The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (26 page)

This time the guard flicked through every page in Ford’s passport. He flicked back. Stopped at the page which showed a stamp for Iraq, alongside a handwritten date. The guard tipped the passport toward Ford.

‘Where is the exit?’

Ford looked at the page.

‘What was your purpose for travel?’

‘Now? Tourist.’

The man tilted the passport to show it to Ford and pointed to the stamp. An eagle against Arabic script. ‘This is the visa with the entry stamp.’

‘It’s the exit date. That’s when I left.’

‘And where did you go?’

‘I went to Syria.’

The guard turned the pages one by one.

‘There is no stamp for Syria. There is no exit stamp for Iraq.’

‘I have another passport.’

‘Show me.’

‘It’s out of date, it’s with the consulate in the UK. I have two passports for business. It’s not uncommon.’

The guard studied Ford’s face with undisguised irritation. ‘The entry stamp and the exit stamp are always on the same page, in the same passport.’ He turned one page and looked closely at the photo. ‘What consulate in the UK?’

‘London. I meant passport services, the passport office. Where it was issued. You confused me.’

The guard gave a single nod then turned to find his companion.

‘Look,’ Ford decided on another approach, ‘I obviously left because I’m here. If they didn’t stamp the passport it isn’t my problem.’

‘There is no entry and no exit from Syria? Did you go to Syria?’

‘I? Of course I went to Syria.’

‘And where were you in Syria?’

‘Damascus.’

‘And they did not stamp your passport. In or out?’

The second guard counted the passengers. He walked by Ford and the guard with a group of people and began to check through their baggage. Once he started the second guard called to the first, asking, Ford guessed, for assistance.

Ford feigned indifference. ‘I don’t see how this matters.’

The guard closed the passport but still held it in his hand. After a moment he gave it back to Ford, then joined his companion. A history here, Ford thought, of old dislikes, of neighbours who gain pleasure from small provocations, from nursing and enduring small hates.

A woman emptied a basket of fruits: oranges and grapefruit, of newspapers and pots, her face set in a sour pinch. The first official slouched over her, superior, impatient, and allowed himself to smile as the oranges rolled free across the deck.

And so they were allowed to continue. As the boat slipped away the guard turned his head to keep his eye on the boat, and Ford had the feeling that it wasn’t the boat that was being watched, but him.

The ferry docked at a pier beside a Crusader castle, a stout stone fort.

Ford changed a little money for euros. Suddenly hungry, he found a row of restaurants lining the portside, tables set in a small grove, branches hung with lights, large-screen TVs out on patios to show the football. Dinner deals, happy hour, laminated pictures of plates of food.

He watched two men arrive on bicycles. They sat close by and drank a beer each, quiet and rested, a sun-glow on their foreheads and arms. He followed them afterward to a pastry shop, watched them choose, and saw himself reflected in the cabinet fronts, as if, instead of two, they were three good friends.

In an afternoon spent waiting between ships he followed these men through the town, and felt himself slowly revive. How ordinary this all appeared. How regular. He imagined himself telling the two men that he was Stephen Sutler, but guessed that they would not recognize this name, or that they would not believe him.

4.9

Afan Zubenko opened the discussion with an apology.

‘My son is naive but he is not stupid. This man approaches him in the street and speaks to him, and my son is unaware that this is a dangerous man. A deviant. Personally,’ he said, ‘I say live and let live. But if one of these men makes an advance to my son or both of my sons, it is their business what they do . . .’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, it isn’t an issue which gives me any trouble. Cossack males are known to follow deviancy only in very rare cases, prison perhaps, and there are maybe one or two stories in our entire history that have the whiff of such deviancy. It is doubtful that you could find a full-blooded Cossack who would voluntarily take part in any such activity, as the girl, so to speak. The receiver. I cannot think of one example myself, not one case which involves a full-blooded Cossack. Historically, this is a weakness of the Greeks, the Italians, and of course your own people, who are particularly fond of this vice.’

‘Gerhard Grüner has made a report stating that he was bound to a chair and thrown down a flight of steps.’

‘None of this is true. We have no steps.’

‘These are serious claims. He has a broken leg and cuts to his shoulder and head. There has also been damage to his property.’

‘It has nothing to do with us. My sons did not touch him.’

The report from the hospital concurred. Grüner had not been beaten. He had escaped from the storeroom still strapped to the chair, a sight variously described as curious, very wrong, unnatural, like watching a dog run on its hind legs – he appeared to throw himself down the steps in a kind of apoplectic seizure.

‘The police are waiting to take your business apart.’

‘The police,’ Zubenko indicated the guard at the door, ‘are not interested in me or my sons.’

‘That might be, but there are a good number of people who are interested in Stephen Sutler, and they will examine every transaction, every piece of paper.’

Zubenko gave a short huff but remained silent.

‘What was he here for?’

‘I’ve told you, he had designs upon my son.’

‘Not the journalist. Stephen Sutler.’

‘I do not know that name.’

‘I’m curious about why you would do this for a person you don’t know?’

Zubenko seemed to sense Parson’s exhaustion and echoed his weariness. ‘Whatever I say you will search in any case, and you will find whatever you will find. Because this is what you want to do.’

‘I want to find the man you were photographed with. His name is Stephen Sutler. I don’t understand why would you risk anything for this man?’

‘Show me these photographs.’

Zubenko asked Parson for a cigarette. Parson took out his cigarettes and looked to the guard, who appeared so sleepy, so disengaged, they both could have walked free.

‘Bastian will cause you a great deal of trouble.’ Parson offered the packet, and Zubenko’s hand flicked quickly, dismissively at the guard.

‘Bastian? I have never heard of this man before today. He tells me that he is a cultural attaché. I tell him my sons like films, they go to museums, they like the art galleries, if he is a cultural attaché he should be speaking with my sons, I do not know him. I have not met him before. I have no dealings with a cultural attaché.’

‘He says that you know nothing.’

‘He says the same of you.’ Zubenko leaned forward for a light then took in a small breath. ‘Perhaps I don’t know so much. There are always conspiracies. But what do I know?’

Parson set the register on the table and began to leaf through. ‘Why did the police confiscate this?’ The information, from what he could see, appeared two years out of date.

‘Because they had to take something. Much like you, they cannot be seen to leave a building empty-handed.’

Parson idled through the pages and found bookings for trips, a small map at the front, everything long out of date.

‘My doctor,’ Zubenko continued, ‘allows me to smoke. He is irresponsible when he thinks that he is being realistic. If he demanded that I follow a more rigorous regimen I would do exactly as he asks.’ He drew in a long breath and held the smoke for the moment. ‘Between you and me, I have no objection to what you are doing. In three or four hours it will probably be over. The problems you are concerned with are happening a long way from here. The Americans are unhappy and they want a man who has stolen from them, and for this everyone will make a lot of trouble for themselves. A lot of trouble for you.’

There were, Zubenko became wistful, plenty of witnesses who would testify that the German had thrown himself down the steps like a crazy man. His two sons were educated men, trained in Germany and treated like Turks, so there were any number of reasons why they might feel disinclined to be courteous to a German journalist, although, personally, he could not imagine his sons being so rude.

Zubenko turned his attention to his register. His forefinger rested on the map.

‘What are you telling me? Malta? Is that what you are saying. He has gone to Malta?’

Zubenko gave a quick glance at the guard then looked hard at Parson and impatiently tapped the page. ‘I am not, personally, telling you anything.’

Parson waited for a call from Gibson. He stood at the window and looked out on a tiled courtyard at two cats. One on a stone seat, the other in a dry flowerbed stretched out in prickly disregard.

When Parson answered he gave his news in one clean breath: ‘I’ve found him. Sutler is in Malta.’

Gibson rushed him through the details. Parson described his meeting with Bastian.

‘People aren’t interested in Sutler any more. It’s gone so much further than that. Does it make any difference if HOSCO did or didn’t send other people on his trail?’

‘They send one man to look for a man who has stolen fifty-three million?’

‘That’s how it looked when it started. At the time no one had any idea it was this big. They have a team in Syria, they have a team in Iraq. I have it on good authority.’

‘From HOSCO?’

‘On good authority.’ Gibson’s voice rang with boredom.

‘What if Bastian is right, and Sutler is nothing more than a distraction?’

‘I don’t see the point.’

‘But that’s the point. All of this money is missing and no one’s interested in who did it or why. The entire budget for the Massive has disappeared. HOSCO is losing most of its government contracts. The company is being split into smaller units. Bastian is right. Sutler is a distraction. I don’t think they want to find him, not HOSCO, and not Washington. I don’t think they’re looking for any particular answer for any of this.’

‘You have to think about the bigger picture. This is about individuals who aren’t comfortable with their association with the entire thing. People who supported the idea from the start. It’s looking very embarrassing. Not only for HOSCO. There are people who backed the Massive who would rather it was all allowed to die down. HOSCO might be in pieces but these people want to survive.’ Gibson drew in breath. The technology transformed his voice to a powdery whine. ‘I need you back in Iraq. If the Americans aren’t happy it doesn’t matter. Time to pass this on. We’ve done everything they’ve asked.’ Gibson continued to explain himself in headmasterly terms, allowing no break, no opportunity for interruption, no avenue for disagreement. When the monologue stopped Parson found himself listening to static.

And so they expected him to return to Iraq.

Smarting from his discussions with Bastian then Gibson, Parson found a kiosk on the Heights overlooking the strait and sat with his back to the city. Talking to Gibson was a mistake, the man, isolated, knew only what others told him, and now because of this Parson had cancelled himself out of the investigation. Bastian’s assessment wasn’t wrong, no one was interested in Sutler any more, and by locating the man he’d completed his job.
Tell them you’ve found him and see what happens.

A late-afternoon fuzz settled between the hills as fog returned to the city from the sea. In front of him, attached to the side of a building, ran a row of billboards set to face the train track. In one image, an advert for a phone company, a smiling woman threw back her head, laughing perhaps; a tag line ran beneath her asking:
. . . where are your friends tonight?

Parson turned to face the city. None of this sat right. A disjointed view, a city made of parts and pieces, of apartments, offices, mosques, immediately behind him a church with minarets. What could he be certain about? Exactly what did he know? He knew that HOSCO, having suffered so many blows, could not afford further speculation or humiliation. The disintegration of the company was in process, not quite begun. No one wanted to hear about Sutler.

A new gesture needed to be struck.

He decided to speak with Geezler, blow a little smoke and see if he could revitalize his interest in Sutler. Quite how he would manage this he couldn’t imagine.

After three fortifying beers he called Paul Geezler directly. ‘I have him,’ he said. ‘Sutler. He’s headed to Malta.’

The response from Geezler sounded unenthusiastic, and Parson guessed that he had spoken with Gibson, that the matter was concluded. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

‘I think I know who he is. I know his name isn’t Sutler.’

Geezler said he hadn’t heard properly and Parson repeated the information.

‘His name isn’t Sutler. Do you know what a sutler is?’

‘So, what is his name?’

Parson hadn’t thought this through. He pinched the bridge of his nose to concentrate. ‘We should be looking at other employees. Maybe the reason we can’t find anything about Sutler in the UK is that he doesn’t live in the UK. Maybe he’s never worked there? Maybe he works somewhere else? Maybe he’s one of your employees from another region? You have people in Amman, Saudi, Afghanistan. We should be looking elsewhere, London is a distraction.’

‘Do you have any idea how many people we hire in Europe alone?’

‘Why Europe?’

‘Or Saudi. Or Kuwait.’

On a note beside his glass Parson had written ‘
Paul Geezler
’ and circled it twice. He needed a different kind of lever, this wasn’t going to work.

‘Do you know Sutler’s name?’

‘I know what his name means. I know this is a game. I know it’s not his real name.’

‘So, again, you have nothing for me?’

Parson turned the paper over and felt a sting: every time he spoke with Geezler the man asserted himself, humiliated him in small, indirect ways: through his exactness, through his precision, as if Parson would never surprise him, as if Parson would always fail to produce a result.