“You guess right,” she said. “As we speak, Calvin’s locking it.”
* * *
Ashley knelt in sun-dappled grass by Martha’s grave, arranging the flowers she’d brought. Seven shades of blue. Though Shawn had worked with her since they met in Fayetteville, Ashley had been Martha’s friend more than his. The two women came together when Ash was investigating a sophisticated system of money transfers that she believed (rightly, it proved) were financing terrorist cells. Martha was a highly paid money hunter, first for Kroll and then for other firms. She led Ash through the intricacies of financial migration: the tsunami of hot and cold cash washing daily around the world. The two women worked together for months until Ashley felt ready to move on the money laundry. When she did, her boss, of course, took the credit. It was, Ash said, no more than she deserved after the trouble she’d caused the guy.
When Shawn had his own troubles with the covert-action outfit he joined after being retired from the Agency, Ash offered a shoulder to cry on, as he and Martha once did for her. Now she stood by the grave, brushing dirt from ill-fitting designer jeans, a dampness about her eyes.
“I miss her, Shawn. God, I miss her.” Sunlight through sycamores cast shifting shadows on the grass. “Such a beautiful place she’s buried in. I’m sure she knows it.”
“It’s what she wanted,” Shawn said. “To lie here. She told me that when she—when she knew, she kind of knew, I think, she wouldn’t make it.” Ash leaned over and kissed him then, this time a sisterly kiss. “I didn’t—I didn’t handle it too good.” He thought back to Martha, alone in a white hospital ward. “Seeing her in bed. Those damn tubes in her body. Hickman line in her neck. Then”—he gestured around him—“you know, hearing her talk about this place. The churchyard. She just lay there, Ash. No illusions. Didn’t listen to the doctors. Knew she wouldn’t make it. Knew she’d die.” He paused a while, then said, “You think—I used to think—death, it’s final. One minute you’re here, in life, next minute, gone. Well, it’s not like that. It’s slow, it’s rough. Messy. Real hard to bear.”
“For all of us.”
“That’s the truth,” he said. “The ones who stay, the ones who go.”
Ash watched him, wondering how to respond.
“You’ll think I’m crazy—some days in the house I hear her voice.”
“Martha’s?”
Shawn nodded.
“That’s not crazy,” Ash said. “She loved this place. She won’t leave easy. She’ll be with you awhile.”
They were silent then, one on each side of the grave, remembering the woman who lay between them. The churchyard was thick with wild cyclamen and flowering primrose. Late bluebells were still in bloom. The scent of jasmine drifted across the lane.
At last, Ash moved away. “I know you loved her. I’m sure you did. And yet—there’s Ellen—”
“If you think love’s that simple, Ash,” Shawn said, “you maybe saw the signs, but you’ve never been down the road.”
* * *
Ash was moving toward the churchyard gate, looking across the lane to the rectory. In Shawn’s driveway stood a van that had painted on its side the words SQUIRREL MAN.
She pointed. “Does he have a name?”
“Squirrel Man? Another name? I asked him that. He said, call me Squirrel Man.”
Ash shifted her gaze to the rectory. “It’s so much her house. I can’t imagine you living here. Not alone.” She was watching him. “You came back, though.”
“I was out of work. You know that.”
“You would have come anyway. Martha could always beat out whoever you had over there.” She turned her gaze to Shawn’s croquet lawn, which spread to the right of the house. “Is that the current squeeze?” She pointed. “On the grass?”
Shawn looked where Ashley was pointing. Danielle was on the lawn, in a deck chair, reading in the sun. She wore a bikini top and shorts. It was the first time Shawn had seen this much of her body. He felt he was getting to know the girl in stages, like one of those kids’ books where you fold down sections—head, torso, loins, leg—to create complete people.
Crazy, he thought, this thing with Danielle. He should quit. Let her find the prisoner. He walked through the leaf-strewn churchyard, toward the lych-gate.
“On the lawn? That’s Dani. Squeeze, no. I’m trying to get her out of my life.”
“Doesn’t look like you’re trying too hard,” Ashley remarked. “She’s staying here?”
“Not the way you think.” He pointed to the rectory’s east wing. “Separate bedroom.”
“Because?”
“Her choice. She’s married. Decent girl, she says.”
Ash paused at the gate to the garden, by Squirrel Man’s painted van. “What she’s wearing now—does that count as decent?” She glanced sideways at Shawn. “You never learn, do you? It’s always body—never brain.”
“She wasn’t raised by wolves,” Shawn said. “Speaks in whole sentences. Come meet her. She’s the reason you’re here.”
“Really?” Ash said. “I thought you liked my company. Maybe wanted to marry me.”
“You’re a wonderful friend,” Shawn said. “Could we settle for that?”
“I have friends,” Ash said. “More, I don’t need.”
* * *
On the rectory lawn, Shawn introduced these two very different women. “Ashley Victoria Caburn, Danielle Baptiste.” Danielle unfolded herself from her canvas seat. Her skin was darkening in the pale Sussex sun. There was a narrow gap between her stomach and the belt of her shorts. “Ash works at the embassy,” Shawn said. “She has some data, might help you find Darius.”
Danielle shrugged herself into a denim shirt, which, Shawn believed, was one of his. She held a hand out to Ashley. “Enchanted.” A comprehensive gesture. “How do you like the place? Or have you seen it before?”
The garden was at its most beguiling: stephanotis flowering, cherry blossoms lingering, iris around the lake, summer foliage unfolding. Chestnuts—their leaves like open hands—learning to be trees. Bumblebees staggering from flower to flower. A faint scent of wood smoke. Somewhere, the crazy knocking of woodpeckers.
Ash lacked interest in the natural world. Falling out of love, she ate too much. Overweight, she sweated lightly in the sun. “Shawn tells me you’re worried about your husband.”
“What would you think?” Danielle asked. “I mean, he is in Paris, one day he goes missing, we hear he is taken from the street. There is no word for a week. You believe I would not worry?”
Ash was impervious to anger. “You assume it’s a Company heist?”
Danielle shook her head a little, catching up with this turn of the conversation. “Heist? It means—?”
“In this case, kidnap,” Shawn said. “CIA kidnap.” To Ashley he said, “Who knows? It has the marks. Foreign territory. Fast, efficient. Flown out of France, most likely. No airport record. Leaving aside whether they got the right guy.”
“Modus?”
“Paris, quatrième. Two men in masks, we’re told: cuffs, a sap, head bag. Black car, Volvo, in this case. Drives off, direction of the airport. Prisoner in back.” He made a hypodermic gesture. “Injected, I guess.” He pointed toward the house. “Come inside. Tell us where Osmani could be. Tell us about the jails. I have maps.”
Walking across the mower-striped lawn, Ash spoke quietly. She said, “I know what you’re doing, Shawn. You’re looking for another Martha. You won’t marry me. I’m not the body you want. Not that thin, not that sexy.” She paused, looking back to where Danielle watched the cat leap at dragonflies hovering around the edge of the lake. “She’s not the one. Whatever you have going with this girl, it’ll end in tears.” She pushed open the door of the house. “Remember where you heard it first.”
In Shawn’s front hall, at the foot of the stairs, a small man in overalls knelt in silence, perhaps in prayer. His skull was clean shaven, though his face was not. As Ashley entered, he stood, turned, and ran up
the stairs.
“Squirrel Man,” Shawn told his visitor. “Also a warlock, he tells me. It’s why he prays before he kills critters.”
“Like our president. Muslims, in his case.”
Shawn watched the vanishing warlock. “Clears them out of the roof space.” He pointed Ashley to her left. “This way. Books, maps, Pimm’s.”
Danielle, buttoning her shirt, caught up. “Warlock is what?” she asked.
From upstairs came the sound of furniture moving.
“Male witch. Don’t ask what it has to do with squirrels. No clue.”
* * *
In the drawing room, Ash, thirsty, poured from a jug full of greenery into a crystal glass.
“My,” she said to Shawn, “aren’t we English? Country house, lake, dovecote. Sheep. Pimm’s.” She considered her glass. “More like a marsh than a drink.” She glanced around the room: the cornices, the murals, the chairs, the colors. “God, Martha had such taste. I could live here, if I was asked. Wouldn’t change a thing.”
Danielle was not drinking. “After kidnap, what then?”
Ashley said, “I don’t know. Ship the guy someplace. Selected location. Post 9/11, we keep them offshore. Someplace they don’t have Red Cross inspection.”
Shawn poured more Pimm’s. “But do have electrodes.”
“Shawn, shame,” said Ashley. “I see why Calvin has his doubts.” With her refilled glass, she moved to one of the maps Shawn had set out on a cherrywood table. “Here we go. All this stuff’s in public domain. If it’s not on the Web, it will be. We have black prisons”—she moved a finger from place to place—“Poland, Jordan, Morocco, Belarus, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar—”
“In the axis of evil?”
From somewhere on an upper floor came the sound of running feet.
“You know how it is,” Ash told Danielle. “Evil’s relative. Depends who’s talking.” She marked jail locations on Shawn’s map. “These I can tell you. Some guy did an FOI on the Agency’s flight plans. Seems we fly suspects in Gulfstreams—”
Shawn was listening to noise from the floor above.
“Gulfstreams?” Danielle asked.
“Executive jets from Georgia. Georgia, USA.” Ashley moved round the room, examining paintings Martha had bought. “Nice way to fly, if you’re not head-bagged, cuffed, shackled to a bed.”
“When you have flight plans—what?”
Ashley was bored with this woman. She wanted to lie down, stretch out, talk to Shawn about marriage or, at least, living together in this half-empty mansion.
“We have flight plans, we know where the planes go. Where they go, honey, that’s where the jails are.”
Danielle was quiet then. She stood by a long window, looking out at the garden, her breathing uneven. When Shawn put a tentative hand on her shoulder, she shrugged him away.
Shawn saw Squirrel Man exit fast from a side door into the garden. He carried a metal cage and a package.
“A person is picked up in Paris. Like my husband. Where would they take him?”
Kicking off her shoes, Ashley lay back on a chaise longue: one that Martha had bought at a village auction. She, too, looked out at the garden. She’d been at a Mayfair party last night. Now she wanted to sleep, though not alone. She raised her head to drink.
“Where would they take him? My dear, it could be anywhere. We move them, country to country. Frequent flyers.” She tried to focus on Danielle, on the girl behind the looks. “Your husband’s Iranian?”
“Darius? Yes. He has a French passport, and Iranian. His research base was here.”
“Why was he in Paris?”
Danielle said, “I can’t tell. Maybe a girlfriend.”
“Ahh.” This was territory Ashley knew. “He had lovers?”
“Not that I heard. Of course, you know, wives are the ones who do not hear.”
Squirrel Man knocked on a French window. He was trampling tender plants, standing in a flower bed Henry Thackeray had planted with Japanese anemones. When Shawn opened the window, the room filled with the scents of freesia and jasmine.
“Got three, Mr. Maguire,” said Squirrel Man. “Little bastards.”
Two squirrels crouched on the floor of their cage; a third stood on its hind legs, gnawing with rodent teeth at the imprisoning mesh.
On the chaise longue, Ash pushed herself upright. “Let them loose.”
“Can’t, ma’am,” Squirrel Man told her. “Against the law.”
“What law?”
“Tree rats,” said Squirrel Man, changing tack. “Rats with tails, that’s all they are.”
“All rats have tails.”
“Furry’s what I mean,” said Squirrel Man. “Furry tails. Let ’em go, little scamps, next thing, they be back up your roof space, chewing insulation off your wires. Dry’s tinder up there, Mr. Maguire. Two bare wires, one spark, whooff, that’s your house gone. Up in smoke.” He offered Shawn the laptop case he was carrying. “You must’ve left it in the roof. Don’t know what you was doing. Not a lot up there. Wires and pipes.” He blew on the case. “No dust, hardly.”
Shawn had never been in his roof space. He considered the little case, the name DELL imprinted on it. He started to open it; stopped as it grew suddenly warm. He paused a moment, then, moving swiftly, went through the open window, pushing past the startled Squirrel Man.
The rodent hunter turned to watch his employer race across the croquet lawn.
Ash reached out to pour herself another drink. Drops spilled on the cream chaise longue. “Full of surprises, our host,” she remarked to Danielle. “Who knew he could move so fast?”
Danielle, too, was watching Shawn. “Or why.”
On the far side of the croquet green, Shawn spun the satchel like a discus into a dense grove of laurels. He was already running backward as the bushes turned to skeletal shapes limned against a white and blinding sheet of fire.
In moments, the laurels were blackened sticks. Something sharp and acrid mingled with the smell of wood smoke.
“Oh my God,” Ash said, entranced.
Leaving his cage and captives on the lawn, Squirrel Man ran for his van, arms arched over his head as if to protect himself from falling debris.
Shawn walked slowly backward toward his drawing room’s open window.
“Jesus, Shawn,” Ash said, “that thing was in your roof space? White phosphorus? Someone doesn’t wish you well. Should we get out of the house?”
“I doubt there’s anything else,” Shawn said. He nodded at the smoking hedge. “That would have been enough.”
“In the right place, no question,” Ash said. “All the same.” She stepped cautiously into the garden, opening the squirrel cage. “I feel better outside.” She looked toward the roof. “Timer set. House burns. Electrical fire. Dodgy wiring. Squirrel damage. No questions; case closed. Smart stuff. Do we know who might want you dead?”
“Well,” Shawn said, “assassination’s a bit like Dani’s theory on wives and affairs. The person most concerned is the last to know.”
Danielle was still in the drawing room, at the window, listening. “May never know.”
“Unless what you said in Paris is right,” Shawn told her. “Death is where the pain starts.”
They stood in silence awhile as the hedge burned down. Smoke drifted toward the Grange.
Ashley asked, “You have any visitors? People alone in the house? Anyone I’d know?”
“Calvin McCord,” Shawn said. “Plus a sidekick. Pakistani. Hassan Someone.”
“Well, well,” Ash said. “Those boys.”
“It could have been me,” Danielle said. “I have been alone in the house.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” said Ashley. “You look like an arsonist. What would be your motive?” She nodded at Shawn. “You need this guy. Why would you burn his house?” To Shawn she said, “Will you follow up on Calvin and Hassan?”
“Tell the local cops?” Shawn asked. “Constable, I have no eviden
ce, but I believe two intel agents tried to incinerate my house. Call D.C., will you? Ask them to extradite.”
“Mmm,” Ashley said. “Problem.” She turned to Danielle, who was watching the fire burn out. “If I was starting, looking for your man, I’d try Fes.”
“Morocco?”
“We have a jail,” Ashley said. “Shared establishment—near Temara. Good start.”
Danielle watched her. “If you have many jails, why this?”
Still considering the scorched laurels, Ash sipped the last of her drink. “Public knowledge,” she said. “We pay people in Morocco. Lot of Gulfstreams go there. If your guy’s a frequent flyer, that’s his first stop.”
“Fes?”
“Fes or Rabat. Temara. If you like, I’ll check the file.”
Which, Shawn thought, you’ve already done.
Where the hedge had been, there was only white powder.
Though it was still warm, Danielle shivered, thin arms wrapped around her body. “For an immigration person,” she said, “you know a lot about rendition.”
The breeze shifted, blowing sour smoke back toward them.
“Ah, well,” Ashley said, “rendition. It’s an area of interest. We all have things we’re curious about. This happens to be one of mine.” She touched Shawn’s cheek. “As for you—from what I hear, my love, you should take care where you travel.”
“Even in Morocco?”
“Especially in Morocco.”
17
FES, MOROCCO, 26 MAY 2004
In a twin-bedded room of the Riad El Medina Hotel, Danielle Baptiste stood at an uncurtained floor-to-ceiling window, considering peopled streets in the old-town quarter of Fes. It brought back memories of childhood. Level rays of early sun warmed her. Closing her eyes, she unbuttoned her jacket. From a minaret somewhere, a muezzin called. On a mahogany chest of drawers, she’d put a monochrome photo of her husband, Darius. In the photo, the man’s eyes were not on the photographer but fixed on some point, some distant point, beyond him. Though Darius was young, that detached gaze reminded Shawn of a suspect he’d once interrogated: an old man; a man who at least seemed old. With Arabs, he’d found, it’s hard to guess at age.
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