16

Black emerged from the college seminar room into the warm late afternoon. Two hours of discussion over whether the appeasers of the 1930s were responsible for the atrocities of the Nazis had turned into a furious debate over the threat posed by modern-day Saudi Arabia and Iran. Unusually, the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right faction had been matched in number by the interventionists, one of whom was the son of a famously hawkish US admiral. Policing the dog fight had done little for the whisky-induced headache that had dogged him since his five a.m. start from Ty Argel, but it had been a spur to get back to his paper: belief in the peace-giving powers of high explosives was, it seemed, still alive and well among tomorrow’s leaders.

Hoping a short walk would chase away his lingering hangover, he took the long way back to his rooms around the college lake. It was an Elysian scene: curtains of willow shot through with shafts of sunlight and lilies floating beneath. Groups of students lolled on the grass at the water’s edge, subconsciously absorbing a vision of civilized perfection that would remain with them for the rest of their lives. He tried to imagine what Finn would have made of it. Privileged little dicks don’t know they’re born, probably. He’d been raised in a council flat in Belfast at the height of the troubles. And if that wasn’t hard enough, his mother was a lapsed Presbyterian and his father an equally lapsed Catholic. Everybody had hated them, even God.

‘Ah, Leo.’

Black turned to see the college Provost, Alex Levine, striding after him. A tall, rangy man of fifty-five, who, besides being a world-renowned economist, had once been an international athlete. His all-round brilliance aroused admiration and jealousy in equal measure. He caught up and fell into step.

‘I’ve been hoping to catch you. Karen told me you were called away and couldn’t make drinks on Friday.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Black said. ‘An old army colleague died suddenly. Had to lend a hand.’

‘She told me. My sympathies.’

Black nodded his appreciation.

Levine let a respectful moment pass before continuing. ‘We had a meeting of the Appointments Committee last week – your application was discussed. There’s support for you, there really is, but … how should I put this? Everybody appreciates that your real-world experience is hugely valuable, quite possibly unique, but we can’t disregard the need for a depth of scholarship. I want to back you, Leo – you’re a gifted teacher, very popular with the students – as Karen has emphasized on several occasions – but there’s no point sugaring the pill, you’re going to need a little more to get over the line. I understand you’re due to present a paper in the States this summer?’

Black maintained an expression of relaxed imperturbability even as he felt the ground crumbling beneath his feet.

‘That’s right. Late August.’

‘And you plan to publish?’

‘I’m hoping for the Harvard International Review.’

‘Harvard’s good. Excellent. That should help a lot.’

Black took this as code for, If they don’t publish, you can forget it.

Levine stooped forward with a look of earnest concentration. ‘Off the record, OK?’

‘Of course.’

‘I sense a slight feeling among some of the fellows that your appointment might send out a difficult signal – politically.’

‘Have they any idea what I’m writing?’

‘No. Well, not in any detail, I don’t suppose,’ Levine confessed. ‘Look, I hesitate to say this, Leo, but you’ve come to this rather odd world of ours rather later in life than most of us – after a few decades you develop sensitive antennae.’

‘No, I hear you loud and clear, Provost. If I want a job, I’d better write something to their liking.’

Levine shrugged, as if the suggestion were entirely Black’s but perhaps worth a try.

They stopped by the wooden bridge that led to the walled garden surrounding Levine’s elegant Georgian lodgings. The inner sanctum reserved for the tiny handful of the most politically adept and ambitious.

‘Best of luck, though,’ Levine said in a way which, whether he intended it or not, sounded as if he were abandoning him to his fate. He gave an awkward smile and headed off across the water.

A sudden impulse prompted Black to call out after him. ‘Be straight with me, Alex; how many do I have to win over?’

Levine stiffened and glanced uncomfortably over his shoulder, his neck reddening in embarrassment above the soft blue collar of his hand-stitched shirt.

Black waited for his answer.

‘It’s seven to three, roughly,’ Levine mumbled. ‘But that’s just a guess. There was no vote as such.’

‘I’m grateful,’ Black said, softening. ‘And I appreciate I’ve only got this opportunity because of your support.’

Levine raised a hand in a gesture that was both a wave and a dismissal.

Black watched him cross the bridge and disappear through the door in the wisteria-clad wall at the far side, wondering at the somersaults he must turn inside his complex mind. He had single-handedly constructed economic policy for several emerging economies and was a vocal champion of the poor and a fierce critic of the international caste of the super-rich. Yet his brothers sat on the boards of two of the world’s largest banks and his father had been an Israeli cabinet minister and hero of the Six Day War. Black had never known a man contend so successfully with so many contradictions. But did Levine know the truth of himself or had he merely harnessed his phenomenal intellect to react against a family whose name alone threatened to subsume him?

I want to back you, not, I will.

Black continued on his way, realizing that the Provost had just set out the terms of his appointment: he needed to be sure Black was cast squarely in his own image before putting his weight behind him. The only version of him he would back was the warmonger who had seen the light and been born again to preach a new gospel. A gospel of peace.

Had he become that man?

An image of a fourteen-year-old boy stepping out from a doorway in a narrow Baghdad alleyway appeared behind his eyes. He pictured the expression on the boy’s face in the split second before the bullets from Black’s semi-automatic had sliced his slender body in half.

If there had been a moment that had caused him to change direction, that had been it.

He hadn’t realized at the time. The killing had been a reflex. One of tens of similar occasions when he had shot first in order to guarantee his survival. He had felt no emotion as he looked down at the boy’s bloody remains but he had noticed its absence. The act of taking a life had become mundane. Part of the job.

The West has a weapon far more powerful than any aircraft carrier or infantry battalion: money. Cash. Rich countries breed few terrorists compared with poor ones and possess the resources, if they choose to use them wisely, to all but eradicate the problem of ‘home-grown’ terrorism. It is simply a question of aiming resources at the tiny proportion of the population in danger of falling under the extremists’ spell. But in the developing world the pool of urban, unemployed and disenfranchised young men – those most likely to turn to violence – is vast. Yet the youth of Cairo, Baghdad, Tripoli and Damascus have the same aspirations as that of London, Paris and New York, the same cultural influences, the same material ambitions.

At last the words began to flow. Ideas that for weeks had remained stubbornly fragmented formed into a coherent whole.

The real enemy confronting the West is not one that can be bombed, assassinated or imprisoned. It is, in fact, the very force that built our thriving democracies: the basic human urge for betterment and security that when allowed to flourish leads inevitably to peace, and which, when frustrated, leads with equal inevitability to destruction.

Black’s landline rang. He paused briefly from his typing to disconnect it from the socket, then switched off his mobile. Whatever it was could wait.

He missed her call by two minutes.