‘And Sarah?’
‘There’s no word about her.’
‘Good God.’ Raul put his face in his hands despairingly. A feeling of impotence filled his soul, while he tried to imagine his daughter, thrown to her fate, uncertain, including death in the most awful way. Professionals didn’t have compassion. If her death was confirmed, he hoped it had been fast.
‘Don’t worry,’ he heard JC say. ‘If something happened to her, we’d know already.’
‘How can we be certain?’
‘Because that would be a message they’d want us to get immediately. It would already be on television. You can be at peace. All is well,’ the old man explained calmly. Such coldness sent chills down Raul’s spine.
‘How can they hide an exploding house from the media?’ He didn’t understand. JC’s words, such as they were, calmed him. Sarah was okay, he forced himself to think positive, and felt a little better.
‘Circling off the area or saying it was a gas explosion. Right away they lose interest,’ he explained. ‘What matters is blood and terrorism.’
‘All this has to do with the murder of Luciani?’ the Portuguese wanted to know.
‘Ironically, no.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
Silence fell over the room quickly. Raul waited for a conclusion that didn’t come. The old man was irritated.
‘Well then, what does it have to do with?’
‘Hot tea.’
‘What?’
‘Hot tea is what sounds good to me now. Do you have any?’
Raul couldn’t believe that in this disorienting moment the old man could be thinking of tea, but he should have been used to it. Most of the time Raul saw him as a normal human being, a fragile elder like so many around there. Nothing could have been more of a false impression.
‘Do you have any?’ JC asked again.
‘Herbal,’ the military man replied.
‘That’ll have to do. But I suggest you renew your stock of Earl Grey or Twinings for tomorrow.’
Raul got up and looked at him from above before going into the kitchen to make tea.
‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’
‘This has nothing to do with Pope Luciani,’ JC said without looking at him. ‘It has to do with the Pole.’
‘Wojtyla?’ Raul looked at him incredulously.
The old man nodded.
‘Do you consider all the popes enemies?’
‘Wojtyla was not my enemy. Never. He was an old man without balls, but not an enemy.’
This reply left Raul in shock. The mystery intensified. So this had nothing to do with what he thought. It was completely beyond what was happening around him. One thing was sure. There were not many people who could make someone as influential as JC retreat to a place like Alentejo to find refuge. What was happening had to be very serious to make this brilliant strategist leave the comfort of his villa in Italy. Another thing that shook him was the older man’s attempt to protect his daughter, although he had done nothing specific except warn her. He had a faint hope in his heart that he had done it in time and that she was able to get out of the city.
‘While you put the water on to boil, call your contact.’
‘Sir,’ the cripple cried out, awakening with his pride wounded. ‘Not that.’
‘Sit down,’ the old man ordered in a firm voice. There was no doubt about who was in charge here. ‘We need someone closer to what took place. Because of our strategic retreat we don’t have anyone in place to be our eyes and ears. This is the best solution.’ His austere look showed that everything had already been decided and explained.
The cripple — an epithet used with no intention of insult, only an allusion to something about someone who doesn’t like to reveal his name — didn’t hide the anger in his face, but ended up sitting down without saying more.
‘Who’s after us, then?’ Raul asked. He had not yet gone to put the water on for the tea.
The old man threw the blanket that had covered Raul over his legs. Warmth was a necessity he should never scorn at his age. Raul waited for a reply, which was glacial, unfeeling.
‘Opus Dei.’
23
‘There are a lot of things happening under our noses, and I’m not happy we don’t have even minimal control of the situation,’ Geoffrey Barnes shouted as he came into the Center of Operations of the CIA in London.
He walked through the enormous room, filled with monitors, computers, and a large screen that filled an entire wall where a map of the world appeared with various symbols that would have meant little to the common person, although they had much to do with the lives of these common people, shouting and gesturing, red with anger. Here in this station only a few lives were important; the rest were disposable, always or whenever necessary.
The printers vomited pages and pages of information and added to the agitation that reigned in the Center of Operations. No one paid attention to the director’s angry words. There was no time or patience. He himself would stop if he thought anyone should listen, but he didn’t. Geoffrey Barnes entered his office, separated from the Center of Operations by a thin structure of aluminum and glass. The director had a privileged view over the room. Nothing escaped his attention, as he wished, but if he wanted to enjoy a few minutes of privacy, all he had to do was lower the inner blinds and no one could see in. Staughton and Thompson followed him into the office and closed the door after them, shutting out the noise from the outer room completely.
The chief sat down and put his feet on the desk. Staughton and Thompson only watched him as he swept aside some papers to arrange his legs better and enjoy some ephemeral rest. He didn’t dare mistreat the three telephones lined up on the mahogany desk on the right. Not these. One green, another red, the other beige. The green was direct contact with Langley, the headquarters of the CIA in the United States; the beige, his colleagues at the agency. Barnes avoided answering that phone, whether or not he knew who was on the other end of the line. The people who used that phone were very powerful, some even more powerful than the man who used the third, red phone, the president. When it rang, it meant someone from the Oval Office, or the president himself. It had rung only once since Barnes had assumed his responsibilities more than seven years earlier, the morning of July 7, 2005, when terrorists detonated explosives in the London transportation system. He remembered flushing when the phone began to ring. It had never crossed his mind that the phone even worked, he was so used to seeing it silent. On answering he realized it was some assistant to the president wanting to know more details first-hand to inform the chief of state. Barnes was not caught off guard and gave him the official version, to which anyone had access. Sometimes the truth was not for the ears of the president.
This is not to say Geoffrey Barnes wasn’t patriotic. Anyone who didn’t want to see his life laid wide open should never say so where he could hear them. Geoffrey Barnes was one of the few men privileged to sift through intelligence information and sort it into categories, the essential, the important, and the normal. The important was given out to others. The country had so many crooked dealings that certain things couldn’t reach the knowledge of the president. Everyone understands, surely.
‘We’re fucked.’ He was recovering, still furious. ‘Set up a meeting for six-thirty.’
‘So early?’ Staughton questioned timidly.
‘I’m awake, aren’t I?’ Barnes yelled. ‘So no one else better lie around in bed.’ He saw that Staughton wasn’t going to object.
‘Okay,’ Staughton replied, opening the door to carry out the order. For a few moments noise filled the office, shattering the quiet in there.
‘Thompson,’ Barnes called.
‘What, boss?’
‘I want a report in a half-hour on my desk with all the facts and events we know up to now.’
‘It’s done,’ the other obeyed, immediately looking for the door out.
‘You should warn all your contacts,’ Barnes ordered.