Thunder in the Blood (18 page)

‘He had a bullwhip,’ he whispered, ‘and he lost his temper.’

17

By early evening, I was back at the motel.

I’d spent the rest of the afternoon in Grant’s den, reading passages from his monograph on Beckermann. He’d fed me bits he felt especially proud about, and after a while I’d recognized a pattern in his choice. The stuff I was reading was all similar in tone: long passages of hero-worship, totally uncritical, a breathless, adolescent celebration of what women’s magazines would call ‘machismo’.

In this version, for page after page, our hero had been the US personified: vigorous, inventive, resourceful, fearless. To what degree this was a figment of Grant’s imagination, I didn’t know. The face in the photographs looked far from saintly to me, and the plain fact was that survival in the arms trade demanded sharp elbows and an eye for the main chance. But I could see at once why Beckermann had been so happy to co-operate with Grant’s little hobby. A helping or two of this every week would appeal to anyone’s ego, and if its author also found time to develop a world-beating missile, then so much the better. But why, so suddenly, had the love affair come to an end? What had Grant touched upon to warrant so brutal a divorce?

Before I’d left the house, I’d asked him exactly this question, and when he told me again that he didn’t know, it occurred to me that he might be telling the truth. His conversations with Wesley, in Geneva and afterwards, were surely part of it. Someone in authority in Extec, someone highly placed, must have been notified that Grant Wallace was sharing sensitive information with a foreign journalist. That, after all, was why they’d put pressure on Aldridge, which in turn was why we’d become involved. The word would also have been passed to the US security
authorities, which explained the attentions of our FBI friends.

But none of that need necessarily have reached Grant’s ears. He’d been nervous, certainly, about company gossip. He’d felt isolated, a leper of his own making. But at no time, he said, had anyone spelled it out, and as far as the FBI was concerned, two nights earlier at the restaurant, it had been exactly the same story. Fully expecting trouble, he’d been surprised, and relieved, when they’d noted details of his missing car and simply driven him home.

This was a puzzle – why hadn’t they questioned him about Wesley? – but what still confused me even more were the circumstances of his abrupt departure from Extec. As we left the house, I’d pressed him again. The two issues, I’d said, were surely connected. He and Wesley brooding about the Gulf War. Extec telling him to quit. Cause and effect. Yet even put this way, simple logic, Grant had shaken his head, totally emphatic.

‘Completely different,’ he’d said. ‘No connection whatsoever.’

‘What?’

‘The stuff in Geneva. The stuff with Wesley. What we talked about over there in Fort Worth. All that,’ he shook his head, ‘nothing to do with Extec.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘No. Extec were simply instructed to bid. That’s all. The rest of it stank, sure, but that was national business, Washington business, politicians’ business. Beckermann’s no politician. Ethically, the man would never have stood for it. Never.’

‘Stood for what?’

‘Any kind of pre-war deal. Any kind of fancy concert party. Us and the Iraqis. No, sir.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘So why did they fire you?’

He’d shrugged at this point, eager to end the conversation. ‘It’s the American way,’ he’d said. ‘I was hired to build them a missile. The missile got built. Job’s over. Job’s finished. We all move on.’

‘And Beckermann? The stuff you showed me?’

He’d shrugged again, reaching for the door. ‘Who knows? The upside’s getting as far as I did. Knowing the man was a privilege. I just pushed too far. Hell, we all got a certain amount of patience…’

‘Your fault?’

Grant nodded, loyal to the end. ‘My fault. Anyway, this Iraqi thing’s much more important. I realize that now, meeting Wesley, knowing him. We have to get to the bottom of it. Have to. You read all that stuff of mine? In the case?’

‘Yes.’

‘You see how it all fits?’

‘Sort of.’

‘There, then.’ He’d paused, out on the lawn now. ‘That stuff on the promotional tapes, the videos, Jesus. I’d had my doubts already but it was Wesley really made me see it. The arms business …’ He’d shaken his head, tidying a pile of grass cuttings with his toe, ‘who needs it?’

‘Beckermann?’ I’d suggested, heading for the car.

We’d parted friends, a handshake out on the sidewalk, but I’d realized then just what a shipwreck Grant had become. Much as I liked him, the man was hopelessly out of his depth. He may have been a genius in the electronics lab and he certainly had talents in the archival field, but emotionally he was marooned in early adolescence. I loved his eagerness, his passion, how trustful he was. He had so much to give. What made me sad was the kind of causes he kept adopting for all that guileless enthusiasm. First Beckermann. And now us. Grant Wallace, I concluded, was one of life’s innocents, and watching him wave farewell in the rear-view mirror as I drove away, I’d whispered a silent prayer. People like him deserved to survive.

Back in the motel room, a day later than Stollmann would have liked, I phoned the hotel number he’d given me for Priddy. While the number rang, a phrase of Grant’s kept settling in my head.
‘I pushed too far’,
he’d kept saying, ‘
I know I did’.
What did that mean? And where, exactly, had his conversations with Beckermann led?

The hotel number answered and I bent to the phone, asking for Lawrence Priddy. The hotel switchboard put the call through and there was a longish pause before a woman picked the phone up. An American voice, young. I asked for Priddy again.

‘He’s taking a shower.’

‘Could he call me?’

‘Of course.’

I left my name and the number of the motel and hung up. Half an hour later, the phone woke me up.

‘Sarah? Sarah Moreton?’

I struggled upright. A recurring feature of my brief relationship with Priddy had been situations like these. Not once had I been in the driving seat. Not then. And not now.

‘Me,’ I agreed, rubbing my eyes.

‘Here? In Dallas?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And free this evening?’

I looked at my watch, thinking about the girl who’d answered the phone. Like most politicians, Priddy was rarely without company. And like most politicians, he was never averse to trading up.

‘I’m flattered,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you about eight.’

When I got to the hotel, Priddy was already in the lobby, making a phone call from a booth beside the reception desk. He registered my arrival with the briefest nod, turning his back to me and taking his time with the call. He was wearing slacks and a beautifully cut lightweight jacket. He’d never been fat, but he’d lost a little weight since we last met and it suited him. The flesh on his face looked tauter, better toned, and hours by some pool or other had given him a fetching tan.

‘Nice holiday?’ I enquired when he finally crossed the lobby and extended a languid hand.

He smiled at my little quip, guiding me towards the elevator. Only inside, did I ask where we were going.

‘Dinner,’ he said lightly. ‘Where else?’

The Skyline restaurant occupied most of the top floor of the hotel. From eighteen storeys, the view over Dallas was breathtaking. Priddy had reserved a table in the far corner. He ordered me a large Margarita and a bourbon on the rocks for himself. We toasted his promotion, but when I began to ask him how he felt about it, he shrugged the question aside. Of far greater interest, it seemed, was my own career. What on earth was I doing in Dallas?

‘Just passing through,’ I said. ‘Stopped to see a couple of friends.’

‘Old friends?’

‘Good friends.’

‘Friends who farm you out to a motel?’

‘Had to.’ I smiled at him. ‘Two young kids. Tiny apartment.’

‘Ah,’ Priddy nodded. ‘No room at the inn.’

I accepted the rebuke as I was meant to, with a certain grim amusement, changing the subject as soon as I could. I’d seen the piece in the local newspaper. I was intrigued to know just how demanding these transatlantic junkets really were. Priddy, true to form, ignored the question.

‘How did you know where I was staying?’

‘I phoned the Chamber of Commerce,’ I said. ‘I told them we were friends.’

‘Ah, I was wondering.’

‘About the hotel?’

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘The other bit.’

The meal was quite beyond me. The house sirloin turned out to be larger than the plate, and the accompanying salad would have kept most rabbits going for months. Crunching my way slowly through the ice-cold radishes, I finally managed to stir the beginnings of a proper conversation. Priddy, it turned out, was heading a trade delegation, in the States for ten days. The schedule would take him and his buddies from Dallas, through the Sun Belt, to a handful of important get-togethers in the fleshpots of the San Fernando Valley. In parliamentary parlance, he was factfinding. What that actually meant Priddy never specified, but I got the impression that his pals back in Westminster and Whitehall would – at the very least – expect a report on likely sales outlets for key parts of the British manufacturing sector.

‘Like arms sales?’ I queried.

Priddy looked briefly pained. ‘Must you?’ he said. ‘At this time in the evening?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s a third of what the country lives on, isn’t it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Then I just thought it might crop up.’ I paused. ‘That’s all.’

Priddy studied me a moment.

‘As it happens,’ he said at last, ‘it does.’

I grinned at him. ‘So what’s the commission? Two per cent? Have I got that bit right, too?’

Priddy looked away, saying nothing, wiping his mouth with his napkin. The smile I’d expected wasn’t there.

‘Joke,’ I said, ‘in case you were wondering.’

After dinner, we left the hotel and set out on foot for an open-air nightclub which Priddy had been recommended. The resident group evidently featured a talented slide guitarist and he thought I might enjoy it. I wondered for a moment whether he knew what a slide guitar was, but I decided I wouldn’t pursue it. He’d never before expressed the remotest interest in what I might like, and I was impressed, as well as wary.

En route, at his suggestion, we made a three-block detour, emerging at a street corner beside a tall, pre-war building. Across the street was an area of grass, and further down, a railroad bridge. A train was crossing the bridge, an endless succession of freight wagons, and I was still watching them when Priddy touched my arm.

‘Over there,’ he said softly.

‘Where?’

‘There.’

I followed his pointing finger. Where the bridge crossed the road, there was a grassy hillock. The road curved away beneath it, disappearing under the clanking line of wagons. I glanced back at Priddy.

‘Nineteen sixty-three,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you were even born.’

‘Barely,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘They shot Jack Kennedy from there,’ he said.

I frowned, looking around again, newly curious. I knew as much as anyone my age about the Dallas assassination. I knew about Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. I knew, too, about all the conspiracy theories, the conviction in some quarters that the whole thing could have been cooked up by big business, or the Mafia, or the CIA. The authorized version said three bullets, in quick succession, from the building behind me. I looked up at it now, then down at the road again, measuring the distance by eye, trying to imagine the motorcade crawling past, the back of the president’s head cross-haired in the telescopic sight. It all seemed feasible enough. I looked again at Priddy.

‘Oswald, wasn’t it?’ I said lightly.

He glanced down at me, genuinely amused, ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘it wasn’t.’

We went to the club. It was over-loud, phoney and awful, a honey-pot for out-of-town visitors with a taste for early deafness. Looking round, I could see no one under thirty, and after two numbers I suggested we could do better elsewhere. Priddy agreed. Our beers were barely touched. We left at once.

Back at the hotel, we went to the bar. By now, for the first time ever, I was beginning to enjoy Priddy’s company. Away from London and the social strait-jacket of Westminster, he was almost human. Two or three times, his guard had begun to slip and although he never began to accept my story about friends and kids and passing through, he gave out a certain charm that wasn’t simply the usual hunt for advantage. Now, with a gentleness I’d never suspected, he reached out and touched my face.

‘Remarkable,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘How little it shows.’

I gazed at him, astonished. ‘What?’ I said again.

‘In your behaviour, I meant. How little it’s affected you. I can see it. It’s there. But you carry it well.’ He paused. ‘And that’s a compliment.’

I looked at him, wanting to believe him. ‘Carry it?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ He leaned forward, across the table. ‘Nasty incident. I’m amazed you survived at all.’

‘You know about all that?’

‘Second hand.’ He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘How?’

He shook his head, refusing to go into details. After a moment or, two’s close attention to his fingernails, he glanced up. ‘So why are you really here?’ he said.

‘I told you. I’m on leave. Vacation.’

He nodded, smothering a yawn, not bothering to comment.

‘That boss of yours,’ he said. ‘Eric Stollmann.’

I blinked. ‘Yes?’

‘He’s either very brave. Or very foolish.’

I frowned. Neither word, in my experience, was remotely applicable to Stollmann. And anyway, who was Priddy to pass judgement?

‘I’m not sure I like that,’ I said. ‘It sounds like a warning.’

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘just a spot of friendly advice.’

‘Why would I need that?’

‘Because …’ he sighed, toying with his second bourbon, ‘these things can be more complicated than you might think. You’re in deep enough as it is. Just be careful. That’s all. I’d hate…’ He touched his own face, just below his ear, a gesture rich in implications.