He couldn’t imagine what was happening at Camp Liberty or Southern-CIPA, and understood when he thought about these places he saw them as they had been, as if they were immune to change.
Eric’s book lay on the bed with the phone and Turkish lire. He’d folded newspaper cuttings and a small black notebook into the pages. Ford reached over and picked out the notebook. If the boy kept a diary he wanted to see what he was writing.
He couldn’t read the entries, and had to stare at them a while before realizing that the writing was a numeric code. 34425 42 16982 1786 126 74025. Page after page. A simple substitution, numbers and symbols for letters, which he couldn’t crack. He read on trying to identify the common numbers, but couldn’t decide. These would be the vowels, unless Eric rotated the numbers, changed the key from time to time.
* * *
Now curious about him, Ford slipped out of bed. He began to search through Eric’s backpack, and found clothes, climbing gear, laundry. The T-shirt with the red star. He checked the side pockets but discovered little of interest: a US passport, tickets, and then traveller’s cheques tucked in a plastic wallet. The passport said only that he was twenty-two years old and born in Berkeley, California. The cheques were in dollar amounts, twenties and fifties. Ford counted to one thousand dollars and stopped, guessing he had the same number of cheques uncounted in his hands. He tried unlocking the phone but could not guess the code. Done, he returned everything to the backpack then slipped back into bed.
* * *
Eric returned late and drunk and stopped with Nathalie immediately outside the door to talk, hushed and secretive. When he came into the room he whispered to see if Ford was awake.
‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘Mike. You awake?’
Disturbed to hear the boy use this name, Ford kept himself still, his breathing even and regular.
Eric rolled back on the bed and tugged off his shorts. Stretched out he started laughing. A patch of moonlight lay square across his hips.
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘Mike. You’re OK.’
3.4
As Anne came into the hallway her dog ran the length of the apartment to greet her. She set down her bags containing her laptop, papers, and newspaper, and three separate packages of biscotti (a gift for the office, a pack she would keep for the house, and maybe, why not, one as an occasional treat for the dog). She shucked off her shoes and checked the corridor for signs of her husband (the television flicker on the parquet, the faint pepper-sweet whiff of whisky), fretting over her son with increasing unease.
Unable to settle her doubt she stopped at the kitchen counter and called to her husband: was there news about Turkey? Anything recent? No? Had he heard anything more about what was going on? It wasn’t only Marian but everyone at the museum from the director down to the preparators: everyone else had a better idea about what was happening in the Middle East. ‘Marian knew,’ she said, even though she’d waited almost a week to say something. So why didn’t they know? Why hadn’t they heard? She held up her copy of the Times.
Still in the kitchen she asked why they’d let him go. What were they thinking? Seriously? Everyone else was spending the summer in mainland Europe. When he first suggested the idea eight or nine weeks ago there were no reasons against the trip, no doubt, except perhaps money — seven thousand dollars to see him through the summer. Justifying the expense she’d told herself that this would be good, this kind of opportunity was exactly why we sent him to Europe. Now she couldn’t imagine entertaining the idea. In five weeks they had watched a kind of madness spark across the Middle East, self-immolation on a scale which didn’t make sense.
Shoes in one hand, glass of wine in the other, Anne approached her husband’s study. The dog scampered ahead. I’m serious, she said, what kind of parents are we? The routing of the American Embassy in Libya, protests in Gaza, a riot in Jerusalem, an attack on demonstrators in Tehran, the shootings at Cairo University, acquired a terrible logic. It all creeps up on you. Outrages in Israel, the West Bank, and the inevitable reprisals, referenced a common instability and impending collapse. All of this paled against the sudden fire of conflict in the cities of northern Iraq, the destabilizing borders between Syria, Iran, and Turkey. And now this business of unregulated contractors, along with the call for a Senate enquiry. American businesses were being stoned, vandalized, singled out; no one yet hurt, but seriously, wasn’t it only a matter of time? She thought of fires, of sparks in strong winds, of cause and reaction, not as someone prone to worry, but as someone who could assay, assess, project; as someone who could understand the wayward world.
‘Mark, I’m concerned.’ She spoke to the back of her husband’s chair, confident that he was listening despite the television: his head cocked slightly, fingers curled round the glass but not gripping.
He turned to speak. ‘Today?’ he said. ‘Nothing new. I came back and watched the news. I looked online.’
‘But there have been attacks, a bombing. It’s on CNN. The refugees.’ Anne stepped into the room, took a smooth sip from her glass.
‘An oil refinery near the border. He’s no reason to be anywhere near a refinery. It’s nothing to worry about. The trouble spots are in the south and the south-east, close to the border. It’s all localized. There’s nothing happening in Istanbul or in the centre. No one is targeting tourists.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t like him being there.’
‘I looked.’
‘I know.’
‘He’s your son.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you know him. He’s sensible. Call him.’
‘I tried.’
‘Call him again.’
‘I’ll try.’ Anne said goodnight and headed to the bedroom. On rare occasions she was reminded that Mark was not Eric’s father, and that, in fact, before this marriage came a whole other life. On these occasions she asked herself if his calm came from this simple fact — she wouldn’t outright call it detachment.
Tired now, she wanted time to herself. She undressed facing her books, a wall lined with monographs and thick-spined catalogues. She preferred her books close, in the bedroom. When she could not sleep she would select one and take it to the lounge and look carefully through the images and choose one painting to examine until she forgot her sleeplessness.
She would write on the flight, because she never slept on an airplane however long the journey, and set on top of her luggage two books that she might need. It was possible that she would not refer to them, but their presence would encourage her to study. It would be better to take them and not use them, rather than leave them and need them. Rome, she told herself. Stop fussing. Think only about Rome.
* * *
While the technician worked on her computer Anne waited, first at the door to her study, then in the kitchen, anxious not to appear anxious or too obviously pressured for time.
Tomorrow afternoon she would fly to Rome. She would arrive in the early morning and would need her computer for work. She couldn’t remember the technician’s name and couldn’t find her diary with his card.
When she returned to her study she found him returning discs to their cases. On the screen a counter logged almost full. He was done, he said, as good as. Someone had deleted temporary files containing internet content and had managed to remove an essential operation file. It was easy to do. The man hesitated.
‘You said your son used the computer?’