The Passenger

by Chris Petit

  Each snapshot was a moment of private history he was never meant to see. Among them: two middle-aged women tourists, bags over their shoulders, stood self-consciously to attention before the Trevi Fountain; a group of what he supposed were students, to judge by their sweatshirt logos, clambering on a sofa and mugging to camera; a soulful teenage girl whose sultry look must have been for her boyfriend taking the picture; a couple of babies notable for their unselfconscious belligerence. So it went on. Landscapes. Travel shots. A set of mildly risqué pictures of a woman posed topless on a hotel bed.

  None of his son.

  Sheehan made him go through everything twice. He seemed desperate, urgent and keen to humiliate. Collard applied himself to the pointless task. He suspected Sheehan was taking it out on him because someone higher up was on his back.

  Eventually he gave up, saying, ‘This is a waste of time. There’s nothing here. Can you tell me what sense there is to any of this?’

  ‘There were 259 people on that plane and they’re dead. There were others who were supposed to have been on the plane but weren’t, you and your son included. Maybe there were people who shouldn’t have been on the plane but were. I’m an exasperated man, Mr Collard, and getting shorter-tempered by the minute.’

  Sheehan’s hostile stare was broken by Parker returning with a list of further luggage and its contents.

  ‘Look at this and tell me if anything is yours or your son’s,’ Sheehan said.

  Collard’s resistance was sapped by the display of orphaned belongings, more harrowing than the random devastation outside for having been collected together.

  The listed contents of a Samsonite suitcase included a man’s suit, grey, and three plain shirts, two white, one blue, long-sleeved, regular button cuffs. They might have been his.

  He shrugged, helpless. Everything was so divorced and unconnected.

  Sheehan continued to regard him in an unreadable way.

  ‘Where are these bags?’ Collard asked.

  ‘With forensics.’

  Sheehan studied Collard like a man setting his sights.

  ‘Did you or your son own or travel with a radio-cassette player?’

  ‘Not me. I can’t answer for Nick.’

  ‘A Toshiba. Something called a Bombeat.’

  Collard looked for signs of irony and found none.

  ‘Bombeat? Is this terrorist humour?’

  The unfunny Parker smirked.

  On Nick’s behalf, Collard denied him owning a Toshiba Bombeat.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Parker asked.

  ‘Nick’s pretty cool. Toshiba isn’t.’

  He laughed in astonishment when Sheehan put it to him that he had broken his journey because he had been warned by his son.

  ‘Well, I can put an end to that idea – far from warning me, he was warned himself.’

  He enjoyed their bewilderment.

  ‘An old man accosted us at Frankfurt airport.’

  Collard had noticed him wandering around the terminal muttering and trying to talk to people.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Old. Silver hair and tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a long black coat and a homburg, like someone from another age. He could have been a diplomat except his clothes were too threadbare. He seemed confused – I thought he was drunk.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I noticed him talking to Nick in a bookshop across the hall. Soon after that the old man approached me and asked if I was taking the London flight to New York.’

  Collard remembered the embarrassment of being singled out. The old man had seemed deranged. Collard recalled the face very clearly: unnaturally pale and finely boned, with fishy eyes, the overall effect austere and forbidding. The man’s throat made a strange click when he spoke. The accent wasn’t quite anywhere.

  The mildly surreal quality of airports had contributed to the strangeness of the episode and the old man seemed to be having trouble deciding what was real.

  He had said something in Latin. Sapiens qui prospicit. It sounded vaguely familiar but by then Collard had decided the man was either mad or ill.

  ‘Nick and I talked about him and he said the old man had told him the plane from London was going to crash.’

  Sheehan’s patience was being tested.

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this earlier?’

  ‘We didn’t believe a word he was saying. He was just some old drunk man.’

  ‘But you changed your flight.’

  ‘Not because of that. A business meeting came up. I had no choice.’

  One reason he hadn’t mentioned the old man, or even thought of him, was he could not allow himself to believe the man was right. In reality, the warning had left him nervous – that private, suppressed fear shared by everyone in the terminal that the unthinkable might happen – and Nick laughed at that. Collard had let it go, his anxiety curbed by the fear of appearing foolish to his cool young son he felt he hardly knew. He still refused to believe he had altered his plans because of this knowledge.

  Now he didn’t know what to make of the old man’s warning or Nick’s reaction, or his own. Had part of him been secretly relieved at the opportunity to change his flight? He had suggested to Nick he stay over too, but Nick wasn’t interested in a delay. He gave a strange laugh and said he would take his chances. It seemed almost a point of principle that he flew despite the warning. But whenever Collard caught a glimpse of him in the odd unguarded moment the bravura was absent and he saw instead something he could not identify: yearning, almost, and anxiety, tempered by something much deeper that he thought was sadness and a fear of the future.

  He mentioned nothing of these anxieties because for Sheehan it seemed like Nick was a blank page waiting to be filled in.

  They went back to Sheehan’s office. Parker skulked in the background. Collard was given more pictures to look at, taken by security cameras in the Frankfurt terminal on the day of the crash. He saw Nick. He saw himself. He saw them standing behind Khaled in the passport queue.

  Each picture had the date and time stamped on it. They were black-and-white images of milky quality.

  There was no sign of the old man. It was almost as if he had been airbrushed out.

  All Collard could do was repeat what he had seen and what Nick had told him.

  ‘Nick must have taken the old man’s warning seriously after all and changed his mind at the last minute.’

  Sheehan shook his head.

  ‘His name would be on the passenger list.’

  ‘He was on the flight from Frankfurt. Why wasn’t he listed on that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think. The Lebanese kid, Khaled, was the patsy. Your boy didn’t get on the plane because he gave the Toshiba to Khaled, meaning he knew, and he passed on the warning to you because he didn’t quite have the heart to blow up his father. You worked that one out, which is why you made up the story about the old man.’

  Sheehan was granting him an ingenuity he didn’t possess. Collard pointed at the photographs.

  ‘These are time-lapse pictures. I remember other people there who aren’t in these pictures.’

  He was thinking of a very tall American and his two companions he had noticed and been curious about. The tall man had reminded him of Gene Hackman and their behaviour alternated between boisterous high-fives and urgent conversation.

  ‘The system’s not infallible,’ Collard went on. ‘The cameras could have missed him. You’re the one making up stories about Nick. You’ve got no proof in any of this.’

  ‘I’ll get it. In the meantime I’m happy for you to prove me wrong.’ Sheehan laughed unexpectedly. Perhaps he was enjoying the contest.

  The second time Charlotte called she told him she was in Plockton. She sounded like she resented him looking for her. He remained upbeat, despite making another exhaustive and fruitless round of phone calls in search of Nick. Charlotte didn’t want to believe Nick might be alive because the pain of accepting his death precluded any re
turn to hope. She admitted as much, describing her time away as a kind of breakdown. She was no believer in miracles and short of being able to see and touch her son she was unable to nurse what might turn out to be false hope.

  He wanted to make her better. But he had no proof to offer, meaning there was little to distinguish his belief from her despair, only a matter of interpretation while the central subject remained elusive.

  Their brief telephone exchanges were like thermal drifts, no more than the slightest breeze of disagreement that would not materialize but would have a cumulative effect. Despite his feeling the calls were driven by his anger and frustration they always remained polite, even courteous.

  He told her to come back. They had to talk about Nick, however difficult that might be. She told him she would be there for the memorial service.

  They ended in stalemate. He nursed his fragile hope, hoping it would be enough for both of them. But sometimes, waiting for her return, when he was about to cross the street or watching the contrails of a transatlantic jet high on its indifferent way out towards the ocean, he became paralysed.

  Sapiens Qui Prospicit

  ‘God Almighty!’ said Oliver Round. ‘We thought you and Nick were dead.’

  Oliver Round was Collard’s oldest friend. They had not spoken since the crash because Round spent his Christmases in the Caribbean. They had first met aged eight at boarding school in East Sussex and gone on to Malvern together.

  ‘I’m coming up to see you,’ Round said after Collard explained. The snap decision was typical. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Apart from worrying about Nick.’

  Round was Nick’s godfather and Collard’s overall boss.

  ‘I’m bringing up Joost Tranter. I want him to take over the Belgian deal for you. You’ve enough on your plate.’

  Collard groaned inwardly. Tranter was one of the new competitive breed and a favourite of Round’s.

  ‘We’ll fly up this afternoon. We’ve got things to do in Edinburgh.’

  Flying up involved a private helicopter, Round’s preferred form of travel now he was rich and could write it off as a business expense. They landed on the hotel lawn and sat with Collard in the lounge, which they had to themselves. The reporters were out chasing stories.

  It was nothing that couldn’t have been done over the telephone but Round and the unsmiling Tranter were men of meetings. Round’s company was purchasing a major Belgian arms concern and Collard’s arrangement to provide a new security system was subsidiary to the deal. Collard had been negotiating with a man called Tresfort for whom he had missed the flight. Tresfort turned up in London as arranged and, unable to find Collard, left feeling snubbed.

  Joost Tranter said, ‘Don’t worry about Tresfort. He’s in the picture now.’

  Tranter had a marked South African accent and clipped his words in a way that was consistent with the rest of his tightness. His dourness was a match for Tresfort’s persistence. Collard felt like a convalescent talking business; slow and finding it hard to keep up. Round offered his place in Tuscany.

  ‘Take a break. You need one.’

  Round was wearing his old school tie. He set store by such traditions. On Round’s advice, Collard had been wearing his on the day of the crash. Round was very keen on a show of British tradition when dealing with Germans, as Collard had been over a huge security installation. It made the Germans jealous because their traditions were up the creek.

  Collard still found it hard to connect the sleek entrepreneur sitting opposite him with the plump schoolboy of tiresome enthusiasms who had arrived the term after him. Round, fat and sensitive, was not up to the usual bullying handed out to newcomers and Collard had fought his corner. It left him wondering how much his present position was a favour returned.

  His company, Opticon, had struggled until he ran into Round in Threadneedle Street, a chance meeting that resulted in becoming part of Round’s Trevayne Group. One of Opticon’s first assignments had been the installation of security cameras at an old RAF base bought by Round at a knockdown price. Collard remembered sitting with Round in a pub called the Hatchet on Garlick Hill in the City, giggling over a pint and a bag of crisps, as he wrote down the figures Round told him to for his tender.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Round asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Nick’ll be all right,’ Round said, frowning.

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you heard from him?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  Collard knew Round well enough to detect embarrassment.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Tell him, Joost.’

  ‘You’re being investigated.’

  Tranter was the type to relish handing out bad news.

  ‘Investigated! By who?’

  ‘Customs and Excise.’

  The company’s VAT accounts were all in order. He could see no cause for concern.

  ‘Unfortunately, they’re investigating you personally,’ Round said.

  ‘What am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘They’re not saying yet.’

  It sounded as far-fetched as Sheehan and Parker’s accusations.

  ‘Ridiculous, I know,’ Round said, ‘and just ghastly timing. I wanted to warn you that my impression is they’re prepared to be perfectly bloody. Are you sure you don’t want to go to Tuscany?’

  Collard smiled at his friend’s attempted humour. After what he had already been through he could hardly be bothered to take the charge seriously. Let them waste their time.

  ‘Why did they come to you?’

  ‘Because they couldn’t find you and yours is a subsidiary company.’

  ‘Tell them I can’t talk until I’ve sorted this business with Nick out.’

  ‘Take as long as you like. Joost will cover for you.’

  It was a sign of the times that Round now travelled with Tranter. Collard didn’t like Tranter with his controlled body language and overconfident air. Round had brought him on to the Opticon board as a consultant. The man cropped up all over the place: one moment attached to a bank; constantly travelling; turning up on this or that board; earning lucrative consultancy fees. Collard wasn’t sure if he wanted Tranter covering for him.

  He had been staring at Round’s school tie, which reminded him of what the old man said at the airport.

  ‘What was the school motto?’

  ‘Sapiens qui prospicit. Wise is he that looks ahead. Why on earth do you ask?’

  He knew Round would have been bound to remember.

  ‘Someone quoted it to me the other day. I couldn’t place it.’

  The old man must have recognized his tie. More than that, he must have some connection to the school; how bizarre.

  Round left, promising to keep ‘those Customs buggers’ off his back. Tranter shook hands, looked Collard in the eye, and said, ‘Good to see you, sport.’

  ‘Tell Nick to call when he gets back,’ Round said with a parting wave.

  Collard was grateful to Round for making everything sound normal, like Nick was on holiday or something. Tears pricked his eyes. Their leaving made him realize how lonely he was. Charlotte was gone. Stack was off, following her German leads. Even Evelyn had moved hotels, having found a room nearer town. They had exchanged a few words in the lobby as he checked out. In Charlotte’s absence, Collard had been concentrating on getting through the days. In the rational hours of daylight he had no trouble rejecting Sheehan’s insinuations. The nights were harder and the reasons why Nick hadn’t caught the flight became darker. Days were spent in his room on the phone, trying and failing to locate Nick. He had called the hotel in Frankfurt. He had stayed there enough to be familiar with one of the receptionists, but when he tried to reach her to ask if she remembered seeing Nick with a girl he was told she was away on holiday.

  Nights were spent awake.

  The news had been returning to normal. There was a lull in the investigation. Forensic evidence was still being collected. T
he plane had been removed, its parts transported for reassembly in a vast hangar. The dead had been brought in. The television crews had started to drift away. Children had begun to be seen in the streets again. Americans were less in evidence and the town lost its air of being under occupation. The show had moved on. Politicians talked with quiet confidence about the net closing around those responsible.

  Collard watched Round’s helicopter crank its way up into the sky.

  Sapiens qui prospicit, he thought.

  Fugue States

  Angleton was stuck in Frankfurt airport, sick and almost too dizzy to stand, stumbling on, forcing himself into another tour of the terminal. He was nervous of the departure boards, knowing that any lapse of attention would mean he could miss his flight. Then he couldn’t remember where he was or why he was there. To do with a bomb. Or a boy. He got distracted by a man’s tie.

  That happened. Jesus, it had happened all the time as he got older and the famous Angleton memory went on the sputter. The day that I grow old was a line from a song; he failed to recall the name of the singer, a little guy with a rug whose girlfriend had taken a high dive out of a window. He’d kept up. Some of his best sources had been at the National Enquirer.

  Angleton’s first moment of reckoning had come years earlier, standing at his desk, staring with no idea of what he was doing. He had ignored the warning signs. The start of the boozer’s shake, the razor nicks, reveries at red lights, cars hooting behind, and a growing sense he was no longer on top of the beat, the night sweats, the start of absent-mindedness: Now where was I?

  Where he was: back in Ryder Street in London, 1943, hanging around like a damned idiot in front of the tea trolley in the hope of an appearance by Graham Greene, the most famous man in the building. There was artificial milk and sweetener because of a sugar shortage. Angleton had admired rather than enjoyed Brighton Rock. Author as spy, spy as author, was in his estimation the most glamorous combination.

  Greene’s cautious oyster eyes checked him over. Angleton, keen to flatter, was daunted. Sourly boyish at forty, Greene worked on an upper-floor in palatial surroundings compared to Angleton’s hutch, shared with a secretary with the delightful name of Perdita Doolittle.