Old Enemies

by Michael Dobbs

  The moment was broken by a disturbance near at hand; the Prime Minister was running late for his next engagement.

  ‘I want you at the heart of this. On your terms. Absolutely anything you want, Harry,’ Campbell repeated. ‘Think about it, will you? Please.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘That’s great. But don’t take too long, eh? I need this particular stable cleansed by Christmas. Before Santa arrives with his sodding reindeer and covers the place in even more muck.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  They had been forced to put together their plan with haste, yet so far it was working. Flying conditions were excellent as they emerged from the heights of the Alps and into the foothills, passing north of the ancient stone-cutting town of Domodossola and briefly re-entering Swiss airspace, all the while remaining invisible to air traffic control. They’d had to gamble on how much fuel there would be in the helicopter but it was working out. They needed another twenty minutes in the air and the pilot reckoned he could squeeze that out – just. He sat with a map on his knees, checking their route, watching the readouts from the fuel gauge as they headed for their destination at 125 knots.

  The small Italian resort of Gravedona with its red-tiled roofs and intimate squares lies on the shore of Lake Como, less than ten miles from the Swiss border. Between the town and the border, where the land rises towards the Alps, is a reservoir, hemmed in by dense fir trees and sloping sides, difficult territory for a helicopter, but the site had three attributes that were essential for their purpose. It was isolated. It was unmanned. And it had a service road.

  An SUV flashed its lights in instruction as the helicopter came into view. The pilot offered up a prayer of gratitude that the visibility was excellent and he wasn’t having to make this approach in total darkness. The landing area next to the reservoir was tight, on a noticeable slope, covered in snow and hemmed in by trees. Branches went flying, shredded to twigs by the blades as the pilot edged forward, keeping just ahead of the blizzard of snow thrown up by his downwash and threatening to blind him. The incline made it all the more difficult, forcing him to land across it with his left skid down the slope, keeping the blades turning until he was sure the craft wasn’t going to start slipping, or settling so deep in the snow that the bloody thing might tip up.

  Ruari sat watching as the snow and pieces of thrashed fir tree were swept around, wishing he had a plan, but his head ached furiously from his injuries. Both eyes had swelled up, although the prodigious flow of blood had stopped and was now congealing in his lap. He felt relief as the thunder of the engines began to wane, and another man, the driver of the vehicle, signalled that he should get out. The driver had a gun, too, but Ruari was hurting too much to give a damn. He stumbled, they dragged him roughly to his feet, then dumped him beneath a tree a little way from the helicopter. As he stared at the new man, trying to focus on this most recent face with its thinning red hair and ears that seemed sewn flat against his skull, he felt a scratch on his upper arm and before he knew any more was drifting away. He didn’t see them bring the SUV behind the helicopter and push the aircraft down the slope towards the reservoir. It didn’t take much. The machine had its gearbox beneath the rotor blades, which gave it a high centre of gravity, and with a little nudging from the bull bars of the SUV it was soon toppling over onto its side. The blades bent as they hit the snow, then snapped, the helicopter groaned, resisted, and began lurching down towards the side of the reservoir. There was ice on the surface but it was nowhere near thick enough to withstand a ton and a half of helicopter. The craft slipped a little more, the last few feet, then, with a stiff, almost courtly bow, toppled over and struck the ice, sinking in seconds and leaving nothing but a dark, jagged hole that would soon be frozen over.

  The dead pilot was still inside, strapped in his seat.

  They bundled the unconscious Ruari into the back of the vehicle and hid him beneath blankets, and only a few minutes after landing they were underway. No one yet knew that the boy, or the helicopter, was missing. The alarm wasn’t raised until night had fallen, but by then they had reached their destination, a further three hundred miles away and almost in another country.

  Campbell turned from Harry to discover Mary Mischon, the keeper of the Downing Street diary, standing in the doorway. He glanced at his watch and let out a sound of extreme weariness. ‘Remind me,’ he sighed.

  ‘Reception downstairs. Pillared Room.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Not if you don’t mind upsetting around three hundred of the most important businessmen in the country, about two hundred and fifty of whom have been identified as potential party donors.’

  He pulled a face. ‘Sometimes, Mary, I don’t like you.’

  ‘I’ll resign in the morning. In the meantime . . .’ She held the door open wider.

  Slowly, as though considerably older than his fifty years, Iain Campbell levered himself up from his warm, comfortable seat, and as he did so he seemed to go through a profound change. He shook himself, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, forcing strength back to his limbs, ironing out the creases and putting on his public face. When he had finished, he held out a hand. ‘Come on, Harry. Join me. It’ll be a good crowd, let’s say hello to the heavy hitters.’

  ‘I’m scarcely dressed for such an occasion,’ Harry replied, still in the loose clothes he’d flown in. He didn’t even have a proper collar, let alone a tie.

  ‘It’s a reception, not a bloody funeral. Anyway, you’re Harry Jones. You get away with murder.’

  There was no mistaking the edge in Campbell’s humour. He had been flying in a straight line, and up front, for so long that he had no more tail feathers left, seemed to have forgotten how to relax. And from somewhere deep inside, beyond where the Prime Minister’s flattery had penetrated, Harry heard an alarm bell ringing – join the flock once again and he might end up just like this. He’d spent time as a minister before, had once been a man rising rapidly through the ranks until his own ideas got in the way. More scars. But he couldn’t deny he was intrigued by the Prime Minister’s proposal, and in the circumstances it would be churlish to turn down his invitation. Anyway, the delays at Heathrow had wiped out his other plans for the evening. He nodded his acceptance.

  Campbell led the way with a remarkably jaunty step down the stairs to the Pillared Room, the largest reception room in Downing Street, which sported a huge crystal chandelier at its centre and Regency gilt sofas at its edge. It was on this spot that the bald-headed fascist Benito Mussolini had been entertained before the war, where during the war the windows and ceilings had been blasted into fragments, and where afterwards Winston Churchill had suffered a major stroke that was to snatch away all the glories of victory and to be the beginning of the end for him. This was also where other moist-eyed departing Prime Ministers had taken hurried farewells from their staffs at those inevitable moments of defeat and departure, yet for now at least the room filled with chatter and good humour as Campbell made his entrance, smiling, shaking hands, grabbing elbows, picking pockets, whispering in ears and dispensing humour, even drinks. ‘An orange juice for Mr Jones,’ he instructed one of the staff. ‘No vodka in it. My wife’s already marked the bottle.’ He began working the room, never lingering yet making everyone feel special, and somewhere in the crowd his wife was doing much the same. Everyone had to get a piece of him, even vicariously. An eminent banker had been hovering and now she pounced, but Campbell didn’t listen to her for long – the woman was notoriously even-handed, gave politicians of every colour a hard time and no money, and soon the Prime Minister had grabbed Harry’s arm once more, using him as an excuse to strike out in another direction until he spied what he thought was a safe harbour.

  ‘Harry, I’m sure you know J.J. Breslin. Impress him, will you? We need him!’ And with that, he was already gone.

  It was at that instant Harry knew he had made a terrible mistake in being here. He didn’t care for crowds, found them claustrophobic, and he
was tired, jet-lagged, distracted. That was how he came to be caught unawares. He found himself extending a hand and, as he did so, as he felt his palm and met his eye, the clamour that had taken hold of the rest of the room somehow disappeared.

  ‘Mr Jones, I don’t believe we’ve met,’ Breslin said.

  That was for sure. Harry had spent many years assiduously avoiding him.

  ‘But I believe you know my wife.’

  And there she was, standing by the ornate marble fireplace, smiling ruefully from behind her glass of wine.

  Harry’s head was spinning. It wasn’t often he lost control of his feelings, but now he was very close. The steward was at his side with the tray of drinks; he grabbed a whisky, leaving the orange juice undisturbed. It gave him the chance to look at her. The hair was a little shorter, a more distinct shade of chestnut than he remembered, her high cheeks perhaps a little fuller, the clothes certainly better cut but she was now – what? Thirty-eight? Or was it nine? It had been so long ago, he’d tried so hard to forget.

  ‘Hello, Harry.’ Still the same breathless, husky voice, the same pouting, expressive lips. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘Paris, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The Left Bank.’

  ‘You remember.’

  ‘Every detail.’

  Lapérouse, a corner table. A Friday evening, shortly after eight, with light, mist-like rain that had required no more than a turned-up collar and springing step to make sure he wasn’t late – at least, that’s the way he remembered it. Waiting for her, alone at the table, too long, beginning to feel awkward, exposed, before she’d arrived, flustered, fumbling with her coat and her words, telling him it was over, that there would be no more secret trips, no more stolen moments. That she was sending him back to his wife.

  ‘How have you been . . . Terri?’ he heard himself saying. Her name emerged almost as an afterthought, on an unwilling tongue.

  ‘Fine. Really fine.’

  Her husband was a tall man who might once have been good-looking but who now sported a receding hairline and a developing stomach hemmed in by a double-breasted suit – always a mistake on a stomach, Harry thought. He was looking at them with a glint of curiosity through thick-framed designer glasses. ‘I’ll leave you two to catch up,’ he said, turning abruptly and leaving them alone on their island in a sea of noise.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive J.J.,’ she said. ‘He has a jealous streak. He’ll be checking up on us.’

  ‘He knows?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ve never told him. He senses more than knows. Heard whispers, maybe.’

  ‘You weren’t the guilty party. I was the one who was married.’

  She smiled, an expression which on her lips always contained an element of provocation. ‘J.J.’s Irish. He never forgets the past.’

  ‘And I’m . . .’

  She nodded. ‘The past.’ Then she laughed, that soft, lilting sound like a trickling brook that he remembered and which had for a few terrifying months of his life so bewitched him. Yes, it had been witchcraft, for otherwise none of what had happened made sense. He’d been married to Julia, the most extraordinary of women, the great love of his life, and yet . . . Terri had come along and his life had been trashed. His fault, not hers, she hadn’t particularly encouraged him, had always held back, but he had pursued her in that relentless Jones style until all he could think about was her. Yet somehow Julia had managed to forgive him. They had rebuilt the marriage, crawled their way back through the pain, little by little, until the day Julia had been killed in a skiing accident, following Harry down the side of yet another mountain, and after that he had never found a way of living with the guilt. It had burned like acid through so many other relationships. He’d hated Terri for all that, because she’d finished it, and he’d never understood why, and because it was so much easier hating her than hating himself. And now she was here, standing in front of him, beneath a portrait of the virgin Queen Bess.

  ‘You know I’ve spent all these years avoiding you,’ he said. ‘Checking guest lists, walking out of receptions just like this, turning down invitations to dinner parties because I knew you and your husband would be there.’

  ‘I know. Me, too.’ No more laughter, only memories. ‘But you’re a very difficult man to avoid, Harry Jones.’

  ‘Someone mentioned . . .’ He found himself reaching for another drink. ‘You have a family.’

  She nodded, sipped, lowered her eyes. She was still elegant, the years had been kind, and if she had put on a few pounds since her early twenties they were spread in superb places. As he looked, and remembered, he found there was too much to say, and so he said nothing. A silence of guilt.

  ‘I never remember you being tongue-tied,’ she teased, softly, trying to break the impasse.

  ‘I’m just not in the mood to stand here and swap small talk.’

  ‘This is Downing Street, what else are we supposed to do?’ A gentle laugh, which died. ‘Or is it me?’

  Harry wasn’t one of those braggarts who claimed never to have crawled away from a place of danger. He could smell the stuff, knew how it lurked like a ruffian on the stairs, waiting to trip you, cast you down, kick the crap out of you and take advantage of any vulnerability. Crawl away? Hell, he knew there were times when the only wise thing to do was to run, to put as much distance between yourself and it as possible. That’s why he’d survived. He swallowed the last of his drink and, without offering a word of apology, turned on his heel and left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the taxi on the way back from Downing Street, Harry’s mood proved to be as sour as the milk that would be waiting for him back home. Terri could do that for him, curdle the finest day. He told the cabbie to stop and clambered out, intending to walk the last stretch and restock his fridge at his local Asian minimarket, maybe get himself a fresh attitude, too. He felt mean.

  He still had his suitcase but it had wheels and was clattering unsteadily along the pavement when up ahead in the lamplight he saw a group of youths loitering near the shop, blocking the path, deliberately making others walk round them and into the gutter. Five of them, wearing hoodies, smoking, spitting, cursing, scratching spots. A woman with a child’s buggy, the wife of the minimarket owner, was asking them to move to one side. Harry wasn’t close enough to make out her precise words but from the woman’s body language he could see that she was nervous and hesitant, trying to be studiously polite. They looked at her, at the colour of her skin, and too long for comfort at the child, before turning their backs and ignoring her. She lowered her head in submission and began to make the trek into the gutter.

  That was when Harry got involved. He had no trouble in finding justification for barging in, of course, and on another day he would have said he was being chivalrous, but the truth was he was pissed off, stirred up by his encounter with Terri, and wanted to take his dark humour out on somebody. The mop-heads made a convenient target. These kids were feral, the type of wild, unassimilated creatures that nowadays were found in every town and on too many corners. Broken families, of course, that was always the excuse, but so what? His family hadn’t been exactly a festival of fun, either, yet Harry had got over it, hadn’t he?

  Or maybe not. Family was something he’d never done well and sometimes, when night pushed aside the clutter of the day, Harry wondered why he’d never been able to find the right place for a woman in his life. Was that because he had no role model, because his own father had so often been absent, erratic and untrustworthy, an emotional waterhole that had dried up and left those around him gasping? It would all have been so different for Harry, of course, if Julia had lived. She’d been pregnant when she died, carrying their son – Harry always thought it was a boy, didn’t know why, perhaps that was nothing more than male attitude, and Harry possessed more than his fair share of that. Dammit, maybe he was more like his father than he cared to admit. And suddenly Harry realized his own son would have been about the
same age as these punks on the pavement.

  The frustration boiled over. Not just with these teenagers but with his father, with Julia for going and getting herself killed, with Terri, but most of all with himself. He was normally a man renowned for his self-control but today wasn’t normal, and suddenly a gear inside him slipped and he was shouting, threatening, making a stupid scene. In response the kids began laughing, mocking, gave him the finger before melting away, moving past him like a current around a stone, kicking over his suitcase as they disappeared.

  He’d spent years listening to any number of psychologists and sociologists, let alone fellow politicians, offering explanations for kids like these who turned into a rat pack, but right now he wasn’t big on mitigation. He was burning, he hated them. For making a fool of him, and for enabling him to make a fool of himself.

  The owner of the minimarket was out on the pavement now, rescuing his wife, comforting his bewildered child, looking at Harry with suspicion as though he was to blame. And at that moment Harry came to the conclusion that he was, after all, a lucky man not to have a family, not to be a father, not to be forced to put up with this sort of shit.

  To hell with the sodding milk, he’d pour beer over his cornflakes. Harry kicked the pavement in fury as he picked up his suitcase, shouldered his anger and continued trudging home.

  It was called the Karst, or Kras or Carso, depending on which of the locals you spoke to, a vast, thinly populated plateau that stretched back from the Italian port of Trieste and marked the boundary between Old Europe and the Balkans, the place where Latin met Slav, a spot where many passed through but few stopped. It was a place easy to overlook. That’s why the kidnappers had chosen it. The dense oak trees that had given this area its character had long ago been ripped out by medieval foresters to provide wood for the trading fleets of Venice, just seventy miles along the coast, leaving scrub pine in their place. This was high limestone country, a landscape that seemed to be at war with itself, riddled with caverns and sinkholes gouged out by the underground streams that made the ground disappear beneath the feet, a place of neglected paintwork and crumbling stone walls where scattered rural communities struggled to eke out a living on thin soils. Such hard conditions bred independence and self-reliance, and a distrust of the many monarchs who had tried to bend it to their ways. It was a region of meagre rewards and hardy souls, and of the Bora, a savage northerly wind that generated extraordinary ferocity as it descended upon the Adriatic, like a hooligan who molested you before running off, only to return just when you thought it safe to come out again. The Carso was a place with its own laws, its own way of doing things. Policemen and officials sent up here had sometimes simply disappeared, as though they had been dropped down a hole in the ground, which in all probability they had. And that was another reason why the kidnappers had come.