The Ghost

NEXT MORNING looked like one of those bad science fiction movies “set in the near future” after the security forces have taken over the state. Two armored personnel carriers were parked outside the terminal. A dozen men with Rambo machine guns and bad haircuts patrolled inside. Vast lines of passengers queued to be frisked and X-rayed, carrying their shoes in one hand and their pathetic toiletries in a clear plastic bag in the other. Travel is sold as freedom, but we were about as free as lab rats. This is how they’ll manage the next holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they’ll simply issue us with air tickets and we’ll do whatever we’re told.
    Once I was through security, I headed across the fragrant halls of duty-free toward the American Airlines lounge, intent only on a courtesy cup of coffee and the Sunday morning sports pages. A satellite news channel was burbling away in the corner. No one was watching. I fixed myself a double espresso and was just turning to the football reports in one of the tabloids when I heard the words “Adam Lang.” Three days earlier, like everyone else in the lounge, I would have taken no notice, but now it was if my own name was being called out. I went and stood in front of the screen and tried to make sense of the story.
    To begin with, it didn’t seem that important. It sounded like old news. Four British citizens had been picked up in Pakistan a few years back—“kidnapped by the CIA,” according to their lawyer—taken to a secret military installation in eastern Europe, and tortured. One had died under interrogation, the other three had been imprisoned in Guantánamo. The new twist, apparently, was that a Sunday paper had obtained a leaked Ministry of Defence document that seemed to suggest that Lang had ordered a Special Air Services unit to seize the men and hand them over to the CIA. Various expressions of outrage followed, from a human rights lawyer and a spokesman for the Pakistani government. File footage showed Lang wearing a garland of flowers round his neck on a visit to Pakistan while he was prime minister. A spokeswoman for Lang was quoted as saying the former prime minister knew nothing of the reports and was refusing to comment. The British government had consistently rejected demands to hold an inquiry. The program moved on to the weather, and that was it.
    I glanced around the lounge. Nobody else had stirred. Yet for some reason I felt as if someone had just run an ice pack down my spine. I pulled out my cell phone and called Rick. I couldn’t remember whether he had gone back to America or not. It turned out he was sitting about a mile away, in the British Airways lounge, waiting to board his flight to New York.
    “Did you just see the news?” I asked him.
    Unlike me, I knew Rick was a news addict.
    “The Lang story? Sure.”
    “D’you think there’s anything in it?”
    “How the hell do I know? Who cares if there is? At least it’s keeping his name on the front pages.”
    “D’you think I should ask him about it?”
    “Who gives a shit?” Down the line I heard a loudspeaker announcement howling in the background. “They’re calling my flight. I got to go.”
    “Just before you do,” I said quickly, “can I run something past you? When I was mugged on Friday, somehow it didn’t make much sense, the way they left my wallet and only ran off with a manuscript. But looking at this news—well, I was just wondering—you don’t think they thought I was carrying Lang’s memoirs?”
    “But how’d they know that?” said Rick in a puzzled voice. “You’d only just met Maddox and Kroll. I was still negotiating the deal.”
    “Well, maybe someone was watching the publishers’ offices and then followed me when I left. It was a bright yellow plastic bag, Rick. I might as well have been carrying a flare.” And then another thought came to me, so alarming I didn’t know where to begin. “While you’re on, what do you know about Sidney Kroll?”
    “Young Sid?” Rick gave a chuckle of admiration. “My, but he’s a piece of work, isn’t he? He’s going to put honest crooks like me out of business. He cuts his deals for a flat fee rather than commission, and you won’t find an ex-president or a cabinet member who doesn’t want him on their team. Why?”
    “It’s not possible, is it,” I said hesitantly, voicing the thought more or less as it developed, “that he gave me that manuscript