The Constant Gardener

"So you wondered whether you might go in his place," Woodrow cried, with a knowing laugh for the wiles of pretty women. "Where's it being held, Ghita? Up in Sin City?" His pet name for the United Nations complex.

"Lokichoggio, actually, Sandy," said Ghita.

* * *

Dear Ghita,

I had no chance to tell you how much Tessa loved you and valued the times the two of you spent together. But you know that anyway. Thank you for all the things you gave her.

I have a request of you but it is only a request and you should please not let it trouble you unless the spirit takes you. If ever, in the course of your travels, you happen to be in Lokichoggio, please get in touch with a Sudanese woman called Sarah who was Tessa's friend. She speaks English and was some kind of house servant to an English family during the British mandate. Perhaps she may shed some light on what really took Tessa and Arnold up to Loki. It's only a feeling, but it seems to me in retrospect that they went up there with a greater sense of excitement than was justified by the prospect of a gender awareness course for Sudanese women! If so, Sarah may know of it.

Tessa hardly slept the night before she left, and she was, even for Tessa, exceptionally demonstrative when we said good-bye to each other — what Ovid calls "good-bye for the last time," though I assume neither of us knew it. Here's an address in Italy for you to write to if you should have occasion. But please don't put yourself out. Thank you again.

Fondly,

Justin

Not Dutchman. Justin.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Justin arrived in the little town of Bielefeld near Hanover after two unsettling days of trains. As Atkinson he checked into a modest hotel opposite the railway station, made a reconnaissance of the town and ate an undistinguished meal. Come darkness, he delivered his letter. This is what spies do all the time, he thought, as he advanced on the unlit corner house. This is the watchfulness they learn from their cradles. This is how they cross a dark street, scan doorways, turn a corner: Are you waiting for me? Have I seen you somewhere before? But no sooner had he posted the letter than his common sense was taking him to task: forget the spies, idiot, you could have sent the damn thing round by taxi. And now by daylight, as he advanced on the corner house a second time, he was punishing himself with different fears: Are they watching it? Did they see me last night? Do they plan to arrest me as I arrive? Has someone phoned the Telegraph and discovered that I don't exist?

On the train journey he had slept little, and last night in the hotel not at all. He traveled with no bulky papers anymore, no canvas suitcases, laptops or attachments. Whatever needed to be preserved had gone to Ham's draconian aunt in Milan. What didn't, lay two fathoms deep on a Mediterranean seabed. Freed of his burden, he moved with a symbolic lightness. Sharper lines defined his features. A stronger light burned behind his eyes. And Justin felt this of himself. He was gratified that Tessa's mission was henceforth his own.

The corner house was a turreted German castle on five floors. The ground floor was daubed in jungle stripes which by daylight revealed themselves as parrot green and orange. Last night under the sodium lighting they had resembled flames of sickly black and white. From an upper floor a mural of brave children of all races grinned at him, recalling the waving children of Tessa's laptop. They were replicated live in a window on the ground floor, seated in a ring round a harassed woman teacher. A handmade display in the window next to them asked how chocolate grew, and offered curling photographs of cocoa beans.