The Passenger

by Chris Petit

  ‘Barry?’

  ‘Colonel Charles “Chuck” Barry.’

  ‘ “Chuck” Barry? No. Was Barry one of the ones on the plane?’

  Sheehan didn’t answer. Collard thought again of the three men he’d seen at Frankfurt airport, including the tall man.

  ‘I badly need to speak to your boy, Mr Collard. On the one hand, I’ve got him connected to the main suspect and not getting on the flight. On the other, here he is seen in the company of an American secret agent who was part of the team that was perhaps the reason the plane was bombed.’

  ‘Are you telling me there was a motive when everyone is saying it was a random act of terrorism?’

  ‘Both. Colonel Barry’s was an anti-terrorist unit, gathering information on the main suspect for the bombing.’

  Collard remembered Stack saying she was trying to track down a Syrian arms dealer.

  ‘Nazir al-Badawi. If anyone was using your son it was almost certainly his people. The question is did they use him to get at Barry and his team?’

  ‘Are the police looking for Nick?’

  Sheehan gave an unexpected laugh that bounced round the room.

  ‘I’m sure plenty of people are looking for your boy. The police are the least of his worries. Your son contacts you or you find him call one of these numbers.’

  He wrote them on the copy of Nick’s bank statement. ‘Be sure you stay in touch. Where are you going to be?’

  Collard said he was going home to London.

  Before leaving he returned to where he had been that afternoon. There was enough of a moon to see by as he walked up the hill. He wondered where Charlotte and Nick were now. He would prove Sheehan wrong about Nick. Slowly he reassembled the cairn he had destroyed, thinking of everything that had been taken away.

  Departures

  Angleton awaited his call, checking the departure boards for a flight as yet unscheduled, as much of his life had been.

  The CIA in the 1950s had been a dull organization but what opportunities for deviancy! Washington had been a dreary company town on a par with Hollywood when he arrived. He grew familiar with its structures and created his own shadow versions.

  The list of the dead in his life: too many he had known about at the time, and too many more he had never heard of. He appreciated the full extent of the wilderness of mirrors; saw himself drunk again, dancing solo to early Presley records (true) at one of those interminable dinner parties that threatened to topple into alcoholic and extramarital disgrace. The wife of a friend had called him a lonely dancer.

  The small moves: another pack of Virginia Slims, equalling 21,900 a year at 60 a day, equalling how many million in a lifetime, give or take (cough cough, no regrets)?

  Drawly Brits had been his undoing. That shit Greene sending a postcard of Haiti stamped in London: Did you know CIA doctor Louis J. West who treated Jack Ruby performed LSD experiments on an elephant and was doctor to Aldous Huxley, died 22 November 1963? Poor Aldous, always a literary reputation in eclipse, pushed off the front pages by an Irish-American upstart. Shall we talk about who whacked Jack? Do let’s.

  Now he could feel nostalgic about all those back-channel deals that had tested the nerves so hard.

  O ye seekers of truth, there is no holy grail waiting, just some shat-on pot – oh, that! – amounting to nothing compared to all the confabulations and the juice that went into the stories surrounding it, all those gunmen on grassy knolls. Integral to the theory is the fact it all stops making sense at some point. Shuffle the pack and after the seventh or eighth time none of it adds up, however much it appears to.

  He revisited the last crisis of his life before his final illness when he had gone and sat by the river, barely bothering with the fish, and reran old movies in his head: The Killers with Lee Marvin, one of the leg-breakers of cinema (terrorizing a blind woman), shot for real in the ass as a young Marine. Marvin’s violence in that film reminded Angleton what he had sanctioned and not been witness to. So little he had seen.

  The departure board did its jig: so many destinations, so many being called. This time his name would come up.

  This is good, he thought: the spook’s spook back in action, the return of the old pistolero – whose father had ridden into Mexico with General Pershing in pursuit of Pancho Villa (and returned with an eighteen-year-old bride, his mother) – loosest of cannons.

  This is really good, he thought, watching the board turn over.

  Detour

  Collard was stopped by police on the M6, past Charnock Richard service station. When he saw the flashing blue light he thought it was Sheehan wanting him back.

  They had clocked him doing 95 mph. Earlier he had noted 105 on the speedometer. He had been driving in the dark at the limit of his skill and concentration, knowing it would take only a tweak of the wheel to send him smashing into the concrete pillar of a bridge.

  He stood on the hard shoulder in spitting rain, buffeted by the slipstream of the big trucks, waiting for his breathalyser to show negative. He had heard when the police issued tickets they awarded themselves league points based on snooker scores, which was why more red cars got booked. The hire car was red so he was surprised they let him go with a caution.

  He drove on, chastened, relieved to be away but fearful for the future. Either Nick had been involved with the Lebanese student Khaled, as Sheehan suggested, or someone wanted it to appear that way. He found he had to accept that Nick might have got himself caught up in a smuggling operation, for the romance of it, or the danger, or the money, and then fallen under the shadow of the bomb plot. But he had no idea how these things worked or what Nick’s role would have been or how drugs got swapped for bombs or why Nick thought he could have got away with it, let alone accept a cheque for the job.

  He had spoken to Stack before leaving. Evelyn was resting upstairs and she was worried. He was complaining of headaches and chest pains. They shared a gloomy drink. Stack’s German trip had not gone well.

  ‘You follow a trail and it makes sense but it ends. Then there’s another trail but you have no idea if it connects. It’s like getting lost in the woods.’

  As for Khaled, reporters had been talking to the boy’s relations. His immediate family were refugees from the civil conflict in Lebanon who like many of their people had resettled around Detroit.

  ‘His father trained as a lawyer but now is part of a monopoly of local families that run the gas stations.’

  Collard tried to picture Nick being introduced to Khaled in a bar or a nightclub. They were around the same age. Nick on his travels would have been open to meeting new people.

  ‘Are people still saying Khaled was a drug smuggler who got used by the bombers?’ he asked.

  ‘Historically, Khaled’s family come from one of the country’s leading drug clans. In the 1920s his forefathers struck a deal with the American gangster Lucky Luciano to set up the first Lebanese connection to supply heroin. Today, the family is split between the Westernized pro-American side and fundamentalists involved in the Syrian-controlled heroin trade.’

  ‘Fundamentalists run the heroin trade?’ Collard wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  Stack nodded. ‘Syria supports the regime in Iran and sponsors terrorists, including the Palestinians. The drugs are the economic base for that. The poppy crop is grown under army supervision.’

  ‘If the fundamentalists control the drug trade does that mean Khaled was working for them?’

  ‘Maybe indirectly, but I can’t see it. He was into fast cars, girls and bodybuilding. “Like the rest of us,” Evelyn said.’

  ‘So the people who control the drugs were responsible for the bomb.’

  ‘That’s the theory.’

  ‘Is your Syrian arms dealer called Nazir?’

  Stack looked surprised. ‘Yes. You seem up to the minute. He’s issuing denials through third parties but in terms of profile he pushes all the buttons.’

  Collard wondered what distance separated Nazir from Nick, an
d how two people from such different backgrounds might conceivably be thrown together.

  He wanted to know more but said goodbye instead, wondering how much Stack knew about Nick.

  The road emptied after midnight, apart from long-distance haulage. A white Mercedes played tag, overtaking and being overtaken, until it exited north of Birmingham. He tried the radio for company, found nothing and switched it off.

  At Birmingham he missed his turn in the tangle of Spaghetti Junction. At school there had been an expression, ‘accidentally on purpose’, and now he found himself driving in the direction of Malvern, wondering whether it was possible that the old man, who had recognized Collard’s tie and been able to quote its motto, had been educated there too.

  Collard had nothing to go home to and being the weekend would make it worse. There was his life before December 21, 1988, the black hole of Scotland, and now the certainty that his old life was gone for ever.

  At the next service station the forecourt smell of gasoline brought back memories of the crash zone. In the mostly deserted cafeteria he sat under garish strip lights, nursed inadequate coffees and failed to eat a greasy egg while watching the nocturnal drifters, wondering if they didn’t all belong with the living dead.

  At Worcester South he left the motorway and followed signs to Malvern, seeing again the familiar hills, a giant slumbering hog’s back, out of place in the surrounding levels.

  Malvern was an old spa, Victorian colonial wealth long gone, large villas wedged into the steep sides of the hills, feats of solid construction from a more expansive age, now a town of too many schools. The Boys’ College was neo-Gothic, festooned with gryphons, set round a showpiece cricket ground with an extravagant pavilion reminiscent of the Raj. Buildings once huge now looked small. At what point had he forgotten about the gryphons, once such a permanent feature of those years? Collard had liked his time there – the security of institution, the regulations of a daily timetable – and been happy to identify, with pleasant memories of damp winter afternoons after games, slouched against hot classroom radiators.

  An ancient classics master who had gone to school there himself dealt with his enquiry. The man had no memory of having taught him in his first year and Collard in turn had forgotten the master’s name. Was it Holly? The name wasn’t offered, nor was a handshake, and Collard recalled the paralysing shyness that had reduced Latin classes to a whispered monotone. The man smelled of chalk dust and pipe tobacco, as redolent of the school as corridor floor polish and the thin, bitter stink of damp games clothes in changing rooms.

  They sat in a panelled study, untouched in decades. No refreshment was offered.

  He explained he wanted to identify an old boy from before the war, an American probably there in the 1930s. He suspected there had been very few Americans in the school. He could remember none in his time.

  They started with photographs of chapel prefects from 1930. They reached 1936 when the old master drew his attention to a tall boy standing in the middle of the back row, an American who had been in Number Two House, as had Collard.

  It was impossible to tell much from the sepia group portrait of half a dozen young men formally dressed to look older. The prefects weren’t named. The most he could say was the tall, handsome youth in the photograph was darker and more romantic than the grey-faced man at the airport.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Angleton. His family lived in Italy. He was below me but I remember he was known as the Yank.’

  Is this the moment of revelation? wondered Collard. He was embarrassed he couldn’t remember the master’s name. Insulated by school life, the man had barely aged. Hair, now white, still fell in a boyish fringe.

  He looked at Angleton again, annoyed not to be more certain. The photograph was elaborately produced, typical of its type, with the name of the studio printed at the bottom. Underneath the hand-lettered ‘Prefects 1936’ lay a stamped engraving of the school shield, which intruded into the space of the photograph, stopping above young Angleton’s head. Beneath the shield on a furled banner was the school motto, the words spoken to him at Frankfurt airport: Sapiens qui prospicit.

  It was uncanny, this bizarre confirmation of their unlikely connection. Collard accepted the careful placing of the motto above Angleton’s head as a sign this was his man. But who was Angleton?

  The clock struck and Collard was taken back: in term time the bell would be ringing for the end of the first morning class, with the noise of scraping desks, the swell of chatter after the silence of the lesson, and the sound of feet everywhere. He supposed nothing had changed. The routine would be the same, with all the familiar noises that made up the regulated day. Things probably hadn’t sounded any different in 1936 when Angleton had been there.

  The past overwhelmed Collard and old habits of deference blunted his curiosity. He half-expected to walk out of the room and find himself eighteen again, his life before him, and mysteriously armed with some piece of arcane knowledge to keep Nick from future harm.

  Collard stared at the old school photographs that seemed so of their moment: nameless faces and the expectation of privilege. Somewhere in these albums he would come across a record of his own boyhood progress, marked by images of a younger self who might now be as unrecognizable as the young Angleton. The sun came out and warmed the room slightly. The old master was too timid to end the meeting or show interest in Collard’s quest, and Collard felt himself reclaimed by a particular kind of institutional listlessness he hadn’t experienced since, paralysing his earlier resolve. He wanted only to stay there, tracing the lives of those forgotten boys. His insignificance was brought home: what did any of it matter?

  The master stood up and adopted a pose that Collard had forgotten: head cocked to one side, dry-washing his hands which were clasped in front of his flies in a way that used to make them snigger.

  ‘Do you know what happened to Angleton?’

  Collard still couldn’t get used to addressing the man as an equal.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. He went on to become quite a famous spy.’

  There was a gleam of private amusement in his eye. Collard wondered whether he hadn’t been stringing him along from the start. He probably knew exactly who he was after.

  Collard experienced the quickening he had been hoping for, fear and excitement.

  The old master said, ‘He’ll be in the Red Book.’

  The Red Book gave old boys’ details. It had been last updated in 1977, and Collard found James Angleton listed as a third-term entrant for 1933, born 1917, which made him seventy. If anything, the man he had seen looked older. Collard was puzzled by the man’s middle name – Jesus – so unlikely for an American. Angleton had been a house prefect, then went to Yale University where he played soccer. In the war he rose to Major in something called OSS and received the US Legion of Merit and French equivalent. Of his main career, it only remarked, cryptically, Chief, Counter-intelligence, 54–74. Distinguished Intelligence Medal. He was also listed as Chairman, Security & Intelligence Fund and the author of Essays by American Cause. Married with a son and two daughters. The most useful information was an address: 4814 N 33rd Rd, Arlington, Va 22207.

  As Collard wrote down Angleton’s address, the master said, ‘Arlington would mean that he was CIA.’

  Collard looked up in surprise. The old master was not the fool they had all taken him for. He had watched them with a contempt that more than matched theirs, and he remembered Collard perfectly well, disliked him still and had surrendered this last piece of information only to make that clear.

  On his way back to the car, Collard ran into another master called Manners, who, after some peering, recognized him. Bald-headed Manners with his high colouring and wire-framed spectacles was exactly as Collard remembered.

  He learned from Manners that Angleton had returned to the school as little as three years earlier, on his way to Wales to fish the River Usk at a hotel where Manners was a regular guest.

  Manners�
�� description of Angleton matched the man at Frankfurt airport. Collard’s lethargy fell away, followed by a sense of something deeper and preordained.

  ‘Is it true he was a spy?’

  Manners shook his bald dome with a vigorous swivelling familiar from his lessons. ‘We only talked about fishing. He was certainly familiar with Vaughan’s poem about fishing on the Usk because he quoted it. I’m sure you know it. The weir is the world; the salmon, man; and the feather, deceit.’

  Collard thought of Nick and the lure of deceit and wondered if that was Angleton’s world.

  Manners, always the teacher, said, ‘Henry Vaughan, and to give the poem its full title: “A Latin Sonnet to his Friend Thomas Powell, Doctor of Divinity, of Canref to Accompany the Gift of a Salmon”. The owner of the hotel is a splendid woman named Valerie Traherne. Perhaps she can help you with what you need and do pass on my regards.’

  Manners sounded strangely smitten.

  Collard found the motorway beyond the Severn at Upton and drove for an hour, past Bristol, and crossed over the suspension bridge at Aust.

  In Wales a bad rainstorm closed in until he was aware only of the elements and the overheated capsule of the car. When the dual carriageway stopped his progress became erratic, slowed by a succession of towns, traffic and rain that eased briefly to reveal a mountainous, dramatic landscape. He found the turning after Crickhowell where Manners had said. It gave on to a poor road running up the side of a hill through dense woods. Collard followed it for a mile. The rain started again. It fell so hard he had trouble seeing with the wipers grinding away on full. The headlights were little more than a watery diffusion. It was so dark it might as well have been night.

  The Gray Ghost Watched

  Angleton saw himself: an old man fishing on the Usk on a fine, cool day in March 1986 with high broken cloud and a north-east wind. There had been a short rise at midday and he used a dark olive fly.

  His hotel sat handsome on the side of a hill behind him, above the river valley, with splendid views of the kind favoured by eighteenth-century landscape painters.