“The Iraqi government doesn’t always see the point of a free press.”
Evans touches his chin with a long index finger. He has feminine hands, which remind Luca of a girlfriend he once had. Penny, that was her name. They shared a bedsit in Paris for six months. When she orgasmed she used to call out her own name, which either made her completely narcissistic or so unsure of herself that she needed reassurance.
“I’ve been asked to review your status here, Mr. Terracini.”
“My status?”
“Why have you come to England?”
“I’m here to see my commissioning editor at the Financial Herald .”
“You’re working on a story?”
“Yes.”
Evans taps at his wrist as though checking that his watch is working.
“You left Iraq in a hurry.”
“I left Iraq as instructed by the Iraqi police and the US Embassy.”
Evans taps again. “It seems the Iraqis may want you back.”
Luca smiles wryly. “You and I both know that the British government is not going to extradite an American journalist back to Baghdad.”
“You can be denied entry to the UK.”
“On what grounds?”
“Undesirable activities.”
There is a knock on the door. A uniformed Customs officer whispers a message to Evans. The door closes on a heavy spring. Luca is alone again.
Opening the water, he sips it thoughtfully. The English are so polite yet Hollywood is always portraying them as fiendish villains. Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, Charles Dance. Jeremy Irons. The lip-curling sneer, the cut-glass accent-it is just another cartoonish stereotype, of course, like the amusing Indian, the arrogant Frenchman and the inscrutable Asian.
Luca’s father loved the English poets. Donne and Blake were his favorites, but he didn’t like Wordsworth, who he said was a rock star poet, famous in his own lifetime, as if that were his worst crime.
More time passes. Luca closes his eyes and tries to doze. Daniela will be through the airport by now. She’ll call Gooding. He’ll pull strings.
The door opens. It’s not Douglas Evans this time. Two airport police officers escort Luca along stark corridors and through swinging doors until he emerges into the arrivals hall. Daniela and Keith Gooding are waiting. Gooding gives him a bear hug. Their bodies don’t fit well together.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone,” Gooding says. “Daniela wanted me to call out the Queen’s Guard.”
“I inspire loyalty.”
Daniela shakes her head. “You attract trouble.”
6
The cafe has three computer screens at the rear of the far wall, squeezed between shelves of canned goods, breakfast cereal and soap powder. Internet access is four pounds an hour. The Bangladeshi owner, Mr. Rahman, has three unmarried daughters and has already quizzed the Courier about whether he needs a wife.
Ibrahim is twenty minutes late, sweating profusely. Big pores, he explains. A bad diet, thinks the Courier.
Coffee is ordered, double espressos with the consistency of tar.
“Why haven’t you found the notebook?” Ibrahim asks.
“Maybe it doesn’t exist or the ex-soldier threw it away. He died slowly. I gave him every opportunity to tell me.”
Ibrahim grunts and spoons four sugars into his coffee. Across the road, through a first-floor window, he notices a girl making a bed. She’s wearing a black skirt and a blue apron. Something about maids, he thinks. He once offered a hotel housekeeper three hundred pounds to sleep with him. A Filipino girl. She got offended. It was more than she earned in a week. Foolish pride.
“Are they ready?”
“They’re boy soldiers.”
“They can still be ready. Soldiers or dogs, they all obey.”
Ibrahim studies him for a while. He expected more of the Courier. Average height, average looks-only his eyes are predatory. Normally, they communicate via internet cafes, logging into an email account. Instructions are left as a draft message in the draft folder: a message that is never sent. Untraceable.
The Courier returns his gaze and Ibrahim looks down, touching the collar of his shirt. Outside a long-legged woman, dressed in black, is buying fruit from a stall. She steps around a couple sitting on the curb sharing a bottle, a beggar on one corner, a drunk on the next, invisible to her.
Ibrahim can feel his heartbeat increase as the caffeine and sugar fire up synapses in his brain.
“The operation is brought forward.”
“I don’t have the materials.”
“They’ll be provided.”
“The payment is double.”
Ibrahim mumbles in agreement.
“And the notebook?”
“If it falls into the wrong hands, we clear the accounts.”
“How long will that take?”
“A keystroke.”
7
Rowan likes the old Mercedes. The smooth leather bench-seat in the back is perfect for sliding across when they turn corners. Elizabeth keeps telling him to sit still and buckle his seat belt.
“This is the way to Granddad’s house,” he says, recognizing his surroundings. “You said you were going on a venture.”
“An ad venture,” she corrects him.
As they near the house, Ruiz pauses at a set of lights.
“There’s Polina,” says Rowan, pointing out of the window. Elizabeth catches a glimpse of the nanny in a smart VW Golf that crosses the junction and disappears from view.
“Maybe she’s visiting Granddad,” says Rowan.
“I don’t think she knows Granddad.”
The electronic gates glide open and stutter to a stop, revealing a long, sweeping driveway and verdant lawns that slope down to a pond. Ruiz notices the security cameras and broken glass embedded in the perimeter wall. How the other half lives: the rich and the anxious.
As the Merc pulls up in front of the main house, Alistair Bach emerges from inside and jogs down the steps. Fit for his age, with teak-colored forearms and a full head of hair, he hoists Rowan aloft and holds him giggling and kicking above his head.
