"Let's talk at the table. There's something I need you to read."
When they were seated, the Canadian answered his friend's question. "He was murdered. In cold blood. No, not here, and not now. Six years ago. In Bosnia."
He explained briefly about the boy's age, his desire back in 1995 to help alleviate the pain of the Bosnians, his odyssey through the capitals to the town of Travnik, his agreement to try to help his interpreter trace his family homestead. Then he passed over the Rajak confession.
Dry martinis came. The senator ordered smoked salmon platter, brown bread, chilled Meursault. Edmond nodded, meaning, the same.
Senator Lucas was accustomed to reading fast, but halfway through the report he gave a low whistle and slowed down.
While the senator toyed with the salmon and read the last pages, Steve Edmond glanced around. His friend had chosen well, a personal table just beyond the grand piano, secluded in a corner by a window through which the White House was visible. The Lafayette at the Hay-Adams was unique, more like a house set at the heart of an eighteenth-century country estate than a restaurant in the middle of a bustling capital city.
Senator Lucas raised his head. "I don't know what to say, Steve. This is perhaps the most awful document I have ever read. What do you want me to do?"
A waiter removed the plates and brought small black coffees and for each man a snifter of old Armagnac. They were silent while the young man was at the table.
Steve Edmond looked down at their four hands on the white cloth. Old men's hands, cord veined, sausage fingered, liver spotted. Hands that had thrown a Hurricane fighter straight down into a formation of Dornier bombers; that had emptied an M1 carbine into a taverna full of SS men outside Bolzano; hands that had fought fights, caressed women, held firstborns, signed checks, created fortunes, altered politics, changed the world. Once.
Peter Lucas caught his friend's glance and understood his mood. "Yes, we are old now. But not dead yet. What do you want me to do?"
"Maybe we could do one last good thing. My grandson was an American citizen. The United States has the right to require this monster's extradition from whereever he is. Back here. To stand trial for Murder One. That means the Justice and State Departs acting together on any government that harbours this swine. Will you take it to them?"
"My friend, if this government of Washington, D. C., cannot give you justice, then no one can."
He raised his glass. "One last good thing."
But he was wrong.
14 The Father
It was only a family spat, and it should have ended with a kiss and make up. But it took place between a passionate Italian-blooded daughter and a doggedly tenacious father.
By the summer of 1991, Amanda Jane Dexter was sixteen and knockout attractive. The Naples-descended Marozzi genes had given her a figure to cause a bishop to kick a hole in a stained-glass window. The blond Anglo-Saxon lineage of Dexter had endowed her with a face like the young Bardot. The local boys were over her like a rash, and her father had to accept that. But he did not like Emilio.
He had nothing against Hispanics, but there was something sly and shallow about Emilio, even predatory and cruel behind matinee-idol looks. But Amanda Jane fell for him like a ton of bricks.
It came to a head during the long summer vacation. Emilio proposed to take her away for a holiday by the sea. He spun a good tale. There would be other young people, adults to supervise, beach sports, fresh air, and the bracing tang of the Atlantic. It sounded good; it sounded normal; it sounded innocent. But when Cal Dexter tried to make eye contact with the young man, Emilio avoided his gaze. Dexter's gut instinct told him there was something wrong. He said, "No."
A week later she ran away. There was a note to say they should not worry, everything would be fine, but she was a grown woman now and refused to be treated like a child. She never came back.
School holidays ended. She still did not appear. Too late, her mother, who had approved her request, listened to her husband. They had no address for the beach party, no knowledge of Emilio's background, parentage, or real home address. The Bronx address he had used turned out to be a lodging house. His car had Virginia number plates, but a check with Richmond told Dexter it had been sold for cash in July. Even the surname, Gonzalez, was as common as Smith.
Through his contacts, Cal Dexter consulted with a senior sergeant in the Missing Persons Bureau of the NYPD. The officer was sympathetic but resigned. "Sixteen is like grown-up nowadays, Counsellor; they sleep together, vacation together, set up house togetherÉ" The department could only send out an all-points if there was evidence of threat, duress, forcible removal from the parental home, drug abuse, whatever.
Dexter had to concede there had been a single phone message. It had come at a time Amanda Jane would know that her father would be at work and her mother out. The message was on the answering machine.
She was fine, she said, very happy, and they should not worry. She was living her own life and enjoying it. She would be in touch when she was good and ready.
Cal Dexter traced the call. It had come from a mobile phone, the sort that operates off a purchased SIM card and cannot be traced to the owner. FIe played the tape to the sergeant, and the man shrugged. Like all Missing Persons Bureaus in every force across the States, he had a case overload. This was not an emergency.
Christmas came, but it was bleak-the first in the Dexter household in sixteen years without their baby.
It was a morning jogger who found the body. His name was Hugh Lamport; he ran a small IT consultancy company; he was an honest citizen trying to keep in shape. For him that meant a three-mile run every morning between 6:30 and as near to 7:00 as he could make it, and that even included cold, bleak mornings like February 18, 1992. He was running along the grass verge of Indian River Road, Virginia Beach, which was where he lived. The grass was easier on the ankles than tarmac or concrete. But when he came to a bridge over a narrow culvert, he had a choice: cross via the concrete bridge or jump the culvert. He jumped.
He noticed something below him as he jumped, something pale in the predawn gloom. After landing, he turned and peered back into the ditch. She lay in the strange disjointed pose of death, half in and half out of the water.
Lamport glanced frantically round and saw, four hundred yards away through some trees, a dim light, another early riser brewing the morning cup. No longer jogging but sprinting, he arrived at the door and hammered hard. The coffee brewer peered through the window, listened to the shouted explanation, and let him in.
The 911 call was taken by the night-duty dispatcher in the basement switchboard at Virginia City 's police headquarters on Princess Anne Road. She asked as a matter of urgency for the nearest patrol car, and the response came from the First Precinct's sole cruiser, which was a mile from the culvert. It made that mile in a minute, to find a man in sweats and another in a bathrobe marking the spot.
It took the two patrol officers no more than two minutes to call in for homicide detectives and a full forensic team. The householder fetched coffee, which was gratefully received, and all four waited.
That whole sector of eastern Virginia is occupied by six cities with contiguous boundaries, a community that extends for miles on both banks of the James River and Hampton Roads. It is a landscape studded with naval and air bases, for here the roads run out into Chesapeake Bay and thence the Atlantic.
Of the six cities- Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton (with Newport News), James City, and Chesapeake -the biggest by far is Virginia Beach. It covers 310 square miles and contains 430,000 citizens out of a total of 1.5 million. Of its four precincts, the Second, Third, and Fourth cover the builtup areas, while the First Precinct is large and mainly rural. Its 195 square miles run right down to the North Carolina border and are bisected by Indian River Road.