There was no compound, only the wreckage of one. Timber and stone lay strewn about as though a city had been hit by a nuclear blast. Eventually Pope found the steps to the basement of what he’d later come to learn was called the Box.
It took him three hours to clear the rubble enough for him to reach the floor of the basement, by which time the salt sweat burned his eyes and his forearms streamed with blood from his ravaged hands. Finding the right flagstone and prising it up took a further hour.
He found the bag, the mini-disc intact inside it.
Not until two days later, when he was back home and almost unconscious with fatigue, did he listen to the recording.
*
25th October
It’s unlikely I’ll get another chance to dictate anything once the storm’s hit. It reached hurricane status yesterday off Jamaica. Portentous though it sounds, this will be my final entry.
We evacuate this evening. Apart from me, only a few of the locals, Taylor and W himself are left. Jablonsky and Grosvenor left by plane last night.
Taylor knows about me. He barely hides it. And from the way Jablonsky and Grosvenor behaved towards me before they left, I think they know too. Which means Z must. Still, though, he behaves affably towards me.
Z killed his wife yesterday. I didn’t see him do it, but I didn’t have to. When she discovered the little girl had been shipped out she became hysterical, even though it was for the best. She stormed over to the Box and demanded to know where Z had sent her. Z took her back to their house, kicking and screaming.
She hasn’t been seen since. We all know what’s happened, though we all pretend not to.
Now Z is making out his wife has left the island. When and how this happened, he doesn’t say. I could have saved her. I could have saved many if not most of the other lives that have been lost on this island. But I didn’t, because I hung on too long. I let the ultimate goal, of getting right to the head of this operation and cutting it off, rule me. And now I’ve failed utterly, and the chance to do any good at all is lost.
They’re either going to kill me, or simply strand me here. Either way I’m dead. The basement will provide little protection against the hurricane. I’d end up entombed there like a character from an Edgar Allan Poe story.
I sent the email yesterday, with Z’s express permission. Right up until I hit the ‘send’ button, I found it hard to believe he was allowing me to do so. The rules were clear. No electronic communication with the outside, for obvious reasons of security. Z read what I typed, of course, and made sure I wasn’t attaching any files. I’d said it was my son’s birthday and that I didn’t know when — if — I’d see him again. Z seemed to sympathise. He feels something for his own daughter, I’ve no doubt.
So all hope now rests with my son. If by some quirk of nature somebody is listening to this, it means my son has come through. Has shown the commitment and the downright canniness I know he’s capable of. I’ve been a terrible father, one of the worst kind, because my abuse has been not physical but of the neglectful variety. Now it’s too late to make amends. But if this is reaching anybody’s ears, please — at the risk of sounding maudlin — please tell my son that I love him.
I’m alone now, but it’s almost time for us to begin the final preparations for our departure. I won’t go quietly, whatever they have in store for me. But I will go, of that I have no doubt.
May the God I cannot believe in have mercy on them for what they’ve been doing here. And may God preserve my own soul.
*
It was the final entry in almost four hours of recorded material, most of it transcribed from his father’s memory and now committed to his. Pope had played it over, countless times, listening to nothing else through the rest of his university career, no music or recordings of seminars. He’d absorbed every detail until it was part of his own history as well as his father’s. It had taken all he had to focus on his studies and pass, comfortably but hardly with flying colours.
Towards the end of his final year he’d started to sound out the political groups on campus, ones of diverse hue. He developed a finely tuned sense of who the genuine students were and who the agents provocateurs and the talent scouts. And he’d let himself be approached — had put himself in the direct path of the recruiters, once he’d identified with them.
In October 2003, a month after graduating, Pope had signed up with the Service. And his plan began.
Twenty-Nine
Sussex County, New Jersey
Tuesday 21 May, 12.40 am
‘The man who phoned me couldn’t get hold of his two friends,’ said Purkiss. ‘It means they’re incapacitated. So Pope’s got to them.’
They were piling back into Nakamura’s Taurus, the night cool and wet around them. Berg had eyed Purkiss and said, ‘Anything else you took off those dead guys other than their phone?’
‘Of course.’ Purkiss patted the small of his back, where he’d tucked one of the handguns he’d picked up. A Glock 23. He’d seen Kendrick select one as well. Berg shook her head but did not comment.
‘Pope’s got to them,’ Nakamura said, starting the engine, ‘meaning he may have got the woman, if they were right behind her. He might have killed her by now.’
‘We have to assume otherwise.’
Kendrick: ‘And her role is what, in all this?’
‘We can’t know that,’ said Purkiss. ‘She’s significant enough that both Pope and this CIA group want her. Possibly both want her dead. But she’s too young to have been involved in the Holtzmann Solar business, even if she wasn’t a civilian, which she clearly is. She would have been ten or eleven at the time.’
‘Jeez,’ said Berg. ‘You don’t think she’s some kind of… experiment? Some leftover from the drug trial who they need to dispose of now to stop it all coming out?’
Purkiss thought about it. ‘Doubt it. Crosby told us the drug was something to do with interrogation, remember. Not the kind of thing a child would be much use as a subject for. Unless they were testing purely for side effects or something.’
‘Ah, Christ.’ Nakamura trod down harder than necessary on the accelerator, the tyres pealing on the tarmac.
Online traffic news hadn’t revealed anything particularly unusual on the roads between Charlottesville and Washington D.C. Nakamura had the radio set for updates. It was possible that the Ramirez woman had made it to the capital and Pope or the CIA men had caught up with her there. Again, nothing from the Washington news websites leaped out at them.
Washington was where they needed to head, they were agreed. Before they left the diner Purkiss said: ‘We could do with a second car.’
‘My driving a problem?’ said Nakamura drily.
‘It’ll give us more flexibility,’ said Purkiss. ‘And we’ll be a divided target, that way.’
*
Nakamura found a car rental shop that was still open. The clerk behind the counter looked up sleepily and recoiled a little at the sight of them, as if he expected to be attacked.
Purkiss chose a black Subaru. In the lot at the back Kendrick eyed it. ‘Pity. Quite fancied trying a Yank car. Mustang or Caddy or something.’
Berg said, ‘We should split up. One of us with one of you. Spread our skills.’
Kendrick said, ‘Works for me, darlin’.’ He winked at her.