A Little White Death Read online

Troy did not know what ‘it’ was – a matter of life and death? A matter of life and lies? It was half-formed or less in his own mind. He would not have dreamt of discussing Charlie with Rod at this point. He said nothing. Just followed Rod down to the front door.

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ Rod said, pulling on his wellies.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. But I do need to get up to town.’

  ‘Secrets, Freddie. Secrets. You’re worse than the old man. You play every damn card so close to the chest. Well, I’m telling you now that if you can’t tell me honestly that your business is more important than mine, I say sod you for your secrets. I’m commandeering the Fat Man and his motorbike and I’m going.’

  Troy said nothing. The very word ‘commandeering’ made him wince inwardly. This was Wing Commander Troy in fully operational mode. Playing by the Queensberry Rules. Rules that let him hijack the bike, but did not permit him to read a telegramme addressed to someone else.

  ‘Quite,’ said Rod. ‘Silence.’

  When the Fat Man trudged back to his bike Rod made his pitch, plain and simple. A fiver to get him, as he put it, ‘to civilisation’. The Fat Man looked to Troy. Troy nodded almost imperceptibly and, as Rod made a racket clambering into the sidecar, leant over and whispered.

  ‘Dump him at the nearest station and get back here. I may need you for a few days.’

  The Fat Man tapped the side of his nose.

  Rod looked ridiculous sitting in the sidecar. Knees tucked almost to his chin, hat rammed down to his ears, goggles over his eyes, briefcase pressed to his chest. He looked like an owl.

  ‘There is one thing,’ he said from his preposterous perch.

  ‘Of course,’ said Troy.

  ‘What’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Is it Einstein or one of those blokes?’

  ‘It’s Kelvin.’

  ‘Never heard of him. What did he say?’

  ‘Entropy. Everything expands into . . . nothing.’

  ‘Don’t quite follow . . .’

  ‘Everything turns to shit in time.’

  ‘And we need a “Theory” to tell us that?’

  The Fat Man raised a giant’s foot off the ground, slamming down on the kickstart, and brought four 250cc cylinders spitting and roaring into life. He was back in less than an hour.

  § 2

  He had not thought Beirut would be cold. It wasn’t – it just wasn’t warm either. He had so looked forward to being warm. He had somehow seen himself in shirtsleeves, a white sea-island cotton shirt clinging to him loosely as a gentle breeze blew in from the Mediterranean to ruffle his hair. It had been a dream conjured up after a night in a run-down hotel on the Great North Road – where he had finally abandoned the Fat Man’s motorbike – another on a bench at Heathrow as his flight was postponed in half-hour chunks – permitting the runways to be swept clear of snow just in time for the next storm, and permitting no one the resolution of checking into a hotel – and a third night on a bench at Orly as his plane was grounded in a blizzard by French air traffic control and much the same stop-go, go-stop policy ensued.

  The best part of four days had passed by the time he landed in Beirut. It was pitch dark and the less than gentle sea breeze, whilst hardly a howling North Sea gale that could cut through clothing, was wind enough to cut through expectation, to chill the spirit if not the flesh. It blew across the runway, chased him through the terminal, pursued him to a taxi, raced him the length of the city out to the Ra’s Beirut promontory, and was waiting for him fifteen minutes later when he got out. All that could be said was that it was warmer than England.

  The taxi dropped Troy in front of the Saint-Georges Hotel, a squat block looming featurelessly over him in the darkness. Sleepless, exhausted, unshaven and unwashed, he felt sure he must stink to high heaven after four days in the same clothes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the white-jacketed clerk at reception. ‘Mr Charlie instructed us to keep the room exactly one week. Everything is ready for you, Mr Troy.’

  All Troy wanted was a bath and a bed, and he was not at all sure he would even bother to take them in that order.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Would you get a message to Mr Leigh-Hunt, tell him I’m here and that I’ll see him at breakfast?’

  ‘Mr Charlie has gone, sir.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone, sir.’

  For a moment the same thought passed through his mind that had first surfaced when he read Charlie’s telegramme – gone meant dead. A blunt, ineffectual euphemism. But from the look on the man’s face that was clearly not the case. There was not a flicker of meaningless public display of regret.

  ‘Gone where?’ he said.

  ‘We never know, Mr Troy.’

  The man was alone at his post. The use of ‘we’ was little short of regal. Troy looked out of the corner of his eye and saw that two men had approached him from the right as he talked. One of them coughed politely and he turned. A short, stout man, well past middle age, who clutched a smouldering cigar between fat fingers, and whose recent meals seemed displayed down the front of his shirt as liberally as the dandruff on his shoulders; and a tall, handsome young Arab with thick black hair and finely chiselled features, wearing a neat Italian black suit and the clean white cotton shirt Troy had seen in his dreams of himself.

  ‘Troy?’ said the old one. ‘Did I hear him say Troy?’

  Troy stared at him and said nothing.

  ‘Would you be one of our Troys, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I don’t know. What are your Troys?’

  The old one stuck out his hand.

  ‘Arthur Alliss. Sunday Post. I used to work for your father. I’m the Post’s Middle East correspondent. We’d no idea you were coming out. Nobody told us. We’d’ve met you at the airport if we’d known.’

  The penny dropped. These men worked for his father’s Sunday paper. Since his father’s death twenty years ago it had been run by his brother-in-law, Lawrence. Troy had next to nothing to do with the family business, with its small empire of newspapers, magazines and publishers. What little responsibility remained for the family, Rod usually handled. It had not occurred to him that there could hardly be a capital city on earth in which he would not find an accredited correspondent or a freelance stringer on one or another of the Troy newspapers.

  Troy took the proffered hand, then shook with the young Arab.

  ‘I’m Frederick Troy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I hadn’t thought about it – I mean, I hadn’t realised you’d be here.’

  Foolish, he thought. Of course they’d be there. Simply hacks doing their job. Why else was Charlie there? When MI6 had discreetly demanded his resignation in 1957, Charlie had asked Rod for a job and Rod had packed him off to Beirut as roving Middle Eastern correspondent for the family’s almost defunct journal American Week. It had seemed appropriate. Charlie spoke Arabic, and it kept him active and paid, kept him out of England, out of the English papers, and out of harm’s way. Only now he wasn’t there. These two were, and looking upon him as some representative of the family firm, which he wasn’t and would never be.

  The old one ruminated a moment on the name.

  ‘Frederick?’ he said with a hint of inflection, a question posed more at himself than at Troy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Troy.

  ‘The policeman?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Troy.

  ‘You’ve come for Charlie?’

  ‘Yes – he’s a very old friend.’

  ‘I think you’d better join us for a snifter, Mr Troy. Said!’

  The mere mention of his name seemed enough to convey a simple, singular meaning to the young Arab. He headed for the bar and Alliss led the way back to their table. Troy wondered where he’d find the energy to talk to them. He hoped to God all they wanted was to pay their respects and then he could bugger off to bed.

  Alliss relaxed into his chair and, finding his cigar out, stuck the wet end back in his mouth and put a match to the other. For a few seconds he
vanished into a haze of sucking and puffing. Troy saw the Arab making his way towards them with a tray and three very large Scotches. He’d have one drink with them and ditch them.

  ‘We both worked with Charlie, y’know,’ Alliss said. ‘Truth to tell I never thought the old firm needed two blokes out here, but there you are, your brother thought different. I file for the Post, Said here – this is Said Hussein – he’s the local fixer . . .’

  Hussein smiled politely at the belated introduction, a cold light in the shining black eyes, enough to tell Troy that at best he was bored by Alliss, at worst probably despised him.

  ‘He’s got the local knowledge. Speaks the lingo. And Charlie, Charlie filed for the Yanks.’

  Troy noted through the haze of tiredness, and the acrid, repulsive smell of Scotch – he had put the glass to his lips and put it back untouched – Alliss’s use of the past tense.

  ‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’

  Alliss looked puzzled by this, glanced at Hussein, and then continued the same puzzled scrutiny of Troy as if the key were written in his face.

  ‘Have ye not seen the papers Mr Troy?’

  ‘No. I had one hell of a time getting here. I feel as though I’ve spent four days in a vacuum.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘So everybody keeps telling me. But he’s expecting me. I can wait, but it would be useful to know how long.’

  ‘No – I mean gone gone. Defected. Charlie’s crossed over.’

  On what level had this rippled through his brain to find instant suppression? The telegramme lay crumpled at the bottom of his inside jacket pocket. He had read it over and again a dozen times in the last four days – ‘I don’t think I have much time left.’ Somehow it had been easier – dammit, reassuring – to believe that Charlie’s last cry had been a cry of help, that he was in mortal peril, that he had cancer, angina, cirrhosis of the liver. Troy found himself acknowledging for the first time that he had been prepared, had actually preferred, to believe that Charlie was dying rather than believe that his past, and with it Troy’s own, had finally caught up with him.

  ‘When?’ he said simply. ‘Four days ago. Just vanished. Clothes in his room. An article on Moshe Dayan half-finished, still in the typewriter, cold cup of coffee next to it. Razor and toothbrush on the washstand. He came in here, sent a telegramme from the press room and vanished. We usually lunched together. First I knew was when he didn’t show. I asked the boys here, but all they knew was the telegramme and they won’t say what was in it or who it was to. Five hours later he boards a Russian freighter in the docks. I reckon all he had was the clothes on his back. Took me till yesterday to find out that much. Bloke in the dockyard recognised him. Came to me for a bit of the old backshish. I filed it, of course. Had to. It’s news. Front page of the dailies back in Blighty this morning. If Hugh Gaitskell hadn’t died last night it’d be the lead. You can’t have a career like Charlie’s and not be news.’

  Alliss was a pig. The mixture of professional greed and personal pique made for a distasteful fool. Troy was beginning to share Hussein’s silent contempt. He feared it might find its voice very soon. Alliss showed no sensitivity to what Troy might be feeling.

  ‘O’ course if I could find out who that telegramme was to, I’d really have a coup. That’d stick it to those dozy buggers on the Sunday Times. Insight Team my left buttock – more like Shortsight Team.’

  He chuckled at his own wit, jowls jiggling, mirth rippling down to his fingertips, Scotch in his glass splashing over onto his trousers. He rubbed it into the fabric with the thumb of his free hand. Seemed not to mind. One more stain on a suit of boozer’s motley.

  ‘O’ course, I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, is there anyone half sane who really believes Charlie was innocent? I don’t care how many times the government set some pillock on his hind legs in the Commons to clear his name. Charlie was one of them – Burgess, Maclean, Leigh-Hunt. It all fits. If the government didn’t know our Charlie was a spy, then they’re the last ones who didn’t.’

  Troy had been the first to know. 1956. While the Suez débâcle rumbled on. He had told no one. It was no one else’s business. It was between Charlie and him. And how dearly and how often had he wished there had been nothing between Charlie and him. That they should be like children, schoolboys again, when they had had no secrets. He had packed Charlie off to live with his lies one autumn day, one Indian summer’s afternoon, seven years ago, knowing they would not meet again. A year later, somehow, MI6 had learnt the truth. Charlie had made too many mistakes, or some recently defected Russian had pointed the finger – Troy neither knew nor cared which – and Charlie had retired from the Secret Service in a flurry of corridor speculation and to a wishy-washy Commons denial, so limp and unconvincing it had fallen not to the Foreign Secretary, but to the most junior of his ministers, a rising starlet of the Conservative Party, Timothy Woodbridge. Woodbridge had exonerated Charlie, gently berated the press for their gossip and cornered his little piece of history as author of what the same press had dubbed ‘the Woodbridge Statement’. The last Troy had seen of Charlie was a farewell drink in a pub in St Martin’s Lane. He seemed grateful to Troy that Rod had come to his rescue – and Troy had said nothing to this, because Rod had done so without telling him. He had done exactly what he thought Troy required of him without even mentioning it. And for that Troy was grateful. Charlie would not have come to him.

  Each time was the last time. A slapdash sequence of partings, each potentially riddled with finality. Now this was the last. Now he really had gone.

  ‘Why now?’ said Troy, more to himself than to the two journalists.

  For a second he thought Hussein was going to speak, but Alliss stubbed out the remains of his cigar and sounded off.

  ‘Had enough,’ he said bluntly. ‘If you ask me he never much cared for the job. After all, if he really has ended up in Russia, then it was only a cover, wasn’t it? I think he just got tired of it. It’s a big territory. You can find yourself in Jerusalem one day and Aden the next. It takes belief. It’s the only thing that’ll keep you at it. Personally, I never thought Charlie had that belief. More often than not we’d cover for him, wouldn’t we, Said? He couldn’t be arsed half the time. He was lucky. Without us he’d’ve gone under. Mind you, he was good company – you get Charlie in the bar with a few drinks inside him. Talk about laugh!’

  Troy heard his cue and knew his exit. Arthur Alliss was decidedly not good company. He had heard enough of Alliss’s vision of Charlie. If it turned out he really had seen the last of him, then he wanted his vision of Charlie, warts and all, not the spiteful, sentimental vision of a drunken hack who scarcely knew him.

  Troy pushed his untouched glass towards Alliss and got to his feet. ‘Forgive me, but I’m flagging badly. I really do need to sleep now.’

  Alliss bustled and missed the hatred in Troy’s eyes. Prised himself from his chair with some loss of breath, stuck out his hand again and said, ‘But you’ll join us for breakfast? It’s not often we . . .’

  Perhaps he had read the look in Troy’s eyes after all. The sentence dwindled down to nothing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘Delighted.’

  § 3

  He kicked off his shoes, tore off his jacket and tie and lay on the bed beneath the motionless punkah. He decided he’d give it fifteen minutes and then hang out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. In less than ten there was a gentle tap at the door.

  Hussein stood in the corridor, one hand oh-so-casually in his trouser pocket, the other poised to knock again. ‘Do you really want to have this conversation now?’ he asked.

  ‘If it’s the only time you’re free of Alliss, yes,’ said Troy.

  Hussein carefully hung his jacket on the back of an upright chair and sank slowly into a deeply upholstered armchair. He loosened his tie, stuck a fat Turkish cigarette in his mouth, crossed his legs with a fastidious tug at the knee of his trousers and lit up. Troy flopped into the chair opposite, feeling
as creased as his clothes.

  Hussein could be no more than twenty-two or three, his eyes were bright, his skin shone with health and at the end of a working day he seemed not have a single close cropped hair out of place. The tie at half-mast was a concession to after-hours occasion. He looked like Madison Avenue man launching into a difficult pitch. Compared to him, Troy felt ancient.

  ‘Arthur is colouring the story. You must forgive him. He is an old man. Out of his time.’

  The preamble over, what they both knew so succinctly stated, he inhaled deeply and savoured his smoke a moment.

  ‘No one carried Charlie.’

  A hand batted the smoke away from his face, the gesture cutting, absolute, to reinforce his words.

  ‘Far from being unsuited to the job, I’d say Charlie was a natural. Arthur got here just after Suez, less than a year before Charlie – just long enough for his nose to be out of joint when your brother hired Charlie. I suspect they were both sent for much the same reason. Suez put us back on the map. Every newspaper on earth increased its Middle East coverage, simply waiting for the next skirmish or the start of Armageddon. I joined them in 1961. My first job when I graduated Yale. I’m the new boy, but being from Jerusalem I’m near enough a native, and I know the lie of the land, and I think I know my job. I’ve seen enough to know that Charlie loved the job, and rather than letting Arthur carry him, he carried Arthur. After seven years Arthur has only a smattering of Arabic – good French; he’d have been OK here before the war, in his element in the time of the Beiks, but that’s another age. I rather think Arthur hasn’t acknowledged that.’

  ‘England is full of men like Arthur,’ said Troy.

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ Hussein replied with an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘But I can quite believe it. He’s right when he says you can find yourself in Aden one day and Jerusalem the next. That’s the nature of the job. But it was Charlie who made those journeys; it was Charlie who gathered enough information to support his own column and Arthur’s news file. Most of the time you can’t prise Arthur out of the bar here. We don’t live here – even Troy Newspapers can’t afford that – but we might just as well. It has its pluses – anyone who’s anyone passes through here eventually – and its minuses, in that you can delude yourself that the Saint-Georges Hotel bar is the world. Until very recently Charlie never fell for that. There was always a world elsewhere for Charlie. True, he drank like a fish, I’ve never met an English reporter that did not, but until last autumn it never interfered with his work.