by Morris West
‘We’ve got a quarter of a million troops there, Gil, and another hundred and twenty thousand on the way. Hussein is reinforcing all his border troops in Kuwait. There’s no way you can hold a stalemate like that, in desert conditions, in a Muslim country. I think we can win the war, but we’ll have a hell of a job winning the peace. And the way the Israelis are behaving – that bloody massacre at the mosque! I’m a Jew, Gil. I’ve got cousins and an uncle in Israel; but my gut turns over when I see what’s going on. From all I hear, you’re betting heavily on the red numbers …’
‘What exactly do you hear, Phil?’
‘That you’ve been hired to mediate economic discussions between the Germans, the Japanese and the Russians.’
‘And who gave you that piece of news?’
‘A couple of our spooks – pardon me, our Intelligence analysts – were discussing it. Nothing derogatory, of course, nothing hostile. I got the impression they’d like to have you on our side.’
‘I’m not quite sure what your side is, Phil.’
His face clouded and he pursed his lips in distaste. ‘At this moment I’m not so sure either. Let’s just say I serve the Administration as best I can. I don’t agree with all its policies.’
‘Do you know a guy at the embassy named Max Wylie? I believe he works in the Consular section.’
‘Sure, I know Max. Came here from Rome about twelve months ago. What’s your interest in him?’
‘None. A woman I know was talking about him yesterday. Apparently she knew him in Rome. That’s it. Just small talk.’
‘An odd coincidence though.’
Why so?’
‘He was the one who brought up your name in the discussion. He said he’d like to meet you some time. I didn’t mention that I knew you. He’s a pretty pushy guy, one of the good ole boys, a real piss-and-vinegar patriot.’
‘He sounds a real pain in the arse.’
‘He is, but he’s got a very pretty wife – the second or third, I’m not sure which.’
‘How much clout does he have?’
‘How do you ever know with a spook? I have to say I get very tired of them, Gil. They tramp over everything with treacle on their boots. But what the hell! You played good golf today, maestro. It’s my pleasure to buy you another Scotch …’
I arrived back in Tokyo mellow and relaxed. I talked with my daughter in Australia and called one son in London. The other in New York was, presumably, in bed and sleeping. I read the messages that had been laid on my desk. In the Seiyo, messages were never pushed under a door, but delivered ceremoniously even in an empty room. There was a note from Marta, sent by messenger: Thanks for the night, the day, the portrait, the book, and you. I called my mother. She sends her love. Mine comes with it. Marta.’
There was another, more cryptic, with a Kyoto telephone number. ‘Call me. Tanaka.’
I knew in my bones what he was going to ask me: How was your weekend? How was the lady? Did you learn anything useful? I knew with equal certainty that I was not yet ready to answer. So I called the operator and asked her to hold all phone calls and send a masseuse to my room. She arrived ten minutes later, a square, chunky, unsmiling, Korean matron, with washboard hands and strength enough to subdue a welterweight. She bowed a silent greeting. She handed me her workslip, which I signed. I stretched myself out on the bed. She rubbed, kneaded, stretched and pummelled me for fifty minutes and then bowed herself out, leaving me limp as a rag doll, with only a towel covering my nakedness. Fifteen minutes later I had recovered enough to call Tanaka in Kyoto. His opening gambit was a series of bald statements.
The Russian peace initiatives in Iraq have broken down. The Germans have interrupted talks on trade and tariffs with the rest of the European Community. They want them deferred. Arab newspapers are now peddling the idea of a swift strike and a war that could be ended before the feast of Ramadan in March. All the signs are bad, Gil. A war can only exacerbate the needs and problems of the Soviets. I talked to their Ambassador a couple of hours ago. He is most anxious that our conference should succeed, especially because the Americans and the rest of the Europeans want to defer decisions on aid until the German position is clarified. You see how it works?’
‘Very clearly. What news on Vannikov?’
‘He arrives tomorrow as planned. We start with him on Tuesday: luncheon at the embassy, Leibig, you and me. I’ll pick you up at your office at twelve fifteen. We should arrive and leave together.’
‘I’ve made a note of it.’
Then, just when I thought I had escaped, the questions began. ‘How was your weekend?’
‘We only had part of it. I played golf on Sunday.’
‘How was the lady?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you learn anything useful?’
‘Useful, no. Disturbing, yes.’
‘Tell me.’
I gave him a curt and colourless narration to which he listened in silence. Then he asked: ‘Have you told Leibig about this?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘We are talking only about suspicion. I share it with you, because there is friendship and duty between us. Wakatte kudasai – understand please! Don’t push me any further. Not yet.’
‘I am not prepared to risk this whole enterprise on a woman – any woman!’
‘Nor am I.’
‘Have you not already done so?’
This was the old Kenji, he of the swift anger and the sudden lethal lunge. Instantly I braced for the close encounter.
‘Kenji, you’re out of line! You asked me in. You can tell me to withdraw at any moment. There’ll be no backlash, no hard feelings. I respect your privacy. You respect mine. I do not require that you confide everything to me, only what touches our work together; but you have not been wholly open with me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘If you like, I can give you a shopping list of things you should have told me but didn’t. However, try this one. You’re under siege from the keiretsu because it is known that you are a sick man.’
There was a long silence out of which a flat toneless voice asked. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It is known. It is talked. You should not suffer in silence, or fight alone. Whatever the others may say, I am not your tame gaijin; I am your friend. In this deal I am also the paid guardian of your interests. You have to trust me or fire me. For the moment let me deal with Marta Boysen. I promise to keep you informed. If a situation arises that I can’t handle I’ll give you fair warning. Agreed?’
That doesn’t dispose of Carl Leibig. His interests are ours. He cannot be left in the dark.’
Then leave it to me to find a formula that alerts him without damaging Marta Boysen before she has been proven guilty. Leave it to me to make my own investigation of what she’s doing or not doing.’
‘We have to know before we begin our shakedown talks in Nara, or she has to be gone before then.’
‘That gives me only Monday and Tuesday.’
‘It’s all we can afford.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘One more question, Gil. If it comes to a choice of loyalties in this matter …’
‘There is none. There can be none. I told you, it was a very short weekend.’
And there we left it. I climbed into bed with a new courtroom thriller which my son had just sent me from New York. My attention waned quickly and I found myself drifting off into a half-world of memory.
We were in Spain that year, my father and I, hitch-hiking or riding on public transport while I brushed up on the fine points and the vulgarities of the language, and he divided his time between correcting my accent, drenching me with history, and instructing me in the manners of woman-hunting on the Iberian peninsula.
We were drinking in a bodega near Navarra, right in the heart of the Basque country, because he had insisted I break my brains on the Basque language, which is still one o
f those I have never wholly mastered. My father was emphatic in his belief that Basques came from somewhere in the Caucasus during the bronze age, so emphatic indeed that if I had had a bronze axe I might have beaten him on the head with it.
The only thing that stopped the flow of his eloquence was a quarrel at the next table, where two youngish couples were drinking up a storm in local brandy. The quarrel was about a supposed insult offered to one of the women. Blows were exchanged. Glasses were smashed. One of the men pulled a fisherman’s knife from his belt. With a speed and a strength I could not believe, my father felled him with a back-handed blow to the side of his jaw, and stamped his foot on the knife. The fellow was still prone on the floor when, in his gentlest and courtliest Spanish, with a Navarrese accent that he summoned up from no place, my father apologised for interfering. Every man had the right to settle his own quarrel, but this one was getting a little out of hand and one or other of the ladies might have been hurt. He hoped he had not hurt the gentleman too much. He hauled him to his feet, still groggy. He handed him back the knife, hilt first, put money on the table to pay the score, and presented me to the gathering as ‘my son, an Oxford scholar, here to study your language, Eskuera, the most ancient language in Europe.’ He walked me out of the place to a round of applause, then hurried me away form the neighbourhood as fast as we could run. Later, in a more sedate drinking place, he read me his homily.
‘All that happened because some country oaf was insisting on pundonor, the point of honour. He’d have killed for it and gone to prison for life. Crazy!’
When I reminded him that he, too, could have been killed for meddling, he simply grinned and raised his glass in a toast.
‘First rule of existence, my boy: learn the arts of survival, most of which involve combat in one form or another, against man, animal or the elements. Second rule, which old Cicero wrote most elegantly: “Expediency and honour never conflict.” ’
I could hear myself remonstrating that he did not believe that, could not possibly believe it.
‘Think back, my boy. I apologised to a bully. I hammed up a speech that would have had me hissed off any amateur stage, and I ran like hell so we wouldn’t get beaten up in an alley. That’s expediency! The honour resides in the fact that I’m ready to admit it. Now, back to the language. What is the nominative plural of harri, a stone… ?’
By the time we got to that part, I was long over the border into dreamtime, but I slept as soundly as I had on that faraway night when the old man and I curled up in a hayloft and woke at cock-crow to hit the gypsy road again.
The morning papers were delivered with my breakfast tray. Every one of them confirmed what Tanaka had told me: the Gulf was on the brink of war; Europe was in disarray over trade policies and farm subsidies; Gorbachev was still grandstanding his way round Europe trying to drum up ready-cash aid, while the Union was breaking up and troops were being called in to quell insurrection in the southern provinces.
In America the Republicans were beating the war drums, the Democrats were recalling Vietnam, the military were underscoring the obvious: inaction corrupts fighting men, war machines will not work unless they are used regularly.
In Japan there were rumblings of protest against any form of military intervention. The Pakistanis had at least the elements of an atom bomb. And China, the giant, was ominously silent.
My own big, empty country was in dire straits, with three years’ wool-clip in store, no market for her grain and company after company sliding into bankruptcy because of profligate spending of borrowed money and usurious interest rates.
All in all it was not the happiest of seasons. I had a thought, however, that I might be able to offer a constructive idea to our people, if they cared to study the opportunities offered by the Tanaka/Leibig plan. We had food running out of our ears. We were shooting sheep. The mice were nibbling at the wheat in the silos. If credits could be provided to ship the stuff to Russia, we might jump-start a programme that would leave the Americans and the Europeans gasping. Laszlo had the same thought, and the clout, if not the money, to sell it to our politicians and bureaucrats. I was, unfortunately, regarded as an expatriate. My strongest influence was abroad. At least it was worth a try. The Bangkok conference was no longer a diplomatic secret. I called the Australian Embassy and asked for an urgent meeting with the Ambassador. He was surprised, but co-operative. He would see me at noon.
At nine-thirty, I presented myself unannounced at Carl Leibig’s office, having first established that he was in but not available. Although he was obviously irritated, he had no option but to receive me. His assistant Franz hovered in the background. I had to ask that he absent himself. The business under discussion was for principals only. Refreshed after a good night’s sleep and a communion with my nearest ancestor, I had worked out a crabwise approach to the problem of Marta Boysen. The logic was simple, old-fashioned medicine: you tap the patient’s knee to make sure his reflexes are working; you make him stick out his tongue, which embarrasses him; then you ask him all sorts of questions about his bowel movements, his sexual habits, his waterworks. After that you have him totally at your mercy.
First, I made an apology for coming unannounced. Then I explained it. ‘Certain matters came up during the weekend. I spoke with Tanaka late on Sunday night. He thought it was imperative that you and I confer. Do you mind if I ask some questions, just to set the ball rolling?’
‘Please.’ It was a reluctant concession.
‘Did you know I spent part of the weekend with Marta Boysen?’
‘I didn’t know.’ A faint smile twitched at his tight lips. ‘I guessed it might happen sooner or later. I trust you had a pleasant time?’
‘Pleasant enough, yes. Let’s say it helped to define our future roles as co-operative business colleagues.’
‘I’m glad to hear that.’
‘Next question. It had been your declared intention to fire Marta. Why did you change your mind?’
‘She made a very gracious apology for her indiscretion at the meeting. I felt she deserved a second chance.’
‘According to Tanaka you considered her a possible security risk. Have you changed your mind?’
‘No. I happen to think that, for the moment, she is safer inside our net than outside it.’
‘Did you tell her about Vannikov’s appointment or arrival?’
‘No, I did not; because at the time of our meeting I did not know about them. Why do you ask?’
‘Please, bear with me a moment. Did she ever tell you that she had an American friend in Tokyo, an official at the Embassy?’
‘Now that you mention it, yes. It came up quite casually. I had offered to introduce her to some German friends who would entertain her during her stay in Tokyo.’
‘How exactly, why exactly, did you see her as a security risk to the project?’
He hesitated for a moment, then excused himself and went into the outer office. A few moments later he was back with a letter in his hand. He did not offer to demonstrate it to me, but explained: “This is the letter of recommendation written to me by the curator of the Haushofer archives. It is full of praise for Marta Boysen and her academic qualifications. Then he says, “She is an acute and accurate observer of the economic and political scene and has on occasion provided valuable information and advice to certain senior ministers in Bonn.” ’
‘In other words she supplied Intelligence information?’
‘It would seem so.’
‘But surely that would be an added recommendation?’
‘For some, yes. For me, no. Intelligence is a trade which often leaves dirty marks on men and women. It is also very hard to escape from old associates. Besides I have a healthy mistrust of governments, all governments. Even in the old days we lived under our own law.’
‘But you still hired Marta Boysen. What decided you?’
‘She had a unique combination of sound historical research and a wide background in strategic economics.’
‘Did you, do you now, have any grounds for suspicion that she might be betraying business confidences?’
‘No.’
‘But you gave the opposite impression to Tanaka.’
‘What I told him was that she was the weakest link in our security chain. If I conveyed more it was because my anger betrayed me into overstatement. Now perhaps you will tell me the reason for this interrogation?’
‘It’s a piece of information which you and I have to assess. I played golf on Sunday with a friend from the American embassy. I discovered three things: our project is under discussion, Vannikov’s arrival is known, and Marta Boysen’s friend is a spook, CIA probably.’
‘Have you told her?’
‘No.’
‘What does Tanaka say?’
‘He wanted you to be told. I’ve done that. He wants Marta Boysen cleared or fired in forty eight hours, before we go into session in Nara.’
‘And you, Gil? What do you recommend?’
‘I’m a tainted witness, Carl. There’s a very old connection between us. My father and her mother were lovers. Marta and I are, well, I’m not quite sure what we are at this moment.’
‘And you’re not quite sure what she is either?’
He said it with surprising gentleness and no hint at all of malice or triumph. He did not wait for an answer. It was written all over my face. Instead he had another question.
‘Is there anything you haven’t told us, that you think we should know? I know bedroom dramas are embarrassing to describe. I’ve had more than a few myself.’
‘This didn’t happen in the bedroom, Carl, it just slammed the door. However, before I say anything, I have to insist that as a piece of evidence it’s quite inconclusive.’
