Chapter 32
Renowned International Terrorist Brakes for Pussycat

JOÃO PACHECO BUZZED the next morning to grant Edgar a rare second audience with Verdade. Though Wallasek had nagged for an updated profile, Edgar courted a reputation as unsympathetic with Verdade’s cause, and had expected his pro forma request to re-interview the great man, put in months ago, to be regally ignored.

The now-or-never interview was for this very afternoon, when Edgar had planned to give Jasmine Petronella the Terror Tour around Cinziero. Fair enough, his Terror Tour was lame—an expedition to the Creme gift shop, a hasty careen through Terra do Cão (where he was disinclined to linger since repairing the Saab’s gouged finish), and a wend about the dreary countryside for an ooh-ah over the landscape’s weirdo wind flutes. Still, with Nicola’s infernally platonic friendship wearing thin, celibate Eddie was getting desperate, even if through the fug of a daylight hangover Jasmine’s looks would inevitably revert to interesting. Anyway, forget it. As a reporter of current events, naturally he had to go haggle over the heroic exploits of Teodósso o Terrível in 1794.

At headquarters, no Serio. Pity; kiss all that sparkling repartee good-bye. Instead, Pacheco hooked Edgar’s thumb into a yo-brother clasp with a smirk. Ferret-face now wore a dark mafioso three-piece with a turned-up collar and wraparound shades indoors. His patronizing collegiality implied that the office was plenty up to speed on the National Record’s hostile coverage, but that Creams sucked the poison from pens like Edgar’s for breakfast.

Seated sullenly in O Creme’s outer office for over an hour, Edgar had ample time to assess improvements to the premises: closed-circuit cameras, IBM computers, fax and photocopier, five phone lines. They’d swapped populist grunge for swank: grass wallpaper, carpet thick as a zoysia lawn, obese armchairs nubbled in raw linen, lined brocade drapes; this roach nest was done up classier than the Wall Street digs of Lee & Thole. As if to offset the Creams’ murderous rep, the reception room was now swaddled in passive, mauvey pastels, which clashed painfully with the wall’s red-and-green Barban flag, no longer silk-screened but professionally stitched.

This time Verdade didn’t bound up the stairs, but casually opened the inner office door, unabashedly present the entire time. Having bagged the working-stiff windbreaker for an Armani suit, Verdade had gone for the debonair statesman look, and was as crisply cornered as an army bunk. His red-and-green silk tie was dotted with tiny hairy pears.

During their first encounter Verdade’s verbiage had slithered with the insinuation that he fronted for truly evil fucks. Now that Edgar had peeked behind the curtain to discover Barba’s Wizard of Oz was a common shyster, Verdade’s propaganda should have lacked subtext. Strangely, the man’s wide brown eyes continued to glitter, and a sibilant hidden agenda still hissed beneath his academic banalities.

As time wore on Edgar grew perplexed. Verdade made such a flap about his tight schedule, his precious time. Yet Edgar had to flip his ninety-minute tape to fill the B-side and then start a second cassette. What’s more, this was all pat national-self-determination soft-shoe that he could have downloaded from O Creme’s Web site. A wicked smile playing on his lips, o presidente seemed to be torturing his interviewer on purpose.

By the end of the interview, Edgar’s chest had tightened and his throat felt constricted as if to warn of an oncoming asthma attack, and Edgar didn’t have asthma. When he was finally allowed out the door it was pitch-dark, and for once the slap of the wind was exhilarating. Liberdade!

Edgar surveyed the Turbo for abuse, but his cardboard sign on the dashboard, CONVIVADO DO CREME, had protected the coupe. Chances were that kids kept their hands off a guest of the party’s car not out of respect, but from fear—which might be justified. For no reason that Edgar cared to formulate, he glanced under the car. Christ, you’re getting paranoid, he mused—ducking in and central-locking the doors.

Edgar pulled out with relief. He’d come to dislike Terra do Cão, which always made him feel unclean, a sensation he’d usually blame on the neighborhood’s unhealthy political quarantine. The area had an Orwellian feel, as if all its residents had been through reeducation camp; you never heard a word against the Creams. Yet whizzing past his regular red wooden phone booth, Edgar wondered if the ghetto’s association in his mind with his own SOB atrocity claims might be contributing to its foulness. Because after he drove out of Terra do Cão, that unclean sensation? It didn’t go away.

Maybe he was tired, but for once Edgar couldn’t be arsed, as Bear would say, to contrive distinctions between the amoral and the immoral, or to sail into congratulatory flights about having hijacked the car bombs of truly warped individuals for a mortifyingly nerdy cause. Fair enough, Edgar was sick of his conscience wheedling that glory might be fleeting but infamy sticks around like gum in your hair. At this point he was even sicker of the callow huckster who continuously rattled off, to no one in particular, pompous excuses for a project at best dubious, at worst repugnant. For once he didn’t mean Barrington, but himself. For Edgar no sooner flicked on the radio to the World Service than his ears reflexively pricked for a calumny that might require another hustle from Barba’s own Fast Eddie.

He switched off the report, and suddenly a black cat scuttled through the beams of his brights. Edgar hit the brakes. Though he’d missed it, his heart was whomping. Catching himself, Edgar grinned. RENOWNED INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST BRAKES FOR PUSSYCAT.

Then, wouldn’t he. Not long ago, after Edgar had lit into another lacerating riff about his colleagues, Nicola collapsed into peals of laughter. Finally she’d explained in a teary-eyed wheeze, “Edgar, give up! You’re a lovely man!” Maybe it was the memory of Nicola cracking up at his unconvincing tough-guy pose that did the trick, because right then a resolution mushroomed in his head.

Edgar wanted out.

He’d flirted with the proposition before, of throwing in the towel on the SOB while he was still ahead of the game, if that’s what he was. Certainly Edgar was a damned sight more anxious than he let on to his notional landlord that any day now Interpol could plow up Abrab Manor’s drive to bark on their loudspeaker that they had the house surrounded. Anyone with a lawyer’s faith in order believed that sooner or later everyone’s brought to book. That he’d got away scot-free so far was miraculous, and the close shave with the fingerprints had brought Edgar up short.

What had kept him claiming bad business this long wasn’t duty, much less mischief, the spirit of which he’d lost some time ago, but more narrative panic. If Edgar plain stopped—simply didn’t call in any more bomb claims—what kind of closure was that? And from then on the SOB is never heard from again, no one knows why, until one by one the Reuters, Guardian, and Times Cinziero bureaus shut . . . An enervating, listless ellipsis, is that how this Sob story should end? Edgar had never cared for songs that faded on the refrain.

Yet slumping behind the wheel, Edgar faced the ugly truth. He had a suck-ass imagination. He couldn’t contrive an inspired climax for this farce any more than he could invent innovative diversions for Yardley’s after-school playgroup. Edgar was an able imitator, the clingy sidekick of a man he’d never even met, and this SOB sport was just a run with Barrington’s ball. Half plagiarist, half errand boy, Edgar didn’t have a creative bone in his body. He was like one of those hacks hired to write sequels to a classic like Peter Pan—travesties of the original on which critics heap opprobrium, with endings crafted purely to allow for yet more second-rate sequels.

Chastened, humbled, and chagrined, by the time Edgar arrived home, he’d made a vow. Okay, it made for a punk story: Edgar picks up where Barrington left off and then calls it quits. It was a tale with no moral, no irony, no final chapter twist. But he couldn’t turn state’s evidence now without incriminating himself, and probably doing some serious time. No narrative orgasm was worth five years in the slammer. So there was nothing to do but resign as quartermaster of the SOB. He wouldn’t call in any more claims. The commitment had a hollow feeling, but all regimens felt bogus at the start. What was it AA people said? One day at a time. Maybe he could start a chapter of Terrorists Anonymous right here in Cinziero.

With an Interpol manhunt fresh in his head, finding the front door ajar fortified Edgar’s determination to skip his evening’s ritual Choque and dive straight for the Noah’s Mill. On entering the living room, Edgar considered that in that case he would have to find the bottle, a task that could prove formidable.

The room had been ransacked. Cushions were flung about, and coughed feathers. The seaman’s chest gaped open, the quilts it stored snarled in far corners. Chairs were upended, antique end tables smashed. Charred logs littered the hearth, and coals had been ground into carpets. The liquor cabinet was toppled, its cut-glass snifters in bits. Since it was the only whole bottle in sight, tonight this bourbon drinker would have to settle for gin. Lots and lots of gin.

“Saddler!” Edgar hated to admit it, but at the moment he could use a friend.

Only the emerald velveteen wingchair remained upright. Plumped with unmolested pillows on either arm, it formed the room’s sole island of repose. Barrington obligingly materialized in the chair, sipping his usual pink gin from that improbably thin martini glass.

“We’ve had visitors,” Barrington advised usefully.

“Thanks. I’d never have noticed.” Scanning the detritus on the floor, Edgar spotted a silver cigarillo case, an ornately faceted crystal candy dish, and a solid-gold snuffbox. “This can’t be a run-of-the-mill burglary.”

Barrington laid a finger on his chin. “I think not.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?” Edgar cried, even as he recognized that depending on imaginary-Barrington to protect the property was like keeping a stuffed Rottweiler. “We’re overrun by barbarians, and you rescue the Beefeater and bitters!”

“Naturally I—what’s that linguistic abortion you Americans use? Prioritized.” Barrington’s brow dimpled. “But Eddie. I’m a bit concerned about the study.”

Edgar groaned. Before trudging upstairs, he took a slug of Barrington’s gin.

It was the study on which the twister had planted its most passionate kiss. The jar of international coins was cracked open like a piñata, and change plinked under Edgar’s feet as he waded through ankle-deep tossed paper. Barrington’s three-ringed clip files were pulled from the shelves and splayed. Since their brain-surgeon guests apparently couldn’t work the fiddly clasps on the glassed-in bookcases, the panes were smashed and the woodwork splintered. The pitching to corners of Barrington’s melted bicycle pump, hairy skull, and rare demagogic button collection confirmed that one man’s memorabilia was another man’s junk.

In the tumult of tossed objects, it took Edgar a few minutes to sort out what wasn’t there: his own computer. After scrounging on all fours for fifteen minutes, he resigned himself that the floppies were gone, too.

Edgar numbly retired to the atrium to allow these absences to sink in.

“Did you,” Barrington began with an air of diplomacy, “save your translations?”

“What translations?” Edgar snapped.

“Of my SOB STORIES. Did you save the decoded files to disk, or store them on your hard drive? Or might you have hit that most magical of keys, D-E-L?”

“I saved them,” Edgar admitted glumly.

“Ah,” said Barrington. “And you’ve been switching the code phrase every so often? It’s terribly important, like changing your underdrawers.”

“Of course!” said Edgar impatiently.

“But you don’t keep a record. You keep them in your head.”

“No,” Edgar moaned. “I keep a list. At first I relied on memory, but after two or three replacements I was afraid I’d forget.”

“A handwritten list,” Barrington proposed hopefully, “that you store on your person, perhaps?”

“I don’t even write my grocery list by hand.”

“So.” Barrington sighed. “This list of code phrases is on your computer?” Hangdog, Edgar nodded. “And it is up to date.” Edgar’s answers had proved so consistently unfortunate that this last query Barrington didn’t bother to phrase as a question. “Then I suggest,” he continued, “that you go ring a newspaper.”

“I decided to quit!”

“You’ve no choice. Unless you want our visitors to ring them for you.”

“What good is that code phrase to anyone but me? Christ, it’s not even any good to me, really—except to carry on with a joke that’s got pretty fucking old.”

“We’ve spent so much agreeable time together,” Barrington despaired. “Please don’t force me to conclude that you’re an idiot.”

“But why would anyone tear this place apart? What were they looking for?”

“Anyone,” Barrington scoffed, “was more or less looking for what they took.”

“Nobody would search for evidence of our racket unless they’d already caught on. How could someone have found us out?”

“Now it’s us, is it? I’ve noticed that we’re only in this together when something goes wrong. But I really can’t accept responsibility here. You called attention to yourself with that cabaret act for Jasmine Petronella. Oh, I grant you it was cute. Too cute, by half.”

“Reckless, yeah. So? The whole world thinks Cinziero’s crawling with Sobs. My ‘interview’ fed local superstitions is all. Like sighting a leprechaun.”

Barrington settled by the pool, dipping the belt of his smoking jacket into the water. “Never mind our humble home. You realize that Tomás Verdade has been metaphorically turning this whole town upside-down for years?”

“Looking for what?”

“Soldados Ousados, you halfwit!” Barrington got shirty when Edgar was slow on the uptake.

Edgar shrugged. “Why has he bothered? The make-believe kind work swell.”

“Think of matters from Verdade’s perspective,” Barrington chided. “He leads a movement whose paramilitary arm provides him all the power he’s got. But he’s no notion who these people are. He’s no more prescient about SOB operations than any old punter. Tomás has to stay light on his feet, and though he plays a good game and looks in control, he isn’t. You’ve talked to our friend a time or two. Think he enjoys being buffeted by the winds of fortune? You set up an interview with a leprechaun. He got word you knew a Sob, Eddie. Tomás has never located a Sob, Eddie. As of this afternoon? He’s found one.”

Having poured himself a tall straight gin, Edgar lay flat on the marble floor. The cold stone’s evocation of a morgue slab seemed apt.

“Will he blow the whistle on me?” Edgar mewled.

“That’s the one fate you’re safe from. It’s less in his interests to expose the SOB than it is in yours. If the SOB’s a joke, it’s on Tomás. He’d become a laughingstock.”

“Then maybe it doesn’t matter.” Edgar brightened. “Maybe he’ll keep playing along. Meantime, I don’t call in any more claims. The whole debacle peters out.”

“No, Eddie,” Barrington cautioned with a rare note of seriousness. “It matters.”

“Leave me alone!” Edgar implored. “I’m shot!”

“If you don’t listen, you very well may be. Aside from myself, you’re the only soul in the world who’s twigged that the SOB’s closest corollaries aren’t Hamas and the Tamil Tigers, but the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Tomás won’t want that information in anyone’s hands but his own. You’re a threat to his future presidency of an independent Barban state. Equally, to his cushy honoraria in America, his Vanity Fair profiles, and the stretch limos sent to escort him to the Lisbon parliament. Now, I doubt that Tomás has ever done anything dire, actually. But not because he’s such a good Catholic. He’s kept his goons in check because he’s afraid of the SOB. He won’t be afraid of the bugaboos from now on.”

Edgar hoped that Barrington would stop there, but not wishing his point to be lost Saddler spelled it out forcefully: “As of tonight, your existence, Eddie—is inconvenient.”