Am I Being Followed?

  Reading somewhere in the book Collection about the various natural disasters which had occurred in the last hundred years or so, in which a million people had been killed by storms, over nine million by floods, and even more by drought and disease hadn’t effected me all that much. They hadn’t made me sick to the teeth, like I was now. Even when the Pastor had cleverly drawn comparisons between some of these comparatively recent events and similar events in history and given reasons for them, convincingly coloured by his view of things, of course, my response had been more intellectual than emotional – the breaking of the moral law was a crime, and crime didn’t pay. But now that I myself was directly involved, being hunted down, just like those unfortunates in that great man-made disaster which had befallen the Jews, my response was quite different. The effect on merely one victim, myself, meant more to me than the effect on millions. It had very nearly brought me to my knees.

  Like the great British statesman, Winston Churchill, who had said of himself in the Book Collection, concerning his escape, as a young man, from a Boer Prison Camp, ‘I had nowhere to hide’. Confessing that he had harboured anti-religious feelings at that time and had turned to philosophy and reason, the great man had gone on to describe how he had found these to be of little use in his hour of need and had finally had to cry to God for help.

  Couldn’t I, in a certain sense, say that the disaster which had befallen me was even worse than his? Churchill had known all about his enemies whereas I really had no idea who I was up against, except to say that they posed a serious threat to my life. My enemy was someone I wouldn’t recognise, or even fully understand. He could come at me from any direction and at any time. And even if I did see him coming would I, in the long term, ever be able to shake him off?

  The element of surprise that had been mine at the caravan, when confronting Steve and the smiling man, was gone. I was a target now, a sitting duck.

  I was almost at my wits end, reduced to that very state the Pastor had described as so often as being necessary to make men realise their frailty and powerlessness, to show them where they really stood in the grand order of things even if, in my case, it hadn’t taken a flood or an earthquake to do it.

  With thoughts like these running through my head, I was beginning to think that I had been wrong in coming to the office. It might have been better, after all, if I had stayed in the flat and listened to some Chopin, even if it wouldn’t have done much good. But what about that other art form? which was hanging there, right next to me, on the wall. Maybe the picture would help to take my mind off things, as it had done so often in the past.

  It worked, but not in the way that I wanted. The fact that the girl in the picture was no longer Linda, but Karen, unsettled me even more. Try as I might, I couldn’t restore Linda to where I thought she belonged. When I ended up imagining myself sitting on the grass watching the ducks I knew the out-of-the body experience that Beethoven associated with music, the same one that I had just then been hoping to gain from the picture, had become mere day-dreaming. I would have to settle for this.

  As I gazed aimlessly out of the window noticing a vehicle drawing into the car park, I realised I couldn’t afford to lapse into this state of mind. I had to keep my wits about me. The occupants of this car would have to be scrutinised as they got out, regardless of the fact that I didn’t even know what kind of people the Operation would send. I couldn’t expect everyone who worked for them to look like Andy or Big Tom. Would they be inclined to look something like Steve or the smiling man? They might as well be invisible, for all the difference their appearance was going to make to me, I concluded fatalistically.

  But surely, I asked myself once more, the Operation wouldn’t harm me as long as they thought I had the package? Hadn’t I already made up my mind about this? On the other hand was it expecting too much to think that they would reason with me, treat me almost as an equal, want to bargain with me? Wouldn’t they be more inclined to be rough on me right from the start to get me to tell them where the package was?

  But I didn’t know where it was. If they wanted it they were going to have to negotiate with me, I persuaded myself one more.

  “Do you know these people?” I asked Benny, pointing out the window at the occupants alighting from the car.

  “They were here last year.”

  How different Benny’s circumstances were from mine, I thought again, as we studied the two men who were walking towards the entrance.

  It didn’t matter to him who these men were. He could look out the window with nothing much more than the weather on his mind.

  Another car was coming in. Benny didn’t even bother to look up. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  Waiting about like this in the office, instead of in the flat, definitely wasn’t working, I could see. How could it, when I had something like this hanging over my head? What was I thinking of? It was a bit like being a condemned man patiently waiting on the firing squad to arrive, although not quite, for I still had a way of escape, I told myself. I could get into my car and drive off. There was still time. But drive where? And what about Andy? And what about Karen?

  “You were supposed to hand in your paperwork,” Benny whispered across to me as if someone could hear us though the wall. “Sears was asking where you were.”

  I was guilty of both of the charges that I guessed were about to be levelled against me by my boss – two mere pin pricks that would once have seemed serious threats to my wellbeing. I was a latecomer, and I had forgotten to hand in some work sheets.

  “Let him wait,” I said to Benny, relishing the startled look he gave me. “Who does Sears think he is?” Hadn’t much more important people than him had to wait, I asked myself. Hadn’t I read in the Book Collection of the two famous American Generals, George Marshal and Hap Arnold, commanding between them about eleven million men, who had had to hang about for forty minutes on the unsheltered platform of a remote British railway station, looking impatiently at their watches, because their train was late? It felt good to be able to downgrade my relationship with my boss in this way. Sears was no longer playing such a crucial part in my life.

  But reflecting on how Chopin hadn’t helped me and the picture on the sales office wall hadn’t either, I saw now that this excerpt from the Book Collection fell short too. I couldn’t really afford to treat Sears with the contempt he deserved. I would still have to pay lip service at least to the fact that, in this place, he was still the Boss.

  And so, not just music and art, but history, too, seemed to be of most use ‘after the event’, or ‘before the event’, I reflect wanly, not when you were right in the middle of it. But if thoughts such as these could bob about in my head at a time like this then maybe the apprehension, anxiety and fear of the last few days was beginning to get to me. That this situation couldn’t go on for very much longer, was becoming all too obvious.

  chapter twenty-two

  I nevertheless felt almost relieved when Sears sent for me, although his particular brand of unpleasantness would only be a distraction on this occasion. But it would keep my mind occupied. I was probably about to be reprimanded for failing to hand in my paperwork and possibly for being late, too. Did I care, because he was still the boss? Not a bit of it, right then. I was actually looking forward to it.

  “I believe you’ve got something that belongs to me,” Sears stated, as soon as I had taken my seat.

  I laid the paperwork on his desk, prepared and unworried. He couldn’t hand me down a death sentence and he wasn’t going to offer me a rise. Whatever it was he had in mind for me didn’t really matter any more.

  “Oh yes, the paperwork,” he said, taking up the sheets without looking at them and laying them aside. Had I wrong-footed him by not apologising at once for my misdemeanours, I wondered, or was he going to deal with my bad timekeeping first? He didn’t look particularly annoyed, I noticed uneasily. Instead, he was staring at me t
houghtfully, rather than aggressively, which I knew was uncharacteristic of him when he was about to deliver a reprimand.

  “Do you want me to do some more cold calling, Mr Sears?” I asked politely, feeling that I had to say something, anything.

  “Oh yes, cold calling,” he replied ponderously.

  Throwing his pencil onto the desk he sat back in his chair and smiled at me. It didn’t look like he was going to be too hard on me, after all. He was probably going to tell me that my sales figures weren’t good enough, or perhaps, merely elaborate on my shortcomings in general. Or did he really have something much worse in mind, I thought, with feigned apprehension – was he intending to take me by surprise?

  “Can we start again,” he said.

  Surprised that paperwork and cold calling didn’t seem to be on his immediate agenda and that his approach seemed to be conciliatory rather than confrontational, I wondered what kind of dirty trick he might be about to try and play on me.

  “I believe you’ve got something that belongs to me,” he said, in a casual tone of voice, completing disarming me.

  “You mean the paperwork, Mr Sears?”

  “Hardly,” he answered, unsettling me even further.

  I was at a loss as to what he wanted. And annoyed too that he was still capable of getting under my skin like this. He certainly knew how to do that for, even yet, I had no idea what was on his mind. I at least knew that there was nothing he could throw at me that would be nearly as bad as the trouble I was in with the Operation but I still wanted to know what he was getting at, even if only to silently pour scorn on it.

  “The Package,” he said. “I want the Package.”

  I could hardly believe what he had just said. That I could have been so completely unaware that he was in any way connected to my present problems was bad. How many other things was I missing?

  “I know you have it,” he added. “I had a phone call from Steve.”

  Here it was again. I had made another fundamental mistake. The smiling man had come up on me in the lay-by and caught me unawares and, in spite of this, and my growing awareness of such threats, Sears had now done much the same thing. I just hadn’t seen him coming!

  But this was a different world from the one I was used to, I quickly reminded myself. I couldn’t be expected to know everything. This was a world in which there were none of the usual rights and wrongs, a world in which I couldn’t afford to waste time on self-recrimination. It didn’t matter that it had never entered my head that Sears might be involved. It was how I handled it that counted.

  “I don’t have the Package,” I said to him, just like the smiling man had said to me when I had confronted him outside the caravan.

  Sears wasn’t looking at me contemptuously, as he usually did when I told him something he didn’t want to hear. I would still have to be careful, though. Even more careful.

  “I know you have it,” he repeated, in an impatient but polite tone of voice. “Steve phoned me, as I’ve already said. He was only too anxious to tell me about what had happened, that it was you who had the package and that it was you I should be going after, not him.”

  “Where’s Andy?” I countered, beginning to feel I could adjust to this new set of circumstances. After all, I still had the package or, at least, Karen did.

  “Andy’s quite safe,” he said. “Give me the package and I’ll tell you where he is.”

  I wished I could take him at his word. But in this kind of thing I knew I couldn’t take anything for granted. The idea of a straight swap, as Sears was suggesting, seemed too good to be true. It might have been what I had been hoping for all along but now that it seemed to be within reach I could see that it might not be the end of the matter. I couldn’t be sure. Sears of all people was obviously involved in my plight. But in what way, or to what extent?

  “I only want what’s mine,” he remonstrated. Surely it’s not too much to ask.”

  He seemed to be a different person entirely from the one who had lorded it over me in my attempt to hold down the job and sell fire extinguishers. There was still no trace whatsoever of the usual harshness in his tone of voice, and his position on the right side of the desk no longer made him seem so overbearing.

  In seeing the other side of him in this way had I just caught a glimpse of how he was able to hold on to the advantage life had given him over people like me? I wondered. I felt he wasn’t just acting. He seemed to be sincere. But he would probably be equally at home with whatever impression he felt was the most appropriate one to further his interests at the time, I supposed. Getting what he wanted or what he needed, I felt, would seldom differ from what he thought was right. And he had almost convinced me, too. I wanted to believe what he was telling me, that we should cooperate with each other. He was making me sympathise with him, to want to trust him. And this, after all that I knew about him. I needed something out of the Book Collection to clear my head, but it wouldn’t come.

  Instead, ‘Would some people never learn’, I lamented to myself, my thoughts going off at a tangent. In fact, would men in general so often misjudge other men, often putting seriously flawed people into positions of power on the strength of their empty promises and outward appearance. Or letting vicious criminals go free because of their good behaviour in the controlled environment of the prison? Were people always going to be fooled by others so easily? Were men always going to be such atrociously bad judges of other men?

  But at last, just in time, a passage from one of the books came to mind to shed some light on the matter. Hadn’t Admiral Doenitz, appointed by Hitler as his political successor, a man of some ability whom even some of his adversaries on the Allied side had come to respect, been taken in by one of the greatest mass murderers of the Century? ‘Hitler’, the Grand Admiral had said when first captured at the end of World War II, ‘was a man with an abundance of good heart, his mistake being, perhaps, that he was too noble, too loyal to colleagues, who had not deserved it.’ Was Doenitz really stark raving mad in having had such an unusual opinion of such an unusual person? I asked myself. While the accuracy of his assessment of Hitler could rightly be called into question, the Grand Admiral’s sanity had never been in doubt.

  “What do you mean the Package belongs to you?” I asked Sears, now more than ever determined not to be taken in by him. Sears was a serious threat, someone who was capable of doing me immense harm, in spite of the great change that seemed to have come over him. I wasn’t going to let my guard drop for an instant.

  “The solution to all this is very simple,” Sears said, ignoring my question.

  “You think so?”

  “Give me the Package and Andy will be released.”

  “You’re speaking for the Operation, I take it?”

  “The contents of the package belong to me, not to the Operation, Grant,” he stated, once more taking me completely by surprise.

  This was a hard fact to accept, I felt, astounded at what he had just told me. If there was some truth in it, how could I even be sure who it was I should be dealing with, or who it was I should have such good reason to fear.

  “And what about the Operation, where do they fit in exactly?” I asked him, trying to see him as someone I could manipulate as he had once manipulated me, someone I could now face up to without having one hand tied behind my back. I had to feel like this. I could feel like this. It was me who had the Package, not him.

  “The Operation won’t be a problem,” he replied. “You’re not dealing with the Operation, you’re dealing with me.”

  “So you say.”

  “You’re not listening, Grant.”

  “I am listening.”

  “You’re not. We both want the same thing as far as the Operation is concerned, don’t we? We both want to have as little to do with them as possible. They’re not the kind of people we want to get on the wrong side of, are they?”


  I certainly couldn’t disagree with him on this point. The prospect of meeting up with some of these invisible and deadly people definitely filled me with dread.

  “Look Grant, I’m sure we can work this out. What would you say if I told you the Operation doesn’t even know the package has gone astray?”

  If he was speaking the truth, then I now knew even less than I thought I did about what was really happening.

  “It’s to do with the setting up of the new Casino, Grant,” Sears went on to explain. “The package does really belong to me. It’s the money I was paid by the Operation for certain help I was able to give them. As far as they are concerned I’ve been paid in full. They don’t know anything about what has happened to the package. They know absolutely nothing about all this.”

  “Nothing about Steve or Andy, you mean?”

  “Absolutely nothing. And its best that it stays that way, isn’t it?”

  If I could believe what he was telling me, it was good news, indeed. I wasn’t a target. The Operation wasn’t interested in me, or in the package. I wasn’t being stalked.

  “And so it’s just between you and me,” I said to him. But there were still pieces missing, enough of them to make me hesitate. Could I really believe him, about any of this?

  “And what about Steve and the other man?”, I added.