The Professor of Truth (32 page)

“What you teach?”

“Literature. I teach English Literature.”

“Books?” Parroulet said. “I don’t know books. I know what is a mechanic. I know what is a priest, a baker, electrician. But books? How do you teach books? It is just so many words. Like noise on paper.”

I said nothing, because there seemed no point, but he repeated himself, “Like noise on paper, is all a book is,” and so I said, “Yes, you’re right. That’s a good description. And I teach how to pick out the words from the noise, how to make sense of particular words, or words used in a particular way by a particular writer. I try to teach my students about life through books. Is that so hard to understand?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. What is this ‘particular’? Life
is not in a book. Maybe you think life is like a book. Maybe you think a book is like life. You think this?”

I drew breath, to try to explain, but the breath was enough for him.

“We are different,” he said. “That is all. Well, okay. One day, in
my
life, a change happen. The police come, the island police and your police, and they ask questions of many drivers. Me also. They take me away from others. They say I can help them.

“They tell me this story. Well, we all know about the bombing. It is big world story and this is what we do, taxi drivers, we read news, we hear news, we talk news. They say the bomb start from there, on the island. It is incredible. We never hear this before. But it is possible, why not? It must start from some place.

“You know they show me pictures, many pictures. Arabs, Africans, Turkish, French. The police come again and again. Look, they say, look, look, look. I look till I cannot see. They show me Khalil Khazar. They do not say but I know it is him they want. They say, you can make justice, help us. They say, no pressure, no pressure.” He puffed dismissively. “They say, we know what he did, so help us. Sometimes they come with other men, Americans. One time Americans come themselves. They say, if you help us we help you. What you want, Martin? You want to help us? What you want?”

He was becoming agitated, speaking more quickly although not loudly. His hand encased the cat but I think he had forgotten it was there.

“What did you want?” I said.

“Do you know what is pressure?” he said. “You know about that? I say something, they catch it in their hand. They show it to me. This is the thing you give us, Martin, but last week it is different. Today you say it another way. So, this way or that way? Now say it again. So I try, and I learn what it is to say. Martin, you are hero, they tell me, you are the guy. I say no, I am not hero. Yes, they say, because you know this man, you identify him. But they have shown me many photographs and get me to tell story many times, so now I’m not so sure again. First I give them wrong man, then later they show me more pictures and I give them right man. How can I be sure what is right man? The man I see, or the man they want? It is one year ago. It is five years. How can you remember all this years ago? So they leave me alone for some time but then they come back. Always they are nice to me, they give me wine and meals. But I am afraid, because men have come from Khazar’s country, very polite but they say don’t talk to police, we will treat you very well. Whatever you like, you can have. I tell this to police, they say, don’t worry, we will protect you. I say how? Protect me how? You pay me? You look after me? They say, we don’t make promise like that but you will be okay. They tell me there is reward, a lot of dollar. The Americans, not the police. I say, what is it for, this money? To protect me? They tell me it is for tell truth about Khazar. It is him they want. I go to police again, I ask if I get reward if I testify. They say we can’t promise nothing, but you will be okay if Khazar is guilty. So if he is not guilty, then what? He is guilty, they say, you just say what you know and he is guilty. Then I say, his friends, people from his country,
they will see me and know it is me who send him to the prison. They will come after me. What they will do to me if I point at him and say, that is him? This is very big deal, yes? Maybe they will kill me. The police say, it is not you only, there are other witnesses, they cannot blame you only. And anyway we will keep you safe, give you change of name, new place to live if you want that. So I say, you want me to do this, and for what? To end my life as it is, to change for ever? We will protect you, they say. And if I do this, I say, then I get big money? This is my question. Because this is big deal they ask. Martin, we don’t promise, they say, but there is a way of looking, you know, when you say a thing, that is the way they look. And I know, and they know, I won’t do it otherwise. I am not mad.

“And now Khazar and the other man …” He stopped, searching for the name, and I supplied it. “Yes, Waleed Mahmed, they are waiting for trial, they are in custody, it is going to happen, and it is ten years, twelve years ago, and I cannot remember all little things from then. Mahmed, I never see him, he is nothing to do with me, but Khazar—all I know, it is Khazar they want. The police say it’s okay, we will help with your memory. Here, this is what you tell us before. All my statements they bring to me, but they say forget this, forget this, only remember this. It is this day, remember, it is this picture, it is this time, remember. My head is so full of everything, it is so long ago, I am confuse. So I think it is better to be safe and say, I don’t know.

“But somehow they know this, what I am thinking, it is in my eyes maybe, and so they come back and this time they are
not so nice. They are a little angry. Martin, they say, we have spend all this time with you, we have promise good things for you, but you must give us something back or we cannot help you. Why you are go back on your word? I say I do not go back on my word, I make no promise. They say, but you will be in court, you must say what you have tell us which is the truth, and if you tell a lie
you
will go to prison for a long time. This make me very afraid. I know they are threaten me even though soon after they are smiling again. They say, look, you are a special person because we need you so we can make sure Khazar is found guilty. He is part of a bigger thing but we cannot tell you about that. I say, what thing? They say, we cannot tell you about it. There are other men like him, he is not alone. They will make more bombs, we cannot arrest these men because we don’t have proof against them but if we get Khazar the things they are planning will not happen. Khazar, he is the one of them all that must not get away.”

He was no longer speaking to me. He was speaking to himself. He sounded like a man running over in his head hours and hours of interviews, years of them, a man drowning in statements and corrections to statements, and always what had kept him surfacing must have been the promise of reward, the possibility of escape not just from the island and his life there but from the endless questions and answers, the evidence, the trial itself. If he could just get through to the end, it would all be over, and he could be somewhere else, a new and different man.
He
could get away. That had been his hope, I thought, watching his worried mouth and hearing his convoluted speech. That had been his hope and his plan, and it had failed.

There was something in his words—
the one of them all that must not get away—
that was like an echo coming right round the world at me. Something Nilsen had said.

“So,” Parroulet said, “you know what happen. I am in court, in witness box. I can trust no one but I know one thing: if I do what police tell me I have something with them, a deal, a bargain. The other side? I have nothing, only fear. So I make up my mind. I have to stick to my story, tell it like it is. I can’t go back now. There is the man, Khazar. It is him they want. It is him I drive to the airport. It is him I see with the suitcase. It is him I see without the suitcase. This is the story. And you know, they never tell me it is only my word that send him to jail. They always say, before trial, there is other witnesses, there is other evidence. Hard evidence, they tell me. But this is not true. It is only … circumstantial. It is me against Khazar. They make me stand up and it is me alone.”

I remembered my conversation with Khazar in prison. His lawyers had advised him not to take the stand. You will not mean to, they’d said, but you may incriminate yourself. Leave it to the prosecution to prove that you are guilty. It is not for you or us to make their task any easier. And Khazar had told me, speaking of Parroulet, that when he heard him describing the taxi journey, when he saw him pointing, saying, “That is the man,” he wanted to defend himself, to speak out, to declare his innocence, to say, “This man who accuses me, I have never seen him before in my life,” but fighting against himself he heeded his lawyers’ warnings and held his peace. And how deeply he regretted that, since
the lawyers had failed to protect him as they had promised they would.

But then, Khazar had admitted, he could not altogether blame them. His solicitor had told him all along, “Do not surrender yourself for trial. It is not possible for you to receive a fair trial.” He had listened, and been half-persuaded, because the solicitor was an honest and decent man. But everybody else had said he should go. The government of his country—and it was not to be argued with—had told him to go, to clear not only his own name but that of the country. He would be home in a year, they said, a hero of the nation. He did not want to be a hero, but he wanted to clear his name. So he went. It was out of his hands. It was not to do with the actions of men. Everything was in the hands of God—the God both Martin Parroulet and I thought was dead.

I looked at Parroulet, with his big hand clutching the now dozing cat, and his thin hair cruelly illuminated by the lamplight, and I thought of Khazar behind the bulletproof glass, quiet and dignified and intent on the proceedings, sometimes donning headphones to hear in Arabic what was being said—and I saw them as I had not seen them then, as two men who did not wish to be heroes, who were not heroes, forced unarmed into an arena against armoured giants. What chance, really, had either of them had?

Parroulet had lapsed into silence, and in the space what Nilsen had said came back to me.
If one got away … it wouldn’t be … forgivable
. And then,
we had motivation too. Everyone had motivation
. And I understood, there in that half-lit room in Parroulet’s supposed sanctuary, I understood—not for the
first time because I’d been through this so often before, but clearer than I’d ever seen it—the meaning of Nilsen’s words. Nilsen hadn’t, of course, told me the whole truth. He hadn’t
levelled
with me. He’d hinted at it and then veered away because even then, so close to his own death, he couldn’t bring himself to admit what the real motivation was. He couldn’t give me that one thing, not straight into my hands, though it had been sitting there between us. He’d made me come to Parroulet so that I’d know for sure. One
had
got away. The agent in Germany, working undercover in the terrorist cell, had helped to make bombs and one of them had got away. It was constructed using a barometric timer and it was taken from Germany, probably overland, and by ferry to England, and then in its suitcase it got through the security system at Heathrow, in fact it bypassed the security checks entirely because somebody had a pass to the baggage-handling area, and there it was loaded on to the flight. The bomb that killed Emily and Alice and all those people. No wonder when Nilsen’s people realised what had happened they did everything possible to undo the narrative and reconstruct it.
If one got away
 … It wasn’t a question of “if.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, as much of one as I’d ever get from someone with knowledge, of what had happened.

I saw this, and I saw too that whatever I could or could not persuade Parroulet to do, to tell me something in confidence or to make a public statement of some sort, that deep, deep truth would never come out. It would never be verified because it was not verifiable. It was a truth that would only ever be in the domain of conspiracy theorists, where it
could be entertained, derided, dismissed, but never proved. I saw this and I heard George Braithwaite warning me that I might be disappointed if I ever met the truth, and I thought, this is as close, now, here, as I will ever get.

I looked at Parroulet and for the first time I felt something for him that was not disdain or disappointment. I felt sympathy.

He spoke again. He seemed to have come back, more or less, to the present. “So it is finish,” he said. “Khazar is guilty. I go to police. Now protect me, I say. Now pay me. Ah, they say, but Khazar will appeal. I get very angry then. They see this. They say, don’t worry, Martin, but I worry. How I can eat, how I can live? I cannot drive taxi now, it is too much public, too dangerous. To sit in a car with some man in back I don’t know—after what I say in court how I can do that day after day? How I can look always in mirror to see what is going to happen? How I can look over my shoulder everywhere I go? They say, be calm, Martin, this will be soon over, you will be safe. And the Americans make plans for me. To find a country that will take me, a country where I want to go. They make papers for me. I will be other person. Everything is ready, they say. Another year pass. They give me some money so I can live but it is not enough. Why I am being punish for doing what they tell me?

“Then one day the appeal of Khazar happen. The judges reject it. It is the end for him. The next day Americans say, now, Martin, you can go. I do not believe them, but actually it is true. They give me air ticket, place to stay here when
I come, in Melbourne, they give me bank account, plastic card, cheque book in name of Parr. Soon, they say, the money will be there. And one day it is. Incredible. It is only numbers on a screen but I try to take out some money and it works! I take out more. For a few days, a few months, I think at last yes, I can live again. All this money. And I meet Kim. Yes, for a year life is good.”

He had been taking occasional sips of beer while he spoke. Now he drained the tin, crushed it in his hand and dropped it. He lowered his foot to the floor and moved forward, and gently laid the cat in the deep part of the chair where he had been sitting. The animal made a small protest and tried to struggle up, but then, evidently exhausted, lay still. Parroulet stood, pausing for a moment to get his balance.