The Passenger

by Chris Petit

  Breakfast arrived, choreographed by Churton. ‘Excellent! Look at that. The English is over there. The Continental is my friend here and I’m the boring one with the toast. Thank you.’

  The elderly waitress blushed from his attention.

  Round lanced his yolk and smeared it over his toast. Bits of the white were still slimy. Collard stuffed croissant in his mouth to quell a spasm of nausea. Churton turned out to be of the school that left business until after eating. Round mentioned his Caribbean holiday and talked easily of trips where Nick had been with them. Collard was grateful for this tacit reassurance.

  When they were done Churton lit a cigarette. He blew out smoke and said, ‘I know you are concerned for your son. We are too. Oliver has spoken to me but I would like to hear your views directly.’

  Collard had to be succinct; men like Churton weren’t for rambling to.

  ‘I have been questioned by an American official who has a sinister interpretation of Nick’s not being on the flight. He made a lot of unpleasant inferences and if the papers get hold of the story they will crucify him. It’s not the sort of thing someone that age easily recovers from.’

  Collard privately worried he had told Evelyn and Stack too much already.

  ‘The press writes what it’s told,’ Churton remarked bluntly. ‘What kind of unpleasant inferences?’

  Churton made Collard’s phrase sound disingenuous.

  ‘Nick knew the Lebanese student Khaled. Everyone says Khaled was used. I want to know whether Nick was involved and to find him.’

  Churton thoughtfully stubbed out his expensive cigarette, half-smoked.

  ‘How badly do you want to find your son?’

  ‘Very badly.’

  ‘What if the result doesn’t have a happy ending?’

  ‘My concern is every father’s, whatever.’

  ‘Of course.’ Round added, ‘That your child is safe and not in harm’s way.’

  ‘I’ve seen your son’s file,’ said Churton. ‘It doesn’t make pretty reading. There are a lot of bad connections.’

  ‘Where is this file from?’

  ‘German security, initially. They passed it on to the Americans, who share with us. Before we go on you should look at this.’

  He produced a photograph from his briefcase. Collard thought it was going to be the one Sheehan had showed him, of Nick in a Cyprus café with Quinn, the agent in Barry’s team who hadn’t been on the flight.

  It wasn’t. It was a black-and-white surveillance picture of a busy city intersection, from a high angle, with time code at the bottom. The location was foreign. Traffic waited for the people crossing the street.

  Nick was among the pedestrians, underdressed compared to the others and hunched against the cold. Collard searched for the girl but there was no one by Nick’s side or close enough to be her.

  He hoped the picture was further proof Nick was alive. He looked at the time code. It was dated the 16th, five days before the crash.

  ‘Where was this taken?’

  ‘Frankfurt,’ said Churton.

  ‘Nick didn’t arrive until the twentieth.’

  ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I presumed he came up from somewhere south.’

  ‘Nick can be pretty vague,’ Round added lightly. ‘Doesn’t march to the same beat as the rest.’

  Collard shook his head, mystified.

  Round said gently, ‘You should prepare yourself for the worst. Nick may not be alive.’

  ‘He wasn’t on the plane.’

  Collard didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘I’m not saying he was. Given the kind of people he seems to have been hooked up with . . .’

  It wasn’t necessary to finish.

  Churton said, ‘Of course, we hope he is.’

  Collard stared helplessly, until he eventually managed to ask, ‘Is there anything you can do to help me?’

  Churton considered. ‘Not in any official sense,’ he finally said. ‘We don’t think your son had anything to do with the bombing.’

  ‘That must be a relief for you,’ Round said to Collard, who was irritated by his friend telling him what to think.

  Churton pointed to the photograph. ‘This in itself is not a reason for grave concern, apart from, possibly, this man here.’

  The man was walking behind Nick. He was short and compact, with a shaved head, and appeared watchful where Nick looked lost in a world of his own.

  Churton said, ‘This is what we have to go on. We have no idea if Nick and this man had met or were about to meet.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Beech. He calls himself Sandy Beech.’

  Round laughed and said, ‘Honestly!’

  Collard had trouble focusing. The man in the picture matched the description given by Valerie Traherne. First Angleton then Barry and now Beech – they had all been in Wales and then Frankfurt.

  Round said, ‘Unpleasant-looking thug.’

  Churton agreed. ‘He calls himself a soldier of fortune, which is a euphemism for smuggling, training terrorists and gun-running. Dangerous customer. We locked up his brother last year for illegal arms dealing.’

  Collard was about to mention Angleton then checked. Churton was not the type to volunteer information and Collard thought it wise to do the same. He suspected Churton was a man of ulterior motives.

  ‘Why was German security watching Nick?’

  ‘Through his association with the boy Khaled, who was under surveillance.’

  ‘Which means they knew something was going to happen.’

  ‘German intelligence was getting reports there would be an attack on an airline in the Christmas period.’

  ‘What do the Germans have on Nick?’

  ‘Just the link with Khaled.’

  ‘Do they know where Nick was staying and what he was doing in that period around the sixteenth?’

  Collard was thinking about the girl, of whom there had been no mention yet. He saw Churton thought his question naive.

  ‘We’re talking about a huge security operation, covering several cities. Your son was noted as a low-level subject for possible further investigation. Alarm bells rang when he turned up in the same picture as Beech, but from what we’ve been able to find out the Germans had neither time nor resources to follow it up.’

  Collard stared at the photograph, fearful of what it might tell him.

  ‘Were they watching Beech too?’

  ‘Yes. As an associate of the man we most want to talk to.’

  Round said, ‘Of course, it could have been chance that they were crossing the street at the same time.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain what Nick was doing in Frankfurt four days before he said he would be there.’

  Churton asked, ‘Do you recognize anyone else in the picture?’

  There were maybe thirty other people in the photograph, half of them crossing the street. Churton pointed to a tall dark man in the background, wearing what looked like an expensive overcoat. Nick was in the foreground; Beech on the other side, in the middle; and now this thoughtful, mysterious figure behind them. Although there was nothing obvious to connect them, the position of all three suggested the man in the overcoat could have just been speaking to either Nick or Beech, or both.

  He guessed before Churton told him that this man was Nazir al-Badawi.

  Nazir had a Mediterranean complexion that made him stand out from the pasty Germans surrounding him. He looked around forty, prosperous and at ease, not the kind of man to bear a grudge and not at all the fanatic of Angleton’s Reader’s Digest article or Collard’s imagination.

  Churton said, ‘Beech and Nazir go back. They ran contraband around the Middle East in the 1970s then Beech graduated to training Irish terrorists in Libya, at Nazir’s instigation. I’m telling you so you know what you’re getting into.’

  Collard sensed they were moving closer to Churton’s real motive. He looked at Round and wondered if he
knew; probably not. It was Churton’s show.

  ‘You said you want to find your son,’ Churton said smoothly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not at all orthodox but it might be quite useful for you to talk to this man.’

  Collard was astonished until he saw how serious Churton was.

  ‘Why on earth should Nazir talk to me?’

  ‘As a way of talking to us. Nazir is the man we most want to talk to, but as a suspect he isn’t going to surrender himself voluntarily, and besides, he has a Syrian diplomatic passport. Nazir claims he is innocent of any involvement in the bombing and is keen to put his case, given the right circumstances.’

  ‘And you want me to act as your go-between.’

  Collard was surprised to hear himself say it. He couldn’t see that it had much to do with Nick.

  Churton read his mind.

  ‘Innocent or not, Nazir knows what happened. He has an extensive network of contacts. Not much goes on that he doesn’t know about. If anyone is able to find your son he is.’

  ‘Why should he care or choose to help?’

  ‘With your permission, let’s be a little economical with the truth and say Nick is my godson rather than Oliver’s. Nazir will cooperate as a way of showing he has nothing to hide and if the senior investigator of the British government says he bloody well wants to find out what happened to his godson, Nazir will jump. His world relies on favours.’

  The bill came and Churton paid with a crisp new twenty-pound note.

  By way of parting he said, ‘It may take a couple of days to organize. Nazir can do something useful, helping you find your boy, while we keep an eye on him prior to reeling him in.’

  Collard took that to mean the man was guilty.

  Churton shook hands. ‘Appreciate it.’

  Amazons of the Bidet

  In the weeks before Angleton left London for Rome, Philby indulged him in ferocious drinking sessions in the Red Lion, a pub off Jermyn Street crowded with uniforms and thick with smoke.

  Philby spoke in an urgent, hoarse monotone, undercutting the hubbub, stammer variable as a faulty radio signal. He had only Angleton’s best interests at heart, he said, a remark that sounded like it came from his seduction manual. He proposed a private line of communication when Angleton was in Rome to be used only by them. ‘Strictly between us, till you’re up and running.’

  It wasn’t necessary to point out how hopeless American security was compared to the British.

  Angleton, dizzy from matching Philby’s drinking speed, was flattered to have this private connection, knowing he had only Philby’s word that what passed between them would remain in confidence. He would have to judge how naive Philby thought he might be.

  Afterwards Angleton defined the moment in terms of himself as the trout wondering whether to rise to the bait.

  ‘Always bear in mind the Vatican,’ Philby said.

  Angleton had no idea what he meant or why Philby showed him a tattered second-hand copy of a book picked up in a Rome market, Amazons of the Bidet, a well-known pornographic novel from before the war. Its author, Virgilio Scattolini, had given up pornography after a religious conversion and worked as a film critic for a Vatican newspaper until his literary past came to light and he was fired.

  ‘Greene’s going to come along tomorrow,’ Philby said. ‘We’re going have some fun with Signor Scattolini.’

  Standing in the Red Lion again, this time with Greene, Philby told Angleton that Greene knew of an operation being run in Lisbon by an agent code-named Garbo, who with the help of a good map, a Blue Guide and a couple of standard military reference books had fooled the Germans into believing his detailed reports on Britain’s defences were the work of a national spy network.

  ‘Made the whole thing up from thousands of miles away,’ declared Greene. ‘And the Germans bought it hook, line and sinker. Bugger me!’

  He told Philby it could work up into a good story.

  Philby said to Angleton, ‘If an idea’s worth using once it’s worth using again.’

  Out of the Garbo ring in Lisbon, an old copy of Amazons of the Bidet and Angleton’s impending posting to Rome grew the Amazon affair, which returned to haunt him three decades later, after his own career had ended in ignominy and disgrace, when he was forced to crawl to George Bush, then CIA Chief, because a Vatican historian was about to request the Scattolini files through the Freedom of Information Act.

  Bush had wanted a favour in return. They met in some bit of fakery he called a club where the air of expectant hush was as phoney as everything else. Bush, for all his old money, had pulled off the astonishing trick of appearing nouveau riche. He sat legs crossed, showing skin as white as a plucked chicken’s, wearing tan shoes with black socks, which earned a silent tsk! tsk! from the sartorially correct Angleton. Bush was awkward around waiters. With drinks on doilies – they drank Coke – he relaxed. Angleton was required to explain while Bush listened with dutiful bug-eyed politeness. Angleton knew he was being indulged. The oil business, in which Bush had grown up, was not known for its naivety.

  Angleton levelled, more or less, and Bush let him back into the library archives for three nights, armed with a black Pentel, to delete anything compromising, which amounted to whole documents.

  When he was done there was nothing left for any researcher to make sense of, no hint of deception.

  Scattolini had been Angleton’s first intelligence trick, the losing of his virginity, the template for everything that followed. It proved durable, was revived in many forms and outlasted Angleton. Without it Bill Casey would never have got in as deep as he did. Without it Flight 103 might never have happened.

  Coincidence of Geography

  Leaving Churton and Round at Fortnum’s, Collard made a pilgrimage to a street only a couple of minutes away in Mayfair. Ryder Street was a small backwater, tucked behind Jermyn Street, where forty-five years earlier the young Angleton occupied a small cubbyhole of an office on the first floor of number eleven. Collard wondered at the coincidence of geography that had led him to meet Churton in Angleton’s old stamping ground. The area remained the heartland of the establishment, with all a gentleman’s needs available within a square mile of where he stood: tailor, club, office, restaurant, pied-à-terre, call girls. It would have been more remarkable had Churton elected anywhere else to meet.

  Collard’s company office was the polar opposite to Mayfair, on an industrial estate, marked by its impermanence, on the edge of the city, at the bottom of the A1, near the new orbital link, which made it well placed for getting around and little else. He parked to the side of the building, nervous at the thought of facing the staff on the ground-floor open-plan office. He didn’t want to talk about his escape. His mortality was something he had so far failed to confront.

  He took the back fire stairs, which led directly to his corridor. The familiar water cooler still stood next to the photocopy machine. He took a deep breath and walked into his secretary’s room to find it empty. Lotte’s desk was clear and her diary was shut.

  Collard broke into a sweat of panic. His discomfort increased on finding Joost Tranter at home in his office, feet up on his desk, telephone cradled to his ear. Tranter interrupted the call to say, ‘Talk of the devil. I’m just on with Ollie Round. Catch you in a minute.’

  Collard went off to make coffee, suspecting his irritation had showed.

  When Collard returned, Tranter was gathering his papers. If he was put out at having to move he gave no sign.

  ‘Where’s Lotte?’ Collard asked.

  ‘Sick with flu. Several of the staff caught it. It’s a forty-eight-hour thing.’

  ‘Where are we on the Belgian deal?’

  ‘It’s good, man. It’s good. We’re nearly there. Look, there are a lot of calls I need to make. We can catch up later.’

  Tranter spoke with focused, monotonous intensity. He had done motivation courses and led his life to fixed goals. ‘I’m in Mike Kidder’s room,’ he add
ed. ‘He’s out all day.’

  Collard felt usurped. He could picture Tranter going through his desk. He told himself the man wasn’t important and he was projecting his larger anxieties on to him.

  Churton had made the most extraordinary offer. Collard thought Round had been well intentioned but naive in putting them together. While Round was genuinely fond of Nick, Churton would be pursuing his own agenda, searching for any angle, however improbable, that led to Nazir.

  There was the further question of how much Churton knew. The Americans were apparently sharing everything with the British, which meant Churton should have access to Sheehan’s reports, yet he had not mentioned Nick’s mystery female companion. Instinct told Collard to keep that lead to himself.

  He sat down at his desk and wrote for a long time, aware of it getting dark outside as he struggled to organize his thoughts, piecing together what he had, trying to keep Nick in the forefront of his mind. He crossed out and refined until he had reduced the matter to its essence.

  Wales and Frankfurt were converging in a way that left Collard frightened by what he might have stumbled across. Angleton and Beech both seemed to know Nick. Angleton had knowledge of the crash, and yet had let Barry die in it. Perhaps killing Barry was the purpose of the crash. Perhaps Barry and his team had discovered something (Collard remembered the urgent whispers and the high-fives) that they shouldn’t have. Quinn was a part of that team. Quinn also knew Nick. Did Nick know what Barry had died to protect? The thought terrified Collard. Was it something to do with Nazir, the constant presence on the periphery? What if instead of finding Nick, Nazir wanted to kill him? And how did Beech fit in?

  The dead end he kept returning to was Nick and the impossibility of fathoming how men described as ‘spymaster’ and ‘soldier of fortune’ related to a boy whose school reports he had been reading until six months earlier, marking him diligent, helpful, conscientious and hard-working.

  Collard knew he was bound to accept Churton’s offer for Nick’s sake. In doing so he would be inexorably drawn into a world beyond his understanding. He wondered how Nick had felt on being enticed into whatever they had involved him in. Had he realized he was being used or had the recklessness of youth left him keen to join up?