Barron raised his wineglass. ‘Welcome to Venice, gentlemen.’
Leo Kinsella, who didn’t like eye-tie food or wine, and whose tastes ran no further than charbroiled steaks of Texan dimensions, pushed his plate aside. ‘Let’s get down to the business, Tobias. I don’t have time to wait for our absent guest.’
Barron looked at Saxon and said, ‘Henry?’
Saxon produced a set of folders. He began to flick through the messages. ‘A few of these are requests for money and matériel,’ he said in his intoning way.
‘Summarize for the sake of brevity,’ said Kinsella. ‘I know how you can go on at times, Henry. Goddam lawyers too fond of their own voices.’
Henry Saxon cleared his throat and glanced at Barron, who smiled in cheerful indulgence of Kinsella’s manner. ‘The sum of one million US dollars is requested by Lotus.’
‘I thought we’d taken care of all the money business. I was of the opinion, Tobias, that we’d laid out all the bread we were ever going to. I’m not sure we can approve that request.’ Kinsella glanced at Rhodes, who took out a notebook, jotted something down with his maroon Waterman fountain-pen, the nib of which scratched the surface of paper.
Kinsella continued. ‘Lotus is a goddam bottomless pit. If we give him the go-ahead, and that’s a mighty big if, it’s going to take time. We have to find new routes for money now. You can’t move that kind of cash without somebody asking questions. We don’t want anybody sticking their nose in. And most of all we don’t want people who have a habit of developing sudden qualms, do we? We don’t want anybody likely to be stricken by an abrupt attack of conscience. If you know what I mean.’
Barron asked, ‘Who can predict a man’s conscience, Leo?’
‘Yeah,’ Rhodes said. ‘Who indeed? Myself, I happen to think conscience a luxury item. A goddam expensive one too, as some people find out too late.’
There was a short silence before Saxon continued. ‘Orchid needs one point three million in Warsaw.’
‘I bet he does,’ said Kinsella. He stared at Tobias Barron. ‘You wonder about these guys sometimes. My people Stateside ask a lot of questions, Tobias. They see a whole lot going out and nothing much coming in so far. They think they’ve contributed enough.’
‘I’m sure the money is well spent,’ Barron answered.
Kinsella raised his dense grey eyebrows. ‘Jesus Christ, how much can it cost to buy votes in Poland anyway? What’s he paying people per head to mark their ballots for Communists?’
‘I gather it’s an expensive business,’ Barron remarked.
Montgomery Rhodes said in his quiet, nasal way, ‘There’s going to be an accounting at the end of all this, Tobias. And it better be goddam accurate.’
‘Indeed,’ said Barron. He stared a second at Rhodes. The darkness of the man’s shades was decidedly sinister. You could never tell if Rhodes was looking at you or not. And if he was, you couldn’t read his expression. Barron sighed. He thought money a grubby topic. What truly interested him about these meetings was his sense of being the epicentre of things. Even if Barron was finally apolitical, even if he found politics an unsightly game played by scoundrels, the idea that he was the adhesive holding everything together narcotized him, jangled his system like speed. He brought together diverse people in unlikely partnerships. He found the resources. He sat at the heart of a great web he’d created himself.
Kinsella, Rhodes, the others throughout Europe and the United States – they would never have come together had it not been for the influence and connections of Tobias Barron. Whether he approved of their individual aims was of no ultimate concern to him. His mind drifted away from this room a moment, it floated up and beyond Venice, beyond the confines of Europe, it became a kind of satellite high above the planet, monitoring events, digesting information, analysing and assessing, scouring the world for opportunities. He was suddenly seized by a sharp sense of self, as if he were outlined by a supernatural current of electricity. If you turned out the lights in the room, he might be phosphorescent.
‘Dandelion wants weaponry,’ Saxon said, turning over a new sheet of paper.
‘Does he specify?’ Rhodes asked.
‘The same as before,’ Saxon answered.
Rhodes rapped his pen on his notebook. ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand rounds of ammunition for Uzis.’
‘What do they do, these guys? Eat the goddam bullets?’ Kinsella asked.
Rhodes turned to look at Barron. ‘These guys kill me. They make demands like it’s some kind of supermarket we’re working here. They don’t think logistics. OK, some places are easy. But others are real tough. Last time we sent ammo into Yugoslavia or whatever it calls itself these days, we had to smuggle the shit inside UN convoys. Bullets in bags of flour. Machine-guns in crates of antibiotics.’
Tobias Barron poured himself another glass of wine and said, ‘I don’t think in this case there are overwhelming problems, Monty. Angola isn’t Yugoslavia.’
‘I hope not,’ Rhodes said grudgingly.
Barron turned to see Henry Saxon, formerly of the State Department, formerly an adviser on Eastern European matters to the Pentagon, flick over another sheet of paper. As he did so, the door opened, and Barron looked round to watch the latecomer enter. The man had a rather kindly face that belied his history. A kid with some imagination might have envisaged him in the role of a department-store Santa Claus.
‘Forgive me, forgive me, I was delayed, this weather plays havoc with airline timetables.’
‘Take off your coat and sit down,’ Barron said. ‘We were just beginning to go through the agenda. You haven’t missed much.’
Barron observed the old man walk to his place at the table, where he removed his coat, hung it over the back of his chair, and sat.
‘Hungry?’ Barron asked.
The old man shook his head. ‘I had a meal of sorts on the flight. It has unsettled me a little,’ and he patted his stomach.
‘Wine?’
‘It might help my digestive system.’
Barron pushed the bottle across the table and watched the General pour himself an ample glass, which he raised to his lips and sipped. He shut his eyes appreciatively. ‘Fine. Very fine, Tobias.’ He looked around the table at the other faces and added, ‘Please. Continue with business.’
‘Thanks for your permission,’ Rhodes said. He had a jagged little line in sarcasm that Barron found unpleasant. But if the old man noticed, he paid no attention to it. Sometimes the nuances of spoken English seemed to elude him.
Henry Saxon said, ‘This is a report written by Nightshade in Berlin.’
The General set his glass down and leaned forward, his interest quickened. He thought these code-names Barron had come up with were absurd. Flowers and plants, for God’s sake. What did Barron think: this was all some kind of botanical gathering? Nightshade was the code-name of a citizen of West Berlin who’d been a secret servant of both STASI and the KGB in the old days of the divided Germanies, a reliable Party member who, even after the reunification process – the Wende as it was called, the bastard Germany that had been dragged into existence by the forceps of greed and expediency – had managed to conceal his past allegiance to the East. He’d been a good servant. His position of authority had allowed him to pass important information to East Berlin and Moscow.
‘According to this, the arrangements are made, the business in Berlin will proceed without interference,’ Saxon said.
Barron caught the old man’s eye and saw there a small gleam of pleasure.
Saxon went on with the next report. ‘From Sesame in Prague. The arrangements are in progress. Expect success in a matter of hours.’
The old man sat back, folding his hands on his stomach. Nightshade in Berlin, Sesame in Prague; he experienced a moment of quiet satisfaction.
Saxon closed the folder. ‘Those are the main items on this agenda.’
Kinsella tucked his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat and said, ‘Which leaves us with
the matter of Helix,’ and he looked at Barron, who drained his wineglass and ran a fingertip round the rim.
Barron looked at the General, who said, ‘I’m assured there will be no difficulties.’
‘I don’t need to tell you my people are anxious,’ Kinsella said. He had a large projecting jaw which gave him the appearance of a retired prizefighter.
Barron smiled. ‘It’s a sure thing. You know that. I know that.’ He wiped his lips with a linen napkin. Schialli came into the room with coffee, set it out on the table, then retreated in his quietly fastidious way.
Barron poured from the cafetière and for a time there was a subdued quiet in which he thought of the assorted concerns and ambitions in the room. There was the General, of course, with his yearnings for a vanished world; he was impaled upon his need for vengeance and restitution. He and his cronies – and there were many of them across Europe – genuinely believed that clocks could be turned backwards, upstart nations dismantled.
There was Henry Saxon, who was probably uneasy with his role of gofer, Henry who’d been to the best schools and held down important positions in Government, and who now found himself calling in old markers from his powerful connections. What did Henry Saxon really feel? Barron always thought Henry required status, proximity to power, the urge to leave his mark, however small and illegible, upon the world. In one way, there was something of the leech about Henry Saxon; he sucked the blood of men bigger than himself.
There was Kinsella, who had parleyed a fortune in Oklahoma crude into a spectral political machine with many covert sympathizers in America, quietly influential men whose financial aspirations were threatened; they’d seen their outrageous profits dwindle in the last few years and they didn’t like the plunge in their graphs. They weren’t used to disappointing balance sheets; they suffered from a case of the financial bends. They liked to live in cathedrals of great wealth, places where profit was the only known divinity. But now they were beginning to notice cracks in the stained glass.
And then there was Rhodes, whose allegiances, for the time being, were directly aligned with Kinsella. These men represented the darker stars in the American political firmament – a neanderthal patriotism, the unquestioning belief in the flag and US supremacy in the world. Rhodes had lived through the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the humiliation of Vietnam, the failure of the so-called war on narcotics, the end of the comfortable stability of the Cold War. He had a number of grievances, old wounds to heal. But now, like the others, he was putting the world right again.
Barron picked up his coffee and thought: They are all, in one form or other, merchants of chaos.
Saxon coughed into his hand and quietly said, ‘There’s still the business with our fugitive friend.’
Barron made a dismissive gesture. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him.’
Rhodes said, ‘Guy lost his nerve, that’s all. He’s not important. So he took a hike. We’ll find him. Anyhow – what does the sonofabitch really know, huh? You think he’s gonna blow us out of the water or something, Saxon?’
‘He’s a loose end, Henry,’ Barron said. ‘Even if he knows more than we think, what can he authenticate? Who is there to back up his claims?’
‘It’s only a matter of time before we pick him up.’ Rhodes sucked air deeply into his mouth, a sound of irritation. ‘I’m not going to work myself up into a goddam lather because of The Weed.’
The General, who had been listening carefully, said, ‘The Weed, as you have so aptly code-named him, is a mistake. Who hired him? Who is responsible for him?’
‘I’m not blaming anyone but myself,’ Barron said. He infused his voice with the appropriate contrition; a consummate actor. ‘He had credentials. We needed somebody with his experience. None of us imagined he’d freak out.’
‘Error of judgement,’ the old man said in a solemn voice. ‘On your part.’
Montgomery Rhodes took off his shades to reveal odd-coloured eyes, one green, the other blue. He clicked the stems of his dark glasses shut. ‘Look. You want the truth, I was the one recommended The Weed. If there’s been an error of judgement, then it was mine. He had very vague connections with the Central Intelligence Agency for the past fifteen years. He’s what they call in the jargon of the spook trade “a reliable deniable”. If he screwed up, nobody would admit to ever having known him. So his affiliations were loose ones. He was a floater. That’s why he was selected.’ Rhodes spoke quietly, as if his real purpose was not so much to inform this thick-skulled old Kraut as to hypnotize him. ‘But he’s no big deal. We’ve got a net out for him. And by God he’ll walk straight into it. He isn’t the smartest kid on the block. Know what I mean? You relax. Take it easy.’
Barron thought of The Weed, whose life – according to Rhodes – had been spent in that shapeless hinterland populated by those claiming nebulous associations with the CIA, with Mossad or MI6 or any number of secret organizations; fantasists, failed poets, jobless politicians, petty crooks with vainglorious notions, soldiers of fortune, that whole set of drifting international flotsam who deluded themselves that they were adventurers, romantics, spies. How was anyone to know The Weed would blow a fuse? You couldn’t predict people.
Bryce Harcourt was a fine example of that.
The room was quiet for a time, the atmosphere weighted. Everyone present knew that disagreements at this stage were dangerous. Helix had its own momentum. Leo Kinsella broke the silence. ‘Well. I guess that covers everything for now. You need to contact me, I’ll be at the Grunwald until everything’s over.’
When the Americans had gone, only the old man lingered. He removed two items from his pocket, one a sealed brown envelope, the other a small cylindrical object in the kind of paper in which you might wrap a child’s gift – clowns, seals balancing coloured balls, elephants. Barron didn’t open the gift-wrapped object, but he looked inside the brown envelope and saw the ID card, glanced at the blank space where a photograph was meant to be inserted.
‘This Weed. This I do not like.’
‘Scores of people are looking for him.’
‘Just the same.’
‘Put him out of your mind. Pretend he doesn’t exist. Pretend Streik never existed.’
‘Easy to say.’
Barron smiled confidently and escorted the German to the door, a hand on the old fellow’s elbow. ‘Everything will be fine, Erich,’ he said. ‘I promise you,’ and he closed the door slowly as his visitor departed.
Sometimes, Barron thought, it was hard to believe that Erich Schwarzenbach had once been the highest-ranking officer in one of the most efficient state-security systems in the world, STASI; the man who had kept the keys to the files, who had stored in his head the secret computer passwords that allowed him access to the histories of almost every citizen in East Germany.
When the General had gone, Barron spent some time in his office. He studied the movement of ships, following the cursors on the wall map; the Falcon was already cruising close to Madagascar, an ideal location when it came to Van den Kamp’s request. The cargo ship, which flew a Nicaraguan flag, was due to lay anchor thirty miles west of the island, where it would take on board consignments delivered by ferry from Tambohorano. These shipments, intended to meet some of Nofometo’s needs, wouldn’t bring the vessel up to capacity. There would also be room for at least some of the matériel required by Van den Kamp. It was a matter of logistics; and there was a neatness, a sense of economy, Barron liked about using the Falcon to deliver two consignments. Nofometo’s would be brought ashore under darkness near Port Shepstone; a further arrangement could be made for the Falcon to continue south in the Indian Ocean and deliver Van den Kamp’s matériel offshore between East London and Umzimvubu.
He sent a couple of faxes, one to the captain of the Falcon, the other to an airstrip hacked from swampland beyond Jacksonville, Florida, where the transport planes were regularly loaded. Then he opened the General’s envelope and let the ID card slide out on to the table. Tilting an Anglepoise l
amp, he examined the card beneath the bulb. Perfect, he thought. Just so.
He was about to leave the room when he received a fax from Cuba, signed by a man called Hector Camocondo, the Deputy Minister of Defence. He read the message. Camocondo’s bureaucratic turn of phrase invited you to read between the lines. The gist was that Barron’s projected agricultural research centre in the Guantánamo Province had received ‘preliminary approval’ – whatever that meant – and could now go into committee. There were, however, ‘certain conditions’ attached to these discussions, which would involve Barron making a visit to Havana within the next two weeks. Barron smiled; in Cuba’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, it was not at all surprising that the Deputy Minister of Defence should be interested in an agricultural project – if you read the hidden message in the spaces.
Barron fingered the fax. By this time, Deputy Minister Camocondo would have discovered the lethal weaponry accumulated by the freedom fighters inside Cuba – in particular the so-called super-rifle, the sniper’s dream, the Tejas. The balance would have to be redressed; the Army had to stay a step ahead of the underground movement. It was always this way. One side trying to outstrip the other, to be better armed, better prepared, to be more efficient in the business of death.
Barron left his office, locked the door. From the bedroom overhead he could hear the woman singing softly to herself, a sound that was melancholic and strangely moving. He walked to the foot of the stairs and listened.
TWENTY
LONDON
GEORGE NIMMO SAID, ‘YOU HAVEN’T BEEN KEEPING ME ABREAST OF things, Frank. You’ve been going along in your usual wayward fashion, which is precisely what I asked you not to do. Why wasn’t I told about this Harcourt chap? And now we have this business with Quarterman. Two US Embassy employees are dead. I have to face some hard questions, Frank. The Home Secretary is not happy. He’s under pressure to do something about the situation.’
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