As the others arrived, each of them asked her what had happened to Dexter. ‘I don’t know,’ she said each time. ‘I found him unconscious with nothing to indicate what had knocked him out. Perhaps he fainted with fright.’
Along with other stretcher cases, Dexter had been taken to the hospital in Abéché when the chopper stopped to refuel. Tamara suggested to Mike Olson that he send a junior officer, maybe someone like Dean Jones, on the next plane to Abéché to visit the hospital and get a first-hand diagnosis from the doctor, and Olson said: ‘Good idea.’
With Olson in charge the atmosphere was more pleasant, and yet all the work got done just as well, if not better.
The General was on the morning news, crowing like a rooster. ‘They have been taught a lesson!’ he said. ‘Now they will think twice about sending terrorists to the N’Gueli Bridge.’
The interviewer said: ‘Mr President, some people were saying that you were slow to respond to that incident.’
The General was clearly ready for this question. ‘The Chinese have a proverb,’ he said. ‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.’
It was not a Chinese proverb, Tamara knew, but a quote from a French novel, but the message was clear in any language. The General had planned carefully, and waited for this moment, then he had struck; and he was sure he had been very clever indeed.
Tamara put all the details into her report, then sat back and thought about how to sum up the significance of the battle. Her conversation with Karim confirmed the General’s claim that he had laid an ambush in retaliation for the shooting at the bridge. His statement that the Sudanese had been ‘taught a lesson’ was confirmed by a report from General Touré, which Susan had passed to Tamara, saying that the Sudanese had been soundly defeated.
That meant the government in Khartoum would be furious. They would try to put a spin on the battle that made them look less like losers, but they and the world would know the truth. And so they would feel humiliated, and want to retaliate.
Sometimes international politics was just like a Sicilian vendetta, Tamara thought. People took revenge for what had been done to them, as if they did not know that their rivals were sure to take revenge for the revenge. As the tit-for-tat went on, escalation was inevitable: more rage, more vengeance, more violence.
That was the weakness of dictators. They were so used to getting their own way that they did not expect the world outside their domain to refuse them anything. The General had started something he might not be able to control.
And there lay the significance for President Green. She wanted Chad to be stable. The US had backed the General as a leader who could keep order, but now he was threatening the stability of the region.
She finished the report and sent it to Olson. A few minutes later he came to her desk with a printed copy in his hand. ‘Thank you for this,’ he said. ‘It makes exciting reading.’
‘Too damn exciting,’ she said.
‘Anyway, it says most of what Langley needs to know, so I’ve sent it as it is.’
‘Thank you.’ Dexter would have rewritten it, Tamara thought, then sent it over his own signature.
Mike said: ‘If you want to take the rest of the day off, I’d say you’ve earned it.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Enjoy a rest.’
Tamara returned to her apartment and called Tab. He, too, had spent the morning at the office writing his report for the DGSE, but he had almost finished and would then leave for the day. They agreed to meet at his place, and maybe go out for lunch.
She took a car to his apartment and got there before him.
She let herself in with her key. It was the first time she had been there without him. She walked around, exploring the sensation of being at home in his private world. She had seen it all already, and he had said: ‘Look at everything, I have no secrets from you,’ but now she could stare at something as long as she liked without fearing he might say: ‘What’s so interesting about my bathroom cabinet?’
She opened the closet and gazed at his clothes. He had twelve light-blue shirts. She noticed several pairs of shoes that she had never seen him wear. The whole closet smelled of sandalwood, and she eventually figured out that his wooden coat-hangers and shoe-trees were impregnated with the scent.
He had a small cupboard of medical supplies: paracetamol, Band-Aids, cold remedy, indigestion tablets. She had not known he suffered from indigestion. On his bookshelf was an eighteenth-century edition of the plays of Molière, six volumes, in French of course. She opened a tome and a card fell out. It was inscribed: ‘Joyeux anniversaire, Tab – ta maman t’aime.’ Your mother loves you. Nice, she thought.
In a drawer he had a folder containing personal papers: a copy of his birth registration, certificates for both his degrees, and an old letter from his grandmother, in the careful script of someone who does not write often, evidently sent when he was a boy. The letter congratulated him on passing his exams. Tamara found that brought tears to her eyes, she did not really know why.
He arrived a few minutes later. She sat cross-legged on his bed and watched him take off his office suit, wash his face, and put on casual clothes. But he seemed in no hurry to go out. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her for a long moment. She was not embarrassed by his stare; in fact, she loved it.
Eventually he spoke: ‘When the shooting started—’
‘You picked up that little girl.’
He smiled. ‘The minx. She bit me, you know.’ He looked at his hand. ‘No blood, but look at that bruise!’
She took his hand and kissed the bruise. ‘You poor thing.’
‘This is nothing, but I did think I might die. And then I thought: I wish I’d spent more time with Tamara.’
She stared at him. ‘That was your, like, dying thought.’
‘Yes.’
‘On the way there,’ she said, ‘that long trip across the desert in the helicopter, I was thinking about us, and I had a similar feeling. I just didn’t want to be apart from you ever again.’
‘So we both feel the same.’
‘I knew we would.’
‘But what do we do about it?’
‘That’s the big question.’
‘I’ve been thinking about it. You’re committed to the CIA. I don’t feel that way about the DGSE. I’ve enjoyed working in intelligence, and boy, have I learned a lot, but I have no ambition to rise to the top. I’ve served my country for ten years, and I’d like to move into the family business now, and maybe take charge of it when my mother wants to retire. I love fashion and luxury, and we French are so good at it. But that means living in Paris.’
‘I figured that out.’
‘If the Agency would transfer you, would you move to Paris with me?’
‘Yes,’ said Tamara. ‘In a heartbeat.’
CHAPTER 16
The temperature rose mercilessly as the bus groaned slowly across the desert. Kiah had not realized that her old home, on the shore of Lake Chad, was one of the cooler areas of her country. She had always imagined that the whole of Chad was the same, and she was unpleasantly surprised to discover that the sparsely inhabited north was hotter. At the start of the journey she had been bothered by the open glassless windows, which let in an irritating dusty breeze; but now, sweaty and uncomfortable with Naji on her lap, she was glad of any wind, even if it was hot and gritty.
Naji was fidgety and cranky. ‘Want leben,’ he kept saying, but Kiah had no rice and no buttermilk and no way of cooking anything. She put him to her nipple, but he quickly became dissatisfied. She suspected that her breast milk was becoming thin because she herself was hungry. The food Hakim had promised was all too often just water and stale bread, and not much bread. The ‘luxuries’ for which he charged extra included blankets, soap, and any food other than bread or porridge. Was there anything worse for a mother than to know that she cannot feed her hungry child?