Short of Glory (22 page)

‘You tried to see me at the embassy?’

‘That’s right. I needed some more.’

‘So you’re not really Chatsworth?’

‘Yes, I am. It’s only Mackenzie that I’m not. Pays to use another name when you’re dealing with kidnappers.’

Patrick leaned forward. ‘Were you dealing with kidnappers?’

Chatsworth held up his hand again. ‘Explain later. Main thing is, what’s your plan? No good swapping clothes because they can see us. You’ll just have to take me with you.
Bluff your way.’

Chatsworth looked cheerful now, recovering his former self-confidence. Patrick wondered at first if he’d misunderstood but decided he hadn’t. ‘Look,’ he said slowly,
‘I haven’t come to get you out. I can’t do that. I’ve just come to see who you are and to check that you have no complaints. I didn’t know you were here, you see. That
is, I didn’t know it was you.’

Chatsworth looked aggrieved. ‘I thought that’s what you consul blokes were for. Especially bearing in mind what I’m doing for you.’

Patrick recalled Chatsworth’s advice about adopting a limp on certain occasions. He also remembered the abrupt laugh and reference to a mysteriously short time spent at Cambridge. He
picked up his pen and spoke carefully. ‘You’d better tell me how you came here.’

‘No time for all that now. Be more use if you’d tell me how I’m going to get out.’

‘I can’t do anything about that until I know what you’re here for.’

‘Well, I’m not sure I know myself, to be honest. All a bit of a cock-up. Not really my fault. Problem of money and identity.’

‘What kind of problem?’

‘Not enough of either.’ Chatsworth laughed and folded his arms. ‘Pity, ’cos I got off to a good start. Picked up by your car at the airport and all that. Stroke of luck.
I liked your ambassador, by the way. Not as stuck-up as some of them. Does he know I’m here?’

‘No. Look, unless you tell me why you are here there’s no hope of anyone doing anything. It’s three months before the next consular visit.’ Patrick knew that this tone of
calm bureaucratic implacability was one that he could not have adopted six months before. Chatsworth sighed, crossed his legs, refolded his arms, glanced over his shoulder at the warder, shook his
head as if at the world’s foolishness, and began in a roundabout way to explain.

His story was rambling and incomplete. The theme was Chatsworth’s struggle against a corrupt, uncomprehending and ungrateful world. Major events were mentioned in passing while certain
details received extravagant attention. It was not clear why he had left the Army. He had decided to ‘chuck it in and let them stew in their own juice’ as a result of persecution.
Getting a passport in the name of Mackenzie was glossed over by reference to someone who had died. On the other hand, an angry encounter with a hotel porter was described at length, as were the
circumstances of an insult allegedly received at the hands of British Airways in a dispute about the validity of a ticket. He was considering legal action.

The job with L and F, who employed a lot of ex-Army people, had started well enough but he’d been let down of late. He’d handled a negotiation in Bogota – an old
stamping-ground – concerning a kidnapped banker but it had all gone wrong before he got there and the chap had been done in. No one’s fault but the office couldn’t be expected to
see that. They’d got even more upset when he’d done the decent thing and stayed on for a few days to comfort the widow.

He’d been thinking of chucking it all in again when they’d asked him to do the Whelk business. Probably had no one else with the experience, though if he’d known what a
dog’s breakfast it was he’d have left them to it. Anyway, having arrived he’d decided to lie low and wait for the kidnappers, if there were any, to make a move. Like the
ambassador, he had from the start suspected the Lower African authorities. He suspected them even more now that they’d framed him. Anyway, he’d pushed off down to the coast for a week
or two to blow away the cobwebs, get some new ideas and so on and had booked in to what seemed a reasonable sort of hotel. Everything had been okay until L and F had started to get a bit sticky
about the expenses and he’d had to ring them a few times. They wouldn’t understand that you can’t expect quick results when you don’t even know whether there’s been a
kidnap. The hotel got suspicious – perhaps they’d listened to the calls – and had demanded cash down. That’s why he’d had to telegraph the embassy. He was grateful to
Patrick for coughing up so quickly and would see him all right in due course though there wasn’t much he could do from where he was, quite frankly.

Then on his last night the hotel staff must’ve taken it into their heads that he wouldn’t be able to pay the remainder, and called the police. Unless it was all a put-up job, of
course, and it looked increasingly like one. They said at the time that it was because he’d been doing a bit of entertaining in his room during the previous few days. No harm in that, but as
luck would have it there was one with him when they burst in. She happened to be black – dark brown, to be exact. He knew the law, of course, but he’d assumed it was one that everyone
broke and that it wasn’t taken too seriously so long as you did it discreetly, like fiddling the income tax. He’d never had a black – or, rather, a dark brown – before and
though he could easily have done it in London, it felt safer in Lower Africa. They were friendlier here.

Anyway, there was the most God Almighty fuss. Room suddenly filled with Keystone cops, the girl screaming and dancing about like a scalded cat, vase of flowers knocked on to yours truly who was
flat on his back, naked. Frog-marched out through the hotel lobby at light infantry pace wearing only a blanket and in front of a pack of bloody Nippons, all with cameras whirring. Blanket then got
stuck in the swing door and he was left starkers at the top of the steps with all the fuzz inside trying to get out. Absolutely bloody, the whole thing, and all for being friendly.

The discovery that he had two passports really put the cat among the pigeons. They took that more seriously than anything. Kept asking what he was doing here but he hadn’t told them
because he knew from the ambassador that it would embarrass HMG. He damn soon would though if HMG didn’t do something about getting him out. Also, if the police were so worried about hotel
bills and who you were and who you had it off with they’d probably say looking for kidnap victims was a hanging offence. As it was they were accusing him of being a terrorist and infiltrating
the country in order to stir up the blacks. That would be funny if he weren’t in prison for it. When he’d heard he was going to see the consul from the embassy he’d assumed HMG
was playing the white man and was getting him out. What Patrick had said had not cheered him, frankly. On the other hand, he was sure the ambassador would do something. He was a chap who had his
head screwed on and his feet firmly on the ground. Also, Patrick knew the background, so everything should be all right. It had to be.

Patrick was not so sure.

The warder peered through the partition again. Chatsworth looked glum. He leaned forward and rested his elbow on the desk and his chin on his hand. ‘You’ve got to get me out, you
know. I can’t stay here.’

Patrick nodded. ‘I would if I could but I don’t know how. We’ve no authority. If you’ve broken their law it’s up to them what they do about it.’

‘Lock up one of them in London.’

‘That works only with diplomats. I’ll try to find out what you’re going to be charged with. You haven’t been charged yet, have you?’

‘Not properly. Only some bloody silly thing about impersonating someone else, just so that they can hold me. Though how I’m supposed to be impersonating someone else when both people
are me I’m blowed if I know.’

‘I’ll try to find out what they’re planning to charge you with and then I’ll speak to the ambassador.’

‘But what should I tell them I’m doing here? They keep asking.’

‘Say you’re looking for a job – you want to be a mercenary or join the Lower African army or something. If we’re lucky we might be able to persuade them to deport you
quietly. I’ll try to come again as soon as I’ve got some news. Anything I can bring you?’

‘Nothing I’d be allowed.’

‘Any complaints?’

‘Only the fact that I’m here.’ Chatsworth sat back in his chair, looked around the room and sighed. ‘It’s a bit like being back at Sandhurst, really, only not as
bad. They’re more polite here.’ A truck-load of black prisoners was driven past the window. They all wore standard olive-greens. ‘Working party,’ he continued. ‘We
don’t have anything to do with them. Strict segregation.’

They stood and shook hands again. ‘You didn’t by any chance leave a bullet in the ambassador’s residence, did you?’ asked Patrick.

Chatsworth’s eyes opened wide and he retained his grip on Patrick’s hand. ‘My little nine-milly, yes. That was my lucky charm. Take it everywhere. Why, has the old boy found
it?’

‘No. I did.’

‘Have you got it?’

‘Well, no, but I know where it is. I gave it to someone. I can probably get it back.’

‘You must, you must.’ Chatsworth was pulling on Patrick’s arm and the warder was looking suspiciously at them. ‘That’s why it’s all gone wrong, you see,
because I lost it. Everything was all right up till then.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘You must get me out.’

‘Yes.’ Chatsworth was led away, frowning again, his head nodding like a pigeon’s as he walked. Patrick said nothing about him to Major de Beers, asking only to be kept informed
of any charges likely to be made. Major de Beers said it was a police matter but he would pass on the message. They agreed that the journalist should see a psychiatrist and the major undertook to
send the report to the embassy. Patrick was shown out with the same punctilious formality as had welcomed him.

He did not at first realise that it was a police car parked next to the bakkie. The driver sat with the window open and his elbow on the door. He got out as Patrick approached. It was Jim,
uniformed, smiling very slightly, his regular features wrinkled against the sun. For a few moments the gleam from his polished belt, the red shine from the bakkie and the bright prison wire behind
lent to the scene the detailed unreality of film.

‘Seems I can’t go anywhere without stubbing my toe on you,’ he said.

Patrick forced a grin. On first seeing him he had felt that he was himself about to join Chatsworth. ‘You don’t have to follow me around.’

Jim pressed down the lower flaps of his jacket. ‘How’s your friend?’

‘My friend?’

The one you’ve just seen. The man with two names.’

‘The remand prisoner?’ He knew that his pretended puzzlement would sound affected but pretence was too instinctive a reaction for him to avoid it. ‘He had no
complaints.’

‘Just as well. He could be in serious trouble.’

‘What’s he being charged with?’

‘Depends what he’s doing in our country.’ Jim looked up at the prison roof, stretched and yawned.

Patrick unlocked the bakkie. The handle was hot to touch. He stood back to let the heat out. ‘Looking for work, he said.’

‘Looking for Whelk, did you say?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Maybe he’s an accomplice of Whelk’s.’

‘In what?’

Jim looked at him. ‘Perhaps you really don’t know.’

Patrick said nothing. Jim began slowly grinding a stone into the hard earth with his polished boot. A working party of white prisoners was marched out of the main gate and towards the married
quarters. They were bronzed, fit men, all young. Those in the front rank marched with unseeing eyes past the policeman and his friend, their faces closed and brutal.

‘What d’you think will happen to him?’ asked Patrick.

‘Dunno. Depends on the British Embassy. He could be granted bail or surety if you were interested in someone involved with Whelk.’

‘Involved in what way?’

‘You tell me.’ Jim kicked away the stone he had been burying. ‘If you are interested you’d better move fast. He can only be held until tomorrow without being properly
charged and if he’s done under the anti-terrorist laws, as he could well be, that’s it. No bail, no remission, nothing.’

‘Is this your opinion?’

‘Let’s say I speak with authority.’ He smiled again. ‘I think you and me understand each other well enough, Pat. For all our differences.’

Patrick nodded. ‘I’ll speak to the ambassador.’

‘When I say move fast, I mean fast. Headquarters will need a letter guaranteeing his good conduct by early this afternoon. Otherwise by late afternoon the papers will have gone across to
the prosecutor and then we can’t do anything.’

Patrick thought immediately of his lunch with Joanna. Also, that the ambassador would soon be out. ‘I’ll see him as soon as I get back.’

‘Good.’ Jim straightened his uniform. ‘No sign of Stanley, Sarah’s boy?’

‘No.’ Patrick decided to proceed with their new-found frankness. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘Wondering where he is, that’s all.’

‘How d’you know he’s not back home in Swahiland?’

‘He left there a while ago.’ Jim got into his car but paused before closing the door. ‘How’s the bakkie?’

‘Going well.’

‘You’re pleased?’

‘I’m pleased.’

‘Be nice to her.’ He looked away as he spoke, started the engine and accelerated suddenly, leaving a small cloud of dust where Patrick stood.

‘H
e’s gone,’ said Clifford.

Patrick didn’t believe him. He knew Clifford was to go to lunch with the ambassador. ‘When?’

‘As good as. He’s reading through Philip’s paper – with my revisions. He hasn’t got time for anything else now.’

‘He’s still in his office?’

Clifford stood in the corridor, a file under his arm, barring the way. ‘He’s leaving in two minutes. So am I. You can tell me. Make it brief or let it wait till this
afternoon.’

No explanations to Clifford were brief. Besides, Patrick had been forbidden to discuss the L and F man. ‘It’s about the British prisoners. There’s something urgent.’

Clifford scoffed and made to move off down the corridor. ‘Well, it can’t be that urgent – they’re hardly going to run away, are they? That can easily wait till this
afternoon. Anyway, it’s a consular matter. If they’re being tortured report it on the normal channels. You don’t bother ambassadors with that sort of thing.’