The Ghost

me! I’m here with the war criminal! I’m an accomplice !
    I sat there for a while, until I heard the noise of the minivan pulling up to the front of the house, followed by a commotion of voices in the hall, and then a small army of footsteps thudding up the wooden staircase: I reckoned that must be the sound of a thousand dollars an hour in legal fees on the hoof. I gave Kroll and his client a couple of minutes for handshakes, condolences, and general expressions of confidence, then wearily left my dead man’s room and went up to join them.

    KROLL HAD FLOWN IN by private jet from Washington with two young paralegals: an exquisitely pretty Mexican woman he introduced as Encarnacion and a black guy from New York called Josh. They sat on either side of him, their laptops open, on a sofa that placed their backs to the ocean view. Adam and Ruth Lang had the couch opposite, Amelia and I an armchair each. A cinema-size flat-screen TV next to the fireplace was showing the aerial shot of the house, as relayed live from the helicopter we could hear buzzing faintly outside. Occasionally the news station cut to the waiting journalists in the large chandeliered room in The Hague where the press conference was due to be held. Each time I saw the empty podium with its ICC logo in tasteful UN blue—laurel boughs and scales of justice—I felt a little more sick with nerves. But Lang himself seemed cool. He was jacketless, wearing a white shirt and a dark blue tie. It was the sort of high-pressure occasion his metabolism was built for.
    “So here’s the score,” said Kroll, when we’d all taken our places. “You’re not being charged. You’re not being arrested. None of this is going to amount to a hill of beans, I promise you. All that the prosecutor is asking for right now is permission to launch a formal investigation. Okay? So when we go out of here, you walk tall, you look cool, and you have peace in your heart, because it’s all going to be fine.”
    “The president told me he thought they might not even let her investigate,” said Lang.
    “I always hesitate to contradict the leader of the free world,” said Kroll, “but the general feeling in Washington this morning is they’ll have to. Our Madam Prosecutor is quite a savvy operator, it seems. The British government has consistently refused to hold an investigation of its own into Operation Tempest, which gives her a legal pretext to look into it herself. And by leaking her case just before going into the Pre-Trial Chamber, she’s put a lot of pressure on those three judges to at least give her permission to move to the investigation stage. If they tell her to drop it, they know damn well that everyone will just say they’re scared to go after a major power.”
    “That’s crude smear tactics,” said Ruth. She was wearing black leggings and another of her shapeless tops. Her shoeless feet were tucked beneath her on the sofa; her back was turned to her husband.
    Lang shrugged. “It’s politics.”
    “Exactly my point,” said Kroll. “Treat it as a political problem, not a legal one.”
    Ruth said, “We need to get out our version of what happened. Refusing to comment isn’t enough anymore.”
    I saw my chance. “John Maddox—” I began.
    “Yeah,” said Kroll, cutting me off, “I talked to John, and he’s right. We really have to go for this whole story now in the memoirs. It’s the perfect platform for you to respond, Adam. They’re very excited.”
    “Fine,” said Lang.
    “As soon as possible you need to sit down with our friend here”—I realized Kroll had forgotten my name—“and go over the whole thing in detail. But you’ll need to make sure it’s all cleared with me first. The test we have to apply is to imagine what every word might sound like if it’s read out while you’re standing in the dock.”
    “Why?” said Ruth. “I thought you said none of this was going to amount to anything.”
    “It won’t,” said Kroll smoothly, “especially if we’re careful not to give them any extra ammunition.”
    “This way we get to present it the way we want,” said Lang. “And whenever I’m asked about it, I can refer people to the account in my memoirs. Who knows? It might even help sell a few copies.” He looked around. We all smiled. “Okay,” he said, “to come back to today. What am I actually likely to be investigated for?”
    Kroll gestured to Encarnacion. “Either crimes against humanity,” she said