The least consequence of what transpired at 10.39 a.m. on Friday August 7, 1998 – date never to be forgotten, time branded on her memory– was the loss of her alarm clock. Miranda threw the sheets aside quickly, realising that she had overslept – on such a day. She had woken up easefully, thinking of Nick and the twanging guitars at the night club on Zanzibar, and the sweet air of the garden afterwards, where he had kissed her. Then her thoughts turned, in a single, self-punitive flash, towards poor Mrs Ghai, George the cleaner, the gardener, Ray, the body without a head. Towards the hundreds of others in Kenya, some still trapped beneath the rubble, alive or dead.
After dressing quickly, and grabbing a few mouthfuls of yogurt and muesli for breakfast, she rushed back to the chargé’s house. She had to fight her way through. Once the bomb had gone off, the world’s media – CNN, BBC and many more – had quickly started to gather round the ruined chancery. Now they had begun to concentrate on the emergency op centre at the house.
During the night, a public-affairs strategy had been devised by the Department of State. Orders were given that the media were to be kept away from evidence-sensitive bomb sites and prohibited from conducting on-camera interviews with victims. But it was too late: a number of images were already out and flashing round the world. Some of them were deemed too grisly for the international networks, and were shown only on African TV. These included one of a hand with a ruby ring still on one of its fingers.
Mrs Ghai’s. Miranda fled to the bathroom, holding her own hand over her mouth.
Later she saw another image, from Nairobi, of bloody hand-prints on a wall, which she guessed were those of an injured person dragging themself to safety. Again she had to turn away. The chancery public-affairs officer tried to clamp down on such broadcasts. Instead, proper briefings, stand-up press conferences, were to be given to the hundreds of journalists who now congregated in Dar.
Miranda watched President Clinton and other members of the government make statements on CNN. ‘These acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent,’ said the President, standing in the White House rose garden. ‘They are inhuman. We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice, no matter what or how long it takes.’
‘Terrorists rejoice in the agony of their victims,’ said Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. ‘What we want to do is take the joy out of their celebration, and we will do everything in our power to track them down.’
Secretary Albright announced a $2 million reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the bombings. ‘Our nation’s memory is long and our reach is far,’ she said.
Miranda could not bear to think what it was like for those families who had lost sons or daughters, mothers, fathers. In Nairobi, it had taken over twenty-four hours of constant digging by Marines and special-forces personnel to remove the bodies from the rubble. The TV showed Marines and Kenyan soldiers standing by the ruined building, which was now ringed with coils of barbed wire and piles of sandbags, in anticipation of further attack. Behind the barrier a bulldozer pushed a jumble of debris. Miranda saw bodies being wrapped in plastic or having numbered aluminium tags attached to their ankles for identification. She saw coffins, made of red wood, being loaded onto the backs of pickups and, as was the custom for the Africans, being taken for burial to their home villages.
* * *
The Administration acted promptly to deal with the crisis, initiating a rescue plan and taking steps to apprehend those responsible. Not surprisingly, however, things were a bit chaotic. It was not until forty hours after the bombings that the C-17 Globemaster III carrying the Tanzanian FEST (Foreign Emergency Search Team) arrived in Dar. The regular FEST plane had been despatched to Nairobi and it was only later, as the scale of the tragedy became apparent, that it was decided to send a separate one to Tanzania. The delay was partly to do with accessing an appropriate aircraft and partly to do with the availability of a second stream of equipment: radios and telephones, search dogs, tools for the excavation and extraction of buried personnel, medical supplies, next-of-kin records and other emergency documentation. It took a lot of work to get all this together.
In addition to the FESTs, a variety of service members were despatched by the Department of Defense, which called on its resources from all over the world. A fifty-man Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Platoon was sent by Central Command to each city; a thirty-man Navy Seabee unit was deployed from Guam to help with recovery operations in Nairobi; European Command sent a twenty-man surgical team, a seven-member Army-combat stress-control team, a critical-care transport team and a seven-member Air Force aeromedical evacuation crew. From south-west Asia, more medical personnel and a mortuary affairs team were deployed, split between Dar and Nairobi.
But it was mainly FBI staff – medical and explosives and engineering experts as well as investigating agents – who were first to arrive at the two sites. Under federal law, the FBI is mandated with investigation of crimes committed on United States property abroad, and this was why Mort Altenburg touched down in East Africa. Jack Queller, rushed from Cape Cod to Washington by light aircraft, was another who came, having been called in personally by Secretary Albright as a Center for Terrorism Control adviser to the FEST.
Queller and Altenburg went to Nairobi first. Both men were shocked by the quantity of debris at the site when they first visited it. There was glass, a lot of glass, mounds of brick, twisted pieces of charred metal, huge slabs of concrete. The walls of several buildings had been completely ripped away, like a cross-sectional diagram. Webs of vapour still hung over the site. Kenyan construction crews, their picks and shovels ringing on stone and steel, continued to dig for human remains.
Altenburg threw himself into investigative searches and interviews. Queller stood back a little, trying to get a picture of how it had happened. He noticed that some of his colleagues were riding roughshod over the personnel from the Kenyan Criminal Investigative Division. He himself took special care to listen to what the African policemen had to say as they went about their own examinations of the crime scene, in the wake of the FBI’s technical experts.
The forensic procedure itself involved mapping out a boundary, a demarcation about six hundred yards from the putative centre of the blast, and working one’s way in. What the technical agents were looking for first of all were pieces of metal that showed a close proximity to the explosion – such as might have come from the vehicle in which the bomb was carried, if that was the case. There was a characteristic pitting and cratering of surfaces, and thinning and rolling of the metal itself from the amount of energy and pressure exerted on the object at the time of detonation.
Later they would swab for trace elements, explosive residue: minute particles of chemical produced when the explosive reacted and changed from a solid to a gaseous state. Having been isolated and dissolved in acetone, the particle would then be separated, using gas chromatography, and its chemical constituents identified with an electron microscope. Only then would they know exactly which ingredients had been used to make the bomb.
There was so much to get through that the FBI set up tents in a parking lot next to the embassy, laying out trestle tables inside, on which they could study fragmentary evidence. It was here the torn pieces of metal were examined, having been carefully picked up from where they had come to rest.
Queller stared at them. It was hard to get a sense of how these blackened pieces, carried by the shock waves at thousands of feet per second, had moved through the air as the explosive expanded; how energy moving at such a high rate of speed could take metal, heavy metal like an axle or a piston rod, twist it, churn it, puddle it, flatten it, or form a knife-like edge even as it travelled.
The following day, on a visit to the hospital, he saw some of the damage that had been done to human flesh by these projectiles, and by the billions of particles of glass, concrete and other material that the explosion had flung around in concentric circles.
He walked the beds with an Asian woman doctor. Torn limbs. Corneal laceration. Shrapnel littering flesh. Teeth sheared off. Holes in the skull. People who had lost parts of their jaws or shoulders. There was one man, a driver at the embassy, who had lost an eye, an ear, and half of his forehead. The ambassador herself had a badly torn lip and other injuries. Many others, from what the doctors told him, had glass buried so deep in their bodies it would take eight or nine operations to remove it.
Queller was most moved by those who had lost limbs. One man had lost a hand. The doctor told Queller how he had come in with the hand dangling from the threads of its neurovascular bundle – a lone figure in the sudden surge of humanity that had descended from buses and cars in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, overunning the triage area and covering its walls and floor with blood as they slumped and lay and sat down all along the hallways, waiting for attention.
He left the place trembling and had to stand in the car park under a red-flowered tree before he could gather the strength to drive back to the bomb site.
* * *
Over in Dar, Miranda was at the scene as the first wave of FEST personnel arrived, to begin collecting evidence there and initiating a programme of interviews. She watched the agents as they checked in at the chargé’s house, where she was still working the phones. There were as many women as men among them, and African–Americans, Asians, WASPs – a broad spectrum – but all seemed somehow the same: the same youth and iron-hard fitness, the same sober business suits half concealing shoulder holsters and handguns, the same logic-chopping, Quantico brains. The response teams went into the blast sites first with picks and shovels, then wearing surgical gloves, carrying Q-tips and tiny plastic bags. They all wore protective Tyvek suits – all-over plastic suits to prevent contamination of evidence. They must be boiling in those, she thought, under the African sun.
The mandatory security inspections conducted by the FEST included rigorous questioning of the chancery staff. Held at the Kilimanjaro, these were something of an ordeal, but everyone agreed they were necessary. One by one, those who weren’t too badly injured were called to the hotel.
By the time it was Miranda’s turn, Queller and Altenburg had arrived from Nairobi. It was they who conducted the interview. She was surprised to see the two men together. She didn’t know what to say as she was escorted into the room by another agent.
Queller was friendly from the start, rising to shake her hand, offering her his good left one, which threw her a little even though she remembered about the prosthesis.
‘We met before, didn’t we?’ he said, with a smile. ‘I’m sorry that we have to meet again under such tragic circumstances.’
Altenburg was colder in his manner, studying her impassively from behind his spectacles. It was he who asked most of the questions, sitting directly opposite her at the formica desk. There was a pile of files, and a tape recorder. Queller sat a little apart with his legs crossed, the empty sleeve of his missing arm hanging by his side. The agent who had escorted her in stood at the door. She felt like a criminal under guard.
At first the interrogation was technical. ‘What colour was the smoke from the bomb? Are you able to describe its smell?’
She tried as best she could to remember. ‘Well, it was just black really, black with streaks of grey. I don’t know how to describe the smell. The only time I ever smelt anything like it was when some kids burnt a car in my cousin’s neighbourhood back home. Only it was more, kind of chemical. And you could smell the masonry dust too.’
There were a few more questions like that, and then Altenburg began quizzing her on matters of security.
‘Had anyone, before the Friday, asked you questions about your working day, or about protection protocols at the chancery?’
‘Stuff like – what are the MSG’s schedules and so on?’ Queller put in helpfully.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, I know very well not to answer questions like that.’
‘What did you see on the day of the bomb? Did you see anything suspicious? Any people or vehicles at the perimeter?’
She began telling them about the water tanker. ‘I had to go out and deal with the water-supply man, he was late you see, and I had to hang around …’
‘Forensics have been right over the wreck of it,’ Altenburg said. ‘We think the other truck was the core of the blast. Can you tell me anything about that?’
‘It was coming up as I left. I wondered what was in it. I thought it was stuff for the swimming pool.’
‘What?’ Altenburg said.
‘We’re having a swimming pool built and construction vehicles have been coming in. I thought it was one of those.’
Altenburg wrote something down.
‘OK,’ said Queller.
‘It was waiting to pass the water truck. I remember being surprised because usually the Tanzanian drivers honk their horns like crazy and this guy didn’t. He just waited there. Well, you know, he was a little agitated. I think … I mean, he was patting the side of the door with his hand.’
Both Queller and Altenburg sat up.
‘Can you remember his face?’ asked Altenburg.
Miranda shrugged. ‘Not really. He had pale-brown skin. He did seem familiar, I remember thinking that. I thought he was part of the construction team.’
‘Try harder,’ Queller urged.
She closed her eyes. She tried to visualise. ‘He had a moustache, I think. I didn’t really look.’
‘That was unfortunate,’ said Altenburg. ‘Considering how things turned out …’
He opened one of the files in front of him, lifting it up so she could see her name on the cardboard cover.
‘It’s your job to vet local ancillary staff here, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ she replied.
‘Any reason to suspect any of them?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘They’re all highly committed.’
Altenburg leafed through the file. ‘You think you vetted them properly?’
‘I followed the standard requirements for medium-and low-threat sites.’
‘It’s clear to me that those requirements did not anticipate a vehicular bomb attack.’
‘If I’d anticipated it I might have been able to do something about it!’
She paused, trying not to bristle at his insinuation.
‘I implemented the security requirements to the maximum extent feasible. I applied risk management as I was taught – looking into the backgrounds of everyone, from gardeners to mechanics to … just about everyone.’
She realised she was floundering. She felt guilty. She didn’t understand why she felt like this. She glanced at Queller, who gave her a slightly grim smile of encouragement. He lifted his stump off the table and rubbed it with his good hand.
‘Let’s play a little game,’ Queller said. ‘Let’s try to put together an identikit of the guy you saw in the truck. Break up his face and tell us about each element in turn.’
She closed her eyes and tried to do as he said. ‘He had a small, thin nose. His eyes … they were kind of brown, I think. The mouth – well, the moustache as I said. Like, a pencil moustache.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like, er, straight and black. Not much of it.’
Altenburg turned impatiently to Queller. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere.’
Queller rubbed his stump again.
Altenburg addressed himself to Miranda. ‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t check the truck.’
‘I wouldn’t normally have done so,’ she said, with some agitation. ‘I wouldn’t have been out there if it had arrived at another time.’
‘You don’t think it was strange that he was sitting right behind the other truck. It seems to me things could have been much worse, that they planned to drive in behind a truck that was coming in much deeper – into the compound proper.’
‘I didn’t think it was odd, no. Lots of trucks come in. As I said, the reason I thought the truck was bringing in supplies for the construction workers was that the man’s face seemed familiar.’
‘Really?’ Altenburg said. ‘And yet you can’t remember it?’
‘I only saw it for a few seconds.’
Altenburg leant back in his chair and put his arms behind his head.
‘What would you say if I said you failed in your duty by not checking that truck? You don’t feel any responsibility in that direction?’
‘None whatsoever,’ Miranda replied, aggressively. ‘It isn’t my job to check vehicles. That’s a crazy idea!’
Inside, even as she spoke, she was not so sure. Should she have checked? Was she to blame? Would Mrs Ghai, George the cleaner, the gardener – would they all still be here if she had?
‘I think we are putting the wrong complexion on things here,’ Queller said, addressing Altenburg. ‘We’re not here to apportion blame. We’re here to find the perpetrators.’
She spat the words. ‘Is that what people are saying? That this is my fault?’
Altenburg closed her file. ‘That will be all for now. Don’t leave town though.’
‘That’s enough,’ Queller said. ‘Jesus Christ, Mort …’
And then, more gently: ‘Miranda, these are just general questions of the kind we are putting to everyone. You are not under suspicion of anything.’
‘Well –’ said Altenburg, coolly, ‘– no more than anyone else.’
Miranda stood up, looking at Queller as she did so. Angry with Altenburg first and foremost, she was also angry with him, for not supporting her more. She summoned up as much dignity as she could muster.
‘One friend of mine was killed in that blast,’ she said, thinking of Mrs Ghai. ‘Another was badly injured. I will not be held responsible for these things. I take great exception to the way in which I have been questioned.’
With that she left the room, ignoring the agent at the door and the next person waiting for questioning on the other side, who was Clive Bayard. He gave her a surprised look.
*
Back in the interview room, once they had concluded the rest of the day’s investigations, Queller turned on Altenburg.
‘What the hell did you think you were playing at with the Powers girl? You surely don’t think she can be blamed for this?’
‘I have my reasons.’
‘Her role’s only administrative security. The truck would’ve been checked by the Marines at the second wall.’
‘As I say, I have my reasons.’
‘Which are?’
Altenburg sniffed, then gave him a hard look. ‘I wanted to press her a little. I’m going to have a full audit done on her.’
‘I think you’ll be wasting your time.’
Altenburg ignored him. ‘I’ve got work to do, if you don’t mind, Jack. I want to run through what’s left of the chancery CCTV footage.’
They did a little shuffle at the door as both tried to leave at the same time.
*
Late the following afternoon, Miranda was called back for further questioning by the two men. During the day she had worked herself up into a rage, furious that her competence had been called into question. She was determined to meet their questions head-on.
Queller looked up and smiled encouragingly as she entered. Altenburg had a video-media program running on the computer in his room – software that allowed him to modulate digitally converted images from the ordinary video player that was wired up next to it. He was in shirtsleeves, his jacket on the back of the chair. On the desk, next to his bare, brown-haired arms, Miranda recognised a pile of tapes of the type used in the embassy’s CCTV cameras. It looked as if he had been going through them and downloading whatever he needed onto the computer.
‘Miss Powers,’ he said, ‘we have been going through footage of all contacts made by embassy staff in the months preceding the blast. Much of it has been destroyed, but I would like you to comment on two small portions of the visual record.’
He clicked an icon on the screen and a moving image came up in a box. It showed Miranda in the car pool, talking to a man in a T-shirt. Queller bent forward to look at it, leaning on the desk with his stump again.
‘Who’s this guy then?’ asked Altenburg, silkily, clicking on pause to freeze the screen.
To the surprise of both men, Miranda burst out laughing, throwing back her head.
‘You don’t think …? That’s great, that’s priceless. He’s a US citizen.’
‘Your boyfriend?’ asked Queller, in a hopeful tone.
‘Well – I guess you’d call it a fling.’
‘What’s his name?’ asked Altenburg.
‘Nick Karolides. He works on a USAID project on Zanzibar. We just kind of met.’
Altenburg signalled to the agent at the door, who went out to check Nick’s name on one of the bigger computers that had been set up in some rooms nearby. Having been brought in on the FEST flight, they were now connected directly to a range of US government databanks. There was a brief silence in the room while the three of them waited for the agent’s return. Eventually, Altenburg spoke up again.
‘When did you first meet him?’
She pointed to the screen. ‘Right then. Well, a few hours before. On the beach. He was over here to collect some stuff from back home. We just got talking. Then I went over to Zanzibar to see him.’
‘Tell us what happened.’
She hesitated. ‘On Zanzibar?’
‘On Zanzibar.’
Miranda sighed and gave Queller an imploring look.
‘Well?’ Altenburg said.
‘We toured. We took a boat trip.’
She waited for him to reply, but Altenburg just slid his mouse round on the desk, pointing the cursor at Nick’s face.
‘Are you asking if we slept together? Are you going to haul me up for that too?’
Queller smiled thinly, as if he enjoyed seeing Altenburg get a run for his money.
‘I took a long weekend –’ Miranda explained, in a more reasonable tone, ‘– went over to the island for a few days and met up with him there. When I came back, I decided it wasn’t going anywhere. So what? I got clearance. The trip’s logged in the day files. Did they survive?’
‘Rather to my surprise,’ said Altenburg, ‘they did.’
‘The MSG put them in a fireproof safe, right?’
Altenburg nodded. The agent came back in and passed him a printout. He took off his glasses and read it.
‘Well?’ enquired Queller.
‘I guess he’s legit,’ replied Altenburg. He sounded vaguely disappointed. ‘Now, there’s another tape I would like you to look at.’
Miranda tossed her hair.
‘I’m just doing my job,’ Altenburg responded primly, as he cued up the new tape.
He pressed the ‘PLAY’ icon, and they waited for another image to appear as the computer counted up the bytes. When it did, what the screen showed was a man with light-brown hair standing opposite one of the gateways to the embassy: the one where the water tanker and the bomb truck had come in. Juma’s post. The man was wearing a baseball cap with the words ‘SPORT TEAM OSNABRÜCK’ on it. Most of his face, which was brown-skinned, was obscured by the video camera he was holding up. The image only lasted a few seconds, before a bus passed and he was gone.
‘Do you know anything about this guy?’ asked Altenburg, rewinding and playing the stream again.
‘I remember the incident. One of the security guards alerted me to it and I came down. But the man had gone. I made an incident report in the day book.’
Altenburg removed a piece of paper from her file. ‘Yes, I’ve dug that out, as I said. Your report in the day book. In which you recommend no action be taken. Why was that?’
‘There was not much we could do. He was gone. He told the guard he was a tourist.’
‘Indeed. That is what it says. Now, of course, it looks different. It looks like he was conducting surveillance of a target.’
‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘But am I not right in thinking that DS regulations state that in all cases of surveillance of a diplomatic institution, Washington should immediately be notified?’
Miranda hesitated. ‘I … believe that is correct – but I didn’t think it was surveillance!’
She looked at Queller. His face betrayed not the slightest emotion.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said.
Altenburg put his hands together and stared at her across the desk. She could see, in his hard blue eyes, the scepticism invited by her assertion.
Eventually he spoke. ‘I’ll be frank with you. This does not leave you in a good place. I will be putting in my report that you were possibly negligent in your duties in not checking the truck. I have already recommended to DS your suspension from post until the matter has been gone into further.’
‘You’re shitting me,’ said Miranda, feeling something waste inside her.
‘I most certainly am not,’ said Altenburg.
It was then he dropped his bombshell. ‘In fact, my recommendation has been accepted. The suspension comes into effect immediately.’
Miranda could hardly draw breath. It was all so sudden. She felt a hot rush of blood to her face, and tears come to her eyes.
‘This is very precipitate,’ said Queller, shaking his head. ‘Surely any disciplinary matter should wait till after the investigation?’
‘Let me remind you who is chief investigating officer here,’ Altenburg said, standing up. ‘Your role is only advisory.’
He picked up his jacket off the back of the chair and folded it fastidiously over his arm.
‘I suggest you return home, Miss Powers, and wait to hear from us. And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go.’
As Altenburg closed the door, Queller went over to comfort her, lightly placing his hand on her heaving shoulder.
‘Look, I swear I had no idea he was going to spring that on you.’
She shook her head several times from side to side.
‘Come on,’ said Queller. ‘It’ll sort itself out.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’ she said, chokily.
‘Do you want me to drive you home?’
‘I can drive myself.’
‘I’ll drive,’ Queller insisted. ‘You’re too upset. Leave your vehicle here.’
Acquiescing, she went out down to the lobby with him, passing other embassy staff waiting for interview. Some of them, recently released from hospital, were bandaged. Miranda avoided their eyes, feeling the stain of guilt that Altenburg had laid upon her.
It was dusk. They found the jeep Queller had been supplied with on arrival. He drove out of the city and, following Miranda’s muttered instructions, east along the coast road to Oyster Bay. The vehicle was an automatic, and he had already attached the stainless-steel bulb to the steering wheel, which allowed him to drive more easily with one hand.
The flame trees that grew around Miranda’s bungalow were glowing a deep orange in the dying sun.
‘Beep the horn,’ she muttered, when they pulled up outside the gates.
He did so, and the old nightwatchman, dressed in ragged khaki and carrying a staff, emerged from his booth and let them in. Hands shaking, Miranda found her keys and opened the door. She went straight over to the sofa and lay down on it, clutching a cushion to her chest like a child.
‘Got anything to drink?’ asked Queller.
She nodded at a corner cupboard. He took out a bottle of bourbon and two shot glasses.
‘Don’t worry about this,’ he said, handing her a glass. ‘I’ll fix it. Where’s your phone?’
‘Bedroom. Bedside table.’
He went through and sat on the unmade bed. There were bits and pieces of feminine underwear and other clothing strewn about. He felt like a voyeur. The room smelt sweet, and as he dialled – holding the handset under his stump – his eyes scanned the dressing table under the window. The usual crowd of perfume phials and make-up stuff. Also – by the bed – a little shell of some kind, rather beautiful. He could hear the muzz and gap of the long-distance line, then a beep: ‘Department of State. How can I help you?’
*
In the lounge, staring numbly at the wall, Miranda listened to Queller’s half of the conversation.
‘Put me through to the Secretary. Clearance 78034 JQ.’
‘Maddy? Jack Queller here.’
‘Dar. Pretty grim, but not so rough as the other place. It’s a big job, as you know. We’ll get them though, eventually … I’m just hearing statements. Listen, you know that FBI guy I mentioned to you when I agreed to come out on this? Well, I’ve run into a problem with him already …’
Miranda listened as he explained what had happened. Her ears were still hurting from the blast.
‘He’s gone way overboard on this, and had the poor girl suspended. I’m convinced she’s clean.’
‘You can take my word for it.’
She felt a rush of gratitude, but wondered how, as an intelligence pro, he could be so adamant. Why should they believe him, anyway?
‘I know you won’t want to intervene in an ongoing operation, but can you do me a favour? Her name’s Miranda Powers, she’s a junior in Diplomatic Security.’
‘That’s right. P-O-W-E-R-S.’
‘No, you don’t have to overrule Altenburg directly. The disciplinary aspect will run its own course. There is no case for her to answer. In the meantime, I want her reassigned to me as a local adviser. I know it’s non-procedural but –’
There was a long pause during which Miranda imagined the distinguished other party speaking from her Washington office, raising objections and qualifications.
Finally Queller spoke again.
‘Thanks, Maddy. I won’t let you down on this.’
‘Yeah, me too.’
After telling Miranda his plans for her, Queller insisted she ate some sandwiches, going to the refrigerator and making them himself. They drank more bourbon, it got late, and then she didn’t want him to leave, so he agreed to sleep on the couch, making her laugh through her tears when he said it wouldn’t be so cramped for him as he only had one arm. She went through to her bedroom, got undressed, and into the sheets. As she sank into sleep, she wondered what it would mean, exactly, to be his local adviser. She would ask him in the morning.
*
When she woke up, hung-over, he was gone. Wandering into the kitchen in her white towelling robe, a thousand thoughts rushed through her head, varying and shifting like a mist. Unsteady, she made herself some coffee and went through to run a bath.
Usually she took brisk showers, but that was in the time before: the time when her integrity and professionalism were intact and she believed herself worthy. The bath was a refuge, and right now that was what she needed.
Her face in the mirror had a sickly, greenish hue, and was still covered in numerous small scabs from the glass. The marks were like tiny zippers, the crust breaking at regular intervals as the skin underneath healed. She shuddered. Some people had suffered terrible scorching burns that would mark them for life. How could it be her fault?
Lying in the tub, head pounding, her thoughts continued to turn. The interview session replayed itself, flashes of memory veering, backing, cannoning into each other. Then Queller’s fixing that she work for him directly. At least this was some kind of solution; at least it meant she wouldn’t be mooching around until the hearing.
Steam rose about her, clouding the window. Beyond the glass, in the thick bush they loved and sometimes descended upon in their hundreds, the quelea birds were singing. The flowers on the bush made her think of Zanzibar and the Macpherson gardens … Nick Karolides.
She slipped under the water, closing her eyes against the enamelled brightness, her scratched skin stinging. Should she call him? He must have heard about the bombs. Was it fair to expect him to have tried to call her, considering how she’d effectively brushed him off on her return to Dar?
She came up for air, then stood up and soaped her legs. She liked the idea, heard somewhere or other, of distributed memory: the body remembering, every piece of it thrilling with information deeper and more primitive than conscious thought. And what it said was this: Nick’s strong hands moving over her. She imagined him swimming through the water, or simply floating, the wave motion lapping him.
And now she was down in the water again herself, filled with melancholy and longing. Her feet were up on the taps, her little toes curling. The sponge danced gently, an island on her stomach.