The Care of Time (18 page)

Zander was certainly not a client, but some thought-processes can never really be switched off. As we sat there listening to the telex sounds I had a change of mind about him, or at least the beginnings of one. I had begun by fearing him. For someone with my mental scar-tissue that would be understandable. But then, that afternoon, he had puzzled me. Now, ever since that odd question of his in the elevator had, so to speak, lifted the edge of the wrapping, I had been getting an idea of what might be there to find if I could worm my way a little further inside. All I had to do was to ask him the question that I ought to have asked Schelm.

‘Mr Zander, how did you find out that Mukhabarat Zentrum had been commissioned to kill you?’

He raised his eyebrows and stared. He was trying to look mildly surprised, but his eyes were giving him away. The question had jolted him and he was playing for time before he answered. ‘I thought that you had been fully briefed,’ he said after a pause.

‘Maybe they skipped that bit.’

‘They were probably keeping strictly to the operational brief I gave them. But they must know all about the attempts on me. The first was made six months ago in Paris. Two young punks with a pistol that jammed. I was leaving Jean-Pierre’s office with him. I kicked in the ribs of the one carrying the pistol. We tried to make the other one talk, but all we got was the usual story. They’d been offered the money, taken the first half and been given the pistol. They didn’t know who it was they’d been working for. We gave them to the police. The second attempt in Rome could have been more serious. The grenade the girl threw exploded all right, but she was too anxious to get rid of it before it burst. I just had time to roll clear and got off with a little damage to an
eardrum. This was right outside my Rome hotel rooms. She was lucky to get away. Two weeks later The Ruler sent for me. It was he who gave me the warning from his intelligence sources that Mukhabarat Zentrum had agreed to take over the contract from the incompetents for a huge price. He had also heard that they meant to go for my family as well as me.’

‘Did he know who was paying this price?’

‘I knew better than to ask. To that kind of question not even The Ruler could get an answer that wasn’t a lie.’ He gave me a sly, sidelong look. ‘Why should it matter to you? Just imagine that it is the Iraqis who are paying –
if
they get results.’ He waved the thought away. ‘With The Ruler, anyway, I had more important matters to discuss.’

‘Abra Bay?’

‘That was the most important, yes.’

Vielle turned his head. ‘Reply coming, patron.’

We went over to the machine and waited. The reply read:

Vielle had an objection. ‘Lindwurm is the code name of the operation,’ he complained. ‘Why do they use it as a telephone number?’

‘Lindwurm means dragon,’ said Zander, ‘and a dragon is the city emblem of Klagenfurt. Velden, where they will be staying, is in the Klagenfurt area. So, they are using Lindwurm there to indicate the telephone prefix Mr Halliday should use.
There
I see nothing wrong with the message.’ His eyes glared into mine. ‘What I dislike is that they so quickly agree with you about this change of plan. Did you perhaps
already discuss it with them at your briefing last night?’

‘No. I was only given a general outline of your proposed plan. Now, looking at it close to, I can see a weakness. I think it should be corrected.’

‘And I don’t agree that the correction is necessary.’

‘That’s because you don’t know how people in the television business think and behave. I don’t know much, but I know more than you do. For instance, if you think that a TV news or current-affairs producer in Vienna is going to accept, quietly and without argument, your telling him that some person in New York must give permission before he can be allowed to see an interview just shot right there in Austria, you’re dreaming. He’ll want to know who in New York has the say-so. If you lie, he’ll know it in a matter of minutes. If you’re evasive it’ll be just as bad. Either way he’ll believe he’s on to something hot. Before you can do anything more about it your cover will be blown and The Ruler very seriously embarrassed.’

‘You are overstating, Mr Halliday.’ But the eyes were flickering.

‘I could be understating. Look, Mr Zander, let’s at least consider the other side’s proposal. What about this French outfit you’re renting all the equipment from? What’s the deal with them?’

The eyes searched mine for signs of treachery before he answered. ‘We take over the two vehicles and basic equipment on Sunday.’

‘Where?’

‘They will deliver it to Geneva,’ said Vielle.

‘Why can’t you do a supplementary deal for the technicians? Hire them to go separately by car or by train to Klagenfurt. Pick them up and take them to the mine site Tuesday afternoon when the private talks with The Ruler are over or recessed. We set up quickly then and shoot some real footage. Not much. I ask The Ruler a few stupid questions and get some wise, golden answers from him. Finish. Your cover’s watertight. You’re in the clear. Why not?’

Zander looked at Vielle. ‘Your opinion, Jean-Pierre?’

Vielle shook his head. ‘It is too late now. The two technicians who matter will not be available. They have taken their share of the front money we paid and gone to Mexico for a vacation. It seemed good that they were uninterested in us and pleased to go. It will be the drivers who deliver to me in Geneva. Only the producer will be with them to take care of the business angle.’

‘Then we’ll ask the other side to help out,’ I said and sat down again at the typewriter.

‘What do you intend to say?’ Zander asked.

I thought for a moment. ‘How about this?’ “Normal personnel not available. Request you arrange for German, Swiss or Austrian freelance unit film or videotape interview at rendezvous Tuesday afternoon.” There’s no need to say anything about security. They’ll be well aware of the problem by now.’

He nodded, so I typed out the message and Vielle began sending again. Zander sat down at his desk and stared at me across it as if he were trying to formulate a rather tricky question.

‘You have impressed me, Mr Halliday,’ he said at last.

‘Oh?’

‘You saw what you considered, because of your special knowledge of television executives’ business behaviour, to be a flaw in our planning. You pointed it out. You also argued with some persistence your case for its correction. Why? You have been hired to act as a go-between for a few days, to support a cover story about a television unit making an interview with an Arab who has bought property in Austria. If those who hire you don’t know enough to make this cover story work properly, why should you care? It’s no skin off your nose.’

‘No, that’s right. It isn’t.’

‘Can it be that you wish the operation to succeed?’

‘As you yourself say, I’ve been hired. As Miss Chihani reminded me quite forcibly last night, I’m being well paid to do a very small piece of work.’

The eyes laughed at me. ‘That’s no answer, Mr Halliday. There’s no craft-pride for you in what you are being asked to do for us. No! All the same, I begin to think that you are wishing us to succeed, and not just to defeat old enemies who still trouble your sleep.’

‘No?’

‘No. Otherwise you’d have talked about them to me, asked about names that I might know and who hated me in Baghdad. Instead, you think of ways of improving our chances in Austria.’ He sighed deeply and then held up his hands for a good look at them. ‘I don’t know why,’ he went on slowly, ‘but I think you are
with
us. Is that possible, Mr Halliday? Is it possible that you are truly with us, that we have enlisted you?’

I thought for a moment of Pacioli’s driver and of saying what I thought. Then I decided not to try fooling myself. Zander was right up to a point. I wanted the operation to go ahead. I didn’t want it to fail because it had been bungled. On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly ‘with’ him in the way he meant it.

The men and women who have interested me most professionally have been the hard cases, the survivors. I have not often liked them, but that hasn’t seemed important. Zander was beginning to interest me very much. The reason was that I now had a hunch about him. Even the little I knew of his history made him, by any standards that had more to them than simple endurance, a considerable survivor. He had had physical strength and plenty of courage, of course, but it had been his wits that had really counted, his wits and his ability to adapt to cultures utterly foreign to those of his youth and early manhood. It had been a remarkable performance. What I suspected, though, was that he was now a survivor for whom the care of time was becoming hard to ignore. He had started to falter. It does me no credit to say it, but that was why I had become so curious about him. I wanted to see how he would manage and what would happen if he were to stumble and then fall.

He was still waiting with the simper on his lips and the question in his eyes for me to swear allegiance to his cause. I smiled regretfully.

‘No, Mr Zander,’ I said, ‘I haven’t enlisted. I think I may have become what that British officer friend of yours would have called a bad sport. I just don’t like being on a losing side any more. If there is any way, any way at all, in which I can help you not to lose, you can rely on me completely.’

By then Schelm’s reply telex had begun to come through. It read:

We left for Geneva on Saturday afternoon, travelling in two parties and by separate routes out of Italy. Chihani took Mokhtar and Jasmin in the minibus along with all the larger bags and Guido as driver. They were going north by the alpine road to Switzerland and took off immediately after an early lunch.

Zander and I went in the Alfasud with Vielle doing the driving, and I was glad to see that my remark the previous day about TV crews’ appearance had borne some fruit. Vielle wore a knitted alpaca golfing cardigan over a yellow shirt the cut of which suggested that it had been borrowed from the fat girl with the blue-tinted glasses. Zander had entered into the spirit of the occasion by wearing a suede jacket with gun-pads on both shoulders and a white silk roll-neck sweater. I wore what I usually wear and felt overdressed, even for an interviewer.

Our route was easier and we left an hour later than the others. We went south to Novara and then took the autostrada north to Aosta via the Ivrea turn-off. We entered Switzerland through the long St Bernard tunnel. At the Italian end of the tunnel they glanced at the outsides of our passports but the Swiss didn’t even bother to do that. Both Zander and Vielle had French passports I noticed.

The motel chosen for our first night stop was just short of Geneva near Coppet. Chihani’s party had arrived ahead of us and had already checked in. There was a brasserie with a bar attached to the motel and it was arranged that we would meet Chihani in the bar as soon as we had freshened up. However, she had something to ask first. The young people, she said, had spotted a discothèque on their way in and had requested permission to spend a couple of hours there. She thought
they should have it. They would be back soon after eleven.

Zander agreed. ‘They have worked well these last days,’ he said. ‘Why should they not enjoy themselves? Perhaps Mokhtar will see a little Swiss girl he fancies.’

Where the older ones were concerned, however, Chihani was applying a different set of rules. We were sitting in the bar drinking white wine when the fuss began. Vielle started it by reminding Zander of a good restaurant they both knew in Geneva.

‘Cuisine de minceur,’ he explained to me eagerly; ‘sauces of great elegance. You too would like it, Mr Halliday, I assure you.’ He turned again to Zander. ‘Why don’t I call for a table, patron?’

I already knew that Vielle disliked Chihani and had guessed that he was jealous of her relationship with Zander, whatever that was, as well as the authority Zander had delegated to her where matters of security were concerned. It was also clear that the table Vielle was proposing to reserve would be for three. She wasn’t included in the invitation. But I don’t think she even noticed that. Her reaction came straight from the book.

‘No! On no account, patron. Why take needless and absurd risks simply to please your stomachs?’

Zander glanced for a moment at Vielle then looked around the bar. There was nobody else drinking and the barman, who doubled as a waiter in the brasserie, was away attending to the cheese sauce for the raclettes. We were more or less free to speak our minds. Vielle lost no time in doing so.

He began with the leaden sarcasms which are the characteristic first stages of a French loss of temper. ‘I beg your pardon, Madame. Please excuse me, Madame. I was completely unaware that I had taken the liberty of addressing you upon any subject at all, much less consulting you about the restaurant at which I am proposing to have dinner with friends. Please forgive me, Madame. I certainly had not the slightest idea that you might suppose that I was asking for your permission to do something, or seeking your valuable opinions on
anything
!’

Chihani was not even looking at Vielle. She had been watching Zander. With a flick of her hand she invited my attention as she replied. She was very cool and sure of herself.