by Carlos Luxul
The red-headed man burned with disbelief. ‘But damn you, man,’ he said out loud, his strained voice cutting through the silence. ‘You must know! You’ve studied this ship, backed by all our resources!’
Dan took an involuntary step back from the table. But I did know, he thought, a burning flash of anger welling up inside him. I made my case and you overruled me. He wanted to say it out loud, to shout it, but could only clench his fists at his side, his haunted eyes turning imploringly towards the door.
LaSalle slapped the flat of his hand on the table and pushed up to his feet. ‘We’re done here,’ he said, grabbing Dan’s arms and bundling him out, the door slamming behind them.
In the corridor, LaSalle’s hands were still gripping him. ‘That was not intended,’ he said, looking him directly in the eye. ‘I apologise.’
Dan had no interest in an apology and no inclination to either acknowledge or accept it. The words had cut straight through the bone to the nerve. Was an apology even warranted, he wondered, feeling he was far from entirely blameless. ‘The raid on Bar Mhar,’ he said. ‘Did you see the report, the outcome?’
‘I didn’t. But it was evidently – negative?’
‘It was.’
LaSalle considered it. ‘And this was shortly after our own enterprise in Sharjah failed.’
‘I got it on the Friday night in the pub with Hak. Does it matter – did it matter?’
LaSalle shook his head. ‘On balance? No. I would have been obliged to accept it at face value too. But you were identified as trouble early on. They played you. The matter was sure to die once you stopped shouting from the rooftops, and with unsatisfactory outcomes in both Sharjah and Bar Mhar, your loss of interest was inevitable.’ He paused, a frown spreading over his face. ‘Particularly with my pressure and wholly regrettable counsel …’
‘Could I have done more?’ Dan said. ‘Could I have done better?’
‘I’m asking precisely the same of myself. In your case? No. In my case? Without a shadow of doubt.’
Dan wanted to say he was relieved, but as he tried to put his own involvement in some kind of order, he realised that in all this devastating disorder, his own role or conscience or pride had no meaning any more. ‘Hak played me?’
‘I don’t think so. Unwittingly, perhaps.’
‘Who then. It can’t be Azmi, can it?’
LaSalle looked at him resignedly. ‘I regret that must remain for some other day, for some other people. You were simply caught in the middle.’
‘And, in Sharjah, you were just looking for a reaction, from someone, trying to draw something out?’
There was no reply, just a wearied expression and downcast eyes. Dan was shocked to think that parallel forces had run alongside him. The IsC – MI6’s Indian subcontinent section – had long been known as an itch that was impossible to scratch. He was shocked to think that his own file amounted to little more than some kind of catalyst in a joint operation to cut out its cancer. LaSalle had mentioned him initially to Azmi and Jo Clymer had encouraged him to contact Hak, no doubt at LaSalle’s insistence. That had surely been the root of the heated words between the two of them that Vikram had stumbled across in the corridors of Thames House. His own file had become lost, the potential threat overlooked, subsumed by some greater prerogative.
And when the reckoning came, which surely must be soon, Dan would remember to let those other people know about his own misgivings, about ‘geared’ ships, about ‘hatch coamings’ and those who claimed no knowledge of the sea and ships. Looming at the front of his mind was the meeting with Azmi, Hak and Pittman, and how he’d told them everything he had known or suspected, and crucially, what he hadn’t known and couldn’t prove. And all the while, had Azmi known every damn detail already, with the crafty old bird drawing his case out of him like shallow water in a pitcher, dropping the pebbles one by one?
‘Has Azmi got shipping experience?’ he said, looking round at another crafty, though wounded animal.
LaSalle turned, surprise on his face, surprise at such a question at such a time. ‘Azmi? I think he used to go as a boy. I believe his father was something in the national shipping line.’
‘Then he probably wrote the field report,’ Dan said. ‘And there was no agent, no raid on Bar Mhar.’
‘Quite possibly,’ LaSalle said neutrally. He checked his watch. ‘Come on, we have to go.’
Dan looked back over his shoulder. Julie and Phoebe were in the building somewhere, perhaps still at Jo Clymer’s side, but that had been twenty minutes ago. ‘I’ve got to get my wife and daughter home.’
‘Not yet, I’m afraid,’ LaSalle said. ‘I’m due at Number Ten at two thirty and you’re coming with me.’
Dan spun round in disbelief. ‘What, and take one for the fucking team?’
‘Someone usually does,’ LaSalle said.
Thirty-four
They set off from Thames House at a fast pace. Downing Street was under a ten-minute walk, but it was already twenty-five past two. The scale of devastation increased as they approached Parliament Square. Every step had to be planned, zigzagging between road and pavement, going round or over the harrowing debris.
As Dan collected his thoughts, he realised there was no time to stop, to look or to help. In many ways it was a welcome if guilty release. He’d seen the Houses of Parliament from the air. At ground level it was visceral. It did not improve when they crossed into Whitehall, where government buildings had evidently been a priority target. His nose twitched at the pervasive smell hanging in the air, a rotting dampness on a hot and dry day, musty and acrid.
‘What do I call her?’ he said.
‘Prime Minister,’ LaSalle said, looking round and running an enquiring eye over Dan, his strained breathing, his uneven gait.
‘Broken rib, I think,’ Dan said.
LaSalle nodded. ‘Just speak plainly, how you see it, how you saw it. It’s not you who’s going to take one for the team – let me worry about that,’ he added resignedly.
At the head of Downing Street, the security officers stepped in front of Dan, looking him up and down suspiciously. Luckily, one of their number was a regular from the Diplomatic Protection Group, who recognised LaSalle and waved them through.
The door to Number Ten opened to them from the inside, its blast-proof steel casing twisted and charred, but intact. The windows to the side were blown in. Fragments of curtain fluttered in the breeze. The inner hall was filled with people. A tall man at the back caught LaSalle’s eye and gestured over the heads of the throng to a staircase at the side.
As they made their way up, a man coming down at a good clip brushed against one of the framed pictures lining the walls. Dan stretched a hand out to steady it. The face seemed familiar, a portrait of an earlier Prime Minister.
They entered a long room with a table to seat at least thirty. The tall man gestured to a pair of chairs and LaSalle tugged Dan’s shirt downwards.
He sat, his eyes restlessly casting around, recognising only a few people in the room and one in particular, a tall, imposing woman midway along the table with her back to the equally imposing fireplace. He noticed that she was sitting in a different chair from all the others, the only one in the room with arms. Nearly every place was taken, with a similar number of people finding standing-room only, lining the walls behind their bosses. Taking the surroundings in, he was intrigued to see the table was shaped like a boat, broader in the beam and tapering fore and aft. Somehow it was reassuring, as though he was on familiar ground.
In the cacophony of competing voices, LaSalle cupped a hand to Dan’s bloodstained ear.
‘The cabinet room,’ he said. ‘And that’s C, Annette Vogel.’ He indicated a woman immediately on Dan’s left, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. ‘The Foreign Secretary, her boss,’ he added, his eyes shifting across the table to a pinstriped suit and steel-framed glasses. ‘And the Home Secretary, our boss,’ as a sharp-featured redhead hurried in and took a
seat two places along. He continued around the table, mentioning names, the head of Special Branch, minister for this, minister for that, General so and so … ‘The seating is by precedence. The Chancellor should be there.’ He frowned, indicating across the table. ‘His injuries are severe. Very severe, I gather.’
More suits and uniforms were arriving by the minute, filling the few remaining seats and standing two or three deep around the walls. Not everyone was smartly turned out, but most were. There was evidence here and there, torn clothes, cuts and bandages, and no shortage of haunted eyes. It eased Dan’s concern about his own appearance. LaSalle reached across the table and filled two glasses with water, gesturing to him to drink.
At his side C, Annette Vogel, made no approach. The swelling in his left eye had half closed it and he dared not turn his head to her overtly.
A hand tapped on LaSalle’s shoulder. He rose and walked around the table to the fireplace and crouched down, his head close to the Prime Minister’s. They spoke for some moments. She shifted in her seat, her face lifting, clear blue eyes focusing along a strong nose. Dan met her gaze for a moment, her eyes narrowing in concentration, head nodding. LaSalle stood up and started back to his seat as a man at the Prime Minister’s side rapped the table and shouted, ‘Order!’
Heads turned expectantly to the fireplace, the rumble of voices subsiding. Dan’s heart was beating hard, the ache in his side rising in step with it, his mind veering between the here and now and Julie back at Thames House, tending the wounded, doing what she could. His concentration was broken by a finger tap on his thigh and a familiar voice whispering, ‘The unadorned truth.’
The Prime Minister looked around the table in the hushed room.
‘The blackest of days,’ she said, hands gripping the arms of her chair, knuckles whitening. ‘And the blackest for more than the plain reason – as it seems there is only one person here who knows what the hell has happened to us. So, Mr Brooks, would you kindly explain.’
Dan made to rise but LaSalle’s firm hand held him back. He drew a deep breath, deciding to speak to the hushed rulers of the land in the only manner he had learned was effective – as if addressing a navy crew.
His voice was strong but not strident, carrying to all quarters of the room. He chose his words carefully, taking his time, the straightforwardness of his language and delivery adding a chilling clarity. And they listened, like junior officers and ratings, trusting his words, trusting him, in absolute silence and stillness, without even a squeak from the packed floorboards around him.
He started where it all began, just before Christmas in the Indian Ocean, sparing little detail, the power of the guns, the engineering, the depth of organisation behind it all, though he was careful to tread lightly over areas he didn’t fully understand – the subtexts of LaSalle, and C, sitting quietly next to him.
His phone was connected to a screen at the end of the room. Those standing before it squashed themselves to the sides. Reaction to the pictures was muted. Eyes instinctively turned away from the faces of the Ocean Dove’s dead, but returned to them in an instant with rapt horror and fascination. Images flashed before them, the ship, hold, guns, firing computer, death.
The Prime Minister’s eyes dropped to the table, her head shaking softly from side to side.
‘And if I understand this correctly,’ she said, lifting her face. ‘You were on the motorway, returning from disciplinary suspension – euphemistically a sabbatical?’
Dan nodded. As the Prime Minister’s eyes raked the ceiling, he shifted his gaze around the table, meeting sombre faces, all staring directly at him.
‘Good God,’ the Prime Minister said, lowering her gaze. ‘And you both knew of this threat for six months and did absolutely nothing about it – Edmund, Annette?’
LaSalle leant forward. ‘As soon as there is an opportunity I will, of course, submit my resignation.’
The Prime Minister’s eyes switched questioningly to C. They were not met.
Dan couldn’t quite bring himself to look to his side. In nine months’ time, the Director General of MI5 was due to retire. LaSalle should be stepping into the role. It was understood within the services and had the blessing of both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister and many around the table who knew him.
‘Your integrity is beyond doubt, Edmund,’ she continued. ‘But I fear we will need you more than ever in the coming months.’
Fear? That could be taken two ways. She’ll need him, but with regret?
‘So, we’re hunting two things, a man with half his nose missing and the organisation behind him, the identity of which we have absolutely no idea.’ She paused, looking across the table as if in hope of a contradiction, which was not forthcoming. ‘I suggest you both,’ she added, looking at LaSalle and C in turn, ‘set up a joint task force with one single mission – to catch these bastards. I don’t care what it is called, who runs it or what it will cost. I simply care about one certain outcome. It will succeed, quickly and ruthlessly.’
There was a stirring to Dan’s left. ‘Perhaps, Prime Minister,’ C said, ‘this might be an appropriate time for Mr Brook to take his leave – before we enter sensitive areas beyond his grade …’
‘What? And deny ourselves the only one among you with the bloody balls for the job? Absolutely not!’ the Prime Minister thundered, her eyes drilling glacially into the visibly shrinking C.
Her attention switched to LaSalle. ‘Your first task is to find a leading role for Mr Brooks,’ she said, emphasising the ‘s’ that C had carelessly mislaid. ‘He is a man I can do business with and our enemies will regret doing business with. For God’s sake promote him, five grades if you must, just damn well do it.’
A voice was heard along the table. ‘Hear, hear.’
Other matters were discussed. A minute for this, a minute for that – social order, emergency services, hospitals, the pound. Questions and answers pinged across the table. People rose at intervals to leave and implement their tasks. A minister with responsibility for customs and border security issued instructions to aides ranging behind her. A deputy police commissioner broke away to speak into his radio. A general peered at a map and discussed deployment. From time to time, people appeared at Dan’s side, seeking additional information or clarification.
Dan saw the Prime Minister rise from her seat and make her way a few places along the table, leaning in to a discussion. There were a dozen other huddles, new people arriving, others leaving, voices competing. He lost sight of her as his attention switched from one cell of activity to another, figuring out who was who and who was doing what, the extraordinary business of government on an extraordinary day.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder, the unmistakable touch of a woman. He turned, getting to his feet sharply. The hand remained there lightly. Her eyes ran over him, head tilting with sympathy, the tip of her tongue playing contemplatively over her lips as she considered the face inches from her own. Dan stood still, remembering his face in a mirror at a kitchen sink in a blue-doored terraced house, with his split lip, crooked nose, bloodstained ear and puffy, half-closed eye in a bed of purples, blacks and mottled yellows.
‘Come and see me next week when the dust has settled,’ the Prime Minister said, glancing around pensively and adding with a sigh, ‘regrettable choice of phrase … I want to make sure I understand all the implications and I know I can count on you for straight answers.’
She tilted her head back a little, making sure she had his attention. ‘Meanwhile, I thank you. And your country thanks you.’ She paused, her expression warming. ‘I understand you have a wife and baby – she’s a lucky woman – so I won’t detain you.’
In what seemed a matter of seconds, Dan found himself down the stairs and standing outside in Downing Street. Between the wail of sirens in the distance, he thought he could hear sparrows chirping. There was relative peace and a warm sun on his back as he tried to gather his thoughts.
It had all happened too quickly.
Leaving Suffolk in the morning he had been in two minds, grateful for the time there but increasingly wary of Monday’s uncertain return to work. In the space of hours, the world, his world, had jarred from its axis. He realised he couldn’t think of it as vindication. Vindication didn’t even begin to enter it. Who could possibly want to be proved right about such appalling events?
But the slate was clean. He could start afresh and there was a hunger already, a burning desire to see it through. He knew it had to conclude with but one ending and that he must be part of it. He had the backing of the Prime Minister and the combined resources of MI5 and MI6, and somehow, in a few short hours, it had all become far less daunting than he had ever dared imagine it could be.
Staring into the Prime Minister’s face, saying nothing, he’d felt a curious mix of energy coursing through him. There had been an urge to wrap his arms around her, for his own emotional comfort, for their mutual comfort, for his own safety and security and concern for hers, for solidarity and their joint purpose. Demons had been released. In the space of seconds he’d felt pressure rise as a torrent and subside as catharsis. A strange and frightening inner strength was surging through mind and body.
He shook his head and looked away as the black door opened again. LaSalle had stayed a moment for a private word with the Prime Minister.
‘She’s something else,’ Dan said, walking across to him.
‘A very splendid and formidable woman,’ LaSalle said, before adding wistfully, ‘We used to date at Cambridge.’
Dan turned. ‘So you … know her?’ He put his hands up immediately, realising the implication. ‘Not like that, obviously …’
LaSalle smiled. ‘You did well in there. Very well. C won’t last a week. First-rate politician but second-rate mind. And they’ve never got on. As for me, well?’
