When he heard who was on the line, he told his secretary to hold all calls and his voice filled the moving limousine ten miles away.
‘Steve. Good to hear you again. Where are you?’
‘Right here in Washington. Peter, I need to see you. It’s serious.’
Catching his mood, the senator dropped the bonhomie. ‘Sure, pal. Wanna tell me?’
‘Over lunch. Can you make it?’
‘I’ll clear the diary. The Hay Adams. Ask for my usual corner table. It’s quiet. One o’clock.’
They met when the senator strode into the lobby. The Canadian was waiting there.
‘You sounded serious, Steve. You have a problem?’
‘I just came from an interment up in Georgetown. I just buried my only grandson.’
The senator stared and his face creased with shared pain. ‘Jesus, old friend, I am so sorry. I can’t even imagine it. Illness? Accident?’
‘Let’s talk at the table. There’s something I need you to read.’
When they were seated the Canadian answered his friend’s question. ‘He was murdered. In cold blood. No, not here, and not now. Six years ago. In Bosnia.’
He explained briefly about the boy’s age, his desire back in 1995 to help alleviate the pain of the Bosnians, his odyssey through the capitals to the town of Travnik, his agreement to try to help his interpreter trace his family homestead. Then he passed over the Rajak confession.
Dry martinis came. The senator ordered smoked salmon platter, brown bread, chilled Meursault. Edmond nodded, meaning: the same.
Senator Lucas was accustomed to reading fast, but halfway through the report he gave a low whistle and slowed down.
While the senator toyed with the salmon and read the last pages, Steve Edmond glanced around. His friend had chosen well: a personal table just beyond the grand piano, secluded in a corner by a window through which part of the White House was visible. The Lafayette at the Hay Adams was unique, more like a house set at the heart of an eighteenth-century country estate than a restaurant in the middle of a bustling capital city.
Senator Lucas raised his head.
‘I don’t know what to say, Steve. This is perhaps the most awful document I have ever read. What do you want me to do?’
A waiter removed the plates and brought small black coffees and for each man a glass bowl of old Armagnac. They were silent while the young man was at the table.
Steve Edmond looked down at their four hands on the white cloth. Old men’s hands, cord-veined, sausage-fingered, liver-spotted. Hands that had thrown a Hurricane fighter straight down into a formation of Dornier bombers; hands that had emptied an M-1 carbine into a trattoria full of SS-men outside Bolzano; hands that had fought fights, caressed women, held first-borns, signed cheques, created fortunes, altered politics, changed the wor
ld. Once.
Peter Lucas caught his friend’s glance and understood his mood. ‘Yes, we are old now. But not dead yet. What do you want me to do?’
‘Maybe we could do one last good thing. My grandson was an American citizen. The USA has the right to require this monster’s extradition from wherever he is. Back here. To stand trial for Murder One. That means the Justice Department. And State. Acting together on any government that harbours this swine. Will you take it to them?’
‘My friend, if this government of Washington cannot give you justice, then no one can.’
He raised his glass.
‘One last good thing.’
But he was wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Father
It was only a family spat and it should have ended with a kiss-and-make-up. But it took place between a passionate Italian-blooded daughter and a doggedly tenacious father.