Deep Black (9 page)

I thought about Zina. I’d never forget the look on her face as she posed for me, just fifteen and daring to dream for a microsecond of being Kate Moss. Then I thought about her and thousands like her getting killed so justice could be seen to be done. Well, it wasn’t my kind of justice, but this wasn’t the time or the place . . . Fuck it, so what? That was over ten years ago. It’s all history now.

We stopped by the news-stand outside the Metro. ‘Good luck, mate. I hope you get to take your photograph, and when there’s world peace I’ll be blaming you for it.’ I put my hand out to shake his.

He hesitated. ‘You know what? Why don’t you come with me?’ He did his best to make me think the idea had only just occurred to him.

‘No, mate. I don’t do that sort of—’

‘Ah, come on. We’ll be there for a week at the most.’

I put my hand out again and this time he took it. ‘I’ve got to go, mate. I hope it all works out for you.’

‘I could do with a white guy out there, Nick.’ He looked me straight in the eye, and held my hand in both of his. ‘Think about it. Promise me that much. I’m going to London Saturday, got a deal going with the
Sunday Telegraph
. Then head for Baghdad Tuesday.’

He finally let go of my hand and pulled out his business card and a pen. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Nick, I’m offering you a job. How does ten per cent plus expenses sound to you?’

I didn’t want his money. I didn’t need anyone’s money. It wasn’t as if I had any more school fees to pay.

He gave me the pen and a second card and I wrote down my mobile number.

‘Listen,’ I passed the pen and card back, ‘here’s my number, but only so we can have another beer when you get back.’ I turned to go into the subway, fishing in my pocket for some coins to buy a token.

He called after me, ‘Think about it?’

I gave him a wave as I went through the barrier.

18

The Metro rolled smoothly beneath Washington with me and twenty-odd other people in the carriage. It sounded like Beardilocks had come a long way since the concrete factory. He’d moved on, but had I? Zina and the other poor fuckers who’d been dropped by Mladic’s crew hadn’t, that was for sure.

I’d never admitted this to Ezra, but I still felt guilty when I thought about that day. What if I’d called in the fast jets earlier? Maybe Sarajevo had only made the decision not to attack a minute or two before I eventually pressed the button. Maybe if I hadn’t delayed the Paveway would have been dropped. Some of the Muslims would have got killed, but more would have survived. Zina might have been one of them.

Fuck it, as I kept telling Ezra, it was all history. And talking of history, Beardilocks might be spreading the good news for now, but he’d soon be dead as well. Look what happened to Gandhi. I hoped Jerry got the shot: it might be the last one anyone took of him.

I got off at Georgetown and took the escalator to the heart of Fortress America. There seemed to be barriers and policemen whichever way you turned. The Brit shop near the mall was normally five minutes’ walk, but today it took at least ten. I stocked up on Yorkshire tea, a couple of party-size jars of Branston, bread and the last four bricks of Cracker Barrel Cheddar, then headed straight back to the station.

I got out at Crystal City. The sinking feeling was back in the pit of my stomach. I knew what the rest of the day held, and the next. Long hours in front of the TV, cuddling a jar of Branston and a mug of monkey, working out when I was actually going to buy the bike and when to get on the thing and fuck off. George was going to let me use the apartment, but only until he had the wrong yoghurt for breakfast and decided to chuck me out. I needed to go soon.

My cell rang. Only three people knew the number, and I wasn’t expecting a call from any of them. I put down the carrier and flapped about in my jacket pocket to drag it out and check the screen: number withheld.

It might be George, changing his mind and telling me to get out of the building. Maybe Ezra wanted to change our next appointment. That would be an interesting call. No, he’d have been told by now that I’d binned George and, in turn, him. So maybe he was checking that I hadn’t swallowed the pharmacy and wasn’t about to jump off the Arlington Memorial Bridge. I just hoped it wasn’t Jerry.

‘Nick?’ It was a woman’s voice.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Renee. Jerry’s wife?’

This was much worse. ‘Hi – how have you been since an hour ago?’

She laughed slightly awkwardly, then went serious on me. ‘Jerry doesn’t know I’m calling. He’s painting the kitchen. Can we meet? I need to talk.’

‘What about?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you. I’m going to Costco now, at Crystal City. You know where it is?’

I could virtually spit at it from my apartment. ‘No, but I’ll take the Metro.’

She gave me directions from the station but I wasn’t listening. The only thing I was thinking about was that I’d said yes without realizing it. ‘It’ll take me about forty minutes to get down there. So meet in an hour? I’ll wait outside for you. It’s really important to me.’

‘OK.’

‘Thank you, Nick. Thank you . . .’

I put the cell back in my pocket, and headed for the flat. What the fuck was that all about? I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

I got to Costco early and sat on a bench outside the entrance by the vending machines. The Pentagon was walking distance away, so the whole place was crawling with people in freshly starched and pressed camouflage BDUs, grocery basket in hand instead of an M16. It felt like the world’s biggest Naafi.

I hadn’t seen her arrive, but about twenty-five minutes later Renee was walking towards me. Chloë was slumped in a front-loading harness, surrounded by her mum’s hairy nylon coat.

I stood up. ‘Hello.’

‘No problems getting here?’

‘None at all.’

Chloë was sound asleep, her head to one side and dribbling. Weren’t babies’ heads supposed to be supported? Fuck, what was happening to me? I was turning into a German grandmother.

‘Nick, I haven’t got long. Do you mind if we shop and talk? I don’t want Jerry getting worried up because I’m late back.’

She collected a trolley and we went inside. Chloë’s head lolled from side to side but she didn’t wake. Renee didn’t know the layout of the aisles yet, but was soon throwing in nappies, baby lotion, bags of fruit. She didn’t really have a shopping plan. It was just kit-in-the-trolley stuff. I knew it well.

‘Jerry told me he asked you to go with him to Baghdad next week.’

‘He sounds pretty excited about this guy. But I can’t go.’

She threw in a six-pack of tuna. ‘He’s got it into his head that this could be the last chance he ever gets to take a great picture. It’s like he sees the
Washington Post
as the end of the line.’

We moved along the aisle.

‘Problem is, Nick, I want him to stay here and paint the apartment and do family stuff with me and Chloë, but at the same time I don’t want him to feel I’m standing in his way.’ She looked up and smiled about her predicament.

I was feeling uncomfortable. This should have been just between the two of them. It was their problem, not mine.

‘I know he appears the cool guy, but he’s incredibly vulnerable. This Nuhanovic thing has got him not seeing straight. I can’t stop myself thinking about Chloë being an orphan. I wake up at night and—’ The trolley was filling. She sniffed. She was on the verge of tears. ‘I love him for it, but—’ She stopped and stared straight ahead. ‘I had this thought, you see . . .’

‘What’s that?’

‘Go with him.’

I looked her in the eye, focusing beyond the tears. ‘I don’t know what he’s told you, but I’m not really in that line of work any more.’

She smiled knowingly as one dropped on to Chloë’s hat. ‘Oh, c’mon, Jerry’s told me a million times about the man who saved his life in Bosnia, and I’m pretty sure advertising isn’t the business he’s just got out of.’

‘I don’t do that other stuff any more.’

‘I’ll beg if you want me to . . .’

I lifted a hand.

She touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. Unfair of me, I know. But I’m going out of my mind here. When you turned up today I thought, well, maybe . . .’

She stroked Chloë’s head as her eyes searched mine. ‘I believe him: this will be the last job. But I want him back safely.’

19

I went through the underground shopping arcade at the Crystal City Metro and came out the other side. Dead ahead were the five tall grey concrete apartment blocks that I still called home. They were so drab they wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Sarajevo suburb, which probably explained why the concierge of my block was Bosnian.

Jerry’s offer had stirred up all kinds of stuff, and my head was like a washing-machine with a full load on. You usually regret more the things you don’t do than those you do. Maybe this was one of those times. But then again, it could be a total gang fuck. I knew the best thing to do. Go shopping for the bike, pack and fuck off south. At least there’d be some sun.

I got into the lift. But it would be great to do some work again, wouldn’t it? After all, I’d just be holding a photographer’s hand as we drove to this ayatollah’s hotel.

Back in the apartment, I put some bread in the toaster, cut up a bit of Cracker Barrel, and made myself a big mug of tea. There’d be no harm in running a few basic checks on Jerry in case I met up with him again. I only knew what he’d told me, and words have always been cheap. I checked Baby-G – 15:14: nearly time for the afternoon talk shows but, just for a change, I was beginning to feel I had something better to do.

I got online as I shoved the first slice of toasted cheese into my mouth, and kicked off with a Google search on ‘Jeral al-Hadi’. There were 418 results. Adding a photograph to the search brought it down to 202. The first few seemed to back up what he’d told me about his life since we last met. I’d go back to them if all else failed, but for now it was enough to know that Jerry’s career curve had taken an impressively vertical trajectory since Bosnia days. His work had appeared in
Time
and
Newsweek
, and he’d just missed the Pulitzer short list in 2001 for his photo reports from Ground Zero.

I took a swig of my brew. It was a pity I couldn’t be doing this officially, using Hot Black’s facilities. I could have logged straight on to Intelink and got a shedload of background much more quickly. All the same, it’s scary what anyone can come up with after just an hour or three on the net.

I did a new Google search, this time for ‘people finder + USA’. What I wanted was a company that ran checks on social-security numbers, past addresses, even the names and telephone numbers of neighbours, in any of the fifty states. The first link I clicked looked perfect. On their home page, I entered Jerry’s name and state, and immediately got a list of addresses, probably everywhere he’d lived over the last ten years. It even gave his age, thirty-three. I clicked the link against the most recent address, in Buffalo, and it gave a phone number. I wasn’t surprised not to find the DC address at the top: they’d only just moved, and the database hadn’t caught up.

So far so good, but there was a lot more I could find out. So why not? Various services were on offer, from basic background at $39.95, to due diligence with criminal search at $295. The more comprehensive the search, the longer it took. I checked the delivery times and signed up for the best I could get: the $59.95 advanced background search sounded good to me. It promised everything from aliases and bankruptcy proceedings, to boat ownership and criminal records. Everything, in fact, apart from his shoe size.

I keyed in my credit-card number and details, chose a user name and password, and was told to check my email box in two hours. I then forked out an extra $19.95 for the marital-records service, suggesting they started with Buffalo.

I then ran a name check for Renee al-Hadi but drew a blank. Some states had direct online marriage databases. They all got the al-Hadi question as I waited for the paid information to come through, including Nevada. But they hadn’t run away to Las Vegas and got married by a Sikh Elvis impersonator at a drive-thru house of love. Shame, it sounded like fun. I’d just have to wait for the New York state records to come through, and take it from there.

I logged on to anybirthday.com and entered Chloë al-Hadi. There was only one, and it gave her date of birth as 9 May 2003.

If I could, I wanted to find something linking Jerry to the DC address. Telephone databases were most likely to be up to date; I went to any-who.com and keyed in the number on his card. Sure enough, the reverse number lookup gave me the new apartment.

Next Google search was for ‘dating + background check’. I got another search company, this time one that helped run checks on prospective dates, maybe people you’d met through the internet. It looked like it was just as healthy to be paranoid in the dating game as it was in my ex-line of work. I wanted to cover all the angles, and if the results didn’t correlate, I’d need to know the reason why.

I now had nothing to do but wait while they did their stuff and got back to me. I went into the kitchen and got more tea and toasted cheese under way. This was basic stuff I was doing, at the very bottom of the intelligence food chain, but it felt good to be doing something familiar at last. It beat going the best of three falls with my psyche in Ezra’s office, or watching others do the same thing on
Gerald Rivera
, that was for sure.