Shadowplay

by Norman Hartley

  The main World News newsroom occupied the whole of the fifth floor of the building. Like its New York counterpart, it was nowadays quiet and cool; computer-based equipment simply cannot survive in the stuffy, airless hothouses that were the traditional newsrooms in the industrial age. The journalists’ union had not yet joined the strike and about seventy men and women were sitting beside the silent VDUs or talking in small groups. Their relations with the print and technical unions had always been as uneasy as the management’s and each new dispute intensified the lingering conflict over union solidarity.

  I glanced around and saw that the father of the journalists’ union chapel was on duty and I chose a route to the editor’s office that went past his desk. I paused just long enough to let him know I was hoping for a breakthrough soon, but not long enough to embarrass him by making him appear too friendly before the dispute had been judged, then made my way quickly to the editor’s glass walled cubicle in the corner of the newsroom.

  The editor, Nye Harzman, looked harassed, but then he always did even when the newsroom was running as smoothly as he liked it to. There were no greetings; we always went straight into his laments about coverage and he gave me a hand-wringing rundown on the way our emergency cover out of New York wasn’t holding up and we were being murdered by AP and Reuters on the Starburst row.

  There was no reproach in his tone. I knew he wasn’t really realizing that he was talking to the man who was supposed to be responsible for the stoppage. Unlike the correspondents, for whom events were real and directly related to people’s lives, Nye lived in a detached world and though he was credited, rightly, with an astonishing ‘news sense,’ that too was an almost abstract gift for assigning weights and values to information that flashed across his monitoring screens.

  ‘It won’t be long, Nye,’ I said soothingly. ‘We’ll sort it out. What’s happening with Starburst?’

  ‘Total bloody chaos. Half of Europe’s up in arms over the NATO test, but the President won’t back down and neither will Bonn or Westminster. The Dutch are going bananas and there’s one report they’ll pull out of NATO, then ban Starburst from flying over their territory.’

  I thanked him and went up to my top-floor office where Nick Jopling was already waiting for me.

  He was looking worried and I grabbed him cheerfully by the arm before he could begin to lay out the seriousness of the problem. I knew his analysis would be accurate to the last subtlety, but in boardroom confrontations his mood was more important than detail too. Nick was one of my strongest allies in World News, but he needed buoying up when Sellinger was in one of his harassing moods. Nick was a quiet, diffident man whose hobby was collecting china horses and who, I’d always believed, liked to get his excitement vicariously through the turbulent and disorderly lives of the correspondents.

  The staff all respected him and vied with one another to invent jokes about his parsimony. According to one currently going the rounds, Nick had invented reusable toilet paper but had lost out on a fortune because he’d been too fastidious to patent it. My own favorite was an oldie, alleging that Nick had been in World News five years before he had understood that when you bought someone lunch on expenses, you were supposed to eat yourself. I enjoyed the jokes like everyone else, but I also knew that it was Nick’s sense of financial discipline that had saved the company during my predecessor’s tenure.

  ‘Sellinger is still doing his round robin of the board members,’ Nick said. ‘So far he’s been preaching mainly to the converted but he’s starting on your people now. He went to Howard Branston first. They’re up in his office now. Paul said he wanted a meeting as soon as you came in.’

  It was a development I hadn’t expected. Lord Howard Branston was no friend of Sellinger’s, and on the Datavol issue I would almost have expected him to favor the kind of ‘boots in first’ approach that Sellinger had made it appear I had chosen. Branston was a man of sixty with a dull mind and very little common sense, who had managed to construct the media empire that was his personal plaything by having unlimited funds to cushion his mistakes. If you are ambitious but intellectually handicapped, it helps to have a personal inheritance which includes almost a quarter of the land in the West End of London.

  His favorite stance was, ‘Let’s show these union people what we’re really made of,’ and I wondered what piece of Sellinger deviousness was behind the latest move. But I didn’t show any concern to Jopling. I had his secretary call Sellinger to arrange a meeting in the boardroom, then allowed myself the luxury of being two minutes late and strode down the corridor, doing my best to carry Nick along in what Dr. Richardson had called my air of masterly calm.

  I was in a perfect mood for confrontation—the staff of Claridges had done their work well—but when I opened the door of the boardroom I found that Sellinger had set out the pieces for an entirely different kind of game.

  Lord Branston was sitting at one end of the oval boardroom table in his usual pompous position, arms resting firmly on the table to give an air of solidity to his flabby figure. Sellinger was standing behind him, half-blocking the light, and they were both looking at a large black-and-white photograph on the table. I walked down the room and as I greeted them, I looked down at the photo and recognized my own naked back. I might not have been so quick to place it if I hadn’t instantly recognized the context: I was kneeling between Seagull’s thighs. She was sitting naked on an upright chair, her legs folded around my shoulders. With one hand she was stroking my hair and the other was holding a joint to her lips—even through what was obviously a long telephoto lens, the angle of her fingers left no doubt that it wasn’t just a cigarette—and beside her on the table was a large glass of red wine.

  I recognized immediately a situation that had become a friendly, loving ritual between us. It had begun once when she had come back to her Hampstead flat feeling fractious and ill at ease in her skin. As part of the process of gentling her out of her mood, I had placed her in that position; at first she had resisted, saying it was too self-indulgent to accept it all so lazily: the wine, the grass, and the tongue. But I had insisted, and over the months she had grown to love it and had designed what she called ‘mood-lifting rituals’ for me in return.

  In the background of the photograph there were shadowy figures, suggesting that other people had watched the scene. But that part I knew was faked. The photograph had been taken through the window of Seagull’s Hampstead flat and I stared down at the table unable to believe that anyone could have recorded such a private moment.

  Then Sellinger broke the silence. ‘John, I’m afraid some of these party photographs have started to circulate already. I think we’ve caught them all, but it’s a very awkward situation.’

  And so the trap was sprung. The photograph hadn’t been taken at the party, but a simple denial wouldn’t be strong enough. I would have to tell the board who it was and about the affair and I could imagine the absurd conversations I would be dragged into:

  ‘You say the photo is faked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it is you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there was sexual activity between you and this woman at the party but not of this particular kind?…’

  Once in the public domain, sex always became unreal. And Paul had chosen his man well in Howard Branston. He was one of the strongest advocates of a return to public decency, but worse, I had glimpsed the private side of his face. Once, on a Concorde flight to Bahrain for a special meeting of the board, I had chatted with Branston when he was slightly drunk. The defender-of-family-life mask had slipped just for a few moments and he admitted sadly how much he regretted having been born too late to enjoy the permissive society. With that kind of conflict in his soul, there was no way of even guessing what fantasies were being triggered as he stared down at the photograph. He couldn’t take his eyes off it and he paid only scant attention as Sellinger went through the ritual incantation of my sins.

  Sellinger listed the sy
mptoms of my instability almost sympathetically: Brussels, the St. Tropez trip, the fight, my clumsy handling of the technical unions. As he went through the litany, he was careful not to diminish me too much in Branston’s eyes. Sellinger always operated on the old principle of Washington politics that a man is measured by the stature of the enemies he destroys. I was about to be defeated, so I must be allowed enough stature to be worth defeating. Sellinger’s tone was one of sorrow: I was the great leader falling because of private weakness. My anguish that photos like this might start to circulate explained everything.

  I looked at Branston and saw that it was working. The oldest cliché of Fleet Street was true: a picture was worth a thousand words. I could imagine it circulating and being discussed at urgent private consultations between board members and I could hear the jokes and the sanctimonious rubbish that it would automatically trigger.

  Just for a moment, I had an urge to take Paul aside and tell him about the dossier on Nancy, to shake his oily complacency at the brilliance of his gambit. But I remembered Cox’s words: Don’t prejudge. A step at a time. Though I would never have admitted it to anyone, there was still a corner of me that believed in Nancy, in the face of all the evidence; and even if I didn’t, I would never sell her into the hands of Sellinger, even now.

  It was time for a strategic retreat. There was no point in arguing now. The picture was dominating the meeting.

  ‘Howard,’ I said, ‘I think we’d better have a private chat. There’s a lot more to this than is apparent.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Branston barely lifted his eyes from the photograph and I saw Paul smile.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ I said. ‘And I’ll also prepare a written statement before the ten days are up.’

  ‘Sorry, John. It can’t wait that long. I’ve asked for the five-day rule to apply.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ I said shortly.

  Sellinger didn’t argue. He knew that the issue wouldn’t be decided here and talk was pointless.

  He made a point of showing me to the boardroom door. When we were in the corridor, I let Jopling go ahead then I said quietly, ‘Paul, you’re in the process of making a fool of yourself. Jennifer’s innocence didn’t end it, you know. Don’t you care anymore about finding the mole? Doesn’t Starburst count?’

  ‘We’ve lived with the threat of a Starburst leak for a long time now,’ he said blandly. ‘We’ll just have to go on living with it a bit longer, won’t we.’

  I walked back along the corridor and as I approached my office, I saw Cox signaling that he wanted to talk to me before I rejoined Jopling. ‘Ryder called,’ Cox said. ‘The meeting with Nancy’s set. In France. This afternoon.’

  ‘In France!’

  ‘Ryder says it’s safer. And he’s right. Nancy’s flying over after lunch. She does most days. Ryder has it fixed pretty neatly. She flies to a little airstrip in Normandy called Chantelux. Ryder’s going to arrange to have it blocked. She’ll be diverted. You’ll be waiting.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  I went into my office with Cox and found Jopling waiting. At first, Nick wasn’t sure whether to refer to the photograph in front of Cox, but when I showed that I didn’t care, Nick still hesitated and I could see he was embarrassed.

  ‘John, it looks bad. Really bad,’ was all he could say.

  ‘Nick, trust me,’ I said. ‘That photo-is a phony. I’ll deal with Branston—and Sellinger. Just buy me the ten days.’

  Nick looked surprised. ‘You need five directors with you. You’d better make those calls yourself. Much safer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nick, I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just haven’t time. I’ll have to rely on you to round up my allies.’

  ‘Yes, of course. The union business. That’s a nasty one too. When will you be seeing Billingsly?’

  Nick looked so solemn that just for an instant I had an urge to say, ‘Haven’t time, old boy. Matter of fact, I’m popping over to France for a chat with my ex-wife,’ but I resisted the temptation. Nick’s sense of humor wasn’t his strong point and I hadn’t forgotten how close I’d been to losing my own in Rome.

  ‘I’m going to delegate the union business,’ I said. ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘Huntsman’s not really up to it,’ Jopling said cautiously.

  ‘Yes, Nick,’ I said, ‘I know.’

  I picked up my direct line and asked Marge on the switchboard to get Geoffrey Haycroft at home.

  Jopling looked startled.

  ‘John, you can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Not even for a situation as bad as this.’

  I ignored him and waited for the call to come through.

  ‘John, you’re not usually that cruel,’ Jopling insisted. ‘You really mustn’t call him. You can’t.’

  I knew that Jopling was saying the call might just kill Haycroft, but it was a chance I had to take and I told myself it was for the sake of World News as much as for myself.

  I couldn’t handle the Datavol issue. I had to go to France. If I walked now into the pressure cooker of union negotiations, I would do nothing else for hours and perhaps days. But we had no one else who could go in my place.

  Haycroft’s heart attack had left the Personnel Division in disarray, even though we had all known it had been coming for years. Haycroft was the company’s master negotiator and Milner had used him mercilessly as a buffer against union hostility brought on by his own incompetence.

  One especially cruel irony was that I had acquired the reputation of being an even better negotiator; it wasn’t true but my successes had been achieved in colorful settings from Bulgaria to Hong Kong and had ended in spectacular new contracts which could be announced at press conferences and state banquets.

  Haycroft meanwhile had lived with the thankless, punishing round of daily arguments with the technical unions. He had spent most of his adult life forcing people to do things they did not want to do, and reasoning with unreasonable men had finally sapped his energy. He had held on to his post because he wanted to, and at his request, Dr. Richardson had concocted medical reports of Chinese inscrutability so that no one would have to face the fact that Haycroft was slowly burning out.

  I had watched him aging at twice the calendar rate and tried several times to persuade Milner to give him generous early retirement before it was too late.

  The heart attack had finally settled the matter and Haycroft was on extended sick leave which would go on until he qualified for his full pension.

  When the call came through, it was his wife Mary who answered and I could hear the fear in her voice.

  ‘Mary, it’s John Railton. I’d like to talk to Geoff.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t.’ Her voice sounded bitter, determined.

  ‘Mary, I just want a quick word. Some advice. It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘I know about the strike. It was on the radio. When he heard it, Geoff went into the garden. He doesn’t want to talk…

  ‘John?’ It was Haycroft interrupting, I guessed, from the extension phone. ‘Yes. Geoff. We’re having a few problems.’ I told him about the forged purchase order, speaking quickly before Mary cut off the call.

  When I’d finished he said, ‘Tricky little bastard, isn’t he? Do you want me to come in?’

  I heard Mary gasp and tried not to look at Jopling as I said, ‘We could use the old warhorse, yes, but only if you feel up to it.’

  ‘I’ll come right in.’

  ‘Geoff, I’m grateful,’ I said. ‘I’ll send a car.’ And I put down the phone quickly, aware that, though no guns or blows were involved, it was the most ruthless thing I had done since the affair had begun.

  18

  On the flight to France we were diverted over Sussex because of troop movements toward the Channel ports and even Ryder’s security priority wasn’t high enough to avoid the delay. As we circled the alert zone, we saw the nucleus of an anti-Starburst protest march, one of dozens which were forming a
nd following routes to various military installations in southern England. Announcements were being carried on the pop radio stations and the marchers were stopping, village by village, to hold rallies to try to build up their numbers. The biggest protests had been in Suffolk because of the large number of American military installations, but the marches were aimless because on one knew for certain where the missiles were.

  Demonstrators were beginning to flood in from the Continent too. The European disarmament movement had sensed that if the test was to be stopped, the place to try was Britain, where the launching was to take place, but no one seemed certain where the protests would be most effective. Two gigantic tent cities had sprung up as the protesters deliberated what to do: one near Heathrow to house the more affluent members of the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament who were coming in daily by charter plane, the other near Dover for the boatloads of protesters who were crowding the decks of the cross-Channel ferries.

  The government had pressured the local councils into allowing the tent cities because they wanted to keep the protesters together, in areas where they could be supervised. The MND executive had called another mass rally for central London, but already there was talk of getting bigger groups out across the country because the police had security and crowd control too well organized in the capital. The lack of focus for the protests was helping the militants win a bigger voice, and leaflets were beginning to circulate calling for more spectacular protests which would bring home the dangers of nuclear weapons more effectively than dignified marches and rallies.

  Nearer the Channel coast, we flew over military columns heading for Folkestone and Dover on their way to embark for the European maneuvers. They were mostly territorial units, swollen to record numbers by the unemployment crisis and a hard-sell recruiting campaign promising camaraderie and excitement instead of the boredom of the dole queues. The protest marchers too were attracting large numbers of young people who wanted a focus for their alienation from a government they blamed for failing to provide jobs. From the air, the lines of traffic almost crisscrossed in patterns—military and anti-military—getting in each other’s way in dangerous polarization.