The waiter hovered, checking on her glass of iced water every few minutes. Ellie took several gulps and the young man rushed forward to refill it. She had developed a reputation for tipping well and was always given the table at the back near the service exit. It was noisy but secluded.
Sathyan’s message had been brief. She exhaled with relief when he walked into the Hare Krishna cafe. He sat down, reached for her water and drank deeply.
‘Thank you for meeting me.’ He looked around nervously. He smelled of sandalwood soap.
‘You don’t need to thank me.’ She touched his leg. He jerked, like a startled animal.
‘Sorry, I’m so stressed.’ He tried to smile. He reached under the table and held her hand tightly and briefly. ‘I don’t know who else to turn to. I don’t even know what to do.’
‘Talk me through what’s happened. I’ll do everything I can,’ Ellie said.
‘The Tigers will be back soon. The Army came to our village and killed a boy, a child, right in front of our eyes.’ He shuddered, remembering. ‘After that, more of our people want to join the movement. Of course they do. Gajan is determined to go with the Tigers when they come.’ He took another drink of water, wiped the tears that fell down his face. ‘I thought I had more time. There’s a field group going to Jaffna Hospital next month. I was going to bring him back with them. The Anti-Landmine Lobby said they would pay the bribes at the checkpoints. But now, it’s too late.’
She wanted to take his face in her hands and comfort him. But he had been very clear. In public, they were friends and work colleagues.
He leaned towards her. ‘Could your friends at the Embassy bring both of them out? If Gajan disappears, the Army will kill Amma.’
‘My friends?’ she echoed.
‘Yes, your friends. There are soldiers at the US Embassy—could they help?’ He stopped as the waiter placed two cups of steaming tea on the table. ‘If you asked them, they might listen. I know they don’t care about us, but they might do it for you. Could they get my brother and my mother out?’
‘I’ll ask,’ she replied. She wanted to promise him she could fix this. She wanted to be the one who would do that for him.
‘I don’t know why I waited so long. It always seemed like there would be more time. I should have known, after Appa …’
‘Don’t think like that. I’ll talk to the Embassy and see if they can help us.’
‘Us?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, us. We’re an us, aren’t we?’ She held his hand again under the table.
He clasped her tightly in answer. ‘I’ve never really been an “us” before. Thank you,’ he smiled. ‘I bought you something.’ He reached into his bag and pulled out an olive-green scarf with soft lace trimming.
•
Ellie sat across from Redmond, watching him read her submission. It would be harder for him to say no this time. She had come straight to his office from JFK Airport.
There was a map of the island behind him, with pins stuck in the main cities. Red and blue wool connected them like arteries and veins across the body of the country, delineating which side controlled which pieces of land. The vital organs of a body distributed between two parasites.
He pulled out an envelope and handed it to her.
She flicked through surveillance photographs of her and Sathyan. Nothing particularly incriminating unless you knew what to look for. They were careful. They always met at the Marbury. Once a small colonial manor, it was now a cheap hotel tucked away in Havelock Town, a quiet outer suburb of Colombo, far away from the diplomatic scene. ‘I never lied to you about the relationship,’ she said. ‘It’s all there in my submission.’
‘Those aren’t our surveillance photographs. Solomon has no interest in following you. These belong to the CID,’ he replied.
Sweat prickled under her shirt. ‘Why are they watching me?’
Redmond raised his eyebrows. ‘They’re watching him. He comes and goes between Jaffna and Toronto, a fundraising hub for the Tigers.’
She tried to remain impassive. She had worked for Redmond for a long time and, although they were on the same side, she knew better than to give him leverage. He couldn’t know how much she cared for Sathyan.
He placed her report on the table. ‘I don’t think this boy is a worthwhile source of intel.’
‘I told you what he saw in his village, the execution of an unarmed combatant. That’s a violation of the Geneva Conventions.’ Even as she said it, Ellie knew Redmond didn’t care.
‘Everyone violates them. All the time.’
‘He has value to us,’ she insisted.
‘Yes, I’ve discussed it with Solomon. He has value to us, but not outside the war zone. He has value if he stays. This is what we’ve been waiting for. Think like an agent. Not like this guy’s girlfriend.’
‘It’s not like that,’ she argued.
‘I think it is like that and I’m happy for you, Ellie.’
She scoffed and turned away.
‘God knows it’s a lonely job and we take comfort where we can find it,’ he continued. ‘But don’t get distracted. You’re there for a reason. You’re digging up Muslim bodies for the Arabs as a cover to access the eastern province. You’re actually tracking Semtex for me. We need to know who’s selling it and who’s buying it. We need to know how it ended up on the USS Cole in Yemen, killing seventeen American sailors, and a bus in Colombo, killing two American tourists. That is your mission in Sri Lanka. That has always been your mission.’
She was desperate. ‘I understand, Redmond. But Gajan’s testimony is direct evidence of summary executions.’
‘You have one kid who maybe saw one killing who will say anything to get out of the war zone,’ he countered.
‘Do you doubt him? Do you doubt me?’ she asked.
‘No. But a UN Special Commission will. Even they will want more than this. Despite their lack of commitment to evidence-based policy decisions, they will want a big fat dossier of evidence that the Sri Lanka Army are executing unarmed combatants and threatening their families.’ He leaned forward. ‘I want the Tigers and I want the Semtex. I want to know where they’re being trained and where they’re building bombs.’ He stood up and walked over to the map of Sri Lanka. ‘The reports we’re getting indicate that it’s somewhere in this region.’ He touched the jungle that no one had penetrated yet. ‘The recruits are all taken there. If we can find the camps, we can free all of them, not just the one who’s lucky enough that his brother is sleeping with the right agent.’
‘So, you’re a humanitarian,’ she replied.
‘You know, Ellie, you act like you’re the only one who cares about what’s going on here. I care. I just have to make the harder calls. I have to choose between which lives we protect and which ones we—’
‘Which ones we hang out to dry?’ she interrupted.
‘It won’t be like that,’ he said. ‘If this kid can deliver, then we’ll get him out.’
‘You can’t promise that. If we get him out now, we know he’ll live.’ She persisted even though she understood the bigger picture Redmond was defending.
‘If we get him out now, he’s of no value to anyone except his brother. If he stays in, he could do something really important.’
‘Please don’t make it sound like we’re giving him an opportunity to be a hero,’ she retorted.
Redmond wouldn’t back down. ‘His father was a hero. His brother works for the Anti-Landmine Lobby. You think he doesn’t care about the others in the camps?’
‘I think Sathyan has lost his father and his sister. He’s desperate to get his little brother out.’ Her hand strayed to the scarf around her neck.
‘Then this is the only way.’ Redmond shrugged. ‘The boy stays. He gives us the location of the training camps. Then we get him out. I’ll petition State myself to get them moved to DC. They can come live with you, happy families and all that.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I’m serious. To show you how serious I am, I’ll share the best surveillance resource I’ve got with you—Scott Barnett—as long as he does all my work first.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Ellie sighed.
‘Excellent, you’re set,’ Redmond replied, hearing the resignation in her voice. ‘Now say thank you. If you weren’t in love with the brother, you’d run this kid like the asset we both know he is. Do what you’ve been trained to do and recruit him. Promise him a better life at the end of it. Promise him he’ll be watched and protected, threaten him that his family is in danger. Do what you usually do.’
‘I usually manipulate people to get what you need under the guise of serving the rule of law.’ She did what her psychometric testing in college had promised.
‘You do it very well, Ellie. That’s why you’re here.’