Empire State rh-2

by Henry Porter

  ‘The appointments with this man are like gold, you understand,’ said Jaidi. ‘He will cure you, I have no doubt of that. But in return I will expect you to look after my friend. I believe he may be about to enter a difficult period. This is the deal, Harland.’

  It was typical of Jaidi to leave the conversation without specifying the doctor’s difficulties or how Harland could be expected to help. But Harland had heard of Loz and dared to hope that, after the procession of chiropractors, nerve specialists and bone doctors, this man would do something for him.

  He reached 5th Avenue and turned right towards the Empire State building. Now the sun was on his back and with the effort of walking like a clown he began to sweat profusely, something that Harland, once so fit and trim, loathed intensely. He paused and looked up at the building thrusting into the brilliant, almost white sky above Manhattan and remembered lines that Jaidi had pointed out to him. ‘This riddle in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of non-violence, of racial brother-hood, this lofty target scraping the skies and meeting the destroying planes halfway.’

  Jaidi had said, looking out over the city from his suite in the UN tower, ‘That was written in forty-eight by E.B. White, about the very building we’re standing in now. “A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy.” A great artist must be prescient, don’t you think, Harland? He must know things even though he doesn’t understand where they come from. Troubled times, Harland. Troubled times.’

  Harland reached the entrance where a line of doughty American tourists stretched round the corner into 34th Street, passed through security and took the elevator to the sixty-fourth floor. He was grateful to be in the cool and when he got out of the elevator, he rested a while, mopping his face and neck, regretting the whisky which he knew had caused the sweating fit and made him smell. He looked around. The corridor was quite silent, except for the gasp and whine of the elevators as they rose and plunged through the 1,200 odd feet of the Empire State. A door opened and a man in shirt-sleeves looked out and examined Harland pointedly before turning back inside. At the far end of the corridor another man in a suit and tie showed a close interest in him. Harland called out to ask where Dr Loz’s office was. The man gestured with a turn of the head. ‘Four down on the right,’ he said and returned to his newspaper. As Harland crept along the wall, he passed a third man, sitting just inside an open door. This one was armed and wasn’t bothering to hide it.

  He pushed on the door that announced Dr Sammi Loz DO FAAO and found a slender man in a smoke-blue tunic buttoned to the neck, standing behind the reception desk. He moved out to greet him.

  ‘You must be Robert Harland. Forgive me, I’ve sent my assistant off to organise the clinic at the hospital this evening.’ He stood still for a moment, his eyes running over Harland. ‘Yes, you are in a lot of pain.’ Loz was in his mid-thirties, with a high forehead, wavy, well-groomed hair, a thin, slightly aquiline nose and a generous mouth that spread easily into a smile. Harland guessed he was Iranian or Armenian, though he spoke with an unimpeachable English accent and his voice was modulated with concern as his eyes made easy contact with Harland’s. ‘Yes, we’re going to have to do something about this immediately. Come,’ he said, gesturing to a room. ‘Come in here and take the weight off your feet.’

  Harland perched on a raised bed, now nauseous with the pain. Loz began to take down his medical history, but seeing that Harland could no longer really concentrate, helped him off with his trousers and shirt and told him to stand facing the wall. After examining him from behind for a minute or two, Loz moved round to his front and looked at his patient with a gaze directed about five inches to the right of him, in order, Harland assumed, to see his whole. He placed one hand on Harland’s sternum and the other in the middle of his back and exerted a tiny amount of pressure for about five minutes. His hands began to dart around his torso, pausing lightly on his upper and middle chest, neck, spine and the top of his pelvis. He was like a Braille reader finding meaning in every bump and depression, and once or twice he paused and repeated the movement to make sure he had not misunderstood. Then his hands came to rest on the marks and scars on Harland’s contorted body and he peered up into his face to seek confirmation of what he suspected. ‘You’ve had a rough, tough old life, Mr Harland. The Secretary-General told me you were the only survivor of that plane crash eighteen months ago at La Guardia. I remember seeing your picture on the television news. That was something. ’

  Harland nodded.

  ‘And these burn marks on your wrist and ankles, the scars on your back. These are older, aren’t they? What caused them?’

  Harland was embarrassed. He didn’t like to use the word torture – it shocked people and tended to evoke a sympathy that he had no use for.

  ‘It’s a long story. I was held prisoner for a while back in the nineties.’

  ‘I see,’ said Loz gently. He told him to sit on the couch then lifted Harland’s legs up so he was able to lie on his back.

  ‘I don’t think I can take much manipulation,’ Harland said, at the same time noting that the pain had subsided a little.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Loz. His hands moved to Harland’s feet. He bent first one leg then the other, holding the kneecap in the palm of his hand.

  ‘What are the men doing in the hallway?’ Harland asked.

  ‘That’s a long story.’ Loz’s attention was elsewhere.

  Harland’s eyes came to rest on an Arabic inscription hung in a simple frame. ‘What’s it say?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, that. It’s a warning against pride and arrogance. It was written by a man named al-Jazir two hundred years after the Prophet died. It says, “A man who is noble does not pretend to be noble, any more than a man who is eloquent feigns eloquence. When a man exaggerates his qualities it is because of something lacking in himself; the bully gives himself airs because he is conscious of his weakness.” ’

  ‘Very true,’ commented Harland.

  Loz had moved behind him and, after holding his head and working his neck very gently, slipped his hands down to the middle of his back, his fingers moving with the whole of Harland’s weight pressing down on them. Although the pain still lurked beneath the surface, the heat had been taken out of it and for the first time in four weeks Harland felt free to think.

  ‘The air crash,’ said Loz suddenly. ‘This has caused your pain. The trauma you experienced has come to the surface.’

  ‘After all that time?’

  ‘Yes. You’ve kept that shock at the centre. You are a very strong and controlled individual Mr Harland – impressively so. But it was going to happen some day. The body has to get rid of it.’ He paused. ‘And the other things in you. These too will have to come out.’

  Harland ignored this. ‘You can treat it then?’

  ‘Oh yes, I am treating it. You will recover and you’ll be able to sleep tonight without the use of alcohol.’ He peered at him with an expression of deep understanding that unsettled Harland. ‘We’ll need to work on this over the next few months. It’s a very serious matter. You will feel not quite yourself for twenty-four hours, as though you have a mild case of ’flu. Rest up and get as much sleep as you can.’

  He continued working for another twenty minutes on the hips and pubic bone. Harland’s eyes drifted to the slightly tinted glass of the window and the glistening silver helmet of the Chrysler building. ‘The Empire State is an unusual place to have your practice,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but I am disinclined to go to the Upper East Side where many of my patients are. It’s an arid part of the city, don’t you think? No heart. Too much money. Besides, I love this building. You know they began it just before the Crash, continued building it through the Depression and finished it forty-five days ahead of schedule. It’s a lucky building with a strong personality, and not a little mystery.’

  ‘A riddle of steel and concrete.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve bee
n talking to Benjamin Jaidi. He told me he had found that passage when I visited him the other day.’

  He left Harland’s side and went to a small glass and steel table to write something down. He returned and placed a note in Harland’s hand. ‘This is the time of our next appointment.’

  Harland read it to himself. ‘Sevastapol – 8.30 p.m. tomorrow. Table in the name of Keane.’ He looked up at Loz, who had put his finger to his lips and was pointing to the ceiling with his other hand.

  ‘Right, we will see each other in a week’s time. But now I must go to the hospital. Rest here for ten minutes then turn off the lights and pull the door to. It will lock automatically.’ He smiled and left Harland in the cool solitude of the room, watching the light slip across the buildings outside. He looked round the room again, noticing five battered postcards of the Empire State lined up along a shelf, copies of the Koran and the Bible and a fragment of stone, which looked like an ancient spearhead.

  He left after about half an hour and went to the apartment in Brooklyn Heights, where he ordered in a Chinese meal and settled down with a book about Isaac Newton.

  The Sevastapol was much more than a restaurant of the moment. The same writers, film and money people and city politicians had been haunting the same tables for decades. It was above fashion. Harland had been twice with Eva, who was fascinated by the place and its noisy owner, a Ukrainian named Limoshencko, a pet brigand of the downtown crowd.

  Harland passed through the tables outside, consciously putting Eva from his mind, and asked for Mr Keane. He was pointed in the direction of a table that was obscured by the bar and by a tall young woman who was gesticulating in a manner designed for public consumption. Loz was seated with his hands folded on the table, looking up at her with an unwavering if rather formal politeness. He rose to greet Harland but did not introduce the woman, who then left rather resentfully.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘You’re looking a different man.’

  ‘Thanks to you. I’m a bit fragile, but a lot better. Look, call me Robert or Bobby, please.’

  ‘You know, I prefer Harland. It’s a good name.’ They sat down. ‘It’s a good dependable name.’ He moved closer. ‘I’m afraid we had to come here because the FBI couldn’t get a table in a thousand years.’

  ‘The men in the hallway were FBI?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve been with me since the first postcard arrived. Did you look at them when I left?’

  ‘The postcards of the Empire State? Of course not.’

  ‘That’s interesting, an investigator with principles.’

  ‘I’m not an investigator, Dr Loz. I do research work for the UN. Most of my time is spent on clean water issues. It’s pretty unexciting.’

  ‘Jaidi told me you were due to go to the Middle East to talk to Hamas. That isn’t just research, surely?’

  Harland ignored the remark. ‘He was rather oblique about you, Doctor. He said you were about to have some problems. I will certainly help if I can.’

  Loz flashed a discreet, slightly awkward smile at him. ‘You see them out there? The black van down the street by the mailbox? I know that vehicle as if it was my own. It’s the FBI. They follow me everywhere. They’re making my life very difficult indeed and I think it’s quite possible that I will be arrested. I’ve seen a lawyer – a patient of mine – and he told me to be utterly open in all my dealings, but I couldn’t be more open. I live a very simple and uncomplicated life. Apparently there’s nothing I can do to fight this kind of harassment. America is no longer the land of the free, Mr Harland. People like me with Muslim backgrounds can disappear into jail and never be heard of again.’

  ‘I think they’d have to have strong grounds for arresting someone like you. You’re very well connected.’

  ‘Oh believe me, that’s not true. How many innocent people have they detained without charge or trial? Here in the United States of America people are disappearing as though it’s a police state in Latin America. I love this country beyond any in the world. I believe in it. That’s why I became a US citizen. I sometimes think I was born to be an American and to work in the Empire State building.’ For a moment his eyes flared with hurt and indignation. The waiter who had been hovering to take their orders beat a retreat.

  ‘When did this start?’ asked Harland.

  ‘When the first postcard arrived, at the end of last year. I guess some mailman with a keen eye thought it was odd for a postcard of the Empire State to be sent to the Empire State with a foreign postmark. They read my name and saw the signature Karim Khan and came up with a plot. Who knows what they think these days.’

  ‘Who is Karim Khan?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘What was written on it?’

  ‘In essence each one told me of my friend Karim’s progress from Pakistan to the West. The first one was from Pakistan, then there was one from Mashhad, a town in Iran, another from Tehran, one from Diyarbakir in Turkey, and the last came from Albania.’

  ‘But why pictures of the building? It does look odd. Is there any significance?

  ‘No, I just kept a stack of cards of the building. I have done since I first visited New York in the eighties. And when Karim went off to Afghanistan I gave them to him with my address written on because I knew that while I might move apartment I would never move my practice.’

  ‘Do the FBI know your friend was in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Maybe. They have lists of these things. I am certain.’

  ‘You’re telling me he fought with the Taleban?’

  ‘Yes, but he used a nomme de guerre. He had one before he left.’

  ‘You must expect this kind of trouble. To all intents and purposes he may be regarded as a very likely enemy of the state.’

  ‘No,’ Loz said with finality. He smiled at Harland once, a brief piece of punctuation that closed the issue. He turned and ordered for them both – caviar, blinis and Kobi beef with spinach. ‘Will you have some wine? I don’t drink.’

  Harland shook his head.

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear you’re giving your system a rest.’ He paused. ‘What if I told you I was going to be arrested tonight?’

  ‘I would be very surprised if you had advance notice of that.’

  ‘It’s a feeling. The pressure has been increasing over the last few days. I cannot be arrested and I cannot submit to confinement. I want your help to avoid it.’

  ‘Tell me about your friend,’ said Harland, noticing now that nearly every woman in the restaurant had either waved to or was stealing looks in Loz’s direction.

  ‘We were both sent to Westminster School in London to gain qualifications to go to college in England. Karim was from an affluent family in Lahore – very old, very pukka. I was brought up in Lebanon, though my father was Iranian; my mother had a Druze background. We were outsiders in an English public school so it was natural that we became friends, despite being unlike each other in practically every way. He was wilder, more gregarious, more daring and I suppose more fun. I think we relied on each other’s strengths.’

  ‘Tell me about these postcards.’

  Loz took five postcards from his pocket and laid them out in their order of arrival. Harland examined the images then turned them over. On each there was a short message in an educated hand. The first said:

  Greetings, my old friend. I am in Pakistan and hope very soon to be in London. I may need a little help from you. I have good news. I am returning to complete my medical studies, as you always said I should.

  The next two were less upbeat and gave only details of where Khan was in Iran. The card from Turkey told how much of his money had been stolen. He still had $400 that his mother had given him and he hoped to use this to get to London. But there were unspecified visa and passport problems.

  Harland read them again. ‘They seem harmless enough,’ he said eventually.‘But these days intelligence services are likely to look at them with an eye for codes and hidden messages.’

  Loz wasn�
�t listening. ‘Karim needs my help,’ he said, looking straight past Harland into the melee of diners and table-hoppers. ‘The last postcard, from Albania, was followed by this letter. I assume they read this as well, but there were no signs of the envelope having been opened.’ He withdrew a single sheet of lined paper from his jacket. The letter was signed by a Mr Skender. It told of Karim Khan’s arrest and imprisonment and his transfer to the state security centre in Tirana. The letter mentioned that Khan had made the local TV news in the context of a massacre in Macedonia.

  ‘I know something about this incident,’ said Harland. ‘The UN has been asked to investigate by the Albanian minority in Macedonia.’

  Loz turned to him. ‘I had a friend go through the Balkan news websites – it’s clear those men were murdered. They had come from Turkey. Karim must have been travelling with them.’

  ‘Then why wasn’t he killed?’

  ‘Because he knows what to do in such situations.’ He produced a printout of a web page from a Greek newspaper and pointed to a photograph of a bedraggled man, dwarfed between two policemen. ‘That is Karim, though he is barely recognisable. You can see that he is very thin and has been hurt.’ A troubled look swept his face and he reached for the bottle of water. Neither of them had eaten much of the first course, and when he had drained his glass he pushed his plate aside and waved to the waiter.

  ‘I had the caption beneath the picture translated.’ He handed Harland a piece of white card.

  TERRORIST SNARED AFTER GUN BATTLE IN MACEDONIA. Jasur al-Jahez, the man who escaped from Macedonian security forces in a raging gun battle has been found to be a Palestinian terrorist wanted in connection with outrages by the Israeli authorities and also by Syria, Egypt and Lebanon. Jasur al-Jahez, also known as The Electrician, was believed to have died of natural causes eighteen months ago and has not been heard of since. Israel, Syria and Egypt are now seeking his extradition.

  Loz took back the card. ‘This is Karim, but for reasons I cannot comprehend they believe he is Jasur. Jasur has killed many, many people. Apparently he split with Hamas in the early nineties and formed a group that assassinated moderate clerics and politicians all over the Middle East.’