Skin in the Game, page 32
*
Kate twists the water from the towel in a bowl and wipes Joe’s face. She turns to the lamp on the table, watching the shadows on the walls as the light flickers. She lights one of Joe’s cigarettes and inhales deeply, then blows the smoke up through the fan above. She passes the cigarette to Joe.
“And so, you and Sofi returned with Frank and Michele. Is that how things ended, Joe?”
“Yes.”
Kate pauses, briefly turns away from Joe and then gazes directly into his eyes. He looks in pain.
“But, Joe, you know this isn’t true. You understand that, don’t you? This is how you wish it had ended. But this was not to be your ending, was it, Joe? Was it?”
Joe presses his head back into the mattress. Sweat rolls down the sides of his face. He twists his head from side to side.
“I saved her. You see, I had to save her. I must save her … Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”
Joe pounds his fists into the bed. Kate leans over him and presses her hands down on his shoulders.
“Joe, please.”
She struggles as he resists. He screams up to the ceiling, his body writhing. Just inches from his face, she looks into his eyes.
“Stop, Joe.” He turns his head to her and sighs.
“To see one image with two eyes.”
Both are silent, listening to the rhythm of water dripping from the tap.
CHAPTER XIII
Joe walks ahead as he and Kate wander through the narrow winding lanes of Al Bastakiya. Sand-colored houses blend into one another, distinct from each other only by the towers catching wind through long vertical vents, recycling the air for the surrounding structures. The lanes are unsigned, one leading into the next.
Joe stops at various points along the way, gazing at the designs carved into the walls and doors. Foliage motifs govern the view from a distance; up close, geometry governs the minute composition of shades. Arabic calligraphy adorns the spaces in between, the curves and patterns drawing him deeper into a trance, hidden meanings presenting themselves at every corner.
Kate feels the sweat trickling down her back.
“We’re circling back on ourselves.”
He pays no heed and continues walking ahead. The lane opens up to a sand-covered square lined with Bedouin tents and camels resting on their knees. Beyond, the hustle and bustle of the souk has begun for the day. Barrels of spices—yellow, red, brown and green—line the pathway. The scents of cardamom, bark, turmeric, chili and curry floats through the air. Behind, vegetables and brass ornaments and rugs are laid out randomly for sale.
Kate watches Joe drift aimlessly forward like a ghost, as the merchants scurry back and forth in his path. As she gets closer to him, he moves further away. As she understands more of what’s inside him, it all becomes further out of bounds. She drags her feet along the sandy path, no clue as to where they are going. The bazaar continues ahead, twists and turns masking where it ends.
“Do you think you will find her here, Joe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you go back to where you were with her?”
Joe sits on a ragged wall made of rock. Kate stands beside him, facing him.
“How did you lose her?”
He looks up to the sun, blinded by the light.
“Life is a violent encounter with intensities. At any given moment, a split between the closing of the ego and the opening of the heart.”
He lowers his head. She rests her palm on his forearm.
“Memories we create with every action we take. With every action, a choice. A decision made on how time will unfold. A fork in the path.”
They rent a small car and make their way out of the city. Just as they pass the city limits, the towers of an enormous residential complex rising out of the sand loom in the distance. There is still construction work, but the foundations have been built and the frame for the first twenty-five or thirty floors is in place. Joe turns to Kate, with a confused look on his face.
“What is it?”
“The pit has been filled in. The service roads to the bottom are gone. The only way in is through the entrance ramp down to each level of the parking lot.”
Joe turns into the lot. It is vacant and unfinished. The concrete has been put in place but nothing more. They drive down to the lowest floor and park the car.
“It’s hard to know. But I believe this would have been the place.”
He walks toward the center of the lot, which now houses the elevator shaft and stairs.
“There was a room built here. There were cells. It’s gone now, but I feel it. We were here.”
Kate looks behind her.
“We seem to be alone. Do you want to stay here for a while and talk?”
“I’m sure we’re not alone. It doesn’t matter. They’ve kept us alive this long. They aren’t going to do anything now.”
They sit on a concrete ledge, facing the center of the building. Kate watches Joe as he sits firm.
“Is anything coming to you?”
Kate leans her head back and glances at him. His head is shaking. He looks about to give up. Feel what he is feeling.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“I don’t know either. We’re caught in some kind of maze.”
Kate studies his face.
“How we see the world reflects how we see ourselves. So, how do we get out of the maze, Joe?”
“There are many stories we tell ourselves. And when we tell the same story over and over again, it becomes reality. Some manipulate our desire to see things in terms of stories.”
Kate looks past Joe’s shoulders, but sees only concrete. She rests her hand on her chin, as if deep in thought.
“We can’t escape the conditioning of our own time, of history.”
“As you tear me apart, do you get closer to who I am, or further away? When all we can ever grasp are perspectives, to dip our toes into.”
Kate rests her hand on Joe’s shoulder and nudges him to sit back. She places her palms over his eyes and brushes them down, closing them. Then she closes her eyes.
“Interpretation is a sea serpent. It devours everything. Things only hang together with experience.”
Joe relaxes and lies back.
“We can live where values are created, Kate. In this life, we can swim in the stream.”
“The truth in my heart, Joe, is that I want you to find yourself again. I want you to find this information and use it for the right purpose, the one that sits well in your heart, the one that satisfies your own sense of justice. If you do, you will also be helping me find my true self. These steps I’m taking with you now, all this is the closest I’ve ever come to living honestly.”
She presses her hand into his.
“Retell the story in your heart. Not how you wish it was told, or how you think it ought to be told. Tell me what really happened.”
*
We walked the streets of Dubai and made our way to the water. It was night when we arrived, the sky was clear and the stars shone bright. Light reflecting off the white sand, transmuting its complexion from creamy white to crystalline silver. Shadows shot through with stardust.
We looked to the east to Castor and Pollux, the twins. A compromise between time and eternity, making possible both life and death.
The wind blew, and the sand was swept into the ether, into castles as firm as the stars before us. The arrow of time, from order to disorder, yes, but also … the regeneration of complexity. A secret formula spreading beauty randomly across the universe.
*
Joe stares at Kate and then down at the space between his feet on the dusty floor.
“We drove out to the safe house, fought our way past the guards. Once underground, outside the control room, I volunteered to go in through the rear entrance. When I was through, I signaled to the others.
“Kurst found me, knocked me down, bound my hands and threw me into the cell beside Sofi. I looked over at her. I could see she was so badly beaten, just barely alive. Blake was standing over her. He turned to me, picked up a bucket of filthy water and through it on me. He was grinning. I was desperate to free my hands.
“I heard a sound from where Laith Khaldoun lay in the cell. I turned to him. He had been beaten and shot several times. He was hemorrhaging, bleeding out. He looked at me and pointed to the next cell. I could see one man lying motionless in a pool of blood on the floor. Beside him … just body parts, the remains of a man who’d had his limbs and head severed, and his torso chopped into segments. It was barely recognizable as human.
“Khaldoun whispered that it was Samarrai and Qadi, that hundreds were dead already. He said there was nothing we could do to stop them. He fell back to the floor and stopped breathing. I turned to Blake. I asked him what he wanted with her, with Sofi. I told him it was me he wanted. I was the one behind all of this. I was the one who’d convinced Sofi to take a closer look at Density. It was me he wanted.
“He smiled and said I meant nothing, and there was nothing I could do. I would be eliminated. But Sofi he’d wanted for a long time. She was lying there, naked, bleeding. He slapped her in the face. She barely flinched. Then … then, as he was walking toward her, loosening his trousers, a razor in his right hand, and as I started to scream, Sofi turned to me and cried out: ‘The information will keep you alive. Lock it away.’
“I could see Blake raping Sofi, heard her screams and then … her silence. I struggled to break free from the ropes, but couldn’t move. Shots rang out. I turned and saw Michele lying motionless on the floor, his eyes still open. When I turned back to look for Sofi, her body lay still on the table as Blake composed himself. She was dead.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving, approaching. I turned to my left and there was Kurst, a club raised above his head and coming toward my face … and there was a dullness and darkness, and the crack of gunfire, and then nothing …”
*
Colors and I’m falling, spinning. She pulls her lips away. Her shoulders fall. She leans into me and I know she’s not going to stop. Our foreheads touch. Her head is warm and I can feel her soul seep in to mine.
We kiss, and every motion she makes says she wants more. I want more. Never for this swooning spontaneity to dissolve back to cold white light. She whispers in my ear and I dive deep down into nothingness.
In this life, we place our bets and roll the dice. Suspended, we embrace becoming over being. Roll with change, and we win. Hold on to a reality before the roll, and we lose.
*
Kate runs her fingers over Joe’s cheek.
“Are you OK?”
He opens his eyes.
“I think I’m going to be.”
“It will take more time to accept and move on. Your own narrative, your life story. I can fill you in on what happened after that, if you want, sometime.”
“Tell me now.”
“You were brought to the facility in Kent shortly after, presumably by Avery. There, you were subjected to the worst possible torture, a combination of sensory deprivation, electro-shock treatment and neuropharmaceuticals. Krug broke all the MI6 guidelines for information retrieval. But you were never withholding the information voluntarily. It was held somewhere below the realm of your consciousness.”
Joe leans back against the wall.
“I can breathe.”
“You loved her. Your heart was broken.”
He bows his head.
“And so too my psyche.”
“The mind is not a unified whole. It’s naturally fragmented, only coming together in moments of clarity or madness. Sometimes the things we experience cause the pieces to fall apart once again. And there is pain and desolation. But new possibilities also arise. New ways of piecing together the fragments, of remembering the world. When the force holding the mind together is love, hope is renewed from the blood of a broken heart.”
“I wouldn’t be here, if not for you.”
He pulls her hand into his.
Kate falls into him, her eyes watering. She squeezes herself into his chest and rises to press her cheek into his. You will love again.
A desert wind blows dust around the room. Kate looks out to the light coming in from a hole in the concrete structure.
“We still have to get out of here. Do you know what you want to do?”
“Michele came to Zurich, Kate. He kept the evidence in Giverny. When he came to Dubai, he forwarded it to Tariq Muhammad. We’ve got to get back to London.”
“Joe, there is something else … Everything that you have been through, the trauma, the torture. Even so, I don’t believe your mind could have kept your secret so secure. I think there may be something more. I’ve never been able to access your medical records.”
He turns his head away.
“Yes, there might be.”
CHAPTER XIV
The silver Bentley makes its way from Ludgate Hill up to Aldersgate. Harold Sallow removes the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wipes away the perspiration as the car circles through the roundabout, and the ruins of London Wall come into view. He removes his jacket, inadvertently revealing the sweat stains under the arms of his blue shirt. Cadan Blake loosens his tie and raises a cup of hot coffee.
“I’m sorry, explain to me again how it is that Hawkins and Farrow have been allowed to return to this country?”
Sallow waves a newspaper back and forth, attempting to cool off his face.
“We are of the view that this is the most effective way of retrieving all of the missing information and ensuring it remains confidential.”
“Yes, but back here, in London? They’re a little too close for comfort, wouldn’t you say?”
“We looked into jurisdiction shopping. We have tacit understandings for extradition to a number of countries to optimize our ability to prosecute, similar to our Echelon surveillance-sharing arrangements. But there was no marginal advantage in doing so in this case. Secret trials won’t help us here.”
“I sincerely hope you know what you’re doing. But it’s your ass in a sling on this, I daresay, more so than mine. Nothing like a pound of flesh to incentivize a bureaucrat into taking action.”
Blake observes Sallow with a smirk. Sallow pushes his glasses back up his nose as the car passes Bishopsgate toward Aldgate.
“We’ve postponed all meetings with the Uzbekistan administration for the time being. As soon as we have all the incriminating evidence safely back in our custody, we can resume discussions.”
Blake looks out through the window.
“Seven gates to keep the barbarians out of the City. How on earth did it come to this, Harold?”
Blake opens a laptop and scans the trading figures on the screen.
“What’s the word from Covington and Trace?”
“It is paramount that none of this leads back to Baexter or Mandrake. The buck has to stop at Density. It’s in your interest.”
“It’s in our interest for our story to be airtight. I have no problem with Density taking the hit if necessary, but we’re going to do it my way.”
“Covington and Trace would like me to coordinate matters.”
“Do you really think I’m going to stand by and let you fuck this up? Not when my neck is on the line too. You can tell Covington and Trace and the fucking foreign secretary, for that matter, if any of this shows up on my doorstep, it’s going to be a lot harder to keep my mouth shut than it would have been to have kept those two meddlers Hawkins and Farrow quiet. Do you have any idea what kind of dossier I have on you, the FCO, MI6, Covington, Trace, Baexter and Mandrake? The fallout would be cataclysmic.”
Sallow clasps his hands together on his lap.
“Understood. How do you want this to play out?”
“Get back the information and all of this is hypothetical. If, and only if, there is any significant damage to address, then it will emerge that Density was a corrupt institution, hijacked by Khaldoun and Kurst and some other senior personnel. I will take a vacation, then reappear long after the dust has settled.”
“You’ll need to make sure there are no leaks.”
“Let me worry about that. You focus on ensuring the Hawkins and Farrow files never see the light of day.”
“What will you do?”
“My reputation will take a minor hit, but the markets have no memory. All that matters is seed capital. First loss. It makes the world go round. I have my own and plenty of other pockets I can approach that wouldn’t hesitate to let me run with theirs.”
“You don’t think this trade blowing up will tarnish you at all?”
“It’s always been about spinning a good story, Harold. Blowing up the balloon without it popping. The fact is: things go wrong sometimes. It’s part of life. My skill-set and experience are unique. I live where stories are created, not according to some script written for me.”
“What about Covington and Trace?”
“Things will need to cool off there. But there are plenty of other arms producers, resource companies. As you and I know, Harold, given the choice, our governments and leaders of business would rather have one of us knocking over third-world wealth than the Russians or Chinese. That’s the game. And I can tell you, as far as raising new money from new investors goes, there is a treasure chest to put to work that sees matters on the same ideological terms as you and me.”
Sallow mulls over Blake’s words as the car turns the corner and the Tower of London comes into view. He turns to Blake.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think this is just about money? All of this? It’s about us versus them. It’s always been about protecting the Western capitalist order, protecting our Christian way of life. Do you think the seed from Anno Domini and White Throne was about emerging-market risk return profiles? No. It’s about protecting our way of life, and the Holy Land.”
Blake catches Sallow’s eyes. They’re watering. Both men crease their brows and burst out laughing.
*
Claire Nelson rises from where she was kneeling on the floor and slides over Blake’s open legs, moving up to kiss him as he lies back on the couch. He turns his face.
