Never a True Word

by Michael McGuire

  My phone rings. Harry looks at me. Apprehension written all over his face. I close my eyes and answer. It’s him, and he is in a state of near-apoplectic panic.

  ‘Where are you?’ he demands, almost screaming.

  ‘I sent you a text. We went for a walk. We’re in a bookshop.’

  ‘Get back here now.’

  ‘Why? What’s happening?’

  ‘They’re here. They’ve fucking found us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I saw a bloke with a camera just as I was about to leave the hotel. Get back now.’

  ‘Right. We’re coming. Stay where you are.’

  By now, Harry has the gist of the conversation. He ditches his magazines on a shelf and I reluctantly let go of the Pelecanos. We make a run for it. Not easy with teeming crowds of tourists infecting every square inch of the New York City pavement. But after a few sorrys and a lot of excuse mes we are back at the hotel. Puffing, sweaty, we both anxiously search the street in front of the hotel. There is nobody around apart from the usual flow of hotel guests and passers-by. Neither of us can see anyone wielding a camera with a long lens. Nobody appears to be brandishing a deadly weapon in the form of a tape recorder.

  ‘Maybe they went inside,’ Harry suggests.

  We push our way through the revolving door and into the lobby. Still nothing. There is no one who looks remotely like a photographer, and no sign of my old pal Inglis. Neither is there evidence of Sloan.

  I call him. ‘Where are you?’ I ask.

  ‘In my room. I wasn’t going to hang around down there. Where are you?’

  ‘In the lobby.’

  ‘Who else is there?’

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘No, idiot. Who’s there from the media. Is it the paper?’

  ‘No. Ray, there’s no one here. No photographers, no journos, no nobody. We’ve had a good look around. What exactly did you see?’

  ‘A bloke with a camera. He had it around his neck. He was just outside the hotel.’

  ‘Sure it wasn’t a tourist? Professional photographers don’t tend to hang their equipment around the neck,’ I say, not entirely sure if I have kept the tone of sarcasm out of my voice.

  ‘No, smartarse it wasn’t.’

  Clearly I hadn’t. ‘Well I can tell you there’s no one here now. And Inglis hasn’t phoned me either, so I don’t know what to tell you.’

  ‘Fine. But from now on you and Harry don’t go anywhere without me. No more wandering off. You are not fucking tourists.’

  25

  One of the problems with this job is that it changes your personality. You are not aware of it at the start. But every day, in some way, the person you were before you started the job is chipped away a little more. This is not a plea for sympathy. Or a justification for some of my behaviour over the years. Neither am I saying I turned into some kind of horrible monster, although, that is possible, and has happened to other people who live this life.

  There’s Ray, once regarded as a future leader. People who have known him far longer keep telling me he was a terrific bloke. Hard working, smart, had the ability to shred the other lot in parliament and the media. His colleagues looked up to him. And I can still see shards of that dynamic personality. He can still bully the other lot into submission in the parliament. At times you can see they just didn’t have the stomach to stand up and fight against him, that they didn’t have anyone to match his particular combination of arrogance, shamelessness and street smarts.

  As a rule I don’t hang around much with the press secs from other offices. My own arrogance at work I suppose. But just as Ray doesn’t have much time for his Cabinet colleagues, I don’t have much time for their staff members. That’s the political food chain for you. Still, I’d hear the odd story filter down from other offices. There was the minister who insisted while on a junket to Europe that his non-believing staff member accompany him to Sunday morning mass. Just because he could. He enjoyed the feeling it gave him, ordering someone to do something they clearly didn’t want to.

  There is something about power and the access to power that changes the chemistry in your brain or something. It hardens you, makes you paranoid and fearful. It makes you see the world as ‘them and us’. But of course you don’t realise any of this until you are finally freed from the job and return to something approaching normality. Then you can lift your eyes from your navel and start to remember there is a much bigger world out there, that no one takes morning breakfast radio seriously apart from the presenters, politicians and their staff members.

  It has happened to me, that retreat into something cult-like, convinced no one else appreciates my job or the pressure I am under. As a result I end up hanging around with those in the office who now understand me better than anyone else, seeing less of my family and friends. I am increasingly intolerant of other’s political views because they couldn’t possibly know as much as I do about politics, policy or the future of the country. And I am only a humble staffer. As the days go by I become increasingly out of touch. If I haven’t a clue what real life is like anymore, how can we expect politicians to retain a sense of proportion?

  You can also drop friends at a moment’s notice if required. And so I am on my phone at La Guardia airport hoping for dear life, and I acknowledge the cowardice, that Inglis’s phone will go direct to voicemail. There has been a change of plan. Ray decided we will leave New York early. The phantom scare at the hotel has made up his mind, even if we all think he is imagining things. So, instead of leaving for Seattle, the last stop on our trip, on the Sunday, we are leaving first thing Saturday. The only problem being Inglis had invited me to his place for a barbecue with his family, and a few other Aussie and American journos, on the Saturday arvo.

  Inglis had been pestering me to get to Ray and I kept saying no. We had reached a stalemate because I knew he really didn’t have the time or energy required to track us down at one of the hundreds of flash hotels in the city. He has real stories to write about presidents and wars. But he had insisted I come around anyway. And I was looking forward to seeing him.

  So, I am in the business-class lounge listening to his phone ring and feeling like a traitor. I had rationalised I couldn’t ring him earlier because he would stake us out at the airport. In fact, Sloan told me I couldn’t ring him until we reached Seattle, which would have been well after the scheduled time I was supposed to arrive at his house for the barbie, but my personality had not deteriorated to that point as yet. Eventually, after what seems like a thousand rings, I hear Inglis’s disembodied voice: ‘Hello, you have reached Cameron Inglis. I am not available to take your call but it is important to me, so leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.’

  ‘Cam, it’s Jack. Look I’m truly sorry about this. It’s a bastard thing to do, but I can’t make it to the barbie. Our schedule was changed and we are leaving today. In fact I’m at the airport now and they’re calling our flight. Sorry again. Take care. Bye.’

  I hang up feeling as bad about myself as I have in quite a while.

  26

  Seattle is comparatively docile. Everyone has given up looking for us and as no one knows we are in Seattle we are safe. There are the usual meetings with enthusiastic Yanks pretending to know who we are. By now all of us, including Ray, are past caring. Three weeks on the road with two suits, four shirts, five pair of jocks and six pairs of socks is wearing thin. All my good intentions of going to a hotel gym every morning have fallen by the wayside. The only clean clothes in my suitcase are my running shorts and T-shirt.

  A few days later we were are standing in the vast awfulness of the Los Angeles International Airport. If Dante had a tenth circle of hell it would be here, among the queues. To get into the airport, to check-in, to pass through customs and security, get into duty free and through more security to get to your gate. And every time it’s shoes off, shoes on, jacket off, jacket on, belt off, belt on. But finally, happily, I am sitting in my sea
t on the plane. Harry and I take the offered champagne and quietly toast the end of the nightmare. Quietly, because Ray and Charlotte are just across the aisle. Still it beats sitting next to him. The last time I had flown from LA to Sydney with him I had the window seat and he was beside me on the aisle. I didn’t have a beer or wine the whole way home because I was paranoid it would make me need a piss in the middle of the flight and I would have to push past him to go to the toilet, maybe wake him up, and so annoy him in the process. But with Harry beside me I have no such inhibitions and decide it is only fair to reward myself with as many beers, wines and bloody marys as are possible while watching as many bad action movies as I can cram into fourteen hours.

  My only nagging doubt is that someone will jump us at the airport when we arrive home. Of course, I have issued a directive that no one is to tell the media when Ray’s flight is due. It’s a state secret right up there with the budget as far as I am concerned. The last thing I need is a jetlagged Sloan, with his jetlagged, possibly hungover media flunky staring down a media pack at the airport. Someone could get punched. Maybe me. But that’s not to say it won’t be leaked. Sloan has plenty of enemies in the Premier’s office who would be only to happy to see him suffer more public humiliation. The weaker Sloan looks, the better Frank Boyle comes off in comparison. I wouldn’t even put it beyond Boyle to brief his own media people to have a quiet word with their favourite journos to organise an ambush of Sloan on his return.

  To be on the safe side I organise one of the younger press secs, one on whom I can rely, to be at the airport when we arrive. His job is to sweep the airport and see if anyone is lurking and give me a call while I am still on the other side of the customs gate so we are not taken by surprise. We are all waiting for our bags when my phone rings. It’s my advance party.

  ‘Jack? Hi it’s Craig.’

  ‘Yep, how we looking, mate?’

  ‘Not sure exactly. When I arrived I saw one of those big Channel Six four-wheel drives in the car park but there’s no sign of a crew.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ ‘

  ‘About half an hour. I’ve looked through domestic arrivals, international arrivals, the shops, restaurants. I saw no one at all from Six.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Right outside the international exit door.’

  ‘No one’s there?’

  ‘Not as far as I can tell. No cameras, no journos.’

  ‘Ok. We’ll be out in about ten I reckon. Keep your eyes open and ring me if anything changes.’

  Sloan is looking at me as I have this conversation, making signs for me to wind up the chat so I can tell him what’s going on. I give him the gist and, as expected, he goes off the deep end.

  ‘Fuck, mate, what are we going to do? They have to be out there somewhere. I don’t need to be filmed walking out with a group of staff members all carrying duty-free bags looking like we’ve just been on a fucking holiday.’

  He is right. That would be a bad look. But I try to talk him down.

  ‘Look, let’s not get carried away. Craig is out there. He hasn’t seen anyone, and if he does he will ring me and we’ll deal with it.’

  ‘No, mate, they’re out there. They must be hiding so they can jump me.’ ‘Don’t be daft,’ I say, before regretting it.

  ‘Fuck you. This could be my job on the line. If you don’t do yours, mate, I am fucked here. Give me your phone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m going to call Chalmers, speak to him. It’ll be him out there. If I’m going to do this we should look in control.’

  ‘No, that’s a bad idea, Ray …’

  ‘Give me the phone.’ I hand it over. He hands it back and tells me to find Chalmers’ number. I do. He rings. I can hear the phone ring at least half a dozen times before it’s answered.

  ‘Where are you, mate? It’s Ray.’ There’s a gap in the conversation before Ray continues.

  ‘Oh really? Sorry.’ Then. ‘At the airport. One of my staff saw a Six car and I thought it must be you.’ The call ends and Ray gives me a look that tells me to keep my desire to say ‘I told you so’ to myself.

  ‘He’s at home. I woke him up. But he’s going to give the office a call to see if anyone is here and wants to talk to me.’

  Wonderful, it seems we have just passed ourselves up to any passing hack. After two weeks of hiding in the bushes, jumping at phantom photographers and ruining friendships we have offered ourselves up at the altar of Channel Six—who it turns out isn’t even looking for us.

  My phone rings again. It’s Chalmers. ‘Hi, mate, apparently the car is there because one of our execs went to Sydney today for a meeting. However …’ By the time ‘however’ is out of his mouth I have cut him off.

  ‘Great mate, thanks.’ And I hang up.

  27

  It takes a while to settle back into the routine of normal life. I have become so used to checking the street for journos every morning that it’s some time before I wake without that feeling of paranoia chipping away at the edge of my brain. I had stumbled back into my house, never so grateful to see the two people in my life. I held Emily for a long time and sat on the couch holding Lily for most of the night as I gave my wife the rundown on everything that happened, while she tells me the equally harrowing story of three weeks as a single parent looking after a child with croup. Funnily enough the two experiences are quite similar.

  At one point she laughs. ‘What?’ I protest.

  ‘Nothing. But you have always loved your trips. The business class, the fancy hotels and free dinners. You do love your luxuries. For a bloke who likes to think of himself as one of the people, you do have five-star tastes. Well, as long as someone else is paying I suppose.’

  I start to argue, but realise she’s right. ‘Public transport and gruel for me from now on.’

    

  At the office Harry and I try to explain to the others the sheer awfulness of the trip. They just think it’s hysterical and we have to admit some of it was so bizarre that there wasn’t much else to do but laugh. Their amusement is partly the relief it wasn’t them trying to keep Sloan in check and dealing with his daily madness. I manage to puncture their good humour by pointing out that Harry and I have now done our duty and the next trip will be theirs to take. You can see a little shiver of fear ripple its way across Bob’s face as he contemplates his fate.

  Eventually we have to face the media. We do it on the second day back in the country. Chalmers has pestered me at least five times in the last forty-eight hours to get the exclusive with Ray. This, I decide, is a bad idea. Not because we can dodge the media forever, we clearly can’t, but because by giving the yarn to Chalmers we will incur the wrath of the rest of the media flock. After the circus of the last few weeks, I don’t want to contemplate what the national daily will do to Sloan if we cut them out again. There are times when it suits us to give exclusives. It can be easier to control the flow of information, the questions are generally gentler, and the journo seems to think they owe you one, which can come in handy.

  We tend to share exclusives about. Feeding the same reporter or the same organisation time and again only breeds resentment from the others. In this case, if we give Sloan up to Chalmers it would rip away whatever modicum of sympathy the rest of the reporters may have for my boss. If you need a mental image think of a school of piranha when a cow’s bleeding carcass is dropped into the river. Sloan, like the aforementioned ex-bovine, would be skinned, gutted and left with nothing but his bones for company.

  So, we do the all-in press conference. There are some press secs who will advise you, in such situations, to hold it outdoors. Preferably in a slightly noisy and uncomfortable place. Beside a busy road is good. On a roundabout in the middle of that busy road is even better.

  The advantages of this strategy are two fold. The press conferences tend to be briefer and your man has an escape route if it all starts to go to shit. Today, though, I convince Sloan to adopt a dif
ferent tactic. It’s going to be in our main pressroom, everyone will be invited, and he will tell them he is there for as long as they have questions. There will be no scurrying off like a frightened rabbit if it all gets too hard. My fervent hope, with this gamble, is that Sloan will win back a modicum of dignity, and even respect, after the events of the last month. I even toy with the idea of inviting along his old nemesis Alistair Armstrong, but decide that is a step too far. I’m not even sure I can control Sloan, never mind Armstrong as well.

  An all-star cast turns up. Chalmers, of course, plus his counter­parts from the other commercial TV networks. There’s Jones from the local rag plus, naturally, our old friend Annabelle Howard. Rumour is she is so keen to skewer Sloan she has delayed her holidays just to be with us today. Even Caldicott has put in an appearance. By my count, his second press conference for the year (the other was the budget); a personal best for my favourite radio ego. All the media A-listers are here, but the most significant indication this could be a big day is that Sloan agreed to submit to a decent preparation for this presser. Normally he has a quick scan of the press release or the briefing paper and somehow manages to absorb enough of the information to put up a decent show for the cameras. Despite his manifest other faults he is rarely caught out on a factual basis, suggesting somewhere inside that otherwise thick skull resides a decent brain.

  We go through it all with him. I think of every question he could possibly be asked from the trivial ‘Are you sorry this happened?’ to the deeply personal ‘Do you have a problem with alcohol?’ and we work out a form of words for each.