“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” she’ll reply.
Welcome to the Royal Lounge of the Baghdad Hilton, the sign says. No caps, no hoods, or tracksuits after 7 p.m.
You stand together inside the entrance of a cheap hotel, watching tired-looking girls appear and disappear behind a threadbare red-velvet curtain. Their movements are subdued and discreet: all shadows and cellulite.
A door in a dark side passage will open briefly onto a scene of Al Qaeda suspects kneeling manacled in their own private darkness, eyes, ears, and mouths covered, held captive behind a chain-link fence that runs down the center of the “Gitmo Room.”
Prostitute phone cards in reception show high-contrast pictures of female GIs in camouflage fatigues leading naked men around on leather leashes. Each one of them reads: Call Lynndie for discipline and correction. All services. Open late. Thanks for asking.
“Well, you certainly know how to show a girl a good time,” she’ll remark.
“Keep quiet and follow me,” you’ll say.
You push your way through the velvet curtain, but a man in a dark suit puts an arm out to stop you.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” the man will say.
“I just did,” you’ll reply. “Get used to it.”
Then you snap his forearm just below the elbow joint, breaking both bones instantly. You watch the blood leaking out from his sleeve.
On the second floor you stop outside one of the rooms.
“What are you doing?” she’ll hiss at you. “Trying to start trouble?”
“Another operative was sent here a few months ago,” you’ll reply, tapping gently on the door. “He was supposed to contact me when I first arrived. He didn’t show.”
“Maybe he forgot.”
“Impossible.”
“Maybe you forgot.”
“I know when I can’t remember something.” You sound dismissive. Impatient. Almost brutal.
“Okay. I have two things to tell you,” she’ll say after a pause.
“Yes?”
“One: I don’t really appreciate you talking to me in that tone of voice, especially if you’re still expecting me to help you.”
“And two?”
“And two: There’s some guy behind you pointing a gun at the back of your head.”
You always know what you’re doing.
You’ll turn around and grab him by the throat. There will be a blind spasming of the flesh, and in another second there will be just you and the girl in the corridor again.
“See if he’s got a pass key on him,” you’ll say.
“As dumps go,” she’ll remark, looking around at the room, “this is a dump. Who do you suppose did the decorating? The Three Stooges?”
But you’re already staring at the body on the bed.
“Is that your contact?” she’ll say.
You’ll nod.
“What happened?”
“Electrocuted.”
“You can tell just by looking?”
The closets and drawers are filled with the worn smell of clothes long unworn. There’s dried shaving cream on the bathroom mirror.
“It stinks in here,” she’ll say, a flat statement delivered in a flat tone. “Should I open a window?”
It can be a small event: like a window opening in a nearby apartment block or blood sluicing onto the dock from a rusty outlet in a harbor wall.
“No, leave it.”
She’ll pick up a plastic entry pass from off the floor, its chain swinging gently from her long slim fingers. She’ll point at the photograph on it.
“Looks like John Frederson’s got a new face and name,” you’ll say, staring closely at the man in the picture.
She’ll turn the entry pass over, examining it carefully on both sides. “This will get you into his private suite of offices at One Canada Square,” she’ll say. “I can take you there, if you want.”
Outside the contact’s hotel you’ll be approached by a young Thai kid wearing a T-shirt with Listen to Dr. Hook printed on it. He’s selling DVDs out of a black Samsonite case. Homo Abduction: Series Red, Teenage Revolutionary Martyrs. Handcuff Party. Necktie Strangler Meets the Teenage Crushers. Baby Cream Pimp IV.
No one’s around: just the late afternoon glare.
“Anything I can’t get anywhere else?” you’ll ask.
The kid opens a back compartment in the case. These DVDs show people doing things that seem meaningless to you.
“Interested?” the kid will ask hopefully.
But you will just walk away.
3
The tower at One Canada Square is not open to the general public. It has 3,960 windows and 4,388 steps, divided into four fire stairways linking all fifty floors. It is 800 feet high. Seen through glass, the sun leaves long white streaks across the sky.
You wander through crowds of people in the underground mall directly beneath Canary Wharf, checking entrances and exits, noting the location of cameras, sensors, and security points. Cities have scenes of their own destruction programmed into them. The world is in hock to itself.
You hear voices all around you, children playing, the rattling of cups on saucers, heels on tiled walkways. You notice frosted glass tables outside cafés, bars, and restaurants. Curved metal and plastic chairs. Music playing. Laughter. Everyone has a sleepy tranquilized look. As if they’ve been caught too far from daylight. The only things that seem familiar to you down here are the names on the brightly lit storefronts: Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, The Gap, Mont Blanc.
People have become slaves to probability. You’ll assume you’ve been on CCTV since you first arrived. A woman takes your photograph with her cell phone. She will have blond highlights in her feather-cut hair and wear a gold plastic leather jacket, bleach-washed blue jeans, and black Cuban heel boots. You will have come to expect this kind of thing by now.
Chemical tests indicate that Prozac is now seeping into the main water supply.
The woman leans forward unobtrusively to get another shot, revealing a portion of flesh so suntanned that it looks almost gray when exposed to the strip lighting in the mall’s main concourse.
You’ll also notice that she has a tattoo at the base of her spine. They all have tattoos at the base of their spine. Or on their ankles. It’s a form of protection.
“Against what?” you’ll ask.
At one minute past 7 on the evening of Friday, February 9, 1996, a bomb concealed inside a flatbed truck wrecked an office complex at Canary Warf, killing two and injuring over a hundred. The device was detonated in an underground garage near Canada Square. It tore the front off the building next door, damaging the roof and shattering the glass atrium. Windows were sucked out of buildings a quarter-mile away. Bystanders were thrown to the floor and showered with flying glass. Things just kept on falling.
You search up and down the concourse again, checking the benches, the artificial displays of greenery, the rest areas and waste bins. You look at faces, gestures: arrangements of groups and individuals. Families are a bland nightmare when seen out in public: a series of aimless and incessant demands. The entire underground mall is designed to keep them moving. They look well fed and cared for and pink from the sun. As if they are all brand new.
You will think you can stay and rest for a moment, but you can’t. You remain on the outside of everything that’s happening down here, watching and waiting. But that’s never really been a problem for you, has it?