A Little White Death (4 page)

The man was alone at his post. The use of ‘we’ was little short of regal. Troy looked out of the corner of his eye and saw that two men had approached him from the right as he
talked. One of them coughed politely and he turned. A short, stout man, well past middle age, who clutched a smouldering cigar between fat fingers, and whose recent meals seemed displayed down the
front of his shirt as liberally as the dandruff on his shoulders; and a tall, handsome young Arab with thick black hair and finely chiselled features, wearing a neat Italian black suit and the
clean white cotton shirt Troy had seen in his dreams of himself.

‘Troy?’ said the old one. ‘Did I hear him say Troy?’

Troy stared at him and said nothing.

‘Would you be one of our Troys, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I don’t know. What are your Troys?’

The old one stuck out his hand.

‘Arthur Alliss.
Sunday Post
. I used to work for your father. I’m the
Post
’s Middle East correspondent. We’d no idea you were coming out. Nobody told us.
We’d’ve met you at the airport if we’d known.’

The penny dropped. These men worked for his father’s Sunday paper. Since his father’s death twenty years ago it had been run by his brother-in-law, Lawrence. Troy had next to nothing
to do with the family business, with its small empire of newspapers, magazines and publishers. What little responsibility remained for the family, Rod usually handled. It had not occurred to him
that there could hardly be a capital city on earth in which he would not find an accredited correspondent or a freelance stringer on one or another of the Troy newspapers.

Troy took the proffered hand, then shook with the young Arab.

‘I’m Frederick Troy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I hadn’t thought about it – I mean, I hadn’t realised you’d be here.’

Foolish, he thought. Of course they’d be there. Simply hacks doing their job. Why else was Charlie there? When MI6 had discreetly demanded his resignation in 1957, Charlie had asked Rod
for a job and Rod had packed him off to Beirut as roving Middle Eastern correspondent for the family’s almost defunct journal
American Week
. It had seemed appropriate. Charlie spoke
Arabic, and it kept him active and paid, kept him out of England, out of the English papers, and out of harm’s way. Only now he wasn’t there. These two were, and looking upon him as
some representative of the family firm, which he wasn’t and would never be.

The old one ruminated a moment on the name.

‘Frederick?’ he said with a hint of inflection, a question posed more at himself than at Troy.

‘Yes,’ said Troy.

‘The policeman?’

‘Yes,’ said Troy.

‘You’ve come for Charlie?’

‘Yes – he’s a very old friend.’

‘I think you’d better join us for a snifter, Mr Troy.
Said!
’

The mere mention of his name seemed enough to convey a simple, singular meaning to the young Arab. He headed for the bar and Alliss led the way back to their table. Troy wondered where
he’d find the energy to talk to them. He hoped to God all they wanted was to pay their respects and then he could bugger off to bed.

Alliss relaxed into his chair and, finding his cigar out, stuck the wet end back in his mouth and put a match to the other. For a few seconds he vanished into a haze of sucking and puffing. Troy
saw the Arab making his way towards them with a tray and three very large Scotches. He’d have one drink with them and ditch them.

‘We both worked with Charlie, y’know,’ Alliss said. ‘Truth to tell I never thought the old firm needed two blokes out here, but there you are, your brother thought
different. I file for the
Post
, Said here – this is Said Hussein – he’s the local fixer . . .’

Hussein smiled politely at the belated introduction, a cold light in the shining black eyes, enough to tell Troy that at best he was bored by Alliss, at worst probably despised him.

‘He’s got the local knowledge. Speaks the lingo. And Charlie, Charlie filed for the Yanks.’

Troy noted through the haze of tiredness, and the acrid, repulsive smell of Scotch – he had put the glass to his lips and put it back untouched – Alliss’s use of the past
tense.

‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’

Alliss looked puzzled by this, glanced at Hussein, and then continued the same puzzled scrutiny of Troy as if the key were written in his face.

‘Have ye not seen the papers Mr Troy?’

‘No. I had one hell of a time getting here. I feel as though I’ve spent four days in a vacuum.’

‘He’s gone.’

‘So everybody keeps telling me. But he’s expecting me. I can wait, but it would be useful to know how long.’

‘No – I mean gone gone. Defected. Charlie’s crossed over.’

On what level had this rippled through his brain to find instant suppression? The telegramme lay crumpled at the bottom of his inside jacket pocket. He had read it over and again a dozen times
in the last four days – ‘I don’t think I have much time left.’ Somehow it had been easier – dammit, reassuring – to believe that Charlie’s last cry had
been a cry of help, that he was in mortal peril, that he had cancer, angina, cirrhosis of the liver. Troy found himself acknowledging for the first time that he had been prepared, had actually
preferred, to believe that Charlie was dying rather than believe that his past, and with it Troy’s own, had finally caught up with him.

‘When?’ he said simply. ‘Four days ago. Just vanished. Clothes in his room. An article on Moshe Dayan half-finished, still in the typewriter, cold cup of coffee next to it.
Razor and toothbrush on the washstand. He came in here, sent a telegramme from the press room and vanished. We usually lunched together. First I knew was when he didn’t show. I asked the boys
here, but all they knew was the telegramme and they won’t say what was in it or who it was to. Five hours later he boards a Russian freighter in the docks. I reckon all he had was the clothes
on his back. Took me till yesterday to find out that much. Bloke in the dockyard recognised him. Came to me for a bit of the old backshish. I filed it, of course. Had to. It’s news. Front
page of the dailies back in Blighty this morning. If Hugh Gaitskell hadn’t died last night it’d be the lead. You can’t have a career like Charlie’s and not be
news.’

Alliss was a pig. The mixture of professional greed and personal pique made for a distasteful fool. Troy was beginning to share Hussein’s silent contempt. He feared it might find its voice
very soon. Alliss showed no sensitivity to what Troy might be feeling.

‘O’ course if I could find out who that telegramme was to, I’d really have a coup. That’d stick it to those dozy buggers on the Sunday Times. Insight Team my left buttock
– more like Shortsight Team.’

He chuckled at his own wit, jowls jiggling, mirth rippling down to his fingertips, Scotch in his glass splashing over onto his trousers. He rubbed it into the fabric with the thumb of his free
hand. Seemed not to mind. One more stain on a suit of boozer’s motley.

‘O’ course, I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, is there anyone half sane who really believes Charlie was innocent? I don’t care how many times the government set
some pillock on his hind legs in the Commons to clear his name. Charlie was one of
them
– Burgess, Maclean, Leigh-Hunt. It all fits. If the government didn’t know our Charlie was
a spy, then they’re the last ones who didn’t.’

Troy had been the first to know. 1956. While the Suez débâcle rumbled on. He had told no one. It was no one else’s business. It was between Charlie and him. And how dearly and
how often had he wished there had been nothing between Charlie and him. That they should be like children, schoolboys again, when they had had no secrets. He had packed Charlie off to live with his
lies one autumn day, one Indian summer’s afternoon, seven years ago, knowing they would not meet again. A year later, somehow, MI6 had learnt the truth. Charlie had made too many mistakes, or
some recently defected Russian had pointed the finger – Troy neither knew nor cared which – and Charlie had retired from the Secret Service in a flurry of corridor speculation and to a
wishy-washy Commons denial, so limp and unconvincing it had fallen not to the Foreign Secretary, but to the most junior of his ministers, a rising starlet of the Conservative Party, Timothy
Woodbridge. Woodbridge had exonerated Charlie, gently berated the press for their gossip and cornered his little piece of history as author of what the same press had dubbed ‘the Woodbridge
Statement’. The last Troy had seen of Charlie was a farewell drink in a pub in St Martin’s Lane. He seemed grateful to Troy that Rod had come to his rescue – and Troy had said
nothing to this, because Rod had done so without telling him. He had done exactly what he thought Troy required of him without even mentioning it. And for that Troy was grateful. Charlie would not
have come to him.

Each time was the last time. A slapdash sequence of partings, each potentially riddled with finality. Now this was the last. Now he really had gone.

‘Why now?’ said Troy, more to himself than to the two journalists.

For a second he thought Hussein was going to speak, but Alliss stubbed out the remains of his cigar and sounded off.

‘Had enough,’ he said bluntly. ‘If you ask me he never much cared for the job. After all, if he really has ended up in Russia, then it was only a cover, wasn’t it? I
think he just got tired of it. It’s a big territory. You can find yourself in Jerusalem one day and Aden the next. It takes belief. It’s the only thing that’ll keep you at it.
Personally, I never thought Charlie had that belief. More often than not we’d cover for him, wouldn’t we, Said? He couldn’t be arsed half the time. He was lucky. Without us
he’d’ve gone under. Mind you, he was good company – you get Charlie in the bar with a few drinks inside him. Talk about laugh!’

Troy heard his cue and knew his exit. Arthur Alliss was decidedly not good company. He had heard enough of Alliss’s vision of Charlie. If it turned out he really had seen the last of him,
then he wanted his vision of Charlie, warts and all, not the spiteful, sentimental vision of a drunken hack who scarcely knew him.

Troy pushed his untouched glass towards Alliss and got to his feet. ‘Forgive me, but I’m flagging badly. I really do need to sleep now.’

Alliss bustled and missed the hatred in Troy’s eyes. Prised himself from his chair with some loss of breath, stuck out his hand again and said, ‘But you’ll join us for
breakfast? It’s not often we . . .’

Perhaps he had read the look in Troy’s eyes after all. The sentence dwindled down to nothing.

‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘Delighted.’

He kicked off his shoes, tore off his jacket and tie and lay on the bed beneath the motionless punkah. He decided he’d give it fifteen minutes and then hang out the
‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. In less than ten there was a gentle tap at the door.

Hussein stood in the corridor, one hand oh-so-casually in his trouser pocket, the other poised to knock again. ‘Do you really want to have this conversation now?’ he asked.

‘If it’s the only time you’re free of Alliss, yes,’ said Troy.

Hussein carefully hung his jacket on the back of an upright chair and sank slowly into a deeply upholstered armchair. He loosened his tie, stuck a fat Turkish cigarette in his mouth, crossed his
legs with a fastidious tug at the knee of his trousers and lit up. Troy flopped into the chair opposite, feeling as creased as his clothes.

Hussein could be no more than twenty-two or three, his eyes were bright, his skin shone with health and at the end of a working day he seemed not have a single close cropped hair out of place.
The tie at half-mast was a concession to after-hours occasion. He looked like Madison Avenue man launching into a difficult pitch. Compared to him, Troy felt ancient.

‘Arthur is colouring the story. You must forgive him. He is an old man. Out of his time.’

The preamble over, what they both knew so succinctly stated, he inhaled deeply and savoured his smoke a moment.

‘No one carried Charlie.’

A hand batted the smoke away from his face, the gesture cutting, absolute, to reinforce his words.

‘Far from being unsuited to the job, I’d say Charlie was a natural. Arthur got here just after Suez, less than a year before Charlie – just long enough for his nose to be out
of joint when your brother hired Charlie. I suspect they were both sent for much the same reason. Suez put us back on the map. Every newspaper on earth increased its Middle East coverage, simply
waiting for the next skirmish or the start of Armageddon. I joined them in 1961. My first job when I graduated Yale. I’m the new boy, but being from Jerusalem I’m near enough a native,
and I know the lie of the land, and I think I know my job. I’ve seen enough to know that Charlie loved the job, and rather than letting Arthur carry him, he carried Arthur. After seven years
Arthur has only a smattering of Arabic – good French; he’d have been OK here before the war, in his element in the time of the Beiks, but that’s another age. I rather think Arthur
hasn’t acknowledged that.’

‘England is full of men like Arthur,’ said Troy.

‘I’ve never been there,’ Hussein replied with an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘But I can quite believe it. He’s right when he says you can find yourself in Aden one
day and Jerusalem the next. That’s the nature of the job. But it was Charlie who made those journeys; it was Charlie who gathered enough information to support his own column and
Arthur’s news file. Most of the time you can’t prise Arthur out of the bar here. We don’t live here – even Troy Newspapers can’t afford that – but we might just
as well. It has its pluses – anyone who’s anyone passes through here eventually – and its minuses, in that you can delude yourself that the Saint-Georges Hotel bar is the world.
Until very recently Charlie never fell for that. There was always a world elsewhere for Charlie. True, he drank like a fish, I’ve never met an English reporter that did not, but until last
autumn it never interfered with his work.

‘Last October he was due three weeks’ home leave. He never went home. Charlie’s idea of leave was Spain or Morocco – I never heard of him taking home leave to go home to
England. Perhaps you will say this is just as well – a man living under a cloud. Perhaps he did pick places where no one gave a damn whether he’d spied for Russia or even whether he
still spied for Russia. Last year he chose to go home. He spent his usual ten days in Morocco and then he flew on to England. He visited his mother in Dorset – I gather they had not met in
years – and he spent a weekend in London – I think he might have done the round of his old haunts, but the look on your face, Mr Troy, tells me that you did not see him. Whatever, he
came back a changed man, dejected, angry, less willing to humour the insufferable Arthur, and his interest in the job vanished. I saw it evaporate like a dish of water put out in the noonday sun
for the dog.’