that found the cream. You just come back when it's finished, whenever.'
A last pair of jeans and a sweater went in. No photographs in leather frames, nothing personal. 'The cat that found the cream'? Probably. Not very fair to show it because there was little enough cream in Ronnie's existence in the visa section. While she was packing the bag Polly had thought she walked tall for the first time since the collapse of the unit in London.
Two years' work there, hard and slogging study.
Satellite photos of every corner of Iraq's deserts pored over. Defectors' statements gutted, analysed, each word weighed. Businessmen from every corner of that wretched region who travelled to Baghdad had been met in hotel bars, had money shoved at them, and been pestered for descriptions of factories and chemical plants. Phone calls and emails intercepted and transcribed. All to answer the great question: were there, in Iraq, programmes for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction? Papers written. In Service tradition it was taught: Capability + Intent =
Threat. Had Iraq the capability or the intent to justify the wolf cry of realistic threat? Caution expressed, caveats and hesitations. Papers returned with red-ink scratchings obliterating the cautions that were embedded in the Service's work practices. Papers resubmitted with honesty seeping out from them.
Caveats and hesitations removed. What they wrote, by Service tradition, was supposed to exude
'provenance'. But provenance had died, and the team
– scattered to the winds – she assumed cursed themselves now for bending at the knee, for allowing valued practices – C+I=T – to be steamrollered and crushed.
She could remember the day when politicians, jutting their chins, had spoken of 'irrefutable proof' of the WMD programmes as justification for the tanks rolling in the sands: she had stood behind Frederick Gaunt's shoulder, had watched the television and heard his silence, and had known it would burst. So quiet when it had done, but a violence in his words she had never heard before. 'They wanted the fucking war. We gave them the fucking war – and our reward will be to be fucked by them.' The inquest, then the cull of the casualties of failure to find the weapons.
Polly Wilkins had been categorized as NBA by the investigators – No Blame Attached – and sent to Prague, but the message had been clear to her: all of the unit was contaminated by that failure. She was scarred by the inquest, poisoned by the failure. She checked her bag for her passport, ticket and euros.
She heaved it off the bed, grimaced, and went to call a taxi for the airport. Because she was the chosen one, elation gripped her.
In the city of Dresden, on their first visit to Germany, an elderly American couple waited for one of a line of public telephones in the square to come free.
That afternoon they had toured the opera house and the Kreuzkirche, then crossed the Augustus-brucke to trawl the galleries of old masters' works in the Zwinger houses. Next they would visit the Hofkirche in the Theaterplatz. They needed a telephone to ring their hotel to confirm a booking for the morning, car and driver, to travel out of the city to the Pillnitz Palace and take them later to Meissen where they would buy porcelain for shipment to Chicago.
They stood, Dwight and Janet, behind a young man. He had dialled, and now he waited for an answer. Always the difficulty at such a time, which phone to target. Which caller would take the least time? They had chosen to stand behind this young man, slight and with bowed shoulders. He spoke.
They could not hear him. But even if he had raised his voice they would have been too polite to listen
– and, anyway, their knowledge of German was scant.
She had her thumb to keep the guidebook open at the page for the Hofkirche and together they matched the view of its towering spire across the Theaterplatz with the photograph.
In front of them, the man hooked the phone back, turned, smiled politely and gestured that the booth was now available. Such a charming-looking young man… Her husband would not have done it -
Dwight had the shyness that age brought – but Janet was bolder. Would he, please, show them how to operate the payphone? She gave him their hotel-room card with the number they needed, and coins. He did it for them, waited until the call was connected with Reception, then passed the receiver to her. And he was gone.
It made them both feel good, as they crossed the Theaterplatz, to have met a young man so considerate.
'Where do you think, Dwight, that guy was from?'
'Couldn't say, could have been from anywhere.'
The office worker was brought by the Bear to Timo Rahman.
In the life of the pate no deals were too small, none was unworthy of his attention. He had come from the yard where he owned the fleet of haulage lorries that carried loads across Europe, legal and contraband, and had arrived at a site on the Elbe side of St Pauli where the old building had been flattened. Bulldozers worked there and shifted aside the mess of concrete, wire and rubble. He had a share, thirty-three and a third per cent, in the hotel to be built on what was now a hole. Dust swirled round him and he wore an orange hard hat jauntily. He would move on from there to the fruit, vegetable and flower market at the Hauptbahnhof where money was paid him for the right to set up a stall. The haulage business brought him tens of thousands of euros a year; the hotel would earn him millions on completion; the stalls were only worth hundreds. Attention to details, whether big or small, was the cornerstone of Timo Rahman's life.
He stood with an architect and the site manager and watched the crawling machines eat at the debris, and he saw the Bear bring the boy. The boy, a cousin's son, would have owned only one suit, and one pair of shoes fit for an office worker, and he walked with great care through the dust clouds, and maybe his shoes would be scratched and certainly his suit trousers would be saturated with the floating dirt.
Timo Rahman broke away from the site manager and the architect.
The boy reached him, stood in his presence and the nerves showed.
Timo Rahman stared out at the bulldozers. It was not for him to show anxiety or any great interest in a messenger who was only the son of a cousin. The demand for news of the lost cargo had screamed at him in the night, had been with him in the days. His casualness was expert as he made the boy wait, then turned to him.
'Again it is you. What matter of home furnishing is there for my interest?'
The boy stuttered, could not be heard.
'Speak up, boy. Shout.'
The boy sucked the dust and air into his throat, coughed, then shouted, 'My manager in the shipping section ordered me to report to you. He has received a telephone message concerning a cargo from Ostrava, in the Czech Republic.'
'I know where my factory is. And you have no reason to fear me.'
'He instructs me to tell you that a part of cargo load 1824 is en route to Hamburg. The time of delivery to the warehouse is uncertain, but it will be within two days.'
'Thank you for bringing such a small matter to my attention. Sometimes you are in the showroom and sometimes in the office, and you should be a credit to the company you serve. I think your suit is damaged by coming to this place. Replace it.'
He took a note from his wallet, of sufficient value to purchase a clerk's suit and a pair of shoes in any clothing shop on the Steindamm, folded it carefully and slipped it to the boy. His generosity would be remembered rather than the message haltingly delivered. He told the boy with firmness that he should be careful when going back across the site, and dismissed him. Long ago Timo Rahman, who was the pate of Hamburg, had learned that a wall of fear protected him, but that kindness generated absolute loyalty among his people. He turned to the Bear.
'He comes… He has evaded them. Already he has proven himself to be a man of quality. If it were known that I assisted him then the wrath – anger and fury – of the world is turned against me. Why do I do these things? They would spit in my eye and break my bones if it were known what help I shall give. Why? I am a little man, I am a peasant from the mountains of Albania. I am sneered at, but not to my face. Those who know of my origins despise me… The time will come. My time.'
He thought the Bear understood not a word that he said, but the man's head nodded vigorous agreement.
