Empire State

by Henry Porter

  The clothes were the same: a scarf was wound loosely round his neck; the faded khaki shirt looked in need of pressing and the blue jeans were sagging and creased. His only concession to the city was an unstructured dark blue jacket.

  ‘This is Lance Gibbons of the CIA,’ Herrick said in answer to an enquiring look in Eva’s eyes. ‘We met in Albania. Mr Gibbons is a great believer in the value of the “extraordinary renditions” that come from torture victims.’

  ‘Cut the crap, Isis. You know I was right about Khan.’

  ‘It hardly matters now,’ snapped Herrick. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’d ask you the same question, but I wouldn’t get a straight answer,’ said Gibbons.

  ‘We were looking over Dr Loz’s offices with the permission of the FBI,’ said Eva coolly. ‘Are you here for the same purpose?’

  ‘Mam, last time I saw this piece of work,’ he said, jabbing his finger an inch away from Herrick’s chest, ‘a fucking towel-head A-rab was about to stick a needle in my arm, which meant I didn’t know shit from sawdust for three days and nights.’

  ‘You deserved it,’ said Herrick, moving off in the direction of the lifts. ‘You didn’t see what your friends had done to Khan. I did. It was disgusting.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ Eva asked Gibbons.

  ‘Looking for someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘None of your goddam business.’

  ‘Maybe we can help each other,’ said Eva. ‘Which office do you want?’

  Gibbons said he didn’t have a number.

  By now, Herrick was by a small corridor which ran from the main aisle to the south of the building. She looked up and saw a sign pointing to 6410.

  ‘Got it,’ she called out. At the far end they found the door. Herrick bent down and put her ear to it. There was no sound. Gibbons moved her aside with the back of his hand and put a card into the crack by the lock but after a minute of working had failed to open the door. He stepped back and hit the door twice with his boot just by the lock. There was still no joy. Then he moved to the other side of the corridor and prepared to launch himself at the door but was stopped in his tracks by a voice coming from the northern aisle.

  ‘Hey, you there! What in hell’s name d’you think you’re doing?’

  The silhouette of a uniformed guard had appeared against the pulses of lightning. Herrick saw the outline of the gun, then the silencer fitted to the end of its barrel. But it was the rolling, lopsided walk of the man approaching in the gloom that made her feel as though she was seeing a ghost, for the second time that day. Before she could see his face the man said, ‘Big lorry jump all over little car.’

  It was Foyzi.

  Herrick struggled to understand what was going on, but Gibbons evidently had no such problem. ‘This is the little cocksucker I’ve been tailing since Egypt.’

  Foyzi’s rubber-soled boots squeaked the final paces to the light, and his face came into view.

  ‘I saw you in the street buying ice-creams,’ she said stupidly.

  Foyzi made a little bow to her. ‘Tenacious as ever, Miss Herrick.’ The New York accent had been dropped in favour of an almost Wodehousian English. ‘I always find opening a door is more easily achieved with the appropriate keys, don’t you?’ He felt in the top pocket of his uniform. ‘Here we are,’ he said, flourishing them. ‘Now, ladies, step aside and I will open the door for us all.’ He waved the gun in a small arc in front of them.

  ‘Mr Gibbons, perhaps you would like to lead the way.’

  Inside Foyzi hit a switch and fluorescent light flickered behind five or six panels in the ceiling. They walked into an unfurnished, L-shaped space with a reception desk tucked into the angle. Everything but the steel-grey carpet was white. ‘Welcome to sixty-four ten,’ said Foyzi, prodding Gibbons in the back with the gun. ‘If you would move to the furthest door, I’ll introduce you to your hosts.’ Then he seemed to change his mind. ‘But of course, I’m forgetting the convention that CIA people never go anywhere without a gun.’ He patted down Gibbons, conjured an automatic from the back of his waistband and put it in his pocket. ‘How did security allow you into the building with that?’ he said with distaste. ‘And ladies, would you empty your purses over there.’

  Herrick’s Apple Powerbook slipped noiselessly onto the desk, but not her phone, which remained in her pocket. Foyzi murmured something and set it aside, then began to sift Eva’s belongings, first examining her mobile phone, then a US passport and a piece of folded notepaper. He held it up to her.

  ‘It’s a medical prescription for my mother. She has cancer - her name is Rath.’

  ‘In Hebrew,’ said Foyzi, and placed the note in his top pocket.

  He went to the door at the end, opened it and beckoned them to go through. Herrick saw a room mostly lit by candles. There was a smell of incense on the air and a faint sound of music - the Sufi chant Herrick had heard on the island.

  Sammi Loz was bent at the centre of the room, working at his treatment. Karim Khan lay on the bed, wearing only a loin cloth.

  Loz put his hand to his lips. ‘We will speak quietly. Karim is asleep.’ His hands returned to Khan’s leg. ‘We expected you two women, but not this person. Who is this, Foyzi?’

  ‘The man who had Khan tortured,’ said Foyzi. ‘He followed me here.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ said Loz. He let Khan’s foot down and stepped away from the bed. ‘We found that it was best to travel with Karim sedated. It has certainly helped his recovery, but he will no doubt wake in a short while, and then I think it will be good for him to meet the man responsible for his torture. It will be a pleasing symmetry, for him to see his persecutor killed. Now tell me who this is,’ he said, moving to Eva. ‘A nice erect posture and a firm, well-exercised figure.’

  Eva returned his look with an absolute lack of fear and said nothing. Herrick absorbed Loz. He had started a beard, which gave a pronounced hook to his chin and he seemed to be thinner. The wild look she had seen in his eyes on the island had been replaced with what she thought was a rather self-satisfied calm.

  He waved a remote at the CD player to silence the music. ‘Isis, who is this woman?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was trying to help me find this place. You should let her go. She has nothing to do with this.’

  Foyzi handed him the passport and a piece of paper. Loz read out the name Raffaella Klein.

  ‘She’s an Israeli,’ said Foyzi.

  Loz dropped the passport and paper and brushed his hands on his white shift, then adjusted the little white hat that signified he had undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca during Haj. ‘She has everything to do with you, Isis. You see, we watch the comings and goings in my room.’ He pointed to a monitor sitting on a pile of telephone directories. The screen was divided between a view of the consulting room and one of the reception desks. They had watched everything for the last hour or so.

  ‘I wish now that I had asked Foyzi to install microphones also. But then we didn’t know we’d have such interesting visitors. ’ He looked at Herrick sharply. ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘How did you get off the island?’ she shot back.

  Loz placed his palm in the air as if holding a serving plate. ‘Foyzi helped us. I hired him on that last night on the island. British Intelligence was paying Mr Foyzi only a little money. I could pay a lot more. It’s as simple as that. It was Foyzi who gave me the idea of placing the bodies of the men he lost to suggest that we had all perished in the missile attack. It worked well, did it not? And then we were able to travel to Morocco and to Canada with very little trouble.’

  ‘To be picked up on the Canadian border by Youssef Rahe - the Poet?’ said Herrick.

  ‘Yahya. His name was Yahya al-Zaruhn. There was no one his equal. No one! And now he is dead, killed by British spies.’

  ‘Police actually,’ said Herrick. ‘But let’s not forget that Rahe had a man tortured and killed to make it look as though he had died. Tha
t’s hardly heroic.’

  ‘A traitor,’ said Loz. ‘A filthy Jewish spy.’

  Herrick sensed Eva stiffen and realised that she must have known the man they were talking about. The Mossad had certainly been wired into the Rahe-Loz network from an early stage.

  ‘Sit down,’ he shrieked suddenly.

  Foyzi waved the gun and they all sank to the floor. Herrick and Eva leaned against the wall while Gibbons sat upright with his legs crossed in front of him. Loz returned to Khan and began to stroke the backs of his legs. He seemed to have resolved to concentrate on the treatment, and for nearly an hour said nothing to them. Herrick let her eyes wander the room. Near the windows there was a bowl filled with candles, the flames shuddering in the draught from the window, and some dirty plates with the remains of a meal. Propped on the table was the Arabic inscription mentioned by Harland. There were also some books, a copy of the Koran and other texts. One, entitled Hadith Literature and the Sayings of the Prophet, was lodged in the seat of an elaborate new wheelchair that had evidently been purchased for Khan.

  The three of them exchanged glances, but each time anything meaningful seemed to pass between them, Foyzi stirred himself from Herrick’s computer and gestured at them with the gun. At length, Loz stretched upwards, cracked his knuckles and moved away from Khan’s side towards the windows.

  ‘How long are you going to keep us here?’ asked Herrick.

  ‘Not now, please,’ he said. He seemed to be entranced by the passage of the storm, which had swept round to the south and was creating an astonishing display over the ocean.

  Eventually, Herrick could stand it no longer and started to translate the framed inscription. ‘ “A man who is noble does not pretend to be noble, any more than an eloquent man feigns eloquence. When a man exaggerates his qualities it is because of something lacking in himself ”. ’ She paused. ‘Why does that mean so much to you?’

  Loz did not turn round. ‘Because they were the first words spoken to me by Yahya, in the middle of a gunfight in Bosnia. Can you imagine that sort of presence of mind? Later, he gave me that to remind me of the friendship that was born in the moment all those years ago.’

  ‘But what about the last part of the quote?’ asked Herrick. She turned and read, ‘“Pride is ugly. It is worse than cruelty, which is the worst of all sins.” Hasn’t it occurred to you that the action you and Yahya planned in Europe for tomorrow constituted the very worst kind of cruelty - the killing and maiming of innocent men and women. The suffering is almost too great to imagine.’

  He got up slowly and straightened his robe. ‘We are always like this,’ he said to Foyzi, as though explaining an old and cranky friendship.

  ‘Like what?’ she said. ‘Last time we laid eyes on each other you were trying to rape me. Tell Foyzi what you were doing in that bath-house when the missiles struck. I’m sure he has no idea you were attempting that.’

  He moved across the room as quickly as a cat, seized her by the hair and banged her head rapidly against the wall five or six times. ‘Dirty white bitch lies,’ he said, still holding her hair. Suddenly Herrick was in the police interrogation room in Germany, where she was hurt in exactly the same way during the Intelligence Officers’ training course. Later, she had decided that it was being screamed at that she couldn’t stand, and so it was now.

  Eva placed her hand on her shoulder and Gibbons threw her a look of sympathy. She prayed they realised she was pushing Loz for a reason.

  ‘That hurt,’ she said. ‘Why do you take such pleasure in hurting women? Is it because you fear them?’

  Loz returned to Khan. ‘I do not, but sometimes it is necessary. ’

  ‘No, the truth is you’re a psychopath who thinks that because you heal people you are morally excused when it comes to hurting and killing. I suppose it’s a kind of God complex. The great Dr Loz dispensing kindness and random acts of cruelty and slaughter, with all the capricious will of God Almighty. I had heard of doctors playing God before, but I never dreamed I’d live to see one who actually thinks he’s God.’

  Loz’s hands stopped moving and his gaze sought Foyzi’s. ‘Listen to that woman,’ he said despairingly. ‘It reminds you of every mother.’ Foyzi nodded and opened Isis’s Apple.

  ‘Is that your problem?’ she said. ‘Is that why you’re such a fucking psychological freak? A mother problem?’

  His head turned to her and he lifted his upper lip to display a row of perfect white teeth, and picked at something in his mouth. ‘I have none of those problems. I am merely doing what must be done.’

  ‘But you’re not - all the men have been caught. Hadi Dahhak, Nasir Sharif, Ajami, Abdel Fatah, Lasenne Hadaya, Latif Latiah.’ She included names of people they knew had been to the Haj but had not been arrested. ‘Those men who were going to spread disease, and murder with explosives and poison, they’re all in jail.’

  ‘She’s clever, no?’ Loz said to Foyzi. ‘She thinks we do not know which ones are still at liberty. She thinks she can trick us. She is in love with trickery, this girl. But she doesn’t know how many soldiers we have in the field. She has no idea, which is why she comes snooping in the Empire State building. She comes to my building and pokes around with her friends.’

  Foyzi nodded and walked over to the bed with the open laptop. Herrick caught a glimpse of the Bosnia picture.

  ‘This is very impressive,’ said Loz. ‘Where did you get this from?’

  ‘A British photographer.’

  ‘Yahya… Larry… myself. The Brothers. I must certainly have a copy.’

  ‘You can get one in the papers tomorrow.’

  He nodded, lost in the memory invoked by the photograph. Gibbons glanced at Herrick and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘We all look so young,’ continued Loz. ‘A decade adds much care to a man’s face.’ He looked down. Khan had begun to stir. He had moved his feet, and Herrick could see they were still swollen. ‘We have visitors, old friend, and they have brought us a gift which reminds us who we really are and what we stand for. Sit up and see what she has found for us. Providence has blessed us at an important moment.’

  Khan pushed himself up on one arm. When he saw Isis he showed signs of recognition and, to her astonishment, a hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth.

  At that moment there was a thunderclap right above the building. The lights dimmed, the glass in the windows rattled and Herrick felt a tremor shoot down the wall. The next time it happened she was sure Gibbons would try to make a move. She had felt him flinch and get ready, but then restrain himself.

  Khan lay back on the bed. Loz took the computer to the window and began to read the emails she had received from Nathan Lyne that day. Herrick understood they would delineate exactly what SIS didn’t know about the Brothers, and cursed herself for breaking the most basic security rule. When he had finished, he examined the prescription found by Foyzi in Eva’s things.

  ‘Again Providence has smiled on us,’ Loz said to the room. ‘We have an English spy, an American spy and, if I am not mistaken, an Israeli spy at our mercy. Perhaps we should kill each one as a symbolic sacrifice to Islam and put it on the internet. That would be a fine conclusion to the life of the website, a finale to beat. Foyzi, do you think you can find a webcam at this time of night?’

  Foyzi nodded obligingly, but Loz’s eyes had gone to Khan, who was shaking his head.

  ‘You think that’s such a bad idea, Karim? But of course, I didn’t tell you who this American is. This is the man who had you tortured. Don’t you recognise the American pig?’

  Khan raised his head and nodded. ‘Yes, he was in Albania. It is the same man. But he also gave me water. And he was not the one to torture me. It was the Arabs.’

  Loz shouted and jerked the gun at Gibbons. ‘Stand up. I shall kill him now. Or do you want to do it?’

  Again Khan demurred.

  ‘Why do you see everything in these terms?’ pleaded Herrick. ‘Arabs against Jews; Americans against Arabs. Karim just s
aid it. It was Arabs who were prepared to torture a fellow Muslim, and worse, they did it for money.’

  The intervention had worked. Loz walked off, and Gibbons let himself down on the floor again. Herrick understood why he took the risk of doing so without asking.

  ‘Look at the United Nations.’ Loz was evidently pointing to the UN building over on the East Side, although none of them could see it. ‘The people in that building are responsible for the death of Muslims everywhere - in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. That building is the source of the evil because it is run by the Americans, the Jews and the British. You three are the United Nations. Not us. You. So you are our enemy.’

  ‘Does your plan include an attack on the UN?’ asked Herrick.

  Loz flashed her an appreciative smile. ‘You’re very smart, Isis. I told you that we were made for each other.’