The Ghost

seemed to congeal. Even Kroll’s little smile froze at the edges. Amelia hesitated, then nervously smoothed down her skirt, picked up her notebook, and rose in a hiss of silk. As she walked across the room toward the stairs, she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. Her throat was flushed a tasteful pink, her lips compressed. Ruth waited until she had gone, then slowly uncoiled her feet from beneath her and carefully pulled on her flat, wooden-soled shoes. She, too, left without a word. Thirty seconds later, a door slammed downstairs.
    Lang flinched and sighed. He got up and collected his jacket from the back of a chair and shrugged it on. That was the signal for us all to move. The paralegals snapped their laptops shut. Kroll stood and stretched, spreading his fingers wide: he reminded me of a cat, arching its back and briefly unsheathing its claws. I put away my notebook.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Lang, offering me his hand. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m sorry to abandon you. At least all this coverage should improve sales.”
    “That’s true,” I said. I cast around for something to say that would lighten the atmosphere. “Perhaps Rhinehart’s publicity department have arranged the whole thing.”
    “Well, tell them to stop it, will you?” He smiled, but his eyes looked bruised and puffy.
    “What are you going to say to the media?” asked Kroll, putting his arm across Lang’s shoulders.
    “I don’t know. Let’s talk about it in the car.”
    As Lang turned to leave, Kroll gave me a wink. “Happy ghosting,” he said.

NINE
    What if they lie to you? “Lie” is probably too strong a word. Most of us tend to embroider our memories to suit the picture of ourselves that we would like the world to see.
    Ghostwriting
    I COULD HAVE GONE down to see them off. Instead I watched them leave on television. I always say you can’t beat sitting in front of a TV screen if you’re after that authentic, firsthand experience. For example, it’s curious how helicopter news shots impart to even the most innocent activity the dangerous whiff of criminality. When Jeff the chauffeur brought the armored Jaguar round to the front of the house and left the engine running, it looked for all the world as if he were organizing a Mafia getaway just before the cops arrived. In the cold New England air, the big car seemed to float on a sea of exhaust fumes.
    I had the same disorientating feeling that I’d experienced the previous day, when Lang’s statement started pinging back at me from the ether. On the television I could see one of the Special Branch men opening the rear passenger door, and standing there, holding it open, while down in the corridor I could hear Lang and the others preparing to leave. “All right, people?” Kroll’s voice floated up the staircase. “Is everybody ready? Okay. Remember: happy, happy faces. Here we go.” The front door opened, and moments later on the screen I glimpsed the top of the ex–prime minister’s head as he took the few hurried steps to the car. He ducked out of sight, just as his attorney scuttled after him, round to the Jaguar’s other side. At the bottom of the picture it said, “ ADAM LANG LEAVES MARTHA’S VINEYARD HOUSE .” They know everything, I thought, these satellite boys, but they’ve never heard of tautology.
    Behind them, the entourage debouched in rapid single file from the house and headed for the minivan. Amelia was in the lead, her hand clutched to her immaculate blonde hair to protect it against the rotors’ downdraft; then came the secretaries, followed by the paralegals, and finally a couple of bodyguards.
    The long, dark shapes of the cars, their headlights gleaming, pulled out of the compound and set off through the ashy expanse of scrub oak toward the West Tisbury highway. The helicopter tracked them, whirling away the few winter leaves and flattening the sparse grass. Gradually, for the first time that morning, as the noise of its rotors faded, something like peace returned to the house. It was as if the eye of a great electrical storm had finally moved on. I wondered where Ruth was, and whether she was also watching the coverage. I stood at the top of the stairs and listened for a while, but all was quiet, and by the time I returned to the television, the coverage had shifted from aerial to ground level, and Lang’s limousine was pulling out of the woods.
    A lot more police had arrived at the end of the track, courtesy of the