The Ghost

lenses, and the handheld mikes in their woolly gray windproof prophylactics. Between the members of the fourth estate, a cheerful, almost a party atmosphere prevailed, as might have existed among eighteenth-century gentlefolk off for a good day out at a hanging.
    “The newsroom says the press conference in The Hague is now at ten o’clock Eastern,” someone shouted.
    I passed unnoticed and went out onto the veranda, where I put a call through to my agent. His assistant answered—Brad, or Brett, or Brat: I forget his name; Rick changed his staff almost as quickly as he changed his wives.
    I asked to speak to Mr. Ricardelli.
    “He’s away from the office right now.”
    “Where is he?”
    “On a fishing trip.”
    “Fishing?”
    “He’ll be calling in occasionally to check his messages.”
    “That’s nice. Where is he?”
    “The Bouma National Heritage Rainforest Park.”
    “Christ. Where’s that?”
    “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing—”
    “Where is it?”
    Brad, or Brett, or Brat, hesitated. “Fiji.”

    THE MINIVAN TOOK ME up the hill out of Edgartown, past the bookshop and the little cinema and the whaling church. When we reached the edge of town, we followed the signs left to West Tisbury rather than right to Vineyard Haven, which at least implied that I was being taken back to the house, rather than straight to the ferry to be deported for breaching the Official Secrets Act. I sat behind the police driver, my suitcase on the seat beside me. He was one of the younger ones, dressed in their standard non-uniform uniform of gray zippered jacket and black tie. His eyes sought mine in the mirror and he observed that it was all a very bad business. I replied briefly that it was, indeed, a bad business, and then pointedly stared out of the window to avoid having to talk.
    We were quickly into the flat countryside. A deserted cycle track ran beside the road. Beyond it stretched the drab forest. My frail body might be on Martha’s Vineyard but my mind was in the South Pacific. I was thinking of Rick in Fiji and all the elaborate and humiliating ways I could fire him when he got back. The rational part of me knew I would never do it—why shouldn’t he go fishing?—but the irrational was to the fore that morning. I suppose I was afraid, and fear distorts one’s judgment even more than alcohol and exhaustion. I felt duped, abandoned, aggrieved.
    “After I’ve dropped you off, sir,” said the policeman, undeterred by my silence, “I’ve got to pick up Mr. Kroll from the airport. You can always tell it’s a bad business when the lawyers start turning up.” He broke off and leaned in close to the windscreen. “Oh, fuck, here we go again.”
    Up ahead it looked as though there had been a traffic accident. The vivid blue lights of a couple of patrol cars flashed dramatically in the gloomy morning, illuminating the nearby trees like sheet lightning in a Wagner opera. As we came closer I could see a dozen or more cars and vans pulled up on either side of the road. People were standing around aimlessly, and I assumed, in that lazy way the brain sometimes assembles information, that they had been in a pileup. But as the minivan slowed and indicated to turn left, the bystanders started grabbing things from beside the road and came running at us. “Lang! Lang! Lang!” a woman shouted over a bullhorn. “Liar! Liar! Liar!” Images of Lang in an orange jumpsuit, gripping prison bars with bloodied hands, danced in front of the windscreen. “WANTED! WAR CRIMINAL! ADAM LANG!”
    The Edgartown police had blocked the track down to the Rhinehart compound with traffic cones and quickly pulled them out of the way to let us through, but not before we’d come to a stop. Demonstrators surrounded us, and a fusillade of thumps and kicks raked the side of the van. I glimpsed a brilliant arc of white light illuminating a figure—a man, cowled like a monk. He turned away from his interviewer to stare at us, and I recognized him dimly from somewhere. But then he vanished behind a gauntlet of contorted faces, pounding hands, and dripping spit.
    “They’re always the really violent bastards,” said my driver, “peace protesters.” He put his foot down, the rear tires slithered uselessly, then bit, and we shot forward into the silent woods.

    AMELIA MET ME IN the passage. She stared contemptuously at my single piece of luggage as only a woman could.
    “Is that really everything?”
    “I travel