The Ghost

crockery snapped me out of my reverie and I looked round to see that one of the kids playing under the nearby table had tipped the whole thing over. As a waitress hurried across with a dustpan and brush, and as the nannies (or mothers) scolded the children, I noticed that the two short-haired men at the counter weren’t taking any notice of this little drama: they were staring hard at me. One had a cell phone to his ear.
    Fairly calmly—more calmly, I hoped, than I felt—I turned off the computer and pretended to take a final sip of coffee. The liquid had gone cold while I’d been working and was freezing and bitter on my lips. Then I picked up my suitcase and put a twenty-dollar bill on the table. Already I was thinking that if something happened to me, the harassed waitress would surely remember the solitary Englishman who took the table farthest from the window and absurdly overtipped. What good this would have done me, I have no idea, but it seemed clever at the time. I made sure I didn’t look at the short-haired pair as I passed them.
    Out on the street, in the cold gray light, with the green-canopied Starbucks a few doors down and the slowly passing traffic (“Baby on Board: Please Drive Carefully”) and the elderly pedestrians in their fur hats and gloves, it was briefly possible to imagine that I’d spent the past hour playing some homemade virtual reality game. But then the door of the café opened behind me and the two men came out. I walked briskly up the street toward the Ford, and once I was behind the wheel I locked myself in. When I checked the mirrors I couldn’t see either of my fellow diners.
    I didn’t move for a while. It felt safer simply sitting there. I fantasized that perhaps if I stayed put long enough, I could somehow be absorbed by osmosis into the peaceful, prosperous life of Belmont. I could go and do what all these retired folk were bent on doing—playing a hand of bridge, maybe, or watching an afternoon movie, or wandering along to the local library to read the papers and shake their heads at the way the world was all going to hell now that my callow and cosseted generation was in charge of it. I watched the newly coiffed ladies emerge from the salon and lightly pat their hair. The young couple who had been holding hands in the café were inspecting rings in the window of the jeweler.
    And I? I experienced a twinge of self-pity. I was as separate from all this normality as if I were in a bubble of glass.
    I took out the photographs again and flicked through them until I came to the one of Lang and Emmett onstage together. A future prime minister and an alleged CIA officer, prancing around wearing gloves and hats in a comic revue? It seemed not so much improbable as grotesque, but here was the evidence in my hand. I turned the picture over and considered the number scrawled on the back, and the more I considered it, the more obvious it seemed that there was only one course of action open to me. The fact that I would, once again, be trailing along in the footsteps of McAra could not be helped.
    I waited until the young lovers had gone into the jewelry store and then took out my mobile phone. I scrolled down to where the number was stored and called Richard Rycart.

FOURTEEN
    Half the job of ghosting is about finding out about other people.
    Ghostwriting
    THIS TIME, HE ANSWERED within a few seconds.
    “So you rang back,” he said quietly, in that nasal, singsong voice of his. “Somehow I had a feeling you would, whoever you are. Not many people have this number.” He waited for me to reply. I could hear a man talking in the background—delivering a speech, it sounded like. “Well, my friend, are you going to stay on the line this time?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    He waited again, but I didn’t know how to begin. I kept thinking of Lang, of what he would think if he could see me talking to his would-be nemesis. I was breaking every rule in the ghosting guidebook. I was in breach of the confidentiality agreement I’d signed with Rhinehart. It was professional suicide.
    “I tried to call you back a couple of times,” he continued. I detected a hint of reproach.
    Across the street, the young lovers had come out of the jewelry store and were strolling toward me.
    “I know,” I said, finding my voice at last. “I’m sorry. I found your number written down somewhere. I didn’t know whose it was. I called it on the off chance. It didn’t seem right to be talking to