Proof of Life, page 2
Stroud walked streets that had forgotten what it was like to be rained on, the sky between the too-high buildings a featureless gunmetal grey. He found the hotel. Haig had been as good as his word and there was a room for him, though he guessed it was the cheapest in the place. Breakfast was not included.
‘Would sir like a wake-up call?’ the receptionist asked.
‘Thank you, no,’ Stroud replied. ‘Sir would not.’
For a while, Stroud lay awake. The window open or closed, it made no difference. His head hurt. Everything hurt, and the heat just served to exaggerate it. The only reason for being here was because he wanted to know what was worth two hundred pounds to Marcus Haig. It was going to be trouble. Of that he was sure. But what was the worst that could happen? No wife, no family, no house, no money, no job, no prospects. Maybe he was just one step away from having nothing left to lose.
It was with this thought that he fell asleep.
2
‘You look bloody awful.’
‘That’s the welcome I get?’
‘Did you run up some horrendous bar tab at the Grange?’
‘No, Marcus, I went to bed.’
‘Alone?’
‘No, Marcus, with your mother.’
Marcus smiled. ‘What the hell were you doing in Amsterdam?’
‘Looking for the meaning of life.’
‘And you thought it might be prostitutes and grass?’
Stroud looked surprised. ‘It isn’t?’
Haig got up and walked to the window. The view of the city was the same through so many other windows in so many other offices. The view came with the salary, the agreement, the compromise. Stroud doubted he would ever want such a view.
‘So, why am I here?’
‘I’ll get to that,’ Haig said. ‘First, tell me how you’ve been?’
‘Eating badly, sleeping badly, drinking a bit too much.’ Stroud paused. ‘Or maybe too little, depending on your perspective. Single, lonely, broke. Don’t see Eva, not much hope of seeing Eva. Aside from that, there’s been some bad stuff as well.’ He restrained himself from asking Haig about Julia. He didn’t want to find out that she no longer even mentioned him.
‘Whatever else you may have lost, your sense of humour remains,’ Haig said.
‘When that goes, it will herald the End of Days.’
‘And work?’
‘Usual things. Freelance bits and pieces, a couple of editorials. I even did a piece for your magazine.’
‘You did. It was good. Not great, but good.’
‘I am overawed by the generosity of your compliment.’
Haig was quiet for a little while. To Stroud it seemed that he was weighing his words before he voiced them.
‘Are you in trouble, Marcus?’
Haig smiled, then laughed. ‘I gave up getting into trouble when I stopped hanging out with people like you.’
‘But you miss it, right? The rush, the uncertainty, the feeling that everything pulls at you and nothing holds you back.’
Haig didn’t reply. He was still pensive, his attention on his motive for summoning Stroud from Amsterdam.
‘Seriously,’ Stroud said. ‘You’re all right?’
Haig waved the question aside.
‘How’s Cathy? The kids?’
‘Cathy is fine. The kids?’ Haig smiled. ‘Noisy. Expensive.’
He returned to his desk, opened the drawer, took from it a bundle of tenners. He flicked through it, then slid it across to Stroud.
‘Two hundred. Get a haircut, some decent clothes, for God’s sake. You really do look like the rough end of a bad party.’
Stroud pocketed the money. He lit a cigarette and waited.
‘Okay,’ Haig said. ‘In at the deep end. Vincent Raphael.’
Stroud looked up suddenly. Of all the names he’d imagined he would hear, Raphael’s was the last.
‘What about him?’ A strange sense of disorientation invaded Stroud. He felt on edge, uncomfortable.
‘He saved your life.’
Stroud nodded. ‘More than once.’
‘When did you first meet him?’
He shook his head. ‘Why? What does it matter? Why are you asking me about Raphael?’
‘Humour me, Stroud. If for no other reason than the two hundred quid.’
‘I met him here,’ Stroud said. ‘The Times employed him. You know this. You were with us. We did the Transvaal and Brazzaville together. And Cyprus. You were there in Cyprus with us too.’
‘But I didn’t cover Jordan in 1970.’
‘No. So what?’
‘So I wasn’t there when he died.’
Stroud frowned. ‘Why are you asking me questions that you already know the answers to?’
‘I know you were close. You worked together, did all those trips to Vietnam, then Stanleyville, then the Paris riots. But how close?’
‘I don’t know what you’re asking, Marcus. The man was my mentor, my best friend. He saved my fucking life more times than I can recall. Anything I ever did that was worth something in this lousy business was because of what he taught me.’
‘Right,’ Haig said. ‘Right.’
‘Tell me what the hell is going on, Marcus. Tell me why I’m here, or I’m leaving.’
Haig looked up. There was something in his expression – a toughness, a sense of resolute determination – that Stroud had not seen for a long time.
‘No one really knows what happened to him, do they?’
‘Yes, they do. He was killed. Some say murdered. A grenade went through the window of his Land Rover and that was that.’
‘And he had half a dozen jerry cans full of petrol in there. According to reports, there was nothing left, not only of Raphael but of the car as well.’ Haig paused. ‘Right?’
Stroud closed his eyes. He didn’t like where this was going.
‘You and I both know that there was no body for them to send home. They buried an empty coffin in a small graveyard in Hereford and that was that. He was like you in the end. No wife, no parents, no one who really gave a damn except us, and we were too stunned and grief-stricken to consider any possibility but what we were told.’
‘Are you telling me that what happened and what we were told were not the same thing, Marcus?’
‘There have been rumours.’
‘There were always rumours. It was nothing but rumours for months after he died. But that was six years ago. Six years.’
‘I know how long ago it was.’
‘So what makes whatever rumour you’ve heard now any different from the rumours back then?’
Haig opened the desk drawer again. From it he took a single photograph. He looked at it for a moment, and then passed it to Stroud.
A street. Somewhere in the Balkans, perhaps. The image was small and blurred, but there appeared to be two men on the corner.
‘This is where? Macedonia? Greece?’
‘Turkey,’ Haig said. ‘Istanbul.’
‘You’re saying that one of these men is Raphael?’
‘I’m saying that the person who took the picture says that one of those men is Raphael.’
‘And who took the picture?’
‘I can’t tell you. Let’s just say it’s someone who would be in the business of being more sure than I am about something like this.’
‘And the other man?’
‘Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.’
‘You mean Mossad.’ Stroud paused. ‘So if whoever took this picture would be in the business of knowing the identity of a British newspaperman, and he was also interested in a Mossad presence in Turkey, we’re talking Special Intelligence Service.’
Haig remained silent.
‘So, someone from MI6 tipped you off that Raphael was in Istanbul talking to someone from Mossad?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘Then how did you get the picture, Marcus?’
‘Look, there may be nothing in it, okay? People get interested, jump to conclusions. Sometimes people have to jump to conclusions so those conclusions can be verified one way or the other.’
‘So what are you asking me to do? Go to Istanbul and find out if Raphael is still alive?’
For a few moments there was silence.
Haig didn’t need to speak for Stroud to get his answer.
‘You are out of your mind.’
‘I am well aware that that may be how it appears.’
Stroud turned the picture towards Haig. ‘This could be you and me. This could be anyone. This is complete crap, Marcus. Raphael is dead. He died outside Karameh, near the Allenby Bridge. His fucking car blew up and there was nothing left of him.’
‘You saw it happen.’
‘Fuck off, Marcus. You know I didn’t see it happen.’
‘Don’t you wonder? Even now? Not even a fleeting thought?’
Stroud sighed audibly. He got up from the chair. He patted his pocket. ‘Thanks for the contribution to the Stroud salvation fund. I’m going to use some of it to buy a plane ticket, if that’s okay with you, but it sure as hell won’t be to Istanbul.’
‘Before you go, there’s something else.’
Stroud shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know, Marcus.’
‘I think maybe you do.’
Stroud sat down again. He lit another cigarette.
‘The French are after him.’
‘What? All of them?’
Haig smiled wryly. ‘How much do you know about French intelligence?’
‘Aside from the fact that that opens up another line of wisecracks entirely, I’d say very little.’
‘Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. That is… was France’s external intelligence agency. They go all the way back to the late forties. Before that they have a history through the Free French spy network in the Second World War and the Deuxième Bureau. Anyway, back in the autumn of 1965, a Moroccan politician by the name of Mehdi Ben Barka went missing in Paris. He was the head of the National Union of Popular Forces. Anti-monarchists, nationalists, far more extreme than the more established republicans. The guy vanished. Not a trace. French intelligence was implicated. There were rumours that Barka had been kidnapped and murdered by the DGSE. And so the DGSE and its overall administrative senior office were placed under the jurisdiction of the French Ministry of Defence. In essence, the Ministry of Defence is now French external intelligence.’
‘And these are the people who are looking for Raphael?’
‘Strenuously.’
‘Why? And what gives them any reason to believe that he’s still alive? Surely more than a grainy picture of two people who could be just about anyone.’
‘We don’t know.’
‘We? Who’s we, Marcus? I feel like I’m in the middle of something written by Fleming or Le Carré.’
‘It’s just an expression, Stroud. I don’t know, okay?’
Stroud looked at Haig. He didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to feel. The whole thing was sufficiently ridiculous for him to give it no credence. He and Raphael had been joined at the hip. There was only one man who had carried a wilder reputation than Stroud himself, and that had been Raphael. He had been the catalyst for so much in Stroud’s career. That he could still be alive was beyond belief. They had lived together, travelled together, almost died together a hundred times. There was no way that Raphael would not have contacted him in the last six years.
Stroud couldn’t afford to invest any emotion in the idea that Vincent Raphael was alive. He was dead, plain and simple.
‘MI6, Mossad, French Ministry of Defence,’ Haig said. ‘And The Times, of course.’
‘And Uncle Tom Cobley and all,’ Stroud added, doing nothing to mask his cynicism. ‘I’m not interested, Marcus. I don’t care who wants to know. I am not buying the possibility that Raphael is alive.’
Haig paused before speaking. He looked towards the window, the view beyond, and then he cleared his throat. ‘Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s just say he was alive. What would that mean?’
‘I have no idea, Marcus.’
‘It would mean something to you, right? That he hadn’t contacted you? After everything you experienced together, I mean.’
‘You have no idea what we experienced together.’
‘But you do, and so does he. Aren’t you curious… beyond curious to know what could have been so important as to make him vanish like that, to contact no one?’
Stroud paused for just a moment, and then he got up.
‘I’m not even slightly convinced, Marcus.’
‘That’s exactly why I am asking you. You’re not caught up in the myth of Vincent Raphael…’
Stroud shook his head and smiled. Haig fell silent.
‘It’s been good to see you, Marcus. I think you did the right thing, getting out of this ridiculous game. Maybe we’ll catch up another time, eh?’
‘Two thousand pounds.’
Stroud couldn’t conceal his surprise.
‘You heard me. That’s over and above the two hundred I just gave you. Flights, hotels, expenses all covered, and a flat fee of two thousand pounds to find Vincent Raphael. Either find him, or prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that he really is dead.’
‘You are actually serious.’
‘As serious as it’s possible to be.’
‘Why, Marcus? Why are you even giving this your attention?’
‘Because I want to know, Stroud. I want to know what happened. I want to know what he knows. If he did survive Jordan and has been playing dead all these years, what has he been hiding from? You have any idea how big a story that could be? Maybe not as big as finding Lucan, but it would sure as hell sell some papers. The mere fact that MI6 say he’s talking to Mossad, and then we get word that the French are looking for him but won’t say why… Just that alone is enough to get me very, very interested.’
Stroud stood in silence. He knew that Haig could hear his thoughts – loud as church bells.
‘Two thousand pounds.’
‘Two thousand pounds,’ Haig repeated.
‘Flights, hotels, expenses.’
‘Everything except bar tabs.’
Stroud smiled.
‘Not a joke, Stroud. No bar tabs.’
Stroud didn’t reply. A million thoughts went through his head. He was feeling things he hadn’t felt in years.
‘So?’
He looked up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I’m doing it to prove, once and for all, that he really is dead.’
‘What do you need?’
‘Photos of him. Clean-shaven, bearded, short hair, long hair. Just give me whatever you’ve got. I’ll need a couple of lenses. Telephotos. I need another two hundred in cash, an agreement on how I get the rest of the money, whatever visas I need for Turkey. I need a day to pack. I’ll leave tomorrow. Get someone to book me a flight. One-way. Cheapest seat. I don’t want it known that I’m going, and I don’t want to draw attention to my reason for being there.’
‘Your passport is up to date?’
Stroud smiled. ‘You know me, Marcus. That’s pretty much the only up-to-date thing in my life.’
3
It all came back. The heat, the smell, the atmosphere. Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul. By whichever name it went, it would always be far beyond anything that could be expressed in words alone. Some said that it was impossible to see this place and remain a disbeliever.
The Grand Bazaar, the Sultan’s Palace, Divan Yolu Street. The Lale Restaurant in Sultanahmet, christened ‘the Pudding Shop’ during the great hippie migration. Once upon a time they congregated for tavuk göğsü, şöbiyet and baklava, to buy hash and hitch rides and convince one another that free love and good acid was the only way to save the world. Booths and couches, books everywhere, an entire wall composed of glass, and from the garden you could see the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. For a while, the Pudding Shop was the only place to get good information about reliable routes into Asia. They came in their thousands, following the Beatles and Donovan and Mia Farrow, looking for something out there that could only be found within. Stroud understood it, sure, but he didn’t buy the hype.
Istanbul sat between Europe and Asia. It straddled the Bosporus, and that river connected the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and thus the Dardanelles. It was a strategic point on the Silk Road, and though it was not the capital, it was a city far greater in history and significance than Ankara. Here were Turks, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians and Arabs; here you could hear a dozen languages, and a dozen more dialects within, as you merely crossed the concourse at Yeşilköy. The entire breadth of the Anatolian peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean had left its footprints and fingerprints here – from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Armenian Highlands, and beyond that, from neighbouring Georgia, Soviet Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
The city itself was just as Stroud remembered. Nothing would really change it but the passing of centuries.
Stroud took a cab from the airport to the Sultanahmet district. He found a small hotel off Atmeydani. He wanted to be within walking distance of Divan Yolu, the park, the local government and newspaper offices, but in a place that was sufficiently shabby and nondescript to attract no attention. He paid in cash, said very little, and refrained from making eye contact with anyone but the desk clerk.
In Istanbul, all Westerners looked and sounded the same. Despite his dirty blond hair and stubble, Stroud hoped that his face would be as unremarkable and forgettable as everyone else’s.
By mid afternoon, the heat was close to unbearable. Stroud wished he’d been a little more selective. He opened the windows and got the smell of the river, beneath that the faint stench of spoiled meat and rotting vegetables. He took a walk, found a place that sold a half-decent bourbon. He bought two bottles, two dozen packs of Turkish cigarettes and a box of assorted baklava. With his bag of provisions, he sat outside a small café facing the Arkeolojik Park. He ordered a medium-sweet coffee, smoked a cigarette, watched the world for a while.
