The Ghost Read online

  ‘Shit!’

  She tilted the screen towards me, then sat back in her chair in disbelief. I bent to read it.

  The web page was headed ‘Breaking News’:

  January 27, 2:57 PM (ET)

  NEW YORK (AP) – Former British Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart has asked the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate allegations that the former British Prime Minister Adam Lang ordered the illegal handover of suspects for torture by the CIA.

  Mr Rycart, who was dismissed from the Cabinet by Mr Lang four years ago, is currently the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs, and an outspoken critic of US foreign policy. Mr Rycart maintained at the time he left the Lang government that he was sacked for being insufficiently pro-American.

  In a statement issued from his office in New York, Mr Rycart said he had passed a number of documents to the ICC some weeks ago. The documents – details of which were leaked to a British newspaper at the weekend – allegedly show that Mr Lang, as prime minister, personally authorized the seizure of four British citizens in Pakistan five years ago.

  Mr Rycart went on: “I have repeatedly asked the British government, in private, to investigate this illegal act. I have offered to give testimony to any inquiry. Yet the government have consistently refused even to acknowledge the existence of Operation Tempest. I therefore feel I have no alternative except to present the evidence in my possession to the ICC.”

  ‘The little shit,’ whispered Amelia.

  The telephone on the desk started ringing. Then another on a small table beside the door chimed in. Nobody moved. Lucy and Alice looked at Amelia for instructions, and as they did, Amelia’s mobile, which she had in a little leather pouch on her belt, set up its own electronic warble. For the briefest of moments I saw her panic – it must have been one of the very few occasions in her life when she didn’t know what to do – and in the absence of any guidance, Lucy started reaching for the phone on the desk.

  ‘Don’t!’ shouted Amelia, then added, more calmly, ‘Leave it. We need to work out a line to take.’ By now a couple of other phones were trilling away in the recesses of the house. It was like noon in a clock factory. She took out her mobile and examined the incoming number. ‘The pack is on the move,’ she said, and turned it off. For a few seconds she drummed her fingertips on the desk. ‘Right. Unplug all the phones,’ she instructed Alice, with something of her old confidence back in her voice, ‘then start surfing the main news sites on the web to see if you can discover anything else Rycart might be saying. Lucy – find a television and monitor all the news channels.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Is Ruth still out walking? Shit! She is, isn’t she?’

  She grabbed her black and red book and clattered off down the corridor on her high heels. Unsure of what I was supposed to do, or even exactly what was happening, I decided I’d better follow her. She was calling for one of the Special Branch men. ‘Barry! Barry!’ He stuck his head out of the kitchen. ‘Barry, please find Mrs Lang and get her back here as soon as you can.’ She started climbing the stairs to the living room.

  Once again, Lang was sitting motionless, exactly where I had left him. The only difference was that he had his own small mobile phone in his hand. He snapped it shut as we came in.

  ‘I take it from all the telephone calls that he’s issued his statement,’ he said.

  Amelia spread her hands wide in exasperation. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Tell you before I’d told Ruth? I don’t think that would have been very good politics, do you? Besides, I felt like keeping it to myself for a while. Sorry,’ he said to me, ‘for losing my temper.’

  I was touched by his apology. That was graciousness in adversity, I thought. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said.

  ‘And have you?’ asked Amelia. ‘Told her?’

  ‘I wanted to break it to her face to face. Obviously, that’s no longer an option, so I just called her.’

  ‘And how did she take it?’

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘The little shit,’ repeated Amelia.

  ‘She should be back any minute.’

  Lang got to his feet and stood looking out of the window with his hands on his hips. I smelt again the sharp tang of his sweat. It made me think of an animal at bay. ‘He wanted very much to let me know there was nothing personal,’ said Lang, with his back to us. ‘He wanted very very much to tell me that it was only because of his well-known stand on human rights that he felt he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.’ He snorted at his own reflection. ‘His well-known stand on human rights …Dear God.’

  Amelia said, ‘Do you think he was taping the call?’

  ‘Who knows? Probably. Probably he’s going to broadcast it. Anything’s possible with him. I just said, “Thank you very much, Richard, for letting me know,” and hung up.’ He turned round, frowning. ‘It’s gone unnervingly quiet down there.’

  ‘I’ve had the phones unplugged. We need to work out what we’re going to say.’

  ‘What did we say at the weekend?’

  ‘That we hadn’t seen what was in The Sunday Times and had no plans to comment.’

  ‘Well, at least we now know where they got their story.’ Lang shook his head. His expression was almost admiring. ‘He really is after me, isn’t he? A leak to the press on Sunday, preparing the ground for a statement on Tuesday. Three days of coverage instead of one, building up to a climax. This is straight out of the textbook.’

  ‘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 cagoule 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 per cent 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 on to 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 mind now!’ shrieked Ruth. ‘What fucking use is now? 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 of you 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?’

  ‘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’t he 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, he won’t hold.’

  *

  I went downstairs with Alice 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 realised 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 off, 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 of domestic 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 adrenalin 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. Immediately they 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 speaking 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 in less 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 remind Adam’ – his tone implied we were just a pair of faggoty Englishmen, conspiring to rob a red-blooded American – ‘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 back 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.