The Passenger

by Chris Petit

  He dressed for dinner as required. The other diners were elderly and, like him, retired. He was courteous without being forthcoming. Since his arrival he had been drinking again.

  He looked like a former professor or a funeral director rather than a man who had a body-count going back forty years, and had dined with criminal masterminds and blackmailed the highest in his land.

  After dinner he chuckled his way through a rerun of Hemingway’s The Killers on TV in which Ronald Reagan, in his last screen role, wore a brown suit and played the heavy until shot by Lee Marvin, his flinch an exact rehearsal of the real thing at the hands of John Hinkley; always the actor, Reagan. Hinkley’s shooting had left him aged and confused, for all the autocue bravura of ‘Honey, I forgot to duck!’

  Angleton went to bed too drunk to read. Light-blue pyjamas, white piping; teeth cleaned more carefully than usual, because drunk; last cigarette. He kept his glasses on until in bed, knowing he looked lost without them. Pointless vanity. He said goodnight to his family aloud.

  The Hotel Register

  The hotel reminded Collard of a big Italianate country house, once grand, now faded, but still well appointed and reliant on the loyalty of a regular band of ageing guests.

  Judging from her brisk landowner’s accent and sensible tweed jacket, he was signed in by Valerie Traherne herself, a handsome, fit-looking woman in her fifties wearing boots and jodhpurs that made it easy to see why Manners was affected.

  She asked if it was his first time and how long he would stay. A couple of days, Collard said, glad not to face his empty house, full of Nick’s things and his absence.

  ‘Take room number one. Nobody else is here at the moment.’

  He signed the register, giving his London address.

  She handed him a heavy key with a large wooden tag.

  He said he was trying to trace an American who had stayed at the hotel three years before.

  ‘We get Americans all the time for the fishing.’

  ‘His name was Angleton.’

  She looked doubtful. ‘It’s an uncommon name and I’m sure I would remember. I know most of our guests.’

  ‘He was here to fish. He came in March three years ago.’

  ‘The season only starts in March. The Americans normally come later.’

  He checked into his room. When he came downstairs there was no sign of Valerie Traherne. He took the hotel register, hoping she wouldn’t mind, and went and sat in a bar decorated with fishing memorabilia and threatening photographs of the Usk in turbulent flood. The red leather-bound register was so large he had to prop it on his knees.

  Collard found no Angleton listed for March 1986. He checked the whole of that year then went through all the March registrations before and after and ended up going through all the names in the book, annoyed at getting excited for nothing.

  He replaced the register on the reception desk. In a large drawing room off the hall a fire had been lit. There was a table with a stack of leather volumes whose wide, rectangular shape reminded him of score books for school cricket matches. It was too hilly for cricket. They were the hotel’s fishing diaries, recording visitors’ catches.

  He listened to Valerie Traherne’s heels on the parquet as she crossed the hall. She had changed into a skirt and low heels. She asked if supper at seven thirty was all right by him.

  ‘As it’s just you, I’ll serve it in front of the fire in here rather than have to heat the dining room.’

  She was gone as briskly as she had arrived.

  Collard turned to the diaries. Under March 1986 he found a sequence of entries in the same spidery, educated hand. The first listed fine, cool weather, with a north-east wind and a short rise between 12.30 and 1.00. A dark olive fly had been used and nothing caught. Each entry was signed J. Troughton. Collard smiled at the pun in the name, thinking the man had had little choice in his hobby.

  He got up and walked to the window. Darkness was falling. The rain had stopped and a low mist was rising in the valley. He opened the tall window. He could hear the river in angry race. Had Angleton stood in the room he was now in? Angleton was intimate with the dormitories and classrooms Collard had lived in for five years. Angleton had talked to Nick. Collard experienced the uncanny feeling that he was chasing his own past as much as Angleton.

  He went back to the diaries. The weather pattern and time of the rise had continued for several days, with Troughton alternating the dark olive fly with a pheasant tail, without success. Low pressure and a March brown fly had brought a 3lb 6oz trout. After that the catch improved. Troughton’s entries covered ten days. He was the only angler. There were no other recordings.

  If Manners was right about the date and Angleton had been there to fish then Collard ought to be looking at Angleton’s record. Angleton; Troughton. Fishermen.

  The empty hotel unsettled him after Scotland. He didn’t feel like eating alone and when Valerie Traherne served him he asked on impulse if she wanted to join him.

  She looked taken aback then said, ‘Why not? There’s no point in standing on formality.’

  They ate plain food well cooked by her, a beef stew with carrots and fennel. There was no sign of staff. She said she managed by herself between the New Year and the end of February, and kept the place open only because she lived there.

  She was a good conversationalist, sticking to generalities of weather, the locality and her dislike of individual packs of butter that most hotels served. She seemed to sense he wanted distracting.

  Collard struggled to finish his food, not because he didn’t like it. He left his wine untouched.

  Valerie Traherne put her knife and fork down. Collard was aware of her studying him.

  ‘It is an hotelier’s job to observe and never comment on the guests, so please excuse me if I ask what has happened to you.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘My life was quite ordinary and now it’s not.’

  He told her from the beginning.

  Afterwards she said, ‘Come with me. There’s something you should see.’

  She led the way upstairs to a back landing decorated with hunting trophies, then stopped in front of a small and unspectacular fish in a glass case.

  ‘Not impressive in itself, but its uniqueness depends on rarity not size. It comes from an obscure breed known as the red-eyed trout, found in certain Welsh rivers but never the Usk until this catch, with none caught since. It’s a one-off.’

  Under the trout an engraved plate named the angler and donor: J. Angleton.

  ‘Troughton was Angleton.’

  ‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘I teased him about it later, asking him why he hadn’t just called himself Mr Fish.’

  ‘Did he give a reason for not using his real name?’

  ‘I think it gave him a childish pleasure. I also think he was sentimental about the trout. Later on he sent some money to have the original plate changed to Angleton, and he asked me to hang it out of the way and not mention the matter to anyone. And until you came that’s what I did. If he was trying to tell you something perhaps he still is and I see no reason to stand in the way. Would you like to see the photograph of the catch?’

  What’s My Line?

  Wales, March 1986: sleepless as always, Angleton flicked through different channels in his head, replayed the last episode of the US edition of What’s My Line? in 1965, with the popular reporter Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen had interviewed a British cabinet minister in the 1950s, confirming the existence of aliens. She had interviewed Marilyn Monroe the day before she died. Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer, had given her an exclusive from his prison cell because he was a fan of her show. Monroe, Ruby and Kilgallen (suddenly and unexpected) all dead; Oswald too (with reason).

  Angleton knew a lot (knew too much).

  He knew the invisible links that connected the political and criminal family trees of sixty years, with show business the go-between. He knew about the brown-bag money ($2 million) that the old Jewish gangster Meye
r Lansky delivered to Harry Truman’s 1948 election train, Truman’s price for supporting the founding of the State of Israel. Lansky was to organized crime what he himself had been to counter-intelligence; two men who shouldn’t have been in the same room. He knew about the tax-shelter earnings invested by future CIA chief Allen Dulles in the Third Reich. He knew about Dulles ghosting Nazi and Croatian war criminals out of Europe, many of them future big contributors to Dick Nixon’s successful 1968 presidential campaign. He knew about the $30 million distributed from Washington (also by Allen Dulles, on sabbatical from Cromwell & Sullivan) through the Vatican in black (rather than brown) bags, to prevent the 1948 election going to the communists. He knew about the weapons inspectors sent to Israel by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. He knew about Marilyn Monroe’s wiretap the year before. The report dated the day before she died noted a conversation between Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen regarding the Roswell UFO crash of 1947 and Kennedy’s politically motivated NASA Apollo moon programme. Hah!

  He knew about the pro-forma invoice from an Austrian arms manufacturer, dated March 24, 1984; knew the illegal end-user was Iran when the certificates said otherwise; knew the deal was negotiated between a British mercenary working for the CIA and a Syrian arms dealer with Iranian connections; knew the order placed with Hirtenberger was for $40 million.

  Forty mill was a lot of cut.

  He bet Slobbery Bill Casey was getting his; Bill, once the helping hand to Croatia’s war criminals all those years ago, now head of CIA and cosy with the White House.

  Wales would be Bill’s comeuppance. Bill Casey not knowing anything of what was going to come down on his dandruffed head. Slobbery Bill left looking an idiot for not knowing. Angleton reflected on the sweetness Casey’s humiliation would bring. Angleton, disgraced spy, restored to glory and that messy eater Bill left with a lot of metaphorical egg on his face, the errant pupil taught a lesson by his old master. Angleton would laugh that cartoon laugh he saved for the bathroom mirror: heh heh!

  The wilderness of mirrors would become a hall of mirrors, each offering a perfect reflection of a lifetime’s career that would finally make sense.

  He awaited only the arrival of his guests. They would drink the finest wines Valerie Traherne could provide. The menu would reflect the momentousness of the occasion. A rib of the rarest roast beef. To finish, the most extravagant cheeses and port more delicious for its hint of closure. The boat was coming in and wrongs of a lifetime would be put right. The return of the prodigal son as guest of honour, and Angleton’s great, final vindication. The Western world would be rocked to its foundations. Angleton waited for the banquet to be served.

  Goodnight, Bill.

  The Check-ins

  The photograph of the catch was in the drawing room in an album kept for guests who sent souvenirs of their stays.

  Collard’s first surprise was that it wasn’t only Angleton in the picture. The names were listed underneath: Messrs Scobie, Troughton and Furse record a catch.

  He was disappointed the photographer had done such a poor job, framing them with too much river in the background and revealing little of their faces, which were further obscured by hats. Angleton was dressed in waders and fishing gear, caught trout in one hand, rod in the other, the top half of his face hidden in the shadow of his tweed fishing hat.

  Scobie stood tallest, to Angleton’s right. He wore a white raincoat that was out of place in the rural surroundings. A rakishly angled trilby obscured his face.

  Furse looked short and tatty, comic by comparison with scraggy beard, flat cap and an old sheepskin coat.

  ‘Mr Furse seems not unfamiliar, if you know what I mean,’ said Valerie Traherne, ‘and Mr Scobie even more so.’

  They looked like men who usually avoided having their picture taken.

  Valerie Traherne carefully picked the photograph loose from its mounts with her nail and asked only that he return it.

  According to the register, Troughton stayed for ten days in March 1986. The handwriting in the register matched the diary. The address was Angleton’s: 4814 N 33rd Rd, Arlington, Va 22207. Collard had missed it the first time.

  ‘Were Scobie and Furse with him the whole time?’

  ‘Mr Scobie came and went a couple of times. Mr Furse only came at the end.’

  ‘Were they old friends?’

  Valerie Traherne cocked her head. ‘Not exactly, though my impression was they had all known each other a long time. For Angleton it was a big event. We do a lot of wedding receptions and he reminded me of a nervous father making preparations for a wedding. Everything had to be just right.’

  ‘What were they celebrating?’

  ‘He never said. Whatever it was made him very excited, although he tried to hide it. Sometimes I would find him sitting alone in here almost hugging himself with glee.’

  They were sitting by the fire in the room where they had eaten. Valerie Traherne pointed out Angleton’s usual armchair in the far corner.

  ‘Once we were discussing how hard it was to make ends meet running this place and he said not to worry, soon it would be a source of pilgrimage.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. Angleton wasn’t one for explaining anything. He hated questions.’

  ‘What was Scobie like?’

  ‘Tall, a dry-Martini man, older than Angleton but still with an eye for the female staff. He seemed awfully familiar. He looked like someone who might have been in those old black-and-white Maigret shows on the BBC.’

  She consulted the register. Scobie’s address was care of the Travellers’ Club in Pall Mall.

  ‘Yes, he travelled. Expensive luggage, at any rate. My impression was he and Angleton disliked each other. Scobie seemed to want to cultivate a sinister aura. He was magnificently offhand and always complained about the smallest things: one night because there was ice in his drink; the next because there wasn’t.’

  Mr Donald Furse gave his address as Leylands, Crowborough, Sussex. He arrived last and stayed two nights.

  ‘Again, quite a familiar sort, fitted in well,’ said Valerie Traherne. ‘Very detached, rather chatty and the most English. He stuttered, which always makes me feel protective. He looked at everything askance, like it was a source of huge private amusement. Reminded me of uncles who had spent years in the colonies – fond of his sports pages and smoked a pipe, said he was fed up with Murdoch for ruining The Times.’

  ‘Were they all the same age?’

  ‘Thereabouts.’

  Collard wondered if he had stumbled across nothing more sinister than an old boys’ reunion. He asked Valerie Traherne if that was likely.

  ‘Up to a point, but it all seemed to go terribly wrong.’

  ‘They fell out.’

  ‘No. Something happened before Mr Scobie and Furse turned up that made Angleton very distressed.’

  The Worm of Uncertainty

  Angleton’s Welsh reading included Ambler’s A Coffin for Demetrios, under its English title, The Mask of Demitrios, The Aleph by Borges, Greene’s Our Man in Havana, and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, all bought second hand from Priory Books in Malvern. He read thrillers for escapism. None got close to the intense molecular activity involving the Vatican, US intelligence, Nazis and the Israelis circa 1945. He looked in vain for an amoral diagnostician to guide him through the labyrinth; his own role exactly; looked in vain for stories that got deep inside – Ambler came close, with barely a gun in sight – in which men scared themselves silly by the enormity of what they were doing; stories that understood the ambiguity of isolation; that followed the money; that grasped how the black secrets cast their long shadow on men like him. Ambler would have understood Quinn (who didn’t bear thinking about). A nice man, Ambler, married to Joan Harrison, who worked with Hitchcock. Angleton and Hitch dined together occasionally in Washington. Hitch was a fan. Angleton had given him the McGuffin for North by Northwest. The ideal McGuffin was the perfect zero: the idea
that drove everything and explained nothing. Angleton told Hitch that he and Greene had once invented an agent in Rome who didn’t exist. ‘Perfect,’ said Hitchcock.

  Quinn was close to the ideal McGuffin except for one thing. He existed and he was close to explaining everything that could not be revealed, the fattest book imaginable.

  British television seemed to show little other than old movies, including a job lot of Don Siegel. Angleton the film buff was happy to get drunk and smoke and drift off to Tourneur’s Out of the Past, with Mitchum, an old favourite, or The Shootist (more Siegel) with Big John Wayne in the role that Angleton now reluctantly found himself in, strapping on his guns again for the last time, under the waiting shadow of the Big C, Valerie Traherne his unrequited Betty Bacall.

  He liked actors. He identified with them and the need to learn lines and deliver those lines as though saying them for the first and only time. His craft similarly involved a great deal of premeditation and the ability to appear spontaneous. They were both in the business of looking convincing while trying not to appear forewarned.

  Late Arrivals

  Angleton himself, in Valerie Traherne’s assessment, was educated, secretive, very much an indoors man apart from his fishing, a constant smoker, two bottles of wine a night at least, and often noisy in his room after midnight. She found him charming but thought he was in the grip of deep psychosis.

  ‘When he got drunk he started moving the furniture around. Certainly the room was quite rearranged by the time he left. Yes, and he insisted on the same place in the dining room. He refused to eat until he got the place he wanted, which meant he had to wait to be served until after Colonel and Mrs Danvers-Rigby had finished and they had to be persuaded to give up their usual table for the rest of their stay.’

  ‘What was so special about his place in the dining room?’