Notorious Read Free Page A

‘Usually it is the French who are considered the looters. The books taken from Danang and Hanoi. Napoleon’s foragings in Egypt and Spain.’ He examines his thumbnail and frowns. ‘You are here to arrest the woman.’
    ‘No.’ My voice is over-emphatic; above my supposed pay grade. ‘But she has information that is very important to certain people.’
    ‘And you?’
    For the first time, I am not sure what to say. ‘I won’t judge the poor woman.’
    ‘It is just a job to you.’
    I do not answer. I open the briefcase, place the envelope in front of him. His shoulders droop. He takes the money. I knew he would.
    Laforche insists on finishing his tea. To punish me. I make myself take another date. I chew it slowly. The time on my watch clicks over: another minute gone from forty-eight hours. And I’ve lost an hour in the flight from Casablanca. I try not to think of the time lost after I heard the news, time spent on my knees retching over the chipped toilet bowl recessed in the floor of the shabby bathroom in Hafid Street.
    Mitch is sure to have started the countdown from the moment he told me her whereabouts. There will be no extensions, no excuses.
    Laforche is offering me more of the local dates, unappetising papooses in a particularly malevolent yellow. I force another one down. More seconds tick over. Now he is wandering away. For God’s sake. I try not to think about Mitch and his goons coming in. Hurting her.
    I can feel the steady thud of the generator through the tiled floor. Sand is itching under my collar, my watchband. There are grains of sand under my fingernails. ‘We don’t get tea-breaks like this at the Embassy, I can tell you.’
    ‘You Americans,’ he says. ‘Always in such a hurry.’
    ‘Actually, I’m Australian.’ More seconds. Dust catches the back of my throat. I worry that grit will ruin my satellite phone. I check it on my belt, the red light is still winking. Next to the chair is my briefcase, a reassuring sentry. I swear there is more dust on the shining steel clasps than there was a moment before. I take out my handkerchief and dust its cool solidness: pure titanium, able to withstand being run over by a tank.
    Laforche is bent over the stereo system on the long mahogany sideboard. There is a clicking noise and he mutters about the generator. The watch ticks on.
    I am like a man going to the guillotine. I just want it to be over. I avert my gaze from the low window, the spackled sky, the Martian-red plain spread out behind the helicopter. The desk in front of me is almost bare: a few files, the embossed silver tea tray and teapot, a black and white photograph of a couple kissing in a very Parisian-looking café. The couple is seated in front of a mirror, in a booth, the seats covered with some dark lush material. The girl’s head is thrown back, lips parted, eyes half-closed. The man is not Laforche. I imagine a photo like that on my desk in the Hafid Street office or even in Canberra. There would be a moustache drawn on the girl, tits on the guy, within a day, within hours.
    There is glass over the photo. As I shift in my seat, I see myself reflected. I move immediately but it is too late. There is no sign of the happy, fleshy lover in Sicily; only a tall man whose cropped dark hair and designer suit and immaculately knotted silk tie can’t disguise the wary eyes and the tense jaw. The muscles chipped beyond health, the body turned wolfish. A once-sleek man teetering on the edge of gauntness, a physically strong man ravaged by darkness. By lack.
    I open the briefcase, take out my colour-coded schedule for the next three days. I have allotted three hours for the first interrogation.
    Once she knows she has been found, she would be a fool not to co-operate. Not to ask for mercy.
    Laforche has drifted over, a vinyl record in his hand. He stares at the chart with interest. He points to the few small green squares in the brick wall of red.
    ‘Leisure time,’ I say.
    He gives me