‘Sometimes you have to look very hard in that thin soup for a veggie,’ Pagan said.
‘A veggie,’ Downey remarked disdainfully. ‘What you want, Pagan, is a smoking gun, not a bloody bit of cauliflower. Do you need me around here?’
‘I doubt it.’
Downey touched his forelock in a sarcastic way, then walked away. Pagan studied the list in the off-chance that a name might yield up a meaning, an association, but he couldn’t find any connections. They were just names. He handed it to Foxworth, who scanned it a couple of times.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Pagan took the paper back, folded it, put it in his pocket. He walked to one of the tables where a young policewoman was talking on a telephone. She looked weary. She’d probably been here for hours. She had a large notepad in front of her, pages covered in meticulous handwriting.
Pagan waited until she’d hung up. ‘What’s coming in?’
She had several notepads on the table. She tapped one of them. ‘See for yourself, sir.’
Pagan picked up the pad, flicked the pages. The woman had dutifully written down every call she’d received, followed by a name and address to which was appended a brief summary of each message. Saw long-haired man with a suitcase on the platform. Noticed unusual skinhead. Saw three Jamaicans talking suspiciously. These messages revealed more about the callers than anything else. Prejudices and fears. Phobic dross. Worthless. What dread did people entertain in their locked houses in the suburbs? Pagan put the notepad down. He was flooded all at once with the enormity of the task, paperwork, false sightings, information that was dud, voices babbling in the ether.
The policewoman said, ‘I keep thinking the next call’s going to be something useful.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Pagan remarked. The numbing brutality of legwork. Putting together each tiny building-block of information in the hope of a grand design.
A grey-haired man who walked with a limp approached Pagan. He carried an untidy sheaf of papers and a stuffed black briefcase. He gave an impression of disorder, spillage, preoccupation. ‘Frank Pagan,’ he said. ‘I heard they were bringing you in on this. Good to see you back.’
The man was Dick McCluskey, an explosives expert. He had known Pagan for more than fifteen years. McCluskey was considered something of an anarchist who kept himself aloof from departmental politics. Pagan liked him for this alone. McCluskey had an intriguing hobby; he designed magical illusions. He constructed elaborate cabinets in which objects and people disappeared. Pagan wondered if he had a trick box that might spirit the wrecked carriage away.
‘What do you think?’ Pagan gestured toward the track, the lit mouth of the tunnel.
‘A small device with enormous power, obviously. It had to be concealed inside some kind of container. You don’t place anything that looks strange on a crowded tube. Too conspicuous.’
‘What kind of container?’
‘Something routine. A briefcase. Somebody’s bag. We’ve been running a few tests, so far not altogether conclusive. Remember, the initial explosion emitted an incredible blast of heat. If that didn’t kill all the people in the carriage, then fire and smoke did the rest. You know, the powers that be think I should have instant answers, but what they don’t consider is how damned hard it is to keep up with technology. Destruction spawns extraordinary technical advances. It attracts oddballs and psychos who just happen to be electronic geniuses. If they applied themselves to other fields, who knows what they might accomplish?’
‘Somebody placed the device in the carriage somewhere down the line, then got off—’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Consider another hypothesis.’
‘I know what you’re going to say.’
‘A kamikaze sort.’
Pagan nodded. ‘A human bomb. I don’t need human bombs, Dick.’
‘Think about it. Say you’re crazy, you’re suicidal, you’ve built a compact high-explosive gismo, you want to test it. More than that. Say you want to be at the suicidal epicentre of it. You want to feel it. Where’s a good place to do it? In the Tube. There’s no security. No baggage check. People come and go at will.’
‘I can’t stretch that far,’ Pagan said.
McCluskey moved away. ‘I’ll get in touch when I have something definite. See you.’
Pagan walked to the edge of the platform. A kamikaze. He didn’t believe that. He was aware of Foxie at his side.
‘Somebody blows up a carriage,’ Pagan said. ‘Why? Does he want to kill everybody inside? Does he have some kind of deranged grudge against a hundred people? I don’t see that. I can’t get my mind around that one.’
Foxie heard a note of frustration in Pagan’s voice. ‘Or was the bomber after just one person, Frank?’
‘And everybody else just happened to be in the way?’
‘It’s a consideration.’
Pagan pondered this a moment: it was the kind of idea that took you down inside an abyss of lunacy. What kind of mind would conjure such a scenario? A cold shadow crossed Pagan’s brain. ‘It’s not a consideration that appeals to me.’
‘Still. A possibility, Frank.’
‘Anything’s possible.’ He took the list of names from his pocket and handed it to Foxworth.
‘Is Billy Ewing available?’ he asked. Ewing was an old associate, a Glaswegian with a permanent sinus problem. Sniffing Billy, reliable and loyal.
‘I can get him.’
‘Have him run these names, Foxie. Tell him he’s back on the team.’
Pagan looked in the direction of the tunnel. It suggested a large maleficent eye, unblinking, relentless. He saw his future down there. And he didn’t like it.
‘I need a few hours to myself,’ he said. ‘Before the fray.’
Foxie was not surprised by Pagan’s statement. He was accustomed to the fact that Frank, who had only a passing acquaintance with police orthodoxy, needed moments of privacy and contemplation before he decided his next course of action. There was at times something of the monk in Pagan’s character, Foxie thought – one a long way removed from Thomas Aquinas.
It was already dark by the time Pagan left the Underground station. He had Foxworth drive him home. He lived in a flat in Holland Park, nothing special, a couple of upstairs rooms that overlooked a square, a small park usually dense and green in summer but withered now, and uninviting. He unlocked the door and went inside, turned on the light. The air was stale. He stepped into the living-room, set his suitcase down and poured himself a glass of Auchentoshan, a Lowland malt he favoured. He sat in an armchair and looked round the room. On the mantelpiece were old photographs – himself and Roxanne on their wedding-day, an artless black and white shot of Roxanne he’d taken one afternoon in Regent’s Park, sunshine, wind in her hair, an enigmatic smile on her lips. On the walls were posters from historic rock concerts. The Rolling Stones at Wembley. Fats Domino at the London Palladium.
He sipped his drink slowly. Something about the apartment bothered him. Silence. The place needed noise. Let’s blow the cobwebs of quietness away. He sifted through his record collection – he hadn’t succumbed to the compact disc, didn’t believe in those smooth oily things, they lacked authenticity, they didn’t have the necessary scratchy quality – and he put a long-playing record on the turntable of his stereo. It was vintage rock and roll, Little Richard singing ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’. Pagan found the comfort of the familiar in these raucous old tunes. He refused to give up his passion for the music. He wasn’t going to be swayed by New Wave or Rap or Grunge or whatever the flavour of the month was called. More than mere nostalgia sustained Pagan’s affection for the old rock. It was wild, liberating. It drove a stake through the heart of silence. Little Richard or Jerry Lee could dynamite a room.
Tracked by the hammering persistence of the music, he walked absently through the flat, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. In the bathtub he found a dead mouse, a desiccated little corpse. He picked it up by its brittle tail and held it.
He heard som
ebody knocking on his front door. He knew at once that it was Miss Gabler from the flat below. He opened the door. She stood clutching the collar of her robe to her throat.
‘You are playing your Negro music again,’ she said. She was fragile, seventyish, and had been raised in India, where her father had been some kind of colonial administrator. ‘I have had weeks of peace, Mr Pagan. Blessed weeks. I really must protest. My nerves are bad enough. I have my angina to consider.’ She spoke of her heart condition as if it were a neurotic pet she had to nurse.
Pagan was apologetic. ‘I’ll turn it down, Miss Gabler.’
‘I would understand it if you had less violent tastes, Mr Pagan. Some soothing Haydn, a little Mozart. I would not object to these.’
‘I’ll turn it down. Promise.’
‘Very well. See that you do.’ Miss Gabler still held her robe shut as if she thought there was some connection between ‘Negro music’ and a menace to her chastity.
Pagan held up the mouse close to the woman’s face. ‘Look what I found.’
‘Oh lord,’ said Miss Gabler, and stepped back, her mouth open.
‘In the bathtub no less. Poor little bastard.’
‘You have a cruel sense of humour.’ She flapped a hand, shuffled away. Her slippers flopped. ‘Some people,’ she remarked, more to herself than Pagan.
Smiling, Pagan shut the door. He liked Miss Gabler if only because she brought out a mischievous streak in him, a light-heartedness. He dumped the mouse in the garbage, then turned off the music. The silence rushed back in. He finished his drink just as his street-door buzzer made its customary rasping sound.
He went to the intercom and said, ‘Yeah?’
‘Frank Pagan?’ The voice that came up from the street was American. Pagan recognized the accent; the man was from one of the southern states, Alabama, Georgia. ‘My name’s Al Quarterman. From the US Embassy? I need to have a word.’
The US Embassy. Why? Pagan pressed the button that released the lock on the street door. He listened to his visitor climb the stairs. When he opened his apartment door, he saw a cadaverous man in his mid-forties. There was an air of ill health about Quarterman. He had dark mournful eyes and yellowy skin. In another age you might have said he was consumptive. He held out his hand, Pagan shook it. Quarterman’s fingers felt like unfleshed bone.
‘I don’t want to intrude on your privacy. I tried your office first. Your associate Foxie was reluctant to give me your address. It was like getting a bone away from a Doberman. He relented only when I explained why I needed to see you.’ Quarterman glanced round the room, saw the rock posters. ‘Hey, an aficionado. I go way back. Bill Haley and The Comets. “Rock Around the Clock.” When life was fun and games.’
‘I remember it,’ Pagan said. ‘Drink?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, Frank. Can I call you that?’
Pagan said he had no objection. He admired the easy familiarity of Americans. He poured two shots of Auchentoshan. He gave one to Quarterman, who said, ‘Here’s to lost youth and rock and roll,’ and tossed the drink back, unforgivably, in one gulp.
‘You ought to savour that, Al,’ Pagan said.
‘Is that the proper way?’
‘It is for me,’ Pagan said. He tasted the malt. It suggested peat, liquid smoke, heathery mysteries. ‘So. Why do you need to see me?’
Quarterman set his glass down on the coffee table. ‘One of our people is missing,’ he said. ‘He may have been on that tube.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, we’re not sure. And we hope to God we’re completely wrong. But he didn’t take his car to the Embassy when he came to work. He said something to one of the typists about how he wasn’t looking forward to going home on the Tube. And he isn’t answering his telephone. Consequently, it’s a possibility we have to consider.’ There was an expression of sad uncertainty on Quarterman’s face. ‘The Ambassador considers this a matter of protocol. We need to nail this down before you publish a list of the casualties. We don’t want Harcourt’s family to just come across his name in the newspapers or on TV. If he was on the Tube, the Ambassador feels we should be the first to deliver the information to the next of kin.’
‘Harcourt, did you say?’ Pagan asked.
‘Bryce Harcourt.’
Pagan found a pencil and wrote this down.
‘If Bryce was on the train, naturally we’d want to ship his remains back. His family …’ Quarterman looked at the bottle of Auchentoshan. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Help yourself.’
‘Damn fine stuff.’ Quarterman poured himself a generous glass. ‘His family would want him interred in Florida. The Harcourts are old and influential. Plus they’re personal friends of the President, which makes Harcourt’s death all the more … significant. If we don’t act as fast as we can and ship the body back – if there is a body – they’re bound to bring some pressure to bear on us. I’m sure you understand.’
‘It’s not going to be pleasant for them, I’m afraid.’
‘I figure that. Where are the victims being kept?’
‘At the station. A few have already been removed.’
‘I’ll send somebody around, see if we can’t make an ID. We have his records, of course, if we need them. Medical. Dental. The usual. They might prove useful in the event …’ Quarterman didn’t finish the sentence. He sipped his drink as he’d been instructed. ‘How’s the investigation going?’
‘These are early days.’
‘You don’t have any idea who perpetrated this?’
Perpetrated, Pagan thought. It was an antiseptic word. ‘Not yet.’ He drained his glass. His mind was foggy. He felt at one remove from his body. He longed for sleep, a couple of hours.
‘I imagine it’s a difficult operation,’ said Quarterman. ‘Do you have any leads? Anything valuable?’
Pagan shook his head. ‘We’ve hardly begun.’
‘I guess it’s like a godawful jigsaw puzzle.’
‘Except I don’t have any idea of what the finished picture looks like,’ Pagan said. ‘What did Harcourt do at the Embassy?’
‘He prepared background papers. If the Ambassador was to receive a visit from, let’s say, a company in Norwich interested in building a microchip plant in Des Moines or wherever, Harcourt would work up profiles of the company just so Ambassador Caan had some grasp. A research position basically. He worked directly under Caan.’ Quarterman looked into his drink. ‘We were quite close. We played indoor squash together. He was a sociable kind of guy. A party animal. Poor bastard.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t on the Tube,’ Pagan suggested.
‘Then where is he? He’s not the type to stay out of the office without calling in to say he’s sick. He’s conscientious. Even a little driven. I can’t imagine him going away without saying anything. His career was important to him.’
‘It’s still a possibility.’
‘Maybe. Look. If I can help, or if the Embassy can render any assistance, don’t hesitate. You can reach me at the Security section. Thanks for the scotch.’
Pagan walked Quarterman to the door and said good night. He heard Quarterman go down the stairs. Bryce Harcourt, possible victim. Another name for the list, for the roll-call of the dead. Pagan went inside his bedroom, sat on the bed, tried to collect stray thoughts and impressions and see if they might be moulded into a whole. But nothing came to him, he was empty; if he was blessed with a muse, it had abandoned him. As he stared up at the ceiling he remembered Foxworth’s unanswerable question: Was the bomber after just one person, Frank?
EIGHT
VILLA CLARA PROVINCE, CUBA
IT WAS JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL WHEN THE CONTINGENT OF CUBAN forces entered the city of Santa Clara in a convoy of ten jeeps, most of which were in a state of disrepair. Palls of black exhaust hung in the air as the jeeps idled in the main square alongside the Leoncia Vidal Park. It was in this city that Castro’s rebel army, under the command of Che Guevara, had won a decisive battle against counter-r
evolutionaries, armed with American weapons, in January 1959. Santa Clara had been absorbed into the myth of Fidelismo, complete with bullet-pocked walls and a number of exhibits showing how Che and his guerrillas had derailed a train carrying enemy troops more than forty years ago. The Revolution had been petrified here as in so many other places throughout Cuba; Fidel’s triumph had been reduced to photographs and artefacts in what were no more than museums. Past glories coexisted with current deprivations. The place had the defeated look of unfulfilled dreams.
The young lieutenant in charge of the convoy, Rafael Mendoza, stepped down from his jeep and stood smoking a cigarette. He gazed at the park where, on benches under guasima and poinciana trees, old men sat in brooding contemplation of their chessboards, or simply dozed; here and there students from the Central University stood around in conversation that was seemingly casual. Everything appeared to Mendoza altogether normal, and yet he experienced tension. He had the habit of running the tips of his fingers through his moustache when he was anxious, and he was doing this now as he surveyed the square and the park.
He gazed at the soldiers in the jeeps, most of them younger than himself; none of them had known any form of government other than that of Fidel. They grumbled sometimes, especially when they looked at videos smuggled in from Florida, or when they received mail from relations in Miami, where the Good Life, Yanqui-style, was lived. Mendoza, although he’d been thoroughly indoctrinated and believed in the ultimate success of the Revolution, felt a certain sympathy toward his men. They’d come from poor backgrounds for the most part, they didn’t get enough to eat, they were often obliquely critical when they spoke of food lines, and rationing, and shortages, and they were openly resentful of the tourists who came from Canada or Germany or Spain and had access to luxurious aspects of Cuba denied the ordinary citizen. Even when it came to artillery, there had been shortages since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was not enough ammunition, equipment was often outdated, and maintenance slack. Fidel always said that things were changing, a better world was coming, patience was the greatest virtue of the revolutionary – but Mendoza knew the men in his charge regarded Fidel’s words as so much meaningless noise, like the slapping sound made by fish dying in a barrel.
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