The Ghost

long blank look and then subsided back into his seat.
    The plane came to a halt in front of the terminal building. The engines died.

    AT THIS POINT, AT long last, I did something smart.
    As Lang sat contemplating his ruin, and as Amelia came hurrying down the aisle to discover what I’d said, I had the presence of mind to eject the disk from the minirecorder and slip it into my pocket. In its place I inserted the blank. Lang was too stunned to care and Amelia too fixated on him to notice.
    “All right,” she said firmly, “that’s enough for tonight.” She lifted the empty glass from his unresisting hand and gave it to the steward. “We need to get you home, Adam. Ruth’s waiting at the gate.” She reached over and unfastened his seat belt and then removed his suit jacket from the back of his seat. She held it out ready for him to slip into, and shook it slightly, like a matador with a cloak, but her voice was very tender. “Adam?”
    He rose, trancelike, to obey, gazing vacantly toward the cockpit as she guided his arms into the sleeves. She glared at me over his shoulder, and mouthed, furiously and very distinctly, and with her customarily precise diction, “What the fuck are you doing?”
    It was a good question. What the fuck was I doing? At the front of the plane, the door had opened and three of the Special Branch men were disembarking. A blast of cold air ran down the cabin. Lang began to walk toward the exit, preceded by his fourth bodyguard, Amelia at his back. I quickly stuffed my recorder and the photographs into my shoulder bag and followed them. The pilot had come out of the cockpit to say good-bye and I saw Lang square his shoulders and advance to meet him, his hand outstretched.
    “That was great,” said Lang vaguely, “as usual. My favorite airline.” He shook the pilot’s hand, then leaned past him to greet the copilot and the waiting steward. “Thanks. Thanks so much.” He turned to us, still smiling his professional smile, but it faded fast; he looked stricken. The last bodyguard was already halfway down the steps. There was just Amelia, me, and the two secretaries waiting to follow him off the plane. Standing in the lighted glass window of the terminal I could just make out the figure of Ruth. She was too far away for me to judge her expression. “Would you mind just hanging back a minute?” he said to Amelia. “And you, too?” he added to me. “I need to have a private word with my wife.”
    “Is everything all right, Adam?” asked Amelia. She had been with him too long, and I suppose she loved him too much, not to know that something was terribly wrong.
    “It’ll be fine,” said Lang. He touched her elbow lightly, then gave us all, including me and the plane crew, a slight bow. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and good night.”
    He ducked through the door and paused at the top of the steps, glancing around, smoothing down his hair. Amelia and I watched him from the interior of the plane. He was just as he was when I first saw him—still, out of habit, searching for an audience with whom he could connect, even though the windy, floodlit concourse was deserted, apart from the waiting bodyguards, and a ground technician in overalls, working late, no doubt eager to get home.
    Lang must also have seen Ruth waiting at the window, because he suddenly raised his hand in acknowledgment, then set off down the steps, gracefully, like a dancer. He reached the tarmac and had gone about ten yards toward the terminal when the technician shouted out, “Adam!” and waved. The voice was English, and Lang must have recognized the accent of a fellow countryman because he suddenly broke away from his bodyguards and strode toward the man, his hand held out. And that is my final image of Lang: a man always with his hand held out. It is burned into my retinas—his yearning shadow against the expanding ball of bright white fire that suddenly engulfed him, and then there was only the flying debris, the stinging grit, the glass, the furnace heat, and the underwater silence of the explosion.

SIXTEEN
    If you are going to be the least bit upset not to see your name credited or not to be invited to the launch party then you are going to have a miserable time ghosting altogether.
    Ghostwriting
    I SAW NOTHING MORE after that initial flash of brilliant light; there was too much glass and blood in my eyes. The force of the blast flung us all backward. Amelia, I learned later, hit her head on