She paid, insisted. The bill would just about wipe away Justin Braithwaite's entertainment allowance for the week. Short rations, there'd be, in the Service's annexe.
On the pavement, his hand touched hers, then slipped into the crook of her arm.
'That was really nice, and we'll do it again,' Polly said. 'I'd have loved to spend the afternoon in a couple of churches, with you to guide me, but that's for another day Must get back. See you soon, I hope.'
'Gloria, have you ever been to Hamburg?' he shouted.
'Twice, Mr Gaunt, just the twice. I liked it, rather a civilized city.'
He had his hands together as if in prayer, fingers under his nostrils and thumbs against his mouth.
Gloria would have come to the door behind him, would be leaning against the jamb. She would allow his thought processes, without interruption, to stutter out, as if that were part of her duties.
'Perhaps "civilized", yes. Quality prostitutes, quality bankers, quality scenic views. Bravo, Hamburg. But it's where it all started, isn't it? While we were faffing over Baghdad, pushed by those bloody politicians, the eye was off the ball – our eye, the German eye and the American eye. Saddam's legacy – don't you know, Gloria? – was to be the fox that led the trail away from the den, where the vixen was and the bloody cubs.'
'Quite apposite, Mr Gaunt,' she said drily, but she would never be impertinent. 'You should use that allusion in a report.'
'Eye off the ball and not seeing the supreme target.
In Hamburg.'
'It wasn't just you, Mr Gaunt. There was an AQ desk.'
'Everybody's eye off the ball. While we were wet-ting ourselves waiting for the next download of satellite imagery from some God-forsaken heap of sand in Iraq, the threat was incubated in Hamburg.
What was the name of that wretched place?'
'Harburg, across the Elbe river.'
'And the name of that wretched street?'
'Marienstrasse, Mr Gaunt.'
'And the spores are still in the bloody pavements of your "civilized" city. It's where they were, where that horrendous plot was hatched, nine/eleven, where war was declared, the ultimate attack – and we knew nothing. Now, little Wilco sends her signal… A man resists torture – and his interrogators were well trained – to protect a notepad on which a telephone number was written. I'm getting there, Gloria. The telephone number is that of a factory that exports furniture. To where? To bloody "civilized" Hamburg.
Hamburg again.'
'Do you not think, Mr Gaunt, that you should rest for an hour or two?'
'God, and wouldn't it be easy if we had some proper equipment to turn on them – a squadron of tanks, a battery of artillery, a brigade of paratroops I can deploy against them? Then I'm laughing. But this is a city that is "civilized". Hamburg is where they plot, plan, then launch from. Once a month I go to a lecture where an academic tells me I have to get into the mind of an enemy. How? I am white-skinned, middle-aged, middle-class, a little Englander. I have no chance… '
'Should I make more coffee?'
'… no bloody chance.' He waved at the pictures she had Sellotaped to the wall. 'Half my age, without possessions, with faith, without conscience, with the ability to justify strapping bloody "martyrs' belts" round foot-soldiers' stomachs. Only a fool suggests I can understand him.'
'You're digging this weekend. That will be good for you.'
'So wise, Gloria, always so wise. You filed it, remember, the commentary from Moskovskly Komsomolets at the time of that obscenity of the school siege: "Why are they always ahead of us? Why are they winning? Because they are at war, and we are just at work. It is time to realize that we, too, are at war." I believe I quote correctly.'
'Don't you think, Mr Gaunt, you ought to have another coffee?'
'I'd like, thank you, a gallon of coffee.' He intoned,
' "They are at war, and we are just at work." And I'd like some tanks on Hamburg's streets.'
At a minor Customs post, north of the Czech town of Liberec and south of the Polish town of Zgorzelec, two officials slept and one staggered sleepily from the hut as the old saloon car, headlights bright, approached.
Because of the telex from Prague received at the hut two days before, the solitary Customs man gestured with his hand for the car to slow. It stopped under a high light. He motioned to the driver to wind down his window and the rock music blasted out – what his own kids played. There were five inside, two girls and three youths. The telex had said that Arabs should be checked, but had listed no name; nor had a photograph been faxed to the post. He asked for the passports. Two of the boys, flaxen-haired, languidly offered him their papers – Polish. The girls, one red-head and the other with a mauve streak, had Czech documentation. The fifth passport was from the back of the car. A man, early thirties maybe older and maybe younger, was sandwiched between the girls and gave him the German passport. He shone his torch into the interior, let the beam light on darker skin. He held the opened pages under the high light.
German citizenship. Date of birth, 1974. Place of birth listed as Colombo in Sri Lanka… Not an Arab.
Sourly, he gave the passport back through the window. Somebody's daughters, from Liberec,
Jablonec or Ceska Lipa, out for the night – without modesty but no doubt with condoms – with Polish boys and an Asian. Could have been his girls. These were new freedoms.
He stamped back to the hut. It had not said on the telex that an Arab might have hitched a lift, joined a car filled with youngsters, to cross the frontier. The Customs official had no reason to be suspicious of the German passport-holder crushed between the girls in the back of the car. Nor did he have reason to suspect that, when the car reached Zgorzelec, and parked at the back of the discotheque hall, the man would sidle into the night, away from the booming noise, and head for the railway station. He poured himself some soup from his flask and returned to his magazine.
'You have to believe it, Father, he will come.' The Bear had said it to him.
'What did the television say?' Timo asked him. 'Tell me again.'
'A siege in the Old Quarter of Prague. A man of the Russian mafiya finally killed by the police. Lies, of course.'
'But not a lie that one was killed.'
'One only, the television said. The lies were that he was Russian, a member of the mafiya. Father, they would lie on that.'
'If one was dead, which of them would it be?'
'Not the principal. Father, he will come.' The great paw of the Bear had settled on Timo's shoulder, and had squeezed reassurance.
'Call Enver. He should send the mouseboy here.'
He sat now with Alicia in the gymnasium of the school in Blankenese, sensing her nervousness. He could acknowledge that, through all the hours since he had met the young man from the warehouse in the Hammerbrook district – Regret cargo load 1824 has not been forwarded – he had given her little attention, his mind clouded by the import of what he had been told.
If he had not had the confidence of the Bear to stiffen him, Timo would not have been at the school that evening.
For good work in year nine and year seven, imitation parchment scrolls were to be presented to the best students. His girls were among them. They, with the rest of the favoured students of their classes, were at the front. He and Alicia sat with the comfort and wealth of the elite of Blankenese's community She had worried about what she should wear, what jewellery she should display, what cosmetics, what shoes were suitable. Before the Bear had spoken to him, he had ignored her concerns. Afterwards, he had gone through the wardrobes of dresses with her, had unlocked the safe with her jewellery and chosen for her, and the shoes, and he had pointed to the lipstick she should use. Timo Rahman was the pate of Hamburg, but he needed a man of brutish strength and limited intellect to soften nagging anxiety.