No answer. What did she expect? Rachel turned the knob and pushed—harder than she needed to. The door swung open and she tumbled into the ambassador’s office, the drawer slamming hard against the tile.
The ambassador was seated on the floor in the corner of the room, his wrists cuffed to the leg of his desk. He looked clouded and unkempt—like one of the old men stationed at nearly all hours outside of Josie’s canteen—and didn’t seem to immediately recognize Rachel.
“Hello, Kinsley,” Rachel said, righting herself as best she could.
“Darling?”
“Yes!”
“Darling. What the hell?” The ambassador’s teeth chattered.
“Listen, Kinsley,” Rachel said. “I need to tell you…”
The ambassador stared at her, his teeth still chattering.
“They know.”
The ambassador continued to stare.
Rachel forced herself to continue. “They know,” she said, and took a deep breath. “About the maps, and everything. Where to find them. And…and about the station, too. They mentioned something about it. Something about…extraordinary renditions.”
The ambassador blinked.
“It might be all nonsense, of course, but I wanted to make sure, and I thought that maybe…” Again she felt uncertain—ridiculous, even. She realized that, if the ambassador wasn’t going to supply her with any more information—regarding what exactly the insurgents were looking for and where they were going to find it—she herself had nothing to propose. “That maybe…it would be wise—”
“I know one of them, you know,” the ambassador interrupted. Despite how earnestly she’d hoped that the ambassador would speak, the interruption startled Rachel. Even more surprising was that, despite his unkempt appearance and chattering teeth, the ambassador’s voice was his own. Loud, competent, nonchalant—a slight trace of a country accent he’d worked hard to either cultivate or erase. “Yes, hard to believe,” the ambassador continued, “but she’s one of our own. From Intelligence. I worked with her years ago. She was just starting out.” He sniffed, wiped at his nose with his shirt. “She was talented,” he said. “Very, very bright. Worked her way right up the ranks—too quickly, probably. Took on a few too many tough jobs and started to crack. I heard later she’d been demoted—but she knew too much by then to be entirely let go. They took her out of the system, made her invisible. My guess,” the ambassador said with a short laugh, “is she’s started to resent that.”
He closed his eyes tight, his big pale cheeks pressed up to his bushy eyebrows, which he more regularly combed, his jaw clenched so his teeth couldn’t chatter. When he opened his eyes again he looked inhumanly tired. “You know,” he said slowly—accentuating the barely detectable drawl—“Bradley’s dead.”
“What?” Rachel lurched forward. A large bead of perspiration dripped conspicuously from her forehead onto the floor. “What?” she said again, though she’d heard the ambassador perfectly well.
The shots; yes. She’d heard them—felt them, even. Had known they were close, she couldn’t help that. And yet, she still had somehow never imagined! Had only supposed…
Supposed what? That the gun had been directed at no one? That there’d been—and would be—no consequences?
“What?” Rachel said a third time.
The ambassador shrugged. His expression suggested unconcern, even indifference, but when he opened his mouth his teeth were still chattering. “They told me it was an accident. That he pulled a gun.”
“Bradley?”
“I know.” A high-pitched squeak. The ambassador attempted to cover his mouth with his wrists. “It’s difficult to picture.”
Rachel stared at him. Had the man actually giggled? Also: why in the hell had Bradley been carrying a gun?
“We need to destroy the documents,” Rachel said, uncertainly.
“What documents?” The ambassador’s face had gone blank again. He sniffed loudly.
“The…the maps!” Rachel exploded. “And anything that suggests…in terms of intelligence, anything at all…extraordinary…”
The ambassador once more wiped at his nose with his sleeve. He was not looking at Rachel; his expression remained neutral, impassive.
“They know,” Rachel repeated, a little desperately now. “They told me…They said that Phil, you know, had mentioned a connection…”
“Darling,” the ambassador said, shaking his head. “Please. Try to relax.”
“It’s just…” Rachel felt offended, then confused. “It could all look very bad, sir. I mean, no doubt, from the outside…”
“Relax, Darling. The last thing we need is to lose our heads,” the ambassador drawled. “Listen to me. None of this matters. No one will find anything. None of this even exists.”
“But—” Rachel felt like she was going to burst into tears and had to swallow hard to keep her voice from breaking. “They said they’d been talking to Phil,” she said. “I know they could have made it all up, but either way, sir…”
“Darling!”
Rachel sat up straight—blinked twice at the ambassador. Little droplets of sweat streamed down her face.
“I told you. Relax. Whatever they know—or think they know—it doesn’t matter. This isn’t Empire soil, is it? You have to remember that. Whatever happens here, we’re not responsible. I promise you. The maps are another dead end. They can’t possibly do anything with them without Ø, and Ø can’t do a thing without us. It all leads nowhere, you see? To nothing. We’ve simply got to wait.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand,” Rachel said, even though she didn’t understand. “But in the meantime…”
“There is no meantime, Darling.”
Rachel looked wildly around the room, as if hoping to seek another opinion somewhere. She coughed. Attempted to clear her throat. “You said…you said he pulled a gun.”
“What?”
“Bradley,” Rachel almost shouted. “You said he pulled a gun.”
The ambassador shrugged. “That’s what I was told.”
Rachel leaned forward. “Do you think,” she said—lowering her voice—“do you think he killed someone?”
Again the ambassador shrugged, slouching against the leg of his desk. Rachel’s heart beat audibly. She took a few deep breaths. Then the ambassador wondered aloud what time it was in the capital and Rachel’s thoughts drifted painfully toward Zoe and Ray. She tried to picture them—going about their ordinary day, both of them still oblivious, perhaps.
“Nearly noon, I’d say,” the ambassador suggested.
She pictured Ray grabbing an umbrella on his way out the door for a meeting, or lunch with a friend. Zoe struggling with the zipper on her coat, balling up her paper lunch sack, or standing in line for the swings.
With a twinge of guilt, Rachel recalled that the ambassador was a recent divorcee. His wife had left him a year ago—gone back to the capital. They had no children. What, she wondered, was the ambassador thinking about now? What, she wondered—beginning to panic a little at the thought—was there to sustain anyone, at any time, if not Zoe? Ray?
Again, she saw Ray. Making his way down the short path from the office to the street; unlocking his vehicle; straightening his jacket at the neck and the shoulders before ducking inside. She felt deeply sorry for anyone who, in that moment, could not likewise picture the slant of his forehead or the tendons in his neck as he glanced quickly behind him; his long fingers on the wheel.
The ambassador’s head lolled. Rachel stole a peek at his crotch; it looked dry. How was that even possible?
She should leave, of course; Rachel knew that. Make her way back to her own office—and fast. There was nothing to be done here, that was obvious. She’d been a fool to think, even for a moment, she should try.
“It all leads nowhere,” the ambassador had said.
And here was Rachel, putting them both at needless risk. For god’s sake, Bradley was already dead!
She should leave; should make
her way back as quickly as she could, slide the desk drawer back into place as though it had never been removed…And yet, for some reason, she lingered. She’d never been particularly fond of the ambassador—had found him irritatingly self-important, affected, aloof. And yet, perhaps precisely for this reason, his presence was at least a small comfort to her now. She admired the way he could still be neutral, offhand—even while his teeth chattered. He’d come up at the tail end of an era where a slap on the back and a stiff drink solved just about anything—and it showed. By the time Rachel and Ray had come along everything was different. They’d learned to be more cautious, more sober. Rachel stuck her foot in her mouth more; Ray—for fear of it—said nothing at all.
Not long ago, Ray had recounted to Rachel a conversation he’d had with a retired counsellor. “It’s the women,” the counsellor had told him. “Forgive my saying so, but they seem to muck up absolutely everything.” He’d waved a long arm and sloshed his drink in his glass. “I know it’s not exactly PC to say so, is it? But truly. We used to—you know—be able to get right down to it, you know, and now you literally can’t say a thing without someone objecting.”
It seemed that Ray expected Rachel to be outraged at this—personally incensed.
“You sound surprised,” she’d said. “You sound like you didn’t realize this is what all the old men are thinking. At least he deemed you worthy to be spoken to. I try to talk to one of those guys and their eyes glaze over.”
Ray stared at her blankly.
“You never noticed that?” Rachel asked. “Whenever we’re out together somewhere, you know they only speak to you.”
Ray looked confused. No, he said, he could honestly say he hadn’t noticed. But now that she mentioned it, he said, maybe she was right. It was true that, whereas he was always hyper-visible in diplomatic gatherings, standing out awkwardly like a sore thumb, Rachel tended to fade a little, to blend in.
“I’m sorry,” Ray said, but he didn’t look sorry. He looked embarrassed—annoyed, even.
Rachel shrugged. She refused to let it bother her. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Those guys are going to all die out sooner or later. It’s a natural process.” She winked at Ray. “You may have even heard of it? It’s called evolution.”
And now here, perhaps, Rachel thought glumly, was the last of them. The ambassador’s head had dropped to his chest, revealing a patch of thinning hair on top and the beginnings of a double chin. In point of fact, Rachel and the ambassador were separated by little more than a decade and a half—and yet, in generational terms, they were worlds apart. At best, Rachel could only imitate what for the ambassador seemed to come so naturally: the cool, unshakable disposition, the innate distrust of anything, or anyone, he didn’t already know.
Maybe this was really it, Rachel thought—the end. In another few moments, right here in this room, the ambassador was going to be wiped off the face of the earth and with him the very last of a generation.
What had she said to Ray again? Evolution. The natural progression of things. There wasn’t anything that either one of them could do about it now. She might as well follow the ambassador’s example: relax. There was, after all, something seriously compelling about the way the ambassador had managed to remain confidently oblivious even while being scared almost out of his wits. About the way his fear had remained simple and discrete, at the root of it only the most basic of questions: was he or was he not going to die? The question had throbbed through the room like a foot tapping, had finally lulled him to sleep.
Rachel could feel her own eyelids begin to droop. Remarkably, the possibility of sleep presented itself to her. It extended itself—a simple offering. But just as she was about to reach out and take it, she heard the sharp sound of boots ringing on the stairs below, and she was wide awake again. She looked across at the ambassador, who didn’t stir—felt a cold panic spread like pins and needles through her limbs.
She’d left it too late; there was no time now. No time to return, no time to slide the drawer back in place—to pretend that she’d never left. Rachel cursed herself fiercely.
What had she been thinking? Putting not only her own life in danger but the life of the ambassador, and the others as well?
The footsteps were almost at the landing now. A loud shout, then a laugh, echoed in the stairwell.
It was, after all, Rachel thought sadly, quite impossible to take only your own life in hand.
More footsteps. The squeak of boots on the stair.
Still the ambassador hadn’t stirred. Rachel listened again and attempted to gauge what direction the footsteps were moving in and how much time she still had before they reached the ambassador’s door.
FIFTEEN
Lota sat next to Norma in the basement conference centre at the Bella Vista Hotel. Her headache had returned; the laptop screen in front of her glared. She stared around at the others. At Mad Max hugging his rifle, at Bruno staring blearily at the ceiling, at Baby Jane tugging at a strand of blond hair. Of all of them, Kurtz was the only one who seemed not to notice they’d been up since dawn without a proper meal or a moment’s rest. She paced the room feverishly. Her skin shone, her eyes glowed; she seemed physically taller, as if she actually took up more space. But then, at the same time, her edges had softened—begun to blur. It was as if, Lota thought, she’d become an element among them rather than a human being—had begun to slowly diffuse into the atmosphere.
Lota turned back to the screen, but she couldn’t focus on it properly. The letters appeared indistinct and strangely elongated. They didn’t seem to be arranged in any immediately recognizable order.
She looked up again and was surprised to see Verbal. He stood toward the front of the room; Kurtz almost grazed his shoulder as she passed.
Lota’s heart gave a sick, sideways leap. So it had all, she thought, been a dream. So there was still time to go back, do it over again. She felt relieved, but also exhausted by the thought. She shook her head. Surely her eyes were playing tricks on her…
But even after blinking three times hard, and rubbing her eyes, Verbal remained—hovering in the space between the cheap maplewood lectern and the wall. He faced her without exactly looking at her, his eyes with that weird expression in them, as though he was searching for something beyond her that she could neither see nor understand.
Then his eyes seemed to brighten—to sharpen at the edges. Slowly, they began to drift toward hers.
A hard lump formed in Lota’s throat. She stared, transfixed, as Verbal’s eyes continued to drift. Yes, it was inevitable, now, that their eyes would meet. Lota could not turn her head. A wave—first of horror and then of intense desire—passed over her. And then (because she was suddenly unsure which feeling was which, or if the two feelings were actually one) she was hit by a still more powerful wave of confusion. It was possible, Lota thought regretfully, that she didn’t want any second chances—didn’t want to go back.
By the time Verbal’s gaze reached hers, he was gone.
“Hey, snap out of it.” It was Norma, beside her.
Lota winced. She glanced back at the screen, but the words of the document still appeared smudged and blurred.
It should have been simple, of course: after all, the story had already been written. Lota’s job was simply to copy and paste it into separate email files.
“You all right?”
Lota bit her lip. Her vision sharpened slightly. She squinted, straining to make out the words on the screen.
A BRIGHT NEW DAWN FOR ISLAND NATION.
“I’m all right,” she said.
Kurtz was still pacing. Lota scanned the document. This time, for the most part, the letters stayed in place on the page. She managed to get nearly halfway through before her eyes snagged.
“Look,” Lota said in a low voice to Norma, “it says here…” But then she faltered. She didn’t know if what she wanted to ask was a question, exactly.
Norma was hunched over her own screen. She was compiling
a list of email addresses and didn’t look up.
“It says here,” Lota began again, “at the beginning of the third paragraph: ‘Not a single shot was fired.’ ”
Norma continued to tap at the keyboard, her eyes—obscured by the slant of her cap—fixed straight ahead on the screen.
“I was wondering…” Again, Lota paused.
What exactly was she wondering? What revision now, after the fact, would possibly suffice? The thing was done. The story had already been written.
“This is an official statement,” Norma said, still without looking up. “It’s not intended to give a complete report.” She leaned back a little in her foldout chair so that its two front legs were raised slightly off the floor. Then she rocked forward with a sudden jolt. “You ready?”
She’d turned toward Lota and smiled. For once the smile did not seem ironic, but friendly—almost kind. Mostly out of gratitude, Lota found herself nodding. The words, and her response to them, seemed now, in any case, to have little meaning.
Norma hit Send. Lota clicked to her inbox and waited for the message to appear. When it did, she copy-and-pasted the addresses Norma had sent her into the BCC box of a new message. Then she copy-and-pasted the press release and turned to stare blankly at Norma. But Norma wasn’t looking at her. She’d already waved to Kurtz—was watching as Kurtz moved toward them quickly, surrounded by a hazy glow.
It was her auntie G who’d taught Lota to read. Even before she’d even started school, Auntie G had helped her trace the letters of the alphabet on transparent paper. Lota could still recall the pressure of her auntie’s fingers on her own, the smell of the freshly sharpened pencil, the barely detectable sound of the letter taking shape on the page. “She’s too young,” her mother had said, “you’re wasting your time.” But Auntie G had just shrugged. Later, she’d said to Lota, “You’re never too young to learn to pay attention. See, once you know the letters, it’s just a matter of looking for connections—for certain patterns, for the way the patterns tend to repeat.”
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