Henry Porter: Empire State

‘You deserved it,’ said Herrick, moving off in the direction of the lifts. ‘You didn’t see what your friends had done to Khan. I did. It was disgusting.’

‘So what are you doing here?’ Eva asked Gibbons.

‘Looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘None of your goddam business.’

‘Maybe we can help each other,’ said Eva. ‘Which office do you want?’

Gibbons said he didn’t have a number.

By now, Herrick was by a small corridor which ran from the main aisle to the south of the building. She looked up and saw a sign pointing to 6410.

‘Got it,’ she called out. At the far end they found the door. Herrick bent down and put her ear to it. There was no sound. Gibbons moved her aside with the back of his hand and put a card into the crack by the lock but after a minute of working had failed to open the door. He stepped back and hit the door twice with his boot just by the lock. There was still no joy. Then he moved to the other side of the corridor and prepared to launch himself at the door but was stopped in his tracks by a voice coming from the northern aisle.

‘Hey, you there! What in hell’s name d’you think you’re doing?’

The silhouette of a uniformed guard had appeared against the pulses of lightning. Herrick saw the outline of the gun, then the silencer fitted to the end of its barrel. But it was the rolling, lopsided walk of the man approaching in the gloom that made her feel as though she was seeing a ghost, for the second time that day. Before she could see his face the man said, ‘Big lorry jump all over little car.’

It was Foyzi.

Herrick struggled to understand what was going on, but Gibbons evidently had no such problem. ‘This is the little cocksucker I’ve been tailing since Egypt.’

Foyzi’s rubber-soled boots squeaked the final paces to the light, and his face came into view.

‘I saw you in the street buying ice-creams,’ she said stupidly.

Foyzi made a little bow to her. ‘Tenacious as ever, Miss Herrick.’ The New York accent had been dropped in favour of an almost Wodehousian English. ‘I always find opening a door is more easily achieved with the appropriate keys, don’t you?’ He felt in the top pocket of his uniform. ‘Here we are,’ he said, flourishing them. ‘Now, ladies, step aside and I will open the door for us all.’ He waved the gun in a small arc in front of them.

‘Mr Gibbons, perhaps you would like to lead the way.’

Inside Foyzi hit a switch and fluorescent light flickered behind five or six panels in the ceiling. They walked into an unfurnished, L-shaped space with a reception desk tucked into the angle. Everything but the steel-grey carpet was white. ‘Welcome to sixty-four ten,’ said Foyzi, prodding Gibbons in the back with the gun. ‘If you would move to the furthest door, I’ll introduce you to your hosts.’ Then he seemed to change his mind. ‘But of course, I’m forgetting the convention that CIA people never go anywhere without a gun.’ He patted down Gibbons, conjured an automatic from the back of his waistband and put it in his pocket. ‘How did security allow you into the building with that?’ he said with distaste. ‘And ladies, would you empty your purses over there.’

Herrick’s Apple Powerbook slipped noiselessly onto the desk, but not her phone, which remained in her pocket. Foyzi murmured something and set it aside, then began to sift Eva’s belongings, first examining her mobile phone, then a US passport and a piece of folded notepaper. He held it up to her.

‘It’s a medical prescription for my mother. She has cancer – her name is Rath.’

‘In Hebrew,’ said Foyzi, and placed the note in his top pocket.

He went to the door at the end, opened it and beckoned them to go through. Herrick saw a room mostly lit by candles. There was a smell of incense on the air and a faint sound of music – the Sufi chant Herrick had heard on the island.

Sammi Loz was bent at the centre of the room, working at his treatment. Karim Khan lay on the bed, wearing only a loin cloth.

Loz put his hand to his lips. ‘We will speak quietly. Karim is asleep.’ His hands returned to Khan’s leg. ‘We expected you two women, but not this person. Who is this, Foyzi?’

‘The man who had Khan tortured,’ said Foyzi. ‘He followed me here.’

‘That is interesting,’ said Loz. He let Khan’s foot down and stepped away from the bed. ‘We found that it was best to travel with Karim sedated. It has certainly helped his recovery, but he will no doubt wake in a short while, and then I think it will be good for him to meet the man responsible for his torture. It will be a pleasing symmetry, for him to see his persecutor killed. Now tell me who this is,’ he said, moving to Eva. ‘A nice erect posture and a firm, well-exercised figure.’

Eva returned his look with an absolute lack of fear and said nothing. Herrick absorbed Loz. He had started a beard, which gave a pronounced hook to his chin and he seemed to be thinner. The wild look she had seen in his eyes on the island had been replaced with what she thought was a rather self-satisfied calm.

He waved a remote at the CD player to silence the music. ‘Isis, who is this woman?’

‘I don’t know. She was trying to help me find this place. You should let her go. She has nothing to do with this.’

Foyzi handed him the passport and a piece of paper. Loz read out the name Raffaella Klein.

‘She’s an Israeli,’ said Foyzi.

Loz dropped the passport and paper and brushed his hands on his white shift, then adjusted the little white hat that signified he had undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca during Haj. ‘She has everything to do with you, Isis. You see, we watch the comings and goings in my room.’ He pointed to a monitor sitting on a pile of telephone directories. The screen was divided between a view of the consulting room and one of the reception desks. They had watched everything for the last hour or so.

‘I wish now that I had asked Foyzi to install microphones also. But then we didn’t know we’d have such interesting visitors. ’ He looked at Herrick sharply. ‘Why did you come here?’

‘How did you get off the island?’ she shot back.

Loz placed his palm in the air as if holding a serving plate. ‘Foyzi helped us. I hired him on that last night on the island. British Intelligence was paying Mr Foyzi only a little money. I could pay a lot more. It’s as simple as that. It was Foyzi who gave me the idea of placing the bodies of the men he lost to suggest that we had all perished in the missile attack. It worked well, did it not? And then we were able to travel to Morocco and to Canada with very little trouble.’

‘To be picked up on the Canadian border by Youssef Rahe – the Poet?’ said Herrick.

‘Yahya. His name was Yahya al-Zaruhn. There was no one his equal. No one! And now he is dead, killed by British spies.’

‘Police actually,’ said Herrick. ‘But let’s not forget that Rahe had a man tortured and killed to make it look as though he had died. That’s hardly heroic.’

‘A traitor,’ said Loz. ‘A filthy Jewish spy.’

Herrick sensed Eva stiffen and realised that she must have known the man they were talking about. The Mossad had certainly been wired into the Rahe-Loz network from an early stage.

‘Sit down,’ he shrieked suddenly.

Foyzi waved the gun and they all sank to the floor. Herrick and Eva leaned against the wall while Gibbons sat upright with his legs crossed in front of him. Loz returned to Khan and began to stroke the backs of his legs. He seemed to have resolved to concentrate on the treatment, and for nearly an hour said nothing to them. Herrick let her eyes wander the room. Near the windows there was a bowl filled with candles, the flames shuddering in the draught from the window, and some dirty plates with the remains of a meal. Propped on the table was the Arabic inscription mentioned by Harland. There were also some books, a copy of the Koran and other texts. One, entitled Hadith Literature and the Sayings of the Prophet, was lodged in the seat of an elaborate new wheelchair that had evidently been purchased for Khan.