by Chris Petit
‘That’s your man. Story never got anywhere because “Mr Newo”, while making startling allegations, could not marshal his facts and after several calls broke contact.’
‘Why would Sandy Beech end up with Angleton in Wales?’
‘Not impossible. Beech wrote a book once, one of those “as-told-to” jobs, in which he claimed MI6 blackmailed him into becoming an agent and sold him out to the IRA to protect an agent in place. He escaped to the United States where he surfaced as a freelance for the CIA. Angleton got sacked in 1974 – he was barking by then and completely paranoid but the fundamentalists in the agency continued to feed him scraps. He could have linked up with Beech that way.’
Evelyn, tiring of his ritual with the unlit cigarette, lit up and immediately stubbed it out.
‘Test of willpower, old boy. Angleton never got over Philby. Anything to do with Angleton begins and ends with Philby.’
The demons Evelyn had been keeping at bay returned. He slumped back, his fingers exploring around his heart. He waved his other hand ineffectually.
‘Be careful for yourself and your son. The wilderness of mirrors, Angleton called it. Keep Nazir in your sights – he’s the likeliest answer. Don’t get distracted by the Kim and Jim show or you will end up totally lost.’
The Two Lieutenant Angletons
Angleton saw himself again as a young man in Rome. Behind his back they called him the Cadaver and the Poet. He would later state that William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity was sufficient preparation for a life in counter-espionage. In Rome he vomited too much, blaming the food and the water, anything other than his nerves. Before the war, Ezra Pound, commuting between wife in Rapallo and Venetian mistress, broke his journey to discuss economics with Angleton’s father, Hugh, who had leased the Italian concession of an American business nicknamed the Cash, a hard-sell company that sold cash registers and advocated clean living as a requisite for commercial success and whose training manual was devoted to the psychology of the aggressive pitch. Angleton recalled Pound’s amusement at his father’s description of company sales methods likened to Mexican banditry.
A solitary light in the window of an otherwise dark street: Lieutenant Angleton’s office, 2.30 a.m. He was familiar with Fitzgerald’s ‘Sleeping and Waking’ and Hemingway’s ‘Now I Lay Me’, referred to by Fitzgerald in The Crack-Up: ‘In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.’
Rome was about the invention of his legend: eccentricity combined with dandified ruthlessness, a marriage of poetry, his mother’s Mexican guile and his father’s hard business head. It was a rehearsal for the bigger act with Central Intelligence, the one-on-one style, fuck with the bureaucracy, the taste for vest- or hip-pocket operations, run with minimum consultation or authorization, bypassing all established channels, passim: from the Cold War through to Watergate, keeping the world safe – for and from what?
He kept files on everyone, including himself.
Marked for his eyes only, he wrote his schizophrenic reports on ANGLETON LT. J.J. with objective suspicion.
LT. ANGLETON is a bright and talented young man but the wide effectiveness of his Italian method seems too good to be true, even for someone of his ambition and efficiency. It makes LT. ANGLETON – whose natural methodology is one of reaction – curiously active. He may be a natural operator but given the poor record of US intelligence in Italy, his achievement is so remarkable that one is bound to ask – as LT. ANGLETON would if called upon to examine this file – what is really going on? The question is who runs LT. ANGLETON?
Was it a manifestation of his early paranoia that he kept a file on himself, written in the objective third person? Who indeed had run Angleton? It was not an answer he could provide and scarcely a day passed when he did not reflect on the ambiguity of his relationship with Philby. His worst paranoia had him wondering if he was run unwittingly, not through mind control or any of what the Brits would call ‘barmy’ CIA experiments, but because someone like Philby had known him well enough to second- and triple-guess him every time. Angleton, who had always cherished the illusion he was a closed text, had in fact been an open book.
At the same time, because it was one of the basic lessons of counter-intelligence that any given event was open to every possible interpretation, he believed any or all of the following had happened: Philby had come to him, his old protégé, as the Burgess and Maclean scandal broke in 1951 and confessed that he worked for the Russians as a result of youthful indiscretion but had seen the error of his ways. Fearing he might one day have to cross to the other side, he offered himself to be run by Angleton in the ultimate hip-pocket operation, exactly the kind of deep penetration they had dreamed of in Ryder Street. With Philby’s defection in 1963, Angleton had his spy in the Kremlin while everyone else thought Angleton had gone potty on the job, almost destroying the CIA in the 1960s looking for communist moles. His aggressive behaviour appeared to make nonsense of this scenario, unless of course it had been to distract anyone from finding out about his prize jewel.
Equally he believed the opposite. The theory emerged at the end of Angleton’s mole hunts that all his furious activity was a charade to prevent anyone from realizing that he, Angleton, was the mole, and Philby had turned him for the Russians. Alternately, Philby had really messed up Angleton’s head by pretending to be his man in the Kremlin, the better to destroy him. Even if any or all of these theories were true, Philby, unable to remember or pretending he was unable, would only give his vaguest smile and say, ‘What’s that, old boy?’
The Polaroid
It was raining hard when Collard returned home and he got soaked in the short distance between his car and the front door. He was struggling with the padlock when someone came up behind him. He turned to see Sheehan.
‘I brought your son’s things back.’
Sheehan held up Nick’s rucksack. Collard didn’t know what to say other than make a weary crack to ask if Sheehan was in the habit of appearing out of nowhere, like his unpleasant friend.
‘Hey, come on,’ Sheehan said. ‘You’ve me to thank that Parker didn’t kill you. Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
Collard reluctantly held open the door and let the American step inside.
‘How did you know I was in Wales?’ Collard asked as he took them to the living room.
‘We put a tracker on your car. Actually, two – the first one fell off. Remember the police on the motorway?’
Sheehan offered Nick’s rucksack. Collard took it.
‘No hard feelings,’ Sheehan said. ‘You have a very powerful protector now in Nigel Churton. I still can’t decide if you have been a spook all along. I take two sugars, by the way.’
‘There isn’t any milk.’
Sheehan shrugged and said, ‘I found the girl.’
He appeared more at ease in the room than Collard, who was slow to see what he meant.
‘The girl. The girl in your son’s room. Capiche?’
The patronizing tone took the edge off Collard’s excitement.
‘Who is she?’
Collard wondered why Sheehan was really there. He was uncomfortable with the man being in his house.
‘Her name is Fatima Bey. She lives in Frankfurt. She comes from the Lebanon and met Nick on holiday. She’s twenty-three, with a kid of four. The grandparents looked after Junior while she was away. She’s a German translator and speaks lousy English.’
Sheehan raised his hands like someone who had successfully performed a complicated trick.
‘Do you want to meet her?’
It was too much to take in.
‘How did you trace her?’
‘There was nothing to trace. She came up in the monitoring of incoming calls to the incident centre. I didn’t find out till later because they have a fucking computer they don’t know how to use. Your son’s name produced one call from her, the week after Christmas, asking if he had been on the plane.’
‘
What did they tell her?’
‘No confirmation of boarding.’
Collard thought of Sheehan talking to Valerie Traherne and Parker’s hair-trigger aggression, yet here was Sheehan acting like they were friends.
‘What do you think about Nick now?’
‘I worry how he got the money.’
‘Do you still suspect him?’
Sheehan shook his head. ‘The investigation has moved on. He’s your business now.’
How straight Sheehan was being, Collard couldn’t tell.
‘I just wanted to tell you about the girl,’ Sheehan went on pleasantly. ‘I’ve got kids. I know what it’s like. I hope you’d do the same for me if you were in my position. I gave you a rough time. We were under pressure to get a result.’
‘Do you have it?’
‘Any day now.’
‘Nazir?’
Sheehan shrugged off the question. ‘From what I hear Customs and Excise want to send you to prison.’
Collard was disturbed. For the first time he wondered if Sheehan was working for Churton. Or vice-versa.
‘What business is that of yours?’
‘None. All I’m saying is you should put your house in order. See the girl, come back home and wait for Nick to turn up.’
‘What if I am a spook, as you suggest.’
‘You’re not a very good one. Parker’s right; way out of your league.’
‘Why do you think Nick hasn’t been in touch?’
‘Because he caused you a lot of trouble and is ashamed what you might think. Call Fatima Bey. I’ll give you her number. Arrange to meet. Like I said, her English isn’t terrific. Maybe Nick has been in touch with her.’
Sheehan sounded sincere enough when he added, ‘I hope you get lucky. Tell me how you get on. You have my numbers.’
‘Why did you tell Valerie Traherne I was mad?’
Sheehan laughed. ‘Well, how did you feel when you learned you’d been speaking to a dead man?’
‘I didn’t know he was dead at the time.’
‘And now? Don’t you wonder at yourself?’
Collard had no answer to that. Sheehan laughed again.
‘Angleton pulled off all kinds of strokes but, as far as I know, not resurrection.’
‘Unless he never died.’
Sheehan was quick to shake his head. ‘Faked his death? Why would he bother? Anyway, that’s beside the point now you’ve got Churton. Be careful you don’t get left out in the cold. It can get very draughty. Call me.’
Collard watched Sheehan from the window getting in his car, and decided the real purpose of his visit was to say he knew about Churton and far from trying to discourage Collard, he was keen for him go in deeper. Maybe Collard was Sheehan’s way to Nazir too.
He opened Nick’s rucksack. The clothes smelled of detergent. He remembered Stack’s story about them being laundered by volunteers to get rid of the stink of fuel. He had thought little about it at the time. Now he sat dazed by such a simple act of charity.
No diary or notebook, but that didn’t surprise him. Any personal possessions would have been in Nick’s hand luggage and the police would have retained anything suggestive. A well-thumbed European guide had the tops of pages folded, marking, Collard supposed, places Nick had been – Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest. He could not think of a single reason to go to Bucharest. Nick seemed to have got as far south as Istanbul, then crossed to Athens and Cyprus before making his way north to Austria and then Frankfurt. Collard had no idea he had been so adventurous. It made his efforts at that age – working on a campsite outside Bordeaux – puny by comparison.
He recognized an old black jersey as one of the few things of his Nick had agreed to inherit. He put it on without thinking. It was loose and warm.
He was ashamed how unfamiliar Nick’s belongings were. Even the rucksack he couldn’t swear to. He wondered if it was in fact his.
He laid everything out. The more he looked the less certain he became. He began to think things had been tampered with. Was the route suggested by the turned-down pages in the guide really the one taken or had it been made to look like that? What else did Sheehan have in mind?
He rang Fatima Bey’s number. A woman answered, dutifully repeating the number, and confirmed she was Fatima Bey. Her English was worse than his German, which made the most basic exchange a struggle. Collard wondered how she and Nick had coped. She said she had been expecting his call. Even that involved a to and fro before they understood each other. He asked if she had heard from Nick.
From what he understood, Nick had called her, the week before, promising to come soon.
The telephone made any real communication impossible. Collard needed to see her face to face, to read her gestures and make more sense of what she said.
‘You spoke to him?’ he repeated. ‘Sprechen sie mit Nick?’
That changed everything.
He told her he would come to Germany as soon as he could. In the meantime, if Nick called she was to tell him not to worry. Everything would be taken care of. He wasn’t sure how much she had understood. The fact that she had spoken to Nick was all he cared about.
He wandered back into the living room and refolded Nick’s clothes. The qualified hope and uncertainty of the past weeks had left him estranged from his feelings. He was disappointed by his lack of elation. It would come, slowly.
Nick had taken only casual stuff – T-shirts, jeans and trainers, and several checked work shirts. As Collard folded the last shirt, he became aware of something in one of the breast pockets. He undid the button, lifted the flap and felt inside.
It was a Polaroid.
The image had survived its laundering with distress. Enough remained to make out the silhouette of a naked girl in front of a bright window that emphasized her slim figure and sharp outline of her breast. The face, not in profile, remained obscure.
Despite its intimacy, the picture gave no clues. An unselfconscious naked girl in a sunny foreign room; a souvenir of a night spent together. It looked like Nick had taken it from the bed.
Holding the Polaroid to the light Collard saw the indentation of writing on the white strip at the bottom. The ink had been washed away. He used greaseproof paper from the kitchen to make a trace of what was written: I’m the one and don’t you forget it!
Collard’s misgivings about the guidebook returned: was the Polaroid a real or false clue? That simple sentence was beyond the fractured English of the woman he had just spoken to. Perhaps she and Nick had written it together. Or maybe he wasn’t looking at Fatima Bey at all.
He added the Polaroid to the other photographs, laying them out side by side. Angleton, Greene and perhaps Philby standing on the bank of the River Usk in the spring of 1986; Beech and another man in the desert, date unknown; and a Polaroid taken by his son sometime in late 1988 of a naked girl in a room.
If he could work out the story of each photograph he would understand why everything had happened.
The Polaroid was his only souvenir of Nick’s time away. It left him feeling very vulnerable.
He was carefully placing the photographs back in his wallet when the doorbell rang.
His hopes of finding Nick on the doorstep were dashed. It was Oliver Round, a surprise in itself as he rarely came north.
‘I was driving past and saw the lights were on. I need a minute.’
‘Come in.’
‘I won’t. I’m late as it is. On my way up to Hampstead.’
They stood under the porch. It was still raining. Round looked tense and Collard wondered at him calling on the off chance.
‘I’m here to give you a bollocking. You can’t go charging around breaking into houses and saying you’re working for Nigel Churton.’
‘A man was threatening to blow my brains out.’ Collard’s temper was close to snapping. ‘What the fuck was I supposed to say?’
‘Don’t go where you’re not told. Beech is the subject of a highly sensitive investigation. It’s b
ig boys’ rules and if you go fannying in you’ll end up in trouble.’
He wasn’t used to Round ordering him about. Although Round was technically his boss, their relationship had always been equable.
‘I’m concerned for Nick. You were the ones who brought up Sandy Beech.’
‘How did you know where he lived?’
‘Off a reporter,’ he lied. ‘Beech’s brother’s trial was in the papers.’
‘Stop playing the amateur sleuth. Churton is not impressed.’
‘Meaning you’ve gone down in his estimation?’ Collard could not resist the dig.
‘I know the pressure you are under and I am doing my best to help.’
Collard relented and apologized.
Round said, ‘It must be hell not knowing. A wonderful boy like Nick. I suppose these bloody people don’t care who they use.’
Collard wondered what exactly Round’s interest was in the affair. Ambition, probably; sucking up to Churton to gain leverage. Still, it was useful to have friends in Round’s position.
‘There has been a development on the Nazir front,’ Round said. ‘A party’s being held tomorrow night in Frankfurt. You need to be there.’
A party was the last place he could imagine himself, or Nazir.
‘And Nazir will be there?’ he asked, incredulous, surprised it was that easy.
‘He uses a German playboy as his go-between. Call my secretary when you get to Frankfurt tomorrow and she’ll give you the details.’
Collard frowned at the casualness of the arrangement. ‘Is this how these things usually work?’
‘I’m only the messenger. Churton’s people said they’ll send someone to watch your back.’
Round looked at his watch, pantomiming his lateness.
‘Are you all right? Joost Tranter thought you seemed distracted.’
‘Only because I found him sitting in my office.’
‘You don’t have to do this, you know, go to Frankfurt. I can tell Churton you don’t feel up to it.’
‘It’s just meeting a man at a party.’
Round laughed and said, ‘As am I and should have done half an hour ago. Best of luck. I’m sure this will help you find Nick.’