The Care of Time (30 page)

The cameraman grunted. ‘But can you get at the power? With all that dripping water about I mean. In damp mines they tend to keep the high voltage stuff sealed away so that damn fools don’t get killed doing things they shouldn’t.’

The Chief Secretary intervened to reassure him. ‘There are specially protected outlets in the gallery. They are used to plug in the heaters His Highness needs sometimes for his hands and feet. No doubt your lights would serve to keep him warm instead.’

‘Why don’t we just go down and have a look?’ I said. ‘Then we can decide.’

The journey down the stairway to the upper gallery was interesting but unpleasant. The interesting aspects were provided by the limestone walls and the curious shapes they made. There were, too, strange holes in some of the walls. They were smooth and angled like chutes. According to the Chief Secretary, they had once been the crawl holes used by the miners to scratch out every last scrap of silver-bearing ore
that could be carried away to the crushing mills. The mills had been across the valley. That was why no slag heaps had been left. Petrucher had written all this down. We should read it. The unpleasantness of the descent was due to the damp, the cold and the mud. The General’s doctor friend in Brussels had been right, I thought. If all this was good for bronchitis and asthma, the Austrian traffic police could be good for high blood-pressure.

Kluvers’s thick shock of hair was immaculately clean and he didn’t like muddy water dripping on it. Clattering down the third flight he muttered that the whole thing was ridiculous, but he kept on going. It was on the fifth flight that we had our first look at the upper gallery.

The lighted part was a space about twenty yards long and four wide. Within it, beyond an iron grating at the foot of the stairs, was a hardwood floor made in sections and resting on steel joists. Amazingly, the floor was quite dry. When we got down there we could see why. The rock of the gallery had been given a slightly curved false ceiling made of a corrugated plastic material. In the gallery all the drips were carried away to drainage ducts running along the sides. Standing in the centre of the floor were four clinical-looking reclining chairs. One of them, larger than the others, was obviously The Ruler’s. Of more immediate importance was the fact that under the plastic false ceiling there was much less echo.

‘This would not be too bad for sound,’ Kluvers said.

‘You’ll still hear the dripping,’ said the sound man. ‘It’s all around us. We’re not very deep here. Where does the water come from?’

‘It is last winter’s snow from the hills above,’ the Chief Secretary explained. ‘It takes many weeks to melt and filter down to here. In two months it will be much drier.’

The cameraman was examining the power outlets. ‘We could light it,’ he said. ‘Does that tunnel beyond here have lighting of any kind? We don’t want a black hole in back.’

The Secretary pressed a switch and showed us the tunnel at
the other end. If we could shoot there, the pictorial values alone would be worth something. Kluvers evidently thought so too.

‘We can explain the dripping background sound by showing the drips back on the stairs. The problem is going to be getting the equipment down here.’ He looked at the mud on his shoes. ‘What does this sheikh use when he comes down here? Gum boots?’

The word ‘sheikh’ had made the Chief Secretary wince quite noticeably. ‘His Highness the Emir,’ he said stiffly, ‘uses the lift, naturally, when he wishes to visit the upper gallery. I use it myself normally. For a man of my age those stairs are a great trial. But I assumed that you would be interested by the drama of the old entrance, the romance.’

‘You mean there’s an elevator here?’

‘I
told
you, Mr Halliday,’ he sighed. ‘I showed it to you on the plan. In the old ventilation shaft that the engineers call Up-Flow B. The stairways and steel scaffolding and girders went in by the main entrance in the house. The engineers simply removed the old wooden structures and supports that Petrucher had installed and replaced them with steel. But when it came to the big pumps and other heavy equipment, His Highness would not allow the old entrance to be enlarged or damaged. The lawyers advised against it too. So, the contractors installed a kind of lift, a hoist they called it, in the Up-Flow B shaft.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you were talking about some sort of block-and-tackle arrangement. Where is this hoist? How do we get to it?’

‘Along the tunnel there where I put the lights on. And above, it comes out at the top of the shaft behind the museum. I will show you.’

A hoist it was, slow, noisy and a bit scary when all you had to protect you from the reinforced concrete on the shaft walls was a single handrail. But it made Kluvers’s day.

‘We can be set up and ready to go in less than an hour,’ he said. ‘How do you want to shoot it?’

I remembered Simone’s briefing. ‘It’s to be done with the utmost ceremony,’ I said. ‘That big chair of his must be treated as a throne. His Highness must be left in no doubt that he is addressing the entire world, and that the world is listening with bated breath to every word he says. I shall grovel unobtrusively before him on one of the smaller chairs. We must be very careful of his dignity. I don’t want your cameraman sticking light metres or tape measures under his nose or trying to make him move again once he’s already set. Let’s be ready for him in advance. I’ll act as stand-in if it’ll help. When we’re shooting and you want to reload, just touch my arm. I shall tell him to ignore the camera, so if he goes on talking while you’re reloading don’t worry. My problem’s going to be to start him talking freely. Keep the clapper-board as quiet as you can. I don’t want to give him any reason or excuse to decide that he’s tired or bored or being treated with insufficient respect and consideration.’

‘Who does he think he is?
What
does he think he is?’

‘That’s what I’m hoping he’ll tell us. One other thing. I don’t want to try hanging a mike round his neck. I think he might feel that it spoilt the princely image. Use a short boom or a stand. It doesn’t matter if it’s seen.’

‘I can’t wait to meet him.’

The reason we had been able to speak so frankly was that the Chief Secretary had left us alone for a moment. He was having an argument with the camera and sound men who wanted to relieve themselves. They could not understand why they were being asked to climb in through the kitchen window to get to the spiral staircase that led up to the only bathroom in the place, instead of going through the front door and up the stairs there like civilized beings. When it was explained to them that there were no other stairs but that there were toilets in the temporary buildings below the car-park a fresh difficulty arose. The sound man shared
Jean-Pierre’s fear of attack dogs. In the end I had to persuade the Chief Secretary to order the uniformed security people to kennel all the dogs for as long as we remained there.

It was a peculiar sort of battle to have won, but from then on I had the crew on my side. That turned out to be a real plus. They were ready to help me make things go smoothly with The Ruler. Meanwhile, Simone had established good relations with the handyman-driver of the Dutch van and, with Jean-Pierre’s agreement, a pooling of food and drink supplies for lunch had been negotiated. Soon we were all drinking Italian wine out of Austrian paper cups and eating sandwiches of both nationalities. I almost forgot about the real reason for our being there. But not for long.

About two o’clock I saw the main door of the house open and Zander came out with the General and Schelm. They stood there for a moment before they were joined by the Chief Secretary. There was a brief discussion, then Zander looked around, apparently for me. I stood up and he beckoned. As I approached the group, the General and Schelm moved away. There was a suggestion in the way they held themselves that their session with The Ruler was something that they did not want to talk about, even to each other.

When I reached Zander I said: ‘Everything okay with those two?’

‘I told them they’d be in shock for a while. I don’t think they took me as seriously as they should have done. Chief Secretary, you have orders for Mr Halliday?’

The Chief Secretary cleared his throat. For some reason, Zander’s presence was now making him feel nervous. ‘Yes,’ he said to me, ‘I have proposals. His Highness has retired to take a little food and to rest. Your unit director seemed to think that the interview could be filmed in the upper gallery after about an hour’s preparation there. Was he exaggerating?’

‘No. In fact, I think the preparations could be made sooner if necessary.’

‘No. His Highness said an hour. Make your preparations on that basis please.’

I looked at Zander again. He nodded blandly. ‘As I said, Mr Halliday, everything so far goes according to plan. The Chief Secretary agrees with me, I think.’

The Chief Secretary was looking more uneasy than ever, but managed a shrug.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we’ll be ready in an hour.’ But I couldn’t help glancing again at Schelm and the General and was opening my mouth to ask a question when Zander cut in sharply.

‘No, Mr Halliday. Those gentlemen have serious things to think about and perhaps discuss. You can’t help them. Best if you leave them alone. You do what
you
have to do. Get your TV interview.’

The eyes, too, were telling me in no uncertain terms to mind my own goddam business. So, I shut my mouth, nodded and went back to the car-park.

‘We have forty-five minutes to get it all set up,’ I said.

‘What’ll he be wearing?’ asked the cameraman.

‘When I saw him earlier he was in full Arab dress as worn by a man of rank.’

‘All
white
, you mean? With the black head-band? No colour at all? Can’t you tell him to wear a suit and the head-dress like the fat man who showed us the lift?’

‘If I try and tell him anything at all, there’ll be no interview.’

Kluvers intervened. ‘It’s the face you want, isn’t it? The face and the head-dress?’

‘That’s right.’

The cameraman looked perplexed. ‘You don’t want even to see him walking in? We miss all that interesting background?’

‘Let’s talk about the foreground first,’ I said. ‘What I need is a full head and shoulders to begin with, enough to see that he’s sitting in this curious chair. Then go in gradually as close
as you can get. We want to see the hairs on his face, the eyes, the lips, the teeth and the tongue as well as hear what he has to say, if anything. When we’re through with him, or he’s through with us, use the backgrounds when you pick up the cut-away footage of me listening to him and asking two or three of the questions that worked, if any.’

‘Rainer said we may use a lot of film.’

‘I hope he’s right. We may end up using very little. Either way, I think we should get moving.’

Kluvers got to his feet. ‘You hear what he says. Let’s get the job done. With luck we should be able to pick up our money in Munich tomorrow and be home the day after.’

They made three trips in the hoist. I got a sweater out of my baggage, then climbed down to the gallery by the stairs so as to keep out of their way and watched them set up. I also went on trying to figure out a way of handling the interview. First, of course, I would introduce him, explaining who I was and where we were, in the bowels of a disused, thousand-year-old silver mine in the province of Styria, Austria. A little bit about why we were there, then I would ask my first question. ‘Your Highness, I would like to begin by asking you this …’

And at that point my mind would go blank.

Until around three o’clock, the chore of acting as a stand-in, so that the cameraman could light the occupant of the big chair and the sound man work out his problems, helped to keep the worst of the anxiety at bay. It also kept me warm. According to the Chief Secretary, the temperature in the upper gallery at that time of year remained at, or just below, nine degrees Celsius, night and day. There was no wind or discernible draught to make the air seem colder than it really was, but it was still very chilly. In my house the thermostat would long ago have switched on the heating.

At three o’clock I moved over to the seat from which I was going to do the interview and started looking at my watch. Five minutes later the whine of the hoist in Up-Flow B began
as it started for the surface. Only this time it wouldn’t be bringing down cables and lamps. According to Simone, The Ruler’s only good habit was that of punctuality. Unless a person or group was to be kept waiting intentionally, he was rarely more than a quarter of an hour late for an appointment. The hoist was silent for a moment or two and then began to descend.

The moment we saw him in the tunnel I heard the cameraman swear softly and start to change his lighting. The Ruler had discarded his Arab robes, including the head-dress, in favour of a blue suit with a vest and dark tie. Someone must have told him about the aversion of television to certain colours because he was wearing a blue shirt too. In fact, the blue-shirt rule for those to be interviewed is, with modern equipment, a thing of the past. Against The Ruler’s sallow complexion, however, the pale blue would have been a good choice of colour anyway. The thing that drew my attention most, though, as I went forward, bowing, to escort him to his television throne, was the high colour on his cheeks. I also noticed that the Chief Secretary waddling behind him was looking anxious. I began to think very quickly indeed.

Kluvers and I had earlier discussed the possibility of using make-up on our subject and decided not to risk it. The Ruler was quite capable of regarding a proposal to use make-up as a suggestion that he was unmanly. Only if he began sweating in the heat of the lamps would someone suggest a little powder to take off the shine. The idea that he might himself decide to use make-up had not occurred to us. Now, though, as he came into the spill light from the photo floods, I could see that the flush on his cheeks wasn’t make-up. He was just excited about something, or by something.

It certainly wasn’t the prospect of being interviewed for television that was turning him on. When I went on with the ceremonial of introducing Kluvers particularly and the rest of the crew generally, all any of them received was a vague
nod. As Kluvers invited him to sit in his chair for a last quick check on the lighting, he turned to the Chief Secretary and said something in Arabic. I knew enough to get the drift of what he said. It was an order to the Secretary to tell him every twenty minutes what the time was. For me, there was only one possible explanation for the way he was looking and behaving. He had had a fix of some sort.