Okay, I said.
But before food, she needed normal day clothes, which she would have to fetch from the hostel, so I lay alone with my thoughts for an hour. She"ll never come back. She"s decided I"m mad and she"s right. She"s gone to Baptiste. Those footsteps tripping up the stairs aren"t Hannah"s, they"re Mrs. Hakim"s. But Mrs. Hakim weighs a good thirteen stone, while Hannah is a sylph.
She is telling me about her son Noah. She is eating pizza with one hand and holding mine with the other while she talks to me in Swahili about Noah. The first time we were together she had spoken shyly of him. Now she must tell me everything, how he happened, what he means to her. Noah is her love-child -except, Salvo, believe me, there was no love, none at all.
"When my father sent me from Kivu to Uganda to be trained as a nurse, I fell for a medical student. When I became pregnant by him, he told me he was married. He told another girl he slept with that he was gay."
She was sixteen years old and instead of her belly filling up with baby she lost a stone before she found the courage to take an HIV test. She tested negative. Today if she needs to do something unpleasant, she does it immediately in order to reduce the waiting time. She bore the baby and her aunt helped her look after it while she completed her training. All the medical students and young doctors wanted to sleep with her but she never slept with another man until me.
She breaks out laughing. "And look at you, Salvo! You are married too!"
No longer, I say.
She laughs and shakes her head and takes a sip of the house red wine that, we have already agreed, is the lousiest wine we ever drank in our lives worse than the stuff they force on us at the hospital"s annual dance, she says, which is saying something, believe me, Salvo. But not as bad as Giancarlo"s weapons-grade Chianti, I counter, and take time out to tell her about the brave little gentleman at the Trattoria Bella Vista in Battersea Park Road.
Two years after Noah"s birth, Hannah completed her training. She rose to senior nurse, taught herself English and went to church three times a week. Do you still do that, Hannah? A little bit. The young doctors say G.o.d is not compatible with science, and in the wards, if she is frank, she sees little sign of Him. But this doesn"t stop her praying for Noah, for her family and for Kivu, or helping out with her Sunday School kids, as she calls them, at the church in North London where, with the little faith remaining to her, she goes to worship.
Hannah is proud of being a Nande, and she has every right to be, since the Nande are celebrated for their enterprise. She came to England through an agency when she was twenty-three, she tells me over the coffee and another gla.s.s of the terrible red wine. She has told me this before, but in the game we are playing if you drop out you go back to the beginning. The English weren"t bad but the agency treated her like s.h.i.t, which was the first time I heard her use an obscenity. She had left Noah in Uganda with her aunt, which broke her heart, but with the help of a fortune-teller in Entebbe she had identified her life"s destiny, which was to expand her knowledge of Western medical practices and technologies and send money home for Noah. When she has learned enough and saved enough, she will return with him to Kivu.
At first in England she dreamed every night of Noah. Telephoning him upset her until she rationed herself to once a week at cheap rates. The agency never told her she would have to attend adaptation school which took up all her savings, or that she would have to climb the nursing ladder all over again from the bottom up. The Nigerians with whom she was billeted failed to pay the rent, until one day the landlord threw the whole lot of them onto the street, Hannah included. To gain promotion in the hospital she had to be twice as good as her white compet.i.tors, and work twice as hard. But with G.o.d"s help, or, as I preferred it, by dint of her own heroic efforts, she had prevailed. Twice a week she attends a course on simple surgical procedures in poor countries. She should be there tonight but she will make it up. It is a qualification she has promised herself she will acquire before reclaiming Noah.
She has left the most important bit till last. She has persuaded Matron to let her take an extra unpaid week of leave, which would also allow her to accompany her Sunday School kids on their two-day outing to the seaside.
"Was it only on account of the Sunday School children that you asked for leave?" I enquire hopefully.
She pooh-poohs the very idea. Take a week"s leave on the off-chance that some fly-by-night interpreter will keep his promises? Ridiculous.
We"ve done coffee and paid the bill out of Maxie"s converted dollars. In a minute it will be time to go home to Mr. Hakim"s. Hannah has helped herself to one of my hands and is examining the palm, thoughtfully tracing its lines with her fingernail.
"Am I going to live for ever?" I ask.
She shakes her head dismissively and goes on examining my captive palm. There were five of them, she murmurs in Swahili. Not nieces really. Cousins. But she thinks of them as her nieces even now. Born to the same aunt who looked after her in Uganda and is currently looking after Noah. They were all the children the aunt had. No sons. They were aged six to sixteen. She recites their names, all Biblical. Her eyes are lowered and she is still talking to my hand and her voice has flattened to a single note. They were walking home along the road. My uncle and the girls, in their best clothes. They had been to church and their heads were full of prayer. My aunt was not well, she had stayed in bed. Some boys came up to them. Interahamwe from across the border in Rwanda, doped out of their minds and looking for entertainment. They accused my uncle of being a Tutsi spy, cut the girls" tendons, raped them, and tossed them into the river, chanting b.u.t.ter! b.u.t.ter! while they drowned. It was their way of saying they would make b.u.t.ter out of all Tutsis.
"What did they do to your uncle?" I ask of her averted head.
Tied him to a tree. Made him watch. Left him alive to tell the village.
In some kind of reciprocity, I tell her about my father and the whipping post. I have never told anybody but Brother Michael until now. We walk home and listen to Haj being tortured.
She sits upright across the room, as far away from me as she can be. She has put on her nurse"s official face. Its expression is locked. Haj may scream, Tabizi may rant and taunt him, Benny and Anton do their worst with whatever Spider obligingly ran up for them from his toolbox, but Hannah remains as impa.s.sive as a judge with eyes for n.o.body, least of all for me. When Haj pleads for mercy, her expression is stoical. When he pours scorn on Tabizi and the Mw.a.n.gaza for cutting their dirty deal with Kinshasa, it barely falters. When Anton and Benny wash him under the shower she emits a muted exclamation of disgust, but this in no way transmits itself to her face. When Philip appears on the scene and starts to talk Haj round with sweet reason, I realise she has been sharing every living second of Haj"s agony, just as if she were ministering to him at his bedside. And when Haj demands three million dollars for selling out his country, I expect her to be at the very least indignant, but she merely lowers her eyes and shakes her head in sympathy.
"That poor show-off boy," she murmurs. "They killed his spirit."
At which point, wishing to spare her the final mockery, I am about to switch off the tape, but she stays my hand.
"It"s just singing from now on. Haj tries to make it better for himself. He can"t," I explain tenderly.
Nevertheless on her insistence I play the tape to the end, starting with Haj"s tour of the Mw.a.n.gaza"s drawing room, and ending with the slap of crocs as he stomps defiantly along the covered way to the guest suite.
"Again," she orders.
So I play it again, after which for a long time she sits motionless.
"He"s dragging one foot, you heard that? Maybe they damaged his heart."
No, Hannah, I hadn"t noticed him dragging his foot. I switch off the tape but she doesn"t stir.
"Do you know that song?" she demands.
"It"s like all the songs we sang."
"So why did he sing it?"
"To cheer himself up, I suppose."
"Maybe it"s you he"s cheering up."
"Maybe it is," I concede.
Hannah is practical. When she has a problem to solve she makes for the root of it and works her way from there. I have Brother Michael, she has her Sister Imogene. At her Mission school Imogene taught her everything she knew. When she was pregnant in Uganda, Imogene sent her letters of comfort. Imogene"s Law, never to be forgotten in Hannah"s view, argues that since no problem exists in isolation, we must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn. Only when we have truly done this and not until will G.o.d point us the right way. Given that this was Hannah"s modus operandi, both in her work and in her life at large, I could not object to the somewhat bald interrogation to which, with all due gentleness and occasional rea.s.suring caresses, she now subjected me, using French as our language of clarity.
"How and when did you steal the tapes and notepads, Salvo?" I describe my final descent to the boiler room, Philip"s surprise appearance, and my narrow escape.
"During the flight back to Luton, did anybody look at you suspiciously or ask you what was in your night-bag?"
n.o.body.
"You are sure?"
As sure as I can be.
"Who knows by now that you have stolen the tapes?"
I hesitate. If Philip decided to return to the boiler room after the team"s departure and take a second look inside the burn-bag, they know. If Spider, on his arrival in England, checked his tapes before handing them over for archival purposes, they know. Or if whoever he handed them over to decided to check them for themselves, they know. I"m not sure why I adopted a patronising tone at this point, but it was probably in self-defence.
"However," I insist, resorting to the style of the long-winded barristers I am occasionally obliged to render, "whether or not they know, there is little doubt that technically I am in serious breach of the Official Secrets Act. Or am I? I mean how official are these secrets? If I myself am deniable, then so presumably are the secrets. How can an interpreter who doesn"t exist be accused of stealing secrets that don"t exist when he"s acting on behalf of a no-name Syndicate which, by its own insistence, doesn"t exist either?"
But Hannah, as I might have guessed, is less impressed than I am by my courtroom oratory.
"Salvo. You have robbed powerful employers of something that is precious to them. The question is whether they will find out, and if they catch you, what will they do to you? You said they will attack Bukavu in two weeks. How do you know this?"
"Maxie told me. On the plane home. It"s about taking the airport. Sat.u.r.day"s a football day. The white mercenaries will arrive by Swiss charter, the black mercenaries will pretend to be a visiting football team."
"So now we have not two weeks but thirteen days."
Yes."
"And not certainly but possibly, you are a wanted man." "I suppose I am." "Then we must go to Baptiste."
She takes me in her arms and for a time we forget everything but one another.
We are lying on our backs, both staring at the ceiling, and she is telling me about Baptiste. He is a Congolese nationalist who is pa.s.sionate for a united Kivu and has recently returned from Washington where he was attending a study forum on African consciousness. The Rwandans have sent their thugs several times to track him down and kill him but he is so smart that he has always outwitted them. He knows all the Congolese groups including the bad ones. In Europe, in America, and in Kinshasa.
"Kinshasa where the fat cats come from," I suggest.
"Yes, Salvo. Where the fat cats come from. Also many good and serious people like Baptiste who care about the Eastern Congo and are prepared to take risks to protect us from our enemies and exploiters."
I want to agree unconditionally with everything she says. I want to be as Congolese as she is. But the rat of jealousy, as Brother Michael used to call it, is gnawing at my entrails.
"So even though we know that the Mw.a.n.gaza has cut a dirty deal in Kinshasa," I suggest, "or Tabizi has, or his people have, you still think it"s safe to go to the Mw.a.n.gaza"s representative here in London and blow the whole story to him? You trust him that much."
She lifts herself onto her side and stares down at me.
"Yes, Salvo. I trust him that much. If Baptiste hears what we have heard and decides that the Mw.a.n.gaza is corrupt, which I do not yet believe, then Baptiste, because he is honourable and dreams of peace for all Kivu as we do, will know who to warn and how to prevent the catastrophe that is round the corner."
She flops back and we resume our study of Mrs. Hakim"s ceiling. I ask the inevitable question: how did she meet him?
"It was his group who organised the coach trip to Birmingham. He is Shi as the Mw.a.n.gaza is, so it was natural that he saw the Mw.a.n.gaza as the coming man. But that does not blind him to the Mw.a.n.gaza"s frailties."
Of course not, I a.s.sure her.
"And at the last minute, just before our coach departed, completely unexpectedly he jumped aboard and gave an impressive address on the prospects of peace and inclusiveness for all Kivu."
To you personally? I ask.
"Yes, Salvo. To me personally. Out of thirty-six people in the coach, he spoke only to me. And I was completely naked."
Her first objection to my preferred champion, Lord Brinkley, was so absolute that it smacked to me of Sister Imogene"s fundamentalism.
"But Salvo. If wicked people are dragging us into war and stealing our resources, how can there be grades of guilt among them? Surely each one is as evil as the next, since all are comp licit in the same act?"
"But Brinkley"s not like the others," I replied patiently. "He"s a figurehead like the Mw.a.n.gaza. He"s the kind of man the others march behind when they want to do their thieving."
"He is also the man who was able to say yes."
"That"s right. And he"s the man who expressed his shock and moral outrage, if you remember. And practically accused Philip of double-dealing while he was about it." And as a CIA O.
clincher: "If he"s the man who can pick up the phone and say yes, he can also pick it up and say no."
Pressing my case harder, I drew on my wide experience of the corporate world. How often had I not observed, I said, that men at the helm were unaware of what was being done in their name, so preoccupied were they with raising funds and watching the market? And gradually she began nodding her acceptance, in the knowledge that there were after all areas of life where my grasp exceeded hers. Piling on the arguments, I reminded her of my exchange with Brinkley at the house in Berkeley Square: "And what happened when I mentioned Mr. Anderson"s name to him? He hadn"t even heard of him!" I ended, and then waited for her response, which I sincerely hoped would not include any further advocacy for Baptiste. Finally I showed her my letter, thanking me for my support: Dear Bruno, signed, Tours ever, Jack. Even then she didn"t totally give up: "If the Syndicate is so anonymous, how can they use Brinkley as a figurehead?" And because I had no good answer ready: "If you must go to one of your own, at least go to Mr. Anderson whom you trust. Tell him your story and place yourself at his mercy."
But I was able once more to out manoeuvre her, this time with my knowledge of the secret world. "Anderson washed his hands of me before I ever left his safe flat. The operation was deniable, I was deniable. Do you think he"s going to un-deny me when I walk in and tell him the whole thing was a scam?"
Side by side before my laptop, we went to work. Lord Brinkley"s website was reticent about where he lived. Those who wished to write should do so care of the House of Lords. My Brinkley press cuttings came into their own. Jack was married to one Lady Kitty, an aristocratic heiress involved in good works on behalf of Britain"s needy, which naturally commended her to Hannah. And Lady Kitty had a website.
On it were listed the charities that enjoyed her patronage, plus the address to which donors could send their cheques, plus a notification of her Thursday coffee morning At Homes to which benefactors were invited by prior arrangement only. At Home being Knightsbridge, the heart of London"s golden triangle.
It is an hour later. I lie awake, my head super-clear. Hannah, trained to sleep whenever she is able, does not stir. Silently pulling on my shirt and trousers, I take my cellphone and descend to the guest lounge, where Mrs. Hakim is clearing away breakfast. After the mandatory exchange of commonplaces, I escape to the little garden which lies in a canyon among tall brown buildings. Printed into me is a running awareness of what our One-Day trainers would term Penelope"s trade routes. After her torrid weekend with Thorne, she will be putting in at Norfolk Mansions for a morning refit before embarking on the rig ours of the week. Her best telephoning is done from taxis paid for by her paper. Like all good journalists, she has thought a lot about her opening line.
And f.u.c.k you too, Salvo darling! If you"d waited another week I could have spared you the bother! I won"t enquire where you spent your weekend after making a laughing-stock of me in front of the proprietor. I just hope she"s worth it, Salvo. Or should I be saying he? Fergus says he"s afraid to go into the same loo with you .. .
I returned to the bedroom. Hannah lay as I had left her. In the summer"s heat, the bed-sheet was draped like a painter"s veil across one breast and between her thighs.
"Where were you?"
"In the garden. Getting divorced."
15.
Hannah in her firm-minded way had convinced me that I should not take the tapes and notepads with me into the Brinkley house. And since she was equally determined to see me to the front door and wait outside till I emerged, we reached a compromise whereby she would sit with my stolen goods in a nearby corner cafe, and I would call her on my cellphone when I judged the moment right, whereupon she would drop them in unattributably at the front door and return to the cafe to wait for me.
It was five o"clock of the Monday evening before we emerged from Mr. Hakim"s emporium and with due circ.u.mspection boarded a bus to Finchley Road tube station. It was six before we were scanning the finely curved Knightsbridge terrace from the pavement across the road, and twenty past by the time I had settled Hannah at a window table in the cafe. On the bus journey she had undergone a loss of confidence, in contrast to my own mood, which was increasingly upbeat.
"A couple of hours from now, our troubles will be over," I a.s.sured her, ma.s.saging her back in an effort to relax her, but her only response was to say she proposed to pray for me.
Approaching the target house, I was offered the choice of descending to a bas.e.m.e.nt marked trade or mounting the steps I.
to a pillared doorway boasting an old-style bell pull. I chose the latter. The door was opened by a plump-faced Latino woman in a black uniform, complete with white collar and pinny.
"I"d like to speak to Lord Brinkley, please," I said, summoning the imperious tone of my more up market clients.
"He office."
"How about Lady Kitty?" I asked, staying the door with one hand and with the other extracting the Brian Sinclair card. Beneath my alias, I had written bruno Salvador. And on the back, the words syndicate interpreter.
"No come," the maid commanded me and, true to her intention, this time succeeded in slamming the door, only for it to be opened seconds later by Lady Kitty herself.
Ageless as such high-society ladies are, she wore a short skirt, Gucci belt and straight ash-blonde hair. Among the tiers of finest-quality jewellery on her wrists, I identified a tiny Cartier watch in two tones of gold. Her silk-white legs were tipped with Italian shoes of faultless elegance. Her blue eyes appeared permanently startled, as if from some horrific vision.
"You want Brinkley," she informed me, her gaze flitting in nervous looks between my card and my face as if she was doing my portrait.
"I"ve been doing some rather important work for him over the weekend," I explained, and broke off, uncertain how much she was cleared for.