A Spy's Life
Praise for Henry Porter
‘In Henry Porter’s exciting, timely and frightening story, a single brave, prescient individual eventually outwits megalomaniac officialdom. This book is primarily a can’t-put-it-down, rattling good yarn but it’s also a deadly serious and truly awful warning’
Literary Review
‘A wonderful novel. I read it addictively and was sorry the minute it was over. It’s way too good to be called a thriller’
Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford
‘
The Dying Light
offers pleasures on every page … But the novel’s greatest charm lies in its nostalgia for an older, safer England, in which the liberty of the law-abiding subject was considered more important than the politician’s vanity’
TLS
‘A tense, intelligent conspiracy thriller set in a horribly plausible future-present Britain where surveillance is so pervasive that it’s impossible to do anything unobserved’
Guardian
‘An espionage novel needs a big set-piece opening, and this is one of the best I’ve read for ages … Porter gives you everything you want’
Daily Telegraph
‘A powerful, propulsive piece of thriller writing’
Observer
‘He is widely recognised now as a real master of the literary espionage thriller, a true successor to Le Carré’
Press Gazette
‘
Empire State
is tightly written, well-paced and cleverly constructed … refreshingly well-written’
Spectator
‘Magnificent … [he has] learned the oldest lesson: that characterisation and narrative are all’
Economist
‘As with his first thriller,
Remembrance Day
, Porter demonstrates great technical ingenuity … Yet this is embedded in a complex web of emotional relationships … Porter has proved that he is a torchbearer in a great tradition’
Sunday Express
Henry Porter has written for most national broadsheet newspapers. He was editor of the Atticus column on the
Sunday Times
, moving to set up the
Sunday Correspondent
magazine in 1988. He contributes commentary and reportage to the
Guardian, Observer, Evening Standard
and
Sunday Telegraph
. He is the British editor of the American magazine
Vanity Fair
and divides his time between New York and London.
By Henry Porter
Remembrance Day
A Spy’s Life
Empire State
Brandenburg
The Dying Light
A SPY’S LIFE
HENRY PORTER
For Liz, with love
Contents
15. Two Halves of a Dollar Bill
1
THE EAST RIVER
A lip of ice protruded from the bank just in front of his face. It was no more than three feet away and he could see it with absolute clarity in the light that was coming from behind him. He contemplated the ice through the mist of his breath, noticing the lines that ran around its edge like tree rings. He understood they were formed when the tide lapped its underside, adding a little to the surface, then receded, leaving it hanging over the mud. He was groggy, but his powers of reason were working. That was good.
Harland moved his head a little and listened. There was a ringing inside his ears but he could hear the slap of the water and the agitated clicking of dead reeds somewhere off to his left. Beyond these there was a commotion – sirens and the noise of a helicopter.
The light didn’t allow him to see how he was trapped, but he felt something heavy pinning him down from behind and he knew that his legs were bent backwards because the muscles in his groin and on the tops of his thighs were burning with pain. The rest of him was numb. He reckoned he must have been there for some time.
He pulled at his arms which had been plunged vertically into the mud. The movement caused his face to fall forward nearer the mud and his nostrils to fill with the smell of the sea. The tide! He could see that the water had risen a little in the time since he had become conscious. The tide would come in and cover his face. He had to get free – shift the weight that was holding him down. But he felt weak and dazed and there was nothing for him to push against to hold his face away from the mud. He groped behind him and felt the seat. Jesus, he was still strapped into his seat! He ran his right hand up and down searching for the seat belt and found it stretched tight across the top of his chest. That explained the pain in the area of his heart. Eventually he located the buckle, flipped its tongue with his thumb and sagged forward into the mud.
It was going to be okay. He’d be able to shift the seat, or wriggle from underneath it. A little more purchase was all that was needed. But that wasn’t going to be easy. Exerting the slightest pressure made him sink closer to the water. He knew that the mud had absorbed the force of his impact and had saved his life, but now he cursed it.
He began to prod and grope beneath the mud. After several minutes he touched something solid, an old plank of wood. It was slippery, but it did not move when he gripped it with both hands and then pushed upwards with all his strength, bringing his legs awkwardly into play. Nothing happened. He slumped down again and inhaled the odour of decay. He had to concentrate on controlling his breath which was coming in shallow puffs.
As he waited, the breeze peppered his face with grains of ice and he realised for the first time how cold it was. He breathed deeply, right into his stomach, and tightened his grip beneath the mud. He was going to do it. He was going to lift the damned seat because he hadn’t survived the crash to be drowned in six inches of the East River.
He pushed again and this time felt the right side of the seat lift slightly. He threw his bottom up and with a desperate writhing motion managed to free first one leg, then the other, and roll over into the sea water. The cold made him gasp. He lunged upwards, knocking the lip of ice, which broke off with a chink, dug his fingers into the bank and pulled himself to a kneeling position. The mud sucked at his shins. He saw the seat now and a tangle of metal and torn plastic attached to the back of it. He looked up and across to Manhattan, ranged along the skyline like a miniature tiara. He realised that he was seeing it through a gauze of tiny ice particles floating on the breeze. But there was something else – the insides of his eyelids seemed to be imprinted with a golden light that flared every time he blinked. And there was a new sensation in his head, halfway between pain and sound.
Shielding his face from the wind, Harland turned and peered towards La Guardia. It was difficult to make out exactly what was happening against the background of the airport’s lights. There appeared to be two fires that were being fed by plumes of foam from the emergency vehicles. The nearest was a few hundred yards away. The lights shot across a long horizontal shadow, which Harland took to be some form of dyke, to play across the mudflats and skim the sea. He wondered how the wreckage of the UN plane had ended up so far from him. Maybe it had kept travelling after breaking up; or perhaps there’d been a collision which would explain why he could see two fires. But that didn’t match his memory of the moments as they approached the runway. He had felt no impact, just the shocking lurch to the right that came as he turned from trying to see the lights of Riker’s Island to Alan Griswald’s face. That was all he knew before a terrible force took hold of him and obliterated everything in his mind.
He climbed on to the bank, shook the worst of the mud from his legs and rubbed his calves and thighs to get the circulation back. The bank which he had taken for part of the shoreline turned out to be a tiny island of a few square feet. Despite the frost, the ground crumbled easily and when he moved, clods of soil and dead vegetation slipped into the water. He peered down into the darkness to see how far he would have to wade to get to the shore, his mind fumbling to make sense of his situation. He had to think about the depth of the water and the possibility of sinking into the mud and getting stuck. And he had to remember the tide because he wasn’t in any state to swim, not even a short distance in the currents which he knew hurtled through the East River. There was also the ferocious cold. It was already way below freezing and the wind-chill was getting to him, sapping energy from his legs. He might die of exposure before they found him.
Where was the helicopter he’d heard? Why the hell weren’t they looking? They must’ve worked out that the plane had broken up and there would be casualties out here in the tide. But the runway was raised quite a height above the mudflats and he knew that would mean they wouldn’t spot anything by chance. They would have to be looking – they would have to know people were out here.
He looked out over the water to see if any rescue boats had been launched. No lights, no sound – nothing. He searched the dark around him and then as his eyes moved across the sea towards the Bronx he caught sight of something about forty feet away. It was a piece of wreckage – another aircraft seat, he was sure. A little closer to him was an oblong object bobbing in the water – perhaps a door. A cry rose up in him and he bellowed, ‘Over here, help! Over here.’
He told himself not to be so damned stupid. No one could hear him above the wind. He cautioned himself to keep a tighter control of his fear. He must conserve his energy.
But then it struck him that someone might be out there and that they could be trapped. He looked again and thought he saw a foot projecting from the end of the seat. Without thinking more about it, he lowered himself into the water and gingerly tested the depth. The mud shelved away to the right but ahead of him it appeared to be level and, although his feet sank into the mud with each step, it was just possible to wade.
He moved slowly out into the open where the breeze was skimming foam from the tops of the waves. The headlights of a truck had manoeuvred in the distance and sent a beam across the water to pick out part of the seat. He was about halfway there and he could see that the seat was tipped backwards and was propped against a stack of tufted soil. Around him was a lot of other wreckage, knocking about in the waves. He grabbed a long plastic panel and felt the rest of the way. When he reached the seat he called out once then took a step sideways to see better and prodded it with the panel. The seat fell sideways and a body slumped into a patch of light.
He knew he was looking at Alan Griswald, although most of his face had gone and part of the neck and shoulder had been torn away. He must have been killed instantly. Poor bastard: one moment draining a tumbler of scotch, the next he was out here, mangled and ruptured and dead.
Harland felt dreadfully cold. A shudder welled up in his back and ran through his entire body. He had been stupid to get so wet because it reduced his options. Before he might have waited but now he was so cold he had no choice but to wade back past the little island and strike out towards the lights of the emergency vehicles and to what he hoped was the shore. At the same time he realised that his strength was going and – more alarming – he could feel the increased drag of the tide plucking at his legs.