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  “Washing machine?” he interrupted.

  Flora saw that she was losing him. “Okay,” she conceded, “forget the washing machine—that really is too weird to worry about for now. But everything that’s going on is definitely linked somehow to a story that Tony and my uncle shot yesterday morning. I think the army wanted to kill them to cover it up or something.”

  “What story?”

  “They filmed a drone strike yesterday morning. It killed some boys who were playing some stupid game near my house. I was there myself, with my little brother. The story became important in the real world, because 24/7 got really graphic close-up footage. So then the army killed Tony, and my uncle too, for all I know.” She recalled the phone in her pocket and piously continued. “And I think the army might be after me and my brother, too. And then, which I don’t get at all, there’s the whole bizarre business with the washing machine . . . .”

  She trailed off. The pilot had crossed to the far corner of the roof and was staring to the west. Naval gunboats broke the horizon, patrolling in line a few miles apart. The sun had sunk into the sea, dying the water a wintry red. She gave up on him and crossed the roof. The wall was hidden from here by other buildings and by the rising ground to the east. To the north, plumes of smoke from the invaded village had merged into one thick cloud, low and flat in the evening inversion layer. She listened for gunfire but could hear nothing except the wind in the wires, the buzz of the drones, and the murmur of tired voices below in the street. The rooftop was a blessed island of indecision, but soon she would have to descend from it and think of somewhere to go. She went to stand beside the pilot. He spoke without looking at her.

  “There’s no way I can phone for help without your uncle, is there?” His tone was conversational. “And the terrorists will kill you if they find me with you. I guess I should go it alone now. Try and find my own way back.”

  Flora had never hated him more. She made an impatient gesture with her hands. “Don’t be silly. You’d be killed for sure.”

  What do you care? his face asked her without expecting an answer. And to her surprise and further anger, she felt herself stung.

  “Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself! I’m the one who has to live here. All you have to do is find a way out.” She put her hand in her pocket, pulled out the cell phone and battery, and waved them in his face. “Look: here’s your ticket out of here! Nobody’s going to let you die!”

  The pilot stared at the objects in her hand. “What? . . . ” He started to frown. “But you told me you didn’t have a cell phone.”

  Flora gave him her pertest smile. “I lied!” Then, as the pilot took two quick steps toward her, she began to wonder why she was feeling so smug. He grabbed her upper arms, his fingers biting into them. His face, inches from hers, was white.

  “You mean to say”—he ground the words out—“that you made me walk all the way here, through terrorist patrols and up-tit operations, when we could have just made a phone call from your apartment and waited for them to come and pick me up? I could have been killed, you stupid bitch! So could you! What the fuck were you playing at?”

  She shook herself free. “I had my reasons! I’m risking my life to save yours, and I don’t trust your bosses not to cheat me. The way I’d planned it, they’d have to give me what I wanted in exchange for your safety.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what’s that? Money? Or guns for your terrorist friends?”

  “I want to live!” She hurled the words in his face. “And I want my little brother to live too! I want them to stop trying to kill us and to let us both out of this place forever so we can look for a real life in some place that’s real.”

  “What, just you and your brother?” He sneered. “Don’t you want to save the rest of your family too? Don’t you care about them? What about your mom and dad and that big brother you keep going on about?”

  Her anger folded its arms and stepped smartly away from her, watching, intent, to see what she’d do next. It was the pilot who had brought it to this, not her. He had handed her the game, the one she hadn’t thought she was playing. For an exquisite moment, Flora felt she might not be able to keep a straight face. The moment passed.

  “They’re all dead,” she told him coldly. “They were killed by your drones. My older brother and mother died two years ago. My father was killed in the jeep with Tony last night—I didn’t bother telling you that before. My little brother is in the hospital—he was injured in the air strike yesterday morning. He’s all I have left now.” She offered the phone to him. “Here. Make your call. Just press and hold the 1 key and it will speed-dial a creepy little soldier whose friend wanted to rape me last night.”

  The pilot was staring at the phone in her hand, or perhaps not quite at the phone but just past it, as if his attention had been diverted inward to some other problem. Then, still not looking her in the eye, he reached out his hand and—absentmindedly it might have seemed—collected the phone and the battery.

  “You can still set your price,” he told her gruffly, turning away to examine the phone. “I’ll make sure they honor it. They’re bound to be grateful to you.”

  She snorted. “I’m not so sure, and I’ve met them. I think they’ll want more than ever to kill me. I know too much about what’s going on.”

  “And what is going on?”

  She thought about that. “I have no idea.”

  Rage and energy ebbed from her, and she felt almost unable to stand. She leaned over the parapet, looking down into the street. Only a handful of people were still out, picking their way homeward. Raising her head, she studied the sky until she saw the sun flash red on a tiny cruciform shape that seemed to hang motionless over the city. Other drones, invisible, whirred in the dusk. They could be looking for me, she thought dully. She laid her arms on the parapet and rested her forehead on her laced fingers, closing her eyes and giving in to the darkness.

  She felt a tap on her shoulder and heard something click on the concrete in front of her. When she opened her eyes, the phone and battery were inches from her face.

  “Take it,” the pilot said. “It’s not over yet. We can still look for your uncle and try and handle things your way.”

  I ought at least to look at him, she thought. If he were anyone else, I would owe him a smile. Instead, she watched her hand pick up the phone. Guiltily, she stuffed it into her pocket.

  “My uncle could be anywhere,” she told the parapet. “We can’t look for him now—it’s not safe on the streets after dark.”

  “Right. Well, is there somewhere we can hide for the night? We can’t stay here: a drone might spot us.”

  Don’t you want them to spot you? she almost demanded. But she stopped herself in time. It did not seem a fair question right then, to ask or to answer. She applied herself instead to the practical problem: 24/7’s office was locked, and if they broke into it, others—Cobra, the soldiers—might come there searching for them or for Joseph . . . . Then she remembered her uncle’s special place and saw the surprise on the pilot’s face. She was, she realized, smiling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Cobra unhitched his donkey and led it back outside the workshop, tethering it to graze on the weeds by the road. He stationed himself in the shadows inside the door, sitting on the cart with pistol in hand, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Nobody came to trouble him. Beside him lay a seven-foot sausage of blue heavy-duty polythene tied up with nylon cord. Every now and then the sausage would wriggle and moan, and Cobra would reach back without looking and tap it sharply with the butt of his pistol.

  “Now, then,” he’d say. “Now, then.”

  Day drained from the workshop and off down the street to the sea. Still Cobra sat smoking. Finally, as the grass outside the door turned gray, he heard the rumble of a diesel engine. A Toyota twin-cab with UN markings turned in through the door. Cobra blinked as the lights clicked off, then stretched himself and rose. The jeep’s door opened.

  “Just yourself,
Daddy Jesus?” Cobra called, trying to sound hearty. “Where’s the captain tonight?”

  Daddy Jesus’s bulk billowed from the cab like a slow-motion airbag. “Busy,” he grunted. “Where’s the package?”

  “All wrapped up for you. Actually, he did the job himself, which was nice of him. I had to gag him, though. He wouldn’t stop bawling and bitching.”

  Daddy Jesus brushed past Cobra and went to examine the sausage. It started to thrash about as Daddy Jesus picked it up and flung it on the floor in the back of the jeep. Leaning in, he quietly addressed it.

  “You. Make one more move, make any trouble at all, and I will fucking cripple you.” Cobra could not help shuddering at the loving menace in Daddy Jesus’s tone; he had heard it before in even less pleasant circumstances. The parcel whimpered once more, then lay still. Daddy Jesus waited a few moments, hoping for an infraction, then grunted again and shut the back door. He was opening the driver’s door when Cobra, alarmed, jumped to his feet.

  “Hey! Aren’t I coming with you? The captain said he told you to take me out!”

  With one hand, Daddy Jesus took a car battery from the floor in the front of the cab, turned, and walked back toward Cobra. In the gloom of the workshop, Cobra could just make out that he was smirking. A smile was never a good thing, he knew. Daddy Jesus raised his free hand and pushed him gently backward until he was sitting on the cart again.

  “Change of plan. I’ll take you out later. The boss needs you to stay live for the next few days. Here—he’s sent you that new battery you’ve been asking for.” He dropped it contemptuously on the cart.

  Cobra’s face was quivering. “But he promised to put me in the program. I’ve packed a bag!”

  “Hey, don’t blame me,” Daddy Jesus protested. “If it was up to me, I’d put you in the program right now. I wanted to. But the boss said no. He said he might still have a use for you.”

  Cobra stared at him suspiciously. “You know, the captain never actually told me what this program involves. What have you got planned for me?”

  Daddy Jesus’s smile changed until it almost looked pleasant. “The plan is that I’ll fill you in when the time comes,” he said, and patted Cobra on the cheek.

  Cobra felt himself shudder again. “Well, what about the money you owe me, then? If I’m staying a bit longer, there’s stuff I’d like to settle. My cousins need burying.”

  “How much money did you get from the Iranian?”

  Cobra looked innocent. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our friend in the parcel here must have had quite a bit of money on him, unless the girl and her goons already took it. I’ll be asking him about that myself very shortly, when I get him back to our lockup. And as you know yourself, he won’t lie to me.”

  Cobra’s lips were dry. “He had three and a half thousand euros in a money belt, since you ask. I reckon it’s mine. I earned it—finder’s fee.”

  “It’s not yours. That money is forfeited to military intelligence. The Iranian belongs to us—him and everything he had on him. But I’ll tell you what: you can keep the cash from the money belt. Let’s call it a down payment on your back pay. You’ll get the rest of what’s coming to you when I put you in the program.”

  “You bastards!”

  “What else did he have on him?”

  “A notebook,” said Cobra reluctantly. “A very fancy smart phone and a video camera. Several pens and highlighters, all different colors—blue, red, yellow, and green. Mostly green.”

  Daddy Jesus stretched out an oar-sized hand. “Give it all here. Did you find any chips on him?”

  “He had some breath mints, but I already ate them.”

  “Computer chips.”

  Cobra looked puzzled. “No. Nothing like that. No passport or wallet or any other kind of ID, either. But I only gave him a quick frisk. You’ll probably want to search him more intimately when you have him on the other side of the wall.”

  “Yes. I probably will.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Joseph finished his last cigarette, tossed it out the car window, and put both hands on the steering wheel. The grain of the wood reassured his fingers. He sighted with one eye down the center of the hood, watching it stretch away from him, beige and gleaming, toward the green roller door at the end of the garage. His feet found the pedals, and he allowed one hand to slip from the wheel, falling, as if from long habit, onto the gear stick.

  “Vroom,” he ventured aloud, rolling the “r.” “Vroom vroom.”

  He was working the clutch and the gear stick—just a little heel and toe drill, he told himself—when he heard a scraping noise from the front of the garage. He became very still. Had he imagined it? Could it have been the wind? And then he heard it again, louder this time. It was definitely coming from the door. And he was sure that he saw the roller door move a fraction. Someone was trying to get in.

  With exquisite care, he lifted the spring-loaded latch on the car door. Meanwhile, his other hand reached across his body to hold the door closed so it would not pop audibly open. There was the faintest of clicks as the latch gave, and then, slowly exhaling, Joseph allowed the door to glide open six inches. He was about to bring his knees across to slip quietly out of the car, when the garage door thundered.

  Joseph shot, as if propelled by an ejector mechanism, out of the driver’s door and pressed himself against the wall. Someone was pounding on the door. He caught his breath: if he could only keep quite still and wait, they might give up, whoever they were, and go away. And then he saw that his discarded cigarette had fallen into a heap of oily litter, which was smoking alarmingly. He stretched out a foot to tramp the fire out, but his toe caught an old oil can that lay hidden in the rubbish, and it skittered rowdily off into a pile of clinking cans and bottles. There was a moment’s silence, and then the pounding redoubled. The door shuddered and jerked as someone tried to wrench it upward. Joseph crouched down, his back against the wall, and cringed, despising himself.

  “Hey!” called a female voice. “Uncle Joseph? Are you in there? Please open up: it’s me!”

  “Flora?” Joseph felt his knees stiffen as fear turned to fury. “What the fuck are you doing out there? You frightened the shit out of me!”

  “Sorry,” she answered, calling through the strips of the door. “We looked for you at the media center, and then I thought we’d come here to hide for the night. Please, open the door before somebody sees us.”

  Joseph squeezed along the gap between car and wall to unlatch the door and heave it upward. His niece ducked in from the alley, followed by a tall, scared-looking kid he’d never seen before. Joseph pulled the door down again and tripped the latch with his foot. There was still a little daylight in the garage from a window set high in one wall; Joseph could just see his visitors’ faces, but their bodies were lost in the shadows. Joining them at the dark end of the garage, he peered at the stranger again, trying to make him out, then kissed his niece on both cheeks. “You know about Tony, I guess,” he said.

  “My dad was in the car with him, Uncle Joseph. He’s dead too.”

  He could only stare at her. “Oh, God, Flora,” he said, finally. “I didn’t know.”

  I should embrace her, he thought. But she’s always been so formal. He reached both hands out to her, and she held them for a moment firmly in her own, then pushed them away.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “There isn’t the time. Listen, do you have your camera with you?”

  “I’ve always got my camera with me: I’m a professional. For the time being, at least—my bosses think I faked yesterday’s footage, and they’ll fire me if they can find me.” The youth, he noticed, had moved to the front of the car and was fiddling with the hood. “Hey, son!” he called. “Don’t touch that!”

  “Listen,” said Flora. “We need to video this guy, and then we need to send the clip to a mobile phone on the other side of the wall. Can you do all that?”

  Joseph rammed his
hands in his pockets. “Flora. What the hell is going on here? Who is this kid?”

  “He’s an air force pilot. He’s lost in the Embargoed Zone.”

  Joseph sat back on the tail fin of his car. He felt the rivets on his jeans grind against the paintwork.

  Flora went on: “I found him, and I’m going to try and get him out in return for a way out of here for Gabriel and me. Would an exclusive like that help you to make things right with your bosses?”

  Joseph jumped to his feet. “Better than that! A story like that could get me out of here, with you and Gabriel.” Joseph looked across at the pale blur of the stranger’s face. “Hey kid, is this true? Are you really a pilot?”

  The blob nodded. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Fuck me! Come on, let’s step outside.”

  Joseph took his camera from a metal shelf in the corner, opened the roller door, and then stooped and peered outside. “It’s clear,” he said, and scrambled out under the door. Flora passed him the camera, then followed. The pilot came out last of all.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, looking warily around him. They were standing in an unpaved alley lined on both sides with lockup garages and workshops and fenced-off junk-filled yards. They were alone. The media center was visible above the eastern end of the alley, recognizable from the dishes and aerials sprouting from its roof.

  Flora thought for a moment. “Just look at the camera and say your name and the date and that you’re trapped inside the Easy and that you want to go home. Tell your family that you love them or something. I’m sure they’d appreciate that.”

  “I don’t have any family. They all died years ago.” Joseph, setting up his tripod, glanced over: the kid sounded pleased with himself for some reason. Flora did not seem to hear him. The kid waited a few moments and then tried again.

  “Do you want me to say that you’re treating me well?” he asked sarcastically.