VALLETTA

 

5.1

Anne walked through the three rooms that made up the apartment, dissatisfied with the arrangement. This was not the villa she had imagined, and definitely not what was promised – a separate, remote, and spacious palazzo. Instead she had a shared house on the edge of the village, with nine small apartments each rented out and an empty pool. Eric’s bed, a folding cot shunted under the windows, didn’t appear solid enough and looked like an animal trap, with springs and wires ready to snap shut. He wouldn’t complain even if it gave him backache, not immediately. She would hear about it in years to come at some holiday meal. That room in Malta, he’d say. That awful bed. Can you remember? And then some story. She couldn’t remember if he still smoked, another one of his deceptions. If he did he could stand on the balcony and smoke and she wouldn’t need to know. The balcony gave him privacy. He’d like the room, but hate the bed. She had to remind herself of his age, that there were boundaries not to cross, information she did not want to know. She thought of him as someone who switched on and off, a boy who logged into accounts and identities, someone who could choose when to be her son: as if this were an account into which he could or could not log into. Weren’t there boundaries also for her, didn’t he need to know this also? It occurred to her with sudden dread that he might – as he had at home – seek out men.

Shabby, unkempt, and cramped, wasn’t this his assessment of the hotels and casas particulares Eric had stayed at in Cuba with her husband? Anne wondered why she had thought that this arrangement would work, of how much easier it would be if she simply hadn’t arranged the holiday. She looked at the cot and couldn’t see her son, an adult, sleeping in it, but the cot came standard in these kinds of apartments, which was better suited anyway for a couple, rather than a mother and her adult son.

The prospect wasn’t quite desperate. Its best feature, a view over Marsaskala, the village, and the bay, would please him. For the last three mornings she’d sat out and watched the view change, watched how the light reverberated through the room carrying colour so that the room and the view seemed continuous. Even in autumn the sun came through with a clear brightness and the water remained an intense blue, almost unreal, and she could feel the colour as she looked at it, the fulsome blue of a deep sea, nocturnal and without limit. Anne regretted not renting an apartment with an extra room for him, knowing that Eric would prefer privacy over a nice view, if he still smoked he would resent having to sneak out for a cigarette. The shutters which could halve the room weren’t substantial enough for him, for her. She’d lie in bed fretting over the cot, knowing that what troubled her was not the bed, not his discomfort, not the issue about him smoking.

Catching her reflection she pressed out a smile and closed her hand about the keys. She should not over-plan. If he wanted to do nothing, he could do nothing, but if he wanted, if he was in the mood, she would show him around Valletta and around some of the island. It would take a little time, she told herself, to learn how to be about him, to regain that ease. On the weekend they could take a boat and stay on Gozo. Despite the promise of a few trips the notion they would spend time together no longer seemed as ideal as it had on previous visits.

It was strange not to have heard from him. No text messages, no calls, and no email. Strange as it was it fitted with this new understanding. The new Eric, post-computer. Ready to leave, she called her husband and checked herself more carefully as she spoke. Her eyes were a little red from reading, from squinting at the manuscripts in the archives, considering for too many hours an evasive, slanted script. Her hair was also beginning to frizz, however short she had it cut the heat and the rain made it too active.

‘You’ll talk to Eric?’

‘He hasn’t called. He doesn’t call me, he emails. You know this. If I hear from him I’ll pass the message along.’

‘But when you speak with him you’ll not forget to ask about the flight?’

‘If he calls I’ll make sure I ask.’

‘You’ll forget.’

‘I won’t forget. I’m writing it down. If he calls I’ll tell him his mother is worried about the flight.’

‘I’m not worried about the flight. I’m worried that he’ll miss the flight. I’m worried that he has made other plans. It’s a different thing.’

There were ways in which her husband irritated her: how he talked without paying proper attention; his assumption that he understood her better than she understood herself; how he appeared never to doubt himself.

Leaning into the mirror she ran a finger over her lips and again looked into her eyes, the same weary blue as the evening light on the walls, a bruise, blue leaning toward violet.

5.2

Ford sat in the bar nursing a sweet local brandy. He watched three men labour up the street arm in arm, shirts undone, drunk and roaring at the rain. When they passed by the window they raised their fists and cheered in companionship for no reason he could see. British or German, he couldn’t be sure. Ford checked his watch, leafed through a two-day-old Herald Tribune, and felt another grain of aggravation. An irritation had plagued him recently, a sense of many things shimmering, sliding along the periphery. It was the city, he supposed, the drama of tight hills, steep streets, the hint of some satisfaction waiting at the peak, just out of view, when what he needed – an idea, a solution, a single sensible reason not to go to the airport – remained far from his grasp.

Nothing in the paper interested him. The war figured in its pages without mention of HOSCO, Geezler, Howell, or the Massive, and no Kiprowski. Never news about Kiprowski. Space given instead to roadside bombs, Shia and Sunni assassinations, multiple attacks at police stations and oil refineries, a suicide bombing at an employment office. He read about the UN stalled in making any practical decision on the occupied oil-fields. The trials of former heads of state. As reassuring as this should have been, the absence of any reference to fifty-three million missing dollars increased his anxiety – the absence of news about HOSCO he regarded as suspicious. Ford folded the paper and drank up. He checked Eric’s agenda, the flight would land in two hours and he needed to find a taxi.

Among the options lay the possibility that Eric had already arrived. He played this through but couldn’t escape the image of a bright airport lounge, of glass doors, of an emerging group, then Eric, backpack on shoulder, lagging behind. The boy would be there, he was absolutely certain. His mother also. Ford needed to pick her out first, whatever else he intended to do. His choices were limited: confront the boy and risk exposure, or hold back and follow them to their villa and risk losing them, risk causing alarm. Other possibilities suggested themselves. Eric could arrive with the police, or the police might already be waiting and it would all be over. The notebook could be lost or stolen, the page torn out, scrawled over, the number erased. He couldn’t quite picture what would happen once the boy came into the arrivals area, but he trusted that an explanation forced by the situation would flow from him. Would he be able to approach the boy, walk right up before the mother had a chance? Nothing he imagined would work.

Rain broke hard upon the street, overflowing the gutters and blacking the road with a smooth lacquer. Over the past four days he’d spent the morning searching for Eric’s mother, calling accommodation brokers and agents in Valletta, Floriana, and Sliema and asking about villas. The afternoons he spent at the cafés and pavilions the beaches on the west and north sides of the island, sheltering from the weather and watching tourists, not enjoying the humidity. The only Powells on the island were British, a family from Wolverhampton booked into the Hotel Intercontinental in St Paul’s Bay. A chubby family of five in matching white shorts and caps. The father bullied his family with his moods, he swapped plates with the youngest son when he refused to eat and finished his food with mixed elements of spite and silence. The daughter chewed with her mouth open, and he thought them crass until he realized that the girl had some kind of disability and needed to be told, prompted, and reminded. The realization stung – how could he not have noticed? Ford regretted not taking the exact address of the villa or the village. Such were the consequences of not planning ahead.

He didn’t spend his whole day fretting. There were moments of distraction. Valletta surprised him with its café-life, old cars, walls and doorways pasted with election posters. A quieter city than Istanbul, of handsome honey-coloured stone, buildings with long ornate windows, small enclosed balconies, wood shutters, gloss-painted doors. All a little secretive.

The brandy furred his teeth, clung to his breath. Couples dressed for the opera sheltered in doorways, hailing and hurrying to taxis.

The idea came to him fully formed. He would pay the taxi driver to come into the terminal, he would identify the boy to the taxi driver, and the man would hand Eric a note saying something simple, a number to call. I’m going, he told himself as he finished his drink. Going. I’m ready. I’m going. Going.

*   *   *

The plan faltered as soon as Ford sat in the cab. The driver, thickset and doughty, couldn’t understand a word he said. When he gestured airport, airplane, aircraft, his hand rising, fingers spread, he noticed the hearing aid in the man’s right ear. Lu-qa. Ford sat in silence as the cab drew around a fountain against the flow of buses. It wouldn’t work, even if he could explain what he wanted, because this broody man would draw attention to himself. No, he decided instead to call the airport courtesy phone, leave a message for Eric to contact him. He wouldn’t need to give details. Just some message. If he could think of one.

Once at the airport it occurred to him to stay in the cab and return to the city. An understanding coming to him of how strange this was, of how, on some slender possibility he’d crossed the Mediterranean, point to point, when he really should have returned to Narapi, sought out Eric’s notebook for himself. But fear of HOSCO, fear of the police, and a desire to push on had sent him island to island, to a bright strip of road alongside an arrival hall.

Stumped by indecision, he paid the driver and waited for the change. Rain drummed hard on the cab. The man half-turned in his seat and took a good long look.

*   *   *

Inside the terminal, Ford hung back beside the rental booths and cash machines. He kept his eye on the police. Three lonesome security guards. Two at the entrance, one, a free wheel, walked a length between the bureaux de change and the Hertz booth. Each of these men short, black-haired, weighty. He measured himself against them and realized that with very little effort they could catch him if they needed.

The flight, marked as landed, topped the message board. Ford watched the first passengers waddle through customs in a sudden huddle. He watched the backs of the waiting families and greeters and noticed how they steadily pressed forward each time the glass doors parted. Most of the passengers arrived in pairs and once through the gate they either scanned the crowd or walked purposefully on, burdened with luggage. He waited to see who would come forward at each arrival and had the feeling that these selections were random, as if these people did not know each other at all, as if this were a job in which some people were employed to arrive and others employed to greet. To stop himself fidgeting Ford crossed his fingers in his pocket.

Eric Powell did not appear.

Family groups welcomed friends and relatives, held them close, hugged and kissed with closed eyes and compressed smiles. Fewer arrivals now, and still Ford kept his eye on the greeters. If he could not identify Eric’s mother he would miss his only opportunity. No older single women stood out, so he walked to the back of the hall and stood by the automatic doors with an impatient eye on the arrivals. The security guards came together, chatted briefly, parted. A stubborn indolence locked in their movements.

Within half an hour the last fussing groups trooped out of the building and the taxi drivers returned to their cars, which left one lone woman in thin summer slacks and sandals, waiting with her back to a rental counter. Her hair a little flat from the rain, her shoulders damp. Her arms tightly crossed. The security guards stayed fixed to their positions.

The woman strained for a glimpse about the barrier. Ford held his breath. This woman, crisp, slight, dressed out of season, self-aware, a kind of quote about her ash-blonde hair clipped straight at her shoulder: the image of a professional who has to work at appearing casual. He wouldn’t have guessed that this was Eric’s mother, although the connection, now drawn, could be seen. A face too gaunt, too white, too proper: Northern European, while Eric appeared southern. Latin, perhaps Spanish.

She stood on tiptoe each time the automatic doors parted. She walked the length of the arrivals hall, past the clean line of desks to a solitary attendant closing the airline booth. She spoke with the attendant and appeared distant at first, then irritated. He could hear her questions repeat through the hall. Was it possible that someone might still be in the baggage area? Or the toilets? Was there any way of checking? Without a satisfactory answer she returned to the gate.

The announcement board began to clear. Air Malta, Libyan Arab, Lufthansa. The flights from Tunis, Bari, Zurich, and Tripoli disappeared in a neat clatter as the slates slapped blank. Ford stood under the board, head upturned, giddy at the idea that this was it, he’d found the boy’s mother but not the boy.

That Eric hadn’t appeared wasn’t exactly a surprise. For the boy to walk through customs bag in hand would be too simple a solution. Too occupied to properly consider this, the fact hung before him undigested. No Eric: no money.

The woman waited close by the gate. She asked the security guards if there were people still to come through. The men shook their heads and directed her back to the airline desk. As she returned through the hall she brushed her hair back, self-conscious now, a little brusque.

Ford followed behind and when the woman stopped at the desk he stood slightly behind and slightly to the side, as if waiting in line, close enough to listen. His only interest now was to locate the villa.

The woman gave a tight smile to the clerk. ‘Would you check to see if someone was on the flight?’ English, yes, but American also. The slightest lilt. She’d noticed Ford, half-turned, was that for him?

The attendant gestured at the computer and explained that she’d shut down the system but couldn’t in any case give information about the flight.

‘I understand. But I’m asking about my son. You can look, can’t you, for my son? The passenger list? It can’t be complicated.’

The attendant looked at her, cold. A girl, hard-faced, eyeliner etched fine along the lower lid. It wasn’t a matter of simplicity, she explained. She simply didn’t have the information.

‘My son’s name is Eric Powell. My name is Anne Powell. I have my passport. Check under Henderson. Eric Henderson. He might be travelling under his father’s name.’ The idea clearly aggravated her. She pinched the brow of her nose, summoned patience. ‘No. I bought the ticket. It’s Powell. He should be under Eric Powell. Has everyone come through from the baggage area? Could you check? They obviously won’t allow me through.’

Ford gave no visible reaction to the name.

The attendant, stiff in every gesture, said she would return.

‘It’s Powell,’ Anne repeated. ‘Eric Powell.’

Anne Powell waited at the desk, one arm on the counter. She turned to Ford with an expression of fixed irritation, and they looked at each other without remark, her eye catching on the small cut under his eye.

‘I’m sorry – are you waiting?’

When the attendant reappeared through the automatic doors, Anne immediately forgot her aggravation at Ford and walked toward her, brisk and clipped. Ford followed after, then asked the attendant himself if everyone had come off the flight. ‘I’m also waiting,’ he explained.

‘I’m sorry?’ Anne stopped and appeared puzzled. ‘But do you have information about my son?’

Ford tipped his head to the side and blinked. What was she asking?

‘Do you work for the airline? Do you know if my son was on the flight?’

‘No,’ Ford replied. ‘I don’t work for the airline.’

‘Then can’t you wait?’

Stung, Ford stepped back.

Anne turned to the attendant. ‘Did you find anything? Was he on the flight?’

The attendant gave a sympathetic frown as she explained that she had asked someone to check the arrivals area and the baggage-claim area, but there was no one there, and no one either in the facilities, the toilets. The manifest did not show her son on the flight. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing we can do.’

The security guards hovered close by with folded arms.

Anne Powell stiffened. ‘What do you mean, he wasn’t on the flight? Are you certain?’

The attendant apologized and slowly repeated that there was no one travelling under the name of Eric Powell. No such name on the manifest. It happens all the time.

Ford asked if everyone was off the flight and the attendant patiently repeated the information. ‘Sir, everyone has come through.’ The halls and lounges were all clear.

The guards grouped closer.

‘I don’t understand. What are you saying? Was he taken off the flight? Would you know if he had changed his booking?’

The attendant explained that it would be impossible for her to know what Anne was asking for, not without a booking reference, and this information couldn’t be retrieved right now. She would have to wait until the morning. She could either come to the airport or go to their offices in Valletta. Irritated, Anne turned smartly about and walked to the exit. The guards separated. The slap of her sandals clacked through the hall.

*   *   *

Ford followed quickly after and came purposefully out of the terminal to find Anne Powell with a mobile phone in her hand: if she was speaking with Eric he wanted to hear. Instead of speaking, she snapped the phone shut and signalled a cab.

The woman hesitated before she opened the door, as if she sensed him, Ford couldn’t be sure, but some doubt caused a momentary pause. When she sat in the cab she closed her eyes, and Ford saw her mouth the name of the village, the name he had read in her letter: Marsaskala. She leaned forward, the cab window opened, and she repeated the name to the driver, a hint of anxiety over her pronunciation. Marsaskala.

He watched the cab round away from the terminal and repeated Marsaskala, Marsaskala, into the night.

*   *   *

The next morning Ford set up post in a café opposite the airline office. He sat in the shade cast by a statue of Queen Victoria, obstinate, pig-faced, the grey stone flecked white. He watched the streets, the offices, the surrounding shops with a sharp eye, alert to every change. The sun slowly crossed the square. Anne Powell did not show.

Ford revised his plan. He would go to Marsaskala and find a similar café where he would wait. The waiter brought him a newspaper which he scanned quickly for news of Howell, HOSCO, and again found nothing.

5.3

The rain stopped in the late afternoon, the sky broke in one moment from grey to a mellow blue. On his way from his hotel to the bus terminal Parson browsed through a small market. He took with him a baseball cap he’d bought in Istanbul, and bought a plain short-sleeved shirt, a pair of Oakley-style sunglasses he thought he might keep afterward, but chose them mostly because he thought this or that suited his idea of Sutler. In front of the mirror he asked himself how a man who’d stolen fifty-three million might dress. This shirt, that shirt? These sandals, those flip-flops? He found himself distracted by the buses rounding the fountain with their white roofs and sunny yellow sides, as if these were familiar to him, part of a memory – or were strangely some kind of a joke, too small and toy-like to take seriously. Laura would like this, he told himself. This would be her thing. Finally, everything ready, he was satisfied that with the hat, shirt, sunglasses, he looked nothing like himself. As there were no photos of Sutler, this would have to do.

*   *   *

He took the bus to Msida then walked along the marina, the sunlight beginning to dry the pavement. He liked the view across the inlet, the watchtowers at the bastion walls, the water flat in the bay, silver and alive, the boats, their ropes slapping at masts, and how lazy this appeared, picture-perfect: there wasn’t anything he didn’t like. He began to prepare for Sutler’s departure, thinking all the time what a great game this was, and under the name Paul Geezler he upgraded the room he’d reserved at Le Meridien to a suite, then booked a passage, second-class, from Valletta to Palermo and on to Naples. If he was to negotiate Sutler’s silence, then he would first need to find the man, and this could take some time. Sutler, under Geezler’s name, would travel at night to Sicily, and slowly roam the small Italian islands on his way to Naples. He asked for the booking information to be passed to the hotel and gave a fake credit-card number, knowing that this would be reported first to the hotel, then to the police. He couldn’t gauge the amount of fuss he should stir: how much trouble would a man who’d stolen fifty-three million dollars make? He couldn’t guess. Just as he had no real knowledge of what fifty-three million dollars would look like, or what, in any real sense, fifty-three million dollars actually meant in any meaningful way. What, for example, would that be in yachts? Fifty yachts? Thirty? Twenty? Every yacht in the harbour? How much did these things cost? It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but imagining the harbour without thirty or fifty yachts made little difference to him and would barely alter the view. Busy or empty the harbour would appear just as picturesque.

A kind of melancholy grew in him as he walked along the promenade. It troubled him to realize how so much money could mean so little.

While most of the boats were occupied, only one appeared occupied, with a couple on board, who were preparing for the evening: L’Olympia, Bordeaux, stately white and blue, held herself politely in the water.

On a first pass Parson saw through to the saloon. A woman in the lower cabin, dressed in a long cream-white dress, prepared for her evening. Above, on deck, a man in slacks, similarly presentable, busied himself tying ropes, securing blue hoods over white seats, a cloth in his hand, an impatience about him. Two worlds in one view. The man on deck, in public. The woman alone, studying herself, hand roving down her stomach, shifting from side-view to three-quarter to make up her mind. Sunlight softly breached the port windows and bounced off the water, the water, untroubled, stirred with a soft lick and a lap.

Parson found shade and sat on the wall so that when the man straightened up he would look across the promenade and see Parson, or rather, not Parson but Paul Geezler, or rather, not Geezler, but Stephen Sutler as Paul Geezler. For this to work they would need a name, Sutler or Geezler. Either would work.

When the couple came off the boat Parson stood up, brushed pastry flakes from the front of his shirt, and swore loud enough to get the man’s attention.

He followed them along the promenade’s curve. As they walked the couple admired the boats massed about the slat-wood piers before the Sailing Club. He allowed them to move ahead certain that he had fixed himself as an event in their minds.

Once the couple entered the restaurant bar of the Msida Sailing Club he decided to return to his hotel.

*   *   *

Parson reserved a table under Geezler’s name at the Hotel Blass Grand – why be subtle now? If Sutler had money, this would be the time to spend it. He leaned over the counter as he made the booking, spelled out the name, insisted that the clerk repeated it, and gave him a tip for pronouncing it right. After roughing it in Iraq and Turkey, the luxury of the Blass Grand would be impossible to resist, and Parson wanted the idea put out that Sutler was beginning to spend his money. The hotel sat on the harbour edge, elegant in the day, but splendid at night with strings of light reflecting in the bay from the terrace, the city appearing as an extension of the hotel, as wings opening out, honey yellows and gold.

*   *   *

The next afternoon Parson returned in the same clothes to the Msida Sailing Club restaurant and bar, and was the only client for the first hour. When a group of women came breezily off the promenade, he assumed that they were tourists and noticed that some of them were dressed alike. He watched out of idleness as they took two tables by the windows, and realized that the women were in pairs because they were twins, not all identical, but still, twins. He counted as more came off the promenade, seven couples now, eight couples and more, all of them women, and this time their likenesses being very close: not only their faces and build, but the clothes and hairstyles were matched without flaw. Parson welcomed the diversion. He no longer wanted to think of Sutler, the whole situation having occupied him continuously for so long that the idea just tired him out.

The group of women grew, split, spread to five tables, then six: women from different cultures, some Asian, most European-looking, and different age groups, but all of them paired. By eight o’clock Parson was beginning to sober up again. The day was working in waves, dry and wet. He moved tables to sit closer to the massed twins who now gathered around a stage – a platform with a small sequinned arch that famed a handsome view of the old city. The bold fortress walls, a stone ribbon outlining the bay. With no guarantee that the couple from L’Olympia would show up, he began to consider another plan.

Soon, with every table occupied, the room became loud. The twins largely kept in their pairs, American and English voices rising above the humdrum. Some of the women sang along with the music and the small glass-walled room took on the air of a private party.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked the couple closest to him. Sisters dressed in white blouses and ice-blue cardigans, their eyes the same intense blue. The women did not understand, could not hear him. One leaned closer with a smile, suddenly intimate.

‘Is this a conference?’

The woman nodded enthusiastically. Her sister sipped her beer, cool and untaken with him, looking at him as if measuring him up.

‘For how long. How many days?’

‘Today,’ the first sister answered and smiled. ‘Tomorrow we go.’

Parson also nodded. He couldn’t guess from her accent where they were from, but was happy that she could understand him, happy to keep the conversation small.

‘To Malta.’ He offered up his beer.

The women nodded politely, again with smiles, then understanding that he was proposing a toast they raised their glasses with him.

The first woman leaned forward and indicating the room with one finger she said something that he couldn’t hear, then sat back and nodded again as music began to play. The women turned to the stage.

On the stage two other twins, smart and severe in evening dress, began to sing. Microphone in hand, they leaned shyly forward to read from a monitor. The first few bars played too loud, soon quelled, so that their voices could be heard, sweet and fresh, and Parson thought that this was something of great beauty. Delicate and shy, their voices seeped across the room, singing easily of love and loss to the cheers of their friends and a synthetic beat – and while they looked similar, moved with the same gestures, sang with similar voices, it was the slight mismatches which kept his attention: one hand slightly out of time, one word sung a little faster, or clipped a little short.

The sentiment woke in him a longing. And where were his friends? A serious question: where was his room of people ready, rowdy, happy for him? Where were these people after all his years of labour, the constant moving, the broken associations, and the endless starts? Parson sang along, the table sang along, the women looking one to the other as if one common thought passed between them.

The couple from the boat sat at the bar. Heads turned to the small stage. The woman smiled, her hand to her chest, amused. She pointed to the group and leaned toward her husband, who turned and looked about the room, a realization coming slowly to him.

Parson asked if the table needed more beer. The women said no with generous smiles and Parson struck his heart in mock hurt.

‘It might be my birthday,’ he said. ‘I might be very insulted. I can’t celebrate alone.’

But the women still said no, no thank you.

He stepped up to the bar, and took a position beside the woman from the L’Olympia, and a smile passed between them at the strangeness of the circumstances. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ he asked. ‘There’s a conference. Twins. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

The couple looked to each other before including Parson, a quick check between them.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I know your boat.’

The woman leaned back, her husband leaned forward, hands folded on the bar. Parson ordered drinks for the table.

‘You’re French?’ Parson offered his hand to the husband. ‘You have a beautiful boat. I was looking at her earlier. Did you sail from Bordeaux by yourself?’

With an element of pride the man admitted that they had.

They spoke for a brief while, the wife remaining silent, the husband reticent but polite, his English a little reserved. Parson learned that they had come from Sicily, and before that they’d hopped along the coast of Spain. In one month they would complete the loop and return to Gibraltar, unless they decided to go to Sardinia, where the boat would be handed to another crew to bring back to Bordeaux. ‘I don’t want this to be work. I work hard enough.’

Parson offered to shake the man’s hand. ‘I understand,’ he said almost with a wink. ‘Paul. Paul Geezler, and you?’

The man introduced his wife, Pamela, and himself, Paul.

‘Another Paul!’ Parson laughed. ‘What’s the chances? Sounds nicer in French, of course.’

They talked business. Paul about exporting, Parson about working as a manager for one of the world’s largest hospitality providers, although, he said, ‘it’s the worst kind of business right now.’

Parson ordered the couple another bottle of wine, mostly to bring himself back to the script he’d decided – what he needed to say. ‘This is good. I mean it’s good we’ve met,’ he said. ‘Because I’m thinking about making a similar journey myself. I’m serious.’ He started to laugh. ‘I’ve always wanted to sail, but I don’t have any experience. So what does a man need to do if he wants to go to Spain or Sicily…’ He allowed the idea to float as a possibility. ‘I was hoping someone would take me on as crew, train me, or let me just outright pay. I’m serious. This isn’t about money. Maybe you know someone who’d be interested? Maybe you should think about it yourselves? I’m completely serious. Take me to Spain. Why not? Or maybe you know someone? Let me tell you where I’m staying.’ He wrote the details down for Le Meridien, and noticed their expressions change from blank refusal to curiosity. ‘Think about it. See if you know anyone. I work hard. I’m like you. I want experience. I’ll give you my name again.’ He wrote out the name in capitals, P A U L G E E Z L E R. ‘Nobody ever spells that right. You should hear the names I’ve been called.’

*   *   *

Back on the promenade Parson sought out L’Olympia. Light shone from the lower cabin. A bottle with glasses stood on deck. A plan for the late evening. A small rope cordoned off the walkway and he felt the exclusion of that one thin line. He couldn’t judge if he’d done enough, or too much.

5.4

Anne waited for word from her husband. She calculated the time difference and counted the hours, working the shift between Malta and Turkey and New York. She thought to go to the airport but decided against this and felt herself constrained by the apartment, the view of the bay spoiled now, irrelevant. Eric wasn’t answering his calls, couldn’t or wouldn’t she had to ask herself; her husband also was playing shy, and she left messages for both of them, alternating calls; at turns angry, self-mocking, bemused, confounded. What does this mean, she asked herself, this disrespect from her husband and her son? What exactly was going on here?

She spoke with Mark in the afternoon and instantly forgot her irritation. ‘I thought this might happen,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I warn you? I had an idea. I knew. He didn’t call, and he usually calls. He calls me from the airport when he’s going somewhere.’ She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, a tell-tale flutter. ‘Usually. He usually calls me when he is going somewhere.’

‘What are we supposed to do? How long are we supposed to wait? Do we report this? Is there a required period?’

His questions suggested that she would know the procedures and she waited for him to ask outright: What did you do last time?

‘Why don’t you ask? Why don’t you ask me? Do you think this is deliberate?’

‘I think it’s a mistake. I think this can be explained. I don’t need to ask you that.’

‘But his father? What if this is deliberate?’

‘He’s never done anything like this before. There will be a simple explanation.’

Her husband’s attempt to soothe only increased her alarm. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I’m being stupid. It’s just one day. One day. I think we can wait. Allow him to contact us before we jump to any conclusions. I called the airline and they said he hasn’t changed the ticket. But this isn’t unusual. Do you know how many people miss their flights each day? It’s in the thousands. They regularly over-sell because this is not unusual.’ Anne pressed the receiver hard to her ear. ‘He’ll like it when he gets here. And the view.’ She hesitated, not wanting to speak at all, but hating the silence. ‘This happens all of the time. There was someone else at the airport waiting for someone who wasn’t on the flight. This happens all the time.’

They agreed to wait one more day, and when she hung up Anne felt the weight of the next day already upon her and decided she could not sit in the apartment.

The phone rang as soon as she set it down. Her husband’s voice sounded unexpectedly close: ‘The university, they’ve tried to call me at work. I have a message asking me to call back at eleven, that’s four hours. I’ll contact you as soon as I know what this is about.’

The news had to be repeated. She couldn’t understand the logic: why would he receive a message about her son through her son’s university? When the core of the information struck her – there is a problem – she hung up.

*   *   *

Anne left the apartment knowing that if she hesitated she would change her mind, and the hours would pass at a painful drag and she would frustrate herself. She kept the phone in her hand, and checked that the signal was still active, and that the batteries were still charged. Immediately on the street she had no idea what to do with herself and thought that if she needed to return home to New York, or possibly someplace else, she should stay near the apartment. Stopped in the entrance, a small marble-faced hallway, she debated what to do and decided not to pack until she knew that she had to. Such a gesture would show a lack of faith and pre-empt any information the university had to tell them. She followed a path toward the village and the port, the church below strung with bare white bulbs that outlined the windows, the entrance, the single tower, and illuminated the square. But all this prettiness soured in her eye and she suddenly resented being alone. How perfect this could otherwise have been. Around her the fields were divided into small landholdings, too tiny to be of practical use. As she came to the portside she found a crowd gathered facing the darkening sea.

Firecrackers had sounded off all evening, giving the night an uneasy edge. Anne caught the first salvo as a reflection in the windows of the houses and bars along the front, a bright cascade, quickly fading to a supple reverberating pop. Again and again fireworks sparked across the harbour, skewing the sea and sky in a strange perspective. When one display ended another began further along the coast, and when that ended another started closer still behind them. Rockets fired over the church and spangled wide above their heads; the crowd leaned back to follow the sparks and showers above them, the light flattening the upturned faces.

She held the phone against her chest and felt it ringing.

‘He’s missing.’ Her husband’s voice came clear above the crackle of fireworks. ‘Eric hasn’t been seen for five days. His tutors called from Turkey. The last they saw of him he was at their hotel. This is five days ago. They’ve reported this to the police. At the moment they don’t know anything. There’s no reason to believe that anything bad has happened. It doesn’t look like he’s in trouble.’

‘Five days?’

‘He left his bags at the hotel but he has his mobile and his passport with him, and he has money. I think they thought he was going to come back.’

‘Why didn’t they contact the police immediately?’

‘I don’t know.’

She felt sick, she said, and sat with her back to the church. It was unlike Eric to do anything without telling anyone where he was going. It wasn’t like him to disappear. He knew better than that. He wouldn’t do this deliberately. He wouldn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t. It was too easy to imagine something going wrong. Some trouble. Some accident. The wrong place at the wrong time. Too easy to picture.

5.5

A long evening spent in Marsaskala. Ford avoided the small crowd of families, mostly villagers, people in any case who appeared to know each other. When the display began he found a bar beside the church and retreated to the counter, beer in hand. Unsettled by the noise – the gunshot clatter and sudden bangs and light firing through the square – he kept himself separate, irritated at his reaction, but the noise, each time, drove into him.

She almost saw him, would have seen him if she had looked up, but with a phone in her hand Anne Powell turned her back to the firework display, and kept her head down as if struggling to hear the person she was speaking with. Ford concentrated on the woman and thought she might be wearing the same clothes as the previous night, and looked, again, presentable, smart, cosmopolitan. This, in any case, was certainly how he saw her. Done talking, Anne Powell walked away, in the same manner as the previous night, focused, a little angry, he couldn’t tell, but she cut directly through the tail of the crowd and headed up the street away from the town.

He left his beer on the counter and followed after, cringing at the expectation of more noise; finding it less easy to push through the crowd he plugged his fingers into his ears and shoved his way through. Another display started up, rockets whistled over their heads, cut out, and exploded above the narrow street. The fireworks pulsed with a stuttered delay, the thump echoed off the walls and amplified in his chest. Away from the crowd it was just her and him, the rockets’ shrieks, and a steep climb. She walked without paying attention to anything around her, oblivious to the sound and the night sky burning about them. At the top of the steps she turned right, walked on, faster now, then began to run so that he thought that he had spooked her, that she had somehow sensed him behind her. Encouraged that she was heading away from the village Ford followed after. The villa would stand by itself, abandoned, a little decrepit. One floor or a suite would be in decent enough repair for occupation, but the remainder would be in ruins.

Anne Powell did not slow her pace until she reached a building set on its own, large and stern, sheer-sided. Up on the roof, occasionally illuminated, a number of the residents watched the display.

Eric had exaggerated or was mistaken. The villa was not abandoned. It wasn’t isolated. Neither was it private, but busy and occupied. This clearly wasn’t the hideaway the boy had promised.

Ford waited for lights to come on in one of the apartments, then counted the floors: one, two, three. At the entrance he studied the list of occupants. Ca’ Floridiana. Third Floor. Suite 5.

Disappointed, he walked along a black road, relieved to have his back to the display, more relieved when it finished and the night sank into more regulated noise: cicadas, the beat of an approaching car, the blank unquiet night. He asked himself what would he do as Sutler? Sutler would return in the morning, reassess his options, adjust to the circumstance. Ford would give up, surrender to circumstance. Sutler would persist.

5.6

The consul’s assistant kept her waiting. Anne sat beside his desk in an office subdivided by small temporary walls, feeling a little more confident, allowing the language of the office – a bank-like odour and finish: sensible furnishings, beech-wood veneer, blue carpet squares – to convince her that business was accomplished here: at these desks, on these phones, problems were approached and pragmatically addressed. In such an environment the answers would come as a simple yes or no. Anne sat bolt upright with her arms folded, reassured by the openness and order.

On the desk, weighted by a folder, were a series of faxes and printed documents from an email account.

The assistant arrived out of breath. His shirt, crisp and white and tight; his tie, fat, red, and out of style. Not much to like, and a little too young, it occurred to her that she was saddled with a junior clerk. He made his apologies sound like an aside.

‘So, this is our man. Eric Powell.’ He pushed the file aside and picked up the papers, reading as he spoke. ‘We don’t think we have anything to worry over at this point. We have information from the Turkish authorities. They have been helpful, although there’s nothing much they can tell us at this point. They are in contact with the people he was travelling with. Has your husband heard anything?’

Anne nodded. ‘The university contacted him yesterday. This is how we heard.’

‘So you have no news today? Nothing direct for how many days?’

‘Five.’

‘You heard from him five days ago?’

‘No. I heard from him last week, I think last week, perhaps the weekend before. Before I left New York.’

‘And is he regularly in contact – in other situations?’

‘He’s a student, so…’ Anne hesitated, not wanting to give the wrong idea. ‘This is very different, he was supposed to join me. According to the airline he hasn’t tried to change his ticket, he just didn’t make the flight. He usually, he always calls me before he comes home, or when we meet up.’

‘Sometimes people don’t realize the trouble they cause.’

She couldn’t place the man’s accent. Not southern, and not identifiably urban. She could never place the East Coast accents.

‘In most cases these are simple matters. At this point there’s nothing to signal that we should be alarmed. No previous misdemeanours, no offences. We’ll find him in some hotel, I don’t doubt. He’s young, looking for adventure. He might have met someone. I’m absolutely sure.’ The idea bloomed promisingly between them. With the help of Eric’s companions the man was confident that they would track him down. He didn’t doubt that they would soon hear from him. ‘But just in case, here’s what we do—’ The assistant began to describe the usual checks and procedures. They were keeping an eye on the hospitals and clinics. The embassy in Istanbul would distribute a description of her son, and they would check anything that came up from such a search. In these situations they would know immediately if he was arrested or if he was in an accident. ‘It happens, very rarely, but it happens. People end up in hospital without identification. It would be rare for someone his age to disappear without provocation, and from what we have here there’s nothing to worry about. There’s no history of drug use, no family problems. Is he most likely to contact you or his father? Mark?’

Anne corrected the officer. Mark was not Eric’s father. The man apologized, still smooth – almost utterly disengaged.

‘I should be doing something.’

‘Until you hear otherwise you have to assume that everything is all right, and that this is, one way or another, his choice. That is, until we know something which otherwise changes the situation.’

*   *   *

She called her husband from the street and found that speaking increased her anger.

‘They have nothing. Nothing. They aren’t doing anything. The man is retarded. He’s a child. They employ children who speak about themselves in the plural, who talk about procedures, about what could be done without doing anything. He talks about nothing. He said nothing. We have to wait. They won’t do anything until more time has passed. Do nothing other than what we’re already doing. He thinks he’s having an adventure.’

‘Did he say this?’

‘It’s what he thinks.’

‘It’s possible. He might have met some girl.’

Anne could not reply. The idea made her wretched. She hadn’t liked hearing this from the consulate, and she didn’t like hearing it from her husband. She caught her reflection and felt suddenly vulnerable speaking in the street about matters which were private. But it wouldn’t be some girl, would it? It wouldn’t be something so straightforward. It was possible that he was continuing with the behaviour he had started at home: contacting men, speaking with them over the internet. It was possible. And if he was doing this, then what other possible opportunities, and what activities were there for a young man seeking company? This potential terrified her. Nothing could be worse. Anne immediately changed the subject. ‘I didn’t mention that he was a climber. I should have said something.’

She satisfied herself with the idea that he was somewhere remote, with a new group of friends, people who shared the same passion. He would be climbing somewhere. Almost certainly. Somewhere remote. ‘I’ll come back. There’s another flight on Thursday, I’ll go to the airport and see if he’s there. But I’ll come back. I’m done with my work in any case.’

Anne made her excuses and promised to call later. As she cancelled the call she found herself alone.

5.7

Ford returned to Ca’ Floridiana early in the morning in the hope that he would see Anne leave and he could risk a closer look at the property. The road that swung about the villa appeared less dramatic in the daylight, the village of Marsaskala smaller, the houses strapped to the bay-side road all faced the sea. Now that the rain had stopped, the sun regained its heat and grew fierce enough to draw scents off the blacktop, the sides of houses, the tin that covered shacks and shop fronts. A burnt fuzz of scorched straw hung in the air. Ford waited two hours. Certain that Anne was not home he counted people coming in and out, and realized it was, as he had found on the previous night, too busy. People would want to know his business. Ford returned to the village and sat out his afternoon, feeling the opportunity slide away from him. Why, exactly, had he come here? He felt distant enough now, even secure; his concerns began to shift to other matters – what he should do, where he should move on to, how he could earn money? Without the dog tags, without Eric and his notebooks, he needed to refigure his plans. While he was free, he was also penniless.

The sun encouraged a kind of laziness, and he half expected to bump into Anne, to find her in one of the cafés or walking beside the port browsing the smaller shops. The longer he sat, the less he wanted to do. Money in any case was short. He had enough for food, and if he didn’t pay for his hotel he’d have enough for a flight. He’d paid for the first night in cash and the manager, pleased to see him stay, happily allowed the nights to accrue.

He found a small café-bar on the waterfront and bought himself a beer. The café offered free internet, and lost for what to do he sat at the terminal, knees just sliding under the table, and typed in names.

‘Eric Powell’ brought almost nothing: a comic-book enthusiast, a sculptor, Myspace and Facebook pages for high-school students, a video of a boy taunting a dog. ‘Eric Powell +Turkey’ returned photographs for Thanksgiving, some jokes about food poisoning. He searched for ‘Anne Powell’ and found information on an exhibition in Rome, lecturers at minor US universities – nothing of interest. For ‘Paul Geezler’ he found more substantial information, pages of reports from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, all linked to HOSCO. In separate reports he found that Geezler was supervising the break-up of HOSCO in southern Iraq, and that he would head a new company managing private construction and supply.

He bought himself a second beer, picked and scanned through pages, and learned that Geezler was returning to Washington to report on the decommissioning of HOSCO, its devolution into smaller companies. On an image search he found photographs of Kiprowski, a head shot accompanying a report on contractors in Iraq. On a first read it made little sense. Here, Kiprowski, looking not quite like himself – Ford couldn’t recall him smiling, at least not so unguardedly – and underneath a tagline noting his death from an insurgent attack on Southern-CIPA at Amrah City.

Kiprowski killed in a mortar attack on Southern-CIPA.

A memorial to be held at St Jerome’s in Rogers Park, Illinois, attended by his parents, his brothers, his sister.

He’d asked Kiprowski to come to Southern-CIPA after he’d changed his mind about Clark and Pakosta. He wanted Kiprowski because Kiprowski kept himself to himself; because Kiprowski could be asked to do something and he would automatically attend to the task; because Kiprowski was easier company; because if Ford was caught leaving the compound, deviating from their usual routine, Kiprowski would not raise any alarm.

Kiprowski had run after him the moment before the mortar strike. The boy came running out of Howell’s office with Ford steps away from the door. The boy had run, hammering down the corridor, teeth gritted, arms beginning to rise – and in that final moment he’d closed his eyes as if he knew.

For Ford the moment before the explosion stuck with him in clear definition. Kiprowski running with his eyes closed, sprinting hard, then everything in pieces, the corridor, the air, the ground suddenly liquid, dense with matter. Flung outward, thrown by the blast, Ford had landed on his back, winded, but was on his feet by instinct, and had run out of the dust to the perimeter fence. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear anything but a shrill mechanical jabber. He didn’t ache until he arrived at Balad Ruz two days later, when his hands had begun to burn and his back had seized up. He felt like he’d been beaten, kicked, but knew, even so, that nothing serious had happened. The blast had knocked them out of the building, small enough to damage an office, but nothing of substance. His assumption to this point was that Kiprowski, two steps behind, was fine, because he was fine.

*   *   *

Ford drank through the afternoon, he read through the articles, clicking back through his history, refreshing his searches, checking repeatedly on Geezler, and finding in every report mentions of Southern-CIPA and the Massive. Geezler: responsible for reorganizing HOSCO contracts in southern Iraq. Geezler: negotiating on behalf of the company, apologizing for the disarray. Geezler: the only company representative ready to step up to the mark. Geezler: apologizing and accepting that HOSCO was entirely responsible for the hiring of its personnel, but that questions about the mismanagement and misappropriation of government funding should be directed at the appropriate governing bodies. Geezler: admitting that the money was gone. Geezler: recovering part of the funding; first twelve million, then five, then another thirteen. Geezler quoted: the company can no longer continue to operate along these lines without accepting responsibility. Geezler: HOSCO operations must be redistributed, the company must be reorganized, restructured, rebuilt, trust needs now to be earned. Geezler: architect and director of a new company, CONPORT, taking over the support contracts for US military in southern Iraq. Geezler: the man of the moment.

He drank. He paid for the beers one by one to keep a check on his money, each time leaving a small tip. In the late afternoon he asked for a telephone, international, and the barman pointed him to a corner store where he spent the last of his money on a phone card.

It took a while to find the company number. Geezler’s extension he could remember: an easy rhythmic 6363. He could not remember the direct number for the company, nor the man’s private number, and could not find the line for the government offices at Southern-CIPA – it occurring to him too late that there was no number because Southern-CIPA no longer existed.

Central-CIPA government operations in Baghdad were split across divisions. Dealings with HOSCO, with outsourcing, with contractors, were managed across administrative departments contract by contract.

He felt them stalling, evading, every person he spoke with, and down to his last five minutes he cancelled the call then dialled the number for HOSCO at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and found himself routed to an answering service who recommended that he call Geezler directly at Southern-CIPA, although they had no number. Don’t you know, he said, don’t you pay attention to the news?

He redialled, a last attempt, went directly to message and found that he had nothing to say.

‘Paul. Paul, I just want to know how this happened. I want to know if this was planned. If you worked this all out right from the start. I want to know if you organized this down to the last detail, had me sent me out there with this idea, so that step by step you’d end up at the top of the heap. I just want to know. What came first, Paul? Was it Sutler? How long did you have the idea for Sutler? Or was this something more haphazard? Someday, Paul, I hope we have a conversation about how this all came to happen.’

5.8

In his first weeks in Iraq, Parson had spent some of his time in barracks. In the evenings they watched DVDs in the mess hall, war films, thrillers, and when a man was shot or stabbed or otherwise killed they shouted die until he died, and then they cheered. They would play the scene over, with some smartarse making a mockery of it right before the screen. The same death, the same keen pain on the recruit’s face, and as he folded to the floor the room rose in uproar to applaud. They watched men die and quoted these deaths, walked into rooms with a stagger, hand to heart, hand to guts. Like the phrases they repeated to each other, like the nicknames they were given, these copycat deaths became part of the language.

*   *   *

Through his last night in Malta, Parson dreamed of endless endings. Falling, shooting, stabbing, suffocating: actions stopped before a final result. He woke and returned to these dreams, these quotes of other deaths, and woke again laughing at their absurdities.

*   *   *

Today he would call Geezler, let him know that Sutler was heading to Palermo, returning to mainland Europe. He was close now, closer. So close they walked practically side by side.

The last news on Sutler would not come for a while – not until he’d marked a trail through Italy, the south of France – names span in Parson’s mind: Corsica, Sardinia, Slovenia, Croatia – places he was keen to visit: Sutler would be busy before his final confrontation. At some point, this Sutler would learn about Parson, and Parson would negotiate a settlement with Sutler before the man disappeared permanently. He couldn’t decide how obvious to make this ending. There needed to be some back door, some possibility of a sequel because the real Sutler might show up, in which case Parson would have to admit to a certain ineptitude. I was working on my own. Following my own nose. I did what I could. But by then, really – three months, one year – what would it matter? It was equally possible that the real Sutler would simply evaporate, just disappear into some white fog on some white landscape. But thanks to Sutler, Parson had hoisted himself out of the Middle East: no longer the available man on the ground.

Parson called his wife: Laura, listen. You pack. You put together what you need. You make arrangements for your mother with your sister. Leave as soon as you can. Find a cheap flight to Naples. You don’t need to think. You only need to say yes.

He held the phone away from him, hand over the receiver, high above his head so that he would not, for one moment, hear her reply, so that he would not feel disappointment in her excuses, her hesitation, or her refusal, so that he would not need to offer encouragement or rebuttal. And so he waited, marking the time it would take for her to come round or reject the idea.

With the phone high above his head he let her thoughts spill out above him, thinking, for the moment, that this might be possible, and that what might be possible at this point would be good enough. And with that idea satisfaction burned through him.