A Spy's Life Page 4

  So brisk and confident when he appeared in his hospital room, Special Agent Ollins was now weighed down, fatigued. Harland knew that look too.

  They walked around the wreckage in silence. Harland was struck by how small the plane seemed, and also by the smell, which contained several elements – burnt plastic, aviation fuel and a scorched, rusty aroma.

  When he had seen enough, Ollins led him up a flight of open stairs and into an office where a ten-foot model of the plane was set out on a large board. The top of the fuselage had been cut away to reveal the inside of the cabin. It was clear that the model was being used as an aid to thought rather than any kind of scientific measurement. Around it were tags and arrows leading to the seats. His name and Griswald’s were attached to the two facing seats at the rear of the model. The labels for Maas, Lahmer and Bloch were beside the plane, as were the ones for the three women on the plane – Elsa Meinertzhagen, Courtney Moore and Noala Shimon. Three other labels were named Male: A, Male: B and Male: C. There were also red markers which apparently indicated baggage that had been identified as belonging to one or other of the victims. Ollins told him that most of the bags had been incinerated, but here and there were clues that enabled identification.

  ‘Have you got the name for males A, B and C?’

  ‘A and B have been identified as Roger Clemence and James Gleeson. Mr Gleeson had served the UN in Iraq and was subsequently attached to various observer missions run by the Security Council. Clemence was a lawyer from New Zealand who worked in Africa – Sierra Leone, Rwanda.’

  ‘What about C?’

  ‘We’ve got no further with him. He’s a complete mystery.’ Ollins went over to a coffee pot, gestured to Harland who shook his head, and poured himself a cup. ‘Why don’t you take that chair, Mr Harland, and talk me through the people that you saw at Washington National Airport last Tuesday afternoon – the people who boarded the plane with you? Did you bring your notes?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I stupidly left them at the hospital.’

  ‘That really is a pity,’ said Ollins curtly.

  ‘I can get them later,’ said Harland. ‘I’ll fax—’

  Ollins put his hand up. ‘Could you wait a second?’ He leant back and tapped on the window of the adjacent room with a key. ‘You people need to hear this.’ Four men came in. Each nodded to Harland and found a perch. They had all brought notepads with them.

  Harland was puzzled by the FBI’s behaviour. If the Safety Board was satisfied that the accident was not the result of sabotage, why was Ollins working under the assumption that it was? Ollins nodded and Harland took them through what he could remember of the meeting at the airport and the minibus ride to the plane. He could now definitely say that Bloch and Lahmer and one of the women were in a huddle inside the terminal and that outside another woman was smoking with Philippe Maas. A third woman, with dark hair cut in a bob, was talking to two men that he didn’t recognise. He could not be sure until he saw some photographs. Standing apart from all these was a man in his early thirties – good-looking, obviously fit and with a standoffish manner.

  ‘That’s C,’ Ollins cut in. ‘The woman with the dark hair was Courtney Moore, which means she was talking to Clemence and Gleeson. Can you remember what any of them was carrying, Mr Harland?’

  ‘Most of them had small pieces of luggage – overnight bags and work bags. Alan Griswald and I both had larger cases – we’d been travelling for longer.’ He thought about boarding the minibus. He and Griswald had had to stow their suitcases at the back while the others had held them on their laps. ‘The man you call C had a large shoulder bag and placed it on top of Griswald’s stuff. I think he may have been carrying something else – a smaller bag perhaps.’

  ‘When you got to the airport,’ said Ollins, rolling the cup between the palms of his hands, ‘you expected to be taking the shuttle. Then you came across Mr Griswald. Who saw whom first?’

  ‘I think I spotted Al.’

  ‘Who was he talking to?’

  Harland thought for a moment. ‘He was with C. They were standing together, but not talking.’

  Ollins looked around the ring of FBI agents to make sure they had understood the significance of this.

  ‘And he didn’t introduce you to him?’

  ‘Nor to anyone else, although I’m not sure how many people he knew on the plane.’

  ‘So where did C sit on the plane?’

  Harland went to the model. ‘Here at the front. One of the women, a blonde of about thirty-five, sat opposite him. She had been looking him over at the airport.’

  ‘That’s Elsa Meinertzhagen … And his baggage would have been placed in the hold with the bigger pieces?’

  ‘No, I think there was some trouble stowing it in the hold. He brought it into the cabin and the flight attendant dealt with it.’

  ‘And he didn’t talk to Griswald during the flight?’

  ‘Nope, I was with Griswald the whole time, except when I went to the toilet.’

  ‘That was what – ten, fifteen minutes short of La Guardia?’

  ‘Yes, about that.’

  ‘The lights were extinguished and you returned to your seat. You say you noticed the heating system was malfunctioning at that time. It was cold in the cabin, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Silence descended on the group as Ollins mulled this over. They all looked tired. The room held the sour atmosphere of long and unrewarded labour.

  ‘Do you want me to try and place people on this model?’ asked Harland.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ollins, ‘and then we’ll go out to the crash site. They’re switching the landing runway and delaying all take-offs for a half-hour. I need you to try to trace your movements out there.’

  Harland went through the cabin placing labels by the seats. He wasn’t sure about Male A and Male B and he couldn’t remember which of the women had been sitting across the aisle from him. But Ollins appeared to have lost interest and was anxious to get out on the runway. A call was made to the air traffic control tower and in a few minutes they got clearance to drive out to the far end of the runway.

  On the way, Ollins laconically indicated the positions where the main parts of the fuselage had come to rest and the Learjet had been hit. All the wreckage had been cleared away and on the spot where the tarmac had been damaged by the Learjet explosion a new surface had already been laid. They moved up the runway, beside the huge blackened scrape which marked the wreckage path of the Falcon. The distances seemed much shorter in daylight and when they got out of the Cherokee Jeep, Harland was astonished how close he had been to the side of the dyke. Now he understood why he hadn’t been seen. The main beam from the fire trucks, although appearing to illuminate his surroundings, must have overshot him. He could see that he’d been about twenty feet below the level of the runway.

  He walked to the edge of the dyke with Ollins and looked down. Out on the mudflats were several men wearing Day-Glo jackets, sweeping the surface with metal detectors. Two other men were in a rubber inflatable. One punted up the little rivulets while the other operated two probes. The tide was still low. Marker buoys floated on slack lines in the water and flag-sticks protruded from the mud. There was a fair amount of ice about and for a moment Harland’s eyes settled on a brittle white shelf which projected over the mud.

  ‘That’s where we located the cockpit voice and flight data recorders,’ said Ollins, pointing to the furthest flag. ‘They were carried in the tail section which is why they were thrown out along this line.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘Over there is where we found Mr Griswald’s body. And right over there is where the chopper picked you up. It’s a long way between the two points. How’d you get there, Mr Harland?’

  Harland was finding this harder than he’d expected. He stared down at the tufts of grass and the little streams that snaked through the mud. It all looked harmless enough now, but down there in the dark and with the tide rushing in, he had been damned certain that he was
going to lose his life. He thought of Al Griswald’s body propped up grotesquely in his seat and the freezing water swirling round his chest and sucking at his legs.

  ‘Mr Harland!’ shouted Ollins over the roar of a plane that had just landed on the other runway. ‘What happened? How did you get there?’

  ‘Swam,’ he shouted back.

  ‘That’s a hundred yards or more. You were swimming out into the East River?’

  ‘I was being swept out there – I was taken by the current.’

  ‘And the phone?’ asked Ollins, leaning into Harland’s face and shouting over the noise of the plane that was now manoeuvring towards the terminal. ‘Can you say where you were when you dropped the phone?’

  Harland looked down at the place where Griswald’s body had been and worked out that he had waded in a line that was parallel to the runway. With the tide being so low now, it was difficult to pinpoint the spot where he’d dropped down into the water and let go of the phone, but he hazarded a guess that it was where the mud shelved down sharply into a gully. At high tide it would be way out of his depth and he could see that what was a trickle of water would become a channel for the tide flowing from the west. Ollins produced a radio from his pocket and guided his beachcombers to the area. A voice came back to tell him that they had already searched there several times. The phone had probably been taken out on the tide. It could be anywhere.

  ‘Why’s the phone so important to you?’

  ‘We’re just researching as much as we can about all the victims.’

  It occurred to Harland that they would want it to see who Griswald had been calling.

  Ollins looked out towards Riker’s Island and then turned to him. ‘I have to ask you this: did you take anything from Alan Griswald’s body?’

  ‘No,’ said Harland, mystified. ‘I thought I was about to lose my life. I wasn’t in the business of ripping off the dead.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No.’

  Ollins looked at him intently. The wind made his hair stand up vertically in a crest. ‘Were you … er … involved with Mr Griswald in any way? I mean his business at the War Crimes Tribunal. You had nothing to do with that?’

  ‘My work is much less glamorous, if I can put it that way. I barely knew what Al was doing and I expect you’ve found out that he was an exceptionally discreet person.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the agency said. You’re sure that you didn’t take anything? It could be important.’

  ‘Why are you asking this?’

  Ollins didn’t answer. He turned towards the car and said, ‘Let’s get out of the cold, Mr Harland.’

  They climbed in. ‘Clark says the two black boxes have been retrieved,’ said Harland. ‘Surely they will tell you all you need to know about the plane? As I understand it, they record everything that happened during the flight. They’re very sophisticated these days.’

  Ollins started the engine distractedly and executed a lazy turn towards the Marine Terminal, steering the car with just a couple of fingers. ‘You’re right. The data recorders are very good – a near-perfect record of that flight. Mr Clark and his colleagues at the NTSB think they’ve got enough evidence to say what happened to your plane. But I find I want to know more than they can answer.’

  He drove in silence to the hangar where he deposited Harland by the cab that would take him back to the hospital. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said, moving off. ‘And don’t forget to fax me those notes you made. The number is on the card I gave you.’

  At the hospital, Harland ate lunch and dozed for a short time before receiving a final examination. While waiting for the cab from Queen’s Limousine Service to arrive he got his few possessions together. As he cleared out the drawer of the bedside table he found a black wallet. It was bulkier than his own but, like his, the leather was distorted from being immersed and then dried out. He opened it and found Griswald’s credit cards.

  Slowly he remembered how the wallet came to be there. At the moment of trying to answer Griswald’s phone he had slipped it into his pocket and forgotten about it. The hospital staff must have dried it out with the rest of his clothes and placed it with his own wallet in the drawer. He looked again and found pictures of the Griswald children. The photos had suffered from the water, as had the receipts and the cover of a mini-disc which was in one of the wallet’s compartments. Harland pulled it out and saw that it was a compilation of work by Brahms, Chopin and Mendelssohn. This surprised him since Griswald was famously hostile to any music which did not involve saxophones and trumpets. He looked at the disc then returned it with the box to the wallet, at the same time remembering the many evenings he had spent with Griswald – more from friendship than shared enthusiasm – searching out increasingly arcane jazz haunts in West Berlin.

  He put the wallet with the rest of his things, reminding himself to tell Ollins about it, and went to find out what had happened to the cab. Sister Rafael made a call and a few minutes later put her head round the door to say that the car was on its way, but that there was another call waiting – a Mr Walter Vigo from England.

  Vigo! What the hell did he want? He hadn’t seen Vigo for at least a decade. On the day he left MI6 for good in 1990, Vigo had come to him and offered a limp hand of regret together with the assurance that their masters would take Harland back if he found he could not make a go of things outside. They both knew this was impossible.

  Harland picked up the phone.

  ‘Bobby,’ said the voice. ‘It’s Walter here. How are you? I was phoning to say how concerned we’ve all been to hear about your ordeal.’

  We, thought Harland. Who the hell is we? A great crowd of well-wishers at the new headquarters of SIS, unable to think of anything but their ex-colleague’s health?

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s good of you to call. Where are you ringing from? It’s nine p.m. in London and it’s Saturday – you can’t be at work.’

  ‘I’m here in New York. Davina wanted to do some Christmas shopping and see a show or two. I took a few days off and came along with her. I’m pleased to say that our flight was rather less eventful than yours.’

  Harland remembered that Davina Vigo was wealthy. She had the kind of background – Vigo’s euphemism for money – that enabled Vigo to treat his government salary almost as loose change. They lived in a large house in Holland Park and were always nipping off for weekends in Italy or Switzerland. People wondered why he hadn’t left the service when his wife inherited in the mid-eighties, but that was to misunderstand Walter Vigo and his profound commitment to the profession. He liked intelligence work and was prodigiously good at it. Harland knew he was pretty near the top of the service now.

  ‘How long are you staying in New York?’

  ‘Until Monday – just a short trip. I was wondering if you’d like me to visit you. I’d do a lot to get out of the play Davina has fixed for this evening. If I came late this afternoon, I could reasonably excuse myself for the whole evening.’

  ‘They’re letting me go home,’ Harland said. ‘I’m waiting for a car to pick me up now.’

  ‘Really! That is good news. Then what are you doing this evening? Can’t be much fun going back to an empty flat in Brooklyn.’

  How uncharacteristic of Vigo to make a mistake like that, thought Harland. Vigo could only know he lived in Brooklyn if he had been making inquiries about him. Harland was not in the phone book and, though he never made any secret of it, few people knew where he lived.

  ‘How do you know it’s empty?’ asked Harland, smiling to himself.

  Vigo laughed. ‘I admit to the assumption, unwarranted perhaps, that your personal life is in its usual state of disarray. Otherwise I imagine that someone would be collecting you and that you wouldn’t be waiting for a car.’

  A fast recovery, thought Harland. Maybe he wasn’t losing his touch after all.

  ‘But forgive me, if I’m wrong,’ said Vigo. ‘Look – it would be lovely to see you. Why don’t we have an early di
nner? Shall we say Noonan’s Steakhouse at seven? It’s at Lexington and forty-eighth Street. I’ll book – it’s on me.’

  Harland was about to decline, but then thought that an evening by himself was precisely what he did not need. He was feeling rested and, besides, he was curious to know what Vigo wanted. He’d bet his life that there was a very specific reason for the call. Walter Vigo always had a purpose, even if at first he did not declare it.

  4

  PHILOSOPHER SPY

  Harland was late at Noonan’s, arriving at twenty past seven. As he waited to check the old blue overcoat he was using as a substitute for the one lost in the crash, he looked around the restaurant and decided it was an odd place for Vigo to choose: a phoney club atmosphere; hearty back-slapping men, and women with the expensive, caramelised look of over-decorated pâtisserie. No, Noonan’s was not at all Vigo’s natural habitat.

  The maître d’ gestured to a booth in the far corner of the restaurant and told him that Mr Vigo had been there for some time. He found Vigo tucked into the booth, with his back to the rest of the diners. The fingers of one hand rested on the stem of a vodka martini, while the other held down the pages of a Sotheby’s auction catalogue.

  He rose as Harland approached and proffered his hand. ‘Bobby, what a pleasure to see you – and looking so well too. Slide in there and let’s get you a drink.’ He examined Harland in the light of the lamp over the table. ‘Let me look at you. Gracious, there’s not a scratch on you. You’re a bloody miracle and a famous miracle at that. I suppose you know that every daily newspaper in the world published the picture of your rescue.’

  ‘I’m beginning to appreciate that,’ said Harland regretfully.

  ‘You’re going to become one of those icons of photography, an exquisitely comic fate for an ex-spy, don’t you think?’ He paused to irradiate Harland with a smile. ‘Now, what are you going to have to drink, Bobby – champagne?’

  Harland accepted and reminded himself to guard against Vigo’s we’re-all-in-it-together bonhomie.