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  Something was still nagging him, a phrase the captain had used when parting from Colonel White. What was it? “Spin cycle”? What could that mean? What kind of spin could possibly interest men like Colonel White and Captain Smith?

  And then it came to him. “Centrifuges!” he cried aloud. “And Iranians! The physicist! Here, in the Embargoed Zone! Oh, my God!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Flora’s lungs fluttered, and her legs were liquid with fear. Yet still some part of her stood aloof from the terror, taking stock. She had panicked and tried to run, yet the soldier had not shot her. She had fallen and was at his mercy now, yet still he did nothing. He loomed over her, brandishing his rifle, a stinking, hulking, wild-eyed brute, his face contorted in hatred or rage, yet his voice—when he spoke—belonged to someone else. He was sick? He needed a telephone? And he seemed to be finding it hard to see. Daring to raise her head, Flora saw no sign of any other soldiers. But didn’t scouts, or commandos, whatever they were called, always work in teams? What were those hideous stains down the front of his uniform? Why was he trembling? Could he have been wounded during yesterday’s invasion and abandoned on the battlefield? Carefully, she sat up and moved a few feet farther away from him, scooting along on her bottom. Then she raised her arms slowly.

  “I’m going to stand up,” she said, managing to keep her voice level. “Please tell me if that’s not okay.”

  “What?” he demanded, squinting. “Um . . . would you have any aspirin or something like that?” He spoke very carefully. “I have a terrible headache.”

  Flora rose to her feet, watching for his reaction. There was none. Her knees shook a little, and she had to fight not to glance at the rifle, machine gun, whatever it was, that he held by his side; her stomach lurched in fear of it.

  And then a thought came to her that was so shocking, so perfect, so much more terrifying still than the soldier and his rifle that she almost vomited. Lost? What if he was lost? And she had found him. She swayed for an instant, dizzied by the notion, but even as her balance brought her forward again, she knew with sick certainty what she must try to do.

  She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry,” she said, glancing about. “I can do better than aspirin if you like—my father has some prescriptions.” She cleared her throat again. “Tell you what, why don’t you come for a cup of tea? I live right over there, in that building.”

  He looked at her more closely. “Um . . . thanks. That’s very kind of you.”

  The soldier followed Flora as she led him to the back of her building. She kept as far as she decently could ahead of him, half turned to flee in case his true nature asserted itself. The soldier had slung his rifle over one shoulder and used his free hand to squeeze his temples between thumb and index finger. Eyes half closed, he stumbled a couple of times on unperceived snags.

  They reached a jagged gap in the wall that gave entry to Flora’s backyard, and she stood back to usher him through it. The way was narrow, and the soldier, turning sideways to pass, misjudged the gap and became jammed in it, held by the rifle slung on his back.

  “Here,” said Flora, “let me help you with that.”

  Marvelously, he did not protest when with shaking hands she eased the rifle from his shoulder. As he stepped on ahead of her, Flora noticed that he smelled like her Uncle Joseph after one of his nights. What on earth was going on here? she wondered. Then she shook the question from her head: for her purposes, it hardly mattered.

  The strange bedraggled girl sat Moon down at an old kitchen table topped with yellowing Formica. He folded his arms and laid his head on them and closed his eyes against the soft light that leaked in from the backyard. He wondered for a moment why the kitchen door was broken, and then another wave of pain and sickness broke over him.

  The girl disappeared through another door, and when she came back a minute or two later, she no longer held the rifle. The weapon was a problem that, Moon was aware, ought to concern him more than it did, but then, he didn’t even know whose rifle it was, so it could not formally be his responsibility. If someone like him had been given a weapon, then someone else had messed up.

  The girl seemed lost in her long and filthy blue raincoat; the hoodie she wore beneath it was stained and darkly smeared. Her black hair was stringy with sweat, and there was a large bruise on the right side of her face, which was otherwise pale beneath the dirt. Shadows made saucers of her eyes. Apart from all that, he thought, she might have looked rather nice on a good day. She put two white pills and two pink pills on the table in front of him, poured him some water from a jug by the sink, then stood on the other side of the table as he mouthed the pills and took a swig of water. He instantly spit it out again. The pills, already dissolving, flew onto the floor.

  “Hey! You gave me dishwater!”

  Her eyes remained fixed on him as she shook her head. “No, that’s all we have to drink here. Raw sewage leaks back into the groundwater because the army won’t let in enough parts or fuel for the sewage pumps. Please, pick up those pills and try and swallow them again. They’re very valuable. I’ll boil some water so we can drink tea. It kills the taste of the water, almost.”

  Moon retrieved the pills from the floor and washed them down with a snatched sip of water. The alcohol, he sensed, was clearing from his brain. He was now merely horribly hungover. He watched the girl fill a kettle and set it on a metal stand by the sink. Then she placed a small white cube under the kettle and lit it with a match; he recognized the cube as a fuel tablet, the kind one got in military field rations.

  “Don’t you know where you are?” she asked him without turning around.

  He tried to smile, but it hurt his face. “I barely know who I am. I thought I’d take one thing at a time.”

  She turned to stare. Why was she so fascinated by him?

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “No. I went for a walk last night, and I got lost in the tank park. I wandered around for ages before I found a sort of party. I think I remember passing out in the back of a tank, but after that I don’t have a clue what happened. All I can think is that those tank guys must have played a really nasty prank on me—I don’t recognize this place at all.” A sense of well-being spread through his body, unknotting the pain behind his eyes.

  The girl studied his face. “Are those pills working yet?”

  “I rather think they are.”

  She leaned back against a cupboard and seemed to reflect for a few moments. “Good. I don’t want to shock you . . . . Listen: you’re not on your base anymore, wherever that is. You’re in Hilltown. You’re inside the Embargoed Zone.”

  He laughed in her face. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The glow was spreading into the tips of his fingers and the balls of his feet. He curled his toes and stretched his back. The pain in his head was a memory now. “What are those pills you gave me?”

  “Codeine and Xanax. Listen, I think you should step over to that door and take a look outside.”

  Moon laughed. “Sure. Why not?”

  As he moved around the table, the girl sidled away from him, keeping the table between them. Reaching the door, he folded himself comfortably into its broken frame. Outside there was a dirt yard with lines of flapping washing; beyond that was a wall and the hole they had come through. Then there was a sandy wasteland strewn with rubbish and weeds and bobbing pennants of shredded plastic and with the rusted abstractions of mangled cars and dumped machinery. And beyond that again was another line of tower blocks filigreed by shrapnel and bullets. It was still early, but the daylight was full now, and kites were specking the sky beyond the tower blocks. There was no sound of traffic, of any motors at all, apart from a little engine that whined mosquitolike high up in the sky.

  Moon thought about what he was seeing, and he felt the glow fading within him. He tried to hold it to him, but it too was abandoning him here. At least he couldn’t feel any pain now, he tried to console himself. Or any great fear for the time being
, although that would surely come. He turned back to the girl, who was still watching from the other side of the table. The kettle whistled in the corner.

  “How did I get here?” He saw how tightly she held herself, her body angled toward the door that led to the rest of the apartment, ready to flee. She looks terrified, he told himself.

  “I don’t know,” she said, watching him. “Please come away from that doorway. No one must see you here dressed like that. That’s some kind of uniform, right?”

  Moon slumped back in his chair. “It’s an air force uniform.”

  “You’re a pilot?”

  Moon stared at the pitted Formica. “You could say that.”

  He heard a clatter from the sink, and a cup of strong red tea appeared on the table in front of him. Her hands, he noticed, were red and swollen, their nails broken and black. A chair creaked as she sat down opposite him.

  “Drink your tea,” she told him. “I’ve put a lot of sugar in it.”

  Moon ignored her. “Oh, God.” He still wasn’t sure how terrified he should be. “This is for real, isn’t it? I’m really in the Embargoed Zone . . . . That tank I passed out in must have entered last night, and I was so out of it, I didn’t even notice—I must have drunk a whole bottle of vodka, not to mention all the weed we smoked.” He looked up at her. “There must be a way to sneak out of here, right?”

  She shook her head almost too quickly, as if she had been waiting for the question. Who was she?

  “Anyone who goes within a few hundred yards of the wall is shot dead,” she said. “Even little children.”

  “But I’m wearing their uniform!”

  “So does the resistance, usually, when they try and attack the wall. It doesn’t get them very far either.” She took a sip of tea.

  “I could call the army and let them know that I’m coming.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “Couldn’t we borrow one?”

  She gave a bitter smile. “The only people in the Embargoed Zone who still have phones that work are the army’s secret informers. They don’t advertise the fact: if they’re caught, they get lynched.”

  Moon drove his head into his hands again. Then he looked up at her. “But that means you could be killed for helping me!”

  The girl flinched. She really is scared, Moon realized. And of me, too! But her eyes met his evenly. “Am I helping you?”

  “You’re hiding me in your house.” He sat upright. “Hey, wait a second. What are you planning to do with me?”

  She took another sip of tea. “Don’t bother looking for the gun,” she said almost primly. “I hid it somewhere you’ll never find it.”

  Moon pushed his chair back. “I don’t want the fucking gun!” he shouted at her. “I’ve never fired a gun in my life! But I don’t think you could stop me from walking out that door if I wanted to.”

  He half expected her to try to flee from him, but she stayed in her chair. “You’re right—I can’t stop you,” she said, studying the teacup in front of her. “But if you do go, I don’t think you’ll get far before someone sees you. You could also murder me if you like—there’s no one else in the apartment. But then you’d be alone here, with no food and hardly any water, waiting for someone you don’t know to start knocking on the door. And when they do . . . ”

  She reached for her cup again. Despite the calmness of her voice, her hand was shaking. Moon flushed. “I’m not the murdering type.”

  He saw her glance down at his uniform, and he exploded again. “I do my job!” He leaned across the table at her. “And if unarmed people get hurt, it’s the fault of the terrorists for using them as human shields. Everyone says so, all of our journalists—it’s human rights law!”

  The girl looked back at him blankly, then put a hand to her mouth and yawned. “Sit down and drink your tea,” she said. “Would you like another Xanax?”

  “No!” shouted Moon, who then found himself sinking back into his chair.

  She finished the last of her tea, stood up, placed her cup by the sink, and turned to face him again.

  “I can help you, I think, but you’ll have to trust me completely.” She rubbed her eyes, then went on. “You have no choice but to trust me, because any other course of action will get you killed. Me too, most likely.” She spoke with the tired mumble of a schoolkid rehearsing some phrase or formula half learned in an all-nighter. “But right now I don’t want any questions from you, and I don’t want any arguments.” She leaned her knuckles on the table, swaying a little. “Because I’ve got a lot on my mind right now”—and then she was shouting at him—“and I am really fucking tired!”

  Moon saw that she was crying. It seemed to him that she was also a little surprised at having heard herself swear.

  “Do you agree?” Her voice was muffled.

  Moon nodded. He was starting to feel very frightened indeed. His stomach was tight, and his mouth tasted of metal. “So what do we do next?”

  She rubbed her eyes again and thought. “I haven’t quite worked it out yet,” she said finally. “I’m too tired to think straight. I’m going to lie down now, just for a couple of hours. There’s nothing else I can do right now. You should try and sleep too, I suppose; you can use my little brother’s room.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The terminal that controlled passage to and from the Embargoed Zone had been built on behalf of the army by a private consortium. The money for its construction had come from funds allocated by foreign donors for the relief of the Embargoed Zone’s civilian population; the army had persuaded the donors that the terminal would serve that very purpose by facilitating visits by UN officials and aid workers and by giving the inhabitants a means of egress when—as would happen any day now, the army had piously insisted—the embargo began to be eased. So the terminal had been built on a lavish scale, with no expense spared—indeed, with expense encouraged—by the retired generals and colonels who controlled not only the construction consortium but also the private security firm that provided the armed contractors who guarded the regular soldiers who protected the military police who fronted for the spooks who really ran the crossing. The building was made from glass and dull silver metal, a long tilted span resembling in cross section an airplane wing. Its architect, himself a reserve colonel in the engineering corps, was hoping some day to graduate to airports, and if the building seemed a little incongruous—not to say mocking—in its geopolitical context, who really cared? No one was ever allowed to photograph the terminal, and real people never went through it.

  Driscoll’s footsteps echoed as he crossed the vast tiled floor that morning. High above his head, pigeons cooed and shit on exposed roof girders, flying in and out of windows shattered in previous rocket attacks. Apart from the birds, Driscoll was alone in the hangarlike departure hall.

  A dozen passport control booths screened by bulletproof glass and plate steel panels lined the far side of the hall. Only the booth farthest to the left was occupied. Inside it, a large young woman in a rather small military police uniform was packed into a swivel chair, reading a romantic novel. She did not look up when Driscoll dropped his bag and his armor to the floor beside the booth or when he placed his passport and his government press card on the shelf beneath her window. She turned a page and then, a minute later, turned another. Driscoll decided to cough.

  “Passport,” she grunted, her eyes still fixed on her book.

  “It’s here,” he said politely, nodding toward it.

  She raised her voice angrily, still reading. “You have to show me your passport.”

  “I said it’s here.”

  Reluctantly, she turned to scowl at him. “Press card.”

  “That’s also here, with the passport.”

  The girl made a noise that if he were honest with himself, Driscoll could only have described as a snarl. She snatched the documents through a hole in the glass and flung them down beside her computer.

  “What is the purpose of your journ
ey to the Embargoed Zone?” she demanded, already typing.

  “Journalism.”

  “Hah . . . What is your profession?”

  “Journalist.”

  “Hah . . . Will you be meeting any terrorists in the Easy?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Her scowl darkened, and she picked up a pen and a notebook. “Then you have to give me their names, addresses, and purpose of meeting.”

  Driscoll grimaced. “Er, it’s just that I don’t know exactly which terrorists I’ll be meeting yet.”

  His reply seemed to please her. “Good. Then you don’t have to tell me.” She dropped the notebook. “Do you have any weapons?”

  He smiled at her. “Just one,” he said. “The truth.”

  The girl pressed a red button on her desk. Shoes squeaked behind him, and Driscoll had only a split second to wonder where they had come from before his cheek slammed hard against the booth’s glass window. Inside, only inches from his contorted face, the girl was reading her book again.

  The interrogation was asinine and repetitive, the search embarrassing and rather painful. And when it was over Driscoll still had to negotiate a maze of steel cages and concrete chutes and cattle bars and turnstiles, observed by swiveling cameras and darkened one-way windows. Angry loudspeakers barked inaudible instructions, ordering him to lift his shirt, drop his pants, place his bags on the belt, take his bags off the belt and put them back on the belt facing another way, empty his bags, place their contents on the belt and stand well back, then watch the belt go into reverse, dropping his precious camera onto the hard concrete floor. Each gate or turnstile was locked when he reached it, and although he was quite alone in the terminal, he had to stand there, appealing to the security cameras, for five or ten minutes before the gate would click and swing open and he could pass to the next stage of his ordeal.