The Care of Time (20 page)

He was silent for a long time after that. I guessed what was happening. He was a man used to success. A lot of careful and complex thought had gone into this operation and it had worked splendidly, so far. All of a sudden, though, he was having to accept the fact that there might be a flaw in his phase-three planning and that, somewhere along the line, he must have made an error of judgement. Now he was trying to identify and locate it. Then, he would either retrieve or neutralize it. But where along the line was he to look?

There had been truth in what he had said about television units. Many of them, including on occasion some of the freelance teams, often enjoyed nowadays the sort of freedom and prerogatives once granted only to the accredited correspondents of great newspapers. Mobile units with access to the world’s networks and satellite picture-transmission systems could be invested during time of crisis with an even headier importance, a kind of supranational status. These were the crews before whom the modern Nechayevs liked to act out their crudely-scripted tales of villainy unmasked, righteous anger unleashed, innocence redeemed through the cleansing fires of violence and of mob-rule justice seen to be done. On those occasions, with millions watching, such crews and the equipment they operated became sacrosanct.

Zander had understood this, of course, but he had only understood it from the outside, as a member of the audience.
Yes, he had made some guesses about how it felt to be where the camera was, but they hadn’t been good enough. What he had seen as the elements of a secure cover – the TV logos, the indulgent customs men, the helpful officials, the protective police – were really the trappings of something quite different. They were the things that would make even the normally incurious person turn a head. The real crews were aware of the intense interest they aroused and were from the most part professionally indifferent to it. Our mixed bunch of phoneys could only look sullen or smirk with embarrassment.

On the outskirts of Zürich we came to a big filling station without a parking area or coffee shop. Zander told Chihani to pull into the forecourt and top up with gas. Then he got out and walked back to the van. He and Vielle spoke briefly before heading for the station manager’s office and, I guessed, a telephone. I saw Chihani watching them, but when she had paid for the gas she made no move to join them. Instead, she got back into the car and turned around to face me.

‘It was the questioning that surprised me,’ she said. ‘Were you expecting that?’

‘No. Of course it’s Sunday afternoon. Those people back there had nothing better to do. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. The questions, some of them anyway, were pretty stupid, yes. But people really aren’t all that stupid. We were doing it.’

‘Making them stupid?’

‘No, but we
were
giving them a feeling that we weren’t quite right. And we weren’t. We were all wrong. Do you know what a real unit would have done? Locked their vehicles and gone to get their coffee and sandwiches. A few people would probably have collected. They would have been ignored. All anyone who asked a question would have had for an answer would have been a stare or a shrug or a “comprends pas”. If anyone persisted the crew would talk between themselves so as to exclude him. We not only
answered questions and kept on answering them but the young people chattered away and giggled as if they were on a picnic. No wonder the questions became stupid.
We
were stupid. I suggest that when we stop next time the young people pretend to be asleep. At other times they should keep their heads down. On no account should they appear to be enjoying themselves. Jean-Pierre should drive the van and try to speak nothing but French.’

‘I will tell the patron.’ She smiled slightly. ‘It is very unprofessional. You must be suffering.’

‘I’d be suffering more if I thought this particular cover was your idea. I don’t think it was.’

‘I was against it. It was good cover for you, but not for us. But then I am sometimes wrong. I was against making the attack on Pacioli’s bodyguard. I thought it was …’ She shrugged.

‘Brutal and unnecessary?’

She looked surprised. ‘No, I thought it mistaken. Coercive action should always be direct. The Syncom man in Rome was permitting the delay. He should have been the one who was hurt.’

‘I’m told that prolonged contact with the Arab world tends to complicate thought processes. Yours seem straightforward enough.’

She gave me her sidelong look. ‘I’m not an Arab and only half Berber. You are thinking of the patron. He is the one who likes the desert Arabs. He can even sometimes like The Ruler.’

‘You don’t and can’t?’

‘There are civilized men down there,’ she said, ‘but he’ – she made a gesture with her left hand as if she were shaking drops of water from her finger-tips – ‘him I always prefer to avoid. The patron knows this.’

‘Did the patron tell you that we’re going to be met on Tuesday somewhere near the rendezvous by a Dutch television unit, a real one?’

She stared. ‘What are you talking about?’

As I told her she pursed her lips and drew deep breaths. Then, with a brief snarl of disgust, she went back to the book. ‘A cover story requiring skills or abilities not possessed or not easily acquired by the person or persons using it is inherently weak. The good cover requires almost no pretence.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘And over-elaborate cover tends to be self-defeating. I do not blame you for this complication, my friend. You thought correctly. It is better than having trouble with the Austrian media. Where is the Dutch unit now?’

‘On the way north from somewhere in Yugoslavia. I don’t know exactly where. But I have another suggestion to make. Want to hear it?’

‘Very well.’

‘Why don’t we leave Jean-Pierre, the young people and all this junk we’re driving around? We leave them somewhere in Zürich and then fly to Vienna tomorrow. There, we rent a car and drive to the Gasthaus near St Veit where the patron said we’ll be staying before the meeting. Then we’ll be all set for the rendezvous with no problems.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Why?’

She was very patient with me. ‘Because that is not the plan agreed in advance by The Ruler. Even a request for minor changes would cause deep suspicion. You don’t know him.’

‘You’re making him sound just like his father.’

‘Oh, you have heard of that one. Well, this one would not pull his own gun and shoot us, I think, but your friends would not see him. He would disappear with his entourage in a private jet to London or Paris. Another meeting would take many weeks to arrange. The patron could not consider such a basic change of plan.’

‘Honey, there are two parties to this negotiation. Why should The Ruler call all the shots?’

‘No reason, if the other party doesn’t mind forgetting Abra Bay for a while.’

‘Aren’t
you
forgetting something? How about this Dutch unit that’ll be arriving and the interview I’m going to do? You don’t call that a change of plan?’

‘The only change will be that the camera he sees will now have film or tape in it. Before, it would only have been a – what did you call it?’

‘A dry run?’

‘That’s it. A dry run after the secret meeting so that there appears to have been a simpler explanation than the real one for all the coming and going.’ I was leaning forward with my elbows on the back of the front seat beside her. She reached over and patted my hands. ‘My friend, you must not make the mistake of thinking that these people automatically respond to sane voices talking good sense. Only a few are sane and sensible men. Sometimes, I think, not even the patron is wholly sane.’

She said the last few words so casually that the oddity of them didn’t really register with me for a moment. By then she had opened the driver’s door and was getting out. Zander and Vielle were returning to the van and Zander was beckoning to her.

They all got inside the van and remained there for some minutes before she and Zander came back to the station-wagon.

‘I have decided that we shall divide our forces,’ he said to me as he climbed in. ‘Divided we shall attract less attention. Simone has told us of the criticisms you’ve made about behaviour and discipline. Your points have been noted and your advice will be taken. Jean-Pierre will drive the van and the young people will remember their new orders. They will go for the night to a motel on the other side of Zürich near the airport. We, the three of us, now have reservations at a hotel in the same area. It is one of the new convention places and has telex. Jean-Pierre will join us by taxi so that we can confer later.’

He said nothing after that until we reached the hotel.

It had a new look, that of a pile of supermarket egg-boxes
made of concrete instead of papier mâché. It had newness of another sort too. Once you had checked in you were on your own. You found your own room, carried your own bag, fixed your own drinks and found your own pillows in the closet. There was no room service. If you wanted anything that wasn’t in your room you called the desk and they told you where to go find it. That way I found someone who was prepared to rent me a cubicle with a telex machine and show me how to work it.

I called Ulm and gave the name and number of the hotel. In return I was given again the phone number I was to call in Velden when I reached the Gasthaus near St Veit plus the name of the person I was to ask for. I was to ask for Herr Kurt Mesner. Please acknowledge.

Zander had come to think of me as
his
man, not theirs, and he monitored these exchanges jealously. He also became impatient. ‘Who cares what noms de guerre they are using?’ he asked irritably. ‘Ask them for the name
we
want, the name we need to know.’

I did so not because I was obeying him but because that happened to be the next item on the list of things to do that Schelm had given me for my aide-mémoire.

The reply came back immediately.

I did as I had been told, then looked at Zander. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’ I asked.

‘I will soon know when Jean-Pierre gets here. Where
is
he?’

‘Trying to get a taxi from a motel near the airport on a
Sunday, I imagine. What do you want me to reply?’

‘Say I will telex acceptance or rejection within an hour.’

‘Why should you reject? On what grounds?’

‘If this Newell is not a lieutenant-general on the staff of Nato as you have led me to expect, I shall reject. And if we have not among the identifying photographs of senior Nato personnel in our dossiers a picture of this Newell so that I shall know it is he the moment I first set eyes on him, I shall reject. The Ruler will be trusting me to vouch personally that this man is who he says he is.’

I wasn’t going to use the word ‘rejection’ though. What I sent was:

Vielle arrived, with his briefcase, ten minutes later and was hustled upstairs by Zander. Each room had a locked refrigerator stocked with small bottles of wine, liquor and soft drinks which the occupant could get at by using the room key and agreeing to accept the charges on his bill. Chihani and I were instructed by Zander to gather bottles of whisky and soda from our refrigerators and join him.

By the time we got there Vielle had the card on Lieutenant-General Sir Patrick Newell, KCB, CBE, DSO, MC, out of the Nato file and Zander was studying a photograph of the man. Vielle was reading aloud from the card.

‘Born: 1931. Educated: Wellington College and Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Joined Royal Regiment Fusiliers, later transferring to The Parachute Regiment. Service in Korea, Malaya, Cyprus, Aden. There are promotions with dates and three small initial letters – p.s.c.’

‘That means he passed the British Staff College course at Camberley,’ Zander said. ‘What else it could mean about him I don’t know.’

‘There are various appointments and commands he has
held listed here. I don’t understand the meaning of some of these abbreviations.’

‘Surely,’ I said, ‘the only one that matters is the last one. Military Deputy to Commander Nato Strike Force South.’

Zander looked up. ‘That one you won’t find. These details are from published sources. Military Deputy is another way of saying Nato Military Committee Intelligence. Nato don’t publish the names of senior officers with appointments that involve reporting confidentially to the Military Committee and Council.’ He looked at the photograph again and then passed it to me. ‘Interesting face. There is a soldier, but you can also see the English gentleman.’

Chihani was handing me a drink. She peered down over my shoulder to see the picture.

It was a black-and-white shot, probably taken during an army exercise in Germany. He was standing by an armoured scout car talking to another uniformed man who was mostly out of focus in the foreground, and he had a map-case propped against the car’s turret. The General wore a beret and a British field-service sweater. I could agree with Zander that the face below the beret was that of a soldier and that he was possibly English, but I didn’t think he looked any kind of a gentleman. It could have been that the man in the foreground, the major he was tearing strips off, had attempted to excuse some inexcusable foul-up by telling an even less excusable cock-and-bull story, but to me the General Newell of that photograph looked a foul-tempered, vindictive, sadistic, any-man’s-army bastard.

‘A strong face,’ Chihani said. ‘Very good bones. And those lines about the eyes. He smiles a lot. One can see.’

I felt suddenly that it had been a long day.

We had an early breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, then Simone sent Zander and me back to our rooms. She would pay the bills and do any talking that was necessary. From now on, strict security controls would be applied. For instance, there would be no dawdling in the lobby to buy papers or for any other reason. She would get the station-wagon from the car park and stop outside in a convenient spot. Then, and only then, when she was ready for us, would we be told by phone to come down with our bags in our hands and embark.