Chapter 8: Now Pay Attention, 327

I signed another document and followed Miles into a cavernous space, which was rather dark. Two men in lab coats scurried away. Miles waited until they were gone and then flipped a switch on the wall near the door. Bright lights in the ceiling clacked on and unveiled a turning plateau with a car under a black tarp. I could see the tyres, but not much else. Miles and Hugo shot each other a look and grinned.

“Carstairs! Your new vehicle! Feel free to do the honours.”

I stepped onto the plateau, a huge turntable painted grey, and grabbed the tarp. It wasn’t actually tarpaulin, but a rather soft, silky fabric. This couldn’t possibly be the Pathfinder: it was much too low for that.

“Turn around, I want to see your face,” said Miles. And so I obliged, turned around and unveiled the car to an audience of two. A dark grey four-door Aston Martin sports car appeared. Very shiny, almost black. I had a good look. The grille was very striking: just a mesh of horizontal lines. A lab technician sat behind the wheel and gave me a polite smile. How long had he been under that tarp?

“Go on, let us hear you!” said Miles. The engine turned on and the tech made it rev. I’m not really a petrolhead, but it sounded amazing. A deep, guttural roar turned into an angry hornet. For ten seconds, the engine revved and growled like a maniac. Then it turned off. Surprisingly, the place didn’t smell of exhaust fumes now. I assumed the ventilation system here was extra heavy duty, but I didn’t feel a draft.

“Well?” asked Miles, beaming with pride.

“Is this a Rapide S?”

I’d been studying the Aston Martin range, in anticipation of my promotional work.

“Yes! And no! This is a Rapide, but it is a special series: K dash T. One of a kind.”

“It’s wonderful,” I said, mostly to be polite. It was certainly a very nice car, but it looked a bit ... bland. Still, it would look really nice on the Waitrose parking lot.

“Great. So this is coming back to London with me? I see it’s even left hand drive! That’s a bit annoying in car parks, but I’ll manage.”

“What? No! This is for your assignment!”

“Bloody isn’t,” I said.

“Bloody IS! What’s wrong with it?!”

“Well ... It’s tiny. I mean ... I’ve got heaps of luggage coming over. Can’t even carry a French loaf in this thing. Look at it, even the rear seats have a centre console. And it’s nearly black. Who the hell takes a black car to Saudi Arabia? I’ll be stir fried! And I’m supposed to be a butler, aren’t I? Should I be cruising around in a 200,000 pound supercar?”

“Closer to eight-fifty for this particular one, actually. And yes, you should! You weren’t penniless before you took this job, were you? You can say you bought it here, where it’s cheaper and tax-free. Expats do it all the time, don’t worry about it. Martin, look at it! Tell me what you see,” said Miles, now on the defensive.

“Okay...” I said, walking around it. The rear windows were tinted nearly black, to the point where it’s illegal in the UK. The rims were very nice, but the headlights gave it a rather aggressive face, with squinty eyes. I don’t usually see faces in cars, but this one clearly wasn’t in the best of moods. The door handles were flush with the panels, which I like. But then I had a look at the rear and saw no exhaust.

“Miles? What kind of engine does this thing have? Supposed to be a V12, right?”

“Oh, you did your homework, didn’t you?” said Miles, glowing. “Yes, the S has a V12. But this is the K-T.”

“Still needs an exhaust, though. Oh, hang on ... Is this thing electric?!”

“YES! Naught to sixty in 3 seconds! Seventy kilowatt hour battery.”

“Then what did I just hear?!”

“That was fake!” he laughed, as if it was all a great joke. “It generates engine noises, but in reality it runs very quietly. We’ll fit a fake exhaust underneath it, because nobody needs to know this is an electric vehicle. The filler cap is just for show, too.”

“Okay, hang on ... I’m supposed to bring an EV to Saudi BLOODY Arabia? Where the oil comes from? The nation least likely to turn to solar energy EVER? How is that gonna work? It’s hardly going to be teeming with charging points, is it?”

“Nope. But you can charge it from a wall socket.”

“SEVENTY kilowatt hours from a wall socket? That could take days!”

“Ah! But here’s the thing: you’ll hardly ever be empty. You know what solar panels do, right?”

“Duh.”

“So tell me.”

“Uhm ... Photons from sunlight strike a titanium dioxide molecule on a die. This excites an electron, which in turn gives off electrical power. Then the electron returns to an electrolyte layer via a catalyst and interacts with a tri-iode molecule and another electron to become an iodide ion. That passes back to the die and the electron recombines with the titanium dioxide.”

Corcoran’s jaw dropped, but Miles howled in delight. I didn’t think this was the absolute best time to tell them I recently did a voice-over for a manufacturer of solar panels.

“HA! HAHAAAA! You see?! That’s why I picked you over a tennis player, a race car driver and a musical sex addict! Brilliant! Yes, that’s ... I don’t think I’d have been able to put it like that, actually. But you’re right: sunlight. Some people think it’s warmth from infrared.”

“Yes, but surely you need half a football field of panels to charge this thing back up even in a few hours?”

“You would, if you used solar panels. But have you heard of thermovoltaic cells?”

“No. I mean, I can guess what they do, but...”

“I haven’t,” said Hugo. Miles turned to face him.

“Think of them as thermal solar cells: they generate electricity when they get hot. And we’ve embedded them in the door panels, the roof and the hood of this car. Not only that, but underneath the paint there is a lattice of heat conductive material, that sends all the heat this car soaks up to these thermovoltaic cells. Doesn’t do much in the UK, but in Saudi a car easily heats up to about sixty degrees Celsius for several hours a day. You can really burn yourself on a car that’s left out in the sun, as you may know. Well, this one soaks up the heat and then stores the energy in its battery. In the middle of summer, you can get between ten and twenty kilowatt hours a day just from being parked in the sun. You’d need thirteen solar panels for that much power! In addition it has all the usual charge ports plus some extra ones and a nice, long power cable.”

“But how far can you get on a kilowatt?” asked Corcoran.

“Kilowatt hour,” I said. “It’s a bit confusing, but a kilowatt hour is an amount of energy. I used to drive a Nissan Leaf back in Los Angeles. I think it did six kilometres per kWh.”

Miles nodded enthusiastically.

“This car does close to eight, if you drive the speed limit. And you have about sixty-three kwh available, because obviously the cells need to maintain a minimal amount of power or they’ll die.”

“So a maximum range of 504 kilometres,” said Hugo. Clearly, not knowing how solar panels work doesn’t mean you can’t do simple sums.

“Yes,” answered Miles, still looking pleased as punch.

“It’s six hundred to Riyadh. And that’s from Doha,” replied Hugo.

“Okay, so drive slower! The slower you drive, the less energy you expend. And we’ll take out the rear seats, that shaves off some weight, too. We’ll ask the car, shall we? K-T? At what speed would you have to drive to reach Riyadh on one charge?”

“From here or from the nearest border crossing?”

The car spoke! And not only that, but it spoke in a female voice. A VERY familiar voice!

“Uhm, starting from the Torch hotel.”

“To reach Riyadh from the Torch hotel on a full charge, the average speed should be seventy-one kilometres per hour and not exceed eighty kilometres per hour. This assumes an ambient outside temperature of forty degrees Celsius, a maximum payload of 100 kilograms and no internal climate control.”

I damned near lost my footing, even though I was standing on a metal podium.

“KATEY?!”

“Yes, Reginald?”

“YOU DRAGGED KATE HERE?” I bellowed at Miles, as I opened the passenger door. How could I have missed her? She wasn’t there, and not in the back seat either. In fact, there was nobody behind the wheel. Not even the technician, who had sat there smirking all the time.

“Huh? Where’s the driver? KATEY? Get down here!”

“I’m here, Reginald,” said the car. The actual bloody car! Well, she was obviously somewhere else, using a transmitter of some sort. I turned on my heels and jumped off the turntable, grabbing Miles’s arm. He didn’t like that.

“Listen, sport. You don’t know me very well. I have been under a LOT of stress recently. Having to land an Airbus was actually a bit of a vacation for me. That’s what I call a slow day. But I’ve had it up to here with your fun and games.”

“Ah ... You’re hurting me, 327.”

“I will hurt you a LOT more if I don’t see my sister here in two seconds flat.”

“Reginald, your sister is not here. I am the on-board computer system in the car. Please let go of Miles,” said Kate, behind me.

She wouldn’t do that, would she? Kate wouldn’t lie to me for this long? Have a laugh? Sure. Pull my leg? In an instant. Turn off the bathroom lights and the heater while I was in the shower? About every other week. But I was losing my temper, and she’d know to stop. It was her voice, I was sure of that. I can identify Kate from a square inch of skin, or a single syllable mumbled into a boxing glove. This was her voice. Her actual voice.

The car doors were closed again. I let go of Miles and went back to the car. There she was, behind the wheel, waving at me! See? She must have been hiding in the ... in the...

“Uhm, Miles? Aren’t we going a bit too far?” asked Corcoran.

“KATEY! Come out!”

She just laughed and shook her head. Then the driver window rolled down and I saw ... nothing. No Kate. I stumbled backwards and this time I actually fell on my arse, which hurt. When I stood up, Miles was brandishing a stick. I didn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry, Carstairs. We prepared this. I didn’t know seeing your sister would make you angry,” he said.

“It’s not SEEING her, it’s NOT seeing her!” I bristled. “WHERE! IS! SHE!!!”

“At home, I imagine. It’s a projection. A variation on Pepper’s ghost. As long as the windows are closed, the car can generate moving images of drivers.”

“Agent 327 currently has a heartbeat of 162. His maximum is 178. Reginald, please enter the vehicle. I will attempt to lower your heart rate by...”

“MAKE IT STOP!”

“ ... playing relaxing music and applying environmental controls.”

“MAKE IT STOP NOW!”

“K-T, stand by,” said Miles.

The car beeped twice, like a microwave oven.

It took two cups of tea and a very large soldier brandishing a short stick looming over me to calm me down. I don’t think I had been that angry in months, maybe even years. But Miles was very apologetic and genuinely thought I’d think it a nice surprise.

“Okay, let’s recap,” I said, pouring a third cup from a metal pot. “You are sending me to Saudi Arabia in a speaking, self-driving car that runs on electricity and that can recharge via solar heat. And this car is equipped with a voice that was recorded by my own sister. And it can’t reach Riyadh. Not even from the border with Doha. Nor will I be able to fit more than two suitcases in it, whereas I’m picking up three from the airport in Riyadh and have one with me now, and a bag.”

“Uhm, yes. Actually, we can take out the rear seats for you. And the engine compartment is mostly empty, so that should hold your bag. You won’t be able to go very fast, but she’ll do the driving. And I’m sure you can find a socket somewhere. There are towns along the route.” Although we were going to stick an additional 30 kWh battery pack there so you’d be able to make the trip in one day, but sadly some dipstick at DHL stuck a screwdriver in it, and it nearly burned down their sorting centre. It was a custom build. But we can just Fedex you your luggage, no problem.”

“Oh, wonderful! No worries there then! Can you at least change the voice?”

“No.”

“Why not? Even my phone can do that.”

“Yes, but this car can’t. It is one of a kind. The body is that of a Rapide S, but the rest is all custom made. It has an A.I. that makes a Tesla look like a lobotomised rapper. It’s years ahead of its time. And I can’t just delete a folder with the voice files and insert new ones. That’s not how it works.”

“How did you get Kate involved, anyway?”

“We booked her as a voice artist. It was Caroline’s idea, actually. She brought us into contact with a company that was developing A.I. software and she also suggested we used your sister’s likeness for one of the virtual driver holograms. I think Caroline thought you’d appreciate it, not that you’d go through the roof and try to crush my elbow.”

Hugo chipped in.

“Yes, Carstairs, that little episode just then does not exactly inspire me with confidence. Your report states you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and are refusing treatment, but I felt you had it under control. But now...”

“I do,” I said, perhaps a bit overconfident. “I do. I’m fine. But Miles here has been jerking me around since yesterday and preparing for all this has been very stressful. I left my family behind less than two days ago. They have no idea when I’ll be back. If I’ll be back.”

“You’ll be home soon enough if you’re careful and follow your training. Not that you had much, but you should at least study the instruction manuals and training documents we’ve supplied. We’d have trained you on the basis of all that, but you walked out on half your classes and then assaulted a lie detector operator. Frankly, I have no idea why Miles is so keen to give you one of the world’s most expensive vehicles. We’re not paying for it, I’ll tell you that much.”

Miles put down his cup.

“It’s on loan. And that car can take care of itself. Worst case scenario is that it gets impounded. They don’t hang cars, not even in Saudi. But I have wanted to build a proper Aston Martin worthy of the name ever since I saw those movies and this is my chance. My only regret is that I won’t be there to hover above you in a helicopter as you drive off into the sunset. Now, if your temper tantrum is done, can I show you all the fantastic gadgets I stuffed into that thing? It weighs almost 2300 kilos. That should tell you something.”

“Don’t you people have any biscuits?” I asked, as everyone stood up. “You’d think an underground base that serves more tea than Twinings would have a chocolate hobnob or something. I missed lunch, you know. And someone mentioned Kitkats.”

“Hugo, would you be a dear and get him something? I’d like to show him the car before I die of old age.”

And so I found myself looking at the Rapide while munching a halal chicken and cheese sandwich from a triangular box. The standard Rapide S is a four-door hatchback, which sounds uncharacteristically practical for an Aston Martin. Rest assured it is not practical. At all. There are two rear seats, but there is also a centre console between them. You could seat a child there, or perhaps a Thai woman, but even they would feel cramped in their stitched leather sports seat. Even with the DVD player in the seat in front, and the complimentary noise cancelling headphones that come with the car. Those seats do fold down, but even then the boot won’t hold more than one suitcase and perhaps a toothbrush if you snapped off the handle.

The dashboard is black and sleek and curvy and, I’m sorry to say, hopelessly old-fashioned. The tiny pop-up navigation system is operated with a dial underneath, so you have to lean in to operate it. A dial is a very inconvenient way to select city and street names. The stupid thing can’t even play music via bluetooth. There is bluetooth, sure. But you can only make phone calls. In 2015, that is a fucking disgrace for a Nissan Micra, never mind a car that costs as much as a house in some places. Hey, I never said I was a fan of the brand, did I?

Fortunately, I had received an updated version of the S, now designated K-T. This dashboard was almost empty, the reclaimed space being filled by a handsome touch screen. The dash was still 99% stitched leather, which I don’t really like, but Miles had taken notice of my width and fitted a comfier seat than standard. Have you noticed the sort of people who buy cars like these are usually rather slender and not all that tall? That’s because some short-asses have a burning need to compensate for their puniness, which is what makes them rich. They buy these cars because they’d look like dwarves driving something like a Hummer. That also explains why they’re so ridiculously low, I guess.

Now, as to the speaking with my sister’s voice ... I know about computers. I started with a Commodore 64 and if there had been a way to sell it, I’d probably have made bank with the Geography Quiz software I wrote when I was twelve. As it was, I just gave free copies to my friends and from there it reached the world. Seriously, I got email from Australia all the way to Iceland on my BBS-node! Well, not emails, exactly: people uploaded text files with thanks. Premails, I call them.

Anyway, I now run an IT department and I used to run a software company. So I know about computers and I am more likely to believe the moon landing was staged by Blind Lemon Pie than that there is an A.I. out there in 2015 that can drive a car and carry on a conversation like a normal human being. Can’t be done. One day, perhaps, but not any time soon. Yes, we can make a car hobble around a well-mapped city, as long as we strap lidar, radar and about sixty types of camera to it and make it stop for every grain of sand, but that’s not driving in my book. And as for talking: have you met Siri? I can just about get her to set a timer for a nap, but in every other instance she either misunderstands me or is unable to carry out the command. I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve made a LOT of money voicing ads and you’d assume it is because my accent is very intelligible. I must say Google is a lot better at parsing my spoken commands, but all it really does is handle search queries. That’s not the same as having a conversation.

I will admit I love the idea of a talking computer. You think I never watched Knight Rider? I can tell you which of the 26 cars used in total is used for any one scene! Or I could, when I was twelve. Not that anyone would listen, obviously. And ever since, I’ve enjoyed any type of show that features a sassy, speaking robot. Heck, I even liked Dr. Theopolis from Buck Rogers, and he’s basically an alarm clock with some Christmas lights. I’ve wondered, with all the brainpower of a six year old, what Rosie from The Jetsons did on her day off. Yes, I love talking robots. And artificial intelligence is great for narrow tasks, such as spotting the difference between a mole, a freckle and a cancerous growth on your back or predicting where you can find oil. It’s getting better all the time. But in 2015, there was no A.I. on this planet that could pass the Turing Test. None, Guaranteed. Except here, in a cave underneath the Qatari desert ... And the fucking thing used my sister’s voice!

We were back at the car, now that I had calmed down and decided not to go on a rampage looking for my sister.

“K-T, introduce yourself to agent 327.”

“Hello, Reginald. I am K-T. I will be assisting you during your mission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

“What’s the square root of 250?”

“That is 18.811. Why do you need this information?”

“Who started World War One?”

“World War One, the Great War, was triggered by the assassination of Archduke...”

“When did you last sing?”

“I do not sing. Do...”

“Who was the first female astronaut?”

“If by astronaut you mean an American, the answer is Sally Ride. If, however, you are referring to women of any nationality, it is cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Are we quite finished?”

“Why do you sound like my sister?”

“We all sound like someone. Except Brian Blessed.”

“Where can you get the best fries in Leiden?”

“Did you mean: Lijnden near Amsterdam or Leiden near Voorschoten?”

Strange. It mangled Voorschoten like an English speaker would. Vewerskooten.

“No, L-E-I-D-E-N.”

“Edelman. Waterstraat 82. Now open. It is usually not very busy at this time of day. Haven’t you got Google on your phone, agent?”

“See? It’s Google and Wolfram Alpha and all the rest of it,” I said to Miles.

“Yes, obviously. Why would I have that information in local storage?” answered the car.

“And some very clever scripting,” I added. Had Kate written some ad-libs for this thing?

Miles shrugged.

“I should hope so. But if that is what it takes, then why complain? This car can drive autonomously in any situation. It is armoured. Not to the highest standard, because it weighs enough as it is, but the glass is bullet proof and the bodywork is armour plated. The tyres are run-flat, but you can still do eighty. Kilometres, obviously. It has a redundant satellite link, but it can also access most Wi-Fi networks, given some time. And it’s got a bucketload of cool features. Here, give me your side arm.”

As I wasn’t even sure yet I’d take it across the border with me, I happily gave him the pistol. He put it in the glove box.

“Very clever. Bet you’re the first one to think of that,” I scoffed.

“K-T? Hide that for us, would you?” asked Miles. The box lid closed. I heard some whirring and then it opened again. It was empty.

“There, safe and sound in a lockbox behind the dash. No customs agent is going to find that. By the time he does, the car will have driven off or self-detonated. Oh, that’s one thing you should know: the battery pack is an experimental zinc-ion version, with a very special catalyst. Nice and small, but not very stable. It’s one reason we armoured the thing: so that a stray bullet doesn’t blow you up. But you can short it, and then it’s KABOOM. Hole in the ground.”

“Lovely,” said the car, in EXACTLY the understated, sarcastic tone my Kate would use if someone ever strapped a bomb to her arse.

“SHUT UP!” I barked, momentarily upset by the image of Kate tied to a bomb.

“Suspend verbal interface,” said Miles. “Martin, why do you hate my car? It is custom built for you!”

“Well, you should have thought harder about that. I’ll take the Trailblazer.”

“Pathfinder.”

“Whatever. This is complete overkill for a shopping run in downtown Riyadh and it can’t even get me there. Well, it can, in two days and without my luggage. No, I’ll stick with the Outlander.”

“Pathfinder.”

Miles fumbled in one of the pockets of his lab coat.

“Look, it comes with a watch. You’ll like this. It can track you wherever you go.”

He gave me an expensive looking smartwatch with a round screen. It was quite thick and looked like a Seiko for the sort of people who claim to dive to 200 metres on a daily basis. Or indeed ever. I don’t wear those, just as I don’t stuff socks in my pants or wear hair plugs.

“Put it on. The car can monitor your vital signs as long as you’re in range of your phone, or direct bluetooth range. You can ask it to come pick you up and...”

“Miles?”

“ ... it can even translate for you if you let it listen in on your...”

“Miles!”

“What?”

“I am not wearing a watch that tells this car when I am on the crapper and lets it listen in, too! You want me to strap a permanent tracking and listening device to my wrist and have myself followed by a hard disk on wheels? I don’t bloody think so, mate.”

“Martin, thi...”

“Carstairs, please.”

“Ma ... Okay, I had that coming. Listen, Carstairs: this car is not a stool pigeon. It is YOUR car. It only keeps information for as long as it needs to. And it won’t be sending all your data back to GHQ, stand on me. At the end of the mission you can review everything it has logged and leave only what you think we might need to improve its performance. After all, there’s no secret agent in the world who would want a car that can testify against him in a court of law. Does that help?”

“Can you change the voice?”

“Yes, but not during this mission. It requires a firmware update and I’m not sending one out when you’re out of my reach. Martin, it’s your own SISTER!”

“That’s exactly the point. Okay, say I take the car: how the hell do I reach Riyadh?”

“I told you: take it slow or find a wall socket somewhere along the way. It’s not as if you need another full charge: just the odd top-up. Have long breaks and leave it out in the sun, that helps too. Pack an overnight bag, just in case. Imagine the drive, man! 360 miles through the desert in this beauty. You should try the stereo system, it’s amazing! And it will drive for you, if you like. I seem to remember you’re not fond of long distance driving. With this thing you can take a nap in the passenger seat!”

I do love gadgets. I don’t allow myself too many of them these days, because I’ve had that phase in my life and I came uncomfortably close to becoming a hoarder. The day I threw out my VIC-20, my Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and Amiga 3000, plus about five hundred degaussed floppy disks and a 9-needle matrix printer the size of a small caravan, I had decided enough was enough, but only a year later the room I had cleared out was stuffed with new nonsense. And I kept the boxes, too!

Monique broke my habit, which is one of the good things she did for me. She helped me to see what these things were: toys, meant to fill a void in my life.

These days I’m quite the opposite: I use gadgets until they are so old they stop getting software updates. And I really, really want a 3D-printer, but not while they’re so clunky and everything they turn out looks a bit turd-like. And I do have an XBOX 360, but it’s a refurb and I generally wait until games are a tenner at the local game store. I’ll tell you what: Crysis 1 really is the dog’s bollocks, isn’t it? Sure, it’s seven years old, but it was sixty euro when it came out and for that kind of money I expect a hand job while I play! (Kate has indulged that particular fantasy, by the way. In exchange, she got to see a particular episode of Sex In The City while I returned the favour.)

“Yeah, okay. Fine. But if it conks out in the middle of the desert, I’m setting fire to it. Give us the keys.”

“You don’t need keys. It knows who you are.”

“Yes, but...”

“It knows.”

I left the underground facility half an hour before dark, so that I’d be able to get back on the asphalt on time. How in the world MI6 managed to build, supply and staff an underground facility miles away from anywhere and via a dirt road I shall never know. I think they had another exit via a much longer tunnel, but Miles said he wasn’t at liberty to tell me about it. I drove the Pathfinder, because he wanted to tinker with the Aston Martin some more and had to take out the rear seats. He could keep the damned thing as far as I was concerned, but once I had relented there was no going back.

That evening I rubbed petroleum jelly all over my chin and cheeks and then proceeded to dye my beard. I was worried I would stain my face, so I took it really slow. I’ve had my hair dyed before, for acting work and years ago, when the first grey hairs appeared when I was seventeen, but I had never done this myself. I should have asked Mel to do it at home, but even though she had allowed me to go, she wasn’t happy about it and we avoided the subject as much as possible.

I bought a cheap towel and a box of tissues at the supermarket in Villaggio before I started this metamorphosis, just in case I needed to clean up. I couldn’t help thinking of those scenes where a wounded agent retreats to a dirty truck stop bathroom, wedges a bullet out of his kidney with the tip of his knife, then does a complete make-over including a false moustache and wanders off to kill another day. Well, if that is level 100 for secret agents, or whatever the hell I was, then surely level one was trying to use Just For Men in a fancy hotel, after having the Cheesecake Factory deliver a Skinnylicious ™ White Chicken Chilli and sending my suit and shoes away for dry cleaning and polishing. But bloody hell, did it work! My scraggly, grey beard was now luscious and black! I trimmed it just a hair more (sorry) and stared in wonder at the quite Arabic-looking face blinking back at me in the mirror. I looked like a Disney villain!

Okay, it wasn’t quite Jafar, but it wasn’t me, either. I put a clean towel on my head and used my belt as an ‘agal’, the thick black rope Saudis use to keep it all in place. I wouldn’t let myself board a waterslide looking like this, never mind an airplane. Only my blue eyes gave it away, although some Arabs do have them. But with black sunglasses that problem disappeared, too.

I briefly considered shaving off the beard entirely, because prince Asim had ordered a British butler, not a Syrian assassin. But then my suit came back and I found that I looked like a Westerner again in my grey two-piece, especially if I left my head bare or wore my Homburg. I entertained myself by using vaseline as pomade for my moustache and I managed to get something of a twirl going. Now I was Hercule Poirot’s older brother! This would look amazing in another week or so. And so I stuck with the beard, because at the very least it would stop Westerners from gawking at me, and asking me ‘who I reminded them of’. The novelty of that had worn off ages ago.

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Carstairs of Arabia

Ron Dudderie

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