then I went to the Balkan desks, now I do Guantanamo. I've heard every goddamn accent there is – Russian, Polish, North Korean, Serb, Bosnian and Croat, Yemeni, Egyptian, Saudi and Kuwaiti. I got accents coming out of my ass. The Brit I had in, he spoke with the same accent as the taxi-driver.'
'Did he now?'
'To me, it was the same accent – then I got sort of scared at what I was looking at…'
With good cause. Lovejoy's hands had tightened on the wheel.
Little parts of three lunchtime lectures seeped into his mind. A psychologist had said: 'I urge you to look elsewhere. Where? For quality, for ability, for the best – because it is those young men that the lieutenants of bin Laden search for.' A Russian counter-intelligence officer had said: 'Somewhere, in his psyche or his experience, there will be a source of hatred. He hates you and me and the society that we serve.' A scientist had said: 'We start with a suitcase. Any suitcase of a size that a man or woman uses for a week's stay in a hotel…' Scared with good cause. He remembered the stunned quiet in that room at Thames House, the day before. A man who had the skill to defeat the interrogation process was a man who was owed respect… Funny thing, respect. It was often churned out for an old enemy – respect for a Rommel, or for a Vo Nguyen Giap, or for the Argentine pilots in the south Atlantic – but he had never heard respect given to the new enemy. On any floor of Thames House he would not have expected to hear of respect for a suicide bomber, or for a fighter in the new order's army. If an enemy was not shown respect – given only the status of a pest – that enemy presented increasing danger.
'Do you have the tapes of the interrogations, the Brit and the taxi-driver?'
He saw the head nod.
'How long have you got, Mr Dietrich?'
'I got till yesterday – and please call me Jed.'
The rain on the windscreen had come on heavier. 'You travelled light – have you brought winter clothes?'
'I got authorization, and I went out of Gitrno, like a bat out of hell.
I know if the Bureau and the Agency had gotten their act together, I'd have been called back. This could bring down empires, could wreck big careers… but, for the moment, it's mine and I'm keeping it. I'm going to the end of the road, Mr Lovejoy, and -'
'Michael, please.'
'- and if I'm wrong, I will be fed to the crows. And if I'm right, probably the same. I will not win a popularity contest. I don't give a fuck.'
Lovejoy took his mobile from his suit jacket and rang Mercy. She would have been upstairs, making the beds for the kids, coming that night. He told her he would be away, apologized, then asked her to dig out the sweater his daughter-in-law had given him two Christmases back, a size too large and never worn, and the old green waxed waterproof coat he hadn't used for five years. He said he'd be by for them in an hour, but would not be stopping. Then, steering with one hand and locking the wheel with his knees when he changed gear, he thumbed through the contacts book that was filled with names and numbers. He tapped out the digits on the phone and made the appointment he needed.
After two hearings, the professor of phonetics at King's College, London University said, 'Well, you're wrong. I'm sorry to disabuse you. It's not a matter of argument, but a fact. The accents are not from the same place. What you have called Tape Alpha, the Briton reading Pashto, is quite different to a trained ear from Tape Bravo. I regret any disappointment that may cause you, but facts are facts. Tape Alpha is Birmingham, with only marginal similarities to Tape Bravo.
Tape Bravo is the Black Country. Now, you'll have to excuse me, I have a tutorial.'
They were out on the street, hurrying through the sluicing rain across the car park, and the American was struggling into the old waxed waterproof coat.
Lovejoy said, 'Don't look so bloody miserable. The Black Country is not at Kandahar, or Peshawar, or in the Yemen. Forget that pedantic buffoon. The Black Country is on the immediate north-west boundary of the city of Birmingham. You did well. Fifteen miles from Birmingham, maximum. You did very well.'
He stood in the doorway, had pressed the bell and waited for it to be answered.
The maid, a Filipina, faced him.
Eddie Wroughton walked past her, went into the sitting room. The Belgian woman was watching a video in her housecoat and painting her nails in a cerise that matched the lipstick.
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a juice from the fridge. For a man who was rated clever, intelligent and cunning, he had taken a giant risk in returning to the villa in daylight, when spying neighbours and gossiping servants would see him. Three times he had tried to ring Juan Gonsalves and three times he had been told that Mr Gonsalves was 'in a meeting', and would get back to him.
Wroughton's mobile had not rung.
From the kitchen, he heard the shopping instructions being given to the maid. There was an officer serving in Riga, Penny, who had his photograph beside her bed. She had told him of the photograph in one of her many unanswered letters. He had no thoughts of Riga, or of the risk, only of the agronomist's wife. He heard the front door close.
If his friend, Gonsalves, had returned his calls Wroughton would not have been in the agronomist's kitchen, would not have been frustrated into taking the risk. He wondered whether the paint on her nails was dry, whether the lipstick on her mouth would smudge and run. His name was called, not from the living room but from the bedroom.
He craved to erase the humiliation of the lobby below the Agency's floor.
His shoes and clothes were scattered over the tiled floors of the kitchen and the living room and he was naked when he reached the bedroom, except for his tinted glasses. He hated his eyes to be seen: they might betray his humiliation.
Between patients, the receptionist brought Bart a printout of the extension contract offered him by the real- estate company.
He had won.
The offer was for an eighteen per cent reduction in monthly payments.
That was victory.
When she'd gone out, as he waited for the next patient, Bart surprised himself: clumsily, he danced a little jig. He hopped from foot to foot, in tune to the whistle from his lips. He had won the victory by his boldness – Christ! He thought, as he skipped, of the many who had walked over him: in particular, Eddie bloody Wroughton – not that he would gain his freedom from Wroughton, but the victory was a moment of success to be savoured.
The German patient spoke shamefacedly of snoring problems; Bart spoke of lymph-node complications, the patient's wife spoke of the disturbance in her night's sleep; Bart spoke of a consultant who was a very decent Greek at the ear, nose and throat section of the King Fahd Medical City. They were relieved and grateful.
'I'll make the appointment, Mr Seitz, I'll take care of everything.
Leave it to me. You didn't tell me your business in the Kingdom.'
'I took early retirement from the Luftwaffe. Now, I train air-traffic controllers for the Saudi Air Force.'
Bart wrote up his notes. 'Do you now? That must be fascinating.'
'Complete chaos, it blows my mind.'
Never looking up from the notes, with studied casualness, Bart asked, 'What in particular do you find stressful about your work?'
He was a worm at the core of an apple – victory on his rent or not, he was still Eddie bloody Wroughton's man.
Caleb rode with Hosni. He sensed the wind slackened, but the smell was worse. Fahd's body was bloated by the sun's heat, and the wind carried to him the stench, sweet and sickly. He remembered the smell of the bodies in the trenches after the big bombers had gone over.
The sand grains were plastered round the old Egyptian's eyes.
They were dulled as if the life was going from them, and Hosni's head never turned to him. He rode with him for kindness. He thought of how it must have been when the missiles had come down.
And how it would have been, in a half-light, when the camels had scattered, when Hosni's own had stampeded, its passenger strapped on, shaken, jolted, deafened, and not knowing. From a past life, a memory surfaced… There had been an old man who walked beside the canal, sunshine or rain, with a stick, and the kids had
