I met my friend from the Directorate tonight. He was waiting for me in a car in the parking area outside the Gare du Nord. As I got in out of the rain, he ran one hand through his hair and lit a cigarette with the other, and I thought that one of the men I love is not able to do such a simple thing.
My friend told me that the encryption on Hamid’s computer is very sophisticated, much more so than he would have expected. Almost military grade, he said. He had not managed to get into the main files, but he did get into the email account, at least for the last two weeks or so. He apologised for calling so late – he is like that, very polite and considerate – but he thought I would want to know right away. Tomorrow might be too late, he said. He looked very stressed, as if he had not slept any more than I have in the past few days.
I didn’t print them, he said. He reached into his pocket, unfolded a paper. I’ve written some of it down, he said, resting his smoking Gitane in the car’s ashtray. 14th October, he began: an email from an Egyptian IP address, someone calling himself simply J, warning Hamid that the authorities would take action if he didn’t abandon the case. That was all it said, just ‘the case’. No reply. Then, two days later, an email from a Yusuf Al-Gambal, saying that ‘the situation was worsening appreciably’ – that is a direct quote – and that he was being watched and he feared that he would soon be made to disappear. Hamid replies by giving him a contact name and an address. (He pointed to the paper.) Then again, two days later, another email from Al-Gambal; same thing, more urgency, desperation also. Hamid tells him there is nothing more he can do. Then, over the next twenty-four hours, a flurry of emails from Al-Gambal. It is as if he is up all night, sending out emails, pleading for help, for forgiveness. And then the tone becomes increasingly accusatory: You are abandoning me; you promised you would help me; I trusted you – that kind of thing. They all go unanswered. The next day there is an attachment from the same address – a spreadsheet full of numbers that I can’t make sense of. A few latitude-longitude coordinates, it looks like, a bunch of other stuff. That was it, no more communications between them.
My friend handed me a stack of papers as thick as my finger. He swallowed then lit another cigarette. He took his time doing it. And then this, he said, pointing to the page with a nicotine-stained finger. On the 19th of October, Hamid writes to this email address, indicating he thinks that someone is planning to murder him. Someone close to him. My friend fell silent, looked at me. His face was washed blue and fluid from the lights on the street and the rain on the windscreen. Have you checked your own email? he said.
Then he handed me the hard drive and the papers. I’ve done all I can, he said. I’m sorry, he said.
I told him that I understood – and I do, fully.
What are you going to do with it? he asked.
I don’t know, I said.
I got out of the car. Rain leapt from the pavement, angled across the yellow cones of light strung along the boulevard. It was cold. He drove away and I walked back to the station. As I turned to wave, I realised that I hadn’t thanked him.
At home, I went straight to my office and turned on my computer. I went through every incoming email for the last four months, and found nothing at all out of the ordinary. Then I looked through the papers my friend had given me. There were stacks of emails to and from Hamid’s Cairo office concerning details of the various cases they were working on – pdfs of Egyptian legal statutes, all in Arabic, of course; legal procedural advice from a local consultant; and various research documents, including saved web pages from news agencies – AFP, Reuters, Al-Jazeera – dating back almost two years. There were stories about Cairo’s worsening air pollution, a BBC article on Egypt’s burgeoning tourism industry and the rapid development on the Red Sea coast, and several pieces about the re-emergence of an Egyptian extremist organisation – Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya – and its new leader, the shadow who goes by the nom-de-guerre of The Lion, and his anti-regime agenda. There were even a couple of articles about the case itself, with Hamid mentioned by name.
Throughout, one name kept coming up: Yusuf Al-Gambal, one of the men Hamid was defending. The spreadsheet that Al-Gambal sent Hamid and the cryptic warnings in his emails clearly suggest that whatever trouble he was in was not over, and in fact may have deepened. Thinking back now to one of the few times that Hamid did discuss the case with me, I recall him mentioning that he’d made a deal to win a form of reprieve for Al-Gambal. He did not tell me what the deal involved. He then went into some detail about the Egyptian legal system, so I didn’t pay much attention.
I need to know more about the case. Tomorrow, I will go to the bureau and do some more research on this. Guilt grips me: I am already thinking about the story this could become. What does that say about me, about the person I am, the person I have become? One word burns in my mind: selfish.
‘Whenever misfortune touches him, he is filled with self-pity.
And whenever good fortune comes to him, he selfishly withholds it from others.’
It is the nature of man. We were put on this earth to rise above it.
Assistant Inspector Marchand called.
The police found a high-temperature industrial incinerator on the property where our Peugeot was abandoned. Inside they found residue of a mass and chemical composition consistent with what would be expected from the incineration of two human bodies. The temperature and duration of incineration meant that even the two sets of teeth were largely reduced to ash, but they did find five small, deformed lumps of metal that were clearly fillings, and an almost intact titanium plate about five centimetres long. There were also the molten remains of what appears to be a wedding ring. She asked if any of this sounded familiar.
I stood speechless for a long time. She repeated: Madame Al Farouk, are you there?
Hamid, I believe, has five fillings, although I never asked him or checked myself. Who, however close, knows the number of fillings her spouse carries in his head? Some details are entirely beyond intimacy. But I do know that Hamid broke his leg several years ago, before I met him, skiing in Lebanon, and had a titanium plate inserted in his right tibia. He wears a wedding ring. At least, he did.
Finally, I recovered, although I have no idea how long I stood there, mute, blank. It probably was not more than a few seconds, but I cannot be sure. I replied yes, I was still on the line. I told her about Hamid’s leg.
There is more, she said. The DNA testing on the clothing found at the site has come back, and I can confirm that the blood on the t-shirt is your son’s and the blood on the jacket is your husband’s. Your DNA, Madame Al Farouk, was on both. Do you do the laundry in your household, Madame Al Farouk? Assistant Inspector Marchand’s new formality sent a shiver running against my growing despair, like the waves that reflect back off a winter beach and collide in an explosion of spray and foam with the incoming breakers.
Yes, I said, trying to think. Yes, I do the laundry.
That would explain it, then, she said. I thought she sounded disappointed.
Assistant Inspector Marchand wants me to come to the station this afternoon. There are a number of additional questions she and her colleagues would like to ask me.
So, they are dead.
Allah has taken them to his eternal grace and protection. Surely, if any souls have ever deserved paradise, it is my husband and my beautiful, innocent little son. And yet I weep. I scream. I grind the pencil deep into the paper, tear the pages, pull at my hair.
I stare out across the city, every window a life, a story, dreams and fears and hopes and sorrows contained in each. Suddenly I am strangled by panic. Fear chokes me, bewilderment at the chaos in which we spin, powerless, deluded into a sense of control and order by all that we have built to give our lives solidity and meaning – the buildings and institutions and conventions; the streaming red-and-white highways and these clothes I wear to cover my nakedness, to hide my true self from the world and from my own introspection.
‘And God has created you, and in time will cause you to die.’
And so, they are dead.
My friend from the Directorate has just called me. My cover has been blown. Someone in the Directorate has informed the police that I – the person they know as Lise Al Farouk, née Moulinbecq, journaliste for Agence France Presse – am actually Rania LaTour, one-time operative for the DGSE Groupe Action. He does not know who did it, or why. But the timing is clear. I am capable of murder; indeed, I have been trained in its art, and the other subtler techniques of concealment and misdirection, surveillance and coercion.
The police are about to charge me with murder. And somewhere out there are the devils who took the lives of my husband and my son. This is not the work of amateurs, of some jealous woman. Professionals did this. Every detail was planned, slowly, meticulously. I am being framed.
I have not heard back from Hope. Wherever Crowbar is, clearly she has not been able to contact him. And Claymore, wherever you are, I know that you have your quarin to deal with – your own personal Satan. So, I am on my own. And I am running out of time.