The Snowfly Page 14

  I liked the building.

  The offices were on the top floor. They were small and cramped with high ceilings and a heating system that clanged and coughed and hissed like a living thing. There was a small garden on the roof where we could take tea, “when it isn’t raining or the soot won’t choke you, which is about a half-dozen times a year,” Daly said.

  There was a receptionist sitting behind a low barrier, holding court over an ancient switchboard with all sorts of colored wires. She smiled dutifully at us. “This is Dolly,” my new boss said. “Do what she says if you want to be linked to the outside world. In fact, just do what she says,” he added.

  The floors of the office were filthy, caked with grease and dirt, the air heavy with stale smoke.

  The bureau chief’s office was small, the same size as the others, and across a narrow hall from the tearoom. “Elevenses,” he said with a nod toward the other room. “Whole fucking country stops at eleven a.m. to have its tea. Dolly makes it every day.” He seemed amused by this.

  I saw no photography equipment and no lab. “Do we have photographers?”

  “Not on staff. The company’s got most of its resources elsewhere. We hire local talent as we need it, fly somebody in, or use some of the crap Fleet Street shoots. It’s cheaper this way. The local talent can hack it, but make sure you plan ahead. Talk to Dolly. She has the list.”

  I nodded agreement and took out a notebook and began to make notes.

  “Dolly’s booked a flat for you.” He looked at me. “It’ll get you started and we’ll pick up the rent. You don’t like it, you’re free to find something on your own. If what you want costs more, you pay the difference. Dolly has the key.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “The bureau owns four cars,” Daly went on. “The one we were in is mine. The other three are up for grabs as you need them.”

  I said, “Talk to Dolly?”

  He grunted. “You’re catching on. She’ll help you work out a driver’s license. We’ve got a deal where we can drive on our American licenses and not have to go through red tape for the locals, but let her handle it.”

  He took me to an office at the end of the hallway. It was crammed with boxes and piles of curling yellow dog paper. There was a Royal upright typewriter that had lost a corner support and listed. The room seemed cold and I must have shivered.

  “We call this the Fridge,” he said. “Low man on the totem, Rhodes. No choice. Good incentive to be out in the street doing your job.”

  I pecked at a couple of keys on the Royal. It worked fine.

  “Staffers are all out working,” he said. “You can meet them later. Dolly’s already put out a note telling everyone you’re on board.” Office assignment made, Daly camped me in front of Dolly’s station and left us alone.

  “Cuppa?” she asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, carefully enunciating each word.

  I laughed. “That would be great.”

  “Follow me,” she said.

  Dolly Aster was a tall, big-boned woman with a leonine head and a huge mane of hair. She wore a short skirt, loose blouse, and satin vest festooned with rhinestones. She was married to a London cop, a detective. She had been with UPI for more than twenty years and was proud of it. She gave me Earl Grey tea and explained that this was the only proper English tea; she had no use for the fruit-flavored “concoctions” that were beginning to emerge on the market.

  “Your flat is clean,” she said. “I’ve seen to that. Wouldn’t do to have you in filth. You get enough of that in your work. I expect conditions here to be a bit better than your last assignment.” Daly had obviously told her something about my past.

  She gave me a list of the other UPI reporters, their addresses and phone numbers, and the key to my flat with directions for finding it, including a city map she had carefully and precisely marked.

  I thanked her for everything and she assured me I could call her at any time and that I should bother Daly only when circumstances were “dire.”

  “You’re in charge around here.” I meant it as a compliment.

  Dolly stiffened. “Mister Daly is the regimental commander. I am merely the regiment’s sergeant major.”

  “But sergeants actually run the armies of the world,” I said. She rewarded me with a smile.

  I walked to my apartment, which was on Rupert Street in Soho. UPI’s offices were in Holborn and to get to Soho I had to traverse the Covent Garden district. Soho had once been open fields and home to foxes, which royalty chased on horseback. Later I learned that the name came from an old hunting call, So-ho! Now the area was a crowded jumble of old buildings in every imaginable architectural style and people sardined into small flats above seedy commercial establishments. There were bright new signs and old faded ones for cafés and pubs and nightspots, and the streets were filled with hawkers and buskers and hippies and young people decked out in electric colors. London’s Chinatown was one block away from my place, on Gerrard Street. The bustle and noise of Soho reminded me of Saigon, without the threat of somebody tossing a grenade in my face.

  My flat was small: a kitchenette, an ancient bathroom with a huge claw-footed tub, a small bedroom, and a living area with a fireplace that no longer worked. The wallpaper was clean but peeling and there were a few threadbare throw rugs on a worn parquet floor. The place was furnished with an eclectic collection of items, including a huge painting on one wall of five naked women making love, twisted into various positions so that the shape of the bodies formed a star. The predominant colors were red and peach; the figures were cartoonish. None of the women had a right breast.

  My telephone was already connected, attesting to Dolly’s efficiency.

  Not remembering that London was five hours ahead of New York, I called Danny’s home number in New York and got no answer. Then I called the New York City Public Library. She was out to lunch, but I left a message for her with my new phone numbers.

  I did not have many possessions to unpack. A few clothes, a fly rod, some fly boxes, some books, a well-worn fishing vest, and a small net.

  Nolan’s Pub was a few doors from the flat. I stood at the bar and had a pint of bitters and fish-and-chips served in a newspaper funnel. People were friendly but left me alone and after four pints, I returned to my new home and fell into deep sleep, wondering what lay ahead.

  •••

  As a reporter you learn that, more often than not, you get the nexus of an idea for a story, then have to scratch and excavate for facts to flesh it out; sometimes, though, a story lands in your lap and leaves you anxious and suspicious. About a week after I began work in London, I had an unannounced visitor. I had arrived at the office early and was alone except for Dolly, who seemed to be there at all hours. I was ensconced in my office reading one of the morning papers when Dolly suddenly appeared in my doorway, looking exasperated and perturbed, but before she could say anything she was pushed aside by a tall gaunt man with a ruddy face and a disabled left hand that curled like a claw.

  “Rhodes?” the stranger said curtly. “Christian Shelldrake here.” He showed no inclination to shake hands and offered no immediate explanation of what he wanted or who he represented.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “I daresay that determination will be made forthwith,” he said.

  His officious tone grated at me. “Who are you with?” I inquired.

  “Affiliations are less important than the individual,” my strange visitor said with a wince, and sat down. He had intense, darting gray eyes and sat tentatively on the edge of his chair as if he might have to spring away at any moment. “Let me be direct,” he added. To save his time more than mine, I thought. “I know that you served in Southeast Asia and I presume you are familiar with flutes.”

  “The musical instruments?”

&
nbsp; Shelldrake sucked in his breath with an agitated hiss and flashed an anguished look. “You are reputed, Mr. Rhodes, perhaps erroneously, to possess a high level of intelligence. If I sought a fool, I would visit Fleet Street.”

  “I’m sorry, Shelldrake. I didn’t mean to make a joke at your expense, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Should I?”

  I sensed his veneer of formality was no more than a flimsy firewall against violence. I had met similar characters in Vietnam.

  Shelldrake studied me the way a predator examines its next meal. “I refer to baton rounds, used for crowd control, most recently employed in the nationalistic disorders in Hong Kong.”

  “Baton rounds,” I repeated to let him know I was listening. This was a new term to me.

  “Yes, teak the length of a man’s member and weighted with a metal core. Some call them flutes because the rounds are more or less rifled, but they are also more crassly known as Flying Rogers.”

  I decided to be as direct as my unannounced visitor. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Everything,” Shelldrake said. “Perhaps. It depends on your critical abilities. They obviously cannot employ flutes against their own people. The Chinese, even in Hong Kong, are one thing, but against white Englishmen? Unthinkable. It would be political suicide, you see?”

  “ ‘They’?”

  “The Home Office, the government. I would say Her Royal Majesty’s government, but the monarchy is a sham, inbred show dogs lacking claws, morals, teeth, or backbones.”

  Shelldrake was certainly free in sharing his opinions.

  “The baton device is bad?”

  “It is quite lethal at close range and entirely indiscriminate and inaccurate at any distance. Fired into the pavement, the wooden shell and metal cores break up and spray pieces around like shrapnel.”

  GIs in Vietnam fired their M-16s into roads and hardscrabble dirt to achieve the same effect. Military experts called the practice multiplying firepower. “Why are you here, Mister Shelldrake?”

  “You are reputedly a politically sensitive man, Rhodes, apparently that unique journalist with ethics, which in this country is as rare as a royal with a brain. I read a cutting of your story on the racist experiments with wounded black soldiers on your government’s hospital ship, the Snow. I reiterate, these heinous weapons are not intended for use on white Englishmen, but they will be employed without conscience on the coloreds flocking to Great Britain and no doubt will find extensive use in the colonies as well.”

  “Governments decide how to handle such problems.”

  “Do you trust your government to take such decisions honorably and correctly?”

  I immediately recalled that night in Lansing when cops were issued brand-new ax handles from gleaming garbage cans. I also recalled the summer of 1967, during my first year in Vietnam, when American cities errupted in race riots that led to dozens of fatalities, mass arrests, and untold damage to private and public property. It had been strange to be covering a war and reading about violence back home.

  I did not trust any government, including my own. “You want to speak out publicly?”

  Shelldrake glared at me. “I want the issue thoroughly and properly aired before these weapons are employed. For very good reasons, my identity must be protected.”

  “And if your identity should become known?”

  “I will be promptly rendered incapable of further communications,” he said gravely. His meaning was clear.

  “How do you know the government’s intentions?”

  He leered at me. “You may assume that I know well of what I speak. The authorities dare not use teak here; because of this, they are now developing rubber bullets, very hard, equally lethal, and even less accurate. You see, rubber sounds better than teak, yes? It’s a mere subterfuge, porridge words meant solely for public consumption.”

  “If these things are still under testing, how do you know they’re lethal?”

  “They’re testing bullets made of various substances against sheep. If I decide you’re the man to do this, I assure you that you will see evidence that will convince even the most recalcitrant skeptic. When you see, you will understand.”

  “Aren’t there ways to express such concerns through the government?”

  “This has been done and led nowhere.”

  “By you?” I asked.

  “I am neither courageous nor stupid, Mister Rhodes.”

  I mulled over his proposition. “I will need some evidence to proceed.”

  Shelldrake gave me an envelope that contained a thick wad of newspaper clippings.

  “These,” he announced theatrically, “are from the Hong Kong riots of 1967 and earlier. The riots in Hong Kong were fomented by Peking, but that’s irrelevant. The constabulary used baton rounds indiscriminately and now British authorities are preparing to do the same elsewhere. It must be stopped, sir. Must be! If you are interested, I will provide you with the compelling evidence you require.”

  “I’ll want photographs,” I said.

  “This has been anticipated.”

  By whom? I wondered. “Photos taken by a photographer of my choice.”

  Shelldrake studied me. “You will, of course, be discreet in your selection.”

  I had no photographer in mind, but I wanted our people doing this in order to be sure of the authenticity of the pictures, whatever “this” turned out to be.

  Shelldrake sat quietly for a moment, then got up and nodded. “I will be in touch, Mister Rhodes. Thank you for your time.” The sudden shift from brusqueness to formal politeness was odd. I decided that he was less aggressive than frightened and I wondered what of? His own government? If so, did I want to be involved? I had accepted risk in Vietnam, but this was London and I was looking forward to living without carefully evaluating every step I took.

  Shelldrake departed without further comment and I immediately sought Dolly. “Your husband is a cop?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “So was our visitor.”

  “He presented credentials?”

  “No.”

  “The laws require it,” Dolly said emphatically. “What makes you think he’s attached to the constabulary?”

  “I don’t know. He had a certain attitude. What was your impression?”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Dolly said, “but I do have a bit of a nose for coppers and your officious visitor doesn’t fit. I daresay he’s more in the mold of Special Air Services.”

  I vaguely remembered reading about SAS in the context of World War II, and hearing of it from Green Berets in Vietnam who admired their British counterparts. “Commandos, right?”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Do SAS personnel have anything to do with riots and civil disturbances?”

  “Certainly not on the homefront.”

  “What about places like Hong Kong?”

  “That would not be unheard of,” she said.

  “Have you ever heard of baton rounds?”

  Dolly paused before answering. “Yes. They are sometimes used for crowd control in the colonies and protectorates.”

  “I understand that some people object to the use of baton rounds. Do you?” I asked.

  “I am the wife of a copper. If a weapon keeps him safe, why would I object? Most police in this country still do not carry firearms. I understand their reasons, but I do not share them. If criminals are armed, so too should be the constabulary.”

  “Would the police use baton rounds to break up riots here in England?”

  “I should think not,” she said. “We English do not riot.” After a long pause during which she stared up at the ceiling, Dolly said, “These weapons are not new. If memory serves me, they were first employed right here in London in the late nineteen-thirties. You see, there were provocateurs and pro-fascist Blac
k Shirt groups in the country then who favored Hitler, and there were many vehement anti-fascists. There came a time when the Black Shirts were supposed to march for their cause but decided to change their plans. The anti-fascists had pledged to disrupt the Black Shirts and showed up for the demonstration armed with petrol bombs and rocks and clubs and in nasty moods and the police were forced to deal with them. Baton rounds were used against the anti-fascists, which is heavy irony, if one thinks about it,” she said in conclusion.

  I decided to keep an open mind about my mysterious visitor and his story.

  “Who’s our most reliable photographer?” I asked.

  “Personally or professionally?” Dolly answered with a playful grin.

  “Somebody I can trust to do what has to be done.”

  “I know the perfect person,” she said. “Crackerjack with a camera, though a bit off in his own world, if you take my meaning.”

  “Somewhat individualistic?”

  “To the point of certifiable eccentricity,” she said. “Which, praise God, is not yet a crime in England.”

  Three days later I met Charlie Jowett, an elfin man with a jutting jaw and fiery eyes. When I telephoned him, he suggested we get acquainted over a hop-pop, which I would come to learn was a beer. Charlie Jowett had his own language.

  I suggested we meet at Nolan’s and he readily agreed. I had just walked into the pub when I heard a ruckus in the corner and saw a huge man punch a smaller man, who went flying backward over a table, spilling glasses of beer. Based on Dolly’s precise description, I recognized the smaller man right away: Charlie Jowett. I also observed that the beer glasses hit the floor and bounced without breaking, sounding like heavy brass bells. It wouldn’t do to be hit by one of those. I stepped into the fray, scooped a pint glass off the floor, intercepted a kick from the big man aimed at the little man on the floor, and, using the leverage of his own kick, spun the big man around sharply and pushed him off balance.