The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  “Yes, that and a bottle of red will do very well.”

  The meal was a disaster. The goulash hadn’t mellowed with age and tasted thin and harsh against the watery rice. The coarse supermarket wine clashed with the peppery meat. Jane quickly withdrew to her study.

  Morgenstern did not seem to notice either her or the food.

  “They’re holding my feet to the fire over this, Jackie. I’ll be straight with you. Your New York operation has been too quiet for comfort for a while now and we thought we should take a look. Then we got a lead – there was somebody who does the odd job for us at a party at Murphy’s place. They were celebrating the son’s graduation when there was a call.”

  “How very convenient for you.” Thornhill knew that Morgenstern would not be giving away secrets unless he wanted something very big in return. “Thanks for the information.” Thornhill was trying hard not to betray his rising anxiety.

  “To save you searching, it was Largo Feingold, a cousin of Murphy’s wife. Murphy left in the middle of the party. He’d only do that if there were something big going down. To cut to the chase, we put a tail on your man.”

  Thornhill did not respond. The stakes continued to rise.

  “If you don’t believe me, talk to him, ask him if he saw four black guys in a beat-up Caddy. They usually do a little street theatre to pass the time. He’d have noticed.” So the story was well and truly out. But how much of it? Thornhill remained silent. “You’re well aware that by rights you should have told us what was going on. Then your people get shot up in Bermuda. It doesn’t look good for ‘hands across the sea’, does it, Jackie? Seems more like you’re trying to snatch some big number for yourselves. You wanna tell me about it?”

  Thornhill exploded. “No, I don’t ‘wanna’ tell you about it. In the same way I didn’t ‘wanna’ tell the committee about it this morning.” The sarcasm bounced off Morgenstern.

  “Come on, Jackie, you’re among friends.”

  “Am I? Our people getting hit in Bermuda and cousin Largo are too close for comfort.”

  “Hey, come on, what are you saying? We may be pissed off but not that pissed off,” Morgenstern said.

  “Someone is.” Thornhill got up and stood by the fireplace.

  On cue, the clock chimed ten in synchrony with Big Ben. Thornhill listened quietly, as if observing some personal rite.

  “I don’t give a shit,” Morgenstern snapped. Thornhill didn’t reply. “I don’t give a shit that you think I’m some sort of colour-coordinated clown that is too tedious for your high intellect, someone you can snigger about over your Armagnac at the Reform Club. Neither do I mind, leastwise not very much, being served warmed-up food and poor wine. Allies don’t have to be friends, they don’t even have to respect each other, but they do have to have the horse sense to see where their common interests lie.”

  Thornhill returned to his seat. He had severely underestimated Morgenstern and the man’s passion shocked him.

  “Okay, Arnold, guilty as charged. You’re right, but I won’t patronise you with an apology.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘common interests’?” Thornhill asked.

  “There’s something big and bad going down. You’ve got a piece of it and you’re not sharing.”

  “And what reason do you have for believing that, Arnold?”

  “Okay, Jackie, let’s cut the crap. This is a game where information is your entrance ticket, and there you’re way ahead of me. I tried buying in with all I’ve got, but not enough, am I right?”

  “You could be right about one thing, Arnold. ‘Big and bad’, perhaps very big and very bad.”

  “Then why keep me on the outside?” Morgenstern asked.

  Thornhill got up and crossed the room to the bureau beside his desk. From the bottom drawer he took a bottle of vintage Claret. He put the bottle and two glasses on the table.

  “I’ve been keeping this for a special occasion,” Thornhill said; “perhaps this is it.” He drew the cork. “Let’s give it a moment to breathe.”

  Morgenstern lifted the bottle and inspected the label as if recognising an old friend.

  “I was there,” he said excitedly. Thornhill looked puzzled. “I picked grapes for this vintage. I was a graduate student doing my dissertation, working my way across France. That’s how I came to be picking grapes that summer.”

  “Dissertation?” Another surprise – Thornhill had not thought of Morgenstern as a scholar. “What was your subject?”

  “Post-revolutionary France. Year One and the Great Terror.”

  “See any kind of connection, Arnold?”

  “Yeh, the kind of people who scare me crapless,” Morgenstern replied.

  “Enough of riddles, who do you have in mind?” Thornhill asked.

  “Same guys as you, maybe,” Morgenstern replied.

  “And who are they?” Thornhill asked.

  “That’s what I need you to tell me.”

  “We’re going in circles,” Thornhill replied.

  “Okay, let’s try again,” Morgenstern said. “Washington has been like a girls’ school where a new clique has taken over. Familiar doors are closed. Old friends don’t want to talk. It’s not even like there’s a new administration. There’s something in the wind and it doesn’t smell good. I’ve seen it all from Watergate onwards. Back then you always knew who was into what, and only CNN and the Washington Post were surprised when it all came out. But this is different. For the first time in my life I don’t know what’s going on and that scares me like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Why do you think I can help?”

  “I think you know who they are,” Morgenstern said sharply.

  Thornhill picked up the bottle and slowly poured the wine.

  “Time to get your own back,” Thornhill said. They both drank thoughtfully. “Worth the wait?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Morgenstern drank, took the bottle and refilled his glass. As host, the action jarred on Thornhill. “You know you have to tell me,” Morgenstern said as he put the bottle down heavily.

  “No, Arnold. If I know anything of that kind, I’m only supposed to tell you. There’s no ‘have to’ about it.”

  “Okay, let’s get naked,” Morgenstern said. The phrase was new to Thornhill and his perplexity showed. “Metaphorically,” Morgenstern said.

  “Metaphorically,” Thornhill replied.

  “Okay, hear me out. From the beginning, and never more so than now, America was, and is, so powerful that it can only work if power is defused. The Founding Fathers got it right and we have the Constitution and a Bill of Rights. The French Revolutionaries didn’t and they got the Great Terror. That’s the genius of the American system – the separation of powers between the President, the Senate, Congress and the judicial system. Okay, year one civics, but it’s ours and it works, or it has worked, for more than two hundred years. So if you had evil ambitions, how hard would you have to huff and puff to bring the house down? Any suggestions, Jackie boy?”

  “I’d rather hear yours,” Thornhill said.

  “Well, how about fear? Good old-fashioned scared shitless fear?”

  “Go on,” Thornhill said.

  “Until now, that was not much use as a weapon against the good ‘ole USA, except during the days of the late and unlamented Joe McCarthy. Then along came terrorism, anthrax, SARS and thoughts of the unthinkable.” Morgenstern faltered. Thornhill said nothing and Morgenstern carried on. “Got any unthinkable thoughts, Jackie boy?” Morgenstern barely waited for a reply. “Here’s mine – a fear that you can play tunes with. A fear that invades the mind and drives the herd, a witchcraft for the 21st century.”

  “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad?” Thornhill questioned.

  “I remember that quotation, it’s French,” Morgenstern said indignantly, as if the language was a personal possession.

  “Greek,” Thornhill said. “The quotation is Greek.”

&n
bsp; “French, Greek, what the hell’s the difference?” Morgenstern snapped.

  “The real question is, is it accurate?” Thornhill asked.

  “Like I said, ‘big and bad’. And maybe you’re right, maybe mad is the delivery system,” Morgenstern said.

  “Why are you so sure about all this?” Thornhill asked.

  “I’ve been warned off. Me, on my own turf! Told not to ask the wrong kind of questions. Can you imagine how powerful they feel themselves to be to do that? I’m scared, not just for me, but for the Stars and Bars. Sounds crazy? Dear God, I hope so. Well here I am, you see me naked and afraid, not a pretty sight.”

  “Ugly thoughts, Arnold; I should have liked to read your dissertation.”

  “Cut the crap. Will you help?”

  Thornhill refilled the glasses before speaking. “The fact is, Arnold, you come with strings and neither you or I know who’s on the other end.”

  “Is that a no? You won’t help?”

  “I’ll make you an offer,” Thornhill replied.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I need to judge for myself. I’m seeing your people in DC and I’ll get back to you immediately afterwards.”

  “My people! Are you terminally insane? They’ll fry you.”

  “I’m flying out tomorrow,” Thornhill said. “I fixed it on the phone from the Cabinet Office. I still have some friends in Washington.”

  “Friends! Do you have any idea how things are on Capitol Hill nowadays? And me, what about me? I’m a liaison; I’m supposed to watch your ass. How does it make me look?”

  “I’ll tell them you sent me.”

  Chapter 23 - Washington, DC

  It was three forty-five a.m. when Thornhill woke. Despite decades of travel, jet lag was something he had never got used to. Before first light, he was striding the length of the Washington Mall, from the Capitol to the Potomac. His pace slowed alongside the reflecting pool that, true to its name, reflected a frosty full moon with magical clarity. It was a walk that always touched him; the principles of the young aspiring republic simply set out in stone. It always seemed to him that they were a more powerful expression of a human ideal than the worship of pomp and pride that the cities of Europe displayed, with their imperial statues and ornate ceremonial buildings. He climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and let his mind wander across the skyline. The White House, deliberately built as the house of a gentleman, not an American Emperor. The Capitol, housing a Senate modelled on the Roman Republic, had no notion of a New World Caesar. The cold bore in on his thoughts as he walked on, across the river and up the hill into Georgetown.

  The meeting with Morgenstern in London had established a lot. Crucially, it had shown what Washington officials did not know. It also demonstrated that it was difficult, to the point of impossibility, to know who could be trusted. By the time the sun was up he was in a side street with a row of elegant 18th-century houses. The one he was looking for had a blue door. He raised the heavy brass knocker and the sound echoed through the wood-panelled interior.

  He waited for what seemed like a long time and was about to try again when he heard footsteps on the tiled floor. An elegant grey-haired man in a tracksuit opened the door.

  “Jack!” Harrison Waters exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were in town,” he said with amiable surprise.

  As a young Senator from the mid-West, Waters had moved to Washington when Jimmy Carter was President, and after he retired had never moved back.

  “Almost nobody does,” Thornhill replied.

  “Then it can’t be good news that brings you here,” Waters said as he headed towards the kitchen, leaving Thornhill to close the front door. “Coffee or orange juice?”

  “Coffee, almost black.”

  “You just caught me, I was leaving for the gym. I’m all alone here at the moment; Margaret is in Charlotte visiting the grandchildren.” Waters was meticulous in not probing into the reason behind Thornhill’s visit. “You haven’t been here since the wedding. Must be all of five years.”

  Their friendship went back to their time at Oxford. Waters was from a middle-class family in Missouri who had fallen on hard times after his father contracted tuberculosis. But Waters’ outstanding abilities as a scholar and as an athlete brought him to the notice of well-connected local players in the educational power game that led eventually to a Rhodes Scholarship.

  Their friendship was of the kind that did not suffer from irregular contact. Each time they met, it was as if their previous conversation had been days, rather than months or years, before.

  “Did you ever think of going back when you retired?” Thornhill asked as he waited for the scalding coffee to cool.

  “No, I used to be down there half a dozen times a month, but that’s a past life. And despite what the song says, everything’s not ‘Up to date in Kansas City’. Everything that I love is right here.”

  They walked into the living room. Waters drew the curtains and the morning light flooded in. They sat on either side of the large empty fireplace.

  “This is unlike you, Jack, you’re not usually impulsive. Why didn’t you call?”

  “I need your advice.”

  “Then you shall have it. I have plenty to spare; people don’t seem to want it much nowadays.”

  “I have a meeting at ten.”

  “And?”

  “I need to run the players past you.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it’s about?” Waters said with rising interest.

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to,” Thornhill said.

  “I understand. I’ll help if I can. But I’m retired three years, that’s an eternity in this town.”

  “Distance may allow you to speak more freely,” Thornhill replied.

  “About what?” Waters was becoming cautious.

  “Whatever the names suggest.”

  “Okay, let’s hear them.”

  “Morgan Douglass, John Brightman, Henry Carlisle, Wilson McSweeney, Sean Harvey.”

  Waters slowly rose and paced across the room. Thoughtfully he spun the antique globe that stood in the window bay.

  “These are not the kind of people you usually engage with in Washington, are they?”

  “No, that’s why I came to see you,” Thornhill replied.

  “What happened to the usual guys, the ones you trust and who trust you?” Waters asked.

  “If your trade is deceit, trust is always conditional, Hal,” Thornhill said, using his nickname from Oxford days.

  “So you called the people you usually liaise with and they were all busy or out of town?” Water asked.

  “All except McSweeney, yes.”

  “Let’s get this straight. You’re the number one man on your side of the pond and nobody wants to listen to you?” Waters asked.

  “You could put it like that,” Thornhill replied.

  “You’re in trouble, Jack.”

  “Yes I know, but I believe they are in even more trouble than I am,” Thornhill replied.

  “In this town it works the other way round. However big a problem they’ve got, yours is bigger. They’ll make sure of it. Hell, Jack, if you’ve forgotten that, you’ve been away too long.”

  “This is not about careers, it’s very much more important than that,” Thornhill said quietly.

  “If you can’t tell me enough for me to offer advice, you’ll have to settle for speculation. My guess is that they’ve got the smell of something bad but don’t know what kind of putrefaction is causing the stink.” Waters leaned back and put his feet on the coffee table. “Another explanation is that they, or at least some of them, do know, and want to stop you blowing the whistle.”

  Waters completed a circuit of the room and returned to his seat opposite Thornhill.

  “Incisive as ever, Hal,” Thornhill said. “Now you see why I need the biographies. Not the stuff you can get on the Net, but the unwashed jungle nature of these creatures; the animals they prey upon, the camouflage they seek out, t
he kinds of ambush they might spring. Above all, any vulnerabilities they might have.”

  Waters looked at his watch and shook his head. “Your meeting’s at ten, right?” Thornhill nodded. “Then let’s get you a cab and have it waiting. I’d take you myself but it would do neither of us any good if you arrived in my car.”

  Waters disappeared into the kitchen and made a call. Thornhill closed his eyes and tried to get a grip on the wave of fatigue that threatened to loosen his hold on the hours ahead. Waters, by contrast, seemed full of energy.

  “Let’s get to work; I’ll give you what I’ve got,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Thornhill replied as he poured another cup of coffee, entirely black this time.

  “With these guys you’ve got the full set: State Department, CIA, National Security Agency, White House, Department of Defence. They’re all heavy hitters. This represents more than mere curiosity at whatever message you may be bearing. They wouldn’t put a group like that together at a first hearing unless they were seriously worried. How many of them do you know?”

  “McSweeney I’ve met before, at the Joint Intelligence Committee. A disagreeable piece of work,” Thornhill said.

  “You’re right, watch your back. He’s got a lot to prove; he had a reliable track record until he made a big mistake about Iraq. Now he needs to re-establish his credibility.”

  “Morgan Douglass I know by reputation,” Thornhill said.

  “He’s a Texan politician, a florid loudmouth who thinks he’s LBJ reincarnate. He’s got the vocabulary and he fools a lot of people a lot of the time, not least himself. But he’s not got the mind of LBJ, or the heart for that matter. There’s an election coming up and he needs headlines. John Brightman is a pallid little bureaucrat with some very nasty friends; our very own model of the banality of evil. Henry Petersen is the product of recent history. He’s a guard fish for the White House. His job is to spot trouble while it’s still far enough away to deflect onto somebody else. Publicly he’s an idealist, and other than my innate cynicism about human nature and political life, I’ve no reason to believe him to be otherwise. In short, he’s the only one of this pack who is halfway decent. Michael Harvey is ex Harvard Law School, an intelligence pro. He’s Irish, rich and wants to make a political name for himself. He’s very tricky, with the instincts of a sewer rat. He’d take that as a compliment.”