A Spy's Life (2 page)

He turned to go, then stopped and listened intently to a new noise. He cupped his hand to his ear. It was a muffled sound – muffled but insistent – and it was coming from Griswald’s body. Suddenly he understood: it was a cellphone. Griswald had kept his phone switched on and now it was ringing. He waded through the water, ran his hands over the body and felt the phone inside his breast pocket. He thrust his hand inside Griswald’s jacket, steeling himself against the blood and pulp of his chest, and pulled out the phone and something else – a wallet. He was about to throw it away when something told him it would be needed for identification. He slipped it into his hip pocket.

The phone was still ringing. He stabbed at the keypad and brought it to his cheek.

‘Hello.’

‘Al?’ came a woman’s voice. She was a long way off and the wind was making it difficult to hear, but he thought he recognised the voice.

‘Look,’ stumbled Harland.

‘Who is this?’ demanded the woman.

Harland grimaced to himself. ‘Look, Alan can’t take your call.’

‘Who is this speaking? Where’s Alan?’ The panic in her voice was rising. ‘Why have you got my husband’s phone?’

Harland saw nothing for it but to hang up. Sally Griswald would learn soon enough. He held the phone in front of him and dialled his own direct line at the UN building.

‘Marika?’

‘This is she.’ The voice was brisk – troubled.

‘Marika, I need you to listen very carefully.’

‘Oh, my God! Mr Harland? You don’t know what’s happened. It’s terrible. The plane’s crashed at La Guardia. The flight from Washington. All those people. We just got the news a few minutes ago.’

‘I was on the flight.’

‘What are you saying? I can’t hear you.’

‘I was on the flight. I’m okay. But I need you to tell them where I am.’

‘I don’t understand. It’s not on your schedule—’

‘Listen, for God’s sake, Marika.’ He was shouting and he knew he was terrifying the life out of her. ‘I was on the flight. And now I’m stranded in the East River. You’ve got to tell them where to find me.’

‘Oh, my God …’

‘Tell them I’m in a direct line between the northeast runway and Riker’s Island. The tide’s coming in fast and I need them to get here quickly. Marika, now don’t hang up! Keep the line open … Marika?’

Another voice came on the line. ‘Bobby, it’s Nils Langstrom.’

‘Thank God,’ said Harland. Langstrom had a cool head. ‘I was on the flight that crashed. I’m stranded in the East River. I guess I’m about one hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred yards from the runway on a line with Riker’s Island. I’m in the water and I’m going to try and get myself back on dry land. They’ll see some wreckage from the plane. I’ll wait there. But tell them they’ve got to move quickly. There may be other people out here.’

‘Got it. I’ll make sure they understand where you are.’

‘I’ve got to hang up now and get to the island.’

‘Don’t take any risks …’

Harland pressed the ‘off’ key and clamped the phone between his teeth. He ignored the taste of blood on the phone and looked up to get his bearings. It wasn’t easy. Wading out to where Griswald lay had been fine because the light from behind him had shown him the way. Going back was a different matter. Beneath the distant beam from the truck everything was pitch black. He picked up the plastic panel, which he had kept wedged between his legs, and set off, jabbing at the water ahead of him. All around him was the excited rippling of a tide in full flood.

Part of him remained aloof from the situation, a dispassionate observer, registering the difficulty he had pulling his legs out of the mud, noticing the shortness of his breath, the lifelessness in his arms, the fatigue clouding the front of his brain and tempting his eyes to close. The cold was beyond anything he’d experienced. It was robbing him of his will, making his thoughts sloppy and his movements clumsy.

This part of Harland, the remote, calculating part, recognised that he had only a very short time.

It was beginning to snow. Big snowflakes were streaming across his vision making a little vortex along the line of the headlight beam. He put his head down and worked his shoulders to take several quick strides. The water had reached halfway up his thighs when he put his left leg down, found nothing and toppled sideways into the current. His lungs contracted with shock, expelling the air with a succession of hollow shouts, the first of which caused him to let go of the phone in his mouth. Then, as he flailed in the water like a child learning to swim, he lost his grip on the panel. He knew his only chance now was to make it back to the point where he could stand, but the current was very strong and his power to resist it had gone. His lungs wouldn’t keep the air down and he was swallowing water. He tilted his head back and stretched out his arms, his brain grasping at half a memory of a training session he’d endured long ago in Poole Harbour. He was floating, allowing the current to take him and to twirl him around like a piece of flotsam. He was aware of looking up at the snow. The light seemed to be growing fainter and the snow was getting denser. His terror was being edged out by blankness and submission. One thought kept moving through him: this is it, I’m going to die; this is it, I’m going to die.

And then his foot hit something and the current spun him round so that his bottom grazed the mud. He had been washed up on another bank. He reached his hands out backwards and clawed awkwardly at the mud, trying to get his head above the water. He found some roots just below the surface. With the last reserve of energy he turned and brought himself to all fours and choked the water out. He stayed there heaving and gulping in the terrible cold for what seemed like several minutes. Then he looked up and squinted through the sea water that was still stinging his eyes. There was no sign of anyone. They weren’t looking for him.

He listened. A seabird called out in the dark and again he heard the rasp and click of reeds nearby. He had to think. He had to think, dammit. But his mind was moving so slowly. He’d crawl into the reeds where the mud would be firm because of the roots and he would drag himself to his feet and stand so that they would see him. That’s what he’d do. He would get up and wait there and not give in to the cold. Someone would come. He knew it. Marika and Langstrom must have made them understand where he was. He inched towards the clump of reeds where a mess of snow and sea foam had collected, grabbed on to a handful of stalks and hauled himself towards them. He rose to his feet and stood, swaying like a drunk.

A few moments later he heard the helicopter’s roar, turned and saw a light coming towards him. He raised both arms and held them high until it was hovering in front of him and throwing up a whirlwind of snow and dead reeds. Next he saw several bent figures emerge from a cloud of snow and foam and rush towards him. They carried lights and a stretcher. He felt himself stagger on his feet, topple backwards and then lurch forwards into their arms.

2

THE MISSING

Sister Rafael was rather proud of her patient in Room 132. Since the British UN official had been brought in early on the previous evening, she had seen the TV film of him standing out in the East River with his arms raised like he was defying death. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been killed with the others. The TV news had said twenty people from the two aircraft had died, and now their bodies were lying in a temporary morgue at the airport, most of them burned beyond recognition. It made her shudder to think of so many people’s grief, especially now, before the holidays. She felt his wrist and touched his forehead with the back of her left hand. There was no sign of fever and his pulse was normal.

She peered at him in the sliver of morning light that was coming through the blinds. He was a big man and she guessed he was naturally strong. When he was brought in they’d needed three people to lift him to put on the Heibler vest so his temperature could be stabilised. His face interested her because it had none of the weak, fleshy appearance she associated with the British. The jaw was well defined, like his dark eyebrows which ran horizontally until they plunged down at the ends. His hair was a lighter brown and was cut short so you could see where it had receded on his forehead. She felt there was an openness in his features, except in the mouth, which even in medicated repose was clamped shut. Tension showed itself elsewhere – in the long furrows that ran from his cheekbone nearly down to his jaw, in the crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes and the single cleft at the centre of his brow. His eye sockets were blackened by fatigue.

She wondered what expression his eyes held when they were open and what his voice sounded like and whether he was married. There was no wedding ring on his finger and when his sister called from London to speak with Doctor Isaacson, she had not mentioned a partner or any family. Of one thing she was sure. Mr Harland was important. Twice that morning a woman had called from the Secretary-General’s office to ask about his condition. She had instructions to pass on his concern and to let them know when the doctor said it would be okay to talk to him. Everyone wanted to talk to him – the TV and the accident investigators, and the Secretary-General was even threatening to come visit in the hospital. People understood that this man’s escape was extraordinary. That’s why the picture from the TV film was blown up in all the papers and why they were still playing it on the news bulletins. She could see him in her mind’s eye, standing there, feet slightly apart, his arms raised outwards in an almost religious attitude.

She moved to the window and parted the blind to look down into the dazzling snow light. Four or five news crews were still there, waiting in the sunshine to hear about her patient. Then she returned to the bedside and gave the face a last glance before leaving the room. He would sleep for a while yet.

Late on the third morning after the crash, Harland woke as a breakfast tray was brought to him. He felt alert but also curiously light-headed. In snatches of wakefulness during the past forty-eight hours, he had struggled to make sense of the events that had brought him to a hospital bed. Drowsily he watched a report on TV and got more or less all he needed – the casualty figures, the shocked reaction in the UN headquarters, the approximate circumstances of the crash and the mildly unnerving fact that he had been picked up by a helicopter that was carrying a TV crew who had filmed the rescue. It had taken a few seconds before he recognised the absurd, panicky figure, gesticulating like a maniac out on the shoreline. He had pressed the remote and had almost immediately fallen asleep.

Now he was hungry and set about the eggs and toasted bagel with relish, his mind returning to the crash. There was a lot he didn’t understand, chiefly how he and Griswald had been thrown out of the fuselage and landed so far from the line of the wreckage path. He thought of finding Alan Griswald’s body and hearing the telephone ringing in the dark and then speaking to Sally Griswald. He remembered her from years ago when the Griswalds were doing the rounds of East European embassies. He could see her now, a small, bubbling natural blonde from the Midwest who never took anything very seriously, least of all her husband’s work as the CIA Station Chief. She was a breath of fresh air in the otherwise self-consciously discreet gatherings of spies and embassy staff. The Griswalds had two small boys then. They were now at college. Griswald had talked about them on the plane. They were home for the Christmas holidays and he was going to take ten days with them.

The door opened and the woman who had introduced herself the day before as Sister Rafael came in, followed by the doctor, who looked him over quickly and pronounced himself satisfied with Harland’s recovery.

‘Anything we should know about your medical history?’ he asked. ‘You have had one or two operations – appendectomy and … er?’ He pointed below Harland’s midrift to his groin.

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘And it’s what I think it was?’

‘Yes, but I’ve been clear for a dozen years or more now.’

‘Diagnosed early then?’

‘Yes,’ he said with finality. He didn’t particularly want to discuss it in front of the nurse.

‘And these scars on your wrists and chest. Nothing that should concern me?’

‘No.’

‘What were they caused by?’

‘An accident,’ said Harland, with a discouraging look.

Isaacson nodded, a trace of doubt showing in his eyes. He told him how his body temperature had crashed below the eighty-eight-degree mark and that it had been touch and go for an hour after he was brought in. An incubator had been used to warm him on Tuesday evening. He had spent the first night on a supply of slightly heated, moist oxygen. Now all he needed to do was to concentrate on building his strength with rest and a high calorie intake. He warned that there were bound to be some after-effects. He would feel weak for some time and his muscles would continue to ache for a few days. There might also be problems of delayed shock. If he felt unusually depressed or listless in the coming weeks, he should seek trauma counselling. It was important that he should not try to deal with the experience by himself, but talk it out with a professional. Harland nodded obediently, although the idea was absurd to him. He had talked only once in his life – to an elderly woman in North London. He’d found it exceptionally hard to be precise about the effects of torture.

Isaacson noticed his expression. ‘How would you feel about speaking with the crash investigators? I mean, about the facts of the crash – what you remember about the airplane journey? They’re very anxious to speak with you.’

Harland agreed and after another cursory check, Isaacson left. Half an hour later, two men were shown in with great ceremony by the nurse. They introduced themselves as Murray Clark from the National Transportation Safety Board and Special Agent Frank Ollins of the FBI.

Harland slipped his legs from the bed and indicated to the nurse that he would like the robe hanging near the door.

‘Are you okay about this, Mr Harland?’ asked Murray Clark. ‘We can do it later.’