The Bone Clocks (38 page)

“Can’t complain, Tariq. Quiet day?”

“Today quiet. Thanks to God.”

“Is Big Mac back home already?”

“Yes, yes. The dude is in the bar.”

I tip Tariq and his three colleagues generously to tell me if outsiders are asking questions about me, and to be vague with their replies. Not that I can ever be sure Tariq isn’t pocketing fees from both sides, but the principle of the Golden Goose has held so far. From the porch I passed through the glass doors to the circular reception area, where a low-wattage lamp gleamed on the concierge’s desk. A mighty chandelier hangs overhead, but I’ve never seen it illuminated, and now it’s mightily cobwebbed. I never looked at it without imagining it crashing down. Mr. Khufaji, the manager, was helping a lad load used car batteries onto a luggage trolley. Dead batteries are exchanged for live ones every morning, like milk bottles when I was a kid. Guests use them to power laptops and sat-phones.

“Good evening, Mr. Brubeck,” said the manager, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “You’ll be needing your key.”

“Good evening, Mr. Khufaji.” I waited while he fetched it from the drawer. “Could I have one of those batteries, please?”

“Certainly. I’ll send the boy up when he returns.”

“Most kind.” We retain old-school manners, even if Baghdad has gone to hell and the Safir was less a five-star hotel and more of a serviced campsite inside a dead hotel.

“I thought I heard your dulcet tones.” Honduran cigar in hand, Big Mac appeared from the dingy bar that served as common room, rumor mill, and favor exchange. “What time do you call this?”

“Later than you, which means you’re buying the beers.”

“No no no, the deal was the
last
one back buys the beers.”

“That’s a shameless lie, Mr. MacKenzie, and you know it.”

“Hey. Shameless lies precipitate wars and make work for hungry hacks. Get any street action in Fallujah?”

“The cordon’s too tight. What about you day-trippers?”

“Waste of time.” Big Mac filled his lungs with cigar smoke. “Got to Camp Victory to be told the fighting had intensified, meaning the Marine Corps were too busy to keep our fat asses alive. We munched bullshit with press officers before being squeezed into a supply convoy heading back to Baghdad. Not the one that got IEDed into flying mince, obviously. You?”

“Better. We found a makeshift clinic for refugees from Fallujah, plus a shot-down Kiowa. Aziz took a few shots before a uniformed countryman of yours kindly suggested we leave.”

“Not bad, but”—Big Mac crossed the floor and lowered his voice, even though Mr. Khufaji had exited—“one of Vincent Agrippa’s ‘well-placed sources’ texted him twenty minutes ago about a ‘unilateral cease-fire’ coming into play tomorrow.”

I doubted that. “Mac, the Fallujah militia won’t roll over now. Perhaps as a regrouping exercise—”

“No, not the insurgents. The marines are standing down.”

“Bloody hell. Where is this source? General Sanchez’s office?”

“Nope. The army’ll be spitting cold shit over this. They’ll be, ‘If you’re going to take Vienna, take fucking Vienna.’ ”

“Do you think Bremer cooked this one up?”

“My friend: The Great Envoy couldn’t cook his own testes in a Jacuzzi of lava.”

“You’ll have to give me a clue, then, won’t you?”

“Since you’re buying the beers, here’s three.” Big Mac took a five-second cigar break. “C, I, and A. It’s a direct order from Dick Cheney’s office.”

“Vincent Agrippa has a source in the CIA? But he’s French! He’s a cheese-eating surrender monkey.”

“Vincent Agrippa has a source in God’s panic room, and it pans out. Cheney’s afraid that Fallujah’ll split the Coalition of the Willing—not that they’re a coalition, or willing, but hey. Join us for dinner after you’ve freshened up—guess what’s on the menu.”

“Could it be chicken and rice?” There were fifty dishes on the Safir’s official menu, but only chicken and rice was ever served.

“Holy shit, the man’s telepathic.”

“I’ll be down after slipping into something more comfortable.”

“Promises, promises, you tart.” Big Mac returned to the bar while I climbed up to the first landing—the elevators haven’t worked since 2001—the second, and the third. Through the window I looked across the oil-black Tigris at the Green Zone, lit up like Disneyland in Dystopia. I thought about J. G. Ballard’s novel
High Rise
, where a state-of-the-art London tower block is the vertical stage for civilization to unpeel itself until nothing but primal violence remains. A helicopter landed behind the Republican Palace, where this morning Mark Klimt had told us about the positive progress in Fallujah and elsewhere. What do Iraqis think about when they see this shining Enclave of Plenty in the heart of their city? I know, because Nasser, Mr. Khufaji, and others have told me: They think a well-lit, well-powered, well-guarded Green Zone is proof that the Americans
do
own a magic wand capable of restoring order to Iraq’s cities, but that anarchy makes a dense smokescreen behind which they can pipe away the nation’s oil. They’re wrong, but is their belief any more absurd than that of the 81 percent of Americans who believe in angels? I heard a
miaow
nearby and looked down to see a moon-gray cat melting out of the shadows. I bent down to say hello, which was the one and only reason why I wasn’t scalped like a boiled egg when the explosion outside blew in the glass windows on the western face of the Safir Hotel, filling its
unlit corridors with blast waves, filling our ear canals with solid roar, filling the spaces between atoms with the atonal chords of destruction.

I
TAKE ANOTHER
ibuprofen and sigh at my laptop screen. I wrote an account of the explosion on yesterday’s flight from Istanbul with dodgy guts and not enough sleep, and I’m afraid it shows: Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither. A statement from Rumsfeld about Iraq is due at eleven
A.M.
East Coast time, but that’s fifty minutes away. I click on the telly to CNN World with the sound down, but it’s only a White House reporter discussing what “a well-placed source close to the secretary of defense” thinks Rumsfeld might say when he comes on. On her bed, Aoife yawns and puts down her
Animal Rescue Ranger Annual 2004
. “Daddy, can you put
Dora the Explorer
on?”

“No, poppet. I was just checking something for work.”

“Is that big white building in Bad Dad?”

“No, it’s the White House. In Washington.”

“Why’s it white? Do only white people live in it?”

“Er … Yes.” I switch the TV off. “Naptime, Aoife.”

“Are we right under Granddad Dave and Grandma Kath’s room?”

I should be reading to her, really—Holly does—but I have to get my article done. “They’re on the floor above us, but not directly overhead.”

We hear seagulls. The net curtain sways. Aoife’s quiet.

“Daddy, can we visit Dwight Silverwind after my nap?”

“Let’s not start that again. You need a bit of shut-eye.”

“You told Mummy you were going to take a nap too.”

“I will, but you go first. I have to finish this article and email it to New York by tonight.”
And then tell Holly and Aoife that I won’t be at
The Wizard of Oz
on Thursday
, I think.

“Why?”

“Where d’you think money comes from to buy food, clothes, and
Animal Rescue Ranger
books?”

“Your pocket. And Mummy’s.”

“And how does it get in there?”

“The Money Fairy.” Aoife’s just being cute.

“Yeah. Well, I’m the Money Fairy.”

“But Mummy earns money at her job, too.”

“True, but London’s very expensive, so I need to earn as well.”

I think of a pithy substitute for the florid “spaces between atoms” line, but my inbox pings. It’s only from Air France, but when I get back to my article I’ve forgotten my pithy substitute.

“Why is London expensive, Daddy?”

“Aoife,
please
. I’ve got to work. Close your eyes.”

“Okay.” She lies down in a mock huff and pretends to snore like a Teletubby. It’s
really
annoying, but I can’t think of anything to say that’s sharp enough to shut Aoife up but not so sharp that she won’t burst into tears. Better wait this one out.

My first thought was
, I type,
I’m alive. My second—

“Daddy, why can’t I go to see Dwight Silverwind on my own?”

Don’t snap. “Because you’re only six years old, Aoife.”

“But I know the way to Dwight Silverwind’s! Out of the hotel, over the zebra crossing, down the pier, and you’re there.”

Look at mini-Holly. “Your fortune’s what you make it. Not what a stranger with a made-up name says. Now,
please
. Let me work.”

She snuggles up with her Arctic fox. Back to my article:
My first thought was, I’m alive. My second thought was, Stay down; if it was a rocket-propelled grenade attack, there could be more. My—

“Daddy, don’t you want to know what’ll happen in your future?”

I let a displeased few seconds pass. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because …” I think of Great-aunt Eilísh’s mystic Script, and Nasser’s family, and Major Hackensack, and cycling along the Thames estuary footpath on a hot day in 1984 and recognizing a girl lying on the shingly beach, in her
Quadrophenia
T-shirt, her jeans as black as her cropped hair, and asleep, with a duffel bag as a pillow, and thinking,
Cycle on, cycle on …
 And turning around. I shut my laptop, walk over to her bed, kick off my shoes, and lie
down next to her. “Because what if I found out something bad was going to happen to me—or, worse, Mum, or you—but couldn’t change it? I’d be happier not knowing so I could just … enjoy the last sunny afternoon.”

Aoife’s eyes are big and serious. “What if you
could
change it?”

I squeeze her hair at her crown so it makes a sort of samurai topknot. “What if I couldn’t, Little Miss Pineapple Head?”

“
Hey
, I’m not”—she yawns—“Pineapple Head.” I yawn too, and she says, “Ha! You caught my yawn.”

“Okay, I’ll take a snoozette with you.” This isn’t such a bad idea. Aoife’ll be out for an hour, at least, while I’ll wake up refreshed after a twenty-minute power nap, catch Rumsfeld’s latest denial, finish my article, and figure out how to tell Holly and the Cowardly Lion that I have to be in Cairo on Wednesday. “Sleep tight,” I tell Aoife, like Holly tells her. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“E
D
! ED!” I was dreaming Holly woke me up in a hotel room, her eyes panicky as a horse’s when it knows it’s going to die. It sounds like Holly’s saying “Where’s Aoife?” but she can’t be because Aoife’s asleep, next to me. Gravity’s wrong, my limbs are hollow, and I try to say, “What’s the matter?” Holly’s like someone doing a bad impression of Holly. “Ed, where’s Aoife?”

“Here.” I lift the blanket.

There’s only the Arctic fox.

Twenty thousand volts fry me into hyperalertness.

No need to panic. “In the bathroom.”

“I just looked! Ed! Where
is
she?”

“Aoife? Come out, Aoife! This isn’t funny!” I stand up and slip on
Animal Rescue Ranger Annual 2004
, fallen to the floor. I check the wardrobes; in the two-inch gap under the bed; and the bathroom, in the shower cubicle. My bones turn to warm Blu Tack.
She’s missing
. “She was here. We were having a nap, just a minute ago.” I look at the time on the TV frame: 16:20. Shit shit shit. I lurch over to the windows as if—as if I’ll see her waving up at me
from the teeming weekend crowds on the promenade below? My toe bangs something and the pain drills a hole: Aoife was asking where Dave and Kath’s room is; and why she couldn’t visit Dwight Silverwind. I look for Aoife’s sandals. Gone. Holly’s speaking but it’s like I’ve forgotten my English, it’s just vowels and consonants, and then she’s stopped, and is waiting for me to respond.

“Either she went to find you, or to your mum and dad’s room, or … or she’s gone to the fortune-teller down the pier. You go to your parents’ room. And tell Reception not to let a six-year-old girl in a—in a”—
fuck, what was she wearing?—
“a zebra T-shirt out of the building on her own. I’ll check the pier.” I ram my feet into my shoes, and as I leave the room Holly calls out, “Have you got your phone?” and I check and call back, “Yeah,” then hurry into the corridor, down to the lifts where two old ladies from Agatha Christie in flowery frocks are waiting by an aspidistra of prehistoric size in a vast bronze pot and I punch the Down button, but no lift comes, and I punch it and realize I’ve been mumbling, “Shit shit shit shit shit,” and the ladies are glaring, and finally it arrives, opens, and a Darth Vader points upwards with his light sabre and says, “Going up?” in a Belfast accent, and I’m walloped in the nuts by an image of Aoife up on the roof, so I get in. Miss Marple says, “We’re going down, but I must say your costume’s
splendid
.” No, what am I thinking? Any door onto the roof’d be locked, that’s stupid. Health and Safety. And, anyway, Aoife’s on the pier. I get out, just as the doors close, and bark my shin, making the doors open again and Darth Vader says, “Make your mind up, pal.” To the stairs. I follow the arrow marked
STAIRS
to another arrow marked
STAIRS
and follow that arrow to another and another and another. The carpet muffles my footfalls. Up ahead the two old ladies are getting into the lift so I shout, “HOLD THAT LIFT FOR ME!” and spring, like Michael Jordan, but trip over my undone laces and slide ten yards, friction-burning my Adam’s apple and the doors rumble shut, and maybe the Agatha Christies could’ve held the lift for me and maybe they couldn’t but they didn’t, the bitches, and I hammer the button with my thumb but the bastard thing’s gone and my trusting, innocent
daughter’s getting closer to that man on the pier, with his own lockable booth, who probably doesn’t even bother with underpants underneath his Merlin robes. I do up my laces, and step back, and the lift stops at “7,” and about a decade later it moves down to “6,” and stays there another decade, and a scream’s welling up, and then I notice stairs through a glass door, behind the aspidistra. For fuck’s sake! Down the echoey stairwell I pound, like an action hero with dodgy knees, but what sort of action hero nods off while he’s minding his only daughter, his only lovely, funny, perfect, fragile daughter? Down I run, floor after floor, on my Journey to the Center of the Earth, the smell of paint getting fumier, and past a decorator on stepladders: “Bloody hell take it easy mate or yer’ll slip and dash yer brains out!” I reach a door marked
EMERGENCY EXIT
with a grimy little window and a view of an underground loading bay, so it’s the back of the building when I need the front, and the door’s locked anyway, and why didn’t I just wait for the bloody lift? I hurtle along a service passage, skidding past a sign marked
LEVEL ZERO ACCESS
, and what’s this prodding certainty that I’m in a labyrinth not only of turnings and doors but decisions and priorities, that I’ve been in it not just a minute or two but ages, years, and that I took some bad turns many years ago that I can’t get back to, and I slam against a door marked
ACCESS
and turn the handle and pull but it doesn’t open—that’s because you’re supposed to push so I push—