'Should I make more coffee?'
'… no bloody chance.' He waved at the pictures she had Sellotaped to the wall. 'Half my age, without possessions, with faith, without conscience, with the ability to justify strapping bloody 'martyrs' belts' round foot- soldiers' stomachs. Only a fool suggests I can understand him.'
'You're digging this weekend. That will be good for you.'
'So wise, Gloria, always so wise. You filed it, remember, the commentary from Moskovskly Komsomolets at the time of that obscenity of the school siege: 'Why are they always ahead of us? Why are they winning? Because they are at war, and we are just at work. It is time to realize that we, too, are at war.' I believe I quote correctly.'
'Don't you think, Mr Gaunt, you ought to have another coffee?'
'I'd like, thank you, a gallon of coffee.' He intoned,
' 'They are at war, and we are just at work.' And I'd like some tanks on Hamburg's streets.'
At a minor Customs post, north of the Czech town of Liberec and south of the Polish town of Zgorzelec, two officials slept and one staggered sleepily from the hut as the old saloon car, headlights bright, approached.
Because of the telex from Prague received at the hut two days before, the solitary Customs man gestured with his hand for the car to slow. It stopped under a high light. He motioned to the driver to wind down his window and the rock music blasted out – what his own kids played. There were five inside, two girls and three youths. The telex had said that Arabs should be checked, but had listed no name; nor had a photograph been faxed to the post. He asked for the passports. Two of the boys, flaxen-haired, languidly offered him their papers – Polish. The girls, one red-head and the other with a mauve streak, had Czech documentation. The fifth passport was from the back of the car. A man, early thirties maybe older and maybe younger, was sandwiched between the girls and gave him the German passport. He shone his torch into the interior, let the beam light on darker skin. He held the opened pages under the high light.
German citizenship. Date of birth, 1974. Place of birth listed as Colombo in Sri Lanka… Not an Arab.
Sourly, he gave the passport back through the window. Somebody's daughters, from Liberec,
Jablonec or Ceska Lipa, out for the night – without modesty but no doubt with condoms – with Polish boys and an Asian. Could have been his girls. These were new freedoms.
He stamped back to the hut. It had not said on the telex that an Arab might have hitched a lift, joined a car filled with youngsters, to cross the frontier. The Customs official had no reason to be suspicious of the German passport-holder crushed between the girls in the back of the car. Nor did he have reason to suspect that, when the car reached Zgorzelec, and parked at the back of the discotheque hall, the man would sidle into the night, away from the booming noise, and head for the railway station. He poured himself some soup from his flask and returned to his magazine.
'You have to believe it, Father, he will come.' The Bear had said it to him.
'What did the television say?' Timo asked him. 'Tell me again.'
'A siege in the Old Quarter of Prague. A man of the Russian mafiya finally killed by the police. Lies, of course.'
'But not a lie that one was killed.'
'One only, the television said. The lies were that he was Russian, a member of the mafiya. Father, they would lie on that.'
'If one was dead, which of them would it be?'
'Not the principal. Father, he will come.' The great paw of the Bear had settled on Timo's shoulder, and had squeezed reassurance.
'Call Enver. He should send the mouseboy here.'
He sat now with Alicia in the gymnasium of the school in Blankenese, sensing her nervousness. He could acknowledge that, through all the hours since he had met the young man from the warehouse in the Hammerbrook district – Regret cargo load 1824 has not been forwarded – he had given her little attention, his mind clouded by the import of what he had been told.
If he had not had the confidence of the Bear to stiffen him, Timo would not have been at the school that evening.
For good work in year nine and year seven, imitation parchment scrolls were to be presented to the best students. His girls were among them. They, with the rest of the favoured students of their classes, were at the front. He and Alicia sat with the comfort and wealth of the elite of Blankenese's community She had worried about what she should wear, what jewellery she should display, what cosmetics, what shoes were suitable. Before the Bear had spoken to him, he had ignored her concerns. Afterwards, he had gone through the wardrobes of dresses with her, had unlocked the safe with her jewellery and chosen for her, and the shoes, and he had pointed to the lipstick she should use. Timo Rahman was the pate of Hamburg, but he needed a man of brutish strength and limited intellect to soften nagging anxiety.
Their younger girl stepped forward, climbed the steps to the stage, had her hand shaken, was given the scroll, and Timo jagged a glance sideways and saw love for her daughter light Alicia's eyes – but the woman, the wife of the pate of the city, did not know whether she should clap, whether she should cheer.
They were peasants of the mountains. He did what no other father, whose son or daughter had gone forward, had done. Timo stood. His arms were above his head and his hands thundered together in applause.
He pulled Alicia to her feet. At that moment he cared not a fuck what other parents, the best of Blankenese, thought of them.
Last summer, with Alicia, the girls, the Bear and Alicia's aunt, he had flown to Tirana and then they had travelled in a fleet of Mercedes limousines along the rutted, broken roads to the north, guarded by the guns of his clan. On the fourth day of the vacation at the villa he had built above Shkodra, he had sent the women and girls to visit Alicia's family in their village. Watched only by the Bear, he had negotiated with those men who had travelled to meet him.
Matters of mutual co-operation. Intense men, they had stared around them with naked disapproval at the lavish trappings of the villa, had demanded prayer breaks, but had come with proposals. They had talked of transportation and safe addresses, the movement of weapons and the production of international travel documents: areas where he was strong and they were weak, or where he was weak and they were stronger. They had left, driven away by his people, before the return of the women and girls. Four days later, when his wife, her aunt and his daughters had travelled to see the site of his newest villa, where the foundations were already dug, the men had returned. The talk had been of money, what he would be paid and what would be demanded of him. At the end of that second day, Timo Rahman had shaken their hands and seen the fire in their eyes. By the shaking of hands he had pledged his word with the strength of the Canun, written down centuries before by Lek Dukagjeni, and their guarantee was on the word of their faith. He had gone into a world that was a clouded sky to him – right or wrong, with sense or idiocy – and he had made the deal. Now a man came – the Bear promised him. His elder girl went up the steps.
He stood again, pulled Alicia up. They were peasants from the mountains. He had come to
Hamburg with holes in his shoes, tears in the knees of his trousers and money to sustain him for a week.
Alicia wriggled free of his grip, and sat, her face flushed red with embarrassment. He saw the sneers, the little titters of amusement his enthusiasm made, and clapped harder.
A dosser stood under the street-light at the junction of Bevin Close and the main road, a woollen cap pulled down on his forehead and his coat collar up. Only a little of his face was visible to Davey, orange-coloured from the light, but what he could see of it was unshaven. The light caught his eyes, flashed on them.
The dosser stared up the length of Bevin Close and his attention seemed to be far down it, where the cul- de-sac opened out and gave room for vehicles to turn, to the semi-detached houses where Ricky lived.
Davey was careful, which was what Ricky paid him to be. He had been in the garage alongside his house to check the alarm on the car, then to satisfy himself that the sensors covering the garage interior were blinking red and alive. He was paid well to be careful of Ricky's security. When Davey turned from the garage, the dosser still stood there.
Then the man moved.
A little frown of surprise flicked at Davey's forehead.
No longer at the junction of the main road and the cul-de-sac, the dosser now walked in a slow, rolling stride
