He was lost for words, still absorbing the surprise of seeing her.
‘And your mother’s been so kind. She’s offered me to stay for a few nights. I know you’re — busy.’
Tom felt a flicker of irritation: he had had enough parental interference for one day.
The possibility — myriad possibilities — hung in the air. She went on, ‘I’ve had a think.’
Tom was aware of the porter shifting uncomfortably behind his desk. He gently touched her arm — sending an electric charge through him — and steered her down the stone steps into the street. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
It was still light, though the street-lights had just come on. The air was cool on their faces.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking and I–I was wrong. Right to go home for a break, perhaps, but wrong to run away as I did.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
She looked down uneasily at the ground. ‘I do! I do blame me.’ She smiled again: that intoxicating beam of light. ‘I think we should try again. I know it’s very forward of me but you know what we French are like when we want something…’ She giggled flirtatiously, but there was an underlying nervousness.
Part of him would have liked nothing more than to leap into a taxi with her there and then and head off into the night, into the future.
‘I’ve missed you.’ That much he could say. ‘Life has been… rather complicated lately.’
‘I’ve missed you too — very much. Can we — go somewhere? Alone?’
Tom gestured back at the large old doors. ‘I’ve left Dad in there.’
‘No, I mean away. Somewhere hot and relaxing and…’
He could see the disappointment starting to cloud her gorgeous face. ‘Please believe there’s nothing I’d like more…’
‘But?’
She was clearly heartbroken. He fought with himself. Looking at her, standing on the damp pavement, her face so full of hope, he realized this was something he wanted now, had wanted all along, without knowing it, and it had come at the worst possible time.
‘But I can’t go anywhere right at this moment. It’s very complicated.’
‘Is it the man you’re working for? The fascist, Vernon Rolt? Your father told me.’
‘He did? It’s not how it looks. I’ll be able to explain, but not yet.’
He knew, even as he said it, that the last thing he could do was explain, probably ever.
‘So it’s true, then. In France in the papers they say he’s like Le Pen — even worse. What’s happening to you, Tom? Is this some kind of revenge for what happened with the Regiment?’
What else could he say? There was no explanation that would work right now. He was in too far and too deep. He reached out to her. If he could just get closer, maybe he could communicate how he felt, transmit the truth of his emotions without using words. But she pulled away.
‘I’m sorry, Tom. I’m sorry for this country, which I did love. And I’m sorry for you.’
She turned and walked briskly towards Piccadilly. He knew it was useless to follow.
71
‘And that’s everything?’ Mandler peered at Tom over his half-glasses, his arms tightly folded over his chest.
‘Chapter and verse.’ Well, sort of: he’d glossed over some of the more extreme moments and left out any mention of the Clements connection. He wasn’t going to share that with the group. It had to be for Mandler’s ears only.
‘Quite a frantic little city break you seem to have had.’
As Tom sat down he scanned the listeners. There were seven of them round the table: Woolf on his immediate left, looking like he had neither slept nor changed his clothes while Tom had been away; Rafiq and Cindy, his sidekicks, whom he had contrived to keep from being reassigned; and Deakin and Brandeis, a pair of geeky analysts on loan from MI6 for their expertise in US affairs. The draughty hangar groaned and creaked in the wind.
‘Was it really necessary to dispatch Carter?’ asked Mandler.
‘He dispatched himself.’
‘And if he hadn’t?’
Tom gave Mandler a cold look. They both knew the answer to that one.
‘Either way, you risked blowing your cover.’
‘My judgement at the time was that it was worth the risk. Beth was killed because she’d asked him about Zuabi. Kyle Pope decided I had to die because I’d heard the same name. For God’s sake, Zuabi’s connection to Stutz is one that people are prepared to kill to hide.’
Brandeis raised a finger. ‘If I could come in here, our reading of the reaction in Washington suggests the Bureau haven’t exactly put the flags at half-mast for Carter. He wasn’t top of anyone’s Christmas-card list. They seem content with the conclusion that it was suicide. More than content, I’d say.’
Mandler gave a grudging nod.
Woolf was wagging a finger to get attention. He looked like he badly needed some sleep. ‘But it still means we have to be extremely careful with the Americans. We don’t know how far Stutz’s influence spreads into Washington. We go to them for help, we risk blowing it all. Could we please turn to what we’ve got on your imam?’
Brandeis got to his feet and plugged his laptop into the screen. A long-lens shot of an elderly man appeared, partly obscured by the crowd around him. He was swathed in white, with a stiff embroidered hat, and had a bushy grey beard. His heavy-lidded eyes were lowered as if in prayer. The same man Tom had seen on Jefferson’s computer in the trailer.
‘Okay, we think this is the most recent shot of Asim Zuabi, taken four months ago. And here’s his mug shot when he first came on the grid.’
An emaciated figure, his head shaved, eyes sunken. He looked nothing like the later shot.
‘It’s early days so what we have is sketchy. In 2004, he walks into the US Consulate in Beirut. Why they didn’t spit him straight back out is still a mystery. It suggests he had names or some information that gave them cause to hang on to him. We don’t yet know where he was born or raised. He told them he was based at a mosque in a village north of Aleppo, which has since been shelled to fuck. But another source tells us that, prior to becoming a cleric, he spent some years working oil wells round the Gulf. Maybe that’s where he hooked up with Stutz. Whatever and wherever that connection occurred, the speed with which he was processed suggests that someone had a hand in fast-tracking his exit. He had an American passport and a green card in two weeks.’
‘What about family?’ asked Tom. ‘The mosque is supposed to be dedicated to one of his daughters.’
‘There are five known children by three different wives, none of whom accompanied him to America. We don’t know where they are now. If they’re still in Syria it’s going to be hard to get any reliable data but we’re working on it. He’s believed to live in a house close to the mosque. He has a couple of servants and a secretary, all men, who live there as well.’
Brandeis flicked through several more shots of the mosque under construction, the Houston Chronicle photo-op Tom had seen, the house and neighbourhood: it all looked very suburban-American, all incredibly normal.
‘There’s nothing ostentatious about his lifestyle. This is his car, a ’ninety-eight Chevy Impala. He lives a very low-tech life. Just a landline into the home, no Internet on site. And no email ID that we’ve found so far. We think this is significant.’
Mandler peered at Brandeis doubtfully. ‘There’s a lot of “maybes” to this story.’
Woolf came straight back. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd? That he’s in charge of the biggest new mosque in the area, the focal point for the Muslim community across Houston and for miles around, yet the guy has no email account? Terror networks are bypassing electronic communication altogether to the extent that they’re using messengers and couriers. His lack of visibility makes him all the more suspicious.’