Amsterdam (11 page)

“You saw the press,” Vernon said. “Pure bliss.”

Today all the papers, broadsheets and all, had been obliged to run related features. You could see the reluctance and the envy in every caption, in every busily researched fresh angle. The
Independent
had come up with a tired piece on privacy laws in ten different countries. The
Telegraph
had a psychologist theorizing
pompously on cross-dressing, and the
Guardian
had given over a double-page spread, dominated by a picture of J. Edgar Hoover in a cocktail dress, to a sneering, wised-up piece on transvestites in public life. None of these papers could bring itself to mention the
Judge
. The
Mirror
and the
Sun
had concentrated on Garmony at his farm in Wiltshire. Both papers displayed similar grainy long-lens photos of the foreign secretary and his son disappearing into the darkness of a barn. The huge doors gaped wide, and the way the light fell across Garmony’s shoulders but not his arms suggested a man about to be swallowed up by obscurity.

Between the second and third floors Frank punched a button to brake the winching mechanism and stopped the lift with a horrible jolt that clutched at Vernon’s heart. The ornate brass and mahogany box creaked as it swayed above the shaft. They had held a couple of quick conferences like this before. The editor felt obliged to conceal his terror and appear nonchalant.

“Just briefly,” Frank said. “McDonald will be giving a little speech at conference. Not quite saying they were wrong, not quite forgiving you either. But you know, congratulations all round and since we’re going ahead, let’s pull together.”

“Fine,” Vernon said. It would be exquisite, listening to the deputy editor apologize without appearing to do so.

“Thing is, others might chime in, there might even
be some applause, that sort of thing. If it’s all right with you, I think I should hang back, not show my hand at this stage.”

Vernon felt a faint, brief inner disturbance, like the tightening of some neglected reflexive muscle. He was touched by curiosity as much as distrust, but it was too late to do anything now, so he said, “Sure. I need you in place. The next few days could be crucial.”

Frank hit the button and for a moment nothing happened. Then the lift plummeted a few inches before lurching upward.

As usual, Jean was on the other side of the concertina gates with her bundle of letters, faxes, and briefing notes.

“They’re waiting for you in room six.”

The first meeting was with the advertising manager and his team, who felt this was the moment to hike the rates. Vernon wanted to wait. As they hurried along the corridor—red-carpeted, as in his dreams—he noticed Frank peeling away just as two others joined them, people from layout. There was pressure to crop the front-page picture to make way for a longer standfirst, but Vernon had already made up his mind about the copy he wanted. The obituaries editor, Manny Skelton, scuttled sideways out of his cupboard-sized office and pushed a few pages of typescript into Vernon’s hand as he strode by. This would be the piece they had commissioned in case Garmony offed himself.
The letters editor joined the throng, hoping for a word before the first meeting began. He was anticipating a deluge and was fighting for a whole page. Now, as he paced toward room six, Vernon was himself again, large, benign, ruthless, and good. Where others would have felt a weight upon their shoulders, he felt an enabling lightness, or indeed a light, a glow of competence and well-being, for his sure hands were about to cut away a cancer from the organs of the body politic; this was the image he intended to use in the leader that would follow Garmony’s resignation. Hypocrisy would be exposed, the country would stay in Europe, capital punishment and compulsory conscription would remain a crank’s dream, social welfare would survive in some form or other, the global environment would get a decent chance, and Vernon was on the point of breaking into song.

He didn’t, but the next two hours had all the brio of a light opera in which every aria was his, and in which a shifting chorus of mixed voices both praised him and harmoniously echoed his thoughts. Then it was eleven o’clock, and far more than the usual number were cramming into Vernon’s office for the morning conference. Editors and their deputies and assistants and journalists were crammed into every chair, slouched against every inch of wall space, and perched along the windowsills and on the radiators. People who could not squeeze into the room were bunched around
the open doorway. Conversation stopped as the editor edged himself into his chair. It was positively raffish, the way he started without preamble, as always, and stuck to the routine—a few minutes’ postmortem, then a run through the lists. Today, of course, there would be no bids for the front page. Vernon’s one concession was to reverse the usual order so that home news and politics would be last. The sports editor had a background piece on the Atlanta Olympics and a why-oh-why on the state of English table-tennis doubles. The literary editor, who had never before been in early enough to attend a morning conference, gave a somnolent account of a novel about food that sounded so pretentious Vernon had to cut him off. From arts there was a funding crisis, and Lettice O’Hara in features was at last ready to run her piece on the Dutch medical scandal, and also—to honor the occasion—was offering a feature on how industrial pollution was turning male fish into females.

When the foreign editor spoke, attention in the room began to focus. There was a meeting of European foreign ministers and Garmony would be attending, unless he resigned straight away. With this possibility floated, a murmur of excitement spread through the room. Vernon brought in the political editor, Harvey Straw, who dilated on the history of political resignations. There hadn’t been many lately and it clearly was a dying art. The prime minister, well known to be
strong on personal friendship and loyalty, weak on political instinct, was likely to hang on to Garmony until he was forced out. This would prolong the affair, which could only help the
Judge
.

At Vernon’s invitation, the circulation manager confirmed the latest figures, which were the best in seventeen years. At this, the murmur swelled to a clamor and there was some swaying and stumbling around the doorway as frustrated journalists standing in Jean’s outer office decided to push against a wall of bodies. Vernon slapped the table to bring the room to order. They had still to hear from Jeremy Ball, the home editor, who was obliged to raise his voice; a ten-year-old boy was going on trial today accused of murder, the Lakeland rapist had struck for a second time in a week and a man had been arrested last night, and there was an oil spill off the coast of Cornwall. But no one was really interested, for there was only one subject that would quieten this crowd, and finally Ball obliged: a letter to the
Church Times
from a bishop attacking the
Judge
over the Garmony affair ought to be dealt with in today’s leader; a meeting of the government’s back-bench committee this afternoon should be covered; a brick had been thrown through the window of Garmony’s constituency headquarters in Wiltshire. Ragged applause followed this news, and then silence as Grant McDonald, Vernon’s deputy, started in on his few words.

He was an old-timer on the
Judge
, a large man whose face was almost lost inside a ridiculous red beard he never trimmed. He liked to make great play of being a Scot, wearing a kilt to the Burns night he organized for the paper and honking on bagpipes at the New Year’s office party. Vernon suspected McDonald had never been farther north than Muswell Hill. In public he had given due support to his editor, and in private, with Vernon, he had been skeptical of the whole affair. Somehow the entire building seemed to know about his skepticism, which was why he was listened to so eagerly now. He started at a low growl, which intensified the silence around him.

“I can say this now and it’ll come as a surprise to you, but I’ve had my wee doubts about this right from the start …”

This disingenuous opener earned him a manly round of laughter. Vernon thrilled to the dishonesty of it; the matter was rich, complex, byzantine. There came to his mind an image of a burnished plate of beaten gold inscribed with faded hieroglyphs.

McDonald went on to describe his doubts—personal privacy, tabloid methods, hidden agendas, and so on. Then he came to the hinge of his speech and raised his voice. Frank’s briefing had been accurate.

“But I’ve learned over the years that there are times in this business—not many, mind—when your own opinions have to take a back seat. Vernon’s made
his case with a passion and a deadly journalistic instinct, and there’s a feeling in this building, an urgency on this paper now, that takes me back to the good old times of the three-day week when we really knew how to tell it. Today the circulation figures speak for themselves—we’ve tapped the public mood. So …” Grant turned to the editor and beamed. “We’re riding high again, and it’s all down to you. Vernon, a thousand thanks!”

After the loud applause, others chimed in with brief messages of congratulation. Vernon sat with folded arms, his face solemn, his gaze fixed on the grain in the table’s veneer. He wanted to smile, but it wouldn’t seem right. He observed with satisfaction that the managing director, Tony Montano, was discreetly taking notes of who was saying what. Who was on board. He would have to be taken aside and reassured about Dibben, who had slumped down in his chair, hands deep in his pockets, frowning and shaking his head.

Now Vernon stood for the benefit of those at the back of the room and returned the thanks. He knew, he said, that most people in the room had been against publication at one time or another. But he was grateful for this, because in some respects journalism resembled science: the best ideas were the ones that survived and were strengthened by intelligent opposition. This fragile conceit prompted a hearty round of applause; no need for shame, then, or retribution from on high. By
the time the clapping faded, Vernon had squeezed through the crowd to a whiteboard mounted on the wall. He peeled away the masking tape that held in place a large sheet of blank paper and revealed a double-size blowup of the next day’s front page.

The photograph filled the entire width of eight columns and ran from under the masthead three quarters of the way down the page. The silent room took in the simply cut dress, the catwalk fantasy, the sassy pose that playfully, enticingly, pretended to repel the camera’s gaze, the tiny breasts and artfully revealed bra strap, the faint blush of makeup on the cheekbones, the lipstick’s caress that molded the swell and smipout of the mouth, the intimate, yearning look of an altered but easily recognizable public face. Centered below, in thirty-two-point lower-case bold, was a single line: “Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary.” There was nothing else on the page.

The crowd that had been so boisterous was completely subdued now, and the silence lasted for over half a minute. Then Vernon cleared his throat and began to describe the strategy for Saturday and Monday. As one young journalist would remark to another later in the canteen, it was like seeing someone you know stripped in public and flogged. Unmasked and punished. Despite this, the general view that took hold as people dispersed and returned to their desks, and that consolidated in the early afternoon, was that this was
work of the highest professional standards. As a front page, it would surely become a classic that one day would be taught in journalism school. The visual impact was unforgettable, as was the simplicity, the stark-ness, the power. McDonald was right—Vernon’s instinct was unerring. He was thinking only of the jugular when he pushed all the copy and resisted the temptation of a screaming headline or a wordy caption. He knew the strength of what he had. He let the picture tell the story.

When the last person had left his office, Vernon closed the door and dispelled the fug by pushing the windows open wide to the damp March air. He had five minutes before his next meeting and he needed to think. He told Jean over the intercom that he was not to be disturbed. The thought scrolled round and round in his mind—it went well, it went well. But there was something, something important, some new information he had been about to respond to, then he had been diverted, and then he had forgotten, it had flashed away from him in a swarm of other, similar items. It was a remark, a snippet that had surprised him at the time. He should have spoken up right then.

In fact, it didn’t come until the late afternoon, when he had another chance alone. He stood by the whiteboard trying to taste again that fleeting flavor of surprise. He closed his eyes and set about remembering the morning conference in sequence, everything that
was said. But he could not keep his thoughts on the task and he drifted. It was going well, it was going well. But for this one little thing he would be hugging himself, he would be dancing on the desk. It was rather like this morning, when he had lain in bed contemplating his successes, denied full happiness by the single fact of Clive’s disapproval.

And there he had it. Clive. The moment he thought of his friend’s name, it came back to him. He went across the room toward the phone. It was simple, and possibly outrageous.

“Jeremy? Could you step into my office for a moment?”

Jeremy Ball was with him in less than a minute. Vernon sat him down and began an interrogation and took notes on places, dates, times, what was known, what was suspected. At one point Ball used the phone to confirm details with the journalist covering the story. Then, as soon as the home editor had left, Vernon used his private line to call Clive. Again the protracted, clattering pick-up, the sound of bedclothes, the cracked voice. It was past four o’clock, so what was it with Clive, lying there all day like a depressed teenager?

“Ah, Vernon, I was just—”

“Look, something you said this morning. I need to ask you. What day was it you were in the Lake District?”

“Last week.”

“Clive, it’s important. What day?”

There was a grunt and a creak as Clive struggled to pull himself upright.