The Truth

by Michael Palin

  Mabbut returned her contemptuous gaze.

  ‘And I would have given him more if I could.’

  ‘Oh, well, of course, now you’re a best-selling author, what’s four thousand pounds? A drop in the ocean!’

  ‘I gave him the money because I believed him. Just as our daughter believed him. And until I hear a lot more about this, I still believe him!’

  Krystyna gave a desperate toss of her head.

  ‘Keith, why do you always believe anything except the truth?’

  Rex took two cups off their hooks above the kettle.

  ‘Look, why don’t we all adjourn for breakfast. Tea’s ready, and I’ll put on some toast.’

  Mabbut thanked him but declined. He gave his daughter a kiss on the top of her forehead. She took his hand for a moment, and then looked up, as if remembering something.

  ‘How’s the book, Dad?’

  ‘Nearly there.’

  ‘That’s good. At least that’s one thing I didn’t mess up for you.’

  Krystyna moved protectively towards her.

  ‘Jay’s going to stay here with us for a while. She doesn’t want to be in the house.’

  Mabbut nodded. ‘Of course.’

  Rex led Mabbut to the front door.

  ‘There’s no point in my staying,’ said Mabbut on his way out, ‘not with Krystyna the way she is. She’s in shock. She’ll calm down. Perhaps you could give me a call then?’

  Rex gave a backward glance then stepped out too, pulling the door almost shut behind him.

  ‘Keith, I’m to blame as much as anybody. I should have spoken up much earlier. I’ve seen a couple of very similar situations. Plausible young chaps with poise and charm. Perfectly decent people taken in. I had doubts about the boy the first time I met him, but as soon as I voiced them Jay took it personally, and because of my situation with her mother, she and the young man didn’t come round much any more. She compounded the problem by telling everyone it was Krystyna’s fault. All those stories about us splitting up, that sort of thing.’

  Mabbut looked up the street. Two elderly ladies with bulging green shopping bags were getting into a taxi, giggling like schoolgirls. A group of young men with wayward blond hair were walking three abreast, fighting each other for possession of the pavement. An immaculate Jaguar XJ turned out of a side road. This was not Mabbut’s London and he wanted to get away.

  Rex held out his hand.

  ‘Ring me any time. If you need to.’

  They shook. Mabbut paused and looked at Rex.

  ‘I still don’t believe he was a bad man.’

  Rex sighed.

  ‘That’s the skill of these people, I’m afraid.’

  Back home, Mabbut made himself a cup of coffee, then called Wendy Lu. Her machine said that she was out of the office until Monday but left no other number. Mabbut thought briefly of ways to poison Ron Latham, or even of running away and leaving his clothes and a note on a beach somewhere. Then, fortified by a second, even stronger cup, he returned to the distasteful task he now had no option but to complete. By late afternoon what had to be done was done. He read through the rewritten pages without satisfaction. There could be no doubt now that the subject of his book was an all too ordinary mortal; a man who at one time in his life had reportedly stolen not just another man’s wife, but his life’s work as well. No matter how much he used the word alleged’, or the well-worn phrase ‘some say’, the damage was clear. Innuendo would do the rest.

  So now, his side of the contract was complete. Mabbut sat back, numbly, staring into the middle distance. The whole process confirmed that, despite all his grand pretences, nothing had changed. He remained a hack. A pen for hire. The Melville effect had made fools of them all. His delusions of transforming himself into some latter-day Hamish, helping the helpless, spreading the truth, slaying cynicism in its lair, had turned out to be no more than that: delusions. And who was he to presume to slay cynicism anyway? A little more cynicism on his part and his only and dearest daughter might not have ended up sobbing over a kitchen table in Knights-bridge. Stanley, with his unerring sense of occasion, leant against the doorpost and purred with pleasure.

  At six Silla called. She apologised for not being around during the week. She was glad to hear he’d revised the book. Things had gone well in Madrid, and now she was back she’d promised Ron that she would come over, collect the new version from Mabbut and deliver it to him personally. She was just glad to hear that it had all worked out.

  NINE

  When Silla rang again to say that she would not be with him for another hour as Hector Fischer was unavailable – it was Sunday night and Hector was evidently a devout churchgoer – Mabbut’s misery was merely prolonged.

  He poured a whisky, vaguely aware that this was the sort of thing he was doing far too regularly these days, checked for the umpteenth time that the envelope was ready on the hall table and was about to distract himself with the evening news when the door buzzer sounded. He looked at his watch. It couldn’t be Silla already. He half hoped it might be Jay, but she’d have her own keys. The buzzer sounded again, impatiently.

  ‘All right. I can hear you!’

  He opened the front door. A stocky figure stood at the top of the steps holding a package.

  ‘Keith Mabbut? Sign here, please.’

  He reached for a terminal and marker and held them out to Mabbut.

  Mabbut signed completely illegibly, then grabbed the package, slamming the door far harder than he meant to. Inside the Jiffy bag was another white envelope. He tore it open. The now familiar handwriting, the Foreign Office notepaper. The lack of an identifying date or place. He had difficulty holding it steady.

  Keith,

  I’ve just heard from Wendy of the problems you are having. All I can say is that I’m not surprised. This is why I don’t do books. This is why I don’t give interviews or go on chat shows. They all have an agenda which is very different from my own. As you know, I had my doubts about Urgent Books from the start, but I’ll come to that later. First of all, the allegations. I owe you an apology for not giving you Ursula or Victor Trickett’s name on the list of people you should talk to. They both are, or were, part of my life. Ursula is not the only daughter I have either, and I would have told you that had we not both agreed that this was not going to be that kind of book. Bettina wanted Ursula to be brought up entirely independent of me and I have always respected that.

  Trickett, on the other hand, is a very nasty piece of work and I would not wish his view of events to go unchallenged. His late wife Bettina was a brilliant woman, a chemist and a physicist with a sharp, highly original mind. I met her through a college friend and although I won’t deny there was a physical attraction, I was chiefly interested in the work she was doing. Bettina was from Yugoslavia and she’d come over as a young researcher to Imperial College in ’76. She badly wanted to stay and work in London and to help that process she’d married a colleague by the name of Victor Trickett. He was also a surgical researcher, but he was a plodder; Bettina was the brains. In 1978 she made a breakthrough that later led to the development of bileaflet heart valves – that’s a ring to which two semicircular discs are fitted that open and close to control blood flow. Without her knowledge, Trickett approached a big pharmaceutical company and offered to sell them the technology for a substantial sum of money, portraying himself as the one who’d made the breakthrough. Bettina was – understandably – furious. She was in the course of developing the next stage of anginal valve technology, but now, thanks to Trickett, all her work and her future ideas had been mortgaged off to a company called Bell Laboratories. I had been drifting around the City at the time, as you know, but while most of my friends were looking to invest in bricks and mortar I was more interested in intellectual property. People doing the sort of things I liked to do, thinking outside the box. Independent-minded, difficult bastards. Bettina was one of those. With her co-operation I raised enough money to buy back the rights to the work she
– and to a very limited extent Trickett – had pioneered. Because he had cheated her in the first place we had to work behind his back and eventually leave the country to avoid the long legal battle that he would undoubtedly have fought. He is not a nice man, Keith. He sent people over to Prague to search the apartment. He made sure Bettina would never be able to work in the UK again. To cap it all, he used work she had done with him to produce heart–lung tubing for which he received a knighthood. For a few years he pursued Bettina through the European courts but he got nowhere. He produced nothing more and his career faded into oblivion. I was surprised to hear he was even alive. Bettina worked on in advanced surgical research until she died of breast cancer in 1998. By that time we’d long since gone our separate ways, entirely amicably.

  This, of course, is my side of the story, and it’s entirely up to you whether you believe it or not. But this you should believe, for it’s true. When I heard what they were trying to do to your book I commissioned some research of my own, on your publisher, and the following can easily be checked out – maybe you’ve even done so? Urgent Books is a subsidiary of Wide Hatt Publishing, wholly owned by the Karlhatt Corporation, headquarters in St Louis, Missouri, and the Cayman Islands. This grand-sounding, if somewhat shadowy, organisation is 80 per cent owned by one Karl Hattiker and his family. Along with a few evangelical radio and TV stations, they also own a cereals combine called Hemisphere Grain Group, one of the big wheat cartels that fix prices around the world. Their domination of the market is now being threatened by Russia and China so HGG are looking to expand elsewhere. One of their biggest, most controversial investments has been to put billions of dollars into the soya fuel market in Brazil. To date they are directly responsible for the clearance of two to three per cent of the Amazon rainforest, and the construction of irrigation dams on the Parcachua river that have already destroyed the cultivable land of thirty local tribes. And Brazil is just the current target. They have eyes around the world, constantly on the lookout for the line of least resistance – the corruptible local politicians, the ambitious state governor, the regime that needs to buy tanks and aircraft. Until last year their operations went almost unnoticed. Then, acting on inside information, my team moved in last August and within a couple of months we had enough evidence to convict the company of fraud, corruption and intimidation. As far as HGG goes I’m Public Enemy Number One. Do you remember those guys out in Bhubaneswar? The ones who came to the hotel? They were HGG heavies, looking for me or my colleagues. And they’re becoming increasingly desperate. My guys in Parcachua have had their families threatened. Kids approached at school, for God’s sake. Now wouldn’t it just suit them if a best-selling book were to come out, showing that the man who has been giving them grief is nothing but a wife-snatching con-man?

  Keith, you’re the man in the middle. To reel you in they had to play on your impeccable liberal credentials and the attraction of my own impeccable liberal credentials to someone like yourself. The problem is that an impeccable liberal book is no good to them. You and I agreed on the things we wanted to say – about the Earth and how we look after it – and that didn’t need dirt. So they’ve dug up some dirt for you and left it on your doorstep.

  I happen to know that there’s a price on my head now, and being a living legend is not going to protect me from some unfortunate accident. Whatever happens I shall go on with my work and hope people will understand that the past is the past and has nothing to do with the work I’ve done since. The one thing I can thank these bastards for is that I’ve had a chance to show you it’s possible to make a difference.

  You do what you want to do, Keith. I don’t want to drag you any farther into all this. I appreciate you’re being paid well and I’m sure you could use the money. I’ll hold no grudges if you decide to go ahead. I’m used to being misunderstood. It’s a badge of honour!

  Regards,

  Hamish

  Almost an hour later Silla arrived in a cab. She still had her cough and blamed a heavy schedule at the Madrid Book Week for impeding her recovery. They didn’t talk much about the book. She could tell Mabbut wasn’t happy with the situation but at the same time she said she was pleased and relieved that he’d done what he had to do. He’d even put the manuscript in a nice red folder.

  ‘Thanks, dear boy. I’ll call you in the morning.’

  Mabbut picked up the folder. ‘I’ll come with you. Deliver it personally.’

  ‘If you’re sure you want to do that. Ron’ll appreciate it.’

  At around half-past seven they drew up outside Latham’s glittering apartment block beside the river in Battersea.

  Silla paid the fare and they walked towards the lobby. Automatic doors slid aside to admit them. Mabbut looked around.

  ‘I thought he lived in the office.’

  Silla laughed. ‘He takes Sunday evenings off.’

  She announced their names to a bored security guard, who queried the name twice before buzzing Latham’s apartment. Once inside the lift Silla pressed the button for the twentieth floor and with a breathy hiss they were swept upwards and disgorged into a silent, carpeted, climate-controlled corridor.

  Ron opened the door, raising his eyebrows when he saw the two of them. He was wearing a white towelling robe and his face was bright pink.

  ‘Keith! What a nice surprise.’ He stood back to let them in. ‘I hadn’t expected the author himself.’

  Mabbut caught the quick exchange of glances with Silla. He stepped into the room. It was what he’d expected: modern furniture, a lot of appliances. Speakers, screens, things in aluminium. Framed certificates on the wall. More surprisingly, a lot of books, on wall-to-ceiling shelves. Some novels among them.

  ‘Drink?’ asked Latham. ‘I’ve been breaking my back down in the gym, so I’m on iced water. Silla?’

  She chose a juice and Mabbut a beer and Latham went to fetch them from the kitchen.

  ‘That’s a view,’ said Silla, walking across to the window. The size and height of the plate glass made Mabbut feel slightly queasy. A Lufthansa Airbus, sinking towards Heathrow with a mournful wail, passed across their line of vision like something from a computer game. She made a face. ‘I can never get used to it.’

  Mabbut just had time to pick up on the remark when Latham appeared with the drinks on a tray.

  ‘Heineken all right?’

  ‘That’s fine. Thanks.’

  They sat down on either side of a low glass-topped table, Mabbut and Silla together, Latham opposite. He raised his glass.

  ‘So, bang on time. Cheers and thanks all round.’ Latham smiled magnanimously at Mabbut. ‘I know it wasn’t easy for you, and I apologise about the pressure, but I appreciate what you’ve done, Keith. I think it’s something we’ll all be proud of.’

  Latham pulled his robe tighter around him and eyed the red binder.

  ‘So, do I get to have a look?’

  He and Silla laughed, and he reached forward. As he did so Mabbut put his hand on the manuscript.

  ‘I just wanted to say a few thanks of my own, Ron. If I may. Now that the book’s finished.’

  Ron nodded. ‘That’s nice.’

  For some reason, Mabbut noted the time on the digital clock on the sideboard. It was 19:38. Another airliner, lights flashing, cruised across the window.

  Mabbut raised his glass.

  ‘Ron, Silla, I want to thank you both for giving me the chance to do this book. I also want to thank Karl Hattiker and the Hattiker family for enabling the Hemisphere Grain Group to continue their good work in clearing the rainforests of the world, and for generously donating some of the profits to fund the activities of Wide Hatt Publishing, without whom there would be no Urgent Books. I should like to thank you, Ron, as my publisher, for encouraging me to look at all aspects of the life of a previously honourable man and to you, Silla, for standing by me when I wavered. And to Hamish Melville, wherever he is, I say thank you for all you have done to open my eyes and the eyes of the world to what is really
going on.’

  No one moved.

  ‘Hamish, I hope I’ve kept my side of the bargain.’

  He drank deeply, set the glass down on the mirrored table, and only then did he take his hand off the folder and push it across the table.

  ‘Goodbye, Ron. Bye, Silla. Thanks for the drink. Enjoy the book.’

  And with that Mabbut stood, collected his coat, and left.

  Silla sat staring at the door as if she was expecting it to be opened again and the whole scene rerun to a different script. But it remained closed. Latham pulled the file towards him. He loosened the elastic at either corner and drew out the manuscript.

  ‘Well, at least I don’t have to be nice to him any longer.’

  Silla flashed him a look of irritation.

  ‘Come on, Ron. He gave you what you wanted in the end.’

  She paused.

  ‘Ron?’

  Latham was staring down at the title page, his face immobile. His left hand beat hard and fast on the top of the table.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Latham said nothing, but shot the manuscript across the table towards her.

  ‘Take a look.’

  Silla gasped. She ruffled through the first few pages as if they might offer some explanation but they only confirmed her worst fears. There it was on the title page, in sixteen-point bold Times New Roman:

  Triumph in Adversity. The Official History of The Sullom Voe Oil Terminal.

  TEN

  The terminal came into sight as Mabbut drove down the immaculate road that ran alongside the company’s airstrip. A private jet was loading up and a line of stooped figures in high-visibility jackets, heads down into the wind, were hurrying towards the aircraft steps. High in the sky, white clouds were dashing across from the west. A moment later the dark waters of the Voe appeared to his left. With a twinge of nostalgia, he glimpsed the four familiar piers jutting out from the terminal complex. A Norwegian-registered crude carrier, the Olaf Kohner of Bergen, was offloading oil from one of the newly opened deep-water fields out in the North Atlantic. On higher ground, behind the jetties, stood the rows of crude-oil storage tanks. Sixteen circular drums, each one capable of holding 600,000 barrels. Mabbut once knew this world well. This thousand-acre city squatting on damp and windswept hills where not much more than thirty years ago there was nothing but isolated crofts and grazing sheep.