The Network - Jason Elliot [71]
‘Really appreciate your input,’ says one of them, although I haven’t given any.
Our driver is summoned on a walkie-talkie and we speed into the city along the Memorial Parkway with the Potomac on our left. Grace asks me for my thoughts.
‘Very impressive,’ I tell her, then feel I should say more. ‘It’s a dedicated team.’
‘Sure makes you feel all-overish looking at those images, doesn’t it? You don’t think we’re barking at a knot with all that technology?’ She sighs and speaks again before I can answer. ‘I can tell you do, and you’re right. I’ll admit there’s a few hotheads in the family who want the glory of nailing bin Laden in some Tom Clancy black op. They don’t give a damn what happens in Afghanistan. Way I see it, the Company’s a strategic entity not a tactical one. You can’t do strategy with a motorised buzzard, even if it can see in the goddamned dark.’ She peers from the window. ‘Same goes for the DIA’s data-mining programmes. We can analyse the conversations of every member of every jihad chat room across the world. We can listen to their phones 24/7. We could hear them talking in their sleep if we really wanted to. But it’ll never tell us what they’re really thinking. You gotta be there to know that.’
We pull up outside the Hilton on Connecticut Avenue.
‘Here,’ she says, leans towards me and stretches out her arm. For just a second I’m not sure what her intentions are, until she unclips the ID from my jacket pocket. ‘I’d better take that. I’ll pick you up at 6 p.m. tomorrow and we’ll go through some details.’
‘I’m seeing my kids in the morning,’ I tell her.
‘How do you get along with their mother?’
‘I don’t. She doesn’t exactly make it easy for me.’
‘Give her hell,’ she says with a grin.
* * *
It’s a brilliantly clear and cold morning, and the sky is a luminously bright blue. I haven’t had much sleep but force myself to run a few miles, dropping into Rock Creek Park to get off the streets. When I run in England, I see no one. Here there’s a steady stream of joggers and bikers in the latest running gear, and I feel distinctly shabby by comparison. Everything they wear is new. In my crumpled T-shirt and three-year-old trainers with holes beginning to show at the toes, I’m definitely not up to local standards. There are men dressed head-to-toe in body-hugging Lycra, women in pink tracksuits with their dogs, and octogenarians with miniature dumb-bells, which they lift as they trot along. Husband-and-wife teams tow their babies behind their bicycles in prams with suspension systems and disc brakes. I feel as though I’ve strayed into the recreation area of an insane asylum.
After a shower back at the hotel I pick up the phone with a familiar sense of dread and call my ex. The phone is answered by her new husband, to whom good luck. He’s civil and has the annoying habit of saying ‘Stand by’ when asking me to hold the line. I ask to speak to my older daughter.
‘Stand by,’ he says. He’s too stupid to realise I’ve been standing by for years. But it’s not my daughter who comes on the line.
‘Hello, Anthony,’ says my ex with scarcely disguised contempt. ‘You said you would call at ten.’
‘Sorry about that. I’m a bit jet-lagged, actually.’
‘Well that’s alright,’ she says. ‘We’re used to your excuses. But in future lateness is unacceptable. You may think you can swan in from England and expect everyone else to change their plans, but from now on you’re going to have to modify your behaviour.’
‘I just want to see the girls for a few hours,’ I say.
‘Well if you’re not here by eleven you won’t find us.’
The line goes dead. As much as I try, every time, to prepare myself for this kind of treatment, it never fails to have