The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  These thoughts blurred, mixed, filtered, passed back and forth through his brain as he numbed mind and soul with stunning amounts of vodka and aquavit. No one said he had too much. He knew how to handle his liquor. He might occasionally fall down in the bar or fall asleep sitting on the crapper, but those were occupational hazards. The journalist, by definition, was a drunk if he was any good at it at all.

  Bloody clerks taken over the business. Bloody fact checkers. Bloody fucking—what’d the Americans call them?—bloody bean counters.

  Resentment entered his dreams, and he groaned through the snores. His nose played the snores like a cathedral organ. His nose amplified and extended his snores.

  The knocks insisted their way into his sleep and he finally connected the knocks of the dream world with knocks at the door.

  “Go away,” he said. He groaned and rolled over. The covers were bunched under his belly. He groaned because the damned knocking went on and on.

  He would throw something at the door, but there was nothing at hand. More horribly, he was waking up. He knew the signs. Enough of the alcohol is passed out, and there is this musty, fuzzy feeling that descends in the middle of the bloody night. Three o’clock in the morning and the naked soul is shivering under the interrogation lamp.

  Knocking, knocking.

  He opened both eyes and saw perfectly, not the double image of the world in his previous incarnation. He stared at the bottle of vodka on the nightstand and measured it with his eye. Enough, possibly, to get him through to the next moment of unconsciousness.

  He got to his feet and the pain in his head began. Or perhaps it had been there all along. He steadied himself on the table that contained the vodka bottle and went around the bed. He had an inside room and the window overlooked a courtyard full of steam pipes and other gadgetry. Lovely, lovely, he had told the clerk.

  He opened the door without any fear, even if it was three in the morning. This was Sweden, and only the prime minister was not safe.

  He blinked at the apparition. The hall was lit by a twenty-five-watt bulb, and the apparition dissolved into a very thin, very short Swede with damp brown hair and large, worried eyes.

  “Mr. Jaynes?”

  Jaynes blinked to better his vision, but it refused to get better.

  “I know the night clerk, he told me your room,” the little man said.

  “Then goddamn him and goddamn you,” Jaynes said.

  “Do you know me?”

  “Is this a commercial or a bloody American quiz program?”

  “My name is Rolf Gustafson.” He let the name lie between them as though it meant something.

  Jaynes shook his head.

  “At the conference. I was the man in charge of equipment. In the press area?”

  “Were you? Then I didn’t notice.”

  “The security people… they questioned me over and over. You are the last reporter left in the city, the last who covered the conference. I thought I should talk to you.”

  The non sequiturs caught Jaynes’s attention. His head throbbed, and he thought he could feel the membranes that held his brain in place stretch and snap. But something in Rolf Gustafson’s presentation intrigued the reporter buried inside Jaynes’s habitual sloth.

  He stepped back, and the little man scurried into the shabby room.

  The little man stared at the place. The bed was rumpled, the half-empty bottle of vodka seemed sad. The room was cold. The window was nearly wide open to the chill Malmö night.

  “It’s very cold,” Rolf said.

  “Close the window and the stink of the place will drive you out,” Jaynes said. “I’ve seen it before.” He made a theatrical gesture. “Same in Zagreb, same in Mexico City… bad drains.”

  Rolf blinked.

  “Civilizations rise or fall not upon the actions of men but by the way men get rid of the actions of their bowels.”

  “Something happened,” Rolf said, holding a cap in his hand.

  “Go on,” Jaynes said. He stood near the table that held the vodka bottle. He was tempted to take a drink, but then politeness or convention would require that he offer Rolf a tot as well. And what if the bloody Swede accepted? What then would sustain him through the wee small until the morning light?

  “On Saturday afternoon when the conference was ended, the police questioned me. Not Malmö police but the national police. And then they gave me to the Russians.”

  “And the Russians ate you up?”

  Rolf had no time for humor. “The Russians and the Americans, they questioned me. I didn’t know who they were, to tell you the truth. I didn’t know what they wanted until they said I had taken a tape—a tape recording from the minutes of the conference—and that the tape was secret and that whoever had the tape had access to the gravest secrets. I understood then, and I told them whose equipment I packed. There were four reporters, sir. And two translators and interpreters.”

  “A tape is missing.”

  Rolf nodded.

  “The crux is, they want their tape back. Did they get it?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. They questioned me again this afternoon. Russians this time. They asked a lot of questions about the two of them.”

  “Two of whom?”

  “The translators, I call them. I suppose they are also interpreters, but I don’t understand the difference. The translators who were packed. I packed them. I must have packed the wrong tape. It was an honest mistake.”

  “You know what’s on the tape?”

  “No, sir.”

  Jaynes sighed. What was the point?

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll get it back.”

  “They didn’t seem certain. They showed me a map. They showed me the places he had gone in the last twenty-four hours—”

  “A map? Who had gone?”

  Rolf made a face. “The translator. The one they think got the tape recording by mistake. He went back to Stockholm where he lives.”

  “Swedish.”

  “No, sir. An American.”

  Jaynes let the glimmer shine ever so, slightly. He moved into the room to crowd Rolf into the single armchair by the window. The cool night air flowed into the room, and the tattered chintz curtains floated like faded white flags of surrender.

  “An American?”

  “Michael Hampton.”

  Jaynes tried to think. Memory created forms, voices, faces in the hall. The fat-faced Russian and the long-faced American secretary. Men and women around, the little people of all great conferences. The Americans wore blue suits invariably. The Russians wore brown or olive or, more formally, black. There was a very attractive dish, black black hair and blue blue eyes. Retina or something, lovely Swede.

  Yes. Michael Hampton. Next booth but one. Jaynes had sized up the competish, and he wasn’t in the running. Worked for some Middle Eastern organizations and even the bloody pope. Very earnest young man, and blessings on him, he wasn’t a problem to Jaynes.

  Michael Hampton.

  The missing tape.

  Headlines began to form in Jaynes’s thoughts. He saw stories as layouts, pages, bonuses, back into the big house from the dog house, no more chasing his tale in dreary resorts like Manchester and Malmö. Mr. Jaynes, if you please, and a suite at Connaught’s for the duration of the international conference.…

  Visions of sugar plums.

  He stared at the little man. “Well, I scarcely know what to say, Mr. Gustoff.”

  “Gustafson, sir. This map they showed me, I have a good memory, I can tell you where Mr. Hampton has been the last thirty-six hours. The Russians told me, and they wanted me to guess where he would go next. They asked me about her, as well. Miss Taurus, the other translator. She was there when I brought his bags. It was her room.”

  “Her room.”

  “Sir, they were lovers.”

  “I see.” That explained why she stared right through him during the conference. Uppity bitch, would serve her right to have her tits plastered on page three. Myst
ery woman of secret naval conference! Mistress of the man who stole the tapes! Tits and sunglasses and whispers in the corridors of power!

  “You seem to know an awfully lot about so many things,” Jaynes suddenly soothed. The change in manner from vodka-wreck contempt to solicitous geniality seemed to frighten Rolf Gustafson. He shrank back in the armchair as far as he could go. The surrender of the curtains fluffed at his face.

  “I know what I know. I know that the Russians and Americans are very worried about this matter, and this is why, I think, it is worth money to you to let me tell you what I know.”

  That had been bothering Jaynes the last few minutes. Motive. Like most journalists of any experience, Jaynes had an inherent mistrust of altruism. Money was perfectly understandable.

  “What sort of money, Mr. Gustafson? For your exclusive—and I mean exclusive—cooperation?”

  Rolf cleared his throat, ducked his head like an estate gardener, and mumbled something.

  Jaynes said, “What did you say?”

  “A thousand kronor, sir.”

  “You’re crazy,” Jaynes said, figuring it into pounds. Not a completely ridiculous figure, but that would come off the top of whatever he would be able to flog the story for.

  “Sir—”

  “Five hundred. Not a farthing more.”

  “All right, sir.”

  The surrender surprised Jaynes. He was annoyed. He should have suggested less. No matter. It was agreed, and so Gustafson was now a paid servant, not a guest, and one did not have to offer the claret bottle round to the staff. Jaynes poured himself a drink and took it down with a fierce face and burning gut. But ah, it gives a lovely light in the belly of the beast.

  “Well, where should we begin then, Rolf?”

  “With the five hundred kronor, sir,” Rolf said.

  “That is a technicality. In the morning—proper morning, when the offices are open—I’ll make a telephone call to one of my… clients… and you shall have your money by afternoon.”

  “Are you certain? And this cannot be traced to me, sir. I don’t want to go round with those Russians again.”

  “Protected by the sanctity of my word, Rolf,” said Jaynes, who meant it at the moment. At least, the part about sanctity of words, if not the five hundred kronor.

  “Where has Michael gone, Rolf? Why do you suppose he’s running away? Perhaps he’s had assignments—”

  “The Russians. You should have seen them. They are very serious men.”

  “Yes, they tend to be, don’t they? Unless they’re drunk and become playful in the manner of bears. But what about Michael?”

  “Michael Hampton is in Göteborg, then Copenhagen, then Hamburg, then Berlin, where they cannot find him. All in twenty-four hours. They ask me many things. About the canal, a thing I don’t understand, where Michael would meet Miss Taurus. Where is the canal? they ask me.”

  “Bloody canals everywhere,” Jaynes said. “Are you sure you don’t have a clue to what is on the missing tape?”

  “After they talk to me again, I return to the press room and I look over the log, sir. Perhaps this has a clue, because I do not wish to be pressed again by the Russians.”

  “Unpressed in the press room?”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Nothing,” Jaynes said. One tot of vodka demanded another. He poured the clear liquid in the water tumbler, and Rolf watched him in the faintly disgusted manner of a teetotaler.

  “The telephone lines are for the convenience of the press, sir, and there is a log kept of the telephone calls.”

  “So you know who Michael called?” Just the edge of excitement.

  “The calls are merely logged, sir. The telephones, you must remember, were part of the common pool. There were no exclusive telephones except for the gentleman from that New York newspaper.”

  “The Times, the bloody New York Times,” Jaynes said. The Times man had studied at Cambridge, wore Savile Row clothes, and affected the sort of accent Jaynes should have been born to. There was no worse snob than an American snob, not even in Scotland, Jaynes thought. On the other hand, at least in most of Scotland.

  “That’s right, sir,” he said. “I went through the lists. Many telephone calls for only four days.”

  “Never offer a journalist a freebie,” Jaynes said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Pray continue.”

  “For his credentials, Mr. Jaynes, Mr. Hampton showed letters of identity from his regular clients. Two are Arabic news agencies, one in Tripoli, Libya. The other in Saudi Arabia.”

  “Libya. I like this better and better. The American connection to Colonel Khaddafi.” Headlines formed again in mind. He wanted to write them himself, position the byline just so, lay out the page, and dictate the play.

  “The third client was the only one he called. The Congregation for the Protection of the Faith.”

  Jaynes gaped.

  “Mr. Hampton called this number seven times. It is at an address in Roma. In Italy.”

  “I know where Rome is,” Jaynes said.

  “The phone number is listed there. I… I checked it. I was curious. Number sixteen, Borgo Santo Spirito,” Rolf said. “I have a good memory.”

  “Except when you’re packing tapes, eh, Rolf?”

  Rolf looked blank.

  Jaynes saw the headlines vanish from screen. Khaddafi bashing was one thing, bashing the RCs was a bit trickier. Not that a touch of antipopery was all bad, but in this day of ecumenicism and the other nonsense of the churches, it wasn’t well to put all your eggs in the same Easter basket. And what on earth did something called the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith care about a naval conference in the bloody Baltic?

  “Who knows this? About the list?”

  “I know this.”

  “But who else?”

  “I put in the press area. I kept the list to submit for the expenses, since the national telephone exchange will receive the international charges in time. I’m careful, Mr. Jaynes. I am curious. I try to make certain all charges are honest.”

  Like bloody hell you do, you conniving thief, Jaynes thought. You keep the list to see how much you can inflate the final bill to the Swedish government for the privilege of hosting a meeting of the superpowers. What had Jaynes written? “Fiercely neutral Sweden wishes to assume a greater, more serious role in world affairs by presenting a sober alternative to pro-Western and pro-Eastern factions.” In fact, Jaynes thought Sweden was terrified of the coming merger of the Common Market into an integrated economy and didn’t want to close any doors to a future alliance of convenience. Perhaps Rolf worked for Swedish security. Perhaps they had wanted to know whom the journalists called.

  “So perhaps Mr. Hampton is going to Rome, is that what you imply?”

  “I imply nothing. You cannot say that, not now. You must have the proof—”

  “I have your list, your telephone list—”

  “There is no list.”

  “You just said—”

  “I said nothing.” Rolf let it fall flat.

  “Oh, bloody hell, Rolf. What was that address in Rome again?”

  “This afternoon, Mr. Jaynes. When you meet me again in Skane Park at four. And you give me the five hundred kronor that you promised—”

  “My word, dear fellow.”

  “I have worked with journalists before,” Rolf Gustafson said, and this time there was no question that he would have his way, even if Jaynes had to scramble all morning to tap a friendly editor back home.

  Which is precisely what Jaynes had to do.

  14

  BERLIN

  Michael Hampton opened his eyes and saw the knife. He felt the tip of it against his left cheek. It was on the side of his nose, just below his left eye. He could just see it. He stared at it cross-eyed for a long moment without making a move or a sound. The strain of staring at it gave him a nauseous feeling, to go with his raging headache.

  The knife was very long an
d sharp.

  The handle was gripped by a bony, pale hand that extended back into a thin arm, into a thin shoulder.

  The creature, Michael thought. The creature disappeared at the point where arm met shoulder; he could barely discern a form, but it might be large or small, hideous or not. He remembered the grip on his ankle, he remembered the two men at the mouth of the alley with their pistols drawn. He remembered falling and something striking his head. His head was ringing. He blinked and tried not to think of the sharp point of the knife on his face. Wherever they were, the place had no windows. There was a candle somewhere in the room, but the thin, wavering light only accentuated the darkness. The place smelled damp and old. He was in a tomb, he thought, and he wanted to shiver, but the prick of the knife on his flesh made him sit very still.

  The creature spoke German. The voice was high and mocking.

  “What are you? A thief or a murderer?”

  “I’m not.”

  “The police don’t shoot at people if they aren’t thieves or murderers.”

  The voice smiled in the darkness. He could make out the shape of a head now as he blinked in the light, but no features. The light was behind the figure holding the knife.

  “You must be a murderer. Or a very poor thief. You have only sixty marks in your wallet.”

  “I’m not a thief. Those men wanted to kill me—”

  “Of course they did. That’s why they shot at you.”

  “Where am I?”

  The creature laughed a screeching little laugh. It wasn’t very pleasant. “You are at the point of death, Herr Hampton. That is your name?”

  “My name,” he said. He wanted to retch.

  “Don’t you have any more money?”