‘You ate with him?’

‘We were staying in his tent.’

‘Which will be called their HQ in the report. The language will be very neutral. The ass-kissing won’t be mentioned. It will be three hundred tedious pages about a rendezvous attempted and a rendezvous kept. People will die of boredom before you’re halfway over the Atlantic. Why are you so worried?’

‘The politics is awful. The Lend-Lease thing. In as much as bin Laden wasn’t dipping into his own personal fortune, it’s like we were subsidizing him. Paying him, almost.’

‘Not your fault. That’s White House stuff. Did any sea captain get it in the neck for delivering Lend-Lease stuff to the Soviets during World War Two? They didn’t stay our friends either.’

Sansom said nothing.

I said, ‘It’s just words on a page. They won’t resonate. People don’t read.’

Sansom said, ‘It’s a big file.’

‘The bigger the better. The bigger it is, the more buried the bad parts will be. And it will be very dated. I think we used to spell his name differently back then. With a U. It was Usama. Or UBL. Maybe people won’t even notice. Or you could say it was someone else entirely.’

‘You sure you know where that stick is?’

‘Certain.’

‘Because you sound like you don’t. You sound like you’re trying to console me, because you know it’s staying out there for the world to see.’

‘I know where it is. I’m just trying to get a handle on why you’re so uptight. People have survived worse.’

‘You ever used a computer?’

‘I used one today.’

‘What makes for the biggest files?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Take a guess.’

‘Long documents?’

‘Wrong. Large numbers of pixels make for the biggest files.’

‘Pixels?’ I said.

He didn’t answer.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I see. It’s not a report. It’s a photograph.

SIXTY-SEVEN

THE ROOM WENT QUIET AGAIN. THE CITY SOUNDS, THE forced air. Sansom got up and used the bathroom. Springfield moved back to his former position by the TV cabinet. There were bottles of water on the cabinet, with paper collars that said if you drank the water you would be charged eight dollars.

Sansom came out of the bathroom.

‘Reagan wanted the photograph,’ he said. ‘Partly because he was a sentimental old geezer, and partly because he was a suspicious old man. He wanted to check we had followed his orders. The way I remember it, I’m standing next to bin Laden with the mother of all shit-eating grins on my face.’

Springfield said, ‘With me on the other side.’

Sansom said, ‘Bin Laden knocked down the Twin Towers. He attacked the Pentagon. He’s the world’s worst terrorist. He’s a very, very recognizable figure. He’s completely unmistakable. That photograph will kill me in politics. Stone dead. For ever.’

I asked, ‘Is that why the Hoths want it?’

He nodded. ‘So that al-Qaeda can humiliate me, and the United States along with me. Or vice-versa.’

I stepped over to the TV cabinet and took a bottle of water. Unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. The room was on Springfield’s card, which meant that Sansom was paying. And Sansom could afford eight bucks. Then I smiled, briefly.

‘Hence the photograph in your hook,’ I said. ‘And on your office wall. Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad.’

‘Yes,’ Sansom said.

‘Just in case. To show that someone else had done the very same thing. Like a trump card, just lying there in the weeds. No one knew it was a trump. No one even knew it was a card.’

‘It’s not a trump,’ Sansom said. ‘It’s not even close. It’s like a lousy four of clubs. Because bin Laden is way worse than Saddam ever was. And Rumsfeld wasn’t looking to get elected to anything afterwards. He was appointed to everything he did after that, by his friends. He had to be. No sane person would have voted for him.’

‘You got friends?’

‘Not many.’

‘No one ever said much about Rumsfeld’s photograph.’

‘Because he wasn’t running for office. If he had ever gotten into an election campaign, that would have been the most famous photograph in the world.’

‘You’re a better man than Rumsfeld.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘Educated guess.’

‘OK, maybe. But bin Laden is worse than Saddam. And the image is poison. It doesn’t even need a caption. There I am, grinning up at the world’s most evil man like a puppy dog. People fake pictures like that for attack ads. And this one is real.’

‘You’ll get it back.’

‘When?’

‘How are we doing with the felony charges?’

‘Slow.’

‘But sure?’

‘Not very. There’s good news and bad news.’

‘Give me the bad news first.’

‘It’s very unlikely that the FBI will want to play ball. And it’s certain the Department of Defense won’t.’

‘Those three guys?’

‘They’re off the case. Apparently they’re injured. One has a broken nose and one has a cut head. But they’ve been replaced. The DoD is still hot to trot.’

‘They should be grateful. They need all the help they can get.’

‘Doesn’t work like that. There are turf wars to be won.’

‘So what’s the good news?’

‘We think the NYPD is prepared to be relaxed about the subway.’

‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘That’s like cancelling a parking ticket for Charles Manson.’

Sansom didn’t reply.

I asked him, ‘What about Theresa Lee and Jacob Mark? And Docherty?’

‘They’re back at work. With federal paper on file commending them for helping Homeland Security with a sensitive investigation.’

‘So they’re OK and I’m not?’

‘They didn’t hit anybody. They didn’t bruise any egos.’

‘What are you going to do with the memory stick when you get it back?’

‘I’m going to check it’s right, then I’m going to smash it up, and burn the pieces, and grind the ash to dust, and flush it down about eight separate toilets.’

‘Suppose I asked you not to do that?’

‘Why would you?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Depending on your point of view it was either late in the afternoon or early in the evening. But I had just woken up, so I figured it was time for breakfast. I called down to room service and ordered a big tray. About fifty bucks’ worth, at Sheraton New York prices, with taxes and tips and charges and fees. Sansom didn’t bat an eye. He was sitting forward in his chair, seething with frustration and impatience. Springfield was much more relaxed. He had shared that mountain journey a quarter of a century earlier, and he had shared the ignominy. Sometimes our friends become our enemies, and sometimes our enemies become our friends. But Springfield had nothing riding on it. No aims, no plans, no ambitions. And it showed. He was still exactly what he had been back then, just a guy doing his job.

I asked, ‘Could you have killed him?’

‘He had bodyguards,’ Sansom said. ‘Like an inner circle. Loyalties over there are fanatical. Think of the Marines, or the Teamsters, and multiply by a thousand. We were disarmed a hundred yards from the camp. We were never alone with him. There were always people milling about. Plus kids and animals. They lived like the Stone Age.’

‘He was a long lanky streak of piss,’ Springfield said. ‘I could have reached up and snapped his scrawny neck any old time I wanted to.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘You bet I did. Because I knew. Right from the start. Maybe I should have done it right when the flashbulb went off. Like a breadstick in an Italian restaurant. That would have made a better picture.’

I said, ‘Suicide mission.’

‘But it would have saved a lot of lives later.’

I nodded. ‘Just like if Rumsfeld had stuck a shiv in Saddam.’

The room service guy brought my meal and I moved Sansom out of his chair and ate at the table. Sansom took a cell phone call and confirmed that as of that moment I was off the hook for the subway transgression. I was no longer a person of interest as far as the NYPD was concerned. But then he made a second call and told me the jury was still out on the FBI, and the signs did not look good at all. Then he made a third call and confirmed that the DoD brass definitely would not let go. They were like dogs with a bone. I was in all kinds of trouble at the federal level. Obstruction of justice, assault and battery, wounding with a deadly weapon.