Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘German engineering is the best in the world, there is no doubt about it,’ said the general. ‘And you know why? Because they are not just a nation of opportunists. There are people in Germany who really believe in what we are trying to achieve in Iraq. There’s something there that the British could learn from. You and I are not old enough to remember the days before ’58, when nearly all of our equipment used to come from Great Britain, but it’s possible to be nostalgic for such an arrangement. There can be no dignity when business has to be done clandestinely, behind closed doors. We want allies, you see. We want relationships. But all you are interested in is doing deals.’
As they continued their tour, the general explained why he had brought Mark back to the laboratory. Nervous of the side-effects of the highly volatile chemicals, they wanted to find a contractor who could install a new air cleaning plant.
‘I’m pleased to hear you’re so concerned about environmental protection,’ said Mark.
His friend seemed to like this joke even more than the one about patriotism.
‘Well, we must give our technicians the best possible working conditions,’ he said. ‘After all, they are making important researches in the field of veterinary science.’
As if to illustrate his point, he took Mark past the animal house on their way back to the vehicle. For a while their conversation was drowned out by the howling of the beagles which would be used to test the effectiveness of the nerve gas agents. A nearby garbage dump was piled high with the corpses of their predecessors.
∗
May
1987
Mark did not have to look far to find his air cleaning plant. He went to a senior German industrialist who had already sent equipment over to the Salman Pak laboratory and had proved himself a reliable, prompt supplier. Mark always enjoyed visiting his country house in the Rhine valley, where the contracts would be signed in a magnificent study beneath a large, gold-framed portrait of Hitler, and tea would be served by his beautiful young daughter. And today, as a sign of special favour, he was offered some extra entertainment, when the industrialist unlocked a cabinet containing a reel-to-reel tape recorder, wired up to a speaker which had been mounted inside a radio console of 1930s vintage. When he started the tape a familiar voice could be heard, and for the next ten minutes the Führer himself, in full oratorical flight, roared out through the bay windows, across the summer lawns and down to the sparkling river’s very edge.
‘I can still remember where I was when I heard that speech,’ said the industrialist, when the tape was over. ‘Sitting in my mother’s kitchen. The windows open. The play of light on the table. The air filled with hope and energy. A fabulous time. Well – why shouldn’t an old man be allowed to get a little wistful about his youth now and again? Some people do it with a trite, romantic poem or sentimental song. For me it will always be that wonderful voice.’ He closed the cabinet door and locked it carefully. ‘Saddam Hussein is a good man,’ he said. ‘He makes me feel young again. It’s an honour to help him. But I don’t suppose you’d understand that: you were born into an age when principles have ceased to mean anything.’
‘If that concludes our business, Herr —’
‘You’re a puzzle to me, Mr Winshaw. To me, and to many others who are old enough to have served the Reich, and who were well acquainted with your family name long before you appeared on our doorsteps.’
Mark rose to his feet and picked up his briefcase. He appeared not to be interested.
‘I know exactly what Saddam Hussein is making at his so-called research facility. I also know that Israel will be his first target. This is why I support him, of course. He will resume a process of cleansing which we were never allowed to complete. Do you take my meaning, Mr Winshaw?’
‘I make a habit,’ said Mark, ‘of not inquiring into the uses – ’
‘Come now, there’s no need to be modest. You’re a qualified engineer: a chemical engineer. I’m well aware that you’ve been instrumental in helping one of our largest firms to supply Iraq with quantities of Zyklon B, for instance. The cleansing process of which I spoke depends upon the free circulation of such commodities, and yet our own laws, placed under absurd international constraints, prohibit us from exporting them. And so, ironically, it’s left to men like you – bounty hunters – to keep our ideals alive.’ He watched for Mark’s response, but saw none. ‘You do know where Zyklon B is manufactured, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Mark, who had visited the plant many times.
‘I wonder if you are familiar with the history of that factory. It narrowly escaped being destroyed by allied bombers in 1942. A British plane was sent out on a secret mission to reconnoitre the area, but the Luftwaffe were alerted and the unfortunate pilot and his crew were shot down. Does any of this mean anything to you?’
‘I’m afraid not. You forget that it happened a long time ago. Before I was even born.’
The old man held his gaze for a moment and then pulled on the bell-rope beside the door.
‘Quite true, Mr Winshaw. But as I say, you remain a puzzle.’ As Mark left, he added: ‘My daughter, if you wish to see her, is in the library.’
∗
December 1961
To his mother, Mark had long ago become a puzzle which there was nothing to be gained from solving, and so she had offered no protest when he told her – several weeks after the event – that he had decided to give up his law degree and enrol as a student of chemical engineering. The letter in which he communicated this news was one of the last he ever sent her. It had become pointless to maintain the pretence that mother and son still had anything to say to each other: and in another couple of years there would be physical distance between them to compound the gulf of incomprehension and indifference.
Her invitation to Mortimer’s fiftieth birthday party had provided Mildred with a rare glimpse into the Winshaws’ prosperous lives. For most of her long years of widowhood the family seemed to have forgotten her, and offered little in the way of financial help beyond the paying of Mark’s school and university fees. As she neared the age of fifty, she was still struggling to subsist on her modest income as secretary to an American wine merchant based in London. One day he announced his intention of winding up the business and moving back to Florida, and she was about to resign herself to the prospect of several gloomy weeks haunting the employment agencies, when he astonished her by asking if she would come to America with him, in the capacity not of his secretary, but his wife. It took her three days to recover from the shock; at which point she accepted.
They lived comfortably in a beach house outside Sarasota until their peaceful deaths, within two months of one another, in the winter of 1986. Mildred never spoke to her son again after leaving England. Their last conversation was over lunch one afternoon in Oxford, and they had both found it difficult to remain civil even then. She had ended up accusing Mark of despising her.
‘ “Despise” is putting it rather strongly,’ he said. ‘I just can’t really see the point of the sort of life you’re leading.’
It was a remark which came back to her every so often: perhaps as she sat with her husband on the verandah after dinner, looking out over the ocean and trying hard to think of any place she would rather be.
∗
1976
Although Mark never spoke to his mother after she had left for America, he did see her once. This was during the early days of his dealings with Iraq, when he was first introduced to a curt, bearlike man called Hussein who represented the ‘Ministry of Industry’ and seemed in a hurry to procure specialized equipment for the building of a large pesticides factory. Mark discussed his requirements and recognized at once that several of the compounds he intended to manufacture – including Demeton, Paraoxon and Parathion – could easily be transformed into nerve gas. None the less he saw no reason why the project shouldn’t be represented to potential clients as part of an agricultural programme, and he promised to put Hussein in touch with an American firm which would be able to supply him with the huge corrosion-resistant vats necessary for the mixing of the chemicals.
Representatives of the company were flown to Baghdad and fed a convincing story about the plight of Iraqi farmers who could not protect their crops from desert locusts. They returned to Miami and set about preparing blueprints for a pilot plant which would enable the local workforce – which had no experience of work in this dangerous field – to be trained in the handling of toxic chemicals. But before they had time to complete the designs they were informed, via Mark, that Hussein had no interest in building a pilot plant. He wished to embark upon full-scale production immediately. This was not acceptable to the safety-conscious Americans, and Mark, who expected to make some six million dollars in commission on the deal, was forced to intervene and set up a meeting between the two sides in a conference room at the Miami Hilton.
It was not a success. Mark stood at a window overlooking the beach and listened in silence as the negotiations broke down amid accusations of hidden agendas on the one hand and over-regulation on the other. Never once taking his eyes from the strip of silver sand, he heard the Americans snap their cases shut and walk out. He heard Hussein grunt and complain that ‘Those guys need their brains examining. They just threw away the chance to become rich.’ Mark didn’t answer. He was the only person in the room not to have lost his temper. The money would have been useful, but he would make it up. He’d try the Germans next.
The day before, he had driven out through the Everglades to the Gulf Coast. A morning’s drive took him to Naples, along the Tamiami Trail with its Indian villages reconstituted as tourist attractions, its airboat rides and roadside cafés offering frogs’ legs and gator-burgers. From there he took the freeway north through Bonita Springs and Fort Myers, and arrived outside Sarasota late in the afternoon. His mother’s address, although he had never used it on any letter, was committed to memory. But Mark did not want to speak to her even now. He didn’t even ask himself why he had come. Once he had found the house, he drove another half a mile down the ocean road and turned off down a dirt track which led to the beach. When he parked at the end of this track, he had a good view of the house.
Her husband was shopping in town that afternoon, but as chance would have it Mildred herself was in the garden. She’d meant just to sit out and read a magazine, maybe start a letter to her stepdaughter in Vancouver, but she could see that the gardener had made a poor job of weeding the lawn, as usual, and was soon down on her knees pulling the more obstinate specimens up by the root. Almost at once she noticed the man leaning against the bonnet of his car and staring at her. She stood up and looked at him, shielding her eyes against the sun. She recognized him now, but didn’t move, didn’t wave, didn’t call out his name; just returned his impassive gaze. There were hollow spaces where his eyes should have been. At closer quarters, she would have realized that he was wearing mirror sunglasses which reflected nothing but the sky’s deep blue. But Mildred stayed where she was, and after a minute or two she knelt down again and resumed her weeding. The next time she looked up, the man was gone.
∗
September 1988
As Graham’s researches progressed, he began to feel that it would be useful to know something about Mark’s family background, and he remembered that there was someone who could probably help him. Michael Owen’s name had disappeared from the arts pages of the newspapers over the last few years, his novels were no longer to be found anywhere in the shops, and his book about the Winshaws was yet to be published. Perhaps the whole project had never come to anything; but it was just possible, Graham reasoned, that he would still be working on it, and if this was the case, he might have gained access to any amount of valuable inside information (not that he would know what to do with it, since the depth of his political naívety had been made fairly clear even from their few conversations). It was, at the very least, worth making a few phone calls.
The first of these calls was to Joan. It was two or three years since they had been in touch, and he wasn’t even sure that she would still be living in Sheffield, but she answered on the third ring and there was no mistaking the delight in her voice. Yes, she was still in the same job. No, she didn’t let out rooms to students any more. No, she hadn’t got married or started a family or anything like that. Yes, she could certainly try to contact Michael for him, although she didn’t have a current address. Funnily enough she’d been thinking of phoning Graham in the next couple of weeks, because there was a conference in Birmingham at the end of the month, and she’d wondered if he might be interested in meeting up for a drink or something. For old times’ sake. Graham said yes, of course, why not. For old times’ sake.
The strange thing was, as they both reflected afterwards, that in all of the ‘old times’ for the sake of which they had agreed to meet up, they could not remember a single evening which had ended with them leaning across the table to kiss each other, or lying down on the sofa with their arms around each other and their tongues in each other’s mouths, or falling into bed together and making love as if their lives depended on it. And yet all of these things happened, in sequence, when Joan came down for her visit to Birmingham. And once they had happened, she found herself curiously reluctant to leave and return to her house, and her job, and her solitary life back in Sheffield. And although she did return, after taking a few days’ unpaid leave (quite a bit of it being spent in bed with Graham), one of the first things she did was to put the house up for sale. At the same time she started looking for jobs in the Midlands. It took a while, because jobs were not easy to come by, not even for someone as experienced and well-qualified as Joan, but in the new year she managed to get a position running a women’s refuge in Harborne, and she moved in with Graham, and one day in February they both took time off to visit the local register office, and then suddenly they were married: he who had always believed that he wasn’t the marrying type, and she who had begun to think she had left it too late to find anyone to marry her.