London.
Six thirty in the evening. The persistent rain had rinsed away most of the people who usually clogged Leicester Square. The pub was packed, after-work drinkers unwinding with tourists and the pre-cinema crowd. It had less atmosphere than deep space: bright overhead lights, Linkin Park on the sound system competing with a chorus of cheesy mobile ring-tones and a football match on the screen at the far end.
Ali Metin was at the bar, nursing a pint of lager. ‘Steffi … looking foxy, as usual.’
‘Ali … looking shiny, as usual.’
Metin was proud to be bald by design and ran a hand over his mercury-smooth scalp. Beneath a long leather coat he wore a shimmering silk shirt and pleated trousers with a suspiciously high waist-band, both black. From his coat pocket he produced a silver mobile phone and handed it to her. It was a Siemens.
‘Talk me through it.’
‘It’s a beauty. Two things you got to remember. None of the calls you make can be traced. There are no records in the phone or on the SIM card. Anybody tries to return your call, they get blocked. If they got the facility to bypass, they won’t get the real number. They get a different number. You can use the memory but it won’t show right. The first time you put in the number you want to save, the phone will show you another number. It’s up to you to remember that. There’s no other way of knowing without ringing.’
She took an envelope out of her bag. Metin opened it and fanned through the dirty twenties inside. ‘Fancy a drink? I reckon I could stand it.’
Three days later Carleen Attwater says, ‘So, you’re one of Stern’s …’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never met one before.’
‘Is that why you agreed to see me? Out of curiosity?’
‘Aren’t journalists supposed to be curious? Or even ex-journalists …’
‘You’re retired?’
Her smile is as enigmatic as her reply. ‘At the moment.’
‘How come?’
‘Burn-out. Too much jet-lag, too much alcohol, too much CNN.’
‘I thought those were part of the deal for war correspondents.’
‘Then too much Balkans.’
‘The straw that broke the camel’s back?’
‘Exactly. Besides, I was never a war correspondent. I was a journalist who just ended up in a lot of wars. Take Croatia. I went to cover a human interest story about murals in a monastery and 1 stayed until the end of Kosovo. The best part of a decade. Or, should 1 say, the worst part?’
We’re standing on the roof terrace of Attwater’s top-floor flat in Poplar Place, off Bayswater Road. She’s watering her plants, which occupy two thirds of the available space.
She’s in pastel blue three-quarter-length linen trousers, a large buttercup T-shirt that falls to the thighs and a wide-brimmed hat. Not quite the flak-jacket she used to wear in Beirut or Baghdad. Or the Balkans. Now in her fifties, her career is etched into her skin but she still exudes an earthy sex-appeal. According to Stern, that was an asset she used to use freely.
‘Who were you working for?’
‘Nominally, I was freelance. But the New Yorker was good to me. So was Vanity Fair, when they could find it in their hearts to squeeze some serious stuff between puff pieces for Hollywood’s latest airheads. Drink?’
‘Thanks, yes.’
‘I hate London when it’s hot. Amman, fine. Damascus, fine. Here it’s horrible. Jim used to feel the same.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Like my career, my ex …’
‘Sorry.’
‘Lord, don’t be. We aren’t. We get on much better now we’re divorced. Of course, it helps that he’s back in New York.’
Her laugh is a sultry smoker’s laugh. Her ex-husband is James Barrie, a foreign correspondent for Time for more than twenty years. They surfed the world’s troubles together.
We go down the iron fire-escape and enter Attwater’s kitchen. She pours me fresh lemonade from a glass jug that has chilled in the fridge.
‘You met Savic?’ I ask her.
‘Many times. Especially during Bosnia.’
‘He trusted you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Why?’
Attwater sighs. ‘Because I don’t think he saw me as an American. In fact, I don’t think he saw me as a journalist. I don’t believe he felt I’d taken a side.’
‘And had you?’
‘By the end, no. With most of the others who were there, I think it was the other way round. They tried to be impartial, then crumbled.’
‘Why was it different for you?’
‘I don’t know. After a while you begin to lose your sense of perspective. Sides don’t seem to matter that much. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares? You just go from day to day, village to village, carcass to carcass.’
‘Surrendering responsibility?’
‘Give me a break. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions any more. It’s outdated, like good manners, or the slide-rule.’
‘That’s a rather cynical view.’
‘Talking about responsibility in relation to what occurred in the Balkans is the worst sort of window-dressing.’
‘Are you excusing what Savic did?’
‘Not at all. I’m just saying that to judge it against the standards you and I take for granted is absurd. War is a different form of existence. It’s heightened living. Survive or die, hour to hour. I apologize if I’m making it sound glamorous in some way. It isn’t. It’s dirty and disgusting. But every time I tried to leave, something held me back. By the end of Croatia I was already dead. And still I stayed, through Bosnia, through Kosovo. I hated being there. But when I wasn’t there I hated wherever I was even more. It was a kind of addictive madness. Heroin for the soul …’
Heroin for the soul. There’s a phrase that has resonance for me.
‘What about the ones he was supposed to have helped?’
She nods vigorously. ‘The project was called Gemini. It was well organized. Milan was impressed by the Homeland Calling fund run by the KLA. Gemini was financed along similar lines. It had a proper command structure, too.’
I point out that most people dismissed the rumour as a conspiracy theory. She counters by pointing out that none of them were there.
We move into the coolness of her sitting room; heavy plum curtains, dark green damask wallpaper, photographs in silver frames on a piano.
‘How did Savic rise so quickly? One minute he’s a street-thug in Belgrade,