The Care of Time (31 page)

It was at that moment that I decided to fall back on one of the crudest of the old interview gambits. If the person being interviewed has any sort of rank, you try pushing it up. If he’s flattered enough to let it go you’ve won an advantage; if he promptly corrects you, you have something with which to start the ball rolling. The only risk you run is with someone who is prepared to make you look, and feel, foolish by remarking that you obviously haven’t checked your basic facts. With The Ruler, I decided, that was a risk it was fairly safe to take. So, when the cameraman said ‘rolling’ and the handyman-driver snapped the clapper-board on ‘Petrucher interview take one’, I began introducing The Ruler not as ‘His Highness the Emir of’, but as ‘His
Royal
Highness the Emir’.

For a while I thought he was going to let it pass. When I began the only question I had managed to think of to lead with, a banal inquiry about his reasons for buying the mine we were sitting in, he put a hand up to stop me.

‘No, Mr Halliday,’ he said. ‘Please hold your horses. Not
Royal
Highness.’

‘My apologies, Sir. I had no wish …’

But he cut me off. ‘Our family is ancient and noble, but not royal. We leave that dubious honour to the kingly dynasties.’

‘Such as that of the Saudi royal family, Your Highness?’

But he saw the pitfall. He wasn’t going on record as describing the Saudi royal family as dubious. ‘No, Mr Halliday. I was thinking more of the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty,’ he said and began to smile. ‘The father of the second and last Shah was a donkey-driver who could not read
or write, who became a soldier, who overthrew the dynasty he had been paid to serve and ended by calling himself not only Shahanshah, but also Vice-Regent of God and Centre of the Universe. Now that, I think, was very royal.’

He had begun to snort with amusement as he said it. Then, he coughed once, tried to swallow and suddenly went into a paroxysm of laughter.

It went on for nearly a minute. I saw Kluvers, who was crouching beside the sound man, making signs asking me if I wanted them to cut, but I shook my head. He then made a pill-swallowing sign, raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes at the man with all the lights on him. I shrugged. By then it was obvious that The Ruler was on a high of some sort, but of what sort and how it had been induced there was no way of telling. Maybe we would find out. At that stage it really didn’t matter. We had some interesting footage. Now, the tone of the laughter was becoming less maniacal and beginning to subside into a breathless cackle. Finally, it stopped as abruptly as it had started. The Ruler began to get his breath back, lick his lips and finger his tie.

The Chief Secretary had sidled over to me. ‘His Highness sometimes finds in the world too much to laugh at,’ he whispered. ‘This film will, of course, be edited with discretion.’

‘Of course,’ I said. And it
would
be edited with discretion. But if he thought that Rainer, or any other producer, was going to leave that rich sample of The Ruler’s finer feelings about the mighty fallen and the death of kings on the cutting-room floor, he was going to be disappointed.

The Ruler himself, still flushed but more or less composed, now announced that he was prepared to continue. ‘But please, Mr Halliday,’ he added, ‘please don’t make these American jokes about dynasties. My sense of humour cannot stand it.’

‘I’ll remember that, Your Highness. Perhaps we could talk about this old silver mine. You bought it, I understand, so that you may replace the house above with a clinic and so that
the old mine workings may be used, as those at Oberzeiring are now used, for the treatment of respiratory diseases. Is that right?’

‘For bronchitis and so on. Yes.’

‘Are those diseases particularly prevalent in the dry, warm country of which you are The Ruler?’

‘They are prevalent, in one form or another, in all countries. That, surely, is common knowledge.’

‘Perhaps not as common as it should be, Your Highness. I am simply trying to use your special knowledge to inform viewers in many countries. You yourself suffer from sinusitis, I believe.’

‘And allergies. The two, in my case, are mixed.’

‘How many medical doctors have you in your entourage, Your Highness?’

‘None at present. In due course, when I am permitted to build the clinic in the way I wish, patients will be referred to the clinic in the customary way.’

‘At Oberzeiring there are some conditions for which this particular kind of treatment is contra-indicated. Do you intend here to follow the same medical policies?’

‘Contra-indicated? My English is not perfect I’m afraid.’

‘Broadly speaking, Your Highness, contra-indicated conditions are those in which the treatment would do more harm than good.’

He tried a jocular smile that didn’t quite come off. ‘I would hope not to do harm, Mr Halliday.’

‘Your Highness, would you regard a patient with right-sided heart trouble, or acute liver disease, or advanced emphysema, or tuberculosis as suitable for treatment in your clinic?’

He thought carefully before he delivered his verdict. ‘For advanced emphysema I would think it very good, and perhaps for TB too. About the liver disease I am doubtful.’

‘At Oberzeiring, Your Highness,
all
patients suffering from the diseases I have mentioned are regarded as unsuitable
for treatment of this kind. Didn’t you find that out when you went for treatment there? Weren’t you examined by a doctor?’

‘You forget. I was being treated for sinusitis and allergies. Obviously, you have been talking to the doctors there.’

‘Your Highness, all the information that I have just repeated was obtained from a small give-away leaflet about Oberzeiring that I found in the desk of my hotel room. How did you hear about Oberzeiring?’

‘From a doctor in Switzerland. I have been grateful for the cure, of course, but my own medical interest, the subject that I have studied intensively, though naturally as an amateur, is the central nervous system.’

‘That would seem an unusual field of study for amateurs, Your Highness. Does one of the difficulties about the permit to build your clinic here hinge on the fact that it will not be supervised by any Austrian medical authority?’

‘My lawyers in Vienna have mentioned that. This, however, would be a private clinic.’

I thought he was going to elaborate, but he didn’t. So I let it go. It seemed to me that I had already more than fulfilled my obligation to Herr Rainer. Having an amateur student of the central nervous system in control of a clinic of any sort was on a par with having an amateur brain surgeon on the staff of a general hospital. There were just a few more things that I wanted to clear up for my own satisfaction.

‘You must know, Your Highness, that there are many in this province, and in Vienna, who simply do not believe in your good faith. They don’t believe that you really intend to build a clinic.’

‘Of course I know this. And I am constantly reminded of it.’

‘This refusal to believe seems to have been based originally on
your
refusal to submit plans for the proposed rebuilding above ground to the regional planning authority. Would you care to explain your refusal to our viewers?’

He wagged a finger at me. ‘No permission was required to spend the large sums of money I have spent here below ground. This was a derelict mine, largely flooded, and, where not flooded, dangerous because of rotted wooden structures almost a century old. I changed all that. I put in pumping and other machinery, the newest and best. I put in steel and concrete. I made the place safe and usable. We are sitting safely in it now. No one lifted a finger to stop me. Yet, when I propose to replace a derelict ugly house with a modern structure designed by a known and respected architect, I am refused permission.’

‘But, Your Highness, how can they grant permission if you will not submit your architect’s plans?’

‘My plans are for a clinic. If they refuse to hear first what my lawyers have to say about the need to replace a smallish structure with a slightly larger one, what can I do? How can I explain anything to a faceless bureaucracy?’

I switched the attack to another front. ‘No doubt Your Highness is aware that a former employee of yours, an engineer, has made statements claiming that your intention here is not the one you have announced. Your true intention, he says, is not to build a clinic but a private fall-out shelter for your family and entourage.’

He had been waiting for that one. ‘Former employees who have been discharged for inefficiency,’ he said with a smile, ‘often attempt to slander their former employers.’

Kluvers was warning me that they were going to have to reload. I gave him an okay sign, but went on talking as if nothing had happened. We had used up a lot of film on the laughing fit but I didn’t want to stop the flow; though, at that point, there seemed only a few more questions for me to ask, and for him to answer or, more likely, to evade.

‘In what way was he inefficient, Your Highness?’

‘He knew nothing at all of hydraulic engineering, even though in that he was supposed to be an expert. He made gross miscalculations.’

I remembered that this particular man, a French engineer, had been the one who had lost his temper with The Ruler and told him, in the hearing of others, that
he
knew nothing about hydraulic engineering. The Ruler was not the first employer to denounce those he had fired by accusing them of his own deficiencies.

‘Miscalculations in an enterprise such as this, Your Highness, could be expensive I imagine.’

By the time he had given me a string of figures to show just how expensive it had all been, we had reloaded and the camera was running again. The second clapper-board was slipped in so unobtrusively that The Ruler didn’t seem to notice it. Doing an interview with someone who is completely self-absorbed at least makes some things easier.

‘You see, Mr Halliday, what his ignorance cost me? And yet he persisted in blaming me. The man is insane.’

‘Still, a lot of people, journalists and civic leaders, seem to have believed him. There are those now who are making a political issue of it.’

He leaned forward unexpectedly and I heard the cameraman’s sharp movement as he reacted to keep The Ruler’s face centred and in focus. I hoped he had succeeded. The cheeks were pink again and the lips twitching with excitement.

‘Do
you
believe him, Mr Halliday?’ he asked. ‘Do
you
believe that I am stupid enough to build a nuclear fall-out shelter three thousand kilometres from my palace on the Gulf?’

‘Your Highness, I don’t think that questions about stupidity or good sense are relevant in any general discussion about civil defence against nuclear attack. Still, the idea of your using this mine as a nuclear fall-out shelter does seem strange, I admit.’

‘More than strange, I would say. If there is to be a nuclear war, we may receive, I am told, half-an-hour’s warning. How do I get here from the Gulf in thirty minutes?’

‘The same thought has occurred to me, Your Highness.
But as I’ve said, sense doesn’t really come into it. On the subject of how a nuclear war might begin I’ve heard all sorts of different scenarios. I’ve heard it said that the start of
any
major war involving the superpowers, even if to start with they’re only using tanks and planes in the old-fashioned ways, will be a clear warning to anyone with access to a fall-out shelter of any kind to run for it as fast as they can.
Or
fly to it. I’m trying to be objective, of course, and on this subject one can’t be. The nuclear warfare threat takes different people in different ways.’

‘How about you?’ he demanded. ‘How does the prospect of nuclear war take you, Mr Halliday?’

‘Your Highness, I’m afraid that I am one of those who don’t give it much thought. If there is a nuclear exchange between the superpowers, even a limited one, most of us in the populated areas of the west will be dead or dying within the first hour.’

‘Even if the initial strike is a pre-emptive one on the other side’s first and second strike capabilities?’

‘I don’t know much about current targeting policies, Your Highness. I don’t know who gets it first, the silos or the cities or the submarines. I do believe, though, that, in any nuclear war, those who survive the first few hours will be the
un
lucky ones.’

‘I agree. But I don’t think you’re going to have your nuclear war, Mr Halliday. I think that the balance of terror will hold up. The Soviets and the Americans will go on glaring at one another and the fringe bomb-makers will look nervously over their shoulders. It is the new conventional war that I fear.’

‘Helicopter gun-ships and napalm, Your Highness?’

‘Those are the weapons now of the rural, colonial wars, the Third-World bush campaigns. Mostly, that is. When I speak of new conventional war I mean the chemical kind.
Not
the biological. Biological fall-out can be as deadly as nuclear. The new chemical weapons are controllable. With them, you can
kill your enemy without running the risk of killing yourself. You can kill where you want to and then clean up the mess, make it all safe again. All you need is the know-how.’

‘Both sides in World War Two had the know-how, Your Highness. Yet, neither side used poison gases or chemical weapons of any kind, even though they manufactured them.’

He snapped his fingers disdainfully. ‘I am not talking about such things as phosgene. They were toys. I don’t even consider tabun as coming within the category of modern chemical warfare weapons. What I am speaking about is …’ He broke off with a coy inclination of his head. ‘But no, perhaps it is better if I don’t speak about such things. I have no wish to frighten anyone.’

‘We here, Your Highness, have no wish, of course, to pry into secret matters or to cause alarm. I am sure that you, in your position as Ruler, hold many secrets that it would not be safe or in the public interest to reveal. That is clearly understood and I would not presume to press you to confide in us.’

The pomposity worked. I could almost see the wish to impress me and the uneasy feeling that it might be better to change the subject battling inside him for the next word. He was excited about something and wanted to spill it all to someone who would listen sympathetically. I think he had completely forgotten that there was a film camera with a sound track running. He was looking for a way out of his difficulty. Suddenly, he thought he saw it.