Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish

Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish

Chapter 1

Carstairs sat at his desk high in the CIA building and studied the photograph that lay in front of him. "I don't like him, Bishop," he said crossly. "I don't like at all the choice they made for us in Cairo, I feel damn uneasy sending this man into Morocco alone. It's too important a job—there are seven lives at stake, damn it!"

His assistant, seated across the desk from him, said politely, "Cairo's always been reliable in the past, sir, is there some specific reason for all these 'damns'? I admit that Janko's moustache is rather too ornate for my taste, but otherwise—"

Carstairs was scowling. "You're overlooking his face, Bishop, the eyes, the mouth. He looks brash for a Moslem country, he looks arrogant. I realize he's the only person available at short notice who speaks Arabic but still—" His voice faded as his scowl deepened. "You know how vulnerable the Atlas group is, just one slip, one rash decision, one wrong person—" He shook his head. ''Suddenly after years of enmity Morocco and Algeria are establishing diplomatic relations and who knows what will happen, what nooses may tighten or—if you'll excuse the mix of metaphors—what hells could break loose for our Atlas group, especially if we're exposed. And now this."

Patiently Bishop tried again. "It could be a very poor photo, you know. A pity he's in Cairo and you can't see him or you might feel differently. I don't quite understand what's on your mind, sir."

"I don't either," growled Carstairs, "but it's a very clear photograph and this man Janko doesn't feel right to me. I realize we're stuck and there's no one else to send but I'll feel a hell of a lot better—given the look of him— if he could travel with someone, someone to keep an eye on him, to round out his image of tourist—he just doesn't look like a casual tourist. Someone who could dilute his personality, which strikes me as superior and abrasive, someone to keep him—"

"Non-brash?"

"My dear Bishop . . . ! "

"Sorry," Bishop said meekly.

Carstairs grinned. "All right, I admit I'm being woefully inarticulate but I can tell you what he needs: a Mrs. Pollifax."

At once Bishop understood, and was awed by Carstairs' cleverness. Carstairs tended to see things in pictures, and at mention of Mrs. Pollifax an unholy glee filled Bishop at such creativeness: he looked again at the photo on the desk, at the fierce black eyebrows, thick black moustache and haughty countenance of the man Janko, and he placed it in the company of cheerful, friendly Mrs. Pollifax—so innocent and trustworthy on sight—and he laughed. "I see what you moan precisely," he said. "Especially about the diluting. Emily would be a great leavening influence and she could patch up any PR gaffs that might get him into trouble."

Carstairs nodded. "This Max Janko may be a whiz at languages—apparently that's his specialty—but I doubt from the look of him if he has the slightest idea what the word tact means." His smile faded. "Unfortunately there's only one Emily Pollifax and we can scarcely ask Cyrus to lend us his wife to travel with another man."

A smile grew slowly on Bishop's face and very casually, with a touch of mischief, he said, "I happen to know that Cyrus left three days ago to see his new grandson in Kenya, which happens to be where his daughter and her doctor-husband live now . . . "

Carstairs stared at him. "Alone? Mrs. Pollifax didn't go with him?"

Bishop's smile broadened. "No sir."

"Why?" asked Carstairs. "Nothing wrong between them, I hope."

"As I understand it," said Bishop, "there has been a recent infusion of new grandchildren and they've decided to divide their responsibilities to the next generation before it exhausts them both. He'll be away for two weeks."

"Hmmmm," murmured Carstairs thoughtfully. "Leaving Mrs. Pollifax to tend her geraniums, I suppose." He was silent for a moment and then he nodded and snapped his fingers. "Let's go for it, Bishop, except—" He hesitated, frowning. He still found it ironic that an experimental group set up in '76 as a "checks and balances" experiment had continued unnoticed and unmolested all these years. It seemed a supreme example of unwieldy bureaucracy that once something was begun it developed a weight and a momentum of its own and was rendered invisible: it existed, therefore it was . . . He utterly believed in the Atlas group but it continued to amuse him that in this case the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing, even at Central Intelligence. He said, "I wonder how much she ought to be told? Do we tell her she'll be working for a maverick group, quite secret, called Atlas, and not, officially speaking, for the main arm of the CIA?"

Bishop said with a smile, "I think she might be relieved to hear that, sir. I had a very irate letter from her during the Iran-Contra hearings with innumerable quotes from the U.S. Constitution."

Carstairs smiled faintly. "Nevertheless we can't afford to let her know too much, it would be dangerous."

"It could protect her as well," pointed out Bishop.

Carstairs was silent, considering; reaching his decision he said crisply, "I don't think so. Basically this is a very simple reconnaissance trip. The greatest danger is that of exposure but since there are to be no personal contacts made during the trip there's small likelihood of that—so long as this Janko chap behaves himself," he added tartly.

"If Mrs. Pollifax can go, if she's available, it can be emphasized that she's working for a separate department, but anything more than that—" He shook his head.

Bishop said lightly, "On the theory that she may not currently trust the CIA but she trusts us?"

Carstairs smiled. "Our hands are clean—well, relatively speaking," he said dryly. "See if you can reach her by phone, Bishop, and ask if she can possibly leave on tomorrow's flight to Morocco to do a job for us, and if so— God help us if she can't—you'll knock on her door this afternoon and brief her."

"Delighted," said Bishop happily, "and if you'll excuse me now I'll race with appropriate haste to my phone, with fingers crossed all the way."

"A small prayer might help, too," Carstairs called after him but Bishop had already vanished into his office, the door slamming behind him.

* * * *

Mrs. Pollifax had begun her morning by cutting back a few of the geraniums in her new greenhouse but after clipping three of them she had found herself staring moodily out of the window. I haven't the slightest interest in doing this, she thought, and putting aside her garden shears she walked into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee and carried it to the dining table where she did her best thinking.

Something was wrong, she admitted, and she began to cautiously approach what it might be. She could find no regrets that she'd not flown to Kenya with Cyrus; after all, they had spent Christmas with her son Roger in Chicago, and New Year's with her daughter Jane in Arizona, and it had been very pleasant to return home, except that neither of them had expected Lisa's baby to arrive a month early and the news to reach them before they'd even unpacked their bags from Christmas.

Perhaps too many guest rooms had tired her, she thought, or perhaps it was simply the fact that it was January, and the skies unendingly gray, but neither thought produced any response, and impatiently she discarded both. Probing deeper she brought up a discovery that shocked her: she was bored—horribly, depletingly and dispiritingly bored.

Oh God, she thought, bored?

And at once she knew—as a part of her had known all along—what was missing in her life. It's been a whole year, she thought, have they decided I'm too old?