The South Lawn Plot

by Ray O'Hanlon

  “Yeah, and all the while talking up his sleeve,” said Manning, now at the door.

  “Don't stay too late, for God's sake. Her nibs will think you're the gold standard for the rest of us.”

  “Don't worry. I'll be history in about an hour, and it won't even be fully dark by then. There really is a fine stretch in the evenings now.”

  Nesbitt's final sentence was to himself. Manning had gone after closing the door quietly.

  It took Manning just a few minutes to reach his car in the underground lot. It took him just a second to stop in his tracks and a second more to see that the man leaning against his car was Roger Burdin.

  Manning drew in what he wanted to be deep breath. But it never got beyond the shallow point. He had known of course that Burdin would show up again. In fact he had been lately wondering why the man from Ministry of Intelligence, Branch Six, had been taking so long.

  Manning, reaching the driver's door, hit his remote button. He said nothing as he got into the car. Burdin, too, was silent as he slipped in on the passenger side. Both men sat for a moment, each waiting for the other to speak. It was Burdin who broke the silence.

  “Nice motor,” he said. “I've always had a soft spot for American cars. They have such comfortable interiors.”

  “I haven't heard a word about Pender,” Manning retorted. He was not in the mood for meaningless small talk.

  “No, you wouldn't have, but you will tomorrow,” Burdin said, turning to look directly at Manning, a half smile on his long, lined face.

  “Fitzhugh will call your ambassador's office tomorrow morning asking for a favor, accommodation for the great shutterbug. He will drop in the line that he has been under your roof at one point in the not so distant past and will suggest a rematch.

  “Your ambassador will ask you if that is fine by you and your lovely wife, and you will readily agree to Pender staying with you for the time he is in Washington covering the White House trade conference.”

  “Why not a hotel?” Manning said, an edge in his voice.

  “The reason he does not want to stay in a hotel is that he had all his expensive camera gear nicked last year in what was supposed to be a posh place in Los Angeles. He simply prefers the comforts of home now, and particularly the security of knowing that his temporary residence isn't brim full of sticky fingered strangers. It's an entirely reasonable and plausible request, don't you think?”

  Manning said nothing for a moment. He had inserted the key but had not switched on the engine.

  “What precisely is your interest in Pender, and why are you taking such an interest in his work arrangements? What the hell is going on?” he said.

  Burdin smiled and turned his eyes to the windshield. “Start the car. How about a little trip to the White House?”

  Manning shrugged. “The White House, why?”

  “Just bloody drive,” Burdin retorted sharply. “We haven't a lot of time.”

  Manning steered the car out of the lot and on to a street that was in the throes of rush hour. He did not make it more than a few yards before being hemmed in by a phalanx of vehicles, mostly D.C. taxicabs.

  “I am assured, am I not? that this is the last time I will have to do anything for you people,” Manning said as he squeezed into a space a few cars back from a red stop light.

  “Absolutely,” Burdin replied. “This is it old boy; you have my word.”

  “Your word. Jesus Christ.”

  Burdin did not respond to Manning's dismissal. Instead, as the car moved with the now green light, he raised a hand and pointed a finger.

  “Take a right here. Then the next right and the first left. I think you will find it the fastest way to where we are going.”

  The two were silent for several minutes as Manning did his best to weave through the traffic while heading in the direction suggested by his surprisingly street-wise companion.

  It was Burdin who spoke first.

  “Never could get used to driving on this side of the road, you know. I believe we got it right way back when. As I've heard it, a rider stayed left so that his sword arm, his right arm, was free to meet a stranger coming from the opposite direction. Can't imagine why the Yanks opted for this side, particularly given that they are so into manly action.”

  “I think they discovered guns and it didn't matter what side of the damn road you were on,” said Manning, drawing a little satisfaction from taking the side of his wife's countrymen.

  “Perhaps you're right,” said Burdin. “The Americans don't exactly stand on ceremony. Look what they did to our blessed language.”

  Manning had found a relatively clear stretch of street and had pressed the pedal as far as he reckoned diplomatic immunity permitted.

  “Ah, the open road. How are your lovely wife and daughter by the way?” asked Burdin, folding his arms and leaning back in his seat.

  To Manning, it was less a question than a reminder of his vulnerability. His past life was something his family had no knowledge of, but with Burdin, the threat went well beyond the potential for mere tattle-telling. The question harbored a threat of harm that, while unspoken, was plain. Yet Manning balked at the temptation to spit out a reply, counter with a threat of his own. He knew such a response would be futile, so he contented himself with the most nonchalant comeback he could come up with.

  “Fine,” he said. “I think we're here. I can't turn, or get any nearer as you know because the street is blocked off. You'll have to walk.”

  “Pull in just here,” Burdin commanded. “Walk I will. As you know, I enjoy a good ramble.”

  Manning stopped in a no parking zone and turned on his warning lights. He was expecting more, and sure enough it came.

  Burdin was staring at him intently now. “Listen very carefully,” he said. “This is a job that will actually make you feel rather good about yourself. Your task is to make sure that people don't get hurt. You will make sure that nobody grabs or diverts Mr. Lau, the Taiwanese industrialist who, as you know, is the star guest at the conference, the man who is going to bring back shipbuilding to Belfast, of a sort at any rate.

  “Above all, don't let your ambassador smother him, kidnap him. Lau will bow as a greeting. This will seem quite normal given the part of the world he comes from. He will shake some hands, maybe speak to some people, but only those that are of his choosing. You must make sure that he is given his space, is allowed to make his own moves. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” said Manning. “But I think I should be able to manage that.”

  “Don't think, make sure you do.” Burdin was already half out of the car.

  “Oh, I do love Washington,” he said, turning and peering back in the door.

  “I wonder if our lads would ever have been able to burn the White House back in that war, 1812 wasn't it, if they had the blessed pile ringed with all these concrete flower pots.”

  And then he was gone, across the street and off in the direction of the presidential mansion, venue for the post conference party for which idle banter and social diversion had suddenly become an act of ominous import and mystery.

  Manning shook his head and pulled back into the traffic. He wasn't thinking of socially overbearing ambassadors, or Chinese billionaires, but of his wife and daughter and of their exposure to Burdin's potential for extreme malice.

  The fact that Burdin would not require him to kill someone else meant little; indeed nothing at all.

  54

  BAILEY WAS SHAKING HIS HEAD. His face registered something not far short of disgust. He was looking out of the only window in his bedroom at what passed for a view.

  The gap between the facing brick walls was little more than an airshaft, and the only other window in the whole depressing picture, the paint around its frame having long since peeled away, was only made vaguely interesting by the fact that the curtain behind it was never opened.

  His vista, by virtue of this perpetually obscured limit, presented a mystery, and from time to time Bai
ley had speculated as to what lay behind it. The room had been in his building before it had been subdivided, and now it was on the far side of a partition wall at the end of the hallway. The room, he had decided in more idle moments, was a drug den, a sex parlor or the hideout for a terrorist cell. He was glad that Samantha had only ever been in his room after dark and had been spared the sheer awfulness of this outlook. He would have to find a new flat.

  He would also, he realized, have to tell Walsh about the email. She was, after all, a copper, and presumably not easily frightened. Neither was he, for that matter, or so he liked to believe, but the threat had been directed at both of them, and the idea of any harm coming to the woman who now dominated most of his waking thoughts was a sensation that was entirely unfamiliar, and entirely frightening.

  He had never experienced such a feeling of vulnerability in a life that had been devoted, up until very recently, to what he now saw as selfish pursuits. If he had been uncertain he was no longer so. He was very much in love with this woman and would do anything in his power to keep her safe.

  But what precisely was his power? As a journalist he had connections for sure, but it was Walsh who could really draw on the muscle, most especially now that she was part of the prime minister's security unit and was, as the Americans would put it, packing.

  The email had looked like a story from some other media outlet and indeed the message in it was presented in the form of a news report. It was quite simple, just a few lines, but it described, without little dressing up, the death in a road crash of a newspaper reporter and a police officer, a woman. Both had succumbed to injuries sustained in the accident that had occurred on a notorious stretch of road near a town that he had little difficulty in remembering. They had stopped in the place for petrol on the way back from Ayvebury.

  The report, for want of a better word, and without elaborating, had concluded with a line that police were investigating the possibility that the car had exploded before hitting a roadside wall. Both bodies had been burned beyond recognition, but a plate number had survived leading police to a near certain, though still preliminary, identification.

  Bailey had been threatened a few times over the years, mostly when he was stuck into gangland stories. He had once received a bullet in the post. But these he put down to bravado and hot air. It was the absence of both, the very ordinariness of the account in the email that had made him shudder. Yes, he thought, this looked real, the sort of thing that happened every day.

  He had written stories like this himself, though not, admittedly, with the revealing job descriptions that applied to both himself and Samantha. Somebody was warning him off, warning both of them off, though off what he could not hazard a guess.

  Bailey turned to face the bed. His suitcase was packed, relatively neatly for a change. He had bought the bottle of whisky in advance, not wanting to deal with duty free at the airport. The less he had to think about at the airport the better. He enjoyed flying well enough, but traveling made him nervous and these days, after all the terrorist attacks and the world seemingly heading for a bloody great war, airports were places to get in and out of as quickly as possible with minimal deviation from the main plan: get on plane, fly, get off plane.

  Henderson had asked him to bring a bottle with him to New York. He was being allowed a few days in the city before heading to Washington, this in order to interview a few locally based business heavies about the White House conference and prospects of Northern Ireland being the future Taiwan after Taiwan, presumably, was blown off the map by the Chinese.

  The bottle was destined for George Dawes, the Post's man in New York. Dawes had for years inhabited that twilight world between full time correspondent and stringer. He was neither and a bit of both. He had served the paper well, being on the spot for everything from the John Lennon assassination to various Wall Street debacles and September 11. Henderson and he were contemporaries and perhaps pals. The whisky, Bailey surmised, was likely appropriate for both of them. He had encased the two liter bottle in bubble wrap, socks and underwear and was trusting it to his hard-shelled suitcase that would be checked in for the flight.

  Bailey looked at his watch. It was time to leave. He made a mental note, several of them.

  Mrs. Grimsby downstairs had the spare key, and the taxi would be outside any minute. He closed the suitcase, slung his backpack over his shoulder and made for the door. Yes, he said to himself, it was time for a new flat; perhaps it might even merit the title of an apartment.

  Bailey quickly glanced around the place before closing and locking the door. “Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to America we go.” He sang the line to the tune but any hint of light heartedness, he knew, was forced.

  As he walked down the stairs, his thoughts had already crossed the ocean. It would be a time to consider things as well as work. It would be time to ponder a future together with Samantha. Given her current job, not to mention his own, it was a stretch to imagine that there would be buckets of time in close proximity to one another. Then again, he thought as he walked out of the building's front door and waved at the waiting taxi, jobs could be changed.

  The drive to Heathrow was excruciatingly slow. But he had made allowances for delays. The driver, thankfully, was not the chatty sort. He contented himself with listening to radio news and traffic reports after seeking permission of his passenger.

  Bailey would be arriving in the States almost a week before Samantha. She was to fly with the prime minister's party on a regular British Airways flight into Washington's Dulles airport. Not up front with the big tickets, she had said, ruefully, over the phone. The prime minister and his immediate party would be up in first class while others, including Samantha and another relatively junior officer, would be in economy. She would not be carrying her gun on board. Her weapon would be issued to her on American soil and in the presence of the US Secret Service.

  Bailey had been intrigued by the rules and restrictions of Samantha's new job. It seemed that nobody trusted anyone anymore. She herself had referred to what she called the Sikh factor, a reference to the assassination many years before of Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards.

  The vetting of protection unit officers, even those with years of a clean record with the police, now went to quite extraordinary lengths. She had asked Bailey's forgiveness when she had replied in the negative to a question as to whether or not she was involved in a steady relationship. He had made fun of it. She would be allowed to lie this once, he had replied.

  She had almost screamed down the line at him in response. It wasn't a lie, she cried, merely a fudge. Steady in this day and age implied cohabitation, and they weren't cohabiting.

  Fair enough, Bailey had responded, and he left it at that.

  He had begun to notice an increase in the frequency of signs for Heathrow. The radio's sports announcer was discussing Arsenal's European prospects, and the driver was clearly happy about them. He had nudged up the volume.

  “Arsenal supporter, are we?”

  Bailey had decided to cover the last few miles with something other than thoughts of Samantha.

  “All my blessed life,” came the quick reply. “And yourself?”

  “Oh, me, too,” said Bailey. It was not the case. Though he far from being the most ardent football fan, he had always leaned towards West Ham United. He liked their style of play.

  “Been to a game lately, then?” the driver prodded cheerfully, expecting an affirmative response.

  Bailey hesitated for a couple of seconds.

  “Not lately, though I did see the lads at Upton Park a while back. That was quite a win.” Ant it was the truth. A colleague had brought him to see West Ham play Arsenal on a day that might have been the coldest since England had a written history.

  “I remember that one all right. I wasn't there. Working that day. Perishing, as I recall. Here we go, next right Heathrow.”

  It wasn't more than a few minutes before the two had exchanged their ‘thanks, mates.’ Bailey
had remembered to get a receipt for his expenses and had bundled his way into the terminal. The first thing that caught his eye was the police with machine guns, one of them with a dog.

  What a bloody world, he thought as he began his immersion in the process of getting himself, his baggage and the bottle of Scotch from one side of the pond to the other. It all went with relative ease, and by that night, Nick Bailey was staring out of a Manhattan hotel window, more or less mesmerized. London, he had decided, came at you in parts. New York just hit you with everything it had in one go.

  “Bloody fantastic,” he said by way of a rehearsal line as he picked up the phone to call Samantha. He got her answering message.

  On his first night of his big assignment, Nick Bailey decided two things. That he really missed having Samantha beside him, and that he wasn't going to worry because she had not been at home, nor had responded to repeated calls he had made to her mobile phone.

  Nevertheless, sleep, on this first American night, came as a rescuer.

  55

  THERE WAS AN ORDER TO THINGS, of sorts. On some days, the instructions coming from the Secret Service were quite specific. On others, there were none. But activity was expected nonetheless.

  The premise of the work at Globescan was based on the view that best results came from freely ranging activity, that crucial discoveries were uncovered in quiet hours. It was true, though never openly spoken, that the nation's security languished partly in the realm of luck and chance. And it was in response that adjunct operations like Globescan had been created in the first place. You could never have enough data nor intelligence, and the quickest way of obtaining both was setting up a new intelligence-gathering operation. It was a recipe for chaos on one level, but people slept a little better for it.

  This might have been one of those quieter days but it would take a future historian with an appetite for the obscure to decide if this was absolutely the case. Either way, the input from the Service higher ups, fast flowing and demanding in the past few days, had ebbed. Today was not a red, or even an orange alert day on the office's own internal scale, but more like a cool blue, perhaps even a sleepy green. And, as a result, expectations were at the highest level for Globescan, not unlike expectant, ever-hopeful fishermen.