How long has he been waiting here? Hard to tell. Karl’s knuckles rap again on the dashboard clock, but still it gives no response, any more than the radio or the air conditioning had. Perhaps an hour has passed, but it could be three. He is so tense, so unsure, time has little meaning. Set up by circumstance, beyond his control. Watching all the cars turn on to the main road from the airport slip, waiting, hoping he might catch a glimpse of her. Celestine is in his mind, her quiet manner, the clarity with which she would express a view, never arguing, but always thoughtful, going to the heart of things. Celestine telling him ‘You must be honest with yourself. When you see the suffering and you know it is wrong, you must say. It isn’t a line to cross.’ It’s why he’s here: he owes it to her.
The authorities at the airport denied any assistance. Celestine must have arrived, Karl was able to check with the airline, and found she was listed on the passenger manifest, but she had not emerged. Unsurprising, it was always likely she would be held for questioning: deported, no valid documents – and then her record.
Is this hopeless? He has no other idea than to wait. Another car slows at the junction, but it’s as old as his rented Subaru; unlikely. Still, he strains to scan as closely as he can from his vantage point just off the road, out of sight of the security post on the airport road. Very hard to make out all the occupants of these cars. Could he have missed her already?
He reasons that the airport is too small for any prolonged detention, and there is only this one exit. This is his one opportunity. More cars slow, and then pass. Karl drums his fingers on the wheel, and thinks over the past three days, since he landed here. No time to acclimatize. Rushing to make contact with people who knew Celestine, family and colleagues. Many of them were suspicious of this foreigner asking questions. People here learn not to talk freely, but the few who were willing to confirmed Celestine’s account, increasing Karl’s concern for her safety. Then overnight he received a message from campaigners back at home, telling him that Celestine’s removal was scheduled, on a flight arriving early morning. Bad news. Karl had been counting on greater administrative delay before this. He didn’t sleep again after the message, but donning the smartest clothes he had packed, set out at dawn for the airport.
Here in the growing heat of the morning the highway has become busy. Now and then a car that looks likely emerges from the slip road. Here comes one, a clean white vehicle, big, and to Karl’s inexpert eye it looks like a BMW, surely indicating someone with power in this country. He has been scanning the registrations of likely vehicles, and tries again. Blank, no registration plates. His senses immediately on high alert, he strains to see the occupants. Yes, no doubting it, Celestine is there, with two men who both appear to be wearing dark glasses.
As the white car eases out onto the highway in the direction of the city, Karl pulls out after it, allowing two or three other cars between them. What can he do? Only follow, in the hope he can find where she will be held, to pass on the information. His professional experience tells him that public knowledge of a detention is the best protection, when the risk, as here, is that the authorities will deny all knowledge.
Traffic is already heavy on the road into the city, mid-morning. Like each of the radiating highways it throbs with the close packed struggle of daily life for long kilometres, chaotic, unregulated growth where the roadway grows, little businesses springing up in every available gap, spilling across sidewalks, signs and noise competing for attention. From time to time they pass the finished architectural frontage of some national enterprise, offering ceramics, machine tools or furniture. Most of the time, even at the slow pace of congestion, the little premises so clutter the roadside that only close attention could distinguish them, but Karl’s attention is focussed on the road, and on the white car as it moves through the traffic ahead of him. In this hubbub he cannot afford to leave the kind of safe braking distance he would at home, knowing it will immediately be filled, forcing him back another vehicle length in the pressing queue, pushing him away from his quarry.
The heat of the day is building to its oppressive climax, Karl feels it pressing down upon him, the worse for the haze of traffic fumes that hangs over the road. His adrenalin level too is climbing, and Karl’s smart white shirt is wet through, from armpit to waist, front and back, sticky against the false leather of the seat. He is beginning to feel feverish, and his hand as he reaches to shift gear shakes. Irritated at himself, he redoubles his attention. Small vehicles weave through the traffic without signals, large vehicles simply force their way through. Here, still on the route towards the city, progress has become slow enough for pedestrians and a few animals to dodge through the small gaps, demanding more concentration of drivers.
He edges as close as he dare to a large truck with painted wooden side panels, and an incongruous memory bubbles up from his school days, being an athlete in a long distance track race, one of the bunch jostling for position before the final sprint for the line. He shakes his head to clear the distraction. There is no common finish here, these bunched competitors move in multiple directions. Besides, he has not trained for this, this is nothing he knows. This is crazy, something from a story, a film script, attempting to trail what must be an experienced local driver down this highway where every element, every incident favours the other car, and seems to conspire against his foreigner’s senses. He is engulfed, hemmed in, a press of vehicles weighing down upon him. Should he give up? So easy; no one knows what he is doing, no one would know if he dropped back, let the unmarked car get away from him, Celestine certainly would never know. He toys with the thought. Just try a little less, let the traffic do the rest. He knows he can’t: he will have to live with himself, and whatever happens today.
For a few minutes, he is caught behind a tractor hauling a trailer of timber, and curses it in every language he can recall, sure that he will lose the BMW, now about ten vehicles ahead. Luck has not left him. The white car is held at traffic lights, and he is able to push past the tractor, narrowing the distance. They are entering the city now, on a highway that circles the downtown business districts, four lanes on either side, but no one remains in lane for long.
Now that the traffic has halted, hawkers and beggars move in amongst them. A child clutching a handful of dusty, wilted flowers appears at his window, and at Karl’s initial refusal is insistent. Karl relents, and reaches into a pocket for some change, having no intention of taking a flower: the child can keep and sell them later. Before he can hand it on the lights change, and the BMW is away. Karl flings whatever coins he can at the child, and pushes the arm out of his window.
As long as they keep to the circular road Karl can keep the BMW in view from further back, and runs little risk of being separated by traffic lights on these long stretches of open, multi-lane highway. Luckily the other vehicle is in no hurry, content to travel at a leisurely pace; the gleaming power of the new BMW could easily outpace Karl’s dented Subaru, his rusty, coughing car, whenever it chose. They are making no atttempt to lose him. Good, they can’t have noticed him then. Still, why should they? No reason for them to suspect they would be trailed. Karl begins to feel in control, and starts to sing loudly and out of tune, some old song from his youth.
They have been driving for perhaps an hour and a half when he sees the other car signal and pull across to an inside lane. He needs to react quickly if he is to follow it into the junction, and struggles to look around him, trying simultaneously to read unfamiliar road signs for an indication of where they are, and where they might now be heading. He feels more more keyed up, more tense than he can recall ever feeling behind a wheel, barely in control, his pulse racing.
Now they are on a smaller road, still in the city, he needs to get closer, or he will lose them. Helpful that the other is so distinctive among all these battered little vehicles, while Karl’s car looks like a hundred others.
The white car overtakes a grimy bus, belching out thick diesel exhaust, and is obscured from view. All Karl can see ahead of him now is the battered bulk of the bus, a large advert painted across the rear, covering the window, in which a grinning face with improbable teeth encourages him to drink a local soda. He hadn’t noticed how thirsty he had become, but his bottled water was finished back while he was parked, and his mouth is dry.
Can’t afford to think about that now. The bus is in the way. Thick fumes push out with each touch of acceleration, further obscuring his view. On the kerb side he can’t see past the bodies of young men hanging from the step, clinging to the outside. He tries to push across to the outside, and fails to notice a motorbike slip between cars to his left and swerve in front of him. He is forced to brake suddenly, as he has several times, and as he does something hits the rear of his car, firmly enough to jolt him forward. What damage has been caused? Is anyone hurt? He can’t stop to check. Cursing again, and damning everyone who has contributed to the foolhardiness of this adventure, he presses on, edging out, pushing close, to peer past the bus. Surely this is it, the end of the chase.
Perhaps luck has not yet forsaken him. The bus pulls across to a halt, revealing the BMW only 30 metres ahead. He is momentarily grateful for the traffic, constantly hiding him from the car he is tailing, giving him cover, but the moment passes, and is replaced again with anxiety.
The pursuit has brought them across the city, and they are now leaving the densely built-up area on one of the arterial roads that stretch out on the map like ribbons from the city, a smaller version of the road from the airport. The traffic thinsas they pass through a zone where factories and industrial units at the roadside shield a neighbourhood of slum shanties. The BMW is moving faster, and Karl is struggling not to lose it. Again it disappears, accelerating away from him, and for a sixth, or a twentieth time he thinks he has lost it, the frustration burning his eyes.
But it is not over yet. There it is, the same white car halted on the approach to a junction, the driver no doubt checking an unfamiliar route. At a distance of perhaps a hundred metres ahead he sees it turn off. He follows, but the BMW is quickly lost to sight again. Karl’s curses are becoming more virulent and colourful, and are now aimed principally at himself. What is he doing in this beat up old car, alone, in a country other than his employers believe him in, involved in a bizarre cat and mouse chase, lost, tired, hungry and thirsty? And chasing government agents he has reason to fear, defenceless and without excuse? There is no alternative: he has seen Celestine.No one else I the world who cares about her knows where she is, or that her freedom and safety are at risk.
Where has the white car gone? Has it already left this side road, or is it still up ahead of him? He is torn between pushing the old car as fast as he dare, in the hope of closing on them, or slowing to look at every entryway, and the pull of the two impulses raises again the tension he thought was easing as they left the town limits. He is away from the urban area already, on a smaller road between small farms and palm plantations.
Then Karl sees something in the road a few hundred metres ahead and slows. As he approaches, it takes shape as a makeshift military road block, tar barrels and scaffold poles across his side of the road, mirrored a short distance further on across the other, forcing vehicles to halt. Two small huts with tin roofs and a lean-to shelter comprise the only buildings. He could turn back, but that would invite suspicion; better to brazen it out. As he nears the checkpoint, trying hurriedly to settle on a plausible account for his presence, he sees a stationary car at the side of the road, between the barriers. The white BMW. The driver’s door is open, and a man with dark glasses is leaning against it, evidently sharing a joke with the two soldiers alongside him. They hear the approach of Karl’s vehicle and glance round. The man in dark glasses gestures in his direction, a soldier gives a perfunctory salute, the driver climbs back into the car, and the BMW glides off.
One of the soldiers stands in the centre of the road, just behind the half barrier, with a semi-automatic rifle slung across his chest. He flags Karl’s car to a halt, and waves him to park off the road, in the gravel. He does, and attempts what he hopes is a welcoming smile, but the soldier gestures him out of the car. Karl switches off, and climbs out, and as he does so a faded flower tumbles from the door, noticed only by Karl. The kid obviously insisted on the sale, fair exchange for Karl’s loose change.
Karl knows his chase has come to an end, nothing more he can do to track Celestine. This is by no means his first encounter with an army checkpoint, and he is not particularly worried, having found them generally civil in their treatment of him as a foreigner. Things are different this time, and Karl is wary, still holding the smile.
The young soldier does not reciprocate. ‘Where you going, man?’ Karl has failed to prepare a convincing account of himself, and manages only that he’s going for a drive out of the city to see the countryside, this beautiful country, waving his arms at the low, scrubby landscape. The soldier laughs at him, and it is not humorous. His partner joins them, and, leaning into the car, removes the keys.
‘I.d, you give i.d. Papers.’ Reluctant to produce his passport so long as it might be avoided, Karl optimistically tries his international driving licence. The soldier takes it, glances at it, and places it in the breast pocket of his tunic. The second soldier slowly walks around Karl, ostentatiously looking him up and down, and then remains behind him, out of Karl’s sight. It is a move designed to make him anxious, and it succeeds. Still they are not satisfied. ‘Papers, man, you give, now,’ and Karl is left to produce his passport, and then the papers for the car. The soldier scrutinizes the passport in detail, turning each page and examining it, before passing it to his partner, though whether they make anything of his frequent travel stamps and visas is unclear.
Now they speak to him again but he does not understand; something about planes? They leave him standing, waiting for some moments before returning to shout at him. Still he has no idea what they are saying, or how to respond. One soldier pushes him angrily, and as he stumbles in front of the other, he receives a heavy blow from the butt of a rifle to his ribs. Surprised and winded, he falls, scraping his hands on the loose gravel. Before he can rise a military boot crashes against the side of his head, stars burst before his eyes, and he is rolled over. Struggling now, the soldiers have to haul him to his feet, and still shouting at him incomprehensibly, propel him with shoves to one of the small sheds. Pushing him inside they say ‘Now you wait here.’
Karl, still winded, falls to the floor, throwing up little swirls of dust, and is gasping for breath as they close the door behind him. His head is ringing and his ribs hurt, pain with every breath suggesting they are cracked. He is shivering, but it is from the shock of what has happened, not cold. The assault was wholly unexpected. Slowly his eyes become accustomed to the gloom of the hut and he takes stock of his surroundings. Two wooden chairs and a small plastic table comprise the whole of the furnishings. One dirty window, facing the road, lets in little light.
Gingerly, feeling the pain sharply through his side as he moves, he pulls himself up to sit on the floor with his back pressed against the wall. He tries to control the discomfort. This should be time to assess his situation, but he feels blank, numb. After a short while he becomes aware of a crawling sensation on his back, then a bite, then another. He moves aside, and finds a line of ants climbing the wall where he had been. He peers closely at these tiny creatures, their constant movement back and forth. All that busy scurrying along a narrow, invisible path, the press of the stream of traffic, so chaotic viewed at close quarters, but a line of purpose so orderly when he moves back, all engaged about their unimaginable tasks.
At one end of this line there must be a nest, and somewhere deep inside its tunnels a queen. All this activity, revolving around the life of the queen. Somewhere he read that the apparent perfect autocracy of the colony can break down, the workers, or was it the caste of soldiers?, turn against their queen, and devour her.
He recalls, too, perhaps from the same source, that ants navigate by laying down a track of scent to mark their route. What happens if it is disrupted? He casts around for something to break their path, and finds a sliver of wood from one of the chairs. With this he scrapes a gap in the line, and then lodges the little stick in a crevice, to form a barrier. Ants mill around it, but none attempts to climb it. Gradually the milling sends a few individuals into wider arcs, until the first find the ends of the stick and continue round. Within seconds a new detour has been established, and the procession of ants on each side continues as before, now with a sharp kink in the line. An old story occurs to him, of some king, defeated in battle, holed up in a cave and watching a patient, noiseless spider, inspired to fight again. Presumably he was eventually successful, or the story would hold little moral.
For him a battle may have been lost, but he will not allow the campaign to be over. The chase has ended, but he knows Celestine is back in the country and detained, and he knows the road her captors have taken. In the gloom of the shed he is in pain, and feels a darkness pressing upon him. The newness of his situation is bewildering, and now that the concentration of the chase has ceased a multiplicity of impressions floods in on him: the cacophony of the city traffic, the heat and his growing thirst, the kid with the flowers, the impact of an unseen vehicle at the back of his car, and of an army boot, the last few hours catches up with him. He is struggling in the tide, barely afloat. His eyes close in exhaustion, and then squeeze with effort.
After a time he checks the shed, and tentatively tries the door. An escape seems improbable. They have the keys to his car, and are armed, but it is as well to know the extent of his circumstances. The door doesn’t give, evidently bolted from the outside. Through the grime of the little window he can see the two soldiers, one sitting on the bonnet of the rented Subaru, sharing a cigarette and a joke. Clearly they are in no hurry. Plenty of time for him to review how he got himself into this fix.
Karl likes his job, congenial not only in the range of skills, in research, writing and presentation that it calls for but also in the assurance it offers that he is doing something virtuous, working for good. The world is rife with injustice, and Karl’s conscience would trouble him unless he resist. The work he does, documenting and publicizing atrocities and abuses in a region of the world oppressed by poverty, undoubtedly provides a small check on the excesses of regimes that would prefer to remain unscrutinized. If only marginally, he makes a difference. There are certain individuals in these countries with cause to thank his organization for its intervention, and it gives Karl meaning to know he sometimes plays the pivotal role.
For him this is more than a job: he needed to make it so, giving purpose to his life, but recognizes others might see that as a weakness in him. He is not smug about it; he has few illusions about the moral claim of what he does for a living. It does not offer him any better claim to virtue than his father, managing a store. This is no avocation to preach about. Nor does he talk of these feelings, but the job allows him to feel good about himself and the world, enabling a gently illuminated image that does not fade when he clocks off at the end of the working day, and joins the line for the bus home, nor on days off. The pay isn’t much, but nor are Karl’s expenses, and a certain frugality makes a good fit with his principles. Oh, there are downsides, but they are small in comparison. He is a lucky man, who has a comfortable life, and his ideal job. He knows, too, he can pride himself on doing it well, taking pains to cover as much as he can, content for it to eat into the hours for which he is not paid.
Karl has acquaintances who resolve their worldly conscience in political activity. The job would bring him into contact, even if his social circles did not. Some of those activists decry his reluctance to commit himself to action, but he feels his way is both more durable and effective. The principles he works for are rigorous, and he is not called on to make the awkward choices they make, or the contortions of justifyingshifting positions. He once explained the difference to an old school friend, and was so pleased with the way it sounded that he would repeat it, that he was ‘not cut out to be an activist, but rather a passivist’.
And there are, in any case, extras: he loves the chance of foreign travel, chiefly to the region of his responsibility, perhaps once in two years. There, he feels the importance of what he is engaged in inheres in himself, and he takes pride in the notion that no one else is able to do what he is there for, not, at least, with the degree of sensitivity that he brings to these conditions. He feels his status, notified and grudgingly tolerated by governments, if rarely approved, provides a measure of objectivity. Perhaps in reality he is destined to float above the surface of this land, gazing at multitudes going about their unknowable business. At present, as far as his employers are aware, he is is still in his home country on a short holiday, about to embark on one of these periodic missions.
From time to time in the office he meets someone recently arrived from one of the countries within his remit. Celestine turned up one day, and he learned of her claim to asylum lodged when she arrived in his country on false documents, of her subsequent detention and the refusal of her claim, of the appeal lodged by lawyers and her release pending a hearing. She proved to have considerable understanding of events in her country, of personalities and places, helpful background information for Karl. In particular, she spoke of the bloody work in her country of the FSP, an elite squad popularly know as ‘zombies’, answerable only to the President.
With little else to occupy her while she waited for a final decision, she stayed on, volunteering her time. She was quick to learn, and proved adept at monitoring the regional press for appropriate news, able to point out certain connections Karl would not have appreciated. Journalists who know they might face dismissal, detention or worse sometimes said more by implication or by silence than they did drectly.
Her unassuming manner and earnest willingness impressed all Karl’s colleagues. He appreciated too the specificity of her knowledge, and attempted to express his admiration somewhat obliquely, remarking how difficult it must be to look so clearly at these abuses, knowing the danger it posed.
Celestine took a moment before replying. ‘It isn’t a line to cross. You must speak. How should there be a choice?’
To Karl’s further question she answered ‘Fearful? For myself, you mean? Of course, but how can we have peace with ourself if we do not speak out? We must do what we know is right. It is not danger for only one person.’
Her words cut through an invisible wall, and Karl was pierced. He realized he had been condescending, and a shallowness was suddenly apparent below the surface of his ethics. That feeling grew deeper over the next two or three months as they worked together, and he was made more clearly aware of her commitment to confronting the ways power was wielded in her country. What most impressed him, however, was an air about her, a quiet inwardness born of the realization that her life was lived always in the face of threat. The manner she presented appeared placid, but beneath it burned a fierce determination. She knew there could be no security for her, yet she never sought to renounce her principles or to hide. Only this bid for asylum, promoted, she said, by a Catholic priest whose name she determinedly kept unspoken, marked any turning aside from that danger.
He saw in her a woman honest and direct, but it was above all that courage she manifested, made the more poignant by a deep awareness of her own vulnerability. Faced with such uncompromising dedication, he found himself questioning his own work as he had never done. His certainties had shrunk, as the reach of his comforts was made apparent.
Celestine’s appeal went ahead, and she showed him a copy of the judgement. To Karl it expressed cynicism, and a profound predisposition to disbelieve her. These attitudes incensed him, both for their failure to acknowledge the conditions of her country that he knew so well, and for its incredulity about a woman he had come to trust so fully. Well aware that he was breaching the impartiality code of his organization, he rang the lawyers, and complained about the judgement. They promised a further appeal, but whether they made it or not, nothing came of it, and within a few weeks she was again detained.
Karl fretted at this news, and felt he must do something. Coincidentally, he was due to make a visit to the sub-continent, and decided to use up his leave allowance in a preliminary side trip to her home. He would not tell his employer; this was a personal intervention. He knew he was crossing a line.
Two or three hours pass before the soldiers return, and evening is falling before they release him. ‘Now you go hotel’. He asks for his passport and driving licence, and they refuse. ‘No. You hotel. You write it, hotel.’
Karl tries to argue, but there is little common language between them, and the soldiers are adamant. Fearing further violence to no purpose, he writes down the name and address of his hotel, they push him towards the car, and hand back the keys, but not his documents. As he is getting in, Karl stoops, and picks up a dusty, wilted flower. ‘Go, quick quick, hotel.’
He has a bad night, troubled by more than heat and mosquitoes, fuming and worrying all night. What can he do about Celestine? He can do no more than alert people to her return and detention, in the hope that those close to her can track her; he has no standing to ask questions, a foreigner, ostensibly a tourist, with no justifiable connection to her. What, besides, can he do about his passport? The army should know where to find him. Will his passport be returned or should he approach army command? He may have to approach his consulate, but should he tell them the full account or invent a robbery? He is anxious to retain his uneasy professional relationship with them, for future trips.
Breakfast at the hotel next morning is a delayed, desultory affair of bland, tepid coffee and damp bread, during which the waiter stares at him, and after which he returns to his room, to take a shower while there is still water and electricity. Stripping, he examines himself as best he can, making use of the small bathroom mirror. A sizeable welt shows on one side, from the rifle blow, the area tender and painful to the touch. There is pain with each intake of breath, and when he turns. In the mirror he sees what the hotel staff stared at. One eye closed, a purplish swelling spreading beyond the socket, into his cheek.
With care he showers and shaves, pondering his course of action. He will lose nothing by visiting army command later in the day if his passport isn’t delivered to the hotel sooner, avoid the consulate for now. But the first thing to do is to tellpeople about Celestine, to pass on what little he knows. This will mean driving without papers. The security services have his registration number, and his appearance is likely to draw more attention than usual, but he has to chance it. He has after all been allowed to drive back to the hotel, not detained. Yes, her contacts first. No doubt others will work out where she is held from his description of yesterday’s journey.
While he is still in the tiny bathroom there is a sudden loud sound of a slamming door. The room door was locked. He looks around and misses a breath, seeing two grim faced men in his room, wearing sunglasses like those of the previous day. They don’t introduce themselves, but there is little need: their whole manner marks them as ‘zombies’. One of them stands with his back to the door and remains silent, while the other is looking around the small room. Karl is wearing only a towel, and feels particularly defenceless.
The man moving looks at Karl’s injured face, smirks, and makes a comment to his partner in a language Karl doesn’t know, though its meaning is clear enough. They are in his room, invading his space, and Karl moves to demand justification, but the air of these two men exudes an authority, a force that silences him. They are not accustomed to being questioned.
Karl is thinking fast, time seems to have slowed: what do they want from him? Will he be interrogated? If the FSP are taking an interest in him, Celestine must be in their custody, will probably now be in one of their secretive holding centres, where her presence will be denied, and no outside organization will be given access. She is in danger greater than he appreciated. Yesterday’s BMW must have belonged to the FSP. The realization finally dawns that the driver was well aware he was being followed, from the beginning, and deliberately lured Karl away from the city to deliver him into army hands. Mentally he kicks himself for failing to see it, knowing that he had not wanted to face facts. He feels his eyes tighten, and quickly forces himself to open them, to appear as unperturbed as he can manage in front of these men.
Zombie number 1 waves Karl’s passport in his face.
‘Your visa has been cancelled, and the passport has been stamped to show you cannot return. We know who you are, and we know you’re not a tourist. It’s interesting: we contacted your consulate. They say they don’t know you’re here. Now what are we supposed to make of that? Your people are usually so careful to let everyone know. Are you working undercover, are you a spy?’
He is speaking slowly, moving around the small room, not looking at Karl even as he pushes past, so that Karl is pressed against the wall. Karl’s open suitcase is on the bed, and empties the contents onto the floor, pushes through the items with a foot, and crouches to look at a couple of books Karl had packed, but they are airport novels, and are tossed aside. A small camera is evidently of more interest, is turned over in his hand, and then pocketed. Karl watches, and says nothing.
‘You lied to get in to the country. You know we could hold you on suspicion. Do you know what it’s like for foreigners like you in our prisons? I’m sure you do. You like to write about our prisons, don’t you? No holiday for a tourist.’ He turns and makes another comment to his colleague, and both men laugh.
Zombie number 1 is now standing at the window with his back to Karl, gazing out, though there is little to see but a blank wall and part of a small car park. There is silence for a while. Karl looks from one man to the other, but neither seems to be concerned for his presence. Alongside the bed, he makes a small move, slowly and deliberately, intending to pick up clothes he had laid out to wear. While his attention shifts to the bed he is hardly aware of Number 1 moving, but the man is immediately in front of him, with a gun in his hand, pressed hard against Karl’s cheekbone, up against the socket of hs good eye, so that he can see its yawning muzzle out of the corner of his vision.
‘You move when we tell you to move. You breathe if we let you breathe. Remember that, spy.’
This threat, and the cold shock of the gun against his facemomentarily alarm Karl, but he is determined to remain impassive and not betray his fear. He reasons that they cannot be intending to spirit him away if they have contacted his consulate, so the risk of serious personal harm must be much reduced. He straightens up, but remains silent.
Number 1 eases away. The gun stays in his hand, but drops away from Karl, as the man steps back, and speaks again, the edge of steel in the voice of a moment past now dropped, in favour of mockery.
‘No, I don’t think you’re a spy, are you? You’re not smart enough. This is a private mission, isn’t it? Looking for your girlfriend. Like your women a bit older than you, eh? Experienced. I’m sure she’s got experience, that one, plenty of men. Just like your mother.’ His hips are thrusting to underscore his point, in case Karl might miss its significance. ‘Do you do it with your mother too, or does she only go with men who pay?’
Karl tres to bring all of his concentration on to his breathing, and will not react to such crude goading.
Number 1 picks up the clean tee shirt that Karl had been about to put on, and makes a show of sniffing at it, before screwing up his face in feigned disgust, throwing the garment into the wash basin.
‘What should we do with you? You’re finished here. Our ministry has made an official complaint about you, you and your shithole organization, making unannounced investigations. Interfering bastards. You people think you still rule over us? Your day is done, my friend.’
It occurs to Karl to say his presence is unknown to his organization too, but decides it better to say nothing at all. If his consulate has been informed the organization will hear of the visit soon enough. This is sure to further damage their fragile reputation in this country, and there will be repercussions.
‘You go today. You leave this country. Leave the car here at the hotel.’ The keys are lying on the little bedside table – or they were: Karl glances, and notices they have gone. ‘Report to the immigration office at the airport, your documents will be there. In six hours, or you don’t leave at all.’
Confident that this last threat is empty, Karl tries to protest, but Number 1 is unimpressed. ‘Your ticket? You can forget it. You will be placed on a flight. You are finished here.’
Realization is crystallizing. He cannot continue on to neighbouring countries as intended, having become himself a deportee, and persona non grata. His job, that has meant so much to him, will almost certainly be lost because of this: he has crossed a line by ignoring the rules of conduct.
Number 1 turns to leave, the warning completed, but as he reaches the door he turns, very slowly, and looks directly at Karl, lifting the glasses to look better at his face. Karl sees a cold gaze, with more menace in it than the blankness of dark glasses. Calmly, he adds ‘You know, I nearly forgot to tell you. You’re wasting your time. She’s dead. She gave us no alternative. Assaulting an officer, and trying to escape. Such a pity, don’t you think?’
A cold shock of belief runs through Karl, confirming a sinking feeling he has had all night, but has not been prepared to acknowledge until now. He has been trailing events from the beginning, chasing disappearing shadows. Have his actions, intended to offer support and help protect her, merely hastened Celestine’s death? Has his blundering cowardice and stupidity contributed to crushing that courage? He can make no answer. He has been a fool, naïve. This final revelation has punctured a bubble of comfort he has inhabited until now, and he gasps as though he is drowning. For years he has written about distant events, on another continent, happening to people he didn’t know, but it has all caught up with him. He is implicated as never before. Everything has changed, his sense of who he is, and the job in which he found so much of his identity now gone. He should have known: perhaps indeed he did, and has been hiding the obvious truth, habit bent on self deception. The immediate future yawns in uncertainty before him, as never before. And yet, something new will be born of this. The encounter with Celestine, the impact she made on his life, may never again be matched, but something of her will live on. He will not be again what he was. A new sense of conviction, of belief, fuller than before, is budding in him.
Mick Chatwin
Jan, Dec 2020
THE LINE Page | 3