Shadowplay

by Norman Hartley

  The film continued, following loosely the thread of my life, but it was a stylized, artificial life: an exercise in hero making, highlighting the great moments and cutting out all the depression, failure, and fear.

  And I soon saw that it was much more than a ‘Hail to the Chief’ tribute. Artistically it wasn’t polished, but whoever had cobbled the film together from old TV and newsreel clips had obviously had a much deeper purpose. In its crude, loosely edited way, the film was a tribute to the ethos of the foreign correspondent and, as Cox had said in his introductory speech, it was touching many people in the audience besides myself.

  Many of the faces on the screen were also faces in the amphitheater. Before long, there were little cries of recognition as old men recognized the younger men they had once been. Soon the audience was alive with laughter and chatter and one scene almost brought the audience to its feet. Half the editors and publishers in the auditorium had been there when World News-TV had filmed a riot at the Berlin Wall and the East German guards had tried to confiscate the film. The cameraman had thrown his Bolex over the heads of the guards and I had caught it and started to run. More guards had closed in, unwilling to shoot but determined to have the camera. I had lobbed it to a colleague, feinted, then taken it back again and sprinted for the edge of the crowd. There were close-ups too of half the VIPs in the audience who had risked a rifle butt or a jackboot to carry the camera for a few yards even though they knew it would be a World News scoop. By the time the film was over, there was not a single member of the audience who hadn’t understood what it was saying. My birthday was only the pretext. The film was to remind everyone that all these people had taken risks for the sake of information. It featured none of the Yellow Press cowboys who processed news as entertainment; the film was about the ones who agonized to get it right, as far as that could be achieved in the rush of events.

  Now, as older men, they were almost all struggling against rising costs and commercial and advertising pressures, and the film was intended to stiffen their backs a little against the Sellingers of the media world.

  For the Sellingers, information represented money and power; it was a commodity to be tailored to the needs of profit. When Paul had first become involved with Global it had been because they wanted cheap foreign news to fill the pages of their third-rate papers, which were little more than profitable adjuncts to the local chambers of commerce in small towns across the United States. Then the Sellingers decided that it had more value to them as a world news agency they could use for public relations and propaganda. In the phrase Paul had flung at me once across the boardroom, ‘We needed a fine reputation. So we bought one. Yours. That’s the way of the world. You buy what you need.’

  The audience had understood, but just in case anyone missed the point, the film also included a clip of a speech I had made at the World Press Council calling for a determined fight against the faceless moneymen of the media.

  I turned to Cox, who had crept up in the darkness and taken the seat beside me.

  ‘Cox,’ I said, ‘was this your doing?’

  ‘No. Don Westerman did a lot of it. I just got elected as the sycophantic asshole who’s brown-nosing his way into the chief’s favor.’

  He paused. ‘Seriously though, a lot of staff—Global and World News—were behind the film. They wanted to tell you they understand what’s going on and they’re behind you.’

  I had noticed and I knew it was true. Seventy-three percent of the revenue of World News now came from financial and commercial information services, but the general news correspondent, especially the war correspondent, was still the folk hero. The age of the accountant as hero might be coming, but it wasn’t there yet.

  When the film was over and it was time to make a speech of thanks, I knew there was no need to draw any morals so instead I played it lightly.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘that was quite a birthday present. Like many of you in the audience, I must admit I never really thought I’d make it to forty. I always promised myself that if I did get there—despite all the stray bullets and wild rides on unspeakable airlines—I would draw a line and call everything afterwards my second life. This week marks the beginning of that second life and also a new life for World News, combining the traditions of two fine news agencies. But I can’t let the film pass without a word of thanks to a woman who is here in the audience, my former wife, Nancy.’

  There was a lot of rustling and murmuring in the audience as everyone wondered how I would handle the situation.

  ‘Some of you may be too young to know that the woman driving that white beetle was that lady sitting here in the audience and if she hadn’t been so astonishingly brave, for better or for worse, World News would probably have a different chief executive.’

  I smiled into the audience, looking directly at her.

  ‘Nancy, I saw that film for the first time today and I never really knew just how close those bullets came to you.’

  I paused.

  ‘As most of you know, Nancy and I have decided to go our separate ways, but at least my colleague Paul Sellinger has had the good sense to keep her in the World News family. I think we should all be grateful to him for that and if she isn’t going to be a part of my second life, then at least she will continue to be a part of this great news agency.’

  The applause lasted several minutes and I had the added pleasure of seeing Paul Sellinger look angrier than I had seen him in weeks.

  But I wasn’t sure how Nancy would take the speech and I felt a little twinge of nervousness as I saw her coming toward me down the aisle.

  She smiled. ‘Thanks for the tribute. It made you a lot of friends.’

  ‘You didn’t mind being used tactically?’ She was far too bright to lie to.

  ‘No. I understand. You haven’t lost your touch.’

  ‘I lost you.’

  ‘I meant with your job. They love your style. That’s what they want, you know. All these young and not-so-young romantics. A leader with style. Don’t disappoint them.’

  ‘You mean the way I disappointed you.’

  ‘Don’t spoil it,’ she said. ‘It was a simple compliment.’

  ‘I know. The film shook me a bit, that’s all. Seeing the old beetle made me wonder just how big a price I did pay to sit in this chair.’

  Nancy’s look was completely neutral.

  ‘ “What might have been” is the most destructive game there is. You can’t afford to play it. You said it yourself. This is your second life. Enjoy it.’

  ‘I don’t play it often,’ I said. Then I added, because of the film and because I always tried to be honest with her, ‘But it would be easier if I didn’t have to look at you quite so often.’

  3

  From the moment we arrived at the Fort Benedict Missile Proving Ground in Colorado, there was no mistaking the kind of welcome the Sellingers had arranged for me. In the great catchall military phrase, we had been classified as hostiles.

  Superficially, we were given VIP treatment: a field-rank Buick with its red plaque covered to take us from the airport to the base; crisp salutes and snappy door opening; stiff, deferential body movements from the Missile Corps driver. But you could read it in people’s eyes and in the tone of the greetings: I was on someone’s blacklist.

  It was a fiercely hot desert morning with a dry wind which seemed to close the pores and prevent even the relief of sweating. The limousine was air-conditioned but the drive was short and we were soon at the guardroom, where the delays began. There was no doubt they were deliberate. The provost sergeant’s eyes looked straight through me as he apologized for having to make a special check with Base Security. His behavior was as impeccable as his turnout. If I complained, there was nothing with which he could be reproached, but his eyes said I was just so much unappetizing dead meat.

  As we waited for Security to call back, I sat in the car at first, but the cool quickly dissipated and I got out and strolled with Cox along the perimete
r fence. The delay didn’t seem to bother Cox and I noticed how at ease he seemed in the military environment. With his childlike, owlish face and fragile frame and single protective earring, he looked like an alien creature—of a different race from the muscular, sweating men who were repairing a huge sign which read: ‘Fort Benedict: The Home of Starburst’ But as we stopped and chatted, they seemed to recognize something in his manner which told them he had been in a few of the spaces they knew about. I envied him that because I felt no such ease. Just the sight of the guardroom and the provost sergeant made my scrotum tighten. Everything I had hated about the army was all there in one little vignette— the stance of the MP, the impeccable white gaiters and belt, the heavy nightstick and sidearm, the helmet set deliberately a shade too low over the eyes; the whole regalia of fear, carefully assembled to intimidate soldiers who weren’t easy to scare.

  As we turned back toward the guardroom, Cox noticed my tension. He grinned. ‘Bad memories?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tangle with the MPs when you were in the service?’

  I hesitated. There was no point in lying.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was one when I was in the service.’

  ‘A cop?’

  ‘Yes. I was a redcap for two miserable, unforgettable years.’ I tried to say it lightly, but Cox could see that even after so long it wasn’t an easy memory to bring up.

  ‘I gather you weren’t a volunteer?’

  ‘No. I was hijacked.’

  ‘Hijacked?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was quite deliberate. The military police wanted me. I’d just come down from Oxford with my national service still to do. I’d boxed for the university and the MPs had one of the best military squads. They knew I’d never volunteer, so they rigged the paperwork. You know the army. No appeal. No redress. They might just as well have thrown a sack over my head and dragged me into a car.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I got mad and rebelled. Refused to box for them, so they decided to break me. But I survived basic training, so they blocked my application for a commission and had me assigned permanently to the depot in Aldershot where the CO could supervise my career personally.’

  ‘Sounds like someone had been reading From Here to Eternity.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But it was a neat twist. They never needed to get me in the stockade. In the MPs they can make your life hell while you’re still supposed to be one of the good guys.’

  As I went on with the tale, it became as it always did, harder to tell. I mentioned it rarely but, with practice, I’d compressed it down to a tight little anecdote. I even raised a laugh with it occasionally, but it was still a bitter memory. I’d held the record for punishment duty during my specialist training and when I still wouldn’t fight, I’d been assigned to permanent provost duty, which meant seventeen months of brawling in bars, night after night. The parachute regiment had been in Aldershot at the time and so had the Camerons and the Irish fusiliers. I was strong and fit, but at first I didn’t have the cunning or the ruthlessness to deal with the nightly manhood rituals. On my second night on patrol, while I was still giving a formal warning to a ‘poisoned dwarf’ from the Glasgow slums, he had nearly taken my eye out with a broken beer glass. That set the style, and on top, the CO used to give little chats to my so-called partners. ‘Don’t forget, Railton has to learn how to take care of himself. He’s a big boy now. Too big for his boots in fact. Too high and mighty to box for a shitty corps like the RMP.’

  ‘Is that how you got the nose?’

  ‘Yes. That was a bar stool. We were in the middle of cooling out a grudge fight—paras versus a visiting navy display team—when my partner turned his back at a crucial moment.’

  ‘And did you ever box again?’ Cox asked.

  ‘No. Not in the army and not afterwards either. It’s probably just as well. University boxing is pretty gentlemanly stuff. When the military police had finished with me, about all I was fit for was fighting all comers in a fairground tent.’

  We passed the guardroom again and there was still no word on the clearance so we walked in the opposite direction to look at the installations.

  Inside the gates, it was hard to tell where U.S. army property ended and the Sellinger Corporation’s began. Though it looked more like an air base, Fort Benedict was an army research facility and for five years it had been ‘The Home of Starburst’ under a joint development scheme. A photographer for a radical magazine could have shot a complete library of illustrations for attacks on the interweaving of the military-industrial complex.

  Five minutes passed, then the sergeant called us back. There had been a mix-up over the clearance. ‘No problem now. Sorry about that, Mr. Railton.’ The apology wasn’t too curt, but I had got the message: I was an unwelcome alien in Sellinger country.

  From the gate, we were driven to the Missile Control Center, a huge tinted-glass tower with panoramic views over the vast complex of hangars on one side and hazy, red-hued stretches of desert on the other. Our ID was checked again and Cox was told to stay with the driver and be taken to the press center, where he was due to join Jim Eisenhardt and the World News team covering the firing which was due in about three hours’ time.

  I was taken to an observation lounge near the top of the tower and was surprised to find that I was almost alone. I was greeted by a Missile Corps major, given a tepid gin and tonic with no lime or lemon and a tiny shard of ice, and left staring out over the base. I asked the major a few questions, got no worthwhile answers, ordered another drink, which this time was warm, then stood by the window quietly fuming.

  At first there was no movement on the airstrip immediately below, but there were two sleek executive jets with Sellinger Corporation markings parked on the tarmac, and after a while some crewmen appeared and started to prepare one of them for takeoff.

  Then a huge bus drove up between two hangars and slid slowly toward the aircraft. It was an enormous vehicle and inside it appeared to be laid out as a mobile restaurant-cum-bar. The seats were not in rows but grouped around small tables, and even at that distance I could see champagne and racks of liquor bottles and buckets of ice.

  The bus drew up next to the jets and Robert Sellinger got out, followed by Paul, at the head of a long file of dignitaries, some of whom looked almost too drunk to stand. I recognized most of the faces immediately. There were three of the most powerful men in the Senate, including Karl Tallman, the head of the Armed Services Committee. Behind them were the governor of Colorado, the president of the United Bank of America, and a three-star general I was sure was the commandant of West Point.

  I walked quickly over to the major.

  ‘Major, what’s happening over here?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I should be with that party out there on the tarmac.’

  ‘No, sir. I don’t believe so, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I believe that’s the A group, sir. They’re about to fly over the proving ground. I believe you’re with the B group, sir.’

  ‘I’d like to go down,’ I snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid that’s impossible. You have to have an escort to go through the building.’

  ‘Then you escort me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I have no clearance for escort duty.’ There was no point in arguing. The major’s was a world of unquestioned orders; his job was to keep me up there, sipping tepid gin while the VIP party swilled iced champagne and flew over the proving ground.

  I strode angrily back to the window and there they were—the brothers Sellinger—center stage on the tarmac, Robert in command, chatting with each guest as he handed them out of the bus and then passed them on to Paul who escorted them to the plane. The sight was too much. I always seemed to be hemmed in by bloody Sellingers. They occupied my every day. It had got to the stage that I couldn’t plan a trip or even go out to dinner without wondering what they would be up to behind my back. All the plans
I’d developed over the years, ready for the moment when I might become chief executive, were in danger of slipping to the sidelines. It really was too much. I had no business being stuck in the Colorado desert worrying about overseeing news coverage; I should have been in Los Angeles, chairing the final sessions of the teletext review committee whose decisions could save or lose three quarters of a million dollars for the agency.

  I looked down at the Sellingers and said softly: ‘All right, you bastards. You may be able to play games with me on your missile base, but World News is my home ground and you’re not going to win so easily there.’

  But even as I said it, my resolve faltered. I thought of the Allenby business and of Paul’s sneering words: ‘You’ll all go down. Everyone who was there will be implicated.’

  Why, why had I given Paul such an edge against me? Why was human sexuality such a bizarre set of impulses? I thought suddenly of Jim Mossman, who had destroyed himself just as he was about to be named Treasury secretary. A brilliant man who would certainly have been the best secretary for a decade. He had worked for the post throughout his career, yet even when it was within his sights, it hadn’t prevented him from risking one night in a gay bar in Hamburg where he’d been seen, allowing himself to be led around naked on a dog lead and slapped by youths in Nazi uniform. My own folly was tame by comparison, but in Sellinger’s hands…