The crawl.
Running across the bottom of the screen.
BREAKING NEWS: FORMER IRISH PRIME MINISTER LARRY BOLGER DIES SUDDENLY IN LONDON… BREAKING NEWS: FORMER IRISH PRIME MINISTER LARRY BOLGER DIES SUDDENLY…
The elevator door opens onto the underground car park of the BRX Building and Clark Rundle steps out. His car is waiting, but directly behind it is another car, door open, engine running. Don Ribcoff gets out and walks over.
‘Sorry, Clark, this won’t take a minute.’
Ribcoff had phoned just as Rundle was leaving for an appointment and he wanted to see him in person. Since Ribcoff doesn’t place much trust in electronic forms of communication, most of his business is conducted in this way.
Rundle is slightly agitated. He’s en route to the Wilson Hotel, to see Nora. ‘What is it?’ he says.
‘That potential situation we had overseas, with the politician? I’ve just heard it’s been put to bed.’ Even with all his security measures in place, Ribcoff still occasionally has a habit of delivering updates in language like this, coded, bleached of specifics.
Rundle finds it strange.
He makes a face. ‘That was fast.’
‘Well, the old man was pretty adamant.’ Ribcoff shrugs. ‘It was rushed, that’s for sure, and they nearly botched it, but it’s fine.’
‘What about the…’ Rundle is about to say ‘journalist’, but stops himself. Might be a bit specific for Ribcoff’s taste. ‘What about the young guy, the, er…’ He’s not good at this. ‘The young guy that the older guy, the politician, talked to?’
‘You mean the journalist?’
Jesus.
Rundle nods. ‘Yeah.’
‘We’re going to keep an eye on him, you know, do a sneak and peek, monitor his activities, and…’ He glances around.
Rundle waits. ‘And?’
Ribcoff looks back. ‘Take action, if necessary.’ He pauses. ‘You know, some form of containment.’
‘OK.’
Maybe Rundle understands it after all, this need for lingo, for euphemism.
‘In the meantime,’ Ribcoff says, ‘I have some travel details for you.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a slim envelope. He hands it to Rundle. ‘Tomorrow, for Thursday. Is that good?’
‘Yes.’
He’ll have to clear his diary and let Eve know he won’t be here when she gets back from England. He’ll also have to arrange to have vaccinations done. Though Ribcoff probably has that set up already.
‘You’ll be going via Paris to Rwanda, and then over the border to the airstrip at Buenke.’
Rundle nods. This will be a Gideon Global operation all the way. They provide transport in and out of the country, as well as escort security at the site.
He’s essentially putting himself in Ribcoff’s hands.
‘And Kimbela?’
‘We’ve just had word from our guy that he’s agreed to a meeting. He’s not happy about what happened last week, but we’re negotiating a reparation package.’
‘And I take it you’ve already done some form of psych screening of your remaining personnel over there.’
Ribcoff doesn’t like this. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘it was a blip, unfortunate yes, but… a blip. These things happen. Even Kimbela understands that.’
‘Oh, he does? And I’m supposed to take comfort from the fact?’
‘Clark, come on -’
‘I’m kidding, Don. Jesus, lighten up.’
Actually, he’s not kidding, and on the way to his suite at the Wilson he realises just how much he’s not kidding. In normal circumstances, by the time he’s riding the elevator up to the tenth floor there’d be a certain amount of anticipatory lead in the equation – to adopt Ribcoff’s linguistic technique – but not today.
Not even when Nora comes through the door.
He’s got a knot in his stomach now, and he reckons he’d better get used to it.
It won’t be going away any time soon.
Jimmy isn’t sure what he’s got here, what he’s coming away with, and as he walks back to his hotel, through the dark, quiet streets of the city, a fog of ambivalence, as familiar as it is unwelcome, settles over him. He really liked Francesca and Pina – liked their different styles and coping mechanisms, liked the way they were confrontational with each other and supportive at the same time. But that hardly gives him the right to come along and intrude into their lives, does it? He did the same with Maria Monaghan and look how that worked out. It’s one thing to interview a pharmaceutical executive for a trade publication and ask about patents or production schedules; it’s another thing entirely to sit across from grieving family members who want to understand how and why their loved one died, and know that your questions – your mere presence, in fact – is giving them hope, hope that you know in all likelihood to be false.
He didn’t make any promises, though. He didn’t lie to them.
At least.
Is that enough?
He passes a small bar, an enoteca, one of the few places still open, and is tempted to go in, but he’s more anxious to get back to the hotel. He could have used Francesca’s laptop to chase up this lead, but he wasn’t keen on the idea of having her there the whole time, peering over his shoulder. He’s also naturally quite cautious and didn’t want to leave a trail of his internet searches on her computer.
Back in his room, he jots down a few quick notes from the evening. Then he opens his laptop and goes online.
Dave Conway.
When Francesca said the name, Jimmy recognised it straightaway. Dave Conway. Conway Holdings. One of the property guys. Hotels, apartment blocks, housing estates. But he had absolutely no idea what connection Dave Conway might have to Clark Rundle or to Gianni Bonacci.
He types in the name.
The thing is, Jimmy calls this a lead, automatically thinks of it that way, but maybe it’s nothing.
Maybe it’s a different Dave Conway.
He does a search anyway and surfs around for a while – business websites, directories, news archives – not expecting to find anything. To his surprise, however, he quickly comes across a clear, unequivocal connection. Three years ago, it seems, around the time of the conference, Clark Rundle’s company, BRX, bought a Conway Holdings subsidiary, First Continental Resources.
No more than that, no detail, just a reference.
Jimmy is fully aware that this doesn’t have to mean anything, that it’s a random, neutral fact he has found on the internet.
But -
It certainly joins up a lot of dots.
Larry Bolger, Clark Rundle, Dave Conway, Gianni Bonacci, Susie Monaghan.
What all of this means, in turn, he doesn’t really know. But his sense, increasingly, is that it must mean something – that there’s simply too much here for it not to mean something.
In which case, it occurs to him, shouldn’t he be concerned? A little nervous even?
Why?
Because -
Jimmy gets up off the bed and goes over to the window. There isn’t much of a view, just red slate roofs in the moonlight. It’s quiet, too, with occasional sounds drifting up from a nearby restaurant, cutlery and plates, laughter.
Because if it does mean something, think what that something must be.
Before now all of this had been academic, more or less, supposition, speculation – and at a considerable remove from any reality Jimmy is familiar with. But there’s something about being in Italy that changes that, recalibrates it, brings it closer to home. Maybe it’s the air or the architecture, he doesn’t know, but he has an acute sense right now of time and history, of ceaseless activity and intrigue, of ripeness and rot, of this calcified political culture where literally anything is possible – where the assassination of a middle-ranking official, for example, would be as routine and banal as the cancellation of an IT support contract.