Sam Bourne – The Righteous Men (страница 9)
Townsend McDougal unsettled every one of those presumptions. Now
Now he was walking among the Metro staff, with his gaze aimed in only one direction.
‘Look, I better go,’ Will said into the phone in what he hoped was a low whisper. As Will replaced the receiver, McDougal began.
‘Welcome to the Holy of Holies, William. The front page of the greatest newspaper in the world.’ Will felt himself blush. It was not embarrassment at the compliment, nor even McDougal's klaxon of a voice, bellowing his praise all around the office in an accent that was so Brahmin as to be almost English, though that was embarrassing enough. It was the ‘William’ that did it. Will thought his father had reached an understanding with McDougal: that there was to be no public acknowledgement of the friendship between them. Will knew he would be resented as it was – the hotshot young journo on the fast track – without his colleagues assuming he was the beneficiary of that old-fashioned career-enhancing drug, nepotism.
Now it was out there; McDougal's decibels had seen to that. The internal emails would be flying: Guess who's on first-name terms with the boss? As it happened, Will had applied for this job the same way as everyone else: sending in a letter and turning up for an interview. But no one would believe that now. He could feel his neck becoming hot.
‘You've made a good start, William. Taking some unpromising raw material and turning it into something worthy of page one. I sometimes wish some of your more mature colleagues would show similar degrees of industry and verve.’
Will wondered if McDougal was deliberately setting out to make his life hell. Was this some kind of initiation rite practised by the Skull and Bones set at Yale, where he and his father had first become such pals? The editor might as well have painted a target on Will's back and handed crossbows to each of his colleagues.
‘Thank you.’
‘I shall be expecting more from you, William. And I shall be following this story with interest.’
With that, and a swish of his finely tailored grey suit, Townsend McDougal was gone. The collective posture of the reporters who had previously been sitting to attention now slumped. The City Life columnist opened up his top drawer, reached for his cigarettes and headed for the fire escape.
Will had an equally instant urge. Without thinking, he dialled Beth's number. After the second ring, he abandoned it. A call about a triumph at work would confirm everything she had said about him. No, he still had to do penance.
‘Now, William.’ It was Walton, his chair swivelled round to face the common space that linked them with Woodstein and Schwarz. He was looking upward, the lower half of his face covered with a supercilious smile. He looked like a malevolent schoolboy.
Despite being nearly fifty years old, there was something infantile about Terence Walton. He had the unnerving habit of playing hi-tech computer games while he worked, rattling the keys as he zapped various alien life forms to ‘proceed to the next level’. His fingers seemed to be in constant search of distraction; the moment he had finished one phone call, he would be onto the next. He was always fixing up extra-curricular activities, a radio appearance here, a well-paid lecture there. His work from Delhi had been highly praised and he was in fairly regular demand as an expert. His book,
Inside the building, Walton was held in slightly lower esteem. That much, Will had picked up. The seating arrangements alone confirmed it: a returned foreign correspondent placed alongside the Metro staff's newest recruit. It was hardly star treatment. Quite what Walton had done to deserve this slight Will did not yet know.
‘We were just discussing your front-page triumph. Good job. Of course, there will be doubters, sceptics, who wonder what greater light this tale shed, but I am not one of them. No, William, not me.’
‘Will. It's Will.’
‘The executive editor seems to think it's William. You might need to have a word with him. Anyway, my question is this: why, I wonder, should this little story be on the front page? What larger social phenomenon did it expose? I fear our new editor does not yet fully understand the sacred bottom left slot. It's not just for amusing or interesting vignettes. It should serve as a window onto a new world.’
‘I think it was doing that. It was correcting a stereotype about urban life in this city. This man seemed like a sleazeball but he was, you know, better than that.’
‘Yes, that's great. And well done! Tremendous job. But remember what they say about beginner's luck: very hard to pull off that trick twice. I doubt even you could find too many “tales of ordinary people”—’ he was putting on a cutesy, Pollyannaish voice ‘—that would interest
Will turned back to his computer, to his email inbox.
Five minutes later Will was in the vast
‘I just wanted to say sorry about all that just now. That's the downside of working here: lot of testosterone, if you know what I mean.’
‘It was fine—’
‘People are very competitive. And Terry Walton especially.’
‘I got that impression.’
‘Do you know the story with him?’
‘I know he used to be in Delhi and that he was forced to come back.’
‘They accused him of expenses fraud. They couldn't prove it, which is why he's still here. But there's certainly some trust issues.’
‘About money, you mean?’
‘Oh no, not just about money.’ She gave a bitter chuckle.
‘What else then?’
‘Well, look, you didn't hear this from me, OK? But my advice is to lock up your notebooks when Terry's around. And talk quietly when you're on the phone.’
‘I don't get it.’
‘Terry Walton steals stories. He's famous for it. When he was in the Middle East they called him The Thief of Baghdad.’
Will was smiling.
‘It's actually not that funny. There are journalists around the world who could talk all night about the crimes of Terence Walton. Will, I'm serious: lock away your notebooks, your documents, everything. He will read them.’
‘So that's why he writes like that.’
‘What?’
‘Walton has this very tiny handwriting, completely indecipherable. That's deliberate, isn't it? To make sure no one reads his notes.’
‘I'm just saying, be careful.’
When he arrived back in the newsroom he found Glenn Harden sticking a Post-it to his screen. ‘Come up and see me some time.’
‘Ah, here you are. I have a message from National. Go west young man.’
‘I'm sorry?’
‘To Seattle. Bates's wife is in labour and National need us to cover. Apparently they don't have any reporters of their own, so they've put out the begging bowl.’ Harden raised his voice. ‘I scraped the bottom of the barrel and offered them Walton, but he's come up with some lame-assed excuse and suggested you.’ Walton was on the phone, not listening. ‘Talk to Jennifer, she'll fix you a flight.’
‘Thank you,’ Will stammered, a smile beginning to break on his face. He knew this was a major break, a serious vote of confidence. Sure, it was only cover, only temporary. But Harden would not want Metro disgraced in the eyes of what he regarded as the Ivy League snobs over at National: he would want to show Metro's best face. Will gulped at the thought: that was him.
‘Oh and pack your galoshes.’
Tuesday, 10.21am, Washington State
Christian radio, along with country music, was the one staple you could always rely on: even the remotest backwater, where there were no other stations on the dial, would always be favoured with the word of the gospel, beamed through the air. The mountain passes of Washington State were no different.
He was getting closer to the flood scene, he could tell. The roads were becoming clogged and soon he began to see the flashing lights of emergency teams. Then, most reassuring of all, a fleet of white, liveried satellite trucks: local TV, confirmation that he had arrived at the site of the story.
He hooked up with a photographer who seemed to know what he was doing. For one thing, he had all the right equipment. Not just the regulation photographer jacket, with enough pockets to store the possessions of a nuclear family, but industrial-strength, thigh-high Wellington boots, waterproof trousers, polar ice-cap socks and gloves that looked as if they were custom-designed by NASA.