‘Don’t be so fucking pious. You think this is an exclusively American vice? Give me a break, Isis. You Brits have been torturing people all over the goddam empire for a couple of hundred years. Hey, you even used those methods on your own citizens in Northern Ireland – bags over the head, sleep privation, beatings. And as long as the people were safe, they didn’t want to know about it.’
She exhaled heavily. ‘Torture and internment didn’t stop the IRA. In fact, there’s a good argument that the Peace Process only happened once those things had been abandoned. I didn’t say we were perfect, but I know that if we start pulling people’s fingernails out now we lose a sense of what we’re fighting for.’
‘The moral high ground, et cetera, et cetera.’ He lit a cheroot and blew a stream of smoke through the crack in the window. ‘You know about the guy who planned to crash a dozen airliners into the Pacific? He was arrested in the Philippines and after intensive interrogation he told them what was going down, and the whole goddam cell was detained. Maybe they broke a few bones on the way, but what’s that compared to the people they saved, the vast numbers of Americans who aren’t grieving because some nut says their lives offend the Prophet’s teaching? You know what? We should go further. Every time they attack us, we should go after them, take the fight to every goddam mosque, every meeting held by every crummy imam and ayatollah, and if they don’t get the point with a few smarts, we’ll show what a little instant sunshine can do. It’s about power, and using that power to dissuade.’ He swept his hand at the street and the teeming life ahead of them on the Boulevard of National Heroes. The evening volta had begun, a procession of people walking up and down in the dusk, admiring each other’s babies in a formal ritual found all over southern Europe. It seemed to speak of an ordered civil society. ‘The only reason I can park up and talk to you is because those people know this is a US Embassy car and inside there’s a guy with Lieutenant-Colonel Uziel Gal’s finest invention on his lap.’ He touched the sub-machine gun through the knapsack. ‘Otherwise they’d strip the car and take you away.’
‘What happens if you torture that man and get the wrong answers? What if you’re asking the wrong questions?’
He smiled. ‘ We are not going to be hurting anyone. We don’t have any control over what happens in the state prisons here. It’s like Colombia’s baby brother. Everyone’s corrupt, the gangsters are running the politicians, the police, the judges – everything. They sell their neighbours’ children into sex slavery and when the kids get pregnant the gangs take the baby and put it to work for a living in the arms of some beggar. America doesn’t run Albania, Isis. We got a toehold in the heart of darkness, that’s all, and we use it to try to protect our own people.’ He paused. ‘We should have a drink back at your hotel and talk some more about this. There’re things you should understand.’
Her first instinct was to say no, but then she thought there was every possibility of Gibbons getting drunk and talking about Khan. Besides, she wanted to see Khan again and she would need Gibbons to get her in.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Yeah, why not?’
They passed through the lobby, Herrick drawing sullen, hungry looks from the knot of bodyguards, and went to the bar where Gibbons ordered whisky and a Diet Coke which he drank separately, downing each in one before Herrick had touched her glass of Albanian white. Another full glass of whisky followed and they went to the terrace and sat down, where Herrick recognised a piece of Schubert playing in the background. One or two of the evangelists were still earnestly hunched over lemonades. How odd, she thought, that in one part of town Americans were standing by as a man was tortured, while in another they were preparing a mission to convert the faithless masses. She made the point less harshly to Gibbons.
‘Before you get too self-righteous, remember the British in India – missionaries and massacres. The sub- continent was virtually enslaved to the British Raj.’ He paused and made a conciliatory gesture. ‘You’re a good person, Isis. I know your type from college. You’ve got genuine, honest to God goodness at your centre and, like all those people I knew, you believe in the healing power of liberal argument.’
She smiled a little vulnerably. ‘Well, you have to believe in something, Lance.’
‘Maybe we do, but belief doesn’t work here. You got to see this as a vacuum. Since the communists fell, every goddam religion and ideology has been trying to fill it. That’s why there’re Christian evangelists in the mountains with a Bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other, and why every kind of shady Muslim charity came here and started building mosques. But these people don’t give a shit about either of them.’ He drank the whisky, eyes patrolling the tables on the terrace. Then he clutched his belt. There was a faint buzz. ‘Hey, that’s my phone going. I better make the call.’
‘That’s fine. I have a couple of calls to make, too.’
‘Don’t you get lost,’ he said, and vanished into the gardens in a conspicuously clandestine manner.
Herrick dialled Harland’s mobile.
‘Who’s that with you?’ he asked.
‘Where are you?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Who is he?
‘The guy from the US Embassy.’
‘There are some developments,’ he said. ‘One, you can’t use the phone in the hotel, but I imagine you already knew that. Two, my charge has gone missing. Probably nothing to worry about, but I need to find him. He said the consignment you inspected this afternoon is much more important than anyone imagined. In a conference call to head office from the Embassy he blurted this out and now the MD is really interested. They’re getting back to me. Meantime, you’re to find out everything you can. Any movement of the consignment from the warehouse and they want to know about it.’
‘Just like that?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘I’ll do my best, which in the circumstances won’t be much. How’s the back?’
‘Comes and goes. Your man’s returning to the table. I’d better hang up.’
Out of the corner of her eye, in the darkened part of the terrace, she saw Harland get up from a table and walk to the dining room door, which she knew could be used to bypass the terrace. He was no longer bent double, but he was moving stiffly.
Gibbons flopped down beside her again. ‘Hell, I thought I had more whisky than that. Isis, you been sneaking my booze?’ He ordered another. ‘So where were we?’
‘What’s going to happen to Khan?’ she asked.
‘That’s all you ever ask.’
‘Well, we would like to talk to him in slightly less threatening circumstances. Maybe he would tell us more. ’
‘He’ll tell us.’
‘Then what will happen to him? Where will he be tried?’
‘Who the hell cares?’ He drank some more and looked at her with sudden sharp focus. ‘Forget about Khan. We just had word from London. I guess they told Milo Franc that you were a royal pain in the arse. They sent you here to get you out of the way. He talked to Collins, then a guy named Vigo, and he said you had no authority whatsoever. The way you threw your weight around has made Franc awful pissed. He said to tell you that you should write your report and get the hell out of Tirana. He doesn’t want to see you again.’ He laughed. ‘Hey, have another drink for chrissake, you’re making me feel awkward.’
‘Vigo spoke to Franc?’
‘Yeh, Vigo, he knows a lot of our guys at Langley.’
‘I’ll take that drink,’ she said, brightening. ‘It’s a relief not to have to go to that place. I don’t know how you stand it.’
‘Goes with the territory,’ said Gibbons in a manly, stoic way.
They drank while Herrick listened to Gibbons’ theories about the lack of car mechanics in Albania and the fact – according to him – that no one was able to read a map because the communists had banned them for forty years. She was amenable, smiled a lot, and was certainly guilty of implying that things might develop further that evening. But just past nine o’clock he leapt up and said. ‘Got to leave you, Isis. Date at the Valleys of Fire.’ He said it as if it was a film title.
‘What’s that?’
He looked down at her without a trace of humour. ‘A place where questions are asked and answers are given. I’ll check in tomorrow. Hey, why don’t we do dinner at Juvenilja?’
He navigated a pretty straight course through the tables of Tirana’s underworld and hopeful reformers, which
