‘If I may interrupt through the chair?’ It was the Walrus, without raising his head. Earwick had thought he’d been snoozing.
Bendall nodded his approval.
‘Why not?’ demanded the Walrus.
‘Why not what?’
‘Why not let the public know? Gain their assistance in the hunt?’ His head was still down, as though he didn’t want to look up to Earwick. As though he were determined that he would never look up to Earwick.
Earwick paused, steepled his fingers, debating whether to embrace the old fool or to throttle him. Throttle him for preference, but that would have to be left for another time. ‘There are two main reasons for silence, at least at this stage. We don’t wish to alarm the public unnecessarily. The IRA and animal libbers are one thing, the prospect of our own highly trained professionals quite another. It could prove most disturbing, particularly to editors with overactive imaginations – as I’m sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer with all his experience will understand …’
‘And the second reason?’ the Walrus demanded, interrupting the flow of grease.
‘To put it bluntly, because we haven’t got the faintest idea who these people are. They don’t fall onto any of our traditional lists of extremists and activists. We’ve no idea at this stage even how many, let alone who. It’s a bit like searching for snowflakes in Siberia.’
‘So what do you propose to do?’
‘Be vigilant! They’ve hit water, transport. Who knows what next? So I have raised the state of alert on all government buildings and asked the Commissioner to draft as many police officers as possible onto the streets, to make their presence more obvious. I’ve also cancelled all leave in SO-13, the police armed response unit.’
‘You think lives may be at risk?’
‘We are dealing with military hoodlums. They may be unstable. Worse than terrorists. I’m not going to be the one who has to stand up in Parliament after some appalling tragedy and say that I wasn’t prepared. I have also told the security services that I’ll authorize electronic surveillance and phone taps under any reasonable circumstance. We can’t afford to lack the necessary courage. As of now London is on a twenty-four-hour alert.’
‘Sounds a little like short cuts.’
‘Let me put it this way. I intend that we should deal with these renegades sooner rather than later. They’ve put themselves outside the law, and if we have to go to the very edges of the law ourselves in order to defeat them, I can live with that. It’s results that count. And – let me phrase this carefully – all the opinion-poll evidence suggests that the people expect us to act decisively. To defend their interests. Hell, we have to trust the people.’
‘But not tell them what they are up against.’
‘If the voters’ – a slip of the tongue; he’d meant to say ‘people’ but for some reason he seemed to be thinking of elections – ‘thought there was a bunch of little Hitlers wandering around the streets of London intent on mayhem, there would be chaos. And unnecessary fear. The economy would lose billions. So first things first. What the public wants to know above all is that their security is safe in our hands. When we know who we’re dealing with, then we can decide what information to give out, but what they need to know in the meantime is that their Government is ready to act. So whatever it takes, gentlemen. Whatever it takes.’
‘I take it that no one has any objections?’ Bendall instructed.
Goodfellowe swallowed. He had all sorts of objections, particularly and very personally to Earwick. A loathsome object but, according to the Prime Minister, a very necessary individual. Within a few short minutes of his first appearance as Home Secretary he’d defiled the grave of his predecessor, shoved his head so far up the Chancellor’s backside that it wouldn’t appear until next Budget Day, and had threatened action that was unprincipled and – who knows? – maybe verging on the unlawful, threatening an armed response to those who so far had done no more than bring Trafalgar Square grinding to a halt. That was no more than Sam had done. What was Earwig going to do next time she waved her bicycle pump around? Shoot her?
Objections? Sure he had objections, but he also had his back against the wall. Quite literally. He hadn’t been invited to sit at the table along with the big boys, merely to sit in attendance. To the rear. On the seats reserved for officials and advisers. His role was to listen and to learn. If he behaved himself, maybe later he would move up to the top table.
But it couldn’t be much later. Goodfellowe had gone past the stage when he had his whole life before him. A good chunk of it was already well behind him or hanging around his waistline. What had Churchill said? It was a line Goodfellowe often used in speeches, one he could always rely upon for a ripple of laughter and applause. Churchill and Lady Astor, entering the Guildhall in the City of London, side by side. ‘Look around you, Winston,’ she had demanded caustically, ‘you could fill half of the Guildhall with all the brandy you’ve drunk in your life.’ The Old Man had looked around the great hall through weary eyes and replied: ‘Ah, yes. So much more still to do. And so little time to do it.’
Damn it, Goodfellowe couldn’t deny it any longer. He was middle-aged, stuck in a world that placed an ever heavier premium on youth. But you are only as young as you feel, and he didn’t feel middle-aged, not with Elizabeth beneath him.
He choked off his misgivings. Time to be not only middle-aged, but also grown up. This was his route back. Back to office. Back to happiness. Back to helping make little bits of history, like COBRA. Back to making a difference, for others. Back to youth, even. Recapturing the many things he’d lost since last he had buried his attentions in a Ministerial red box, and Stevie had drowned.
Give and take. Compromise. A team player. As though he were playing on a football squad, accepting the need to pass the ball, helping others score goals, not battling on his own any more.
So much better than shouting angrily from the touchline, wasn’t it?
Although he’d better watch out for the professional foul.
When first they had gathered, they had done so as a matter of honour. Now the conspirators met in a mood of anger. Anger becomes conspiracy, and they now knew that conspirators were what they were. Earwick had left them in no doubt of the fact during his statement to the House.
‘A conspiracy not just against the elected government,’ he had thundered, ‘but against the people, and our capital city. A conspiracy against democracy itself.’
The time of mischief when they had worn toy helmets and played games with the Bendalls’ loo seemed to be from another age.
Earwick had attacked. He had abused.
‘These are not people of principle but parasites, Mr Speaker. Men of malice. Nothing less than wreckers …’
Earwick had distorted.
‘… whose objective is to inflict misery and chaos upon thousands of innocent Londoners.’
He had gone on to belittle them.
‘We are dealing here with a conspiracy of spite … extremists whose overriding objective is as simple as it is selfish – to create chaos and confusion. Bully boys who target the innocent for their own narrow ends.’
Then he had impugned their honour.
‘These are extremists, nothing less. They may claim to be working in the public interest but, in truth, they are working in no one’s interest other than their own …’
And finally he had threatened.
‘Lawlessness cannot be allowed to rule our streets, Mr Speaker. Lives are at risk in these attacks. By polluting our water supplies, by disrupting emergency services – our ambulances and our firemen, not to mention the police – they attack the people themselves. And so I feel entitled, indeed duty bound, to use every means at our disposal to protect the public and prevent further outrages. While the House will understand if I do not give full details of the security measures I am implementing, let me give the assurance that they will be rigorous and comprehensive …’
The threat was left vague, but vivi
d. There were mad dogs roaming the capital. The implication was clear. Like mad dogs, they would have to be put down.
‘Seems we may have upset Mr Earwick. Pity. Such a nice man.’
‘A true gentleman.’
‘Ferret turd, more like.’
‘Upgraded security everywhere.’
‘You’re right. All too bloody obvious. Trafalgar Square. The Circus. Outside Parliament and at Hyde Park Corner. All over the shop. Mr Earwick seems not to trust us.’
‘They were checking the rubbish bins every twenty minutes outside Harrods. Dammit all, they think we’re fucking bombers.’
‘I am a fucking bomber,’ McKenzie insisted.
‘Then we are done for!’
Half jest, half in deadly earnest.
‘So what do we do? It’s sort of a point of no return. Could get messy from here on in. Anybody want out?’
Amadeus had to pose the question. The matter had changed, grown beyond what any of them had envisaged. No longer could this be a simple matter of apology; Earwick had made that abundantly clear. It had become a battle of wills, of implacable positions and inflexible egos. War is never simply an affair of violence but of achieving a set of objectives, and now those objectives had shifted. Bendall wouldn’t change, so … So he had to be changed. Overwhelmed. Forced to climb down in the face of adversity, before they themselves were caught and overwhelmed. It was one or the other. The risks, of course, were mighty, but in a matter of honour the burden of doing nothing far outweighed the perils of failure.
The others also understood this. They had been naïve to believe there could be any sort of victory through simply muddying the Prime Ministerial waters, but this was a very different kind of foe from any they had previously fought. Yet in facing adversity, each of them had found opportunity.
For Scully it was the opportunity to rebuild himself and, in his different way, for Payne to rebuild himself too, and renew his fortunes. They barely considered the risks. Amadeus had given them both something to cling to, and drowning men don’t ask too many questions.
McKenzie saw it as a matter of principle. Bendall was both preacher and poacher and McKenzie, as a Highlander, had been bred to distrust both. He thought Bendall the worst of his kind, a man who would sacrifice any principle or position for his own advantage. That made him no different from any of the petty warlords who had scattered land mines and left a trail of shattered lives across so many innocent communities. In McKenzie’s eyes, it scarcely mattered that Bendall hadn’t started any wars; he hadn’t done a damned thing to prevent any either. He’d even slashed the British contribution to the land-mine clearance programme in Cambodia. Typically, the cut had been announced by means of a Written Answer put out on a Friday in late July, as if it were just some other parliamentary game. That same day the Scot had watched a seven-year-old girl and her small brother walk hand-in-hand into a rice field near Kompong. They were searching for butterflies. After the explosion he’d found himself covered in UFCs. Unidentifiable Fragments of Child.
Mary’s motivations were both simpler and yet immensely more complicated. For her, this wasn’t just a battle against Bendall but against all those men throughout her life who had stripped her of everything – her childhood, her hopes, her career, her value as a woman. Bendall symbolized that bloody male arrogance that had torn her life to shreds time and again. Now she had the chance to fight back. It involved risk, of course, but there was always a price to pay, and it was nothing compared to the price she had paid repeatedly at the hands of people like Bendall. And Gittings. Both of whom were now so close at hand, and so vulnerable. When she thought of Gittings, the question of giving up never entered her head.
Amadeus’s question hung in the air. Mary was the first to respond.
‘What, throw in my hand and go back to mastitis and mud?’
‘And just when I was beginning to ha’ fun? Hell, no.’
‘You too, Skulls?’
The RSM seemed to stretch his battered body, to grow taller. He was standing on one foot, his right boot no longer touching the ground. ‘When the other bastard starts to squeal, usually means you got ‘im by the balls. Not the time to stop squeezing, if you ask me.’
Payne was nodding in agreement.
‘Which seems to leave us with only one wee question.’
‘What’s that, Andy?’
‘Where do we squeeze ’em next?’
For the next two and a half hours, over burgers and beer, Amadeus explained in meticulous and carefully prepared detail how they were going to make Bendall squirm, then scream, then cough up his guts.
And how, by and by, they were going to bring themselves to the edge of disaster.
TEN
Goodfellowe had slept fitfully and risen with a nervous stomach. The full English breakfast he had prescribed for himself at Mr Chou’s hadn’t helped, either. It blew his diet, made him flatulent and only increased his feeling of unease. Anyway, his old friend Chou, a near-neighbour on Gerrard Street, couldn’t cook a full English to save his last remaining gold tooth. How on earth did he scramble eggs so that they actually bounced, not only off the plate but inside the stomach? Goodfellowe knew from the first mouthful that it was an awful idea but all the while Chou had stood over him, beaming and hopping from foot to foot like a nervous parent, forcing Goodfellowe to eat out of politeness. And to suffer.
Yet as the day grew older, Goodfellowe began to realize that his problems weren’t dietary. By late afternoon he found himself in the Chamber, occupying a place at the far end from the Speaker’s Chair and on the very highest bench, which gave him a view over the entire leather-shod assembly. For all its faults it was to him still a fine place, a place of beauty and awesome history, at times a place of wisdom yet at other moments a place of masterly confusion and indecision, stalked by ghosts and by greatness and by fools. To be part of this place had always been his dream, but as he watched the proceedings he began to realize that it wasn’t enough.
For what was gripping him inside was not indigestion but ambition. The Chief Whip’s words had kept returning to him, that one day, this Chamber could be his Chamber.
It was a reckless desire, of course, but not impossible. All Prime Ministers are ultimately put to the sword, and what would happen when the mob came to kick down Bendall’s door? What if … What if it came down to a choice between him and, say, Earwick and Vertue? Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo. To stand any chance in such a contest would require commitment and endless endeavour, not all of it wholesome. Spending more time around the corridors and in the well-polished corners, embracing lobby correspondents, gossiping, whispering in their ears, following the whisper with his tongue. Ugly business, but you couldn’t work your way to the top by leaving the place strewn with virgins.
The bike would have to go, of course. Yet on second thoughts he might be able to make the bike a selling point. Not so much a rusting piece of scrap as a symbol of sincerity and independence. Like Harold Wilson’s pipe, or Ronald Reagan’s jelly beans. The Pedalling Premier! Trouble was, all his grand visions of sincerity and independence were contradicted by what was taking place in the Chamber directly in front of him. Earwick was posturing at the Despatch Box like a brawler propping up the bar, throwing threats in every direction. So what if the Prime Minister had been made to look ridiculous? That’s what politics were about, but Earwick was making it sound like the onset of the French Revolution. Goodfellowe couldn’t shake from his mind the thought that the whole thing was faintly absurd.
In the quieter corners of Westminster he found others who, out of earshot of the Whips, admitted to having enjoyed the spectacle of Bendall drowning in front of the Surf Summit cameras, who thought that those responsible deserved not so much a guillotine as an award for comic entertainment. Sure, they had stuffed up the centre of London, but so had the Mayor and the Minister for Transport on a daily basis. Was Earwick going to throw them in a tumbrel, too? There was fine sport to be had in mocking Earwick – but for t
he moment the sport was pursued only gently, for Earwick was Today’s Man. Best not call his bluff, they argued. Wait until tomorrow.
A drowning Prime Minister. A Home Secretary who was one wheel short of an undercarriage. This was the team Goodfellowe had signed up with. No wonder he felt such a sense of unease.
He tried to work it out during the hour he spent in the Tea Room, but couldn’t. So he followed that with a serious session out on the Terrace and a button-straining dinner in the Members’ Dining Room, after which there was yet another session on the Terrace before the final vote.
It was at this point he began to realize there was a fundamental flaw in his plans to claim his place in the history books as the Pedalling Prime Minister. For no matter how hard he struggled and concentrated and swore, he found it was impossible for him to ride his bloody bike. Not when he was completely legless.
‘We could always wait for one who’s grown up. More your age, perhaps.’
‘Do something useful for a change, Freddie. Turn into a lamppost or get in another round.’
Mary rocked back on her uneven stool and squirmed. She didn’t like this place, the Ring o’ Bells, a smoke-and-soiled-varnish pub that was hidden down a little passage off Camden High Street. It had nothing to recommend it, other than the location. Even the beer was foul. It had too much head and tasted of Rotherhithe, and reminded Mary of her father. For almost an hour she’d been sitting at a sticky-topped table, exchanging stilted conversation with Payne, and waiting – for what, she wasn’t entirely sure, but as it drew closer to six their patience was rewarded. The pub had begun to fill with drinkers, a good number of whom were employees from the Telecoms Technical and Engineering Centre located less than a hundred yards down the road. They worked in an environment designed for computers with air conditioning that was bone dry, which all helped build up a scorching thirst by the end of the day. The Ring o’ Bells was the nearest watering hole.
Whispers of Betrayal Page 17
