The Ghost (16 page)

I stared at it for a while, as the potential implications slowly filtered into my brain. Cautiously, I pressed
SELECT
.

The screen went blank. The device was obviously malfunctioning.

I turned off the engine and hunted around for the instructions. I even braved the sleet and opened up the back of the Ford to see if they’d been left there. I returned empty-handed and turned on the ignition. Once again the navigation system lit up. As it went through its start-up routine, communicating with its mother ship, I put the car into gear and headed down the hill.

Turn around when possible.

I tapped the steering wheel with my forefingers. For the first time in my life I was confronted with the true meaning of the word “predestination.” I had just passed the Victorian whaling church. Before me the hill dipped toward the harbor. A few white masts were faintly visible through the dirty lace curtain of rain. I was not far from my old hotel—from the girl in the white mobcap, and the sailing prints, and old Captain John Coffin staring sternly from the wall. It was eight o’clock. There was no traffic on the road. The sidewalks were deserted. I carried on down the slope, past all the empty shops with their cheery closed-for-the-winter-see-you-next-year!! notices.

Turn around when possible.

Wearily, I surrendered to fate. I flicked the indicator and turned into a little street of houses—Summer Street, I think it was called, inappropriately enough—and braked. The rain pounded on the roof of the Ford; the windscreen wiper thudded back and forth. A small black-and-white terrier was defecating in the gutter, with an expression of intense concentration on its ancient wise face. Its owner, too thickly swaddled against the wet and cold for me to tell either age or sex, turned clumsily to look at me, like a spaceman maneuvering himself on a lunar walk. In one hand was a pooperscooper, in the other a white plastic scrotum of dog’s crap. I quickly reversed back out into Main Street, swinging the wheel so hard I briefly mounted the curb. With a thrilling screech of tire, I set off back up the hill. The arrow swung wildly, before settling contentedly over the yellow route.

Exactly what I thought I was doing I still don’t really know. I couldn’t even be sure that McAra had been the last driver to enter an address. It might have been some other guest of Rhinehart’s; it might have been Dep or Duc; it could even have been the police. Whatever the truth, it was certainly in the back of my mind that if things started to get remotely alarming, I could stop at any point, and I suppose that gave me a false sense of reassurance.

Once I was out of Edgartown and onto Vineyard Haven Road, I heard nothing more from my heavenly guide for several minutes. I passed dark patches of woodland and small white houses. The few approaching cars had their headlights on and were traveling slowly, swishing over the water-slicked road. I sat well forward, peering into the grimy morning. I passed a high school, just starting to get busy for the day, and beside it the island’s set of traffic lights (they were marked on the map, like a tourist attraction: something to go and look at in the winter). The road bent sharply, the trees seemed to close in; the screen showed a fresh set of evocative names: Deer Hunter’s Way, Skiff Avenue.

I steered down the hill into Vineyard Haven, passing a school bus toiling up it. I had a brief impression of a deserted shopping street away to my left, and then I was into the flat, shabby area around the port. I turned a corner, passed a café, and pulled up in a big car park. About a hundred yards away, across the puddled, rain-swept tarmac, a queue of vehicles was driving up the ramp of a ferry. The red arrow pointed me toward it.

In the warmth of the Ford, as shown on the navigation screen, the proposed route was inviting, like a child’s painting of a summer holiday—a yellow jetty extending into the bright blue of Vineyard Haven Harbor. But the reality through the windscreen was distinctly uninviting: the sagging black mouth of the ferry, smeared at the corners with rust, and, beyond it, the heaving gray swell and the flailing hawsers of sleet.

Someone tapped on the glass beside me and I fumbled for the switch to lower the window. He was wearing dark blue oilskins with the hood pulled up, and he had to keep one hand pressed firmly on top of it to prevent it flying off his head. His spectacles were dripping with rain. A badge announced that he worked for the Steamship Authority.

“You’ll have to hurry,” he shouted, turning his back into the wind. “She leaves at eight-fifteen. The weather’s getting bad. There might not be another for a while.” He opened the door for me and almost pushed me toward the ticket office. “You go pay. I’ll tell them you’ll be right there.”

I left the engine running and went into the little building. Even as I stood at the counter, I remained of two minds. Through the window I could see the last of the cars boarding the ferry, and the car park attendant standing by the Ford, stamping his feet to ward off the cold. He saw me staring at him and beckoned at me urgently to get a move on.

The elderly woman behind the desk looked as though she, too, could think of better places to be at a quarter past eight on a Friday morning.

“You going or what?” she demanded.

I sighed, took out my wallet, and slapped down seven ten-dollar bills.

ONCE I’D DRIVEN UP
the clanking metal gangway into the dark, oily belly of the ship, another man in waterproofs directed me to a parking space, and I inched forward until he held up his hand for me to stop. All around me, drivers were leaving their vehicles and squeezing through the narrow gaps toward the stairwells. I stayed where I was and carried on trying to figure out how the navigation system worked. But after about a minute the crewman tapped on my window and indicated by a mime that I had to switch off the ignition. As I did so, the screen died again. Behind me, the ferry’s rear doors closed. The ship’s engines started to throb, the hull lurched, and with a discouraging scrape of steel we began to move.

I felt trapped all of a sudden, sitting in the chilly twilight of that hold, with its stink of diesel and exhaust fumes, and it was more than just the claustrophobia of being belowdecks. It was McAra. I could sense his presence next to me. His dogged, leaden obsessions now seemed to have become mine. He was like some heavy, half-witted stranger one makes the mistake of talking to on a journey and who then refuses to leave one alone. I got out of the car and locked it, and went in search of a cup of coffee. At the bar on the upper deck I queued behind a man reading
USA Today
, and over his shoulder I saw a picture of Lang with the secretary of state. “Lang to face war crimes trial” was the headline. “Washington shows support.” The camera had caught him grinning.

I took my coffee over to a corner seat and considered where my curiosity had led me. For a start, I was technically guilty of stealing a car. I ought at least to call the house and let them know I’d taken it. But that would probably entail talking to Ruth, who would demand to know where I was, and I didn’t want to tell her. Then there was the question of whether or not what I was doing was wise. If this
was
McAra’s original route I was following, I had to face the fact that he hadn’t returned from the trip alive. How was I to know what lay at the end of the journey? Perhaps I should tell someone what I was contemplating, or better still, take a companion along as a witness? Or perhaps I should simply disembark at Woods Hole, wait in one of the bars, catch the next ferry back to the island, and plan the whole thing properly, rather than launch myself into the unknown so unprepared?

Oddly enough, I didn’t feel any particular sense of danger—I suppose because it was all so ordinary. I glanced around at the faces of my fellow passengers: working people mostly, to judge by their denims and boots—weary guys who had just made an early-morning delivery to the island, or people going over to America to pick up supplies. A big wave hit the side of the ship and we all swayed as one, like rippling weed on the seabed. Through the brine-streaked porthole, the low gray line of coast and the restless, freezing sea appeared completely anonymous. We could have been in the Baltic or the Solent or the White Sea—any dreary stretch of flattened shoreline where people have to find a means of turning a living at the very edge of the land.

Someone went out on deck for a cigarette, letting in a gust of cold, wet air. I didn’t attempt to follow him. I had another coffee and relaxed in the safety of the warm, damp, yellowish atmosphere of the bar, until, about half an hour later, we passed Nobska Point Lighthouse and a loudspeaker instructed us to return to our vehicles. The deck pitched badly in the swell, hitting the side of the dock with a clang that rang down the length of the hull. I was knocked against the metal doorframe at the foot of the stairs. A couple of car alarms started howling and my feeling of security vanished, replaced by panic that the Ford was being broken into. But as I swayed closer, it looked untouched, and when I opened my case to check, Lang’s memoirs were still there.

I switched on the engine, and by the time I emerged into the gray rain and wind of Woods Hole, the satellite screen was offering me its familiar golden path. It would have been a simple matter to have pulled over and gone into one of the nearby bars for breakfast, but instead I stayed in the convoy of traffic and let it carry me on—on into the filthy New England winter, up Woods Hole Road to Locust Street and Main Street, and beyond. I had half a tank of fuel and the whole day stretched ahead of me.

In two hundred yards, at the circle, take the second exit.

I took it, and for the next forty-five minutes I headed north on a couple of big freeways, more or less retracing my route back to Boston. That appeared to answer one question, at any rate: whatever else McAra had been up to just before he died, he hadn’t been driving to New York to see Rycart. I wondered what could have tempted him to Boston. The airport, perhaps? I let my mind fill with images of him meeting someone off a plane—from England, maybe—his solemn face turned expectantly toward the sky, a hurried greeting in the arrivals hall, and then off to some clandestine rendezvous. Or perhaps he had planned to fly somewhere by himself? But just as that scenario was taking firm shape in my imagination, I was directed west toward Interstate-95, and even with my feeble grasp of Massachusetts geography I knew I must be heading away from Logan Airport and downtown Boston.

I drove as slowly as I could along the wide road for perhaps fifteen miles. The rain had eased, but it was still dark. The thermometer showed an outside temperature of twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. I remember great swathes of woodland, interspersed with lakes and office blocks and high-tech factories gleaming brightly amid landscaped grounds, as delicately positioned as country clubs, or cemeteries. Just as I was beginning to think that perhaps McAra had been making a run for the Canadian border, the voice told me to take the next exit from the interstate, and I came down onto another big six-lane freeway which, according to the screen, was the Concord Turnpike.

I could make out very little through the screen of trees, even though their branches were bare. My slow speed was infuriating the drivers behind me. A succession of big trucks came lumbering up behind me and blazed their headlights and blared their horns, before pulling out to overtake in a fountain of dirty spray.

The woman in the back seat spoke up again.
In two hundred yards, take the next exit.

I moved into the right-hand lane and came down the access road. At the end of the curve I found myself in a sylvan suburbia of big houses, double garages, wide drives, and open lawns—a rich but neighborly kind of a place, the houses screened from one another by trees, almost every mailbox bearing a yellow ribbon in honor of the military. I believe it was actually called Pleasant Street.

A sign pointed to Belmont Center, and that was more or less the way I went, along roads that gradually became less populated as the price of the real estate rose. I passed a golf course and turned right into some woods. A red squirrel ran across the road in front of me and jumped on top of a sign forbidding the lighting of campfires, and that was when, in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere, my guardian angel at last announced, in a tone of calm finality:
You have reached your destination.

I PULLED UP ONTO
the verge and turned off the engine. Looking around at the dense and dripping woodland, I felt a profound sense of disappointment. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d been expecting—not Deep Throat in an underground car park, necessarily, but certainly more than this. Yet again, McAra had surprised me. Here was a man reportedly even more hostile to the country than I was, and yet his trail had merely led me to a hiker’s paradise.

I got out of the car and locked it. After two hours’ driving I needed to fill my lungs with cold, damp New England air. I stretched and started to walk down the wet lane. The squirrel watched me from its perch across the road. I took a couple of paces toward it and clapped my hands at the cute little rodent. It streaked up into a nearby tree, flicking its tail at me like a swollen middle finger. I hunted around for a stick to throw at it, then stopped myself. I was spending far too much time alone in the woods, I decided, as I moved on down the road. I’d be happy not to hear the deep, vegetative silence of ten thousand trees for a very long while to come.

I walked on for about fifty yards until I came to an almost invisible gap in the trees. Demurely set back from the road, a five-barred electric gate blocked access to a private drive, which turned sharply after a few yards and disappeared behind trees. I couldn’t see the house. Beside the gate was a gray metal mailbox with no name on it, just a number—3551—and a stone pillar with an intercom and a code pad. A sign said,
THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY CYCLOPS SECURITY
; a toll-free number was printed across an eyeball. I hesitated, then pressed the buzzer. While I waited, I glanced around. A small video camera was mounted on a nearby branch. I tried the buzzer again. There was no answer.

I stepped back, uncertain what to do. It briefly crossed my mind to climb the gate and make an unauthorized inspection of the property, but I didn’t like the look of the camera, and I didn’t like the sound of Cyclops Security. I noticed that the mailbox was crammed too full to close properly, and I saw no harm in at least discovering the name of the house’s owner. With another glance over my shoulder, and an apologetic shrug toward the camera, I pulled out a handful of mail. It was variously addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Emmett, Professor and Mrs. Paul Emmett, Professor Emmett, and Nancy Emmett. Judging by the postmarks, it looked as though there was at least two days’ worth uncollected. The Emmetts were either away, or—what? Lying inside, dead? I was developing a morbid imagination. Some of the letters had been forwarded, with a sticker covering the original address. I scraped one of the labels back with my thumb. Emmett, I learned, was president emeritus of something called the Arcadia Institution, with an address in Washington, DC.

Emmett…Emmett…For some reason that name was familiar to me. I stuffed the letters back in the box and returned to my car. I opened my suitcase, took out the package addressed to McAra, and ten minutes later I’d found what I had vaguely remembered: P. Emmett (St. John’s) was one of the cast of the Footlights revue, pictured with Lang. He was the oldest of the group, the one who I’d thought was a postgraduate. He had shorter hair than the others, looked more conventional: “square,” as the expression went at that time. Was this what had brought McAra all the way up here: yet more research about Cambridge? Emmett was mentioned in the memoirs, too, now I came to think about it. I picked up the manuscript and thumbed my way through the section on Lang’s university days, but his name didn’t appear there. Instead he was quoted at the start of the very last chapter:

The squirrel came back and regarded me malevolently from the roadside.

Odd: that was my overwhelming feeling about everything at that moment.
Odd.

I don’t know exactly how long I sat there. I do remember that I was so bemused I forgot to turn on the Ford’s heater, and it was only when I heard the sound of another car approaching that I realized how cold and stiff I had become. I looked in the mirror and saw a pair of headlights, and then a small Japanese car drove past me. A middle-aged, dark-haired woman was at the wheel, and next to her was a man of about sixty, wearing glasses and a jacket and tie. He turned to stare at me, and I knew at once it was Emmett, not because I recognized him (I didn’t) but because I couldn’t imagine who else would be traveling down such a quiet road. The car pulled up outside the entrance to the drive, and I saw Emmett get out to empty his mailbox. Once again, he peered in my direction, and I thought he might be about to come down and challenge me. Instead, he returned to the car, which then moved on, out of my line of sight, presumably up to the house.

I stuffed the photographs and the page from the memoirs into my shoulder bag, gave the Emmetts ten minutes to open the place up and settle themselves in, then turned on the engine and drove up to the gate. This time, when I pressed the buzzer, the answer came immediately.

“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Is that Mrs. Emmett?”

“Who is this?”

“I wondered if I could have a word with Professor Emmett.”

“He’s very tired.” She had a drawling voice, something between an English aristocrat and a southern belle, and the tinny quality of the intercom accentuated it:
“S’vair tahd.”

“I won’t keep him long.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“It’s about Adam Lang. I’m assisting him with his memoirs.”

“Just a moment please.”

I knew they’d be studying me on the video camera. I tried to adopt a suitably respectable pose. When the intercom crackled again, it was an American male voice that spoke: resonant, fruity, actorish.

“This is Paul Emmett. I believe you must have made a mistake.”

“You were at Cambridge with Mr. Lang, I believe?”

“We were contemporaries, yes, but I can’t claim to know him.”

“I have a picture of the two of you together in a Footlights revue.”

There was a long pause.

“Come on up to the house.”

There was a whine of an electric motor, and the gate slowly opened.

As I followed the drive, the big three-story house gradually appeared through the trees: a central section built of gray stone flanked by wings made of wood and painted white. Most of the windows were arched, with small panes of rippled glass and big slatted shutters. It could have been any age, from six months to a century. Several steps led up to a pillared porch, where Emmett himself was waiting. The extent of the land and the encroaching trees provided a deep sense of seclusion. The only sound of civilization was a big jet, invisible in the low cloud, dropping toward the airport. I parked in front of the garage, next to the Emmetts’ car, and got out carrying my bag.

“You must forgive me if I seem a little groggy,” said Emmett after we’d shaken hands. “We just flew in from Washington and I’m feeling somewhat tired. I normally never see anyone without an appointment. But your mention of a photograph did rather stimulate my curiosity.”

He dressed as precisely as he spoke. His spectacles had fashionably modern tortoiseshell frames, his jacket was dark gray, his shirt was duck egg blue, his bright red tie had a motif of pheasants on the wing, there was a matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. Now I was closer to him, I could discern the younger man staring out from the older: age had merely blurred him, that was all. He couldn’t keep his eyes off my bag. I knew he wanted me to produce the photograph right there on the doorstep. But I was too canny for that. I waited, and kept on waiting, so that eventually he had to say, “Fine. Please, do come in.”

The house had polished wood floors and smelled of wax polish and dried flowers. It had an uninhabited chill about it. A grandfather clock ticked very loudly on the landing. I could hear his wife on the telephone in another room. “Yes,” she said, “he’s here now.” Then she must have moved away. Her voice became indistinct and faded altogether.

Emmett closed the front door behind us.

“May I?” he said.

I took out the cast photograph and gave it to him. He pushed his glasses up onto his silvery thatch of hair and wandered over with it to the hall window. He looked fit for his age and I guessed he played some regular sport: squash, probably; golf, definitely.

“Well, well,” he said, holding the monochrome image up to the weak winter light, tilting it this way and that, peering at it down his long nose, like an expert checking a painting for authenticity, “I have literally no recollection of this.”

“But it
is
you?”

“Oh, yes. I was on the board of the Dramat in the sixties. Which was quite a time, as you can imagine.” He shared a complicit chuckle with his youthful image. “Oh, yes.”

“The Dramat?”

“I’m sorry.” He looked up. “The Yale Dramatic Association. I thought I’d maintain my theatrical interests when I went over to Cambridge for my doctoral research. Alas, I only managed a term in the Footlights before pressure of work put an end to my dramatic career. May I keep this?”

“I’m afraid not. But I’m sure I can get you a copy.”

“Would you? That would be very kind.” He turned it over and inspected the back. “The
Cambridge Evening News
. You must tell me how you came by it.”

“I’d be happy to,” I said. And again I waited. It was like playing a hand of cards. He would not yield a trick unless I forced him. The big clock ticked back and forth a few times.

“Come into my study,” he said.

He opened a door and I followed him into a room straight out of Rick’s London club: dark green wallpaper, floor-to-ceiling books, library steps, overstuffed brown leather furniture, a big brass lectern in the shape of an eagle, a Roman bust, a faint odor of cigars. One wall was devoted to memorabilia: citations, prizes, honorary degrees, and a lot of photographs. I took in Emmett with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Emmett with Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela. I’d tell you the names of the others if I knew who they were. A German chancellor. A French president. There was also a picture of him with Lang, a grin-and-grip at what seemed to be a cocktail party. He saw me looking.

“The wall of ego,” he said. “We all have them. Think of it as the equivalent of the orthodontist’s fish tank. Do take a seat. I’m afraid I can only spare a few minutes, unfortunately.”

I perched on the unyielding brown sofa while he took the captain’s chair behind his desk. It rolled easily back and forth. He swung his feet up onto the desk, giving me a fine view of the slightly scuffed soles of his brogues.

“So,” he said. “The picture.”

“I’m working with Adam Lang on his memoirs.”

“I know. You said. Poor Lang. It’s a very bad business, this posturing by The Hague. As for Rycart—the worst foreign secretary since the war, in my view. It was a terrible error to appoint him. But if the ICC continues to behave so foolishly, they will succeed merely in making Lang first a martyr and then a hero, and thus,” he added, gesturing graciously toward me, “a bestseller.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Lang? Hardly at all. You look surprised.”

“Well, for a start, he mentions you in his memoirs.”

Emmett appeared genuinely taken aback. “Now it’s my turn to be surprised. What does he say?”

“It’s a quote, at the start of the final chapter.” I pulled the relevant page from my bag. “‘As long as these nations’—that’s everyone who speaks English—‘stand together,’” I read, “‘freedom is safe; whenever they have faltered, tyranny has gathered strength.’ And then Lang says, ‘I profoundly agree with this sentiment.’”

“Well, that’s decent of him,” said Emmett. “And his instincts as prime minister were good, in my judgment. But that doesn’t mean I know him.”

“And then there’s that,” I said, pointing to the wall of ego.

“Oh,
that
.” Emmett waved his hand dismissively. “That was just taken at a reception at Claridge’s, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Arcadia Institution.”

“The Arcadia Institution?” I repeated.

“It’s a little organization I used to run. It’s very select. No reason why you should have heard of it. The prime minister graced us with his presence. It was purely professional.”

“But you must have known Adam Lang at Cambridge,” I persisted.

“Not really. One summer term, our paths crossed. That was it.”

“Can you remember much about him?” I took out my notebook. Emmett eyed it as if I’d just pulled out a revolver. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Go ahead. I’m just rather bewildered. No one’s ever mentioned the Cambridge connection between us in all these years. I’ve barely thought about it myself until this moment. I don’t think I can tell you anything worth writing down.”

“But you performed together?”

“In one production. The summer revue. I can’t even remember now what it was called. There were a hundred members, you know.”

“So he made no impression on you?”

“None.”

“Even though he became prime minister?”

“Obviously if I’d known he was going to do that, I’d have taken the trouble to get to know him better. But in my time I’ve met eight presidents, four popes, and five British prime ministers, and none of them was what I would describe as personally truly outstanding.”

Yes, I thought, and has it ever occurred to you they might not have reckoned you were up to much, either? But I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “Can I show you something else?”

“If you really think it will be of interest.” He ostentatiously checked his watch.

I took out the other photographs. Now that I looked at them again, it was clear that Emmett featured in several. Indeed, he was unmistakably the man on the summer picnic, giving the thumbs-up behind Lang’s back, while the future prime minister did a Bogart with his joint and was fed strawberries and champagne.