Notorious Read Online Free PDF Page B

pale plants and small outcrops of grass stand in focus only briefly. Then the earth shifts.
    I am not a fanciful man. The most logical explanation is usually the right one. But all this airy fairy talk about deserts is distracting me. It is impossible to get anything done – and I’m on the clock. It’s stress, I say to myself. And the sun. I’m used to the heat after Iraq and Borneo; but this air is too thin or dry. I think I see an immense beast with the head of a vulture and the paws of a lion, moving its slow thighs, shaking its head, beginning to rise from the sands.
    I see black specks coming out of dust clouds. I see helicopters.
    A sound claws into the great bell of silence. My watch is beeping. It is time to call Mitch.
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’ says Mitch, static eroding his words. ‘She’s obviously not sane. Wave more amyl under her nose. Find out where she hid the stuff.’
    ‘The Administrator – ’
    ‘ – can see the writing on the map. The desert is a busy place these days.’
    I roll my eyes at the brown void below.
    ‘I know you didn’t want this job,’ says Mitch. ‘You must hate my guts for sending you . . . ’ He pauses expectantly.
    ‘No, Mitch.’ I grit my teeth. ‘I appreciate the opportunity – ’
    ‘ – the opportunity not to go to jail for letting her get away. So you’d better nail her good this time.’
    ‘Yes, Mitch.’
    ‘You’re on probation until then, you know.’
    ‘Yes.’
    I stare at the gravel grimace, hear the endless silence. Always we try to make our little marks on this vast page, digging out roads, reshaping mountains. It is a compulsion, this constant remaking. Like reaching out in the middle of the night to cup a hand around a woman’s calf and, very softly and gently, move her leg a fraction.
    I catch my breath.
    ‘What’s that sound?’ says Mitch.
    ‘The wind’s coming up. People go mad in the dust storms here, apparently.’
    ‘Madder,’ says Mitch. ‘Well, you’ve got one day – ’
    ‘Two,’ I say.
    ‘Dude, if you can’t get her talking by tomorrow night, dump her in the desert. We could pick her off from the air. Problem solved.’
    Static eats the humour in his laughter.
    ‘Joke, Devlin,’ says Mitch. ‘Like your Hollywood name.’
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Joke.’
    He says, ‘You field guys. You all think too much.’
    Laforche had refused to wake the woman. Instead, he told me a long pointless story. An old tale of the desert, he said. Two friends are parted for years by various malign fates, the weather, new loves. Then, after many more contrived circumstances, one finally sends the other a letter which contains only the words, This morning I pruned my rose tree . After many more malign circumstances (bandits, failing carrier pigeons and so on), his friend replies, This morning I too pruned my rose tree .
    Whole minutes went by while I stared in despair at the photo of the kiss in the café. The wooden fan overhead creaked into my silence.
    ‘You see?’ said Laforche.
    Now I am being given a guided tour of the property by Sister Antony. The condemned property. I wonder if Laforche knows. Maybe he thinks it will help, if he co-operates with us. Maybe he doesn’t care; it is another game to him. A game putting me behind schedule.
    I am standing in the room where the woman slept when she first arrived. It is a windowless cell, one of the summer sleeping rooms burrowed into the earth, taking advantage of small caves and natural pockets in the rock. But even here, some indecisive murk of sunlight falls down the curve of the rubbed-shiny stone steps and sidles exhausted, the colour of grey felt, around Sister Antony, who waits for me in the cool corridor.
    Dust is still itching my ear. I am annoyed enough to want to take off my tie and jacket but I refuse to lower my standards. I sit on the cot in the corner which, surprisingly, takes my weight without protest. A white sheet covers a lumpy pallet made from tough calico.
    I scratch a