Shadowplay

by Norman Hartley

  Attached to one of the pages was a photograph of Nancy dressed in a way I’d never seen her. She was wearing a long granny dress, of the kind fashionable among hippies in the 1960s, and she was in a group of young people. The file said the photograph had been taken at the Copenhagen People’s Progressive Congress, a rally of Left-leaning and ecological ‘green’ parties which, the file said, Nancy had attended to give a special briefing to senior Soviet officials. The Congress was in 1969, during our marriage, and I could have sworn that Nancy had never been near Copenhagen, but the page contained photostats of Danish passport stamps and of a pass giving her American observer credentials at the congress.

  As I was staring at the photo, Ryder came into the room. He saw my face and, without speaking, looked over my shoulder and when he saw the picture, he said softly, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

  I was too stunned to say anything. Ryder sat down and I passed across the pages I had finished reading and turned to the end of the file.

  It covered the period of the divorce and I gathered that Claire had been jubilant, especially when Nancy reported to her the first sign of a romance with Paul Sellinger. Claire had urged her to break with me as quickly as possible. When the possibility of marrying Paul was mentioned, Claire described it as ‘a greater opportunity for service to the State than had ever been possible with me.’ My career was in decline, Claire said; Nancy must accept Paul’s proposal.

  Then, in the final two pages, the tone changed completely. Claire began whining and carping at Nancy, accusing her of losing enthusiasm just when the possibilities were greatest. Starburst was mentioned several times and the drift was clear: Nancy was supposed to be getting information on Starburst but she hadn’t produced. Nancy was claiming she couldn’t get access to the information; Claire was accusing her of backsliding, of cowardice, of not trying hard enough.

  Claire kept urging that Nancy must act now: the decoy (obviously me) was ready. But Nancy didn’t like the plan, and she didn’t want to use me as the decoy. She claimed that it couldn’t be done convincingly, but Claire had accused her of being sentimental and stupid and making excuses for her failure to obtain the Starburst information. It was clear from the tone that Claire was becoming frightened. She was being blamed by Moscow for upsetting Nancy and being responsible for the failure of the mission, and relations between the two women were becoming severely strained. At one point, Claire found herself justifying Nancy to Moscow, pointing out that she had been useful in giving information which had helped the Soviet side prepare for ‘secret trade negotiations’ with Paul; but Moscow had replied that this was only marginally useful. Only Starburst mattered.

  By the last page, Claire was accusing Nancy of deliberately lying in her reports and exaggerating the difficulties. She claimed Nancy was disillusioned with Communism and was planning to make Paul throw her out so she would be no further use to her Soviet masters. As I read it, I remembered Nancy’s behavior at Samman’s and wondered whether, in a final nerveless maneuver, she was going to try to use me to get her out of a situation she couldn’t handle.

  If the file was correct, then Nancy could herself be in considerable danger. Moscow had threatened Claire for upsetting Nancy and Claire had fled. Now Claire was doing her best to expose Nancy in revenge.

  But how far had it gone? Was the file that Ackerman had acquired the only copy? Did Moscow know about it? If they did, they would certainly move quickly.

  I sat back against the hard sofa and watched Ryder reading the last of the page. When he’d finished, I said, ‘So much for the right enemy coming into focus.’

  Ryder nodded. ‘We have to make some quick decisions, especially with the situation in London.’

  ‘What situation?’

  Ryder did his best to give me a little grin of encouragement.

  ‘I know this isn’t the time to break this, old buddy, but there’s trouble there too. The World News technical unions have filed a formal grievance against you and gone on strike. Your U.K. operation’s at a standstill and Paul has made a formal request to the board for your resignation.’

  17

  It was the low point of my life. The period before the divorce had seemed desperate enough, but now there was nothing left. I’d been used as a puppet by Nancy for most of my professional life and whether any legal moves were made against me or not, I was finished. She had humiliated and destroyed me and now Paul Sellinger was about to organize the burial of the wreckage. She had fooled him too, of course, and that was a weapon with which I could fight back, but I had no will to fight. I really no longer cared and I couldn’t bring myself to deal with the trap he had sprung on me.

  Paul had acted as soon as he had discovered that Jennifer was innocent. He had filed a formal motion with the board asking for my resignation on the grounds that I was not in a suitable emotional state to hold the office. Cox had been in touch with the company secretary, Nick Jopling, who was an old friend and a close ally, and been told that the motion was expressed in only vague terms. ‘According to Nick, it’s a very short formal request which talks about your poor management judgment under stress,’ Cox said. ‘Sellinger has told Nick that he’ll be preparing a memorandum before the next board meeting setting out the reasons in detail, but apparently he’s working mostly by telephone and contacting each of the board members directly.’

  Most of the complaints against me were predictable. Sellinger had apparently been talking about my absence from Brussels, having managed to eradicate all trace of his promise to stand in for me, and rumors were flying that I’d simply ‘gone off screwing in the south of France’ and let the EEC negotiations collapse. Word was also out about the fight on the way from the airport and Paul had started fueling speculation that I was acting unstably because I was under great personal stress. There were no prizes for guessing the next step. Thus far the Allenby business hadn’t been mentioned, but as the board meeting approached, the cause of the stress would start to be spelled out and details of the party and the sleeping-bag game would start to emerge.

  But Paul was too shrewd to rely just on that to prove a case of instability and poor judgment against me. He knew very well that innuendo and rumor are fine, but it helps if you can dramatize events and bring them to a head. So he had provoked the strike—or rather he had made it appear that I had provoked it.

  In typical Sellinger fashion, he’d gone straight for the jugular, plunging into our most sensitive area: our shaky relations with the technical unions. It had always been delicate ground. World News was an acknowledged leader in introducing new technology and we had survived a number of neo-Luddite onslaughts from the unions, only because of the negotiating skills of our former Personnel Director, Geoffrey Haycroft. But there was one issue that was more fraught with danger than all the others: the introduction of the Datavol X-13 news processor, and it was there that Sellinger had chosen to attack.

  The Datavol technology was complex but the issue was simple. The X-13 processor could shrink the entire World News distribution operation by more than a third. It eliminated technical jobs, cut across union demarcation lines, and because it was a self-monitoring cybernated system, it also played havoc with maintenance-staff levels. More threatening still, it could make the central newsroom instantly transportable to another country with the flick of a switch. If the London unions threatened to go on strike, we could switch the news-processing operation to Amsterdam or Zurich or New York within twenty minutes.

  With prayer, patience, and a half-decent successor to Geoffrey Haycroft, I had hoped that we might be able to start introducing Datavol peacefully within two years, but Sellinger had decided that I should not wait that long.

  As far as Cox could reconstruct it, word had been allowed to leak out in New York that I had personally placed an order for twenty-four Datavol X-13 processors in Los Angeles two weeks ago. A photocopy of a purchasing request, apparently bearing my signature, had mysteriously come into the hands of the secretary of the American Technical Workers U
nion. Half an hour later, after some quick transatlantic phone calls, the London newsroom had come to a complete standstill.

  It was a brilliant move by Sellinger. If I had placed such an order at a time when relations with the unions were so sensitive, it would be ample evidence that I was behaving rashly and showing poor business judgment. Coupled with all the other signs of my ‘instability,’ it was a masterstroke.

  But I just couldn’t be bothered. Ryder tried to talk to me about the document but I wouldn’t listen. Cox came, but I turned him away, and finally they left me alone in the miserable little lounge of the base house and I stared at the walls, not even thinking about what to do. The only drink available was bourbon, which I’d never liked, but I took the bottle and sank three in quick succession to keep the bitter tang from lingering on my tongue. The lounge looked as though it had been furnished in one visit to a cheap Italian chain store by a man whose only home had been military quarters. The furnishings were completely spartan and unimaginative and they fitted my mood perfectly.

  A fourth bourbon was just beginning to ease the pain when Cox came back a second time. He walked in and closed the door behind him, deliberately ignoring me as I waved him away.

  When I looked up, he said: ‘I have a few things to say.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be said.’

  ‘Yes there is.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like I am getting pissed off,’ Cox said abruptly. ‘While you’ve been sitting in here for the past hour wasting good bourbon, which I know you don’t even like, I’ve been trying to run World News, which I’m not being paid for and I’m not qualified to do. Look, Chief, I didn’t ask to be your exec. You asked for me. I’d have been perfectly happy screwing around in Tehran or Rio or somewhere chasing fires.’

  I looked at Cox hard.

  ‘It won’t work, you know, the shake-the-chief-out-of-his-self-pity routine. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘You always taught me that mood didn’t matter,’ Cox said. ‘Let me quote you some of the Railton words of wisdom for rising executives. When the situation is a shambles, isolate the different elements and deal with them separately. That way the problems become more tractable. Sound familiar?’

  I smiled. It certainly did, especially as Cox had managed a passable imitation of my own voice.

  ‘And what would you suggest, Cox?’

  ‘First things first, Chief,’ Cox said seriously. ‘We’re leaving for London in half an hour. We can deal with WN on the flight. First Nancy…’ He saw me flinch and said quietly, ‘Look, Chief, you’ve got to face it. May as well be now. I’ll get Ryder.’

  While Cox was gone I gave myself a talking-to. He was right. My entire life I’d based my career on finding out what needed to be done and then doing it. And now here I was cradling a bottle instead.

  When Bob arrived I said simply, ‘Sorry. I had what the Victorians used to call a transient attack of the vapors. I’m okay now. Go ahead. Separate the elements. Let’s see how the situation looks.’

  ‘To be completely callous,’ Ryder said, ‘the situation looks more promising than it did this morning.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, we’re talking about Nan,’ Ryder said coldly, ‘but if it is Nan, she’s apparently not going through with the Starburst number and that’s good news, John, however you may feel about her.’

  ‘You say ‘If it’s Nan,’’ I said. ‘Do you doubt the letter?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be a fake. A few tapes of this Dahran woman to get her verbal style plus a raft of confidential information from your files. A topflight writer to craft it all together. Yes, it could be done. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. That has to be our next move. Finding out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve given it some thought while you’ve been brooding,’ Ryder said. ‘The most direct way is for you to confront her. Accuse her. We’ll tape you. Put it through Voice Stress Analysis. It won’t be one hundred percent foolproof, especially if she is a pro with a lifetime of experience, but it’s our best bet.’

  ‘Why me?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you confront her?’

  ‘Because, old buddy, if she is a Soviet agent, and Claire’s right, she’s trying to quit. You might be the one to help her.’

  ‘Why the hell should I help her?’ I snapped.

  ‘I could say because she may still be fond of you and because I suspect you still care for her a bit despite everything. But quite frankly, John, I don’t give a shit. What I care about is saving the Starburst program from being scuttled by the Soviets. I don’t really care whether she loves you, hates you, despises you, or is totally fucking indifferent to you. Or how you feel about her. But if there is a chance—even a small chance—that she does care for you, and that can be exploited, then I want it exploited. Okay?’

  I grinned. ‘Well, thanks for sparing my feelings anyway. Incidentally,’ I said, ‘since you’re allowing for the possibility that Nancy could have been framed too, I presume it has occurred to you that this file has made its appearance at a very convenient time for Paul. Just when we were suspecting him seriously, up it turns. It even confirms that his visits to Moscow and Prague were for nothing more serious than secret trading contacts which Soviet intelligence apparently wasn’t very interested in. Nothing to do with Starburst. Very convenient.’

  Cox put his arm on my shoulder.

  ‘Chief,’ he said seriously, ‘do me a favor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop clutching at fucking straws. We don’t know if the document’s genuine. You’re going to see Nancy to find out. Just wait, will you? For Christ’s sake,’ he added, mimicking one of my own moments of exasperation with him, ‘how long is it going to take me to train you?’

  It was agreed that Ryder should set up a meeting with Nancy later that day, if possible.

  ‘We’ll touch down at Whitestones by breakfast time,’ Ryder said. ‘I’ll give you the morning to sort out your problems with World News. Then Nancy. Deal?’

  ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘A whole morning to deal with an all-out strike of the London headquarters and a formal demand for my resignation.’

  After that, I deliberately put Nancy out of my mind and didn’t talk to Ryder about her or the document for the whole of the flight back to London. Of the six hours in the air, I spent four gratefully asleep and two discussing the World News situation with Cox. At the end of it, I still wasn’t sure how to deal with the union situation, though a few ideas were beginning to form, but I knew that, in any event, it would have to take second place to the resignation demand. If I knew Paul, he would be filing a special request for an emergency board meeting. Since the World News directors were about half British and half American, the normal notice required for a special meeting was ten days. There was a procedure by which he could demand a meeting within five days, if he could prove there was a major crisis, but if I could get the support of five members to oppose it, then Paul would have to wait the full ten-day period. Buying those ten days was the first step; after that, I’d take a look at the strike situation.

  In dealing with both the unions and the board, mood was probably even more important than substance. If I had tackled either problem in the mood I was in after reading the file on Nancy, I would have been beaten whatever the rights of the issue. I’d been away five days and there were rumors that I was behaving erratically and that I’d been screwing around when important World News matters needed to be settled. If I gave the slightest impression of slinking back, it would be quickly taken as confirmation, especially by my enemies. It was—if ever there had been one—a moment to return to Fleet Street with colors flying.

  When we reached Whitestones, I had myself driven straight to Claridges and sent Cox to my flat to pick up my smartest clothes and order the company Rolls-Royce, which I used only on the most formal occasions.

  At Claridges, I had a luxurious shower and barber shave, my hair trimmed and my nails manicured. When C
ox arrived, I dressed myself with meticulous care in a dark-gray Dior suit and glistening white shirt with a Per Spook tie to add a touch of more noticeable elegance. It was nine-thirty and I knew that Sellinger was already in the World News building, but I made a point of having a slow and self-indulgent breakfast, then ordered the Rolls to the hotel entrance and set off for Fleet Street, in a mood to cross any picket line.

  I arrived at the WN building at ten-thirty and though the morning traffic was thinning out a bit, there was still some confusion caused by the squad of police who were keeping the pickets confined to the apron of the building.

  The TV news crews were in fact causing more of an obstruction than the demonstrators, but as usual they had made their peace with the officer in charge and were even allowed to interview me in the middle of the street—and block traffic as far as the Aldwych and Ludgate Circus—because the point where I had stepped out of the car didn’t give them a good enough angle.

  As I answered the questions, I spotted the Technical Union General Secretary, Joe Billingsly, among the protestors; when the interviews were finished, I walked straight over to him and repeated my little set piece about misunderstandings having arisen, and managed to avoid showing any irritation when he dropped into the stilted ‘speak-your-weight-machine’ language which has somehow become received trade-union English.

  At the top of the steps, I paused by the bronze World News plaque. Before the TV crews could notice the gesture and make a big production out of it, I gave the plaque a quick rub for luck. When I had first joined World News, I had been so proud of entering the building, I sometimes used to linger by the plaque in the hope of being noticed by passersby in Fleet Street. I’d lost a lot of innocence since then, but the plaque was still my private talisman.

  In the entrance hall, the commissionaire saluted and gave me his usual cheery greeting, as though he hadn’t even noticed the turmoil outside. I gave him a message for Nick Jopling and went with Cox straight to the newsroom.