In the Evil Day

the wine, he thought. At the door, they shook hands.

‘I’ll make a call from here,’ said Kirkby. ‘Get things moving.’

60

…HAMBURG…

Anselm went to the basement and got a beer from the machine. Soon they’d take the machine away. The room was empty, the heating off, damp blistering the paint on a wall. No one used the place any more except to sneak a smoke, avoid going out into the chill. In the first years after his arrival, the room always had people in it, financial charlatans from the top floor, advertising people from the annexe, people drinking liquor and coffee, smoking, eating their packed lunches. Flirting. The truck had come to refill the beer machine every afternoon. He’d never lingered, nervous, hanging out, just got two beers, gone outside, drained them in minutes.

He sat on the formica-topped table, put his feet on a chair. The television in the corner was on, an old Grundig, the colour uncertain. Beyond midday and he was only on his first beer. What did this mean? He took a measured swig and lit a cigarette. Drink and smoke, the fatal, sweetest combination.

Constantine Niemand had a film of something terrible in Africa. He tried to sell it to Caroline Wishart and later she saw someone try to kill him.

Kael and Serrano sent Shawn to Johannesburg to look for papers, documents, anything that involved them. Shawn found a film too. Then he was murdered. Niemand was there, and then he had the film and the documents.

Lafarge were looking for Niemand and someone called Jessica Thomas.

Caroline Wishart wanted to connect Kaskis’ one-paragraph reference to a rumour about an Angolan village to the film Niemand showed her.

Anselm thought about San Francisco, about Kaskis calling from somewhere, a message on the machine:

A few days in Beirut, it’s on me, my grandpa’s money’s come through, to spend not on myself but in the interests of truth and justice. I need a witness, a reputable witness, but you’ll have to do. And a photographer. Got one handy? Footloose and fancy-free?

On the plane two days later, Kaskis was just himself, giving away nothing, you didn’t bother to question Kaskis, he told you what he wanted to tell you. It was a free trip to somewhere where there were always saleable stories to be found.

What had Kaskis said about Diab?

He’s a bitter man, a wronged man, the army done him wrong…

He couldn’t remember when Kaskis had said that. At the hotel in Beirut perhaps. Riccardi arrived after them, the morning after. Kaskis and Riccardi went for coffee. How much did Riccardi know about the job? Who was he there to photograph? Stills or video? Black and white? Colour? So much photographic equipment hung off Riccardi that people in the street had been known to point and ask: How much for that?

But surely Riccardi already knew when he arrived in Beirut? Kaskis would have described the job when he rang him in Ireland. Told him who, why, the point of the exercise.

There was no certainty of that. Riccardi often forgot to ask the most basic questions. He simply didn’t care. And Kaskis always had the this-is-your-commanding-officer-and-I’ll-tell-you-what-you-need-to-know air. Presumably that came from the army. He joined at seventeen, became a Green Beret, ended up in Delta Force. He didn’t talk about it much. Once he had said the army didn’t want you to go beyond a certain stage of maturity:

‘If you’ve got the brains to grasp that, then baby, it’s time to saddle up and ride. The ones who don’t, well, they’re kids forever. Playing this fucking wonderful game with really dangerous stuff. And I’m not talking just the grunts, the cannon fodder. There are kids right at the top-the fucking Pentagon’s full of them.’

Anselm stubbed his cigarette, tested the can for beer, wobbled it, drained it.

The television showed a heavily built man getting into a car, Secret Service protectors around him. The woman on television said:

In spite of strong rumours, American Defense Secretary Michael Denoon today continued to avoid declaring that he will next year seek the Republican Party nomination for the American presidency. Gerald McGowan reports from Washington.

A solemn-looking man came on, standing in front of the White House. He put his hands into the pockets of his black overcoat and said:

White House insiders are today saying that Secretary of Defense Michael Denoon is hours away from resigning his position to begin his late run for the presidency.

Since the collapse of the Gurney campaign, Denoon is said to have been urged to take the field by powerful interests. These include the US military, which he left twelve years ago as a much-decorated four-star general, and the Republican Party’s most powerful business group, Republicans at Work.

Anselm was on the stairs when he thought about the flight to Beirut. Business class. Free drinks. He had been drowsing, cabin lights dimmed. Kaskis had taken a photograph out of his briefcase, adjusted the overhead spotlight to look at it. An 8 x 10 print, a group of men, perhaps a dozen, posing like a team, standing, some squatting or on one knee. Young men in casual clothes, jeans, T-shirts, some baseball caps. He remembered signatures-they had signed across their chests with a broad-nibbed pen, a felt-tipped pen, not full names, first names. He remembered thinking some of the signatures were childlike, immature. He also remembered thinking they all looked like bodybuilders. The thick necks, the big, veined biceps.

Anselm went to his office and found a file. He took it into the humming workroom. Inskip was reading an airline passenger list.

‘When you’ve got a moment,’ said Anselm.

‘This’ll keep.’

Anselm sat down and wrote the name ‘Joseph Elias Diab’ on Inskip’s pad. ‘I need a US Army service record. National Archives and Records Admin database. They run something called CIPS, Centres Information Processing System. To get what’s called a NARS-5 record, you need a user ID and a password. Users are federal agencies. And you can only access the record groups used by the agency you represent.’

‘Naturally,’ said Inskip. He looked at the ceiling and rubbed his chin stubble. ‘Just sticks in the mind does it, this sort of stuff?’

‘Veterans Affairs are easiest. They’re allowed to see most things.’

‘I’m going to need some handholding here.’

Anselm found what he was looking for in the file. He wrote it on the pad. ‘The procedure’s here. Carla did this one a couple of months ago.’

‘Perhaps she could do it again?’

‘She’s busy. And you need to learn. The problem is the agency’s password changes every ninety days. No indication when this one was issued. Could be outdated. Very likely. Then you start from scratch.’

‘I love scratch. What’s the US Government’s view on such invasions?’

‘On conviction, death or worse.’

‘Ah, choice. The American way. With or without fries?’

Carla rolled into view, rolled from behind her partition on her chair. She was looking at Anselm, her head back, pale forehead free of hair, an unlined expanse of skin.

‘Falcontor,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready.’

He went over.

Carla had pages of notes in her clear, spiky handwriting.

‘It’s complicated,’ she said. ‘But what we seem to have is Serrano’s business accounts going back to 1980. There are many, many transfers into the main one.’

‘From?’

‘What you would expect. Caymans, Panama, Hong Kong, Netherlands Antilles, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Isle of Man, Vanuatu. The black money places.’

‘Big money?’