Anselm took the magazine to the study and sat behind the desk to read it.
From the first words, he knew that he had not written it. No matter how battered the brain, there was something in it that knew what it had created, and he had not created this. It was vaguely familiar but it wasn’t his.
He found what the woman was talking about, the village in Angola.
Nothing. It meant nothing. Why had someone told Caroline Wishart that he had been paid for writing the article? And given her his San Francisco address as the place the cheque was sent to?
He paged through the rest of the magazine. On the last page was an offer for back issues of the magazines and three others:
That was it, he knew the name, that was how he knew Bob Blumenthal. He pictured his face again. A cafe in San Francisco. In the afternoon. Long ago.
Anselm was looking for a cigarette when it came to him: he had written a piece for Blumenthal on the CIA and European intelligence services. That was what they talked about that day. In 1990. Blumenthal had rung him. Kaskis and Blumenthal went back a long way, Blumenthal had taught Kaskis at college after Kaskis left the army. Kaskis had written stuff for him.
Anselm thought about living in San Francisco, in Kaskis’ tiny apartment on the hill. Kaskis knew the people who owned the building, Latvians, friends of his family. Kaskis never spent more than a few days at a time in San Francisco. Anselm remembered him staying for a week once, that was the longest. They went out at night, went to bars where journalists hung out, drank a lot. Kaskis always had somewhere to go later. Someone he had to see before the night was over.
Anselm remembered the piece. It was published in
Why should he help this woman, this muckraker? Because he’d heard something in her voice. Perhaps it was a matter of someone’s life and death. He rang Inskip again, got connected to the London number. She was close to the phone. Was it a work number?
‘John Anselm,’ he said. ‘I found the article. A man called Paul Kaskis wrote it. He had the magazine pay me. He owed me money.’
A long sigh. ‘Paul Kaskis, do you…’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Oh. Shit. The name, I think I remember it, he was kidnapped with you…’
‘He was murdered in the Lebanon.’
Another sigh. ‘Well, thank you. I think I’m at the end of this road.
As a matter of interest, what was he doing in the Lebanon?’
‘He wanted to talk to an American soldier, an ex-soldier. A Lebanese-American.’
‘You wouldn’t remember his name?’
‘Diab. Joseph Diab.’
He hadn’t told Alex that. Why was he telling this woman?
‘Did you know what it was about?’
‘No. Paul never told you anything.’ Anselm’s eyes fell on the photograph albums on the bookshelf beside the door, three big leather-bound albums, he remembered looking at them when he was a child, Pauline pointing out people.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’d really appreciate being able to ring you if I get any further with this. Is that possible?’
Anselm hesitated. Then he gave her the W amp;K number. ‘Leave a message if I’m not there.’
He took the photograph albums from the study to the kitchen. He poured wine and opened an album. The pictures were in chronological order, little notes in ink under most of them identifying people by names and nicknames, giving places, dates, occasions. There was a photograph of Pauline and a young man sitting on the terrace. Fraulein Einspenner was standing behind them, the maid. She was young and beautiful. In the first album, the captions were in red ink. In the other two, they were in green, in Pauline’s hand.
There were pictures missing, taken out of their corners. The captions were crossed out and cross-hatched in green ink until they were illegible.
The phone rang again.
‘I feel I need company,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve had some news, I’m feeling a little…’
‘Come over,’ he said. ‘Can you do that?’
52
…VIRGINIA…
They walked in the day’s cold ending and stopped beside a pond, silver, sat on a wooden bench bleached white as bone by sun and rain and snow.
‘Got a smoke? I’m not allowed to.’
Palmer reached into his coat. ‘Allowed? Fuck, who’s running things here?’
They lit cigarettes, sat back. Smoke hung around them in the still air, reached the earth, curled. High on the wooded hill behind the pond a cluster of maples blazed amid the brown oaks, seemed to be sucking in the light.
‘Pretty spot,’ said the shorter man. ‘The prick’s hard to kill, is he?’
‘He’s quick.’
‘And they’re dead.’
‘Yup. Messy. I sent Charlie Price to sort it out. They told him they’d use pros next time.’
Three ducks came around a small point in the pond, ducks keeping close together, missed the mass exodus to warmer places, just the three of them left.
‘He’s been in the trade,’ said Palmer. ‘Now he’s riding shotgun. He drove this Shawn’s wife home, the arrangement was that he stayed for the husband to get back. I think he just lucked onto this.’
‘Shawn had the film?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well. A known quantity. Courier mainly. They say Ollie North used him.’
‘You wouldn’t want that to be the high point of your career.’
Palmer shot his cigarette butt towards the water. It fell well short, lay on damp leaf mould. ‘I gather he took Ollie. Like everyone else.’
Silence. The other man shot his butt. It almost made the water, died in a puddle.
‘So who would be using him?’
‘We’re checking.’
‘I was given to understand this history was history.’
Palmer put both hands to his head and scratched all over-back, top, sides. ‘Burghman was in charge, we can’t ask him. The film- well, that’s something else. No one knew about a film then.’
‘Not a huge cast of suspects.’
‘No. Trilling says Burghman told him, he thinks it was in ’93.
