The Constant Gardener

"When Lorbeer visited my wife's ward, he was accompanied by Kovacs. What was Kovacs doing in Nairobi?"

"Markus wanted me to come to Nairobi a second time but my relationship with KVH and the hospital was by this time bad. They had heard about my earlier visit and were already threatening to have me expelled from the university because I lied about my mother. Therefore Markus telephoned to Kovacs in Basel and persuaded her to come to Nairobi as my substitute and observe the situation with him. He was hoping she would spare him the difficult decision and herself advise ThreeBees to withdraw the drug. KVH in Basel was at first reluctant to allow Kovacs to go to Nairobi, then they consented on condition that the visit remained a secret."

"Even from ThreeBees?"

"From ThreeBees that would not have been possible. ThreeBees were too close to the situation and Markus was advising them. Kovacs visited Nairobi for four days in great secrecy, then returned to her Serbian crook in Basel for more opera."

"Did she file a report?"

"It was a contemptible report. I was educated as a scientist. This was not science. This was polemic."

"Lara."

"What is it?" She was staring combatively at him.

"Birgit read you Lorbeer's letter over the telephone. His apologia. His confession. His whatever he calls it."

"So?"

"What did it mean to you — the letter?"

"That Markus cannot be redeemed."

"From what?"

"He is a weak man who looks for strength in the wrong places. Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong. Maybe he did something very bad. Sometimes he is too much in love with his own sins."

"If you had to find him, where would you look for him?"

"I do not have to find him." He waited. "I have only a postbox number in Nairobi."

"May I have it?"

Her depression had reached new depths. "I will write it for you." She wrote on a pad, tore off the sheet and gave it him. "If I was looking for him, I would look among those that he has injured," she said.

"In the desert."

"Maybe it is figurative." The aggressive edge had left her voice, as it had left Justin's. "Markus is a child," she explained simply. "He acts from impulse and reacts to the consequences." She actually smiled, and her smile too was beautiful. "Often he is very surprised."

"Who provides the impulse?"

"Once it was me."

He stood up too quickly, meaning to fold the papers she had given him into his pocket. His head swam, he felt nauseous. He thrust a hand to the wall to steady himself, only to discover that the professional doctor had taken his arm.

"What's the matter?" she said sharply, and kept holding him while she sat him down again.

"I just get giddy now and then."

"Why? You have high blood pressure? You should not wear a tie. Undo your collar. You are ridiculous."

She was holding her hand across his brow. He felt weak as an invalid and desperately tired. She left him and returned with a glass of water. He drank some, handed her the glass. Her gestures were assured but tender. He felt her gaze on him.

"You have a fever," she said accusingly.

"Maybe."

"Not maybe. You have a fever. I will drive you to your hotel."

It was the moment that the tiresome instructor had warned him against on his security course, the moment when you are too bored, too lazy or simply too tired to care; when all you can think of is getting back to your lousy motel, going to sleep and, in the morning, when your head has cleared, making up a fat parcel for Ham's long-suffering aunt in Milan containing everything that Dr. Lara Emrich has told you, including a copy of her unpublished paper on the harmful side effects of the drug Dypraxa, such as blurred vision, bleeding, blindness and death, also a note of Markus Lorbeer's postbox number in Nairobi, and another describing what you intend should be your next move, in case you are impeded from taking it by forces outside your control. It is a moment of conscious, culpable, willful lapse, when the presence of a beautiful woman, another pariah like himself, standing at his shoulder and feeling his pulse with her kind fingers can be no excuse for failing to observe the basic principles of operational security.

"You shouldn't be seen with me," he objects lamely. "They know I'm around. I'll only make things worse for you."

"There is no worse," she retorts. "My negative situation is complete."

"Where's your car?"

"It is five minutes. Can you walk?"

It is a moment also when Justin in his state of physical exhaustion gratefully reverts to the excuses of good manners and ancient chivalry that were bred in him from his Etonian cradle. A single woman should be accompanied to her coach at night, should not be exposed to vagabonds, footpads and highwaymen. He stands. She puts a hand under his elbow and keeps it there as they tiptoe together across the drawing room to the stairs.

"'Night, children," Amy calls through a closed door. "Have fun now."

"You've been very kind," Justin replies.

CHAPTER NINETEEN