“So theoretically,” said Alexis, “you’d see every last man on earth blown to smithereens before this crummy hinterland was given its independence.”
Win’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Fuck, yeah.”
“The Creams sure got some awful good ideas about immigration,” Trudy intruded. The non sequitur was deliberate. Trudy was afraid of Win. The only way she could get in her two cents without being brutally cut down was to contribute her thoughts when they were beside the point.
“With community relations in the gutter,” Win snarled at Trudy, “give this dump independence and forget that ‘repatriation’ plan. Next day, you’ll have doggy-doo-landers slaughtering rag-heads like sheep. Lining ’em up in front of ditches, just you wait.”
“Win, I know how you feel,” said Roland. “You don’t want to negotiate with Creams, you don’t want Lisbon to meet with them or make any deals—no concessions, no favors, no attention. But that’s like asking Lisbon to overlook the elephant in the living room—”
“I didn’t say elephant. I said garbage.”
“I’ve more respect for these blokes than you, I mean they’re dead sussed,” Ordway proceeded. “This campaign’s been brilliant, like—bordering on genius. All right, Sobs are wankers. But you want to pretend the SOB don’t exist. That’s worse than purism, Pyre; it’s wishful thinking.” Ordway clomped his cowboy boots on the table. “Like having some hood burst into your off-license and hold a pistol to your head and then saying to yourself, ‘There’s no pistol to my head,’ and going about your business. Sorry, mate, but you’re gonna get done.”
Jasmine began, “In resolving any conflict—”
“Peace at any price, is that what you people want?” Win barked. “Chamberlain thought the same way. What did Sudetenland matter?”
“You have to negotiate with combatants,” Jasmine persisted. “Even if they’re distasteful—”
“Hitler was a ‘combatant,’ wasn’t he?” Win wheeled to their guest with video-arcade reflexes. “Distasteful, too! But what the hell, give the guy half of Europe—”
“For pity’s sake, Win!” cried Martha. “We’re talking raggedy-ass Portuguese thugs, not Hitler. Nothing flags losing your intellectual grip like dragging in World War Two!”
“Martha,” Nicola entered in slowly, drawing idle pictures in poured salt. “You said that the ‘only’ thing capitulation to Barban independence would cost is principle.” She looked up. “Is principle that cheap?”
“Principle is a commodity, which can be swapped along with pork bellies and coffee futures,” said Ordway. “It isn’t priceless, Nicky. Nothing is.”
“That’s a depressing perspective,” said Nicola quietly.
“Well, what would you do about the Sobs, Nicky?” Ordway despaired. “Let them bomb their little hearts out, while you stick to your bleeding principles?”
“You’ll say I’m gormless,” said Nicola mournfully. “But instead of rewarding them, you might have them arrested.”
Trudy got few chances at savvy, and pounced. “Honey, you can’t be serious!”
“How can you arrest the buggers if you can’t flipping find one?” Ordway sneered in Edgar’s direction. “Oh, except our resident Sob-diviner—whose precocious gift for journalism seems to extend to nicking Bear’s contact book.”
Edgar smiled pleasantly. Ordway’s uncanny incapacity to wound his rival must have driven the little snake insane.
Jasmine began, “Military defeat of indigenous guerrillas has proved almost impossible since the Revolutionary War—”
“Or look at Vietnam!” railed Ordway. “You can’t win against these people, Nicky, they’re too sharp. Having gone this long without getting lifted, if anything they’ll just get better at scarpering. Besides, it’s easy for you to cling to that old we-shall-not-be-moved, mustn’t-give-in-to-terrorism waffle. You haven’t had to pay the price of your convictions. But what about your husband? His whole family’s been blown off the frigging planet. How about you, Durham? Want to see more planes incinerated, more families be-fucked, just so sorts like Win and your wife here can keep their hands clean, unsullied by compromising with rubbish?”
Henry looked uncomfortable. During most of this discussion, he hadn’t seemed riveted, and Edgar suspected that, despite his history, questions like the one Ordway posed didn’t engage Durham on a profound level. The likes of Henry were made for lager-drinking contests and darts. His story and his feckless character were a gross mismatch.
“Aw, I don’t know.” Henry’s mop of brown hair flopped in his eyes. “At first I’d have been with Pyre. Not wanting the wankers to win, doing what they done. But—” Henry glanced apologetically at his wife—“it just goes on and bleedin’ on, and I’d not want any more sons and brothers to go through what I done. Maybe at the end of the day I don’t give a monkey’s. Maybe give them what they want and get the whole balls-up over with. I’m knackered. I’m about ready to go home, and when I do, I don’t want the plane to blow up.”
“That’s just what they’re counting on!” Win declared fervently. “Exhaustion! Zealots have the advantage! Fanatics never get tired!”
“But don’t you?” asked Edgar.
Funny—abruptly, Win sagged. Rather than look rugged, he just looked haggard. In fact, Win may have been sicker of this conflict than anyone else at the table. But he was hooked, just as he’d been hooked on despising Saddler. Loathing was an addictive emotion, and though Pyre was wildly, claustrophobically bored with the SOB, he was also passionately bored. And all passion was a trap.
Edgar slipped off to the bar, where someone hissed, “Edgar!” behind him. He swiveled with dread. Alexis Collier’s shoulders were thrust back, her hard little nipples pointing like accusatory arrows. Her uplifted chin exposed a neck that, to his mean satisfaction, was just beginning to wattle.
“It’s not easy to cover a beat where the main story is invisible, would you accept that?” Alexis whispered harshly. “Being a foreign correspondent is challenging in the best of circumstances. But in Barba we’re all especially hobbled, because the SOB is so secretive. And these are the very sources our editors most want to hear from—”
“Alesbo, how about you cut to the chase?” said Edgar, elbows on the bar.
“I think you owe this entire journalistic community an explanation!” she huffed, discarding any pretense of speaking softly. “Some of us have been here for years, and we’re under a lot of pressure to produce groundbreaking copy. We try to support each other—”
“Gimme a break!” said Edgar, glancing over his shoulder.
“Yes, we’re in competition, but we’re also in the same boat. Loose cooperation is in order, don’t you think? So one day some flibbertigibbet who’s never published so much as her phone number flies into town unannounced—a kid, a freelancer—”
Edgar murmured, “Alex, I’d be willing to talk this out—”
“And you save your favors for this zero? For a wannabe?”
“Some other time,” Edgar urged sotto voce. “Right now, keep a lid on it.”
“For God’s sake, if you’re going to be that way,” Alexis was shrieking, “I could see, maybe, keeping a source like that to yourself—a rare, cooperative source, who’s willing to interface with the media. I wouldn’t like it, but I might understand it, especially since you’re new to journalism and you don’t know the unwritten code. But this—this beggars belief! Even for a greenhorn! What, were you trying to impress her? To get her into bed? A leg up for a leg over, is that it? And the only way you could think to give her goose pimples was to say, ‘You know, I’ve got this terrorist friend’?”
“Alex, would you shut the fuck up?”
“What about us? If you’re going to parcel out Barrington’s contacts, you might have started with serious journalists who publish in mainstream newspapers. This is a headline, international story! So why didn’t you arrange an interview with a member of the SOB for the New York Times?”
The most indi
fferent bystander at the Rat that night would have registered Alexis Collier’s outrage. At first, Edgar had feared that Jasmine Petronella would overhear the tirade, and her feelings would be hurt. But by the time Alexis was through broadcasting his business to the whole world, Edgar’s nervous glances had shifted from the hacks’ round table to the silent hulk looming by the door. He’d never been sure just how much English Bebê Serio understood.
Chapter 32
Renowned International Terrorist Brakes for Pussycat
JOÃO PACHECO BUZZED the next morning to grant Edgar a rare second audience with Verdade. Though Wallasek had nagged for an updated profile, Edgar courted a reputation as unsympathetic with Verdade’s cause, and had expected his pro forma request to re-interview the great man, put in months ago, to be regally ignored.
The now-or-never interview was for this very afternoon, when Edgar had planned to give Jasmine Petronella the Terror Tour around Cinziero. Fair enough, his Terror Tour was lame—an expedition to the Creme gift shop, a hasty careen through Terra do Cão (where he was disinclined to linger since repairing the Saab’s gouged finish), and a wend about the dreary countryside for an ooh-ah over the landscape’s weirdo wind flutes. Still, with Nicola’s infernally platonic friendship wearing thin, celibate Eddie was getting desperate, even if through the fug of a daylight hangover Jasmine’s looks would inevitably revert to interesting. Anyway, forget it. As a reporter of current events, naturally he had to go haggle over the heroic exploits of Teodósso o Terrível in 1794.
At headquarters, no Serio. Pity; kiss all that sparkling repartee good-bye. Instead, Pacheco hooked Edgar’s thumb into a yo-brother clasp with a smirk. Ferret-face now wore a dark mafioso three-piece with a turned-up collar and wraparound shades indoors. His patronizing collegiality implied that the office was plenty up to speed on the National Record’s hostile coverage, but that Creams sucked the poison from pens like Edgar’s for breakfast.
Seated sullenly in O Creme’s outer office for over an hour, Edgar had ample time to assess improvements to the premises: closed-circuit cameras, IBM computers, fax and photocopier, five phone lines. They’d swapped populist grunge for swank: grass wallpaper, carpet thick as a zoysia lawn, obese armchairs nubbled in raw linen, lined brocade drapes; this roach nest was done up classier than the Wall Street digs of Lee & Thole. As if to offset the Creams’ murderous rep, the reception room was now swaddled in passive, mauvey pastels, which clashed painfully with the wall’s red-and-green Barban flag, no longer silk-screened but professionally stitched.
This time Verdade didn’t bound up the stairs, but casually opened the inner office door, unabashedly present the entire time. Having bagged the working-stiff windbreaker for an Armani suit, Verdade had gone for the debonair statesman look, and was as crisply cornered as an army bunk. His red-and-green silk tie was dotted with tiny hairy pears.
During their first encounter Verdade’s verbiage had slithered with the insinuation that he fronted for truly evil fucks. Now that Edgar had peeked behind the curtain to discover Barba’s Wizard of Oz was a common shyster, Verdade’s propaganda should have lacked subtext. Strangely, the man’s wide brown eyes continued to glitter, and a sibilant hidden agenda still hissed beneath his academic banalities.
As time wore on Edgar grew perplexed. Verdade made such a flap about his tight schedule, his precious time. Yet Edgar had to flip his ninety-minute tape to fill the B-side and then start a second cassette. What’s more, this was all pat national-self-determination soft-shoe that he could have downloaded from O Creme’s Web site. A wicked smile playing on his lips, o presidente seemed to be torturing his interviewer on purpose.
By the end of the interview, Edgar’s chest had tightened and his throat felt constricted as if to warn of an oncoming asthma attack, and Edgar didn’t have asthma. When he was finally allowed out the door it was pitch-dark, and for once the slap of the wind was exhilarating. Liberdade!
Edgar surveyed the Turbo for abuse, but his cardboard sign on the dashboard, CONVIVADO DO CREME, had protected the coupe. Chances were that kids kept their hands off a guest of the party’s car not out of respect, but from fear—which might be justified. For no reason that Edgar cared to formulate, he glanced under the car. Christ, you’re getting paranoid, he mused—ducking in and central-locking the doors.
Edgar pulled out with relief. He’d come to dislike Terra do Cão, which always made him feel unclean, a sensation he’d usually blame on the neighborhood’s unhealthy political quarantine. The area had an Orwellian feel, as if all its residents had been through reeducation camp; you never heard a word against the Creams. Yet whizzing past his regular red wooden phone booth, Edgar wondered if the ghetto’s association in his mind with his own SOB atrocity claims might be contributing to its foulness. Because after he drove out of Terra do Cão, that unclean sensation? It didn’t go away.
Maybe he was tired, but for once Edgar couldn’t be arsed, as Bear would say, to contrive distinctions between the amoral and the immoral, or to sail into congratulatory flights about having hijacked the car bombs of truly warped individuals for a mortifyingly nerdy cause. Fair enough, Edgar was sick of his conscience wheedling that glory might be fleeting but infamy sticks around like gum in your hair. At this point he was even sicker of the callow huckster who continuously rattled off, to no one in particular, pompous excuses for a project at best dubious, at worst repugnant. For once he didn’t mean Barrington, but himself. For Edgar no sooner flicked on the radio to the World Service than his ears reflexively pricked for a calumny that might require another hustle from Barba’s own Fast Eddie.
He switched off the report, and suddenly a black cat scuttled through the beams of his brights. Edgar hit the brakes. Though he’d missed it, his heart was whomping. Catching himself, Edgar grinned. RENOWNED INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST BRAKES FOR PUSSYCAT.
Then, wouldn’t he. Not long ago, after Edgar had lit into another lacerating riff about his colleagues, Nicola collapsed into peals of laughter. Finally she’d explained in a teary-eyed wheeze, “Edgar, give up! You’re a lovely man!” Maybe it was the memory of Nicola cracking up at his unconvincing tough-guy pose that did the trick, because right then a resolution mushroomed in his head.
Edgar wanted out.
He’d flirted with the proposition before, of throwing in the towel on the SOB while he was still ahead of the game, if that’s what he was. Certainly Edgar was a damned sight more anxious than he let on to his notional landlord that any day now Interpol could plow up Abrab Manor’s drive to bark on their loudspeaker that they had the house surrounded. Anyone with a lawyer’s faith in order believed that sooner or later everyone’s brought to book. That he’d got away scot-free so far was miraculous, and the close shave with the fingerprints had brought Edgar up short.
What had kept him claiming bad business this long wasn’t duty, much less mischief, the spirit of which he’d lost some time ago, but more narrative panic. If Edgar plain stopped—simply didn’t call in any more bomb claims—what kind of closure was that? And from then on the SOB is never heard from again, no one knows why, until one by one the Reuters, Guardian, and Times Cinziero bureaus shut . . . An enervating, listless ellipsis, is that how this Sob story should end? Edgar had never cared for songs that faded on the refrain.
Yet slumping behind the wheel, Edgar faced the ugly truth. He had a suck-ass imagination. He couldn’t contrive an inspired climax for this farce any more than he could invent innovative diversions for Yardley’s after-school playgroup. Edgar was an able imitator, the clingy sidekick of a man he’d never even met, and this SOB sport was just a run with Barrington’s ball. Half plagiarist, half errand boy, Edgar didn’t have a creative bone in his body. He was like one of those hacks hired to write sequels to a classic like Peter Pan—travesties of the original on which critics heap opprobrium, with endings crafted purely to allow for yet more second-rate sequels.
Chastened, humbled, and chagrined, by the time Edgar arrived home, he’d made a vow. Okay, it
made for a punk story: Edgar picks up where Barrington left off and then calls it quits. It was a tale with no moral, no irony, no final chapter twist. But he couldn’t turn state’s evidence now without incriminating himself, and probably doing some serious time. No narrative orgasm was worth five years in the slammer. So there was nothing to do but resign as quartermaster of the SOB. He wouldn’t call in any more claims. The commitment had a hollow feeling, but all regimens felt bogus at the start. What was it AA people said? One day at a time. Maybe he could start a chapter of Terrorists Anonymous right here in Cinziero.
With an Interpol manhunt fresh in his head, finding the front door ajar fortified Edgar’s determination to skip his evening’s ritual Choque and dive straight for the Noah’s Mill. On entering the living room, Edgar considered that in that case he would have to find the bottle, a task that could prove formidable.
The room had been ransacked. Cushions were flung about, and coughed feathers. The seaman’s chest gaped open, the quilts it stored snarled in far corners. Chairs were upended, antique end tables smashed. Charred logs littered the hearth, and coals had been ground into carpets. The liquor cabinet was toppled, its cut-glass snifters in bits. Since it was the only whole bottle in sight, tonight this bourbon drinker would have to settle for gin. Lots and lots of gin.
“Saddler!” Edgar hated to admit it, but at the moment he could use a friend.
Only the emerald velveteen wingchair remained upright. Plumped with unmolested pillows on either arm, it formed the room’s sole island of repose. Barrington obligingly materialized in the chair, sipping his usual pink gin from that improbably thin martini glass.