“We thought you died in the water.”

“Not quite.”

“And then Peder saw you last night. He saw you enter the town, and Raffo followed you and tried to kill you as you left the coffeehouse.” He lowered his eyes. “He said it was as if you were guided by demons. You dropped to the ground even as the knife was in the middle of the air.”

“Well, the demons told me to.”

“Now I have tried twice and failed twice.” He looked up at me. “You will kill me now?”

“No.”

“You will not kill me?”

“I’d like nothing better,” I said, “but it would be a waste of time. If I kill you they’ll just put somebody else on the job. Look, I want you to take them a message. You seem to think that I’m a threat to you-”

“You know our plans.”

“Not really.”

“And you have come to Afghanistan to thwart them.”

“No, definitely not. Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

“You are a spy and an assassin.”

“Be that as it may, I couldn’t care less about you and your plans. And I don’t really know what they are, except that you’re going to overthrow the government of Afghanistan -”

“Ha! You know!”

“Well, I didn’t think you were over here to get a concession to breed Afghan hounds. But I don’t know the date or the reason or-”

“You arrive in Kabul on the 14th of November and try to have us believe you do not know the coup is to be on the 25th?”

“The 25th?”

“Ha! You know!”

“Well, you just told me, you cretin.” I turned, glanced at the mouth of the alleyway. We were still quite alone. “Look at it this way,” I said. “If I knew anything, or if I cared at all, I could inform someone. That might make sense. But since you already had a make on me, why would I come into Kabul myself? Why wouldn’t I have my organization send someone you don’t know about?”

“It is said that you are very shrewd.”

I looked at the heavens. The sky had grown dark, and I didn’t blame it a bit. He said, “If you would not sabotage our plot, why are you here in Kabul?”

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“You’ll have to go to a whorehouse. The ordinary girls, they will not even talk to strangers.”

“You don’t understand. I’m looking for a girl I happen to know. She was kidnaped and taken to Afghanistan.”

“And where is she?”

“In a whorehouse.”

“Ha! You will have to go to a whorehouse!” His face lighted up, then clouded over. “You talk in riddles,” he said. “You speak nonsense, you are impossible to understand. You tell me there is something you must say to me, and then you kick me in my poor testicles. You told us on the boat you could not speak Russian, and now at this very moment you and I are speaking Russian fluently.”

“Well, your accent’s not so hot.”

“I am Bulgarian.”

“Make things easy for yourself,” I said in Bulgarian. “Just so you get the message. Speak to me in Bulgarian as well, and we shall be at ease with one another, and you can go back to Yaakov with the message, and-”

“You know of Yaakov.”

“Well, I met the sonofabitch. Of course I know of him.”

“It is all a trick,” he said mournfully. “You said on the boat that a man was overboard, and this was not so, and when we looked you were suddenly overboard. Now you say that you will not kill me, so of course I know that you will.”

“I’d like to.”

“Ha!”

“More and more I’d like to.” I thought of the restaurant where I’d had that fine mutton steak, that cashew-flavored beer. The restaurant and all the hungry people in it were now a thing of the past, all because of this little bastard with his bomb.

“But killing you does me more harm than good,” I said. “Look, let’s try it on one more time. I’m not interested in you. I don’t give a damn about your plot or the government of Afghanistan or anything else except the girl I came to Afghanistan to find. I’m not even sure I give a damn about her either, but I certainly care more about her than any of the rest of you. And I also care about staying alive. I don’t want knives in my turban or poison in my wine or walls that explode when I take a leak on them. Don’t interrupt me. All I want is to be left alone. I’ll let you go, and you’ll go back and tell them that. Right?”

“You will not kill me?”

“Good thinking.”

His eyes grew crafty. “You are with the Central Intelligence Agency, perhaps?”

“So that’s what was grabbing you.”

“Who is grabbing me?”

“No, forget it. No, I’m not with the Central Intelligence Agency. As a matter of fact, the Central Intelligence Agency and I don’t get along very well.”

“You are an enemy of the CIA?”

“Well, I suppose you could put it that way, if you don’t mind stretching a point. You could even say I’m a great friend of Russia if you want. A supporter of the Soviet Union. An ally of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, if it makes you happy.”

“Ha! The Soviet Union!”

“Sure.”

“Ha! Bulgaria!”

“Ha! indeed,” I said. “So you’ll tell your boss, okay? Yaakov, the one with all the knees and elbows and teeth. Tell him I’m a good guy and I just came here to get my glasses cleaned. And tell him to for God’s sake stop sending people to kill me. I don’t like it.”

He nodded.

“And now,” I said, “I am not doing this because I hate you, but simply because I don’t trust you. I know it’s mean of me to think it, but I’ve got a feeling that you might try to follow me.”

“I would never do this,” he said.

“Somehow you fail to convince me. I even have a hunch that, given insufficient time for reflection, you might have another try at killing me.”

“I am not such a man.”

I aimed a kick at his groin. I checked it, but the mere thought of it was enough to make him double up, hands at crotch. It was no great trick to grab his head and rap it a couple of times against the wall. Not too hard, because I wanted my message delivered to Yaakov. Not too soft, either, because I wasn’t that crazy about my little bearded friend. If he had a headache when he woke up, that was fine with me.

I slipped out of the mouth of the alleyway. I didn’t just walk out, the way I would have done earlier. I found my way to the end of the alley and stuck my head out very carefully and looked to the left and to the right, and then I scurried out and disappeared into the shadows on the other side of the street.

If all of these fools didn’t know any better than to waste time killing me, at least I could be on my guard. There was no point in making their work easy for them.

A man named Arthur Hook had described him as a great hulking wog with white hair to his shoulders. A man named Tarsheen of the Sausage Pot added that he had a furious appetite and a belly that would press through his robes if it could. They were both right. Amanullah the son of Ba’aloth the son of Pezran the son of D’hon was all this and more.

He sort of hung. His hair hung straight to his shoulders, white as a Southern jury and limp as a eunuch. His body was appallingly fat all over, and the fat drooped. Someone must have slammed the door while his head was in the oven, because his face had fallen all over the place. His eyes were huge and very blue, contrasting nicely with his brown teeth. His ears were positively gigantic, with huge lobes, and if he could have contrived to flap them he could have flown away like Dumbo the Flying Elephant, whom he probably outweighed. While I introduced myself he engulfed a salad, a large wedge of cheese, two liters of beer and a chunk of bread the size of a small loaf. He didn’t even seem to be eating. He seemed to inhale his food, to breathe it into his belly.

And he was, all of this notwithstanding, an exceedingly charming man. Good will was an aura around him. I sat down across the table from him fully prepared to despise him, and from the onset I found it impossible to do other than like him.

“So you bring greetings from Tarsheen, eh?” He belched rather delicately. “Tarsheen of the Sausage Pot. He is, let me see-”