Our Game полностью

I turned a couple of blackened pages. The highlighting continued: Emma's or Larry's, it made no difference, since I knew now that they shared the same madness:

. . . mass disorder and inte . . . conflicts accompanied by the use of force, weaponry, and combat vehicles . . . the refugee situation ... catastrophic, with more than 60,000 . . . situation is a tragedy which has befallen a people needed by no one . . . Russian troops operating in the state of emergency area on the territory of North Osetia and Ingushetia have been ordered to eliminate bandit gangs which fa ... authorities, said General ... the interim administration in the Osetian–Ingush conflict zone.

But in the left-hand margin, in angry capitals, Larry had written the following words:

FOR BANDIT READ PATRIOT

FOR GANG READ ARMY

FOR ELIMINATE READ KILL, TORTURE, MAIM, BURN ALIVE.

* * *

I was in spasm.

In spasm, but overcontrolled.

I was standing, and my back was screaming murder at me and I was screaming murder in reply, but I had found the file I was looking for. LP: LAST DEBRIEFINGS, I had written on the cover, in capitals in my bureaucratic hand. Yet for all my eagerness, I had to punt myself along the wall like a wounded cow in order to carry it to the trestle table.

I was squatting in a chair and leaning low over the table, taking as much weight off my spine as I could. My left elbow was pressed onto a cushion, as Mr. Dass had taught me. But the pains in my back were nothing compared with the shame and anguish in my soul as I stared at the accumulating evidence of my culpable blindness:

Asked LP whether he could decently duck the Caucasus trip that CC is so keen on. I didn't say so, but customer interest in region v. low and already oversupplied by satellite, humint, sigint, and a flood of reports from US oil companies operating or prospecting in the region. LP not receptive.

LP: I owe it to him, Timbo. I've promised him for years and never gone. They're what he cares about. They're who he is.

* * *

Licking my fingertips, I clawed painfully through the pages till I came to my account of the debriefing three weeks later:

LP has violently overreacted to Caucasus trip—predictably, in his present menopausal mood. Nothing in scale for him, everything a first and last. Saddest, most exciting, most moving, tragic experience of my career; etc., masses to report, seething unrest, balloon will go up again any minute, ethnic, tribal, and religious tension everywhere, Russian occupiers total oafs, plight of Ingush archetypal for plight of all small oppressed Muslim nations in region, etc. . . .

Footnote to source report: H/Evaluation Ex-Sov target told me off the record she was unlikely to file.

* * *

But Cranmer had filed.

Cranmer had filed and forgotten.

Cranmer in his criminally negligent myopia had consigned the cause of the Ingush people to the dustbin of history, and LP with it, then buried his stupid head in the sweet earth of Somerset—even though he knew that nothing, absolutely nothing in Larry's life, or Cranmer's own pathetic imitation of it, ever went away:

. . . because I've seen them, in their little valley towns and in their mountains. . . . In life, as we both know, it's the luck of the draw, who you meet and when and how much you have left to give, and the point at which you say, To hell with everything, this is where I go the distance, this is where I stick.

* * *

A picture postcard. Torn once vertically. Addressed to Sally Anderson in Cambridge Street and showing a dressed couple lying in a field. Postmark: Macclesfield. The artist: one David Macfarlane. The description: "Silent Noon 1, 1979, mixed media 18" x 24"." Provenance: Emma's wastepaper , basket.

Emm. Crucial. AM needs 50,000 in his account by Friday noon. Miss your beautiful eyes. L. PS. Henceforth he's Nutty as in f' cake, nuts-in-whenever, tough Nutty to crack.