The Wreckage

6

The cafe has three computer screens at the rear of the far wall, squeezed between shelves of canned goods, breakfast cereal and soap powder. Internet access is four pounds an hour. The Bangladeshi owner, Mr. Rahman, has three unmarried daughters and has already quizzed the Courier about whether he needs a wife.

Ibrahim is twenty minutes late, sweating profusely. Big pores, he explains. A bad diet, thinks the Courier.

Coffee is ordered, double espressos with the consistency of tar.

“Why haven’t you found the notebook?” Ibrahim asks.

“Maybe it doesn’t exist or the ex-soldier threw it away. He died slowly. I gave him every opportunity to tell me.”

Ibrahim grunts and spoons four sugars into his coffee. Across the road, through a first-floor window, he notices a girl making a bed. She’s wearing a black skirt and a blue apron. Something about maids, he thinks. He once offered a hotel housekeeper three hundred pounds to sleep with him. A Filipino girl. She got offended. It was more than she earned in a week. Foolish pride.

“Are they ready?”

“They’re boy soldiers.”

“They can still be ready. Soldiers or dogs, they all obey.”

Ibrahim studies him for a while. He expected more of the Courier. Average height, average looks-only his eyes are predatory. Normally, they communicate via internet cafes, logging into an email account. Instructions are left as a draft message in the draft folder: a message that is never sent. Untraceable.

The Courier returns his gaze and Ibrahim looks down, touching the collar of his shirt. Outside a long-legged woman, dressed in black, is buying fruit from a stall. She steps around a couple sitting on the curb sharing a bottle, a beggar on one corner, a drunk on the next, invisible to her.

Ibrahim can feel his heartbeat increase as the caffeine and sugar fire up synapses in his brain.

“The operation is brought forward.”

“I don’t have the materials.”

“They’ll be provided.”

“The payment is double.”

Ibrahim mumbles in agreement.

“And the notebook?”

“If it falls into the wrong hands, we clear the accounts.”

“How long will that take?”

“A keystroke.”