Anonymous Sources
Page 12
“Oh. So is he on some sort of nuclear watch list?”
“To be completely honest with you—and I’ll admit it’s an unfamiliar sensation—I don’t know. There are so many different watch lists these days that it’s a full-time job just trying to keep track of them.”
I tried changing tack. “And what about Thomas Carlyle? What’s the connection?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know that there is one. Swear to God, that’s a new one.” He raised his right hand as if he were taking an oath. I studied him. Either he was a terrific liar or he was telling the truth.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Fine. Let’s just talk logistics then. Is Nadeem Siddiqui still in the UK? Or has he left the country?”
Withington cocked his head to one side. I wondered whether he was also weighing the universal rule of doing business: to get information, sometimes you have to give some.
Finally he spoke. “Just to make sure we’re crystal clear. We are off the record, Miss James.”
“Yes. You’ve been quite clear about that.”
“This meeting did not happen. As far as you know, I don’t even exist.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Has he left the country or not?”
“There is . . . there is nothing to indicate him leaving Britain. Nadeem Siddiqui’s passport hasn’t scanned since he flew in from Islamabad in March.”
We were both quiet for a minute.
“Well, I guess that’s something,” I said finally. “At least I know where to look for him.” I pushed my chair back and laid several bills on the table, to cover my share of the check.
“Hey, one last thing,” Withington said. “You said Siddiqui had some strange habits. Like what?”
What the hell, I thought. “Like power lifting, whatever that is. And he likes bananas. I mean, he really likes bananas. He’s been ordering huge crates of them. From Pakistan, every month. But I thought he must be traveling, because the latest order . . .”
“The latest order . . . ?”
I decided I’d said enough. “I guess we’ll have to see. It could be . . .” I fumbled, trying to backtrack. “It could be useful if he turns up to sign for it.”
“But why did you think he’s traveling? Did he suspend his usual order or something?”
“How on earth would I know that?” I lied.
“Do you have a tracking number? The name of the company he orders from?”
“Nope,” I lied again.
He narrowed his eyes at me, and his tone changed once more. Now he sounded menacing. “Miss James, you normally cover higher education, if I’m not mistaken. I gather Pakistani scientists and banana shipments are a bit off the beaten trail for you?”
I nodded.
“You might want to think about keeping it that way.”
27
Inside Harvard’s Memorial Church it was hot and stuffy. The morning had dawned unusually warm for Massachusetts in June. Several hundred people sat crammed into the pews, perspiring and sneaking glances at their neighbors to gauge whether it would be rude to fan themselves with the order of service.
There had been some discussion over whether to have Thomas Carlyle’s funeral here or in the church the Carlyle family attended. Thom had been baptized at Christ Church on Garden Street and had been dragged there to Christmas and Easter services all though his childhood. But there was the question of numbers: the Carlyles had many friends, they all wanted to pay their respects, and Memorial Church simply held more people.
Among those in attendance now, in the second row, sat Petronella Black.
She looked exquisite. Her creamy skin, her pearl choker necklace, and her white-blond hair all caught the morning light. Everything else was black: black sheath dress, black kid-leather Chanel pumps—but lower than she usually wore, only three-inch heels. Petronella had been born knowing what to wear. It was the emotion she had to fake.
It was a bit awkward, being seated here in the family section. She was right behind Thom’s parents and sisters, next to an aunt to whom she’d been introduced earlier this morning. Thom had occasionally spoken of his family. But she had never paid much attention to the details, and now she was struggling to keep the sisters’ names straight. The Carlyle clan, on the other hand, all seemed to be under the impression that she and Thom had practically been engaged. This morning when she had met Anna Carlyle, Thom’s mother, Anna had embraced her and wept. Then Anna had reached down, touched the bare fourth finger on the younger woman’s left hand, and smiled sorrowfully, as if to acknowledge the diamond that would now never be placed there. Thom had apparently told his family he was going to propose. And he had apparently not had the chance to tell them that she had broken things off. Even Petronella had the decency to feel mildly ashamed.
She sat now with her hands folded primly across her lap, her face arranged into the mask of a grieving fiancée. So many people had approached her this morning, patting her arm and murmuring condolences, that she was managing to convince herself that she did perhaps feel something approaching grief.
She watched Anna Carlyle’s shoulders ahead of her shaking with sobs. Petronella fluttered her lashes. Slowly a tear formed in her own eye. Her handkerchief was poised. It wouldn’t do to muss her mascara; it would look sloppy. Petronella did not own waterproof mascara. She had never needed it. She never allowed herself to cry.
She was trying to pay attention to the words the priest was speaking, truly she was, but it was so bloody hot in here. Her stockings itched around the ankles. She could feel her hair going flat. Also, she longed to turn around and ogle the president and the first lady. There had been a murmur when they slid inside, moments before the service began. They were sitting near the back, on their own, although she guessed Secret Service guards must be posted at the doors. Their presence lent a frisson of glamour to the otherwise mournful proceedings.
The priest droned on and on, and now it appeared there was to be another musical interlude. Was it her imagination or could she actually see heat shimmering up around the candles on the altar? A fat fly buzzed along the tops of the hymnals. Petronella fought the urge to sneak outside for a smoke. Her mind flitted in random directions. She thought of Lucien Sly. He had not returned her calls yesterday, and when she had finally reached him last night, he sounded odd. Distracted. They had exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, and it occurred to her they didn’t actually have much to say to each other.
Petronella watched the lips of the priest moving in prayer. Her gaze wandered across the center aisle and settled on Joe Chang, Thom’s old roommate. His cheeks were ashen and he was slumped over in what appeared to be true misery. When they had been introduced this morning on the steps of the church, he had appraised her unsmilingly and blinked in a way that seemed to say, Now I get it. Then he had turned and walked alone into the church.
In front of her, Anna’s shoulders had stopped shaking. She was resting her head against her husband’s arm, as he kissed the top of her head over and over. Lowell Carlyle had been polite to Petronella but more distant than his wife. He seemed an earnest man, more serious than his son. Making small talk with the woman his only son had loved was perhaps more than he could bear.
They were singing a hymn now, and it seemed the funeral might at last be drawing to an end. Petronella mouthed the words. The voice of one of Thom’s sisters carried. Which one was she again? It was a pure, rich voice, but it trembled on one of the high notes as she began to cry.
Petronella’s own eyes were dry. So many people here had loved Thom.
It was not her fault that she had not been one of them.
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, MARCO GALLONI scanned the crowd.
He had chosen a sober black suit and tie for the occasion. Unfortunate given the heat, but it wouldn’t do to stand out. He had positioned himself near the bottom of Memorial Church’s wide stone steps.
Harvard police were providing basic security, steering tourists away. And of course, a Secret Service team was escorting the presiden
t and the first lady. Galloni’s role was simply to watch. You never knew what you might glean from the people who turned up for a funeral, what furtive glances or snatches of conversation you might catch. If Thom Carlyle had been murdered, chances were he knew the person who killed him. And it followed that that person might turn up here today.
Mourners were now pouring out of the church. They formed sad little clusters on the steps, exchanging greetings and sympathies. He watched Petronella Black sweep out from the double doors and step daintily to the side. She pulled a mirrored compact out of her handbag, checked her lipstick, and fluffed her hair. Then she glanced around and disappeared around the corner of the church.
Interesting. Galloni followed her. What he saw made him shake his head. Petronella was standing in a beam of sunlight, a microphone in her face, granting an interview to an excited-looking TV reporter. The logo on the side of the camera read ABC NEWS. She must have made the arrangement earlier, figuring she could squeeze in a few minutes between the church service and the funeral cortege to the cemetery.
Tacky, thought Galloni. But then nothing about Petronella was to his taste. He had met and interviewed her briefly last night, at her hotel. She was a knockout, no question. But brittle. Snooty. And skinny, too narrow in the hip-and-ass department to hold his interest.
Not like Alex James. Galloni swatted away the thought of her. Since their brief encounter last week, he had dreamed of Alex. Erotic dreams that left him thrashing beneath his sheets. When he snapped awake, he was sweaty with pleasure and embarrassment. Yeah, he liked her. Annoying that she wasn’t here today to cover the funeral. He could have suggested a drink afterward, under the pretense of hearing more about what she’d uncovered in England.
But enough. He had work to do. He left Petronella to her tawdry television chatter and walked back around to the front steps of the church. The crowd was beginning to thin. Galloni wiped the perspiration off his face and noted that the Feds he’d had to put up with for the last two days hadn’t showed.
Lowell Carlyle had apparently called in a favor. Word had it he was not happy with the investigation’s progress—or lack thereof—and had asked the FBI director to take a personal interest in his son’s death. A flurry of phone calls around Washington had resulted in a pair of taciturn Feds swooping in. They had insisted on spending hours up in the Eliot House bell tower, taking photographs and dusting again for prints. At the station they combed through Galloni’s notes. It was a nuisance. There was no reason for the FBI to take the lead, no reason not to leave the case to the Cambridge PD, other than Mr. Carlyle’s status as a Washington big shot. But that wasn’t what bothered Galloni. No, it was something about the two Feds themselves.
It was the questions they asked, and the way they handled evidence. They were simultaneously thorough and oddly careless. Yes, that was it. Thom Carlyle had likely been murdered, and Galloni saw his job as collecting evidence that would lead to an arrest. And then to a trial, and then eventually to a conviction. He was supposed to find the bad guy and put him behind bars. It was the way police were trained to think, the way they built a case. But these men were trained in something else. They did not appear interested in the wheels of justice.
He hadn’t been sure until yesterday. The duo had deigned to join him for a drink after work, in a bar around the corner from the station. Galloni had ordered a pitcher of beer. And they had ordered . . . Chablis. Chablis? At happy hour in a police hangout in Kendall Square? No. No self-respecting cop went in for dry French wine. Not in public, anyway. These guys clearly worked for some federal agency. But Galloni was convinced it was not the FBI.
28
The heat got worse the farther south you went.
In Washington, DC, that day, it was insufferable. The city’s notoriously swamplike summers seemed to arrive earlier every year. Local forecasters had already dubbed this first heat wave of the summer the “Beltway Meltaway”; stepping outside felt like getting slapped with a hot, sticky towel.
But inside the rooms of the Key Bridge Marriott, air-conditioning was blasting great gusts of arctic air. And Shaukat Malik was feeling good.
He liked having his own hotel room. Room 609 was near the vending machines and had two queen beds. Both were swathed in navy-and-orange-striped fabric, as were the matching curtains, obligatory armchair, and bathroom shower curtain. He had a view out over the muddy currents of the Potomac River. And if he stood at the corner of his window and pressed his cheek to the pane, he could glimpse the tall needle of the Washington Monument.
Mind you, he was not in Washington proper, but across the river in Arlington, Virginia. A disappointment. The website had promised “a premier Georgetown location.” But this was a trifle. He would see Washington tomorrow, the real insider’s Washington. He would see a room few people ever laid eyes on in person. And in that room he would complete his last critical assignment.
Today, though, he had nothing to do except wait for a message that the shipment had arrived. The confirmation would arrive on his new phone. He was expecting an automated, computer-generated e-mail from the shipping company, which he would forward without comment. And that would be that. The wheels were in motion.
Malik surveyed the brown water below. He wondered what kind of birds lived along the banks of this Potomac River. He liked birds. Perhaps he would take a walk and find out. No reason not to. Let them find him if they needed to. After all, he was an important man now. An indispensable man. He clasped his hands behind his balding round head and savored the feeling: Shaukat Malik was a player.
29
I taxied from Claridge’s to my own—considerably less well-appointed—hotel in a state of supreme irritation. The Heathrow Comfort Lodge in Slough was as depressing as it sounds. The Chronicle travel agent had given up on me and my ever-changing itinerary and told me to book my own room. Ordinarily I would interpret this as carte blanche to check into the Ritz, but that seemed a bit cheeky given that I hadn’t filed a story in three days now.
So the Comfort Lodge it was. At least it would be convenient for my flight in the morning. I checked in and got my room key, but there was no point rushing up to what would surely be grim quarters. Instead I flounced into the bar and ordered a double.
Then I sat brooding. This Crispin Withington character. Who the hell was he? And his parting shot—You might want to think about keeping it that way—What the hell was that supposed to mean? The whole encounter left me feeling unclean. I’d been outmaneuvered so thoroughly I hadn’t even understood what game I was supposed to be playing.
What I wanted now was to vent to someone who would listen and not judge. I thought for a moment and then pulled out my phone and rang Lucien.
“Hallo, lovely lamb chop,” he answered. “You’ve caught me headed to dinner. How’s London?”
I glanced around the seedy little bar. “Well, I’m drinking cheap gin in a cocktail lounge, which is empty except for me and an off-duty flight crew for Aeroflot, and the sound track here appears to be Michael Bublé’s greatest hits. So, you know. A promising start to the evening.”
He chuckled. “Sorry it’s not up to the high standards of the Eagle. And what about the banana sleuthing? Any developments on the Pakistani fruit front?”
“Umm-hmm. I spent a bizarre afternoon at Claridge’s with a man purporting to be from the US embassy. He says Nadeem Siddiqui is still in Britain.”
“The plot thickens!” Lucien whispered delightedly.
“Well, but I couldn’t get anything else out of him. He didn’t seem to think there was any connection between Siddiqui and Thom Carlyle. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, not that it matters anyway, because the whole conversation was off the record. And I don’t even know who this source really was, and I haven’t filed a story in days, not that I even know what the story is anymore—”
“All right, all right, it’s not as bad as all that,” said Lucien, cutting across my ravings.
“Actually, it is.”
“If you say so. Now, listen, I need to hop off—I’m just walking in to dinner with Mum and Dad—but how about I ask Dad tonight if he can help. If you think this Siddiqui chap is in Britain, and you say the American embassy is watching him, maybe Scotland Yard is too. I could ask Dad’s people to make some calls.”
“What do you mean ‘Dad’s people’?”
“His staff. He must be on some committee that has clearance for this sort of thing. God knows they sit around doing bugger all else all day.”
“Sorry, I’m not following you.”
“Westminster, silly. Parliament. Dad’s in the House of Lords.”
“Your father—you father is in the House of Lords?”
“Of course. Along with eight hundred other pompous old gits with titles. Not that I can think of the last time he bothered to show up and actually, say, vote on anything.”
I was dumbstruck.
Lucien interpreted my silence as acceptance of his offer. “So what did you say this embassy officer’s name was? Might be useful to know where the information is coming from.”
“Er—I hadn’t. He was a bit funny about it. Didn’t want to be quoted or anything. But his name is Crispin Withington.”
There was a pause.
“Crispin Withington?” repeated Lucien.
“Ridiculous name, I know.”
“Complete bollocks name is what it is.”
“What?”
But now Lucien was roaring with laughter. It was a full thirty seconds before he could pull himself together to speak.
“Let me take a wild guess here and assume that you don’t closely follow British sport?”
“British—sport? What are you talking about?”
“Only that Crispin Withington”—he had to stop here and chortle again—“only that Crispin Withington is wicketkeeper for the England cricket team, Alex. He’s in the papers quite often. And it’s, um, rather a distinctive name. So unless our man Crisps is exploring a radical career change, I very much doubt he’s now spokesman for the American embassy.”