The Ghost

worries about his personal security. I said truthfully that he hadn’t.
    “Mrs. Bly,” said the MI5 man, “tells us you recorded an interview with him during the final part of the flight.”
    “No, she’s wrong about that,” I said. “I had the machine in front of me, but I never actually switched it on. It wasn’t really an interview, in any case. It was more of a chat.”
    “Do you mind if I take a look?”
    “Go ahead.”
    My shoulder bag was on the nightstand next to my bed. The MI5 man took out the minirecorder and ejected the disk. I watched him, dry-mouthed.
    “Can I borrow this?”
    “You can keep it,” I said. He started poking through the rest of my belongings. “How is Amelia, by the way?”
    “She’s fine.” He put the disk into his briefcase. “Thanks.”
    “Can I see her?”
    “She flew back to London last night.” I guess my disappointment must have been evident, because the MI5 man added, with chilly pleasure, “It’s not surprising. She hasn’t seen her husband since before Christmas.”
    “And what about Ruth?” I asked.
    “She’s accompanying Mr. Lang’s body home right now,” said Murphy. “Your government sent a plane to fetch them.”
    “He’ll get full military honors,” added the MI5 man. “A statue in the Palace of Westminster, and a funeral in the Abbey if she wants it. He’s never been more popular than since he died.”
    “He should have done it years ago,” I said. They didn’t smile. “And is it really true that nobody else was killed?”
    “Nobody,” said Murphy, “which was a miracle, believe me.”
    “In fact,” said the man from MI5, “Mrs. Bly wonders if Mr. Lang didn’t actually recognize his assassin and deliberately head toward him, knowing that something like this might happen. Can you shed any light on that?”
    “It sounds far-fetched,” I said. “I thought a fuel truck had exploded.”
    “It was certainly quite a bang,” said Murphy, clicking his pen and slipping it into his inside pocket. “We eventually found the killer’s head on the terminal roof.”

    I WATCHED LANG’S FUNERAL on CNN two days later. My eyesight was more or less restored. I could see it was tastefully done: the queen, the prime minister, the U.S. vice president and half the leaders of Europe; the coffin draped in the Union Jack; the guard of honor; the solitary piper playing a lament. Ruth looked very good in black, I thought; it was definitely her color. I kept a lookout for Amelia, but I didn’t see her. During a lull in proceedings, there was even an interview with Richard Rycart. Naturally, he hadn’t been invited to the service, but he’d gone to the trouble of putting on a black tie and paid a very moving tribute from his office in the United Nations: a great colleague…a true patriot…we had our disagreements…remained friends…my heart goes out to Ruth and the family…as far as I’m concerned the whole chapter is closed.
    I found the mobile phone he had given me and threw it out the window.
    The next day, when I was due to be discharged from hospital, Rick came up from New York to say good-bye and take me to the airport.
    “Do you want the good news or the good news?” he said.
    “I’m not sure your idea of good news is the same as mine.”
    “Sid Kroll just called. Ruth Lang still wants you to finish the memoirs, and Maddox will give you an extra month to work on the manuscript.”
    “And the good news is?”
    “Very cute. Listen, don’t be so goddamned snooty about it. This is a really hot book now. This is Adam Lang’s voice from the grave. You don’t have to work on it here anymore; you can finish it in London. You look terrible, by the way.”
    “His ‘voice from the grave’?” I repeated incredulously. “So now I’m to be the ghost of a ghost?”
    “Come on, the whole situation is rich with possibilities. Think about it. You can write what you like, within reason. Nobody’s going to stop you. And you liked him, didn’t you?”
    I thought about that. In fact, I had been thinking about it ever since I came round from the sedative. Worse than the pain in my eyes and the buzzing in my ears, worse even than my fear that I would never emerge from the hospital, was my sense of guilt. That may seem odd, given what I’d learned, but I couldn’t work up any sense of self-justification or resentment against Lang. I was the one at fault. It wasn’t just that I’d betrayed my client, personally and professionally; it