EBOLOWA 2

No wonder Cameroun was perfect: it had a mineral resource of huge strategic importance and had given Annie a ringside seat on a guerrilla war. What a story. 

     He was cutting the pages out of the encyclopaedia when Sal buzzed him: Brad was on the phone, true to his word and back within the hour.

     “You got a pad and pencil, Harry?”

     “Sure.”  He pulled a legal notepad across the desk.

     “Ike’s got quite a story for you.  Even more than the colour of her underwear.”

     “Shoot.”

     “First thing, Eileen O’Connell is who you’re looking for, a specialist in French Africa after the war when the CIA was just getting off the ground.  She wasn’t involved in any of their covert action or anything but she fed them intelligence, and get this: one of her briefs refers to the rape and murder of an American woman in Cameroon.  I couldn’t get her name but I bet it was Annie Fayol.  The timing is right.”

     “No kidding - - ” He sat forward.  “What else did it say?”

     “It’s classified.  I only got the summary.”

     “Too bad.  So where’s O’Connell posted now?”

     “She’s not.  That’s the other thing about her.  She was thrown out of the Service a couple of years ago for associating with NORAID.  You know about them?”

     “Vaguely.”  The name rang a bell: some funding front for the IRA.  Only a couple of months ago they’d blown up a bus killing a bunch of soldiers and their families.  “You saying Eileen O’Connell has been aiding and abetting terrorism?”

     “Not that bad.  It’s what the Service calls inappropriate association.  She denied it and got any mention of dishonourable discharge erased from the record.”

     “Where she is now?”

     “Place called Port Jefferson on Long Island.  Number One Beach Street.”

          Harry took down the details.  “Thanks Brad.”

          “All down to Ike, my friend.  Aren’t computers amazing!”

          “Yeah. Amazing.”

          “I’m telling you Harry, paper is on the way out.  Imagine a world without filing cabinets.”   

          Harry grunted and rang off.  He liked the past on paper and he liked handwriting - - people revealed themselves in it. He tapped his front teeth with a fingernail and gathered his thoughts.  Talk about an ice maiden: the US chargé had been dumped for ‘inappropriate association’ and was party to the cover-up of a murder known to the CIA.  Just a whisper of their involvement brought back bad memories for Harry.  His first brush with them had been classic Cold War, and later on they’d pulled an insane stunt in Vietnam about him having experience of Soviet techniques of interrogation and brainwashing.  He tilted back in his chair and cleared his mind before going through to reception and giving Sal the main points. 

          “Oh My God, that’s terrible,” she said.  “It feels weird, us knowing and Dr Fayol in blissful ignorance - - well, not blissful exactly but you know what I mean.  You going to tell her?”

          “Not until we’re sure it was her sister.”

          “Remember what you always say about coincidences.”  

          “I don’t believe in them.”

          “Exactly.  How many other American women were out there back then? It’s got to be her.”

          “That’s what Brad said.”

          “OK, so we’re all agreed; what now?”

          “Get me a meeting with Eileen O’Connell ASAP,” he said and gave her the phone number.  “She’s retired to Long Island.  Old CIA habits die hard so she’ll be wary.  Say I’m working for the Shultz gallery on an exhibit of Annie Fayol’s long lost photographs and that we’d appreciate a bit of help in identifying people and places.”

     “OK Chief.  Good as done.”

     “And while I’m away see if the people at Life know what big story Annie was working on when she drowned.” 

     “I thought it had closed down.”

     “It has but there’ll still be people around who knew her.  We’ll exchange notes when I get back.”

     “Assuming Eileen O’Connell agrees to see you.”

     “Bet you five bucks she will.  If Annie was murdered and O’Connnell helped cover it up she’ll want to see the photographs in case they lift the lid.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

Tuesday April 2nd 1974.  Long Island, New York State.

 

     Harry caught an early flight to New York and took the Long Island train from Penn Station.  He wanted to see the setting for The Great Gatsby.  They’d read some wooden translation at school pitched as a satire on the decadence of American capitalism in its death throes.  Of course it hadn’t worked out like that.  There had been no revolution and millions were still on the breadline, but meantime NASA had put a man on the moon, which was no doubt proof of the contradiction Lazlo was always going on about of technology running way ahead of society.

     At Port Jefferson dirty snow covered the sidewalks and a chilly wind whipped the Sound into white crests.  He walked down to the ocean and stared out towards Africa as if he could conjure up the whole troubled mess of the Annie Fayol case.  He wondered how much deception had gone into the making of Eileen O’Connell and how many other fathers had trekked halfway across the world to be told a pack of lies.

     It didn’t get him anywhere and he turned around and took a shortcut across the supermarket parking lot.  Neon lights were flashing out messages on miraculous new lines and amazing cut-price deals.  He recoiled: it seemed like materialism gone mad and yet wasn’t that why he’d abandoned the socialist utopia and come to the US in the first place?  Maybe he was perverse like his father said, with no solidarity or pack mentality. 

     Eileen O’Connell lived in a big Victorian clapboard with a porch, a wide bay, and gabled windows in the roof.  Out front there was a birdhouse with a half coconut hanging from it.  He knocked on the porch door and after a moment she appeared at the inner door and smiled.  He watched her move nimbly down the steps in stilettos: an attractive woman wearing a perfectly pressed apron over a cream-coloured silk blouse and a light grey pencil skirt.  She had a shock of artfully streaked black hair and was wearing make-up that belied her age.

     “Mr Kaplan, welcome aboard,” she said taking his hand.  “Come in.”

     She took his coat and led the way through to the main room.  The house was warm, the air thick with the scent of baking and wood smoke.  The walls were a mustard yellow that gave the room a comforting glow and in the corner there was a cast iron stove with flames flickering through the glass door.  A neat stack of logs suggested hired help and a signed photograph of Franklin Roosevelt with his trademark bowtie was hanging on the wall next to an alcove full of books.

     Newspapers were strewn across a big oak table with headlines on the Arab oil embargo and how much longer Nixon could hang on.  The Wall Street Journal had “Nigerian Crude at Record High” and on a tabloid front page there was a blurred photo of Patty Hearst robbing a bank under the caption “BRAINWASHED”.

     Eileen O’Connell gestured at it with a snort.  “Old man Hearst must be spinning in his grave.”

     Harry nodded: one of America’s great capitalist barons had been humbled by conspirators on the lunatic fringe and he wondered if it was a harbinger of the times or just a girl waylaid by fate in the kind of case that turned up at his door.  He took another look round: it reminded him of his grandfather’s apartment before it’d been sacked.  “Nice room.  I like the colour.”

     “Thank you.  So do I.”

     “I heard you were a French specialist,” he said picking up a special issue of Express on French plans to go nuclear.  “Still keeping your hand in?”

     His question was drowned out by an alarm going off in the kitchen and she gestured at the settee.  “Make yourself comfortable.  I’ll only be a few minutes.”

     “No problem.”

     Just the chance he needed. He moved quickly over to the roll top desk, passing two framed photographs, one of the Lusitania steaming out of Liverpool and the other a vaguely familiar shot of a gaunt woman surrounded by children and staring out of a roughly erected tent.  It was signed.  The books in the alcove were in alphabetical order, a good number of them French paperbacks with uncut pages. 

     Busy noises were coming from the kitchen and with one eye on the door he half opened the roll-top desk.  Next to an old portable typewriter was a torn package covered with colourful stamps, one of which he recognised from Annie’s postcard as Mount Cameroun.  Underneath the package was a book called LAMIA, which according to the back cover was a best-selling exposé of KGB penetration of the French Secret Service.  Something fell out and Harry glanced at it - - a photocopied page from a spiral notebook covered with Arabic and the letters ‘BP’ written in the margin.  He put it back and pulled open the central drawer: inside were neat piles of household bills and at the back a standard issue Beretta and an opened box of shells. 

     He just had time to shut the desk and pretend to be looking over his host’s library before she swept out of the kitchen with a tray of coffee and croissants.  She set it down briskly and the cups rattled.

     “Black or white Mr Kaplan?  Or perhaps nowadays I should say with or without milk?”

     “Black, please,” he said still weighing up what he’d found.  The gun and the book fitted her CIA connection, as did the page of Arabic after her time in North Africa.

     “Croissant?” the woman in question asked.  “Freshly baked.  A habit I picked up in occupied Paris.  The Nazis monopolised the supply.”

     Harry took one with a nod.  “Must’ve been tough.”

     She smiled.  “Nothing was tough for me in Paris.”

     Except betrayal, he thought.  “It’s a beautiful city.  Did you ever get back?”

     “Going back is difficult but I have Aznavour.”  The stereo was playing some French crooner.  “What do you listen to Mr Kaplan?”

     “When I have time, jazz.  Monk, Charlie Parker - - Miles Davis.”

     “Very modern.”

     “No words.  I like that.  Every time a new story.”

     “Stories seem to loom large in your life.”

     “Don’t they in everybody’s?”

     “True.”  She brushed flakes of croissant onto her plate and then looked up.  “You actually hear a lot of them in the Service.  People are travelling through and don’t expect to come back.  It goes to their heads, they get giddy and carefree, keen to confide.  My god - - - if only I’d written them down.“

     “Maybe you should’ve been a writer.”  He was pretty sure she had written them all down. 

     “I might still.”  She seemed on the verge of saying she was still young enough.  “Fiction is all I’m allowed.”

     “All those memories going to waste.  Shame.” 

     “You’re right Mr Kaplan, and exotic places.”

     “Any favourites?”

     “Casablanca, obviously,” she said with a sly smile.

     “With or without Bogart?”

     “Need you ask?” she laughed.

     “No, I’ve never met a woman who didn’t fancy him.”  He chewed a mouthful of croissant.  “Delicious.  You could be a pastry chef as well.”

     “Thanks but no thanks.  Too much like hard work.”

     “So it’s the novel then.  Anyhow, was Annie Fayol one those giddy travellers?”

     “No, she wasn’t the least bit giddy.” 

     “What was she like?  I think Dr Fayol has her on a pedestal.”

     “I didn’t know her that well.”

     “Well enough to identify her body.”

     “In my official capacity.”

     “Exactly, she wasn’t just travelling through.  Two career women in a man’s world, fellow Americans on the frontier: you must’ve have had lots to talk about.”

     “We didn’t.  She wouldn’t have trusted me with the time of day.  As far as she was concerned I was part of the wicked establishment, almost as bad as the French.”  She pointed to an oil painting of makeshift barricades and classical columns wreathed in gun smoke.  The only colour came from a fluttering green and orange tricolour.  “That’s Dublin 1916, the Easter Rising, painted by my cousin.  I’ve got anti-colonialism in the blood, but Annie Fayol wouldn’t have it.  I told her I worked on the Atlantic Charter, but she still thought she was the first white woman to stand up for Africa.”

     “What Charter?”

     “FDR’s principles for a democratic post-war world, including the rights of colonised people to self-determination, co-signed by Churchill.”

     “Really - - ” From where Harry came from Churchill was the arch imperialist.  “You couldn’t have been too happy dealing with an old enemy like him.”

     “It was actually kind of fun.”  She shrugged an elegant shoulder.  “We had the old rogue over a barrel - - or even better, looking down one.  Of course he reneged after FDR died, as they all did.”

     “Especially France - - you must’ve watched it happen in Algeria.”

     “And the rest,” she murmured before taking a packet of Gauloise and a Zip lighter out of the drawer.  “Another habit I picked up in Paris: care to join me?”

     “Sure.” 

     Harry was trying to quit but still getting through almost half a pack a day. 

     “You still seem pretty attached to France.”

     “I’m half-European.  From day one I was straddling the Atlantic, born mid-way across on the Lusitania.”

     “I saw the photo.” 

     “I still have my Irish passport.”  She slipped into a beige camelhair coat with big lapels.  “I do my smoking in the porch with the front door open.  Do you want your coat?”

     “I’m OK,” he said.  “I grew up with the cold.”

     “On the Prussian plains?  You have an accent like Kissinger’s.”

     He shrugged; everybody said so.  “Mine’s actually from Budapest.”

     “So you’re Hungarian.“

     “Like you’re Irish.”

     She looked at him quizzically and tied her belt.  “Well, I am Irish.  We always leave the back door open.”

     “Yeah, well, I’ve never looked for one.”

     “Out of sight, out of mind?”