by Tim Lees
“Hey! Hey!”
I stared, inches from the blank wood.
“You can’t leave me here!”
I paced the room. I sat down. I stood up. I used the toilet, half gagging in the fumes my piss stirred up. I slapped the door. It had a heavy, solid sound.
“Anyone out there?”
I tried to sound cocky, unconcerned.
“Fancy a chat? Game of cards?”
Nothing. It was an old building. The walls might have been ten feet thick. The whole staff might have gone home. No, no: there had to be someone outside. And this was crazy, anyway. I wasn’t guilty. I was trying to help, for God’s sake! Jesus Christ! I started thumping on the door. I hit it with the flat of my hand, till it boomed like a drum. I hit it with my fist, which hurt like hell and absolutely failed to smash it all to matchwood.
“Hey! I ordered steak! Where’s my steak?”
Thump. Smash.
“Where’s my cocktail, eh, you bastards?”
The next few hours did not go well. I suppose we all like to assume we’ll take our suffering with dignity; locked up, we’ll sit tight, wait it out. Maybe do some meditation or catch up on our singing practice.
Not spend half an hour screaming and shouting and beating our fingers bloody on the woodwork.
Or trying to shoulder-charge the door. Which I did, once. Or twice.
After that I sat down for a while, and slowly, bit by bit, the anger drained from me, leaving me empty, helpless, and—worse still—tearful.
Then I put my feet up on the planking. I pulled one of the blankets over me, thin as it was, folded the other for a pillow, and—rather to my own surprise—I went to sleep.
CHAPTER 22
RESCUE
The light was still on when I woke. A dismal, thirty-watt bulb in a metal cage screwed to the ceiling. Glad I didn’t pay the bills in here.
I woke because I had to piss. And, as so often, the reverse was also true: my throat felt parched and sore from shouting, like I hadn’t had a drink in years. I needed coffee—good, strong Hungarian coffee, and perhaps a shot of something on the side, as well, the way the workmen did it in the cafés here.
I went over to the door and, chastened by my misbehavior last night, called out, very politely, “Hello? Anyone there? Hello? Hello?”
I knocked, expecting nothing.
“I’m awake. Hello?”
The judas hole slid back, so suddenly I jumped. Someone growled at me.
I said, “Coffee? Breakfast . . . ?”
He growled some more—I couldn’t understand a word he said—then put his wristwatch to the hole so I could see it.
It said 5:17.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d thought it must be nine at least.
So I went back to my incarceration.
Sitting there. No way to tell the time. Nothing but pale blue walls, blue ceiling . . . Maybe they were that color to calm you down. Remind you of the sky, perhaps, “that little tent of blue.” Fact is, there’s nothing worse than being locked away with no idea when you’ll get out. I sat down, I stood up. I peed about a dozen times. I felt panic and anger and had to talk them both down, reason with them. I tried to sleep again, simply to pass the time. It didn’t work. Time passed, though. Slowly. Like a thousand years of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The doctor wore a loud check jacket, like a vaudeville comedian, and he had his hair brushed straight from one side of his forehead to the other, then plastered down with grease. He looked as if a cow had just crapped on his head.
“Mouth,” he said, and peered into my mouth.
“Eyes,” he said, and shone a light into my eyes.
I blinked.
“Do you hear voices? In here?” He tapped his temple. “Now or any other time?”
Yes, I thought. I’m hearing yours.
“No,” I said.
His forehead creased up like an old rag.
“I’m not lying,” I said.
He made a small note on his clipboard.
“Beliefs or ideas others may think are unusual? Ideas that cause distress?”
“Can’t think of any.”
“Do you ever—ah.” He sat back, cleared his throat. “Have desire to harm yourself?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Desire to harm others? Hm?”
He smelled of garlic. At 10:00 a.m. Who smells of garlic at 10:00 a.m.?
I looked at him, with his stupid cowpat haircut and his stinking breath.
“No,” I told him, and this time I was definitely lying.
“Undo your shirt, please.”
He sounded my chest. Then he put a cuff on my arm and took my blood pressure. I didn’t like that; it always feels as if the cuff’s just going to squeeze and squeeze and take my arm off. But it stopped, he did his reading, then stuck a thermometer into my ear and noted the results down on his little board. He exchanged some grunts with my guard.
“Am I normal?” I said. “Am I healthy?”
But he didn’t deign to answer me.
I wasn’t taken back to the interrogation room. Instead, the Colonel came to visit me there in my cell. A guard gave him a wooden chair, which he sat on backwards, folding his arms over the backrest, watching me. His trim moustache peeped up over his cuffs, his blue eyes slitted: a soldier in a bunker.
That went on a long time. Then he said, “You know that they will charge you for the murders. You know this, yes?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“You know it’s ridiculous.”
“But they need someone. And—well. You are here.” He was very calm about it. Just sat there, watching me. No, it really didn’t worry him a bit. “Perhaps you need me to explain,” he said, “how bad this will become?”
I didn’t answer him.
“You are thinking it will not become bad because you are not guilty. Because your government will intervene. But I must assure you: you are not at home now. You are hiding things from us. You may, of course, choose to reveal those things and hope that somebody is interested enough to listen. Or . . . well.”
He stood. He picked the chair up easily in one hand, knocked the door to be let out.
Looking back, he said, “This is difficult for us, you understand. Maybe you are innocent. How do we know? Your organization does not recognize you. Nothing is authenticated. You are not a tourist, not on business. You tell us one thing, but . . .” He shrugged, helpless.
I said, “Um?”
“If we had proof . . . ? Something we could validate, perhaps . . . ?”
There were footsteps in the corridor, the clack-clack-clack of studded boots.
“Your Registry ID? Or—I don’t know. You have access to their intranet? A user name? A password?”
I heard a big key scrabbling in the lock.
“If you can give us these—I cannot promise, but it might help. I will speak for you. I have . . . some influence . . .”
He smiled, lifting his brows expectantly.
“Your user name?” he said again. “Your password?”
The door opened.
“Some other proof, perhaps?”
He nodded to the guard, stepped out into the corridor.
“No? A shame.”
I told him, “Wait—”
And the door slammed shut.
They wanted me willing, frightened. Desperate to talk.
I hadn’t got there yet.
And yet it isn’t just the fear. That’s there, of course, and you can’t get away from it: realizing how big and how corrupt the national machine of justice is, how easily these people can do anything they want with you; that human rights come to an end the instant that you’re out of common sigh
t.
There’s more: there’s the desire to please.
We’re pack animals. Social creatures. Show us an alpha male, and half of us will fawn all over him, roll on our backs and ask to have our tummies tickled.
I didn’t see it at the time, but I can see it now.
They let me stew. No big man, slapping me about the head. I got a meal, though it was hardly Cordon Bleu. I got a mug of thin, sweet tea. No one said anything.
And I waited for the Colonel to come back. Thinking, Maybe I should trust him. Maybe he’s my chance and I should tell him everything. All those questions that he asked about the Registry, and every site and source of energy from here to Moscow. What harm could it do? Chances were, they knew it anyway. Better than I did, come to that.
Or maybe I should just assume they’re lying. Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t be the last. . .
The key turned in the lock. I stiffened, straightened. My fingers smoothed my shirt-front, trying to smarten myself up.
But it was not the Colonel. Not this time.
It was Detective Ganz.
She looked pale and sickly in the dim lights, and her eyes flicked left and right, checking the corridor.
“You are to come now. Quick, please.”
But I remembered how she’d put me in there, and I hung back.
“Come! Quick. Quick, please.”
Her voice was low and hoarse. I didn’t trust her. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to sit there in the cell simply to prove how mad at her I was. So I walked out and she locked the door behind me.
There was no one in the corridor.
Halfway down the hall stood a small bench. She stopped and slipped the key under the seat cushion.
We didn’t pass the main desk. We took a back way and a fire exit and walked into a parking lot and got into her car.
“No paperwork?” I said.
She started up the engine.
“Nothing to sign?”
She backed out rapidly, in too much haste.
“Not even an apology?”
She brushed a hand across her eyes.
“You mean I’m free to go?”
She turned the car, flashed a badge at the man on the gate, pulled out onto the street.
“You are already gone, Mr. Copeland.”
“Yeah. And very glad, I’m sure.”
“You have been gone for two days. There is proof.”
“Deniability. Of course.” I sulked a few minutes. Then I said, “Not having had access to a mirror for the last few hours, I can’t be sure of this. But I’d bet I’ve got a visible bruise or two, just here and there. And I can smell that fucking chemical toilet, even now. So I will be making a complaint. I will be making a very long complaint, and at the very highest levels.”
The building fronts flipped past. She lit a cigarette. She said, “You left from Budapest Ferenc Liszt International, Terminal 2B. American Airlines to New York JFK International Airport. There is your record at passport control. There is CCTV footage. You used your card to purchase meatballs and coffee at a concessionary stand. And your flight touched down successfully at JFK, where you were admitted to the United States. So it is clear we can no longer hold you, yes?”
“What?”
“We are going to America, Mr. Copeland. You, me. Once we have necessary documents. Now tell me you are pleased?”
“I’m . . .”
“Your zoo-man. He has come to light. And we will follow him, and bring him back. And you will get your passport. Yes now?”
CHAPTER 23
GOING TO AMERICA
I did not look at Anna Ganz.
She sat beside me, all the way to Paris, and then, much longer, all the way to Newark. (We did not get the nice direct AA route my doppelganger had pursued. I don’t know why, but I think it had to do with money. Most things did.) Once I woke with her head lolling on my shoulder, and for a moment felt a little thrill of pleasure, even excitement. Then I froze.
She’d had me locked up. She’d had me questioned, isolated, almost tried for murder.
Well, no. Not as she saw it, at least. Things had sort of . . . got away from her. She’d explained it all over a glass of wine while we’d been stuck at Charles de Gaulle, waiting for the connection. I will say, she was very matter-of-fact. No apology, no self-justifying, no excuses. I suppose I liked that. In a way.
“You must understand,” she said. “Russians were in charge for many years. They had inner circles—in police, in government, in law, in medicine, wherever. Before that, Germans. Russians have been gone a long time now. Germans longer. But circles are still there. Circles inside circles. Always.”
“So it’s the Russians, then.”
I don’t know if she caught my sarcasm. She spoke on, very controlled, very level, staring at the wineglass cradled in her hands.
“Not Russians. But circles still. They are . . . people. Cliques. With their own aims. Their own plans.” She shrugged. “I did not expect they would involve themselves. I did not . . . anticipate.”
“Well. Thank you. That gives me great comfort.”
“Mr. Copeland.” She looked straight at me now; her eyes were an unusual shade, a kind of honey-brown, almost golden in the bar lights. “You come to me, you tell me something very strange. Something I must always see as suspect. I am police, I cannot help this. You were arrested. This is my work. My job. What happened next, I do not know. There are people want to speak to you for reasons I am not informed. My job is to catch killer. A man I now believe is in the United States, and I plan to apprehend.”
I took a big drink this time. Looked around.
“That’s public spirited.”
She didn’t answer me. But later, as we waited in Departures, she said, “You dislike Hungarian police, I think. Perhaps all Hungarians. You think we are not good.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“We take bribes. We can be bought. In your eyes, we are corrupt.”
I didn’t answer. I watched a very fat man manipulate a very fat suitcase, humping it forwards a few inches at a time with his knee and boot-toe: bump, bump, bump.
“It is true. It is true of all police, but perhaps more true of ours. That does not mean we do not have a job to do, Mr. Copeland. People to protect. There is still honor, there is still justice. Not the American way, perhaps. But still true. Do you understand?”
I grunted, still smarting from my days’ imprisonment. But later, I felt bad about it, especially the way that she got treated when we finally reached Newark. Though that, as I say, was later. We’d still a way to go till then.
CHAPTER 24
THE VERGE OF GREAT THINGS
At Newark, we queued. There was the usual mix of boredom and impatience, homecomers and holidaymakers caught up in this antechamber to reality, this in-between place, governed by surveillance and bureaucracy. Laptops tucked away, cell phones itching to be used. Everyone held incommunicado, clutching their passports and their visa waivers and their customs declarations.
I didn’t have a passport. Someone—no guess who—had checked into my room, having claimed he’d lost his key; he’d taken my documents, my cash, my credit cards—also, my reader, flask, and my containment gear. What I had now was a paper from the embassy. I waited, debating banter to swap with Ganz when we would meet again, out on the far side of the barrier: “Bet it’s weird, you being fingerprinted for a change.” But Anna Ganz did not seem strong on humor, even when the jokes were funny. It was a police thing, maybe. Or a Hungarian thing. Or a Ganz thing, perhaps.
The guy in the booth called me forward. His face was round and swarthy, caterpillar eyebrows and moustache to match. He checked my papers, tapped his keyboard, studied his computer screen.
Next thing I’d got two tall gents in uniform reques
ting me to come this way, sir. Not a summons that would brook refusal. I made to follow, but the guy in the booth called me back. “This is yours.” He passed me my documents. I looked for Anna. Couldn’t see her. Then I vanished into that hive of back rooms that few people, if their lives are simple and straightforward, and not like mine, are ever privileged to see.
I was not under arrest. I was not a security threat. This I deduced from being left alone, unguarded, and in fairly comfortable surroundings. A double row of metal chairs stood fastened to the floor. A countertop held half a dozen computer screens; at the rear, a metal cabinet topped by a small green light suggested some mysterious, arcane machinery.
A fat man in a short-sleeved shirt arrived. He nodded to me, asked my name, checked a few things on the screens, then, rolling like a young bullock, left me there. The black bead of a camera watched me from the corner of the wall. I imagined someone, maybe miles away, analyzing each time I crossed my legs, or twitched, or scratched my chin. Like a Warhol movie, boring and fascinating at the same time.
The inner door swung open once again.
Seddon appeared.
He was very tall and thin, in an elegant charcoal-gray suit and black-and-white silk tie. His movements were both unhurried and purposeful, giving the impression that he hadn’t really needed to keep me waiting there; it had merely suited him to do so. He held a hand out, and I rose and took it.
“Chris. Good to see you. Now: let’s get you out of here, shall we?”
