Part 22 (1/2)
”You will. You can. We can go back to your office now and play it. You can interview me and I'll tell you the whole story in my own words. You can photograph me and plaster my picture across your front page alongside Brinkley's. On one condition.” I closed my eyes and opened them. Was this really me talking? ”Will you, on your word of honour, before these two witnesses, go with the story on Sunday? Yes or no?”
In a silence that is with me to this day, I pulled the shoulder-bag from between my feet, but for security reasons kept it on my lap. The notepads were in the big compartment, the seven tapes in the smaller one. Clutching the bag against my stomach, I unzipped the smaller compartment, then waited for his answer.
”Terms accepted,” he muttered.
”So yes?”
”So yes, d.a.m.n you. We'll go on Sunday.”
I turned to Jelly and Sophie, looking each straight in the eye. ”You heard that. He'll run the story on Sunday as ever is. Yes?”
”Yes.”
”Yes.”
I put my hand inside and fished. One by one I picked my way through the tapes, looking for tape number five which contained the Haj interrogation, and tape number six which contained Lord Brinkley's voice saying yes to three million dollars. As I watched my fingertips going back and forth across the stack I began, with no particular sense of revelation, to recognise, firstly that there were only five tapes, not seven, then that tapes number five and six were missing. I unzipped the large compartment and felt around among the notepads. For form's sake, I tried the little compartment at the back, which isn't a compartment in any real sense, more a purse for travel tickets or a bar of chocolate. They weren't in there either, and why should they be? They were in Bognor.
By now my head was so busy reconstructing recent events that I wasn't really very interested in the reaction of my audience which, as I recall it, varied from the sceptical Thorne -to the effusively concerned -Jelly. I made excuses silly of me, must have left them at home, et cetera. I wrote down Sophie's cellphone number for when I found them. I ignored Thome's scathing eye and his insinuations about wanting to make a fool of him. I said goodbye to them and see you later, but I don't think any of us believed me, and certainly I didn't. Then I hailed a cab and, without bothering to give the driver a cover destination, drove home to Mr. Hakim's.
Did I blame Hannah? Quite the opposite. I felt such a surge of love for her that, even before I gained the privacy of our sanctum, I was marvelling at her courage in the face of adversity me. Standing before the open wardrobe, I observed with pride, not indignation, that Haj's business card, with his e-mail address scrawled on the back, had gone the way of the tapes. She had known from the start that Brinkley was no good. She had no need of One-Day Courses in security to tell her that in Salvo she was dealing with the remnants of a misguided loyally that was lodged like a virus in my system and needed to work itself out with time. She didn't want Noah spending his birthday in a war zone. She had gone her own way as I had gone mine. We had both veered from the same path, each in our separate directions, she to her people, I to mine. She had done nothing that required my forgiveness. Propped on the mantelpiece was a copy of the Sunday School kids' programme: 12 noon Picnic lunch and sing along at YMCA hostel .. . 2.30 p.m. Matinee performance of The Wind in the Willows by the Bognor Dance and Drama Club ... 5.30 p.m. Families Evening. Five hours. Five hours before I could return her message of total and undeviating love.
I switched on the midday news. Laws are being framed to prosecute Islamist firebrands. Special tribunals to hear terrorist cases in secret. Suspected Egyptian bomber seized by US s.n.a.t.c.h team in Pakistan. Manhunt continues for thirty-year-old man of Afro-Caribbean origin whom police wish to interview in connection with wait for it! the suspected murder of two under-age girls.
Run a bath. Lie in it. Catch myself attempting to reproduce Haj's Mission school jingle. Why does a tortured man sing? she had asked me. Her patients didn't sing, so why did Haj? Why does a grown man chant a dirge about a little girl's virtue when he's been beaten up?
Get out of bath. Clutching my transistor radio, I stand obliquely at the window, clad in my bath towel. Through the net curtains, I contemplate a no-name green van parked close to Mr. Hakim's front gate. Exceptional rainfall in southern India. Reports of landslides. Many feared dead. Now for the cricket.
Five o'clock. I walk my mile but contrary to One-Day instructors' advice I use the same phone box. I put in a pound and keep another ready, but the best I get is Grace's answering service. If I'm Latzi, I should ring her after 10 p.m. when she'll be in bed alon el Hoots of laughter. If I'm Salvo, I should be her welcome guest and leave a love-message for Hannah. I attempt to rise to her invitation: ”Hannah darling, I love you.” But I do not, for security reasons, add, as I might have done: I know what you've done and you were right to do it.
Using side roads I make my desultory way back to Mr. Hakim's. Post-bombing bicycles tick past me like ghostly hors.e.m.e.n. The no-name green van is still parked in front of the gates. It displays no parking permit. Listen to six o'clock news. The world remains where it was at two.
Food as diversion. In the postage-stamp-sized fridge, find half a two-day-old pizza, garlic sausage, pumpernickel bread, gherkins, Marmite for me. When Hannah first arrived in London from Uganda she shared digs with a German nurse and consequently a.s.sumed that all English people ate Knackwurst and sauerkraut and drank peppermint tea. Hence a silver packet of same in Mr. Hakim's fridge. Like all nurses, Hannah puts everything in the fridge whether or not it is perishable. If you can't sterilise it freeze it, is her axiom. Warm up b.u.t.ter as prelude to spreading on pumpernickel bread. Spread Marmite. Eat slowly. Swallow with caution.
The seven o'clock news is identical to the six o'clock. Can the world really have done nothing for five whole hours? Careless of security considerations, I go online and scroll through the day's trivia. Suicide bombers in Baghdad have killed forty and injured hundreds ~ or is it the other way round? The newly appointed US Amba.s.sador to the United Nations has filed another fifty objections to proposed reforms. The French President is entering hospital, or coming out. His ailments are subject to France's Official Secrets Act but it sounds as though he's got a bad eye. Unconfirmed reports from the Congolese capital Kinshasa speak of a spontaneous outbreak of fighting between rival militias in the eastern region of the country.
Hannah's rainbow cellphone is ringing. I bound across the room, grab her phone and return to my computer.
”Salvo?”
”Hannah. Marvellous. Hi.”
Sources close to the Congolese government in Kinshasa blame 'imperialist elements in Rwanda'. Rwanda denies involvement.
”You okay, Salvo? I love you so much.” In French, the language of our love.
”Fine. Great. Just longing for you to come back. How about you?”
”I love you so much it's stupid, Salvo. Grace says she never saw anyone so normal go so lovesick.”
The border area with Rwanda is described as peaceful with no unusual traffic.
I'm fighting on three fronts at once, which Maxie would not approve of. I'm trying to listen and speak and decide whether to tell her what I'm seeing when I don't know whether it's our war or someone else's.
”You know what, Salvo?”
”What, my darling?”
”Since I met you I lost three pounds.”
I have to digest this, reason it out. ”Blame the unaccustomed exercise!” I cry. ”Blame me!”
”Salvo?”
”What, my love?”
”I did something bad, Salvo. Something I've got to tell you about.”
A British Emba.s.sy official in Kinshasa describes rumours of British-led mercenaries in the region as fanciful and absurd'.
Of course they are! They must be! The coup is nine days off! Or did Brinkley fire the starting pistol the moment I walked out of his house?
”Listen. You haven't. It's all right. Truly! Whatever it is! Nothing matters! I know all about it. Tell me when you come back!”
Shrill kiddie noises off.
”I've got to go back in there, Salvo.”
”I understand! Go! I love you!”
End of endearments. End of phone call.
Four Swiss aviation technicians who were caught in the crossfire have requested the protection ofBukavu's UN commander.
Seated in the wicker chair with the transistor radio on the table beside me, I embark on a study of Mrs. Hakim's wallpaper while I listen to Gavin, our Central Africa correspondent, giving us the story so far: According to the Congolese government in Kinshasa, a Rwandan-backed putsch has been nipped in the bud, thanks to a brilliantly executed security operation based on first-cla.s.s intelligence.
Kinshasa suspects French and Belgian complicity, but does not rule out other unnamed Western powers.
Twenty-two members of a visiting African football club are being held for questioning following the discovery of a cache of small arms and heavy machine-guns at Bukavu airport.
No casualties reported. The foot ballers country of origin has not yet been ascertained.
The Swiss Emba.s.sy in Kinshasa, asked about the four Swiss aviation experts, declines to comment at this stage. Enquiries regarding their travel doc.u.ments have been pa.s.sed to Berne.
Thank you, Gavin. End of bulletin. End of any last lingering doubt.
Mrs. Hakim's guest lounge is a regal place with deep armchairs and an oil painting of a lakeside paradise with hour is dancing on the sh.o.r.e. In one hour from now it will be the haunt of hard-smoking Asian salesmen watching Bollywood videos on a television set as big as a Cadillac, but for the time being it has the sweetened silence of an undertaker's parlour and I am watching the ten o'clock news. Men in shackles change size. Benny has shrunk. Anton is bulky. Spider has grown nine inches since he pa.s.sed out the plates in his improvised chef's hat. But the star of the show is neither the UN's Pakistani Commandant in his blue helmet, nor the colonel of the Congolese army with his swagger cane, but our skipper Maxie in fawn slacks with no belt and a sweat-soaked s.h.i.+rt minus one sleeve.