Betrayals (30 page)

“Why?” Janet said. “I don't understand why …” She stumbled to a halt. “There was no reason, no purpose. And he didn't know where I'd put the money anyway.”

Hart leaned slightly forward, to make his point. “Ms. Stone, I want you to understand something. I don't really give a damn whether you get taken for every penny you've got or whether you really do end up in an Arab outhouse, along with the rest of the animals. But I do care if anything you do causes one of my colleagues to get killed. That's why I want to see your ass out of here. But others are concerned about you, personally …”

“Partington didn't know about the money!” Janet insisted.

“Lady,” Hart said. “Partington knew all about the money because your father called him from England before you even landed, told him what you were likely to do and asked him to pull every string he could think of to get you on the next available plane out of the island and back somewhere sensible.”

“My father!” Janet said, disbelieving.

“Your father,” Hart said. “He worries about you.”

From behind the desk Knox said: “You know, Al, I always knew you were a shit. I just never knew until now exactly how much of a shit you are. It's something: it's really something!”

19

I
t was a military helicopter, attached to the base at Akrotiri, so the comforts were minimal. Conversation was impossible and Janet was grateful. She did not want any talk—any contact at all—with Al Hart. After takeoff from the American compound in Beirut Janet pulled as far away from him as possible on the continuous, port-to-starboard seat, and after they landed she tried to distance herself similarly in the back of the waiting police car. Hart seemed unaware of what she was doing: if he did notice it, he didn't appear to care, not wanting to talk any more to her, either.

There was still some heat in the day, and the vehicle had no air conditioning. Almost at once the interior became eye-droopingly hot: very shortly after picking up the motorway for the drive into the capital Janet felt her lids closing and let it happen.

Janet started, frightened, into bewildered wakefulness, her body aching, not immediately able to remember where she was or what she was doing, babbling “… What …? No …!” before becoming properly aware of her surroundings. Someone was shaking her shoulder.

It was the notetaking Sergeant Kashianis who was leaning into the car to shake her: Zarpas stood behind him. Janet heard a slam, another noise that made her jump, and saw that Hart had left the car and closed his door.

“This way, please,” said Kashianis.

Janet got unsteadily from the vehicle, needing the door edge for support until she became properly awake. She ached very badly, seemingly at every joint, and her eyes were sticky and still heavy: it would have been very easy for her to go back to sleep.

“This way, please,” urged the sergeant, again.

Janet made an uncertain path into the police headquarters, aware of Zarpas and Hart ahead of her, their heads lowered and close together in intent conversation.

The air was heavy inside, but there was at least a desultory fan in Zarpas's office. It was a disordered, cluttered box of a place, files and dossiers haphazard on top of cabinets which supposedly should have contained them, others overflowing on to the floor. The police officer's desk was mountained with more paperwork, in peaks and foothills: in a glass vase were yellow, long-used water and a sad flower, head lolled to one side, already atrophying, and Janet wondered why he bothered.

Zarpas shifted dossiers from a chair for Janet to sit in. Kashianis took another chair alongside the desk and arranged his pad and pencils there. Zarpas sat behind the desk. Yet again Hart had nowhere to sit. There was no space in the disorder for him to perch on the desk, as he had in Beirut. Janet was childishly glad.

“So you didn't bother to listen,” Zarpas began.

“I really am very tired,” Janet said. She vaguely remembered saying something similar to Hart and wished she had thought of a better rejoiner.

“We're all very tired of it, Mrs. Stone,” said the Cypriot.

“Do you normally share interviews with American intelligence personnel!” fought back Janet.

“When it pleases me to do so,” replied Zarpas, unimpressed. “And for our mutual benefit—his and my own mutual benefit—at the moment it pleases me to do so.” Zarpas paused, looking towards the American as if inviting the man to say something as well. Hart remained silent. The Cypriot announced, “We've found the man we think you stabbed.”

“Dead!” demanded Janet, no longer lethargic.

“Not yet,” said the policeman. “Someone—or maybe some people—this morning dumped him on the steps of the hospital in Homer Avenue. There was a deep stab wound to the stomach and a sepsis had developed because it had not been properly treated. There also seems a possibility of tetanus.”

“Not dead!” accepted Janet, the relief sighing from her.

“Not yet,” repeated Zarpas.

“What does the bastard say!”

Zarpas blinked, surprised at hearing a woman swear. He said: “It's not been possible yet to take a statement from him: he's in intensive care.”

“What about the others?”

“They claim the idea of selling you to a Shia group in Beirut was that of the man found on the hospital steps this morning. I'd guess they abandoned him, expecting him to die. If he does die there's only the fraud involving that Letter of Credit to worry them, isn't there? Still serious but still a lesser charge.”

“The captain went ashore to negotiate with whoever it was in Beirut,” insisted Janet.

“Good,” said Zarpas obtusely. “That's what I want. I want a full and complete statement: I want you to tell me everything.”

“For a prosecution?” asked Janet, cautiously.

“Of course.”

Janet tried to imagine how absurd she would appear in court, recounting the events, but found it difficult properly to encompass. She said: “They weren't able to cash the credit letter, were they? I haven't suffered any financial loss.”

“Not this time!” said Zarpas, his voice loud. “I'm not letting you refuse this time.”

“You can't force me to testify,” rejected Janet.

“No one's trying to force you to do anything,” came in Hart, speaking for the first time. “But you have the right of American residency, from your marriage. Washington likes American residents to cooperate, in matters of law and order. You own an apartment in Washington and have got a pretty high-powered job at a university there. It would all be very inconvenient if you couldn't live in the United States any more, wouldn't it?”

“What the hell are you saying!”

“I'm not saying anything,” said the man, innocent-faced. “Just posing a thought.”

“Why!” demanded Janet.

“Why what?” said Hart, playing word games.

“You want me to be publicly discredited, don't you!” discerned Janet, in awareness. “I've caused you a lot of awkwardness and you want me labeled in a court as an empty-headed fool who didn't have a clue what she was doing!”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Hart.

“Then why make the threat?”

“What threat?”

It was a mental struggle for Janet to keep up. She said: “About my residency being revoked.”

The American turned towards the policeman. “Did I say anything about Ms. Stone's residency?”

Zarpas shook his head. “Not that I heard.”

Janet looked between the two men, moving her own head in understanding. To Zarpas she said: “So this is it, is it? This is what you call a stitch-up? Unless I make a statement and appear in court and end up looking a complete idiot—a laughingstock that no one is going to take seriously—I lose my right to remain in America?”

“I'm sorry,” said the policeman. “I really don't understand what you're saying.”

A feeling of being lost engulfed Janet: of being lost and too weary to fight and wanting to give up and actually do what they wanted, to go home. She said: “And you'd deny it, if I complained? Talked to the newspapers, for instance?”

“Ms. Stone!” said Hart, patronizingly. “What right do I have to threaten your right to live in America! Any complaint would be demonstrably untrue!”

“And this is why I was flown here by an American helicopter and why the CIA can take part in a Cypriot police interview!” said Janet. “You really have created a complicated little scenario to get rid of—or rather to ridicule—a nuisance, haven't you?”

“All I am asking is that you make a complete statement to enable a prosecution to be brought against men who tried to defraud you out of £10,000,” said Zarpas, formally. “I am not going to comment upon the foolhardiness of preparing to give men you didn't even know £10,000. Or the wiseness of getting on a boat with them expecting to be introduced to more men you didn't know in the Lebanon.”

From where he stood near the overflowing filing cabinets Hart made a snorting, laughing sound.

It did sound ridiculous now, conceded Janet:
would
sound ridiculous. It hadn't, though, at the time. To the patiently waiting Kashianis she said: “Why don't we get it over with?”

Zarpas only let her talk briefly before intruding with a question, which became the way the statement was recorded, Janet's responses to questions but written down in the form of a continuous narrative. Zarpas was very particular, carefully bringing out every detail of the voyage and stopped her briefly but completely while he issued telephone orders for the arrest of Hasseb as a possible accomplice.

When she finished her account Janet said: “What about if the man dies? Won't I be guilty of something?”

Zarpas brought the corners of his mouth down, in a doubtful expression. “I would have thought that could be considered justifiable self-defense,” said the man. “And although if he does die it will be on Cyprus territory the wound he suffered would appear to have been inflicted outside Cyprus jurisdiction. And no accusation has anyway been brought against you, has it? The other two
want
him to die.”

Janet supposed it was the tiredness but everything seemed very difficult to comprehend: there were disorientating lapses in her concentration, so that sometimes Zarpas's words were quite clear but other times what the man said seemed indistinct. Janet supposed she should be grateful for the reassurance about the stabbing. She said: “Have you finished with me now?”

“There will be the need for clarification: maybe more questions,” Zarpas said. “I will want to know where you are going to be at all times.”

“House arrest?” Janet asked.

“Cooperation,” contradicted Zarpas.

Hart said: “And let's not have any more nonsense, OK, lady? You've caused an awful lot of flak and achieved absolutely zero. Let's leave it at that: let us, the professionals, worry about getting John out.”

Janet was too exhausted to argue as she had in the past: couldn't think how to argue, any more. She said: “I would like to go.”

Zarpas provided a car and driver. Janet traveled with the window down and the wind in her face, trying to revive herself, and when she got to the hotel it was besieged with reporters. Janet let herself be bustled into a side lounge and responded to the questions but insisted that the television and radio interviews be conducted at the same time because she did not feel able to do them separately.

It still took a long time, more than an hour, and Janet was so weary at the end that she had literally to force one foot in front of the other to walk to the elevator and from the elevator to her room. She let her borrowed clothes lie where they fell and burrowed into bed, scarcely aware of where she was, sinking immediately into sleep.

She thought at first that the sound was in a dream, not responding for several minutes to the ringing telephone, and even when she lifted it she had to struggle for consciousness. She did not completely succeed, so that she could not follow what the man was saying for several more minutes.