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‘Yes, I’m seeing a lot of Billy this week,’ said Champion, as if visiting his young son was no more than an afterthought. ‘Caty has been very good about letting me see Billy.’
He went through the postcards one by one and then put them away with exaggerated care. ‘The night Billy was born,’ he said, ‘I was up to the neck in bank loans, promissory notes and mortgages. I was sure I’d done the wrong thing … did I ever tell you how I started: with the uncut diamonds?’
‘I’ve heard stories,’ I admitted.
He inhaled carefully on his cigarette. ‘Do you know Accra?’
‘No.’
‘The arse-hole of West Africa. I was flat broke, and working hard to buy a ticket home. I was translating export permits for cocoa traders and wangling customs forms for importers – all of them Arabs. My Arabic has always been good, but by the time I finished working with those jokers I could have done the sports reports for Radio Cairo. When I think of it!’ He clasped his hands tight as if to stretch the joints. ‘I took the bumpf down to the customs sheds one day – June, it was, and bloody steamy, even by Accra standards. I made the usual golden obeisance to the officials and loaded ten crates of Renault spares on to the truck I’d hired. But when I uncrated them back in the cocoa warehouse, I find I’m knee-deep in French MAS 38s, complete with cleaning kits, and spares and instruction booklets.’
‘Sub-machineguns,’ I said.
‘Go to the top of the class.’
‘But could you get the Long cartridge?’
‘Am I glad you weren’t involved, old boy! No, you couldn’t get them. But the kids who bought them were too young to remember the MAS 38, so they think they are MAT 49s, for which there is 9 mm stuff ready to be nicked from a local police or army unit. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘But I’m getting ahead of the story. Imagine me – the only man in Accra who’d sooner have Renault spares than sub-machineguns, sitting on ten cases of them. All of them customs cleared, rubber stamped and signed for. It was tempting.’
‘But you didn’t succumb?’
‘Oh, but I did.’ He took a drag on his cigarette and waved the smoke away. ‘Two hundred and thirty-five dollars each – American dollars – and I could have doubled it, had I sold them to the loudmouths with the fuzzy-wuzzy haircuts.’
‘Ten to a case?’ I said. ‘About ten thousand pounds profit.’
‘I had to stop my client going down to the customs and raising hell about his Renault spares. I owed a bit of money, I had to get an exit permit, and clearance from the tax office: it all costs money.’
‘You came home?’
‘I went to buy my air ticket from a crooked little Portuguese travel agent. I started bargaining with him, knowing that he could unload my US dollar bills at a big premium. To cut a long story short, I ended up giving him all my American money in exchange for a bag of uncut diamonds from Angola and a boat ticket to Marseille.’
‘You went to Marseille?’
‘Old man Tix had just died, his whole set-up was for sale. Caty’s sister told me about it. But the Algerian fighting was still on, and the Tix fruit and vegetable importing was no more than a ream of headed notepaper and a couple of fleabitten offices in Constantine.’
‘And the quarry was defunct.’
‘The quarry – yes.’ Champion smiled. We’d both hidden in the quarry during a big German round-up, when old man Tix had chased a German officer out of the house shouting ‘Sale Boche’ at him, crossing himself as he did so. ‘The quarry was finished. They’d mined, too, but it was costing so much to dig that the old boy did better on unemployment benefit.’
‘But you sold your diamonds and bought the Tix place from his widow?’
‘That was only a down payment,’ said Steve, ‘but Madame Tix wanted me to have it. She waited a long time for the rest of the money. It was a gamble for all concerned. We were betting on a peaceful settlement of the Algerian war.’
‘You were always a good guesser, Steve,’ I said.
‘The peace between France and Algeria meant immigrant labourers – that got the mine back into profit.’
‘Lower wages,’ I said.
‘But still higher than any they could get in their own country.’
‘But you closed the mine and the quarry – you sent the men home.’
Champion smiled. He said, ‘It was the idea of cheap labour in the mine. That’s what enabled me to get my capital. Avaricious little hairdressers with their hands in the till … contractors fiddling their tax, and hard-eyed old bastards from the merchant banks. They came to see my quarry and the Arabs sweating their guts out. They liked it – that was the kind of investment those little sods could understand. That was the way their grandfathers – and their friends’ grandfathers – had made a fortune in Africa a hundred years ago.’
‘And you put that money into the fruit and veg.’
‘Much more than money … soil analysis, a professor of botany, a programme of seeding techniques, long-term contracts for the farmers, minimum price guarantees for seasonal workers, refrigerated warehouses, refrigerated transport and contracted refrigerated shipping. I put a lot of money into the Arab countries.’
‘And now they have oil as well.’
‘Oil is a one-crop economy,’ said Champion.
‘A gilt-edged one,’ I said.
‘That’s what they said about coffee and tea and rubber,’ said Champion. ‘I truly believe that North Africa must trade with Europe, right across the board. The Arab countries must have a stake in Europe’s well-being. The economics must link, otherwise Africa will let Europe die of inflation.’
‘I never thought of you as a crusader, Steve.’
Champion seemed disconcerted at the idea. He picked up his glass to hide behind it.
Two men came downstairs: one was a famous poet, the other a peer of the realm. They were arguing quietly and eruditely about the lyrics of an obscene Eighth Army song about the extra-marital activities of King Farouk.
A club servant came to tell Champion that a lady was waiting at the entrance. ‘Come along,’ said Champion. ‘This is someone I’d like you to meet.’
A servant helped Champion into the lightweight vicuna coat, designed like a British warm, and handed him the bowler hat that made him look like a retired general. Someone unseen gave a perfunctory brush to the shoulder of my dirty raincoat.
The snow obliterated the view through the doorway, like static on an old TV. Outside in St James’s Street, London’s traffic was jammed tight. Champion’s girl gave no more than the nod and smile that manners demanded. Her eyes were devoted to Champion. She watched him with the kind of awe with which an orphan eyes a Christmas tree. It was always the same girl. This one had the same perfect skin that Caty had, and the same soft eyes with which Pina had looked at him. Except that decades had passed since Caty or Pina had been this kid’s age.
‘Melodie,’ said Champion. ‘It’s a nice name, isn’t it: Melodie Page.’
‘It’s a lovely name,’ I said, in my usual sycophantic way.
Champion looked at his watch. ‘It’s a long time since we jawed so much,’ he told me. ‘My God, but you would have been bored, Melodie. We must be getting old.’ He smiled. ‘Melodie and Billy are taking me to the theatre tonight. They are going to repair one of the gaps in my musical education.’
The girl hit his arm in mock anger.
‘Rock music and pirates,’ Champion told me.
‘A potent mixture,’ I said.
‘Billy will be glad I’ve seen you. You always remember his birthday, he told me.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That’s damned nice of you.’ Champion patted my arm.
At that moment, exactly on schedule, a black Daimler drew level with the entrance. A uniformed driver hurried across the pavement, opening an umbrella to shelter Champion and the girl from the weather. He opened the door, too. As the girl slid into the real leather seating, Champion looked back to where I was standing. The snow was beating about my ears. Champion raised his gloved hand in a regal salute. But when only three of your fingers are able to wave, such a gesture can look awfully like a very rude Anglo-Saxon sign.
2
I could see my report about Champion on Schlegel’s desk. Schlegel picked it up. He shook it gently, as if hoping that some new information might drop out of it. ‘No,’ said Schlegel. ‘No. No. No.’
I said nothing. Colonel Schlegel, US Marine Corps (Air Wing), Retired, cut a dapper figure in a lightweight houndstooth three-piece, fake club-tie and button-down cotton shirt. It was the kind of outfit they sell in those Los Angeles shops that have bow windows and plastic Tudor beams. He tapped my report. ‘Maybe you can shaft the rest of them with your inscrutable sarcasm and innocent questions, but me no likee – got it?’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Champion was just seeing his kid, and buying stamps – there’s no other angle. He’s a rich man now: he’s not playing secret agents. Believe me, Colonel. There’s nothing there.’
Schlegel leaned forward to get a small cigar from a box decorated with an eagle trying to eat a scroll marked Semper Fidelis. He pushed the box to me, but I’m trying to give them up.
‘He’s in deep,’ said Schlegel. Puckered scar tissue made it difficult to distinguish his smiles from his scowls. He was a short muscular man with an enviable measure of self-confidence; the kind of personality that you hire to MC an Elks Club stag night.
I waited. The ‘need-to-know’ basis, upon which the department worked, meant that I’d been told only a part of it. Schlegel took his time getting his cigar well alight.
I said, ‘The story about the machineguns fits with everything I’ve been told. The whole story – the stuff about the uncut diamonds providing the money to start the mine, and then the fruit and vegetable imports – that’s all on non-classified file.’
‘Not all of it,’ said Schlegel. ‘Long after the file closes, Champion was still reporting back to this department.’
‘Was he!’
‘Long before my time, of course,’ said Schlegel, to emphasize that this was a British cock-up, less likely to happen now that we had him with us on secondment from Washington. ‘Yes,’ said Schlegel, ‘those machineguns were shipped to Accra on orders from this office. It was all part of the plan to buy Champion into control of the Tix set-up. Champion was our man.’
I remembered all those years when I’d been drinking and dining with the Champions, never suspecting that he was employed by this office.
Perhaps Schlegel mistook my silence for disbelief. ‘It was a good thing while it lasted,’ he said. ‘Champion was in and out of Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, arguing about his melons, carrots and potatoes, keeping his eyes open and dropping a few words to the right people, doing us all a power of good. And the way that Champion had scored – selling cannons to some freaky little terrorist outfit – all helped.’
‘So what was the fadeout?’
Schlegel blew a piece of tobacco off his lip, with enough force to make the bookcase rattle. ‘The feedback of information began to sag. Champion said the French were starting to lean on him, and it was getting too dangerous. It was a top-level decision to let him go. It was the right decision. You Brits are good at bowing out gracefully and you’d done all right out of Champion by that time.’
‘And now?’
‘A guy in German security trying to make a name for himself. He’s dug out some stuff about Champion’s financial affairs. They are asking questions about the guns at Accra.’
‘Bonn gets hysterical – and we have to join in the screaming?’
‘If the Champion business becomes a big scandal, they’ll say we were careless when we let him go.’
‘Perhaps it was a little careless,’ I suggested.
‘Well, maybe it was,’ said Schlegel. He picked up my report exonerating Champion. ‘But your whitewash job isn’t going to help matters.’
‘I’ll take another shot at it,’ I said.
He slid my report across the polished desk. Then from a drawer he got Perrier water and a tiny bottle of Underberg bitters. He shook the bitters into the mineral water and stirred it with a ballpoint pen to make it a delicate brown. ‘Want some?’
‘That’s just for hangovers,’ I said. ‘And even then it’s got to be a pretty damn bad hangover.’
‘I like it,’ said Schlegel, and drank it slowly, savouring each sip.
I took the report and stood up to leave. Schlegel said, ‘This is going to be a lousy rotten miserable bummer. I hate these jobs where we are shaking down our own. So you don’t have to give me a bad time, or give yourself a bad time for not covering up for him.’
‘I had that lecture at Indoctrine Four, when I went to the CIA Communications symposium in 1967,’ I said.
‘Champion saved your life,’ Schlegel reminded me. ‘If you can’t hack it, just say you want out.’
‘I know what kind of out I’d get,’ I said bitterly.
Schlegel nodded. ‘And I’d countersign it,’ he said. In a way, I preferred Schlegel’s New World directness: the others would have tried to persuade me that such a request would have had no effect on my career.
Schlegel stood up to look out of the window. It was still snowing. ‘This isn’t just some kind of fancy positive vetting job,’ he said. ‘This is a hot one.’ Schlegel scratched his behind, and reflected.
‘Someone across the street could lip-read you,’ I warned him.
He turned to look at me pityingly. It was Schlegel’s often expressed belief that we’d get more done here in London if we worried less about such details. ‘The Germans are sending one of their people down to Nice to investigate Champion,’ he said thoughtfully.
I didn’t respond.
‘Have you been taken suddenly drunk or something?’ said Schlegel.
‘I didn’t want to disturb your deductive processes,’ I said. I polished my spectacles and blinked at him.
‘Damned if I understand it,’ he said.
‘You’re in Europe now, Colonel,’ I said. ‘This German scandal has come just when the Bonn government are warming up for an election. When their security people discovered that Champion had once been a British agent it was the answer to all their problems. They wrote “Passed to British security” in the margin and fired it across here. Now the German Defence Minister can refuse to answer any questions about the scandal on the grounds that it would prejudice the security of their British ally. It will give them all they need to stall until the election is over. When they are elected again it will be “Minister requested” and that’s the last we’ll see of it. I’ve been through all this before, Colonel.’
‘Well, you know more about all this European Mickey Mouse than I’ll ever understand,’ said Schlegel. It was a double-edged compliment and he bared his teeth to let me know it. ‘We’ll hold it for the three-month cycle,’ he offered, as if trying to come to terms with me.
‘Don’t do me any favours,’ I told him. ‘I don’t give a good goddamn if you publish it as a whole-page ad in Variety. I’ve done what I was asked. But if the department expected me to return with the synopsis for World War Three, I’m sorry to disappoint. If you want to send me back to spend the rest of the year drinking with Champion at the department’s expense, I’ll be very happy to do so. But Champion is no dope. He’ll tumble what’s going on.’
‘Maybe he already did,’ Schlegel said slyly. ‘Maybe that’s why you got nothing out of him.’
‘You know what to do, then,’ I told him.
‘I already did it,’ he said. ‘A short dark kid. Looks ten years younger than she really is: Melodie Page. Been with the department nearly eight years!’
3
‘William, come to Mother, darling, and let me give you a kiss.’ Champion’s failed marriage was all there in that imperious command. An elegant French wife who persisted in calling their small son Billy ‘William’, and who gave him kisses, instead of asking for them.
She gave Billy the promised kiss, pulled a dead leaf off the front of his sweater and then waited until he’d left the room. She turned to me. ‘All I ask is that you don’t remind me how keen I was to marry him.’ She poured fresh hot water into the teapot, and then put the copper kettle back on the hob. It hummed gently with the heat from the blazing logs. There was a stainless-steel kitchen only a few steps along the carpeted corridor, but she had made the tea and toasted the bread on the open fire in the lounge. From here we could look out of the window and watch the wind ruffling the river and whipping the bare trees into a mad dance. The black Welsh hills wore a halo of gold that promised respite from the dark daylight.
‘I didn’t come down here to talk about Steve, or about the divorce,’ I protested.
She poured tea for me and gave me the last slice of toast. She spiked a fresh piece of bread on to the toasting fork. ‘Then it’s surprising how many times we seem to find ourselves talking about it.’ She turned to the hearth and busied herself with finding a hot place in the fire. ‘Steve has this wonderful knack,’ she continued bitterly, ‘this wonderful knack of falling on his feet … like a kitten.’
