He took a large sip and hit his intercom.
“What do you have, Laura?”
She came in quickly, carrying a box. “The investigating team said they could release this to you.” She put it on the center of his desk directly in front of him. It had been sealed with a red plastic tape marked “Secret.”
“Thanks.”
Laura left equally swiftly, knowing he wanted to be alone.
As soon as he opened the box, the room filled with the odor of burned plastic and rubber from the explosion in Doha.
Amazing.
The one type of injury that Maggie hadn’t suffered was burns. Apparently, the fire occurred sometime after she was evacuated from the rubble. Nevertheless, the items in the box had been singed. They included several loose reports, a small recorder broken open and empty, the keys to a Ford, and a blackened ladies’ wallet atop them all. He opened the wallet and pulled out a driver’s license from D.C. It showed the face that he had fallen for.
A small Glock pistol, missing its clip, lay in a pile of ash and cinders at the bottom of the box. He tilted the box and then set it back down on the desk.
As the ash and cinders shifted and settled, Tranthan caught a glimpse of a metallic, gold object at the bottom. He pulled it out from under the debris, finding a small tarnished gold photo frame no bigger than a man’s wallet. It held no photograph. He weighed it in his hand. It had been bent and blackened by the heat.
He knew the missing picture well, a photograph that could have never been developed. The empty frame stood for their entire relationship, a symbol of pure impossibility.
“Fuck!” He threw it across the room. The frame struck the wall and fell to the carpeted floor. The room echoed the crash, then went silent.
This is stupid.
Sighing, he got on his knees and looked for the frame. It had fallen behind a table next to the wall. In the small space he could smell the alcohol. It reminded him of a father he was born to hate.
There it was. Tranthan grabbed the frame and backed out into the light of the room. Its glass was shattered. But the back of the frame seemed to be missing, maybe somewhere still under his desk? He looked underneath and then he saw it.
Tranthan backed out again into the light, now holding in his hand a small flash drive, black, no bigger than his thumb. It was scorched, blackened by the heat and slightly deformed, bent like the frame it had been in. He reached over to the telephone and placed a call to the IT section.
“This is the deputy director. I need something checked out, and I need it checked out now. Call Mr. George.” A pause. “Yes, tonight.”
CHAPTER 33
The double-decker bus blew past William Parker as he started to cross over King Street to the newspaper. He stepped back, between a parked Mercedes and a small Fiat, as the gust of wind blew past him. Another van followed right behind the bus. As he waited for a third van, Parker noticed a London Times newspaper box in front of the Hammersmith city hall.
MURDER IN WALTHAMSTOW
Gangs Out of Control
He shook his head. He’d known it was a mistake leaving Knez’s body so close to his flat as soon as he saw the blue lights earlier that morning. The police cars had lined up on his street when he left for the newspaper. He was stopped twice, but the investigators had already made several assumptions, all of them wrong.
Apparently, this was the third death in the neighborhood in the last several weeks. A gang war had been raging for some time. It didn’t matter, as Parker only needed a few days.
“Hello. It’s Sadik.” He held down the button on the intercom for several seconds.
The buzzer to the door was slow.
He bounced up the stairs.
“As sala’amu alaikum, sister.”
“Walaikum as sala’am.” The woman behind the desk always smiled when Parker came in. “Did you see the Times this morning?”
“Just the front page in the box.”
“A man was murdered where you live.”
“Yes, the police cars were at my front door.” The word traveled very fast in London. It would be pointless for him to try to avoid the topic.
“Your poor wife must be horrified.”
“Yes.”
He had learned that the best way out of a conversation was not to have one. She meant well, but in the short time he had gotten to know her, Parker recognized why she had remained as a receptionist. She had the job because she was the editor’s wife’s cousin.
“There was a picture of the man.”
“Oh?” The British newspapers were not known to hold back the gory details.
“He looked like the man who was here the other day. The one who was looking for you.”
“Do you have it?”
“Sure.” She pulled out the newspaper. It was folded around the photograph. Knez’s half-open eyes stared out into space. “Isn’t that him?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him. Did you say he looks similar?”
“Yes, and the man who came to see you, he was from Bosnia, wasn’t he?”
“That’s what the message said. But I have no idea who he is.”
Events were compressing the time available to him. Parker needed to get out of London soon.
“Oh.” She seemed satisfied. “By the way, Mr. Atwan asked to see you once you came in.”
“Is he in with anyone?”
“No. I know he wanted to see you. Something must be up.”
Parker didn’t like it. Atwan generally left him alone.
The editor’s office was in the very rear of the building. One of the coworkers had accused him of wanting to be as far away from the street as possible. Parker knocked on the door frame.
“Hello, Sadik! Come in.”
“Did you hear of the murder?” Parker thought he would preempt the conversation.
“Yes, and the girls said the man may have been here just yesterday. Did you know him?”
“No.”
“They are probably wrong. If you haven’t noticed yet, they have a vivid imagination.” Atwan had this habit of pulling up his sleeves when he talked. He would do it repeatedly. “But, more importantly, I liked your draft on the BBC.”
“Yeah?”
“It will have the boys in White City boiling.” Atwan had several grudges against the BBC. He knew that they would ignore it, but with a few calls Al Jazeera would run the story as well. It would keep his little paper in the minds of the Muslim world for another day. It would help sales.
“How did you get those quotes and details?”
“I had a very good source.”
Atwan smiled. “You wouldn’t consider sharing that source?”
Parker smiled but said nothing.
“I have something for you.”
Atwan handed a manila envelope across the desk. He didn’t have a chair on the other side of his desk so that no one could stay long in conversations. The paper was too small and the budget too little.
“What is this?”
Atwan nodded his head as if to say go ahead and open it.
The envelope was not sealed. He looked inside, seeing a Lufthansa ticket jacket.
“You are expected in Peshawar in two days.”
“This is from Yousef?”
Atwan, beaming, nodded. “The interview of a lifetime.”