A Most Wanted Man (9 page)

“Igor’s an arsehole and his stories are a load of shit,” Bachmann pronounced, bundling together the papers on his desk and stuffing them into an old, scuffed briefcase that nobody would want to steal.

“Where are you going?” Erna Frey demanded.

“Across the courtyard.”

“Whatever for?”

“To tell the gallant protectors that he’s our case. To tell them to keep the police off our backs. To make sure that, if by any unlikely chance the police
do
find him, they will kindly
not
send in Armed Response and start a small war, but stay out of sight and inform us immediately. I need this boy to do what he came to do for as long as he can do it.”

“You’ve forgotten your keys,” Erna Frey said.

If you’re not taking the S-Bahn, please do not arrive at the café by taxi.

Annabel Richter had been equally uncompromising about Brue’s clothes.
For my client, men in suits are secret policemen. Kindly wear something informal.
The best he had been able to manage was gray flannels and the sports coat by Randall’s of Glasgow that he wore for the golf club, and an Aquascutum raincoat in case there was another deluge. As a gesture, he had dispensed with a tie.

Darkness of a sort had fallen over the city. The earlier downpour had left the night sky clear. A cool breeze was washing off the lake as he climbed into the cab and recited her directions to the driver. Standing alone on a strange pavement in a humble part of town, he felt momentarily deprived, but rallied when he saw her promised street sign. The fruit stalls of the halal grocer’s shop were a blaze of red and green. The white lights of the kebab house next door shone all across the street. Inside it, at a corner table of bright purple, sat Annabel Richter with a bottle of still water before her and a discarded bowl of what looked to Brue like school tapioca with brown sugar sprinkled over the top.

At a table next to her, four old men were playing dominoes. At another, a young couple in their best suit and frock were nervously courting. Her anorak hung over her chair. She wore a shapeless pullover and the same high-necked blouse. A cell phone lay on the table, the rucksack at her feet. Sitting down opposite her, he caught a scent of something warm in her hair.

“Do I pass?” he asked.

She ran an eye over his sports coat and flannels. “What did you find in your archives?”

“That there’s a prima facie case for further inquiry.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“At this stage, yes, I’m afraid.”

“Then let me tell you a couple of things you don’t know.”

“I’m sure there are many.”

“He’s a Muslim. That’s number one. Devout. So it’s tough for him when he’s got to deal with a woman lawyer.”

“But tougher for you, surely?”

“He asks me to wear a headscarf. I wear one. He asks me to respect his traditions. I respect them. He uses his Muslim name: Issa. As I told you, he speaks Russian; otherwise bad Turkish with his hosts.”

“And who are his hosts, if I may ask?”

“A Turkish widow and her son. Her husband was a client of Sanctuary North. We nearly got him citizenship but he died. Now the son is trying on behalf of the family, which means starting all over again, and taking each member of the family separately, which is why he’s running scared and why he called us. They love Issa but they want him off their hands. They think they’re going to be thrown out of the country for harboring an illegal immigrant. Nothing will persuade them otherwise, and these days they may be right. They’ve also got air tickets to Turkey for her daughter’s wedding and there’s no way they’re going to leave him in the house alone. They don’t know your name. Issa knows it but hasn’t repeated it, and won’t. You’re somebody who’s in a position to help Issa, that’s all you are. Are you comfortable with that description?”

“I believe so.”

“Only believe?”

“I’m comfortable with it.”

“I’ve also told them, because I had to, that you won’t reveal any of their names to the authorities.”

“Why on earth should I do that?”

Ignoring his offers of assistance, she clambered into her anorak and slung her rucksack over one shoulder. Heading for the door, Brue noticed an oversized young man prowling the pavement. Following him at a respectful distance, they entered a side street. The boy seemed to grow bigger the farther he got away from them. At a pharmacy the boy took a swift look up and down the road at the cars, at the windows of the houses and at two middle-aged women studying the window of a jeweler’s. To one side of the window stood a brides’ shop with a dream wedding couple clutching wax flowers, and to the other a thickly varnished front door with an illuminated bell button.

About to cross the road, Annabel stopped, half unslung her rucksack, extracted her headscarf, put it over her head, then carefully pulled down two corners and tied them at her throat. Under the streetlight, her face looked strained and older than her age.

The oversized boy unlocked the door, shooed them in and held out an immense hand. Brue shook it but didn’t say his name. The woman Leyla was small and sturdy and dressed to receive, in a headscarf and high heels and a black suit with a ruff. She stared at Brue, then uneasily took his hand, her eyes all the time on her son. Following Leyla into the living room, Brue knew he had entered a house of fear.

The wallpaper was puce, the upholstery gold. Lace antimacassars were draped over the chair arms. In the glass base of a table lamp, globules of plasma rotated, parted and rejoined. Leyla had awarded Brue the presidential throne. My late husband’s, she had explained, pulling nervously at her headscarf. For thirty years, my husband wouldn’t sit on any other chair, she had said. It was ornate, hideous and exquisitely uncomfortable. Brue dutifully admired it. He had one not unlike it in his office: inherited from his grandfather, and hell on earth to sit on. He thought of saying something to that effect, but elected not to. I’m somebody in a position to help. That’s all I am, he told me himself. On dishes of best china Leyla had laid out triangles of baklava in syrup, and a lemon cream cake cut into slices. Brue accepted a piece of cake and a glass of apple tea.

“Marvelous,” he declared, when he had tasted the cake, but nobody seemed to hear him.

The two women, the one beautiful, the other dumpy, both grim, sat on a velveteen sofa. Melik stood with his back against the door. “Issa will be down in a minute,” he said, looking upward at the ceiling, listening. “Issa’s preparing himself. Issa’s nervous. He may be praying. He’ll come.”

“Those policemen could hardly wait till Frau Richter had left the house,” Leyla burst out to Brue, venting a grouse that had evidently been gnawing at her. “I closed the front door behind her, I took the dishes to the kitchen, and five minutes later, there they were, ringing my bell. They showed me their identity cards and I wrote down their names, just the way my husband used to. Plainclothes. Didn’t I, Melik?”

She thrust a writing block into Brue’s hands. One sergeant, one constable, names supplied. Not knowing what to do with it, he rose and showed it to Annabel, who handed it back to Leyla beside her.

“They waited till Mother was alone in the house,” Melik put in from the door. “I had a swimming date with the team. Two-hundred-meter relay.”

Brue offered a nod of earnest sympathy. It was a long time since he had attended a meeting where he was not in charge.

“An old one and a young one,” Leyla said, resuming her complaint. “Issa was in the attic, thanks be to God. When he heard the doorbell, he pulled up the steps and closed the trapdoor. He’s been up there ever since. He says they come back. They pretend they’ve gone away, then they come back and deport you.”

“They’re just doing their job,” Annabel said. “They’re visiting people all across the Turkish community. They’re calling it outreach.”

“First they said it was about my son’s Islamic sports club, then it was about my daughter’s wedding in Turkey next month, and are we sure we’re entitled to return to Germany afterwards? ‘Of course we’re sure!’ I said. ‘Not if you obtained German residence on humanitarian grounds,’ they said. ‘That was twenty years ago!’ I told them.”

“Leyla, you’re upsetting yourself unnecessarily,” Annabel said sternly. “It’s a hearts-and-minds operation to separate decent Muslims from the few bad apples, that’s all it is. Calm down.”

Was the choirboy voice a notch too sure of itself? Brue suspected that it was.

“You want to hear something funny?” Melik asked Brue, his expression anything but humorous. “You’re going to help him, so maybe you should hear this. He’s not like any Muslim I ever met. He may be a believer, but he doesn’t
think
like a Muslim, he doesn’t
act
like a Muslim.”

His mother snapped at him in Turkish, but to no avail.

“When he was weak—all right?—when he was lying in my bed, recovering? I read him verses from the Koran. My father’s copy. In Turkish. Then he wanted to read it for himself. In Turkish. He knew enough to recognize the holy words, he said. So I go to the table where I keep it—
open,
okay?—I say
Bismillah,
the way my father taught me—I made like I was going to kiss it but I
didn’t,
he taught me that too, I just touched it with my forehead, and I gave it into his hands. ‘Here you are, Issa,’ I said. ‘Here’s my dad’s Koran. Reading it in bed is not how you should do it normally, but you’re sick, so maybe it’s okay.’ When I come back into the room an hour later, where is it?
Lying on the floor.
My dad’s copy of the Koran and it’s lying on the floor. For any decent Muslim, never mind my dad, that’s
unthinkable
! So I thought: All right. I’m not angry. He’s sick and it fell from his grasp when he had no strength. I forgive him. It’s right to be generous-hearted. But when I yelled at him, he just reached down and picked it up—with
one hand only,
not two—and gave it me like it was”—at first he could find no suitable comparison—“like it was any book in a shop! Who would
do
that?
Nobody!
Whether he’s Chechen or Turkish or Arab or—I mean, he’s my brother, all right? I love the man. He’s a true hero. But on the floor. One hand. Without a prayer. Without
anything.
”

Leyla had heard enough.

“Who are
you
to bad-mouth your brother, Melik?” she snapped at him, also in German for the benefit of her audience. “Playing dirty rap music all night in your bedroom! What d’you think your father would make of
that
?”

From the direction of the hall Brue heard cautious feet descending a rickety ladder.

“Plus he took my sister’s photograph and put it in his room,” Melik said. “Just took it. In my dad’s time I should kill him or something. He’s my brother but he’s weird.”

The choirboy voice of Annabel Richter took command.

“You’ve missed your baking day, Leyla,” she said with a meaningful glance towards the frosted screen that separated the kitchen area from the drawing room.

“That’s their fault.”

“Then why don’t you do some baking now?” Annabel suggested calmly. “That way the neighbors will know you’ve nothing to hide.” She turned to Melik, who had taken up a position at the side of the window. “It’s nice that you’re keeping watch. Please continue to do that. If the doorbell goes, whoever they are, they can’t come in. Tell them you’re having a conference with your sports promoters. All right?”

“All right.”

“If it’s the police again, they must either come another time or speak to me.”

“He’s not a real Chechen either. He just pretends to be,” Melik said.

The door opened and a silhouette as tall as Melik’s but half his width advanced by slow steps into the room. Brue stood up, his banker’s smile aloft and his banker’s hand outstretched. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Annabel was also standing, but had not come forward.

“Issa, this is the gentleman you have asked to meet,” Annabel said in classic Russian. “I am confident that he is who he says he is. He has come specially to see you tonight, at your request, and he has told nobody. He speaks Russian and needs to ask you some important questions. We are all grateful to him and I am sure that, for your own sake and for the sake of Leyla and Melik, you will cooperate with him all you can. I shall be listening, and representing your interests whenever I consider it necessary.”

Issa had drawn up at the center of Leyla’s gold carpet, arms to his sides, awaiting orders. When none came, he lifted his head, placed his right hand over his heart and fixed Brue with an adoring look.

“Thank you most respectfully, sir,” he murmured, through lips that seemed to smile despite him. “I am privileged, sir. You are a good man, as I have been assured. It is visible in your features and your beautiful clothes. You have also a beautiful limousine?”

“Well, a Mercedes.”

For reasons of ceremony or self-protection, Issa had donned his black overcoat and slung his camel-skin bag over his shoulder. He had shaved. The two weeks of Leyla’s motherly attentions had smoothed the crevices in his cheeks, giving him, to Brue’s eye, a seraphic unreality:
This pretty slip of a boy has been tortured?
For a moment, Brue believed none of him. The radiant smile, the stilted style of speech, too flowery by half, the air of false composure, were all the classic equipment of an imposter. But then as they sat down to face each other at Leyla’s table, Brue saw the film of sweat on Issa’s forehead, and when he looked lower he saw that his hands had remet each other, wrist-to-wrist on the table, as though waiting to be chained. He saw the fine gold chain round his wrist, and the talismanic golden Koran hanging from it to protect him. And he knew that he was looking at a destroyed child.

But he remained master of his feelings. Should he count himself inferior to somebody merely because that somebody has been tortured? Must he suspend judgment for the same reason? A point of principle was involved here.

“Well now, and welcome,” he began brightly, in a carefully well-learned Russian, curiously comparable with Issa’s own. “I gather we have little time. So we must be brief but we must be effective. I may call you Issa?”

“Agreed, sir.” The smile again, followed by a glance for Melik at his window and a dropping of the eyes away from Annabel, who had taken up a place in the far corner of the room, where she sat sideways, with a folder set chastely on her averted knees.

“And you will call me nothing,” said Brue. “I believe that is agreed. Yes?”

“It is agreed, sir,” Issa responded with alacrity. “All your wishes are agreed! You permit me to make a statement, please?”

“Of course.”

“It will be short!”

“Please.”

“I wish only to be a medical student. I wish to live a life of order and assist all mankind for the glory of Allah.”