Richard House - The Kills

He sat on the hotel balcony and faced the sea, the distant Greek islands, a faint stacked bank of blue, with a kind of abstract bemusement — if HOSCO broke apart then Gibson & Baker would lose their most lucrative client — and if this break could be felt in London, the situation would mean a keener rupture in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in all of the arenas where HOSCO supported military ventures. He couldn’t imagine a more god-awful mess. A world without the middleman upon which everything depended struck him as a truly fearful world. No food, no water, no pay, no cash, no cola, Tang, Rip It, Bawl’s, and no Red Bull; nowhere to sleep, nothing to sleep on, nothing to sit on, or sit at; no stores, no spare parts, nothing to drive, no trucks, no tanks, no Humvees, no drivers, no transport, no blast walls, no checkpoints, no protective vests, no bullets, no tourniquets, no doctors, no nurses, no blood, no plasma, no morphine, not one aspirin.

By the time Gibson called, Parson had downed four shots of whisky. Parson sat in his boxer shorts, feeling the sweat work its way down his back, the prickle of a slight wind on his legs. All of this recent immobility: sitting in cars, waiting, had added a few extra pounds.

‘You’re lucky you’re away from this. It’s all getting a bit bloody. HOSCO is in pieces.’

He listened as Gibson drew on a cigarette and remembered that the man did not smoke. He let this pass without comment. ‘I think you’ll be happy with what I’ve found.’

‘You have news?’ Gibson sounded sincere.

‘I have information. I know that HOSCO encouraged their managers to squirrel money away as a security, just in case something went wrong. It makes sense in a way, but it opens up the possibility that one or more of the project managers might have been less than honest about the budgets. If you look closely you’ll find a culture of doctored accounts and bloated budgets. My guess is it’s endemic, built into the system. Everyone does it.’

‘And you know this how?’

‘From the horse’s mouth. Directly from Paul Geezler.’

‘From Paul Geezler?’ Gibson sounded surprised. ‘Geezler is a temporary fix. He’s an assistant, remember, to a division director. When things become clearer they’ll move in some of the big guns.’

‘He’s HOSCO’s man in Amrah.’

‘For the moment. He’s cleaning up, they send in the junior staff when everything is messy.’

Parson disagreed. Geezler, he said, seemed canny. ‘Did you find anything about Howell’s office?’

‘I have a little of the information you asked for, but it isn’t much.’ Gibson appeared to be reading. ‘As far as I can tell there was no autopsy on the man who was killed, and no report has been released as yet on the damage to the office.’

‘Photos?’

‘None on public record. The demolished sections of the office were replaced almost immediately — as far as I know they were taken to one of the burn pits.’

‘So it’s gone?’

‘All gone. The thinking now is that whatever it was it detonated inside the building. But without the office to examine, and without any official report we aren’t going to know. The national bank was destroyed a month before in a similar attack, so even with these suspicions it still looks consistent with insurgent activity.’

Parson followed small passenger ferries leaving the harbour. ‘They’re blaming Sutler.’

‘I’m not surprised. Somebody has to be the poster boy for all of this damage.’

‘I want someone to make a mistake.’ Parson lifted up the last of the whisky and squinted through the bottle at the horizon, warping the boats and the pleasure craft.

4.3

Grüner rode by coach to the coast, then took a taxi from Izmir to Istanbul. Once in Istanbul he learned that the official recommended by Parson would not be in his office and was possibly en route to a conference in Cairo. Worse: despite an explicit guarantee the man had made no provision for their visas. Expecting similar bad news from Heida, Grüner headed directly to the airport in case he needed to book a flight. This is what they needed to do, get a flight, go anywhere, just out, away, someplace else. At the airport, armed guards monitored the loading bay, the entrances, the public areas; security checks slowed the flow of passengers leaving some areas empty and others over-full. Every flight, arriving, departing, delayed.

Heida’s call came earlier than Grüner expected and contained startling news.

‘I’ve seen Sutler, Stephen Sutler. The Englishman. In Ankara. He’s on the coach to Istanbul. He changed coaches in Ankara. He’ll be there early tomorrow morning.’ She first gave details of the coach, then details of the sighting. How remarkable to have spotted him, caught him walking right beside her. How arrogant! Her voice squeaked with delight. Forget the visas, just forget them. This gift, dropped into their laps by Providence herself, was a story of unprecedented scale. They had found Sutler, not once, but twice, and he was heading directly to Grüner.

‘He’s on the coach. He will arrive in nine hours. You must get to the coach station and make sure you are at the Asian terminus not the European terminus,’ she warned. ‘Take photographs. Follow him. Don’t let him see you. Don’t call the police. Wait for me before you contact anyone. Just follow and observe. I will be there by the afternoon. I will call. Make no mistakes.

* * *

Grüner took a taxi directly to the terminus. He checked the arrival times to make sure the service was running on time, then secured a room in the Hotel Lucerne overlooking the plaza where he could watch Sutler’s arrival undisturbed.

He slept for six hours then rose, waited at a window overlooking the city walls and watched the spare flow of traffic, a bare plaza, a scrubby park. He remembered that it snowed in the winter, but couldn’t imagine it given the present dust and heat. Not unimaginable so much as improbable. Although he still had two hours he kept on his feet, anxious that if he sat down he would fall asleep and miss it all. As dawn rose over the city he began to disbelieve Heida. How clearly had she seen this man, and for how long? She sounded certain, but then she always sounded certain. The longer he considered the coincidence the less possible it seemed. The man was nondescript, indistinct in his own mind, she could have spotted any number of people who looked like him. This would all be a mistake, without doubt, a misunderstanding.

As Grüner debated the possibilities three coaches drew into the terminus, and right before him, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and light trousers, squinting as he stepped down, came Sutler. The man himself. Grüner looked into his viewfinder, he focused on the coach, moved the camera carefully on its tripod until he had the man in his sights. He tracked after Sutler and continued to take photographs as the man walked alongside the wall — when it occurred to him that the man would soon be lost to the city if he did not hurry after him.

* * *

Easy to follow, the Englishman walked slowly and appeared uncertain. He stopped regularly to check street names, to look at signs, as if unclear of his direction. Grüner kept his distance and walked on the opposite side of the street. When the road widened into a boulevard he became more confident and crossed back over to walk behind the man, feeling the distance between them as something with substance.

The walk into the city took an hour. As the hour passed the streets became busier and Sutler began to avoid the main thoroughfares. He stopped to buy a black baseball hat from a street vendor. Once he reached the Heights it became clear that he was searching for a room.

Sutler booked into the Konak Hostel, room nine on the second floor, under the stout bulwarks of Aya Sofya. Grüner took a room on the first floor with a view of the courtyard through which Sutler would have to pass to reach the lobby. Everything looked good.