Thunder in the Blood (16 page)

Up on the eighth floor, I found Wesley’s room guarded by a tall, wiry-looking man in a lightweight Stayprest suit. He was heavily tanned, with an enormous Burt Reynolds moustache and I sensed at once that he knew who I was. I paused outside my room, inserting the key in the lock.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Yes?’

‘Miss Moreton?’

‘Yes.’

‘A word?’

‘Of course.’

I unlocked the door and began to turn the handle, but the man in the suit stepped in front of me, flipping open a small leather wallet. Inside the wallet was an FBI photocard and I paused briefly on the way past him, inspecting it. His name was Pedernales. I glanced up at him, managing a brief, cold smile, and went on into the room.

The room was a shambles. The bed had been stripped and the sheets were still bundled roughly on the floor where they’d fallen. The drawers in the vanity unit were all out and the inside of the closet, where I’d hung my handful of dresses, looked like a battlefield. Only my case, oddly enough, appeared to be untouched. I walked across and began to unlock it. I pack in a particular way, very methodically, bulky stuff like woollens at the bottom, knick-knacks on top. I opened the case and found myself looking at my one and only pullover, the one I’d brought over in case it got chilly.

‘Who’s been through this?’ I said. ‘You?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘This.’ I nodded at the case. ‘Your work? Friends of yours?’

I looked at him. Agent Pedernales had no intention of answering the question. Instead, he’d produced a clear polythene bag, the kind the scenes-of-crime people use. It was sealed at the open end, and he held it out between two fingers for my inspection. Inside, plainly visible, was a green book of matches. On the matches, embossed in gold letters, it said ‘El Mesón’.

‘We understand you’re with one of those UK intelligence services, ma’am.’

‘That’s right, MI5.’

‘Good.’ The smile did nothing for the coldness in his eyes. ‘Then you’ll understand the rules of evidence.’

‘Evidence?’

He nodded. ‘Arson, ma’am. A Federal offence.’

He hesitated a moment, not bothering to qualify the phrase, then he turned on his heel and began to leave. When he got to the door, I broke the silence.

‘You get what you wanted?’ I said. ‘From the case?’

Pedernales paused in the doorway, scarcely bothering to glance back. ‘Only prints,’ he said. ‘But that’s plenty enough.’

Wesley let me in on the first knock. Pedernales, his message delivered, had disappeared. I shut the door behind me and locked it. When I turned round, Wesley was standing on the carpet in his bare feet semaphoring a message about hidden microphones. He was wearing a pair of silk boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He looked like something out of Ethiopia. He was incredibly thin. I nodded, an indication that I understood about the microphones,
and followed him into the bathroom. He turned on both taps in the handbasin, then the shower. When he was happy with the noise level, he shut the door. Through the steam, he looked paler than ever.

‘You get Grant’s case?’ he mouthed.

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Dunno.’

‘
What
?’ he peered at me.

I beckoned him closer, up on tiptoes, my mouth to his ear. ‘Haven’t read it,’ I hissed, ‘not all of it. Not yet.’

Wesley stared down at me, shaking his head. Then he opened a cupboard over the handbasin and took something off the top shelf. He gave it to me. It was grey, about three inches long, studded with push buttons. You use it in conjunction with a telephone answering machine, phoning your own number from wherever, and sending a special tone via a tiny speaker down the line. The tone does something magic to the recorded tape and the tape plays back to you. I have one myself, though I’ve never used it.

Wesley was still looking at me. ‘You know what it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘You good on numbers? Remembering them?’

I nodded. ‘Terrific,’ I whispered. ‘Years of practice.’

Wesley looked at me again, then grinned, wetting a finger, very theatrical, and writing a number in the condensation on the mirror.

‘Got it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’ll leave a message. As soon as I get back. Stuff you should know about. Names. Some more numbers.’

‘Why not write them down? Give them to me now?’

‘Too risky.’ He shook his head, emphatic. ‘These bastards’ll search you. They’ve turned me over already. Twice. Grant, too, before they took him away.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Try and find him. Tomorrow.’

‘OK.’ Grant’s address was in the attaché case, neatly typed on the Sun Valley Arms Corp invoice. I looked at Wesley. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing. Until I get back.’

His eyes returned to the mirror, and I took a final look, making sure I’d got it right, before reaching for the tiny wafer of soap in the basin. Wesley watched me working the lather carefully round the numbers. When they’d quite disappeared, he frowned.

‘I was going to wipe it off,’ he said crossly. ‘I’m not that fucking ill.’

I smiled at him, reaching up again, kissing him on the cheek, genuine affection. There was still lots of condensation on the bottom of the mirror, more than enough for my brief message. ‘I need to use your phone,’ I wrote carefully. ‘Yes or no?’

Stollmann, as ever, was brief. He gave me the name of a hotel in downtown Dallas and a room number. He told me to stay in the States as long as I thought it worthwhile and confirmed he’d cover my costs. Only at the end of the conversation did we return to the subject of the Dallas hotel.

‘Room 891,’ I mused. ‘Who would that be?’

‘What?’

‘This hotel. The Statler.’

There was a brief pause. Then Stollmann was back. ‘Your friend, of course,’ he said. ‘Our Mr Priddy.’

I stayed with Wesley until the time came to check in for the flight back. I laid him on the bed, coaxed him out of his T-shirt and retrieved my case from the room next door. In my wash bag, I keep a small selection of body oils, stuff I’ve picked up from here and there. I use them occasionally at Charlie’s, trying to apply what little I’ve learned about physiotherapy and other hands-on treatments. There’s a school of thought that says that body massage can sometimes help people like Wesley, toning flabby muscles, helping circulation, giving a little lift to the immune system. I explained the theory as best I could, ignoring his protests, reminding him that the journey back would be no joke.

‘Got to get you into shape,’ I said, kneeling over him. ‘Got to get you fit again.’

Wesley looked up at me, one huge eye, his face flat on the pillow, shivering with cold despite the columns of hot air ducting up from the radiators. His flesh tone was awful, one shade off grey, and bones protruded everywhere.

‘I was never beautiful,’ he muttered, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘No?’

‘No. Fucking active. But nothing to look at.’

I bent over him, hands flat on his back, the tips of my fingers working the muscle paths away from his long spinal column.

‘You sleep with Grant?’ I said. ‘In Geneva?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Properly?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what he wanted.’

‘What did he want?’

He shook his head, not eager to tell me, and I left it at that for a minute or two, letting him make up his own mind, not pushing, not wanting to intrude.

At length he smiled, turning over, oblivious to the erection I’d stirred. ‘He wanted a cuddle,’ he said, ‘nothing else.’

I looked down at him. ‘And did you oblige?’

He nodded, gazing at the ceiling, thoughtful. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I did. Poor bastard. Felt sorry for him.’

‘And you? Now?’

‘Yeah,’ he said again, ‘if you’re offering.’

16

Wesley’s flight left at half past eight that night. From a distant parking lot, I watched the lights of the Jumbo lifting off, then I retrieved the bags from the lock-up, returned to the Chrysler and took the freeway towards Dallas. On the outskirts of the city, I found a tiny motel and booked in. I bought Chinese food from a take-away across the street and double-locked the door of the motel room. Cross-legged on the bed, a carton of noodles on my lap, I was ready, at last, for a proper trawl through Grant Wallace’s files.

There were seven in all, six devoted to an analysis of the period between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the chill, moonless night six months later when the first waves of Allied bombers took the war back to Saddam. Grant had organized the account with great care, one month per file. Each file was prefaced with a typed chronology, a day-by-day record of who was doing what. Attached to the chronology were thick sheaves of newsprint – cuttings from papers, whole articles from magazines, even the odd abstract from the weightier specialist publications – and these provided back-up, sourcing quotations, amplifying key events, offering glimpse after glimpse of the national mood as George Bush tugged America to war. As a feat of archival research, Grant’s files were a revelation. His organizational skills were faultless. He seemed to have a natural eye for detail. He was scrupulous, painstaking and extraordinarily neat. Curzon House would have given him a job for life.

In the motel room, I spread the files on the carpet beside the bed, going through them one after the other, looking for the small print behind the headlines, the tiny bits of evidence that would tell me whether or not Wesley’s thesis deserved any more of Stollmann’s precious budget.

November, it seemed, had been the key date, the hinge on the door that led to war. August, September and October, the months immediately following the invasion, Bush had spent in furious consultation: with his allies abroad, with his cabinet, with his generals, with Congress. At first glance, the circle had seemed impossible to square. The State Department – the diplomats – favoured sanctions; the Pentagon argued for war, but with an overwhelming concentration of force. The latter would cost a fortune, both in money and in blood. The money, oddly enough, proved no problem. The hat went round the international community and came back brimming with foreign dollars. But the projected body count, the real cost to America, went up and up. As the Pentagon talked gravely about ‘Iraqi capabilities’ – their million-strong army, their world-class artillery, their stocks of chemical weapons, their ultra-modern air force – so the risks multiplied.

On 11 October, according to Grant Wallace, General Schwarzkopf had sent his first attack plan back to George Bush in Washington. Phase Four of the attack, codenamed Night Camel, drove a three-pronged assault towards Kuwait City. US Marines would storm ashore from the east, US armour would push up from the south, while Egyptian units took on the Iraqis from the west. It was a textbook plan and it included a number of important footnotes. One of them anticipated heavy casualties from prolonged artillery duels. Success would mean the liberation of Kuwait City, but only at the price of 20,000 American deaths.

Bush rejected the plan, horrified, but there were other predictions, equally grave, each painstakingly detailed in Grant’s files. On the best available information, Washington’s Center for Defense Information was warning of 10,000 US deaths, with a further 3 5,000 casualties; the Brookings Institute, 10,000 deaths, with unspecified casualties; while the Pentagon itself, having taken another look at the Iraqis, talked of a worst-case figure of 30,000 Americans dying in just twenty days’ fighting. This, Grant pointed out in a pencilled aside, would be a disaster of Vietnam proportions, a national wound too deep for any president to survive.

I looked again at the first file. There seemed little doubt that George Bush, early on, had made up his mind to go to war. On 15 August, with the crisis barely two weeks old, he’d begun to
compare Saddam to Hitler. The parallels were clear. Both men had grabbed without asking. The lessons were therefore equally clear. Only force, in the end, would stop them.

Thus, within a month, there were thousands of US Marines in Saudi Arabia, plus fighter bombers, plus offshore carrier attack groups. A force of this size, Grant had noted, was certainly large enough to defend King Fahd, yet within weeks George Bush had accepted the need for more. On 25 October the Pentagon had requested nearly half a million troops. Five days later, at a meeting in the White House, Bush had said yes. Sanctions were now ruled out. The war would now take place at some point between 1 January and 15 February 1991.

I looked up a moment, memorizing the date of that crucial White House meeting, 30 October 1990. Bush had delayed making the decision public for a further week, not wanting to sour the mid-term congressional elections, but that wasn’t the point. The point was what happened next. With the growing certainty of war, Bush had been left in no doubt about the lack of popular support. Within ten days, presidential approval was at an all-time low. American boys weren’t ready to sacrifice themselves for cheap oil. ‘No, no, we won’t go’ went the cry in a dozen big-city rallies, ‘we won’t die for Texaco’.

The vehemence of the protests sobered Bush. They might even cost him the next election. So how on earth was he going to pull it off? How was he going to launch a major war, hammer the Iraqis, liberate Kuwait and avoid spilling more than a thimbleful of American blood?

Wesley’s answer was simple. Given the pressures, given the military odds, given the popular mood back home, George Bush would do what any politician in a corner would do: he’d look for a deal. Not in Washington. Not in Riyadh. But in Baghdad. This was the core of it. This was what we had to believe. This was what we’d been debating so endlessly. Wesley in absolutely no doubt about what had really happened. I thought about it now, cross-legged on the cheap nylon bedspread, trying to test Wesley’s furious convictions against the cold facts listed in Grant’s files.

By mid-November, Bush was half-way to assembling a huge striking force in the Persian Gulf. Regardless of all the hype about
Iraqi prowess, he knew that Saddam would be outgunned. He wouldn’t be helpless, he’d certainly fight back, there’d probably be heavy casualties, but no way could he win. That was the strength of the hand Bush had to play. Every week that passed, every next planeload of troops and equipment that thundered into Saudi Arabia, lengthened the odds against Saddam. Saddam was no fool. Saddam knew those odds. So what would he do? What would bring him to the table?

I smiled, thinking of Wesley again, wedged against the window on the flight over, fuelled by three hours of steady drinking, his dinner-tray untouched on the seat-back table. We’d talked about a pre-war deal then, Wesley patiently explaining its merits. For Bush, it was obvious. Even I could see it. He’d win. He’d be a war hero. He’d keep his people behind him. He’d stay in power. But what about Saddam? What was in it for him?

‘Exactly the same,’ Wesley had said, ‘word for fucking word.’

I’d frowned at the time, not fully understanding the logic, but now, thanks to Grant, it was infinitely clearer.

The proof, if that’s what I needed, was in the back of the sixth file. There was a whole section, marked
POST WAR
in carefully formed capitals, very Grant Wallace. Inside, he’d simply detailed what had happened at the war’s end, 28 February 1991, the wreckage still smouldering on the Basra Road, the flags out all over Washington. While Bush had talked of drawing lines in the sand and standing up to naked aggression, Saddam had simply left the last word to Radio Baghdad. ‘Iraq has fought, stood fast and triumphed,’ they announced, ‘it was a victory for our people, and for our President Saddam Hussein. Iraq is master of the whole land, and leader of the Muslims in the whole world.’

I looked up a minute, my finger in the text, thinking about the charred Iraqi faces in the Extec video. Victory? Triumph? Then I remembered Wesley on the plane again, musing aloud about Saddam and what the Americans had been able to do for him. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he’d stood up against the big guys. He’d survived the most intense air campaign in history, and when the ground war started, he’d survived that, too. The most powerful alliance on earth had been sent to squash him flat, and it had failed. He was back in Baghdad. He was physically untouched. And even the Americans had to admit that
he was still – absolutely – in charge. The guy was alive and well and busy shooting his own people again. By surviving, he’d won.

‘You think that’s luck?’ Wesley had asked me. ‘Some fucking coincidence? You don’t think they had a little chat beforehand? Sorted one or two things out? Saved themselves a lot of grief?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You don’t think it’s amazing? All those guys surviving? All those American kids? And then Saddam himself?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘and neither do you.’

‘No,’ he’d agreed, ‘I don’t. But it might be worth finding out. Don’t you think?’

The memory of the end of that conversation had lingered. Wesley was half-way home now. Soon, I’d have to phone him. I glanced at my watch, trying to calculate the time in England, wondering when he’d be able to record whatever message it was he wanted me to pick up. Then I turned back to the litter of newsprint on the carpet, reaching for the last of the files. Unlike the other six, there was nothing on the cover, no date. I opened it. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. It was headed
HAROLD J. BECKERMANN
. I paused, remembering the name from the newspaper piece about Priddy. Beckermann had been one of the two sponsors of the reception he’d attended. In the photograph, he’d had his back to the camera: bald head, thick neck and a rather loud jacket. I bent to the file again, realizing for the first time that I was looking at a press handout. At the bottom, beneath the copy, a discreet line of text read ‘Extec. Excellence in Technology’.

I read the copy. Extec were announcing the retirement of Harold J. Beckermann. The tone of the piece was almost reverential. Beckermann had steered the company from oblivion to glory. He’d taken it from a back-lot computer software operation in deepest Alabama to the cutting edge of the American defence industry. En route, he’d won the affection of his workforce, the respect of his peers and a multi-million dollar take-over by the Dallas-based Texcal Corporation. Under the wing of Texcal, Extec had flourished as never before. In this giddy rise, Texcal’s money had certainly been a factor, but the real laurels, said the handout, belonged to Beckermann. He was the one who’d raised the stakes in the laser-designation game. He was the one who’d prised open all those foreign markets. And he was the one
who’d now put a large slice of the company’s fortunes into
Scarab.
The latter already looked a winner, and in a closing quote Beckermann himself drew a folksy parallel between the new weapon and his own career. ‘Takes one homing missile to recognize another,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure we’re both on target.’ Quite where Harold was headed next wasn’t clear, but there seemed little doubt that he’d end his days in some style. As a parting token of their gratitude and affection, the Extec board had voted Harold J. Beckermann Honorary President-for-Life.

I put the handout to one side, wondering where it belonged in Grant Wallace’s research. There was nothing else in the file, no pencilled notes, no magazine articles, just the bare bones of the man’s career, larded with superlatives. I reached for the copy of the
Dallas Star-Courier
for a moment, and studied the photograph again. Priddy, I knew, was at least six feet, but Beckermann looked almost a clear head taller, wide shoulders, spare frame. Without seeing his face, it was difficult to form any other judgements, but Priddy, at least, looked impressed. He was laughing at some joke or other, and for once the smile seemed genuine, even eager.

I looked at it a moment longer, remembering the newspaper report I’d read back in the spring, the announcement of Priddy’s promotion. Now, according to the
Dallas Star-Courier,
Lawrence Priddy was ‘a high-flying young minister… tipped for the top’, and I tried to imagine him picking up the paper and tucking it into his briefcase, yet more evidence that he was heading, inexorably, for a seat at the cabinet table. That, I knew, was the motor that drove him on, and I was still thinking about it an hour later when, showered and changed, I finally dropped off to sleep.

Next morning, later than I’d planned, I phoned the UK number Wesley had made me remember. There were the usual clicks and buzzes, then I heard an answering machine engage. Wesley’s voice came on the tape. He sounded tired to the point of exhaustion. He wasted no time on small talk, but addressed me by name, telling me to get in touch with a friend of his in Washington. The man’s name was Jake McGrath. He was a working journalist who lived in a Washington suburb called Silver Spring. He knew a great deal about the defence industry, probably more than any other journo in DC. The guy was a mine of information and
there was little that a bottle of bourbon and a little patience wouldn’t unlock.

At the end of the tape, after McGrath’s address and telephone number, Wesley instructed me to acknowledge. Once I’d picked this message up, there’d be others. It was a little piece of MI5 subterfuge. I was to think of it as our very own dead-letter box. I, too, could leave messages on the tape, and he’d pick them up by calling in. The number wasn’t anywhere near Guildford, but he’d check it regularly. If I wanted to short-circuit the system, all I had to do when leaving a message was ask for Connie. Connie was monitoring all incoming calls. She could hear what was going down on the tape. She was a little gem. He’d trust her with his life. I heard Wesley stifling a tired laugh, then he was gone, leaving me to say I’d called.

‘Bye,’ I said awkwardly, ‘hope you’re OK.’

An hour later, dressed at last, I was back at the wheel of the Chrysler, picking my way through the Dallas suburbs, looking for Grant Wallace. I had the address from the Sun Valley invoice. Two attempts to charm his unlisted number from directory assistance had both failed, but in any case I sensed it would be better to talk face to face. I hadn’t a clue what had happened to him after I’d removed his car from the restaurant but the least I owed him was an apology.