Garcia's Heart

Chapter 1 "Going to see the Angel?" the cab driver said, and smiled like a man who knew for certain he'd won a bet. All Patrick Lazerenko had done was get into the cab and ask to go to the tribunal building at Churchillplein. The real destination was obvious to the cab driver. At this time of year, with the hotels catering almost exclusively to dark-suited people on official business, Patrick had the look of a tourist. Standing among a group of businessmen in the lobby of the Hotel Metropole and watching them disperse into the Den Haag drizzle, he had already begun to feel conspicuous, almost wishing he could pick up a briefcase and join their ranks for a day of bloodless regulatory triumph. Other than business, there wasn't much reason to be in Den Haag in November. What was left of the tulips had been interred for weeks, and the jazz festival was a memory of someone else's summer. Patrick wasn't surprised by what the cab driver said. The only public spectacle was taking place at the War Crimes Tribunal building where a man who had come to be known as the Angel of Lepaterique was on trial. It annoyed him to be so easily gauged, and he almost leaned forward to tell the cabbie to mind his own business, but instead he just nodded and said "Yes" in a squeaky voice, a bubble of last night's sleep still clinging to a vocal cord. Patrick didn't enjoy travelling and this trip hadn't begun well. He'd slept poorly on the flight from Logansometimes extra legroom isn't the issueand the attentions of the first-class stewardesses, which he thought he'd gotten used to, felt like the clumsy interventions of a special-needs teacher. There had been delays with the trains from Schiphol, saddling him with an extra hour to study the fairly limited palate of greys offered by the skies around Amsterdam. He'd assumed it was raining but hadn't bothered to go up to the window to check. By early evening he had arrived in Den Haag and a half-hour later found himself propped up against the reservations counter of the Hotel Metropole, trying to stay awake through the surprisingly elaborate process of check-in, craving the chance to close his eyes, hallucinatory bursts of rem sleep intruding and almost tripping him up as he concentrated to sign his name. Hours later, he awoke in a dark, compact room, got up to undress and then went back to bed, returning to a dream where everything seemed to slowly spin. He awoke again, coming to the surface of sleep's muddy pond for a breath of air that was really the voice of his wake-up call. It was past ten when he finally got out of bed. As if obliged to point out that Den Haag had more to offer than genocidal criminals, the taxi driver mentioned a few local landmarks worth seeing as they stopped and started through traffic. "The old city," the driver said for clarification, taking pains to make eye contact with Patrick in the rear-view mirror. Patrick thought he must have seen some of this alreadycobbled streets and a foreign style of architecture, the theme-park reassurances of European citiesdetails glimpsed on the ride from the train station. But maybe that was Amsterdam. Or Brussels, from last year. Here, along Johan de Wittlaan Boulevard, the taxi driver explained that it was mostly hotels. Many looked nicer than the Metropole. The traffic was made up almost entirely of trucks, other taxis, and what appeared to be a scattered fleet of black S-class Mercedes. Every time he looked through the windows into the back seats of other cars, he saw people talking into their mobile phones. He could remember when the sight of all these people talking on their phones would have seemed sophisticated, butDurcan, Liam is the author of 'Garcia's Heart ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312367084 and ISBN 0312367082.