“Your textbook.”
Lang acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod and returned his gaze to the window. “Ah,” he said. “Here comes trouble.”
A small and determined figure in a blue windbreaker was striding down the path from the dunes, moving so rapidly that the policeman behind her had to break into an occasional loping run to keep up. The pointed hood was pulled down low to protect her face, and her chin was pressed to her chest, giving Ruth Lang the appearance of a medieval knight in a polyester visor, heading into battle.
“Adam, we’ve really got to put out a statement of our own,” said Amelia. “If you don’t say anything, or if you leave it too long, you’ll look—” She hesitated. “Well, they’ll draw their own conclusions.”
“All right,” said Lang. “How about this?” Amelia uncapped a small silver pen and opened her notebook. “Responding to Richard Rycart’s statement, Adam Lang made the following remarks: When a policy of offering one hundred percent support to the United States in the global war on terror was popular in the United Kingdom, Mr. Rycart approved of it. When it became unpopular, he disapproved of it. And when, due to his own administrative incompetence, he was asked to leave the Foreign Office, he suddenly developed a passionate interest in upholding the so-called human rights of suspected terrorists. A child of three could see through his infantile tactics in seeking to embarrass his former colleagues.’ End point. End paragraph.”
Amelia had stopped writing midway through Lang’s dictation. She was staring at the former prime minister, and if I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d swear the Ice Queen had the beginnings of a tear in one eye. He stared back at her. There was a gentle tap on the open door and Alice came in, holding a sheet of paper.
“Excuse me, Adam,” she said. “This just came over AP.”
Lang seemed reluctant to break eye contact with Amelia, and I knew then—as surely as I had ever known anything—that their relationship was more than merely professional. After what seemed an embarrassingly long interlude he took the paper from Alice and started to read it. That was when Ruth came into the study. By this time I was starting to feel like a member of an audience who has left his seat in the middle of a play to find a lavatory and somehow wandered onto the stage: the principal actors were pretending I wasn’t there, and I knew I ought to leave, but I couldn’t think of an exit line.
Lang finished reading and gave the paper to Ruth. “According to the Associated Press,” he announced, “sources in The Hague—whoever they may be—say the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court will be issuing a statement in the morning.”
“Oh, Adam!” cried Amelia. She put her hand to her mouth.
“Why weren’t we given some warning of this?” demanded Ruth. “What about Downing Street? Why haven’t we heard from the embassy?”
“The phones are disconnected,” said Lang. “They’re probably trying to get through now.”
“Never mindnow !” shrieked Ruth. “What fucking use isnow ? We needed to know about this a week ago! What are you people doing?” she said, turning her fury on Amelia. “I thought the whole point ofyou was to maintain liaison with the Cabinet Office? You’re not telling me they didn’t know this was coming?”
“The ICC prosecutor is very scrupulous about not notifying a suspect if he’s under investigation,” said Amelia. “Or the suspect’s government, for that matter. In case they start destroying evidence.”
Her words seemed to stun Ruth. It took her a beat to recover. “So that’s what Adam is now? A suspect?” She turned to her husband. “You need to talk to Sid Kroll.”
“We don’t actually know what the ICC are going to say yet,” Lang pointed out. “I should talk to London first.”
“Adam,” said Ruth, addressing him very slowly, as if he had suffered an accident and might be
concussed, “if it suits them, they will hang you out to dry. You need a lawyer. Call Sid.”
Lang hesitated, then turned to Amelia. “Get Sid on the line.”
“And what about the media?”
“I’ll issue a holding statement,” said Ruth. “Just a sentence or two.”
Amelia pulled out her mobile and started scrolling through the address book. “D’you want me to
draft something?”
“Why doesn’the do it?” said Ruth, pointing at me. “He’s supposed to be the writer.”
“Fine,” said Amelia, not quite concealing her irritation, “but it needs to go out immediately.”
“Hang on a minute,” I said.
“I should sound confident,” Lang said to me, “certainly not defensive—that would be fatal. But I
shouldn’t be cocky, either. No bitterness. No anger. But don’t say I’m pleased at this opportunity to clear my name, or any balls like that.”
“So,” I said, “you’re not defensive but you’re not cocky, you’re not angry but you’re not pleased?”
“That’s it.”
“Then what exactly are you?”
Surprisingly, under the circumstances, everybody laughed.
“I told you he was funny,” said Ruth.
Amelia abruptly held up her hand and waved us to be quiet. “I have Adam Lang for Sidney Kroll,” she said. “No, I won’t hold.”
I WENT DOWNSTAIRS WITHAlice and stood behind her shoulder while she sat at a keyboard, patiently waiting for the ex–prime minister’s words to flow from my mouth. It wasn’t until I started contemplating what Lang should say that I realized I hadn’t asked him the crucial question: had he actually ordered the seizure of those four men? That was when I knew that of course he must have done, otherwise he’d simply have denied it outright at the weekend, when the original story broke. Not for the first time, I felt seriously out of my depth.
“I have always been a passionate—” I began. “No, scrub that. I have always been a strong—no, committed —supporter of the work of the International Criminal Court.” Had he been? I’d no idea. I assumed he had. Or, rather, I assumed he’d always pretended he had. “I have no doubt that the ICC will quickly see through this politically motivated piece of mischief making.” I paused. I felt it needed one more line, something broadening and statesmanlike. What would I say if I were him? “The international struggle against terror,” I said, in a sudden burst of inspiration, “is too important to be used for the purposes of personal revenge.”
Lucy printed it, and when I took it back up to the study I felt a curious bashful pride, like a schoolboy handing in his homework. I pretended not to see Amelia’s outstretched hand and showed it first to Ruth (at last I was learning the etiquette of this exile’s court). She nodded her approval and slid it across the desk to Lang, who was listening on the telephone. He glanced at it silently, beckoned for my pen, and inserted a single word. He tossed the statement back to me and gave me the thumbs-up.
Into the telephone he said, “That’s great, Sid. And what do we know about these three judges?”
“Am I allowed to see it?” said Amelia, as we went downstairs.
Handing it over, I noticed that Lang had added “domestic” to the final sentence: “The international struggle against terror is too important to be used for the purposes ofdomestic personal revenge.” The brutal antithesis of “international” and “domestic” made Rycart appear even more petty.
“Very good,” said Amelia. “You could be the new Mike McAra.”
I gave her a look. I think she meant it as a compliment. It was always hard to tell with her. Not that I cared. For the first time in my life I was experiencing the adrenaline of politics. Now I saw why Lang was so restless in retirement. I guessed this was how sport must feel, when played at its hardest and fastest. It was like tennis on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Rycart had fired his serve low across the net, and we had lunged for it, got our racket to it, and shot the ball right back at him, with added spin. One by one the telephones were reconnected and immediately began ringing, demanding attention, and I heard the secretaries feeding my words to the hungry reporters:“I have always been a committed supporter of the work of the International Criminal Court.” I watched my sentences emailed to the news agencies. And within a couple of minutes, on the computer screen and on television, I started seeing and hearing them all over again (“In a statement issued in the last few minutes, the former prime minister says…”). The world had become our echo chamber.
In the middle of all this, my own phone rang. I jammed the receiver to one ear and had to put my finger in the other to hear who was calling. A faint voice said, “Can you hear me?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s John Maddox, from Rhinehart in New York. Where the hell are you? Sounds like you’re in a madhouse.”
“You’re not the first to call it that. Hold on, John. I’ll try to find somewhere quieter.” I walked out into the passage and kept following it round to the back of the house. “Is that better?”
“I’ve just heard the news,” said Maddox. “This can only be good for us. We should start with this.”
“What?” I was still walking.
“This war crimes stuff. Have you asked him about it?”
“Haven’t had much chance, John, to be honest.” I tried not to sound too sarcastic. “He’s a little tied up right now.”
“Okay, so what’ve you covered so far?”
“The early years—childhood, university—”
“No, no,” said Maddox impatiently. “Forget all that crap.This is what’s interesting. Get him to focus on this. And he mustn’t talk to anyone else about it. We need to keep this absolutely exclusive to the memoirs.”
I’d ended up in the solarium, where I’d spoken to Rick at lunchtime. Even with the door closed I could still hear the faint noise of the telephones ringing on the other side of the house. The notion that Lang would be able to avoid saying anything about illegal kidnapping and torture until the book came out was a joke. Naturally I didn’t put it in quite those terms to the chief executive of the third largest publishing house in the world. “I’ll tell him, John,” I said. “It might be worth your while talking to Sidney Kroll. Perhaps Adam could say that his lawyers have instructed him not to talk.”
“Good idea. I’ll call Sid now. In the meantime, I want you to accelerate the timetable.”
“Accelerate?” In the empty room my voice sounded thin and hollow.
“Sure. Accelerate. As in speed things up. Right at this moment, Lang is hot. People are starting to get interested in him again. We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip.”
“Are you now saying you want the book inless than a month?”
“I know it’s tough. And it’ll probably mean settling for just a polish on a lot of the manuscript rather than a total rewrite. But what the hell. No one’s going to read most of that stuff anyway. The earlier we go, the more we’ll sell. Think you can do it?”
No, was the answer. No, you bald-headed bastard, you psychopathic prick—have you seriously read this junk? You must be out of your fucking mind. “Well, John,” I said mildly, “I can try.”
“Good man. And don’t worry about your own deal. We’ll pay you just as much for two weeks’ work as we would for four. I tell you, if this war crimes thing comes off, it could be the answer to our prayers.”
By the time he hung up, two weeks had somehow ceased to be a figure plucked at random from the air and had become a firm deadline. I would no longer conduct forty hours of interviews with Lang, ranging over his whole life. I would get him to focus specifically on the war on terror, and we would begin the memoir with that. The rest I would do my best to improve, rewriting where I could.
“What if Adam isn’t keen on this?” I asked, in what proved to be our final exchange.
“He will be,” said Maddox. “And if he isn’t, then you can just remindAdam ”—his tone implied we were just a pair of faggoty Englishmen—“of his contractual obligation to produce a book that gives us a full and frank account of the war on terror. I’m relying on you. Okay?”
It’s a melancholy place to be, a solarium when there’s no sun. I could see the gardener in exactly the same spot where he had been working the day before, stiff and clumsy in his thick outdoor clothes, still piling leaves in his wheelbarrow. No sooner had he cleared away one lot of detritus than the wind blew in more. I permitted myself a brief moment of despair, leaning against the wall, my head tilted to the ceiling, pondering the fleeting nature of summer days and of human happiness. I tried to call Rick, but his assistant said he was out for the afternoon, so I left a message asking him to ring me back. Then I went in search of Amelia.
She wasn’t in the office, where the secretaries were still fielding calls, or the passage, or the kitchen. To my surprise, one of the policemen told me she was outside. It must have been after four by now and getting cold. She was standing in the turning circle in front of the house. In the January gloom, the tip of her cigarette glowed bright red as she inhaled, then faded to nothing.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you were a smoker,” I said.
“I only ever allow myself one. And then only at times of great stress or great contentment.”
“Which is this?”
“Very funny.”
She had buttoned her jacket against the chilly dusk and was smoking in that curious noli me tangere way that a certain kind of woman does, with one arm held loosely against her waist and the other—the one with the hand holding the cigarette—slanted across her breast. The fragrant smell of the burning tobacco in the open air made me crave a cigarette myself. It would have been my first in more than a decade, and it would have started me back on forty a day for sure, but still, at that moment, if she’d offered me one, I would have taken it.
She didn’t.
“John Maddox just called,” I said. “Now he wants the book in two weeks instead of four.”
“Christ. Good luck.”
“I don’t suppose there’s the faintest chance of my sitting down with Adam for another interview today, is there?”
“What do you think?”
“In that case, could I have a lift back to my hotel? I’ll do some work there instead.”
She exhaled smoke through her nose and scrutinized me. “You’re not planning to take that manuscript out of here, are you?”
“Of course not!” My voice always rises an octave when I tell a lie. I could never have become a politician: I’d have sounded like Donald Duck. “I just want to write up what we did today, that’s all.”
“Because you do realize how serious this is getting, don’t you?”
“Of course. You can check my laptop if you want.”
She paused just long enough to convey her suspicion. “All right,” she said, finishing her cigarette. “I’ll trust you.” She dropped the stub and extinguished it delicately with the pointed toe of her shoe, then stooped and retrieved it. I imagined her at school, similarly removing the evidence: the head girl who was never caught smoking. “Collect your stuff. I’ll get one of the boys to take you into Edgartown.”
