux pas costing me a good connection; on the other hand discretion might be taken as a snub, etc.

Muldoon ends my dilemma by introducing him to me as Marvin instead of Marag. I tell him my name is Devlin. Muldoon says Marvin has this map, and quick little hands produce a roll of paper. Something is dimly penciled secondhand over a kid’s math assignment still showing through. We lean to look and it rolls back up like a windowshade.

“Marvin says it’s a map, to a Secret Hall of Holy History—”

“Secret Tunnel,” Marag corrects, “of Angel History. Not far. I have car and driver will take you there very reliable. Hut! Nephew! My friends from America. Hut hut hut!”

He waves at a guy slouched against the fender of his cab at the curb, a surly sort about twenty years old, wearing polyester-knit slacks and a polo shirt, sleeves rolled up to emphasize the arms-folded biceps. He looks us over, the set of his jaw and the beetle of his brow letting us know here, by Allah, is a customer cool yet dangerous. He answers Marag’s hail with a curt nod, the very image of rawboned threat were the effect not flawed by the driver’s actual squat-legged big-butted round-shouldered shape.

“Not so much education,” Marag confides, “but a fine driver.”

“Say, Marvin, just where’d you get that map?” I can’t remember mentioning anything to him the other night about the Hall of Records.

“I hear talk the American doctors one with baldness are searching for the Secret Tunnels. I draw this last night this map.”

“You drew it?”

“And have my son write in the words. Very reliable secret map. My family is live at Nazlet el-Samman many hundreds of years, pass down all is know.”

Muldoon says all he is know is Marvin wants ten pounds for it. Ten pounds! Jacky and I say at once.

“Only five for me,” Marag hastens to add. “Other five for car and my nephew driver.” He notes our hesitation and shrugs good-naturedly. “As you wish, my friends. I don’t blame you being cautious. We take only five now—for car, gasoline—and my five for map when you are return satisfied. Is good? Only five now?”

Five seems to be the going front figure. Marag keeps grinning at me.

“Let’s go for it,” I decide. I take a five-pound note out of my wallet. The hand comes out and the note vanishes into the folds of the blue gellabia; not as quick as the nephew’s eye, though; he comes fuming over and he and Marag have a splendid argument in screaming Egyptian.

As squat as the nephew is, he still is some inches taller than his bantyweight uncle, and you can tell he’s pushed a little iron down at the YMMA. Still, it’s an obvious no-contest. That bright-eyed little mink of a man would swarm all over Cool Yet Dangerous, leaving nothing but a pear core.

“My nephew is a fool with money,” he confides, showing us all toward the battered Fiat. “But a most reliable driver you can be insured.”

As he bustles around the car closing us in, I realize he isn’t coming along.

“Also most furthersome. His name is T’udd.”

“Thud?” we all ask in mutual dawning apprehension. “Thud?”—as a thick brown thumb punches the starter into a victorious roar. Pumping the foot feed, Thud turns and gives us a thick-lipped leer of triumph. The map is crumpled in his hand.

“I haven’t seen a grin like that,” Jacky concedes, “since Sal Mineo won the Oscar for Young Mussolini.”