Choke Point by Ridley Pearson Page B

old. He’s stolen it. He will call it borrowing.
    “After what has happened . . . someone with your particular credentials . . . the car bombing. My being assaulted. You must be half mad to investigate this.”
    “Only half?”
    “You joke? A man was killed.”
    “Assistant deputy directors are allocated five minutes of humor a month.”
    “Again,” he says.
    The return ferry arrives. She repeats the boarding process, and there’s Knox chatting up a blonde while eating a candy bar and laughing into the gray mist that’s thick as teapot steam. He’s so deeply in character she wonders if he remembers why he’s here.
    “Your . . . the people who assaulted you . . .” she says, “did they condemn you, make any kind of racial slur or—”
    “My mother was a Turk. My father, Chechen. I no longer hear such things when they’re said. My ears filter them out.” He lights a cigarette, savors the first inhale. Barely any smoke escapes as he exhales, or maybe the wind caused by the movement of the ferry carries it away.
    She does not quote the police file directly. She wants him to volunteer the same information a second time. People say strange things—incorrect things—when in shock and under duress. People will blurt things out to the police, invented on the spot, having no idea why.
    Give me what you gave the police. Convince me.
    “What can anyone do about such hate crimes?” he asks.
    “I’m a civil servant. Trained as an accountant. I’m not much of an investigator. I ask questions I am told to ask. I write reports. We build statistics.”
    “I’m a statistic.”
    “Soon. Yes. Of course.”
    “Earlier you said you were investigating.”
    “Following orders.”
    “The police report. I would not have filed in the first place, except for my attackers’ comment about me keeping my mouth shut.”
    Thank you.
    “
How many?” she asks.
    “It is this Kabril Fahiz they were after. I know that now. You should be speaking to him, not me.”
    “He is on my list, of course. But he was not attacked. He is not the victim.”
    “Victim,” he repeats. “So you
are
investigating.”
    “I am doing what I am told. Seriously. No more, no less.”
    “I’m not sleeping. If I am to see even my close friends,” he said, meeting eyes with her for the first time, “it’s like this.” He motions out to the river. The ferry is pulling up to the dock. “Precautions. Paranoia.”
    “What exactly did they say?”
    “You have read the report.”
    “Can you give me some descriptions? We often remember more a day or two later. Hmm?”
    “Not I. I want to forget, not remember.”
    “We don’t control our memories. They control us.”
    “A philosopher?” he says, mocking her. Again, eye contact. “What I ask is simple enough. This is not my fight. But they brought it to me. They know my face. My habits. How would I know until it’s too late? You . . . and the police . . . you owe it to me to let me know what’s going on
ahead of time
so I am not made a victim a second time.” He touches the fresh scar on his cheek. It’s an angry red. “You owe me.”
    “I need more,” she says. “If I am to—”
    She’s cut off as the gangway begins its groaning descent. The passengers surge forward as a unit.
    “Listen, from what I experienced, you should not pursue these people. They will hurt you. Worse. Go back to your superiors and tell them it was a dead end. Give this up.”
    “Height? Weight? You must remember something.”
    She sees Fahiz trying to time his next comment, his eyes shifting toward the lowering gangway.
    “Three of them. One who spoke Dutch, but like a German speaks Dutch.”
    She says, “You did not tell this to the police.”
    He doesn’t look at her, seems not to have heard her. “I have your number. If I should remember more . . .”
    “The longer your assailants remain at large, the longer you are at risk. Help us find them, and your trouble is over.”
    “Once