Gone Tomorrow

die of boredom before you’re halfway over the Atlantic. Why are you so worried?”
    “The politics is awful. The Lend-Lease thing. Inasmuch as bin Laden wasn’t dipping into his own personal fortune, it’s like we were subsidizing him. Paying him, almost.”
    “Not your fault. That’s White House stuff. Did any sea captain get it in the neck for delivering Lend-Lease stuff to the Soviets during World War Two? They didn’t stay our friends, either.”
    Sansom said nothing.
    I said, “It’s just words on a page. They won’t resonate. People don’t read.”
    Sansom said, “It’s a big file.”
    “The bigger the better. The bigger it is, the more buried the bad parts will be. And it will be very dated. I think we used to spell his name differently back then. With a u . It was Usama. Or UBL. Maybe people won’t even notice. Or you could say it was someone else entirely.”
    “You sure you know where that stick is?”
    “Certain.”
    “Because you sound like you don’t. You sound like you’re trying to console me, because you know it’s staying out there for the world to see.”
    “I know where it is. I’m just trying to get a handle on why you’re so uptight. People have survived worse.”
    “You ever used a computer?”
    “I used one today.”
    “What makes for the biggest files?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Take a guess.”
    “Long documents?”
    “Wrong. Large numbers of pixels make for the biggest files.”
    “Pixels?” I said.
    He didn’t answer.
    “OK,” I said. “I see. It’s not a report. It’s a photograph.”

Chapter 67
    The room went quiet again. The city sounds, the forced air. Sansom got up and used the bathroom. Springfield moved back to his former position by the TV cabinet. There were bottles of water on the cabinet, with paper collars that said if you drank the water you would be charged eight dollars.
    Sansom came out of the bathroom.
    “Reagan wanted the photograph,” he said. “Partly because he was a sentimental old geezer, and partly because he was a suspicious old man. He wanted to check we had followed his orders. The way I remember it, I’m standing next to bin Laden with the mother of all shit-eating grins on my face.”
    Springfield said, “With me on the other side.”
    Sansom said, “Bin Laden knocked down the Twin Towers. He attacked the Pentagon. He’s the world’s worst terrorist. He’s a very, very recognizable figure. He’s completely unmistakable. That photograph will kill me in politics. Stone dead. Forever.”
    I asked, “Is that why the Hoths want it?”
    He nodded. “So that Al Qaeda can humiliate me, and the United States along with me. Or vice versa.”
    I stepped over to the TV cabinet and took a bottle of water. Unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. The room was on Springfield’s card, which meant that Sansom was paying. And Sansom could afford eight bucks.
    Then I smiled, briefly.
    “Hence the photograph in your book,” I said. “And on your office wall. Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad.”
    “Yes,” Sansom said.
    “Just in case. To show that someone else had done the very same thing. Like a trump card, just lying there in the weeds. No one knew it was a trump. No one even knew it was a card.”
    “It’s not a trump,” Sansom said. “It’s not even close. It’s like a lousy four of clubs. Because bin Laden is way worse than Saddam ever was. And Rumsfeld wasn’t looking to get elected to anything afterward. He was appointed to everything he did after that, by his friends. He had to be. No sane person would have voted for him.”
    “You got friends?”
    “Not many.”
    “No one ever said much about Rumsfeld’s photograph.”
    “Because he wasn’t running for office. If he had ever gotten into an election campaign, that would have been the most famous photograph in the world.”
    “You’re a better man than Rumsfeld.”
    “You don’t know me.”
    “Educated guess.”
    “OK, maybe. But bin Laden is worse than Saddam. And that image is poison. It doesn’t even need a caption. There I am, grinning up at the world’s most evil man like a puppy dog. People fake pictures like that for attack ads. And this one is real.”
    “You’ll get it back.”
    “When?”
    “How are we doing with the felony charges?”
    “Slow.”
    “But sure?”
    “Not very. There’s good news and bad news.”
    “Give me the bad news first.”
    “It’s very unlikely that the FBI will want to play ball. And