The Care of Time (34 page)

Obviously, he hadn’t heard a word of my last few remarks. My reference to television had started him brandishing the telescope as if it were a rubber truncheon. Now, he raised his voice over mine. ‘I have already conceded defeat on the television cover question,’ he yelled. ‘You were right, as it happened, but
only
as it happened. We would have had no trouble at all, no serious trouble, except for two obstacles. The first was the unexpected trouble with the Austrian authorities over The Ruler’s plan for the Petrucher mine. But
that could have been overcome had it not been for the second obstacle –
you
.’

‘You’ve lost me, patron.’ And he had. The fact that I couldn’t see his eyes, even through the rear-view mirror, put me at a disadvantage.

‘My original specification,’ he said, ‘made it clear that the go-between would not only know something about television production, and be known as an interviewer, but also that he should be a weak performer. Not totally incompetent, but consistently third rate. You fitted the specification like a glove.’

‘It’s always good to be paid a graceful compliment.’

He ignored that. ‘Until,’ he said, ‘today. Today, when you should have been at your worst, you were at a totally unprecedented best. One can only ask why.’

‘These accidents happen.’

‘They shouldn’t happen. They add to our burden of responsibility. May I remind you of your own words in Stresa. You were justifying the inclusion of this back-up unit. You were to ask The Ruler a few stupid questions and get from him some wise, golden answers. Wasn’t that what you promised?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know The Ruler so well then.’

‘It was permissible to get him to talk about his troubles with the Austrian authorities but, according to Simone, you then proceeded to run rings around him. Very cleverly you showed him up as a rich, autocratic pretender to medical knowledge he doesn’t possess. You exposed him as a dilettante who should not be allowed to open an unsupervised clinic of any description in Austria or anywhere else. Golden answers, eh?’

‘It was unrehearsed. The man dug his own grave.’

‘You didn’t have to bury him in it. You didn’t have to manipulate his state of high excitement and emotion, to lead him on until you had him talking his lunatic head off about matters that are supposed to be deeply secret. You were disgracefully irresponsible.’

‘Are you worried about Kluvers and his crew?’

‘They have no film evidence. They have no dangerous background knowledge.
You
could talk and be believed just as we could talk and be believed. That is why there is a four-man Rasmuk team back there waiting to see what they can do about killing us when we get off this narrow road with trucks to protect us and on to the Autobahn.’

‘You mean that I’m now on the hit list too, like the rest of the family?’

‘If you have not already been added to the list, you soon will be. Yes, even those butchers back there may already have been told. They use their radio a lot. I blame Simone for conspiring with you behind my back.’

‘Nonsense,’ she snapped. ‘The world needs to know that The Ruler is a homicidal maniac and a public menace. But how can it know if there is no one about with guts enough to record the evidence?’

‘Clap-trap, Simone, and you know it. The Ruler has no real power, merely nuisance value.’

‘You are beginning to think like an old man, patron. These days, mere nuisances can start wars.’

I intervened hastily. She was beginning to take her eyes off the road again. ‘Aren’t you both forgetting something?’ I asked. ‘The Chief Secretary believes that
he
has the interview film.’

Zander said: ‘Ha! Do you think he took your word for it that he has the real film? Let me tell you something. If it hadn’t been for that Austrian security captain, no film at all would have been allowed to leave the compound. There would have been a body search of everyone, including the Hollanders. But that Austrian was scared. He had seen the ORF trucks waiting down on the road. That flashing light of theirs can only be authorized by the police. He thought that you or the Hollanders might make an official complaint.’

‘So I
have
done something right. I arranged for those ORF vehicles to be there with their flashing light. You should be
grateful, patron. You should be thanking me. Instead of golden answers you get golden deeds.’

My impudence seemed to please him. ‘All right. A thousand thanks, Mr Halliday. But don’t forget this. One of those BMWs is already on its way to the nearest colour film processing laboratory. The Chief Secretary will know soon enough that you tricked him. You’d better start doing some quick thinking. What was your plan for today? I mean your plan for handing over the film?’

‘When we get to the frontier, or close to it, we’ll have to stop. When we do I’ll get out and hand Rainer the package marked with a figure 1. That’s got most of the Petrucher stuff in it. That’s the stuff he really needs.’

‘What about the second package? Keeping that for yourself?’

‘I was thinking of giving it to you and Simone.’

‘To us? Why?’

‘You’re defecting, aren’t you? From the Gulf anyway. I thought defectors always took along a little something with them, something to make their hosts feel warmer and better-disposed towards them.’

Simone’s quiet chuckle clearly annoyed him. ‘We are being given political asylum. That is all,’ he said testily.

‘Still, the General should be grateful. That second reel of interview could make his job a whole lot easier. I mean the job of persuading this Nato committee he reports to that The Ruler is not a man to be trusted with anything more lethal than a fly whisk.’

‘Perhaps. Though I don’t think that the General I spoke with today will need help from us. Let us hear more about
your
plan. When you have given this Rainer his film, taken your valises from behind you and are standing in the road with them, what then? I am assuming that we shall all still be alive by then. But let us suppose that most of us are. What will you do next?’

‘Ask Rainer for a ride to Vienna, I guess. From there, I’ll
get a plane to New York. I may have to change at Frankfurt, but I should make Kennedy by breakfast time tomorrow. I’ll rent a car to drive home.’

He had turned round on his seat to face me. ‘You won’t make it, Mr Halliday, not any of it.’

‘No?’

‘Well, you might just make it as far as the airport at Vienna, but there’ll be someone from Mukhabarat Zentrum waiting for you there, They’ll have seen you hand over film to ORF and they’ll have reported by radio to The Ruler. Even if he hasn’t yet had a lab report on the blank film you gave the Chief Secretary, he’ll be taking no chances with you. Think carefully, Mr Halliday.’

‘Are you inviting me, patron, to stay with you and this group?’

‘You would be well advised to do so, yes.’

‘And, if we make it, are you suggesting that I ask for political asylum in my own country?’

He looked at Simone. ‘Is that what I was suggesting to him?’

‘No, patron. But you don’t make it clear what you
are
suggesting. To us he has been very helpful. You yourself admit it. I think we should speak more freely to him about his own position. We have nothing to lose by frankness.’

‘Possibly not.’ He picked up the telescope and had another look at the enemy. ‘Speak more frankly then. Go ahead.’

Her eyes I could see through the rear-view mirror. They smiled slightly at mine. ‘Mr Halliday,’ she said; ‘about this film you are giving to ORF. Clearly they will make much of it. But when? How soon?’

‘Hard to say. It’s a hot story. On the other hand, they won’t have any pick-up footage. That’s all at the end of the second can, the one they’re not getting. They’ll probably dig up some stills of the mine. They may even have one of me. And then they’ll have to do a very careful German translation, record it and dub it as voice-over. I’d say it’ll be
twenty-four hours before they get it on the air.’

‘By then, The Ruler will have been told that the interview you did wasn’t destroyed. One way or another he will know. What he will not know is whether both parts of the interview are to be used on the air. His lawyers in Vienna will no doubt be active, but what will The Ruler himself be doing?’

‘Using his private plane to get the hell out before the Austrian press gets after him again.’

‘Meanwhile, ORF will be denying quite truthfully that they know anything about a second reel of film. All they have is what you gave them.’

‘So Mukhabarat Zentrum gets further urgent instructions,’ said Zander. ‘If they missed you at Vienna, they’re to nail you in New York or Bucks County.’

‘Patron,’ Simone said sharply, ‘it was
me
you asked to advise Mr Halliday if you remember.’

‘My child, I was only stating the obvious.’

‘Mr Halliday can see the obvious for himself.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ I said. ‘What’s the obvious way out of the spot I’m in? I mean the easy, painless one.’

‘Oh, there is no obvious way out.’ She smiled. ‘You have to take a chance. Only one, and I hope it will be painless, but it is a chance. After you have handed over the first package of film to Rainer, you stay with us. You may have some uncomfortable moments later, but you will not necessarily be killed.’

‘Not
necessarily
?’

‘Probably not. My friend, we are not infallible. If you go with Rainer you will certainly be killed. Possibly at Vienna as the patron says. Why are you surprised? The patron is under a sentence of death for
serving
The Ruler. You have done the same man a serious injury. You have shown him as he is. What mercy can
you
expect? None. But if you stay with us and take a chance, the odds are better. And you must be ready to win. This is very important. You take the second package of film and you put it in your pocket. Not in your
luggage but in your pocket. And if it is too large to go in a suit pocket, then tear an inside pocket and carry it inside the lining. If our plan for today works out, you will then be able to call on your good friend Herr Schelm for a little practical help. He will not, I think, refuse you.’

‘What sort of help? I like him personally but, on anything to do with his job, I doubt if the milk of human kindness flows in any quantity that you could really see.’

‘He might find it very convenient to do as you asked. All you are asking is that he makes copy prints of the film in package two and arranges for them to be sent privately to the Foreign Ministers of the UAE and Saudi Arabia and all Nato ambassadors in the Gulf capitals. Or, if he doesn’t want to involve Nato, you could use your television connections in New York.’

I thought for a moment. The first can wouldn’t be of much interest to the PBS producer, but with the second lot of footage added he would have something to build on. A feature on chemical warfare with sequences showing a crazy oil sheikh holed up in an old silver mine that he had converted into the world’s safest fall-out shelter would be pretty interesting anyway. If you stirred in the hysterical laughter bit and the full close-up of the man smacking his lips over the convulsions of his nerve gas victims just before they stopped fighting for breath, you’d have some fairly sensational television. You’d also have an old international issue – the Geneva Protocol on CB warfare of 1925 – freshened up a bit to appeal to youthful palates.

‘What makes you think,’ I asked, ‘that The Ruler’s going to like all that adverse publicity?’

‘He’ll dislike it intensely, of course.’

‘Then why should he tell Rasmuk to forget about killing me?’

‘He won’t have to. By then, he’ll be the one on the defensive. Rasmuk doesn’t like clients who run up huge bills they are suddenly unable to pay. What his fellow Rulers will
decide to do about him is yet another matter. They’ll sometimes suffer fools, but not the kind who make their follies public and disgraceful.’

‘The sillier I make The Ruler look, then, the better I make it for you. Yes?’

Zander brandished the telescope at her. ‘You see, Simone? A little frankness, you said. We have nothing to lose. The next minute the fellow is telling us that he can solve all our problems with television propaganda. He has become our saviour.’

The telescope was pointing at me now. I leaned back to avoid it. ‘That’s not what I said or meant, patron, and you damn well know it. What I said was that anything that discredits The Ruler takes some of the heat off you.’

The eyes surveyed me almost pityingly. ‘You really know nothing about my world, do you? When The Ruler is discredited, the first question to be asked will be, “who showed our brother the steps, the way down to this dangerous path?” And the answer decided upon will be that I was and am the guilty one. As for Mukhabarat Zentrum, they will have a serious public relations problem to face. It is now too widely known, you see, that they accepted a contract, for a top price, to kill me and my immediate family.’

‘Known by whom?’

‘By everyone who matters in Gulf business circles, and by some who don’t matter at all. I suspect that they have been penetrated by an undercover police spy. Even your friend Herr Schelm seems to know, and he also knows the price. An intelligence officer! If
he
knows, anyone could know. Do you think Mukhabarat Zentrum can permit a failure on their part to occur so publicly? Who in future would pay their prices after a fiasco like that? Simone is right about their greed, but only partly. The fact that The Ruler may, in any case, now be unable to pay them all he owes is of minor importance. Their reputation is on the line. To murder me and my family
without
the certain prospect of a final payment might be a
very good prestige move for them. It would demonstrate to those who matter that, even when others let them down, Mukhabarat Zentrum always goes on acting in good faith. You want a prophecy, Mr Halliday?’

‘I’d prefer reassurance. For instance, I’d like to be told, with a reasonably convincing smile, that the General’s backroom Nato committee isn’t going to play footsy with The Ruler because of Abra Bay. But prophecy will have to do, I guess.’