The last meal with Abdallah had been eaten in silence. The food was delicious, as always. Abdallah had smiled his inscrutable smile as he ate slowly and systematically from one side of his plate to the other. His family were, as usual, not present. It was just them, Abdallah and Tom, and a silence that seemed to dominate. The servants disappeared too, once the fruit had been served. The candles had burnt down and the only light came from the big terracotta lamps on the walls. Abdallah had eventually got up and left him with nothing more than a quiet good night. In the morning, Tom had been woken by a servant and collected by a limousine. When he got into the car, the palace seemed to be totally deserted.
He had not looked back, and now Tom O’Reilly was standing on a corner on Upper East Side, clutching an envelope in his hand. The unfamiliar uncertainty made him anxious, almost frightened. The terrifying eagle on the postbox looked as if it was about to attack. He put down his small suitcase.
He could, of course, open the letter.
He tried to look around without drawing attention. The pavement was teeming with people. Car horns hooted in irritation. An old woman with a lapdog on her arm bumped into him as she passed. She was wearing sunglasses, despite the grey skies and the drizzle in the air. On the other side of the street, he noticed three youths talking animatedly. Tom thought they looked at him. Their lips were moving, but it wasn’t possible to hear what they were saying above the noise of the city. A girl smiled at him when he met her eyes; she was pushing a pram and was lightly dressed for the cool weather. A man stopped just beside him. He looked at his watch and opened his newspaper.
Don’t be paranoid, Tom reassured himself, and stroked his chin. They’re just normal people. They’re not watching you. They’re Americans. Just ordinary Americans and I am in my own country. This is my country and I’m safe here. Don’t be paranoid.
He could open the envelope.
He could throw it away.
Maybe he should go to the police.
With what? If the letter was illegal, he would be investigated and confronted with the fact that he had actually brought it into the country. If it was OK and Abdallah had been telling the truth, he would have betrayed the man who had looked after him for so many years.
He slowly opened the outer envelope. He pulled out the one inside, with the back facing up. The letter was not sealed, only glued down in the usual way. There was no sender’s address. He froze as he was about the turn the envelope over to see who the addressee was.
What he didn’t know wouldn’t harm him.
He could still throw the envelope away. There was a rubbish bin only a few metres along the street. He could throw the letter away, go to his meetings and forget the whole thing.
But he would never be able to forget it, because he knew that Abdallah would never forget him.
He resolutely dropped the letter into the blue postbox, then he picked up his suitcase and started to walk. As he passed the rubbish bin, he scrunched up the outer envelope with no name on it and dropped it into the bin.
There was nothing wrong with posting a letter.
It was not a crime to do a friend a favour. Tom straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. He would try to wrap up the meetings as quickly as possible and catch the early-evening flight to Chicago. He wanted to get home to Judith and the kids. He had done absolutely nothing wrong.
He was just terribly tired.
He stopped at the pedestrian crossing and waited for the green man.
Three taxis were hooting furiously, quarrelling about the inside lane on Madison Avenue. A dog barked loudly and wheels screeched on the asphalt. A little girl howled in protest when her mother pulled her by the arm to stand beside Tom. She gave him an apologetic smile. He smiled back, full of understanding, and took a couple of steps out into the road.
When the police reached the scene only a few minutes later, the witnesses all told different stories. The mother with the little girl was almost hysterical and not of much help when it came to establishing what had actually happened when the big middle-aged man was mowed down by the green Taurus. She just hugged her daughter tight and cried. The man in the Taurus was at breaking point too, and could only sob something about ‘suddenly’ and ‘crossed on the red man’. Some of the pedestrians just shrugged their shoulders and mumbled that they hadn’t seen anything, while they sneaked looks at their watches and rushed off as soon as the police let them go.
However, it seemed that two witnesses were absolutely certain. One of them, a man in his forties, had been standing on the same side of the street as Tom O’Reilly. He could have sworn that the man had staggered and, without waiting for the green man, had just tumbled into the road. A sudden turn, thought the witness, and nodded sagely. He was more than willing to give his name and address to the overwhelmed policewoman, he said as he glanced over at the body lying motionless in the middle of the road.
‘Is he dead?’ he asked quietly, and was given a nod in confirmation.
The other witness, a younger man in a suit and tie, had been standing on the other side of 67th Street. He gave a description of events that was remarkably similar to the first man. The policewoman also noted his personal details and was relieved to be able to reassure the distraught driver that it all appeared to be a terrible accident. The driver started to breathe more evenly and some hours later, thanks to the clarity of the witnesses, was a free man again.
Not much more than an hour after Tom O’Reilly had died, the place had been cleared. His body was swiftly identified and driven away. Traffic flowed as before. The remains of blood on the asphalt did make the odd passer- by wonder for a moment, but a shower around six in the evening washed the road clean of the final remains of the tragedy.
XVII
‘Who did you get the idea from?’
The policeman who was sitting in front of the monitor in the gym at the police HQ and who had spent more than a day and a half going through footage that showed nothing other than an empty corridor stared at Adam Stubo with scepticism. ‘It’s not logical,’ he added in an aggressive tone. ‘There can’t be anyone who would think that something interesting was recorded after the woman disappeared.’
‘Yes,’ replied Bastesen, Chief of Police. ‘It is completely logical, and it’s a huge blunder on our part that we didn’t think of it. But what’s done is done. So now let’s see what you can show us.’
Warren Scifford had eventually returned. It had taken Adam half an hour to get hold of him. The American didn’t answer his mobile phone and no one picked up the phone at the embassy. When he did show up, he just smiled and shrugged without giving any explanation as to where he’d been. He took off his coat on his way into the gym, where the air was now unbearable.
‘Fill me in,’ he said, grabbing an empty chair, which he pulled into the table and sat down on.
The policeman’s fingers leapt over the keyboard. The screen flickered grey, before the picture was clear. They had seen this part of the video many times before: two Secret Service agents walking towards the door of the presidential suite. One of them knocked on the door.
The digital clock on the top left-hand corner of the screen showed 07:18:23.
The agents stood there for a few seconds before one of them tried the door.
‘Strange that the door was open,’ muttered the policeman, fingers ready at the keyboard.
No one said anything.
The men went in and disappeared from the scope of the camera.
‘Just let the film run,’ Adam said quickly, and noted the time.
07:19:02.
07:19:58.
The two mean came tearing out.
