Never a True Word Read online

  ‘Well that’s just fucking stupid, mate.’

  Bear in mind the bouncer is a two-metre muscle-bound freak who is probably only at the door of this club during breaks from lifting weights and taking steroids in his gym, while lanky Ray may be approaching the height of the freak in front of him but carries the physical threat of the last hot chip in the bucket. Charlotte tries to drag him away.

  ‘Ray, let’s go. I don’t want to go in here anyway. There’s plenty of other places to go.’

  ‘I want to go in here,’ he says in something of a menacing tone.

  ‘But they won’t let me in,’ Charlotte reminds him.

  ‘I am fucking going in. And you are coming with me.’

  Now he is shouting. Charlotte looks exasperated, but instead of arguing further she just turns and marches away as Ray shouts ‘fuck’ and strides off in the opposite direction. Harry and I are left speechless in front of the club.

  ‘Your friend has some serious problems,’ says the steroidal mutant guarding the door.

  We can only nod in agreement and wander off down the road in silence to find another pub. Sitting there the fear starts to set in. This is the first day. How are the next twenty going to pan out?

  ‘What can we do?’ says Harry.

  ‘Nothing. We don’t say anything. Hopefully we won’t even see them tomorrow. And when we do, everybody will be too embarrassed to mention it.’

  We settle into several drinks of quiet contemplation. There’s a baseball game on the TV above us and that distracts us until we realise the jetlag is catching up with us and it’s time to head back to our hotel. But being blokes we decide there is just time for one more in the hotel bar. As we sit there Charlotte walks in through the revolving doors and spots us, beers in hand.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ she says. ‘Still going?’

  ‘Yep,’ says Harry. There is a stilted silence before Harry does the polite thing and asks if she would like to join us. She does and once she has gin and tonic in hand I ask what happened to Ray.

  ‘No idea,’ she says. ‘He may have tried to call but I switched my phone off.’ Great, I think. That will have really driven him over the edge. Five minutes after she stormed off Sloan would have been on the phone trying to beg forgiveness. Once he couldn’t get through to her the anger would have started to build again.

  My stomach continues to sink but by now we are all relaxing into our drinks and Harry, god bless him, asks the one question that has been bugging our office for six months now.

  ‘Just between us. What do you see in him?’

  ‘I wonder that myself sometimes,’ she laughs. ‘I know you guys have some problems with him but you should know he thinks the world of you both.’ This is something of a revelation.

  ‘As we all know he sometimes loses that temper of his. But deep down he’s a sweet, sentimental kind of guy. He can be completely charming and generous when he wants to be.’

  As most sociopaths can be I suppose.

  ‘There is another side to him. He just doesn’t bring it out in public all that often. I think he thinks it will make him look a bit soft or something. I mean how many men would bring a girlfriend on a trip like this?’

  I think he has only brought her along because he doesn’t trust her to be alone for three weeks while he is travelling the world. Then my phone rings. I assume it’s a call from home. It’s after eleven and I can’t imagine who else it could be.

  It’s the boss. ‘Mate, have you seen Charlotte? I haven’t seen her since outside that club. She’s not answering her phone. It’s not even ringing. I’m worried about her.’

  Fuck.

  ‘Oh, Ray, hi …’ I pause trying to decide whether to lie or tell the truth. I glance, with what I assume is a look of pure terror, towards Charlotte and Harry, who are also frozen to the spot.

  In that moment I decide to tell the truth. If he catches me out in a lie later, and I really don’t trust Charlotte to back me up, it will be much worse.

  ‘Yes, she’s here. We’re in the hotel bar. We are just having a drink. Do you want to come down?’

  ‘No, mate,’ and he hangs up.

  Charlotte is on her feet. ‘Well it’s been lovely, gentlemen, but I’d better be going.’

  17

  The next day is torture. It’s that kind of classic blue-sky Californian day you see in the movies. There is plenty we could be doing. We could get out on the water, the San Diego Padres are playing at home. It could be a hot dog and beer kind of day. Instead, Harry and I meet for lunch and then listlessly walk around the shopping mall closest to the hotel. I think we are scared of being either too far away or found enjoying ourselves by Sloan if he calls. Over lunch we discuss the options.

  ‘Maybe, he’ll not mention it,’ Harry says. ‘I mean he must be pretty embarrassed by all that stuff last night. He knows we won’t mention it, maybe he won’t either.’

  ‘That’s optimistic. You know what he’s like. It won’t be his fault, it will be Charlotte’s, or ours—or that bouncer. He’ll be looking to take it out on someone and my betting is that it will be us.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You didn’t hear him on the phone last night. Not happy.’

  The conversation meanders into the afternoon. Sloan doesn’t ring and I’m not calling him for anything other than news from home that Boyle has called an election.

  Three o’clock comes and goes. By five we are in a state of full-blown panic. ‘I reckon he’s going to send us home,’ says Harry.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘He’s really cracked the shits this time. I can feel it. He’s going to send us home. We’re history here, mate.’

  ‘No. Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  At 5.30, as I’m contemplating buying green suede shoes in Macy’s, the phone finally rings. I shout out to Harry who is in the next aisle. ‘It’s him I think.’

  ‘Mate, it’s Ray,’ he says.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Shopping for shoes in the mall near the hotel. Harry’s here too.’

  This sounds horribly trite and I wish for a second we were out on the harbour or laying into our sixth beer at the baseball game.

  ‘Ok. Look, I just wanted to apologise for last night.’

  This is unexpected. I look at Harry and give him a smile and a thumbs-up. It looks like we are off the hook.

  ‘The booze on top of the jetlag just put me over the edge. Charlotte and I should never have argued in front of you two like that. Sometimes I feel I have to try a bit hard to keep her entertained.’

  ‘That’s ok. These things happen. Do you want to catch up for dinner tonight?’

  ‘No, mate. Thanks for the offer, but I think we’ll just have a quiet one tonight.’

  ‘Ok. How about we see you in the lobby in the morning. The first meeting is at ten, so let’s meet at nine. It’s a bit of a drive.’

  ‘Sure, see you then.’

  By now Harry is standing so close to me trying to overhear the conversation that casual observers will think we are in love.

  ‘What? What did he say?’ he demands.

  ‘Eh … he apologised. Said it was the booze and the jetlag talking. And something, I think, about the difficulties of dating a younger woman.’

  We both take a second to digest this and then burst into laughter. The laughter is as much about the relief we feel as it is about taking the piss out of this absurd character who has such influence over our emotional wellbeing.

  ‘So we are not going home?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s go and get a drink then.’

  ‘There’s an idea.’

  18

  The next few days are relatively serene. After the meetings in San Diego there is an early morning flight to Dallas for more meetings with Americans who make military stuff that will blow your mind, as well as many other bodily parts if you give them an excuse. There are tours through giant airc
raft hangers where fighter jets are being assembled and climbs up control towers to watch these terrifying machines screech in and out of the airfield on practice runs. And plenty of meetings with smartly dressed military men in dull beige rooms talking with confidence about some new weapon or other, but most of those go right over my head.

  We had a few hours to spare in Dallas so we all go to the Texas Book Depository and stare at the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy. We agree it didn’t actually seem that hard a shot, so maybe Oswald did do it all by himself. The only bump in the road is when we all troop out of the hotel in Dallas to go to another dinner meeting and find a stretch limo waiting to pick us up.

  Harry and I are out first. ‘Did you book that?’ I ask.

  ‘No way,’ he says.

  ‘Then it must have been Angus or Norm. Thank fuck for that. Ray will freak when he sees this.’

  Despite our boss’s well-known love for luxury and the high life, his political antennae are permanently set on high alert and the idea of the six of us cruising the streets of Dallas at taxpayers’ expense in a vehicle that looks like it had been stolen from Jay Z might cause his head to explode.

  Norm is out next. In many ways Norm is a lovely bloke. He’s ex-military from a long time ago and has been in the public service twenty years now. But he still carries some of that old-style, living-on-the-edge, party-boy persona common to army blokes of a certain age. That his favourite phrase is ‘Toughen-up, princess’, usually uttered when one of us suggests it’s time to call it a night, probably tells you all you need to know.

  Angus is his boss. Only recently retired from the navy, he was a high-ranking officer the government targeted to help give it credibility when we were out talking to other ex-military types who seem to exclusively staff the US defence world. Again, a nice bloke, but one who is still coming to terms with life out of uniform, so still expecting the world to fall at his feet. He’s had a few rude shocks with Ray so far but the good thing is his training tells him Sloan outranks him so he is properly deferential and respectful. Neither of them shows the slightest surprise to see a car out the front of the hotel taking up three car spaces. Clearly, this is how they roll in the military.

  Sloan strolls out, Charlotte in tow. Charlotte looks pleasantly surprised by the evening’s mode of transport. Ray is speechless. He looks at Harry, looks at me. Harry and I, remembering rule number one, blurt out simultaneously, ‘Norm booked this one.’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, Norm?’ Ray asks quietly.

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, Treasurer,’ says Norm. The old military types also have an endearing fondness for titles.

  ‘Why do we have the biggest car in fucking Texas to take us to dinner?’

  ‘It’s the done thing in this part of the world,’ he replies gamely.

  ‘Well, I’m not doing it, mate. Get me another car. If anyone hears I am swanning about Dallas in this fucking thing I’ll never hear the end of it. Imagine the front page of the paper. I am warning you all, no one is to take any pictures. I don’t want to see this on fucking Facebook.’

  We are already running late for the dinner meeting with the head of some defence company.

  ‘Look,’ I pipe up, ‘I agree the car is a travesty, but we’re running late and there’s no time to find another. Let’s just all agree we never speak about this back home.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Sloan. ‘Let’s go.’

  Norm offers a ‘Sorry, Treasurer’ but the boss doesn’t even glance at him.

  19

  Next day we leave Dallas and fly late at night to Houston. A hop, skip and a jump from one spot to the next, not much more than half an hour. Harry and I are in one car following Sloan and Charlotte to the hotel when my phone rings. It’s a reporter from the national daily back home. One I have a less than fruitful relationship with, mainly because I think she is often wildly inaccurate, highly paranoid and far too keen to listen to the Opposition’s fairytales. The fact she worked for a couple of Opposition pollies at different times probably doesn’t help.

  As a press sec I don’t have too many philosophies on how best to do the job. But one is to always be as nice as possible to as many reporters as possible. For one thing my boss has been a prick to all of them at one stage or another, so my being pleasant and cheerful might help knock off some of the distrust they feel whenever Sloan opens his mouth.

  So when one of the TV reporters one day greeted me as the ‘friendly face of the government’ I took it as a compliment. To me, it just made sense. Be friendly to the reporters as often as possible, even if you don’t like them, even if you know they are full of shit. However, when it comes to Annabelle Howard, local political reporter for the national daily, I lose my cool on a regular basis. She is the only reporter to make me hurl my phone against a wall and shatter it into a thousand pieces after one spectacularly fractious conversation.

  The newspaper’s modus operandi, and I should know because I worked for it for many years, is to find a topic and campaign on it. This is fair enough, but they run aggressive agendas and style the facts to fit, blasting away like a toddler trying to force a triangle through a square hole. I don’t like Annabelle and she doesn’t like me. So when I answer the phone on the back seat of a car driving towards the Houston CBD and realise who is calling I know nothing good is about to happen.

  ‘Jack, it’s Annabelle.’

  ‘Hello there, to what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘Where are you at the moment? You didn’t release an itinerary before you left.’

  ‘Houston. It’s in Texas. America.’

  ‘Yes. Very good. I need to speak to your boss.’

  ‘That may be difficult. It’s 9 pm here. We are just out of the airport heading into the city and everyone is tired after another long day. What do you need him for?’

  ‘It’s about this thing with Armstrong.’

  Alistair Armstrong is a highly successful independent member of parliament. The media love him. Punters love him. He is that rarest of creatures in the parliamentary jungle. A politician who people not only like but also respect and trust. He has the ‘only honest man left in politics’ schtick down pat. Of course we hate him. Hate that the media love him, hate that he is never asked a hard question, that he is the go-to man for a damning quote every time the government stuffs up.

  The problem is you can’t treat him like an official Opposition and attack and ridicule him in the normal fashion. No, that just looks like the big, bad government ganging up on the poor little Independent, like giving Bambi a swift kick to the nuts. If Bambi had nuts.

  ‘What Armstrong thing?’ I reply.

  ‘Can we not play this game just this once?’ is Howard’s exasperated response. ‘I have a statement from a witness, Armstrong isn’t denying it. The story is running tomorrow with or without your input.’

  This is starting to sound a little worrying. I really haven’t a clue what she is talking about.

  ‘No, sorry, Annabelle, I am not playing games. I’m lost here.’

  ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well you’d better talk to your boss then.’

  ‘Yes, but about what?’

  ‘Him getting pissed, calling Armstrong a cunt and a faggot, and then pushing him over in the parliamentary bar last month.’

  Silence follows as two people separated by 15,000 kilometres grasp their mobile phones and figure out who is going to speak next. Harry is looking at me with a quizzical stare, probably trying to figure out why all the colour has abandoned my face.

  ‘I see,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to get back to you. Ray is in the car in front of me. We won’t reach the hotel for another twenty-five minutes. I’ll talk to him then and get back to you.’

  ‘Ok,’ Annabelle says. ‘But just so you are clear, I am expecting to speak to him. It will go much better for him if he does … give his side of the story. Don’t fob me off with one of your bullshit press releases.’


  And with that she breaks the 15,000-kilometre thread that connects us.

  I turn to Harry. ‘Do you know anything about a barney between Sloan and Armstrong in the parliamentary bar last month?’

  I now have the dubious pleasure of seeing just what Harry saw happen to me as his normally pink and healthy face takes on a distinctly unhealthy pallor. ‘No. What happened?’

  I relay my conversation with Howard. His ashen-grey face now takes on the hue of Casper the Friendly Ghost’s.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asks.

  ‘I really don’t know. This one could be beyond even my skills as a spin doctor of world renown.’

  ‘Stop. Don’t try and be funny. It’s not the time.’

  ‘I don’t know. What else do we have left?’

  ‘Are you going to call him?’

  ‘No. Not now. This is not a chat we have in the car. Let’s wait until we get to the hotel.’

  ‘Yes, that will be so much more fun,’ he says. ‘Look on the bright side. He really can’t blame either of us for this one.’

  20

  For the rest of the ride into Houston we maintain radio silence. Neither of us in a mood for talking after the latest revelation of Sloan’s apparent unlimited capacity for self-harm. We look out the window of the car and take in the approaching city skyline. Here we are at the bottom of America, wending our way to another glass and concrete palace for one night, in a town famous for oil and the US space program. Houston, we have a problem. Indeed we do.

  Eventually, the convoy pulls up outside our next anonymous hotel. We are scheduled to spend ten hours here before packing up and moving again. It’s barely enough time to get the toothbrush out of the toiletries bag. I step out of the car and see Sloan already stepping towards the sliding doors.

  ‘Ray,’ I shout. He stops, looks annoyed, and waits for me to continue. I am speaking as I walk towards him.