Thunder in the Blood

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘He’s well,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that great?’

  ‘Wesley?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Any message,’ I enquired, ‘for me?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, grinning to himself. ‘You know something, Sarah? About Wesley?’

  I hesitated a moment, hearing his voice quicken, wondering what Wesley had told him on the phone, the way the conversation had gone. Wesley, as I knew to my cost, was far from straightforward. He laid bait. He set traps. He’d done it to me, the first time we’d met, that night in his flat, the audio cassette lying there beside the hi-fi stack, the little surprise he’d prepared to bring our evening to an end. The man looked for situations, adopted roles, played them with huge gusto. Grant, God bless him, would never have met anyone quite like it. Hence the spell.

  ‘Wesley,’ I said carefully, ‘is pretty special.’

  Grant nodded vigorously. ‘Class of his own,’ he said. ‘Bet your life.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Grant beamed up at me, getting off the stool, swilling his glass under the tap. From time to time, the bruising made him wince with pain.

  ‘You know something else?’ he said. ‘The guy’s out of his time, a hundred years out of his time. You know when he should have been born? What period?’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Eighteen-thirties, eighteen-forties, in time for the big battles.’ He paused a moment, drying his hands, staring out of the window. ‘I’ve studied the Civil War all my life,’ he said, ‘and I never met anyone closer to Jebb Stuart than Wesley.’

  ‘Who’s Jebb Stuart?’

  ‘Jebb?’ He looked at me, surprised. ‘Confederate brigadier. Cavalryman. Helped lose the Battle of Gettysburg.’

  ‘Lose?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘lose.’

  I frowned, confused now. ‘And Wesley?’

  ‘Same kinda guy. Brave as hell…’ he shook his head, ‘and totally outgunned.’

  He hesitated a moment, then he took me by the hand and led me towards the door. I was doing my best to balance my coffee cup. It was still half full.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  ‘The den. The place I work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll want to know about Beckermann.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Wesley’s idea. Not mine.’

  Grant’s den lay at the back of the house. You stepped down into it from the hall. It was small, cluttered and cosy, and smelled of a certain kind of pipe tobacco. The walls were panelled in pine, tongue and groove, the wood stained a rich honey colour. There were a number of nicely framed lithographs on the wall, scenes from the American Civil War, and a long shelf over the desk was piled high with books. The books were mostly biographies – Ulysses Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee – and in the corner by the window stood a large Confederate flag. The room had an almost shrine-like quality, and looking round, taking it in, I began to understand the kind of scholarship that had gone into the Gulf War files I’d read. The man was a born historian. God knows why he’d spent his working life designing guided missiles.

  Grant shut the door, then bent to a big steel filing cabinet. The bottom drawer was full of files, the same kind I’d found in his attaché case. He pulled one out from near the back, pushing the drawer shut with his foot as he did so. Inside the file were a number of photographs. He sorted quickly through them, a smile on his face. Then he held one out.

  ‘Harold J.,’ he said, ‘in his prime.’

  I looked at the photo, recognizing the shape of the head, the thick bull neck. Beckermann was sitting behind a desk which looked too small for him. He was staring at the camera, his head tilted aggressively up, as if taken by surprise, one finger still anchored on some document. He had a square, weather-roughened, outdoor face and a brutally short crewcut. Despite the setting, this wasn’t someone who belonged in an office. I glanced up at Grant. He was bending over the desk, filling his pipe. He looked at me, the same eager smile.

  ‘Some fella, eh?’

  We talked about Beckermann for perhaps an hour. Grant had known him by reputation before he’d joined Extec, and what he’d found there had amply justified what he’d read and heard about the man. He was, he said, a born leader. He hated bureaucracy and loathed committees. He never hid himself away. Everyone who worked for him was allowed one mistake, and until that happened, he’d back you all the way. In short, he was exactly the kind of entrepreneur the nation needed. Without men like Beckermann, America was heading down the tubes.

  ‘You liked him then?’ I said drily, when Grant paused for breath.

  ‘Sure. Even if—’ He broke off. ‘Sure, no doubt about it.’

  ‘Even if what?’

  Grant shook his head, ducking the question, but after we’d circled for a while, talking about Beckermann’s early days, his talent for spotting opportunities, his courage in taking on the major players, we returned to the man I’d seen, back view, in the Dallas Star-Courier, the older statesman, Mr Honorary President-for-Life.

  ‘You still see him?’ I asked. ‘At Extec?’

  Grant glanced up, sucking on his pipe. He looked, if anything, confused.

  ‘I guess Wesley didn’t tell you,’ he said at last.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘About me …’ he paused, ‘and Extec.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t work there any more, not since last week, anyway. They fired me.’

  I blinked. ‘But you were Extec,’ I said, ‘as I understood it. Scarab? Laser designators? All that?’

  Grant sat on the edge of the desk, both feet off the floor. ‘Beckermann’s Extec,’ he said. ‘Always was. Always will be.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I let him down.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged, visibly miserable now. ‘He never told me, never spelled it out. I guess it was my fault. I guess I just pushed a little too hard. Who knows? You wanna do something well, something you believe in, you wanna finish it.’

  I gazed at him, hearing Wesley in the slow Texan drawl, same sentiment, same philosophy, almost word for word. ‘I thought Scarab was finished?’ I said. ‘Ready to go?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then …’ I frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Grant looked at me for a long moment. Then he got off the desk and went to the filing cabinet by the door. He opened the bottom drawer again and stood to one side, letting me see the neat row of files.

  ‘A year’s work,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Beckermann. I was writing his story. The story of his life. A little monograph. A tribute to mark his retirement.’

  ‘He was that important?’

  ‘Sure. Not to me. To the folks out there. To America. I told you. The day I met the guy, I knew he had it. The more I found out, the more I had to tell the story.’

  ‘With his permission?’ I paused. ‘He knew about all this? He was helping you?’

  ‘Sure. It was taking a little time, but yes, sure. He used to give me stuff,’ he nodded down at the open drawer, ‘lots of stuff, letters, memoranda, old contracts, everything he’d kept. Here, look, see for yourself.’

  I nodded, not moving, believing him, trying to get the chronology clear in my head, what Wesley would call the time-frame.

  ‘You started when? Exactly?’

  ‘Two years ago. Back end of ’89. I’d been up at Extec a couple of months. That’s all it needed. Meet the man and you’ll know what I mean.’ He paused. ‘I’m a single guy. I don’t go out at nights. I don’t watch television. I don’t do drugs. I don’t miss for company. You get to have a lot of time that way.’ He peered at me, intense, determined to make me understand. ‘I’ve been scribbling away since I was so high,’ he said. ‘I did it like other kids play softball. Or go fishing. It’s a big part of me. A huge part of me. Talk to Wesley about it. He understands.’

 
‘I’m sure.’

  ‘So…’ He shrugged. ‘Writers need subjects. Even amateur guys, part-timers like me. Guy like Beckermann?’ He looked away. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘And you’ve spent a year on it?’

  ‘At least. Probably more. I was getting up to date when he fired me.’ He shot me a quick, nervous look. ‘Up to date in his life, I mean.’

  ‘Right up to date?’

  ‘More or less. Texcal bought the company in ’79. That was the big change. I’d got as far as drafting ’85. Research-wise, like I say, I was nearly up to date.’

  I nodded. Eighty-five was right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. Eighty-five was when both sides started running out of stuff they needed to kill each other. Eighty-five would have been a tactful point to close the curtains on any half-honest account of Beckermann’s life. Assuming, of course, he had anything to hide. I was still looking at the filing cabinet.

  ‘Had he read anything you’d written?’ I asked. ‘Beckermann?’

  ‘Yeah, lots. I used to send him drafts, for his comments. He’d tell me where I’d gone wrong.’

  ‘And you’d change it? If he didn’t like it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So what did he think?’

  ‘Loved it.’ He smiled, rueful now. ‘Grade A loved it.’

  ‘So what made him …?’ I frowned. ‘I still don’t understand.’

  Grant said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed to the desk and opened a drawer, taking out an envelope. He slid a letter from the envelope and read it briefly.

  ‘I’d been doing the research for Mr Beckermann’s last few years,’ he said, ‘off on my own for once.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Newspaper offices mainly. Cuttings libraries.’ He pulled a face. ‘I guess it wasn’t such a smart idea.’

  ‘Why?’

  He said nothing, passing me the letter. It was handwritten. In six brief lines, it demanded the return of ‘all biographical materials’. The stuff was to be delivered to the office of a Dallas attorney by midday, a week hence. Failure to comply would incur legal action. I looked up at the top of the letter. The address read ‘Fairwater Ranch’.

  ‘Where’s Fairwater?’ I said.

  ‘Out beyond Corsicana. About an hour and a half’s drive.’ He paused. ‘That’s where he lives. Big holding. Runs cattle.’

  ‘You know the place?’

  Grant nodded. ‘Well. I was out there again this morning. I had to talk to him. I had to find out…’ He shook his head. ‘Letter like that, a year’s work, hell…’

  ‘You don’t want to part with it?’

  ‘No.’

  I nodded. ‘And Beckermann? What did he say?’

  ‘He was out riding. Way over towards Two Rivers.’

  ‘But you found him? You talked to him?’

  ‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘In the end, I did.’

  ‘And?’

  He looked at me for a long time. Then he crossed the room again, bent to the open drawer, straightened a couple of files, an almost maternal concern for neatness and good order. His precious child. His creation. Under threat.

  ‘What happened?’ I said again. ‘Out at the ranch?’

  Grant didn’t look round. He appeared not to have heard the question. Then he sighed, easing the drawer shut, standing upright, his voice muffled, and I was suddenly back outside, standing in the warm sunshine, Grant semi-naked in the open doorway, his ribcage purpled with welts. Now, in the office, he glanced round. His eyes were moist.

  ‘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.