Hammerhead

by Peter Nicholson

  Priestnall arrived, looking like a man in search of himself. Usually querulous and domineering, here on the island he was perhaps already losing some of the sting that had got him into the State Department. He wore a linen suit on his arrival, but that soon gave way to casual clothes. The warm sun on the skin was too seductive. We watched as he walked through Linaria, in search of his accommodation. We knew the port reasonably well by now. It was protected from the strong winds that could blow up, settled below houses dotting the mountain on top of which was a castle.

  It was puzzling to me how a man of such erudition and culture could have got himself entangled in the mesh of those grotesques we’d blown up in Berlin. Yet the evidence of his complicity was undeniable. He was now going to pay for his involvement. He had stored up too much bad karma.

  We walked through the areas Priestnall frequented. He usually took just a satchel and a book with him, and some notepaper—no laptop. He seemed content to simply amble around the port, not really wanting to go further afield. Thérèse had to get herself known by him.

  So, the following day, Priestnall was sitting down on a nearby beach reading when Thérèse walked by and then sat down some distance from him. Finally, his curiosity piqued, he went up to her and they began the conversation we hoped would bring us the main prize. Thérèse explained we were visiting and planning to travel by car to see the rest of the island. She had just had an argument with me, and we weren’t speaking to one another.

  We got into the habit, after he’d met me too, of having lunch together on the beach, sometimes swimming and lying buried half-in, half-out of the fine grey sand covering the shoreline. There were always new beaches to find, new areas to explore. One night we went down to one of our favourite spots, lit a fire on the beach and watched the massive span of the stars. Skyros was the legendary dwelling place of Theseus and Lykomides, Achilles and Neoptolemus, and they seemed close at evening. Priestnall was a classics scholar and knew a lot about the mythological past of the ancient Greeks and the Romans who had once occupied the island.

  Then one day, out of the intense blue, he started to talk about politics. He told us a lot of things perhaps wiser heads would have kept to themselves. There was gossip about presidents and so forth.

  We knew from recently-intercepted calls relayed to us that Priestnall could be meeting someone in the next few days—probably Jacmel—so we had to act soon.

  We went on some longish drives around the island. Priestnall wanted to see Rupert Brooke’s grave as well as the monument to poetry which was situated in a setting worthy of a poet. Priestnall and the two of us stood before the sculpture and read the inscription: ‘Now that I have seen the sacred Attiki I can die.’

  It would be so.

  The arrow of my intent sailed in a pure arc across the vault of the sky towards the setting sun …

  Thérèse and I had prepared Priestnall’s final meal the evening before, reserving two containers for our food that we packaged and put to one side. Then, following Florian’s strict precautions, we put the ricin into the leftover rice and meat, mixing the various elements and packaging the food into another container. We marked this container for Priestnall with a slight scratch on the surface and then put his meal into the bar fridge. We placed our food in the larger fridge nearby.

  I hoped we hadn’t tried to be too clever.

  We had planned everything so we could catch the ferry out the following afternoon.

  We settled on the secluded beach we’d chosen for the last supper. Priestnall took out his Virgil and asked if we’d like to hear some read aloud. I thought, why not, and so for ten minutes we listened to him recite, in a beautiful speaking voice, some passages from the Aeneid.

  Eventually, he cast the book aside, the sun working its effect on him and, with a sigh, suddenly said, apropos of nothing, ‘You know, I haven’t lived a very good life. In fact I am rather tired of life.’

  Surprised, we looked on, listening intently. I opened a bottle of retsina Priestnall soon drank most of.

  ‘No, I haven’t used my life carefully enough. I could tell you some very interesting stories you know, but I don’t suppose I should.’

  Thérèse prepared our meals leaving Priestnall to unpack his own food.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Priestnall said eagerly, and he tucked into his food as we excavated ours from the edge of the plate.

  ‘This is really tasty. I haven’t had this meal before. Is this a Greek dish?’

  We talked, and waited.

  Priestnall was soon fuddled. As we knew, he liked his alcohol and got drunk quickly.

  ‘You know I feel I could do one of those Greek dances, except that I’m too old now. That’s my wisdom for you today. Don’t grow old.’

  Having said which, he stood and walked a little way down to the water.

  Suddenly he doubled over in pain, then fell on his knees, panting.

  ‘Please … a doctor.’

  We both sprang up, watching Priestnall’s fallen form. Florian had warned me death from ricin poisoning could take up to three days. But we had used an intense, purified form of it, and I didn’t think we were in for a protracted death scene on this isolated beach. I thought his age and the alcohol, together with the ricin, would be conclusive.

  He tore at his clothing, turning on the sand. The effect of the poison was quick, a mercy for him.

  I had imagined I was going to give a vengeance speech over the prostrate body of Priestnall, but I didn’t say anything.

  Now a white foam appeared on his lips, and in his last moments he stretched up his hands to us. The look in his eyes was faraway.

  We went forward apprehensively.

  He raised his head, and I thought I heard him mutter the name of Jacmel before he fell back in final surrender.

  Thérèse ran and emptied the remaining food on Priestnall’s plate into the ocean. Then we dragged his body back against a rock outcrop and began preparing an impromptu grave. We checked him over for any clues as to his immediate intentions but there were only some local phone numbers.

  We buried Priestnall quickly, then returned to Linaria in our car.

  Eventually we were back in Athens on our connecting flight to Germany.

  I went to see Charles as soon as we arrived, but when I opened his door his head was bent, and he looked shocking.

  ‘What’s the matter Charles?’

  Charles looked at me directly, but his face was a mask.

  ‘Anton, David. Anton has disappeared off the mountain he was climbing. We think he fell. But I’m not sure.’

  I stared back, numb, a blurred idea of Anton’s face shattered, bloody, on mountain rock and ice.

  And then I slumped.

  ‘It was an accident. We think it was an accident. He was climbing. But he has disappeared. We think he has disappeared.’

  Charles sounded off-centre from reality. I was off-centre from reality.

  Surely this was a ruse on Anton’s part. He might have been captured …

  I sat, trying to imagine the unimaginable.

  Had Anton finally discovered the great moment of release he’d spent so much time and energy pursuing? He had saved my life, and I had felt very close to him. I wondered about his moment of letting go up there on some impossible ledge, like all the impossible ledges he climbed in his life.

  Now he was gone and I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

  How could he have been so careless.

  I offered a silent reproach, but all I could picture was Anton winking back at me, non-compliant as ever.

  Just how much loss were you supposed to bear. For me, this was the worst loss of all. When my father died, I could accept it, since that fitted into the life cycle we expected. But Anton’s disappearance wouldn’t fit any cycle, any reasoning.

  I was filled with hate at the unfairness of it all. But what was I hating. I had involved myself in a clear-sighted way. And Anton would not have wished for me to go back to my old, safely-ordered
life.

  Thérèse comforted me, and I tried to comfort her, because she had worked with Anton too, more than I had. I had almost forgotten about Priestnall, his body decaying in the sand, the white foam dried on his blue lips.

  How long would it be before they found him?

  Skyros seemed far away. There was blood on the temple steps, Cassandra wailing truths none wanted to hear.

  I tried to gather the shreds of my allegiances and hold them together for the sake of Charles, for Thérèse, for our organisation. Men are supposed to be strong at such moments. The facade stays respectable, but the scaffolding crumbles inside, and amid the dust and broken glass uncertainty bears up with its harsh prerogative. Not knowing what had happened on the mountain only made me more nervous of the strange reflection in the mirror that used to be me.

  Charles spoke quietly.

  ‘Remember when Roy went. I had to go on.… I think I can go on.’

  He paused, then stared ahead.

  ‘We have reports saying Jacmel has gone to Australia. I want you there. Find out what is happening. Yes. Anton is going to be hard to replace, but we can’t afford to let all our good work go to pieces because one of our friends has gone.’

  At which point Charles gave me the strangest look. I couldn’t work out what it meant.

  I summoned every scrap of my self-possession and walked from the room.

  The first thing I had to do was phone Florian which I did with as much nobility and steadfastness as was possible in circumstances that were terrible for both of us.

  I would go. I would do my best, I promised myself, even though I rebelled at the thought of having to return home again so soon.

  Discontinuity seemed to have become my new way of experiencing time and I just had to get used to it.

  III

  A Traveller Over

  Antique Lands

  Back to Down Under.

  Home? Was this home? I was resisting the idea even as I settled into my plane seat. The black fury inside me had quietened, but was still bubbling away, corroding the bottom of my plinth. I was in danger of becoming a cynic, horrible fate. I made a mental list of the things I didn’t like about the greatest country in the world. Did the Chinese get up in the morning and think—Australia, the greatest country in the world? Did Americans? Did Australians? Were we stupid. Was this the last place on the whole planet to cast off the fantasy that we didn’t have the same problematical history other countries did, the same compromise and unloveliness. There were no black armbands in sight and all of life was reduced to the level of a joke. We were amused by the world, and the world was amused by us. Was this the great ideal to strive for? Was our civilisation a bluff at the end of the earth? What might save us was the fact that we clung to the edge of a land resisting us at every turn, the Aboriginal calamity building its wave across our consciousness. But we held on to clichés as surf ripped over us and fire blackened us.

  And then there were Sydneysiders, forever going on about their great city. What had any of us done to invite such narcissism. It made one laugh to see the hype, the extravagant cultural claims. We hadn’t brought about the superb harbour, the picture-perfect views, the brilliant beaches. And what of that infinitely precious thing—the golden freedom we enjoyed. It was previous generations who had achieved that. Were we properly grateful for what had been given to us. Self-pleasuring was an art form in Sydney, and stroking others to a warm glow of self-satisfaction a talent practised by masters of the art who prided themselves on spinning fantasies the gullible digested while another flawless blue sky kindled skin cancers on leathery backs and prone thighs.

  Celia would still be in mourning. And Chris, my mother … I hadn’t had time to mourn my father properly. How much mourning I still had to do for all the brutality I had encountered, or brought on. Something within me had toughened. I could feel its scale building. It could have been the scale of experience, weighing its lead, or it might have been the thief of time, putting up the banner proclaiming all flesh is grass.

  But nothing would have changed. People would still be cheering on muscle that whacked balls, churned water, tearing groins at the everlasting Circus Maximus of sport, just as Shevchenko had intimated to me before his demise in Saint Stephans. At least I had moved on from my tennis trophy days. If we had produced important writers, scientists, thinkers and statesmen, you would sometimes be hard-pressed know it from media coverage that contracted all human endeavour to a continuous exaltation of physicality.

  I calmed down, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting home.

  This time I didn’t even want to look at those Opera House sails. I got out of the airport as quickly as I could and hardly exchanged a dozen words with my taxi driver.

  I rang my mother to see how she was—fair to middling, drinking, then Celia and Chris—promises, promises. I rang some of my friends who thought my sudden disappearance from the scene strange. They didn’t believe my explanations about what I’d been up to. How could I say I was pursuing a sadistic Haitian colonel interested in African diamonds concealed somewhere in Australia. Who would have believed that, for goodness sake. And, I must say, it seemed unlikely, even to me, as I contemplated how I was going to find out what was happening here.

  I supposed the fact I had been chosen for this assignment was a genuine vote of confidence in my abilities. Charles had grown into a truly admirable person from very unpromising beginnings. People can change their lives in a moment, following the long struggle between conscience and desire, the need for moral absolutes after personal failure and indulgence. Charles had been like that. People wanted someone like Charles to exist. And he did; they just didn’t know it.

  I spoke to Charles to see if there was any more information about Jacmel’s movements. He had been seen in Singapore, so he was probably in Australia already.

  It all seemed to hinge on this message: d/saiOH/waiting. I recalled when MI6 had tried to break the cipher machine for the Russian cruiser Ordzhonikidze. After concerted effort had been made, the cipher resisted them and they were forced to give up.

  Our message had already been decoded. I just had to guess at its meaning.

  This ridiculous rind of letters was my sphinx.

  That d now seemed obvious. Diamonds. But what was sai. That had me stumped. Then I remembered. When he was interrogated, Vella revealed that diamonds and some encoded messages had been stored … he had mentioned sails … the Opera House? The Opera House roof sails? Vella had always taken precautions against searches, and I knew criminal cartels could choose bizarre places for concealing contraband. But up there, in that inaccessible, unlikely space?

  My story was distending, less believable by the minute. This could only be fiction. I am an unreliable narrator and everything I say is a lie.

  Unreal, like our own lives which, often, we could not understand.

  However unlikely some fiction might be, to do a big thing in the world needed the unlikeliest courage, accepting everything others doubted or rejected.

  The new political dispensation had led to this anxiety that buildings might collapse around us, nightmares made real in blood and choking dust, where tongues could be cut out and in which children died on heaps of refuse at the edges of cities. This dispensation had narrowed on to my shoulders.

  But if skyscrapers could be destroyed, here was a building, this Opera House, that seemed to reconfigure all the improbabilities of my recent life. Where logic wouldn’t help, those splendid curving shells invited you to participate in some ritual from which you might emerge nobler, perhaps purer. At the very limit of reason, of believability, one could, after all, discover fresh energy and a new way through.

  All sense of purpose and honour, every skerrick of cunning learned since joining The Hammer, would be needed in this coming confrontation. I had to manage it for my sake, for Anton’s sake, for Charles’ sake, Charles, who had already given so much. And for Chris too. What did I want him to inherit. Surely not the disgusting behavi
our I had seen over the last months. I wanted a better world for Chris. If that meant I had to go, well, I could die happy knowing I’d done something to shape Earth a little towards the good.

  I had changed so much since my first phone call from Charles. I was more confident, more ruthless, overcoming many of my fears, my negative emotions. I was metamorphosing into someone not wholly admirable, but necessary. Removed from the banking milieu that only induced scepticism in me, I had become enlightened. I now felt, strangely, free in a way I never had before. I had perfected myself, but most terribly.

  How did the Latin motto go? Faster. Higher. Stronger.

  It was in the Mitchell Library, where I had often gone in the past, that I studied the architectural drawings of the shells of the Opera House. I would need an intimate knowledge of what was underneath those arches. As Anton always said, be prepared.

  Anton! Why did you have to leave? I want an answer!

  But an answer wouldn’t come if I only showed bad faith.

  People who think and write about the world—they are important. But it is the people who do good things in the world who really matter. Were we doing good? Most turned their heads the other way when terrible things happened. They were like members of the happy family settling down to rump steak who never visit the abattoir to see the death march on fast forward. Our lives were very convenient from that point of view. And most of us had no intention of facing up to our cowardice. We would drift into eternity on a prosperous voyage of indolence. Our ignorance was our equanimity and our equanimity was our bliss.