The Ghost

whom are obliged to lunge into it and shuffle forward to avoid knocking into one another, like convicts on a chain gang. Luckily for me, I was in the middle of the outgoing group, which is probably the reason Emmett didn’t see me. He had a man on either side of him, and they were in the compartment that was swinging into the hotel, all three pushing at the glass in front of them, as if they were in a violent hurry.
    We came out into the night and I stumbled, almost falling over, in my anxiety to get away. My suitcase toppled onto its side and I dragged it along after me, as if it were a stubborn dog. The car park was separated from the hotel forecourt by a flower bed, but instead of going round it I walked straight through it. Across the parking lot, a pair of headlights came on and then drove straight at me. The car swerved at the last moment and the rear passenger door flew open.
    “Get in,” said Rycart.
    The speed with which Frank accelerated away served to slam the door shut after me and threw me back in my seat.
    “I just saw Emmett,” I said.
    Rycart exchanged looks in the mirror with his driver.
    “Are you sure?”
    “No.”
    “Did he see you?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.”
    I was holding onto my suitcase. It had become my security blanket. We sped down the access road and pulled into the heavy traffic heading toward Manhattan.
    “They could have followed us from LaGuardia,” said Frank.
    “Why did they hold back?” asked Rycart.
    “Could be they were waiting for Emmett to arrive from Boston, to make a positive ID.”
    Up to that point, I hadn’t taken Rycart’s amateur tradecraft too seriously, but now I felt a fresh surge of panic.
    “Listen,” I said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go and see Lang right now. Assuming that was Emmett, Lang must surely have been alerted to what I’ve been doing. He’ll know that I’ve driven up to Boston and shown Emmett the photographs.”
    “So? What do you think he’s going to do about it?” asked Rycart. “Drown you in his bathtub at the Waldorf-Astoria?”
    “Yeah, right,” said Frank. His shoulders shook slightly with amusement. “As if.”
    I felt sick, and despite the freezing night, I lowered the window. The wind was blowing from the east, gusting off the river, carrying on its cold, industrial edge the sickly tang of aviation fuel. I can still taste it at the back of my throat whenever I think of it, and that, for me, will always be the taste of fear.
    “Don’t I need to have a cover story?” I said. “What am I supposed to tell Lang?”
    “You’ve done nothing wrong,” said Rycart. “You’re just following up your predecessor’s work. You’re trying to research his Cambridge years. Don’t act so guilty. Lang can’t know for sure that you’re on to him.”
    “It’s not Lang I’m worried about.”
    We both lapsed into silence. After a few minutes the nighttime Manhattan skyline came into view, and my eyes automatically sought out the gap in the glittering façade, even though we were at the wrong angle to see it. Strange how an absence can be a landmark. It was like a black hole, I thought: a tear in the cosmos. It could suck in anything—cities, countries, laws; it could certainly swallow me. Rycart seemed equally oppressed by the journey.
    “Close the window, would you?” he said. “I’m freezing to death.”
    I did as he asked. Frank had turned the radio on, a jazz station, playing softly.
    “What about the car?” I said. “It’s still at Logan Airport.”
    “You can pick it up in the morning.”
    The station switched to playing the blues. I asked Frank to turn it off. He ignored me.
    “I know Lang thinks it’s personal,” Rycart said, “but it’s not. All right, there’s an element of getting my own back, I’ll admit—who likes to be humiliated? But if we carry on licensing torture, and if we judge victory simply by the number of the enemy’s skulls we can carry back to decorate our caves—well, what will become of us?”
    “I’ll tell you what will become of us,” I said savagely. “We’ll get ten million dollars for our memoirs and live happily ever after.” Once again, I found that my nervousness was making me angry. “You do know this is pointless, don’t you? In the end he’ll just retire over here on his CIA pension and tell you and your bloody war crimes court to go screw yourselves.”
    “Maybe he will. But the ancients thought exile a worse