‘You were watching me then?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why? Why didn’t you just make yourself known? You could have joined in at the bank.’
‘I wanted to see what you would do.’ She stopped and tipped her ash into the waste-paper basket. ‘I admit… I was also interested in you. Are you Bobby’s girlfriend?’
Herrick turned from the screen. ‘I don’t do this, okay?’
‘So you are?’
Herrick shook her head. ‘I’m really not going to talk about it.’
‘But you were ill. There was something wrong. I saw you.’
‘There was nothing wrong. I was tired. I needed to eat. I do now, in fact.’
Eva revolved her bracelet on her wrist. ‘What are you doing? Let me see.’ She came to stand at Herrick’s shoulder. ‘Let’s look into the computer’s history.’
She pulled the keyboard towards her and began to work, eyes flicking from her hands to the screen. Then she straightened and stood back, allowing Herrick to see a list of web addresses. There was almost nothing for the last six months, but in November and December of the previous year someone had visited the official UN website and sites concerned with Palestine, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Herrick began to write down the pattern of research on a piece of Sammi Loz’s headed notepaper. She scrolled down the list of sites visited in the last three years, noting down about twenty of them.
‘Why’re you taking these notes?’ said Eva.
‘Force of habit,’ Isis replied. As she said it, her eyes drifted to the address printed at the bottom of the notepaper. She read it several times, then got up and walked to the door. ‘This is 6420,’ she called out. ‘This office is 6420!’
‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘It’s still listed in the lobby as Loz’s place.’
‘No, you don’t understand! In the bank this afternoon there was a document in which the Empire State was given as the address of the account holder – an American named Larry Langer who was a member of the Rahe-Loz group in Bosnia – the Brothers. We assumed he’d given Loz’s address for the account records. But he didn’t. He gave 6410 – not 6420. That means they could have another space on this floor.’
‘Well, let’s go and take a look,’ said Eva, picking up her bag.
The storm had moved closer and the windows and polished floors flickered with lightning. But in the corridor, as they checked the office numbers, there was only the sound of their footsteps and the feathery exhalation of the air-conditioning. As they rounded a bend into one of the main corridors on the northern side, the lift bell pinged and they heard the doors open. Both instinctively withdrew into the corridor they had just searched. Herrick noticed Eva’s eyes, straining to interpret the new presence on the deserted sixty-fourth floor.
They waited. A pair of heavily booted feet were approaching them – the solid, purposeful walk of a man, but a man who didn’t know the floor well. They heard him pause three times to look at the door numbers.
Eva peered round the corner. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, ‘I think he’s a messenger looking for an office.’ Then she called out. ‘Can I help you?’
‘No, I’m doing fine,’ came the reply. Herrick didn’t need to see the man to know who it was. He was just a few paces away now and there was nowhere she could possibly hide. She stepped out to join Eva.
The clothes were the same: a scarf was wound loosely round his neck; the faded khaki shirt looked in need of pressing and the blue jeans were sagging and creased. His only concession to the city was an unstructured dark blue jacket.
‘This is Lance Gibbons of the CIA,’ Herrick said in answer to an enquiring look in Eva’s eyes. ‘We met in Albania. Mr Gibbons is a great believer in the value of the “extraordinary renditions” that come from torture victims.’
‘Cut the crap, Isis. You know I was right about Khan.’
‘It hardly matters now,’ snapped Herrick. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’d ask you the same question, but I wouldn’t get a straight answer,’ said Gibbons.
‘We were looking over Dr Loz’s offices with the permission of the FBI,’ said Eva coolly. ‘Are you here for the same purpose?’
‘Mam, last time I saw this piece of work,’ he said, jabbing his finger an inch away from Herrick’s chest, ‘a fucking towel-head A-rab was about to stick a needle in my arm, which meant I didn’t know shit from sawdust for three days and nights.’
‘You deserved it,’ said Herrick, moving off in the direction of the lifts. ‘You didn’t see what your friends had done to Khan. I did. It was disgusting.’
‘So what are you doing here?’ Eva asked Gibbons.
‘Looking for someone.’
‘Who?’
‘None of your goddam business.’
‘Maybe we can help each other,’ said Eva. ‘Which office do you want?’
Gibbons said he didn’t have a number.
By now, Herrick was by a small corridor which ran from the main aisle to the south of the building. She looked up and saw a sign pointing to 6410.
‘Got it,’ she called out. At the far end they found the door. Herrick bent down and put her ear to it. There was no sound. Gibbons moved her aside with the back of his hand and put a card into the crack by the lock but after a minute of working had failed to open the door. He stepped back and hit the door twice with his boot just by the lock. There was still no joy. Then he moved to the other side of the corridor and prepared to launch himself at the door but was stopped in his tracks by a voice coming from the northern aisle.
‘Hey, you there! What in hell’s name d’you think you’re doing?’
The silhouette of a uniformed guard had appeared against the pulses of lightning. Herrick saw the outline of the gun, then the silencer fitted to the end of its barrel. But it was the rolling, lopsided walk of the man approaching in the gloom that made her feel as though she was seeing a ghost, for the second time that day. Before she could see his face the man said, ‘Big lorry jump all over little car.’
It was Foyzi.
Herrick struggled to understand what was going on, but Gibbons evidently had no such problem. ‘This is the little cocksucker I’ve been tailing since Egypt.’
Foyzi’s rubber-soled boots squeaked the final paces to the light, and his face came into view.
‘I saw you in the street buying ice-creams,’ she said stupidly.
Foyzi made a little bow to her. ‘Tenacious as ever, Miss Herrick.’ The New York accent had been dropped in favour of an almost Wodehousian English. ‘I always find opening a door is more easily achieved with the appropriate keys, don’t you?’ He felt in the top pocket of his uniform. ‘Here we are,’ he said, flourishing them. ‘Now, ladies, step aside and I will open the door for us all.’ He waved the gun in a small arc in front of them.
‘Mr Gibbons, perhaps you would like to lead the way.’
Inside Foyzi hit a switch and fluorescent light flickered behind five or six panels in the ceiling. They walked into an unfurnished, L-shaped space with a reception desk tucked into the angle. Everything but the steel-grey carpet was white. ‘Welcome to sixty-four ten,’ said Foyzi, prodding Gibbons in the back with the gun. ‘If you would move to the furthest door, I’ll introduce you to your hosts.’ Then he seemed to change his mind. ‘But of course, I’m forgetting the convention that CIA people never go anywhere without a gun.’ He patted down Gibbons, conjured an automatic from the back of his waistband and put it in his pocket. ‘How did security allow you into the building with that?’ he said with distaste. ‘And ladies, would you empty your purses over there.’
Herrick’s Apple Powerbook slipped noiselessly onto the desk, but not her phone, which remained in her pocket. Foyzi murmured something and set it aside, then began to sift Eva’s belongings, first examining her mobile phone, then a US passport and a piece of folded notepaper. He held it up to her.
‘It’s a medical prescription for my mother. She has cancer – her name is Rath.’
‘In Hebrew,’ said Foyzi, and placed the note in his top pocket.
He went to the door at the end, opened it and beckoned them to go through. Herrick saw a room mostly lit by candles. There was a smell of incense on the air and a faint sound of music – the Sufi chant Herrick had heard on the island.
Sammi Loz was bent at the centre of the room, working at his treatment. Karim Khan lay on the bed, wearing
