Dalgleish found it rather wryly amusing that in later years – a good way down the road for both of them – they had found themselves doing much the same thing, except that it was now Conservatives they were setting up, as he and Swan pursued their Kind Hearts And Coronets strategy within the parliamentary party. But that, of course, was a more clandestine affair, only possible thanks to the way his and Knight’s relationship had developed.
For a time, like all the other young and ambitious spooks, Knight had kept a foot in many camps, playing MPs and civil servants off one another, and like a magpie took what he could from each of them. But Dalgleish had let him know that there came a stage when you had to bet on one horse, and that he was, if not the favourite, at least offering the biggest potential payout.
Knight had been a promising and already resourceful figure, but with Dalgleish’s sponsorship he had progressed apace, and the higher he climbed, the more useful he was to Dalgleish, who in turn could use his growing influence to open more doors for Knight, and so on.
Knight had become extraordinarily well-connected. The length and breadth of the land there were senior policemen and military officers whose cooperation and confidence he could rely upon; influence that could, with just a phone call, get things done which might otherwise require a great deal of legal wrangling and conspicuously traceable paperwork. And of course, the occasional document of permission or request from a government minister could be rather helpful from time to time.
But the deadliest ace up Knight’s sleeve was his team of “little helpers”, whose services were quite definitely not officially engaged by anyone, but who had proven useful to variously the government, MI5 and Alastair Dalgleish on a number of occasions. Knight paid them a retainer himself, while their operations fees and expenses came from “the client”. They were bloody expensive, but as they say, if you pay peanuts . . . There was also the consideration – of which Knight was patently aware – that if your predicament or even intentions were such that the little helpers’ involvement was required, then you probably needed them a lot more than you needed the money.
But what the hell, they got the job done, and nobody ever knew a dashed thing.
He had called in Knight when he realised the full magnitude of the consequences of what Voss was demanding. He had been confident Knight would have no reservations; apart from the fact that he was hitched to Dalgleish’s gravy train and would suffer greatly from its derailment, Knight was entirely professional when it came to such things. The stature of the man who had to be removed would mean nothing: he thought only of logistics, practicalities, contingencies. The hunter does not stop to consider the social position within the herd of the beast in his sights, only where best to put the bullet, which position to take for the clearest shot.
Knight had been as steady and emotionless as ever, talking immediately of the how, when and where, his invaluable experience in the political arena coming into evidence as he even discussed how they might best “play” the murder. Only the furthest glint in Knight’s eye perhaps betrayed a reaction to the audacity and ruthlessness of what Dalgleish wished to undertake – and that reaction, he was sure, was one of delight and admiration.
For Dalgleish had walked through fire in making this commission, been cleansed by the flames, galvanised by the experience. There had been political comings of age, rites of passage, milestones and watersheds, but this was a door through which he could never go back (and talk about being hung for a sheep . . .).
Dalgleish had destroyed a few lives, wrecked careers, companies even, but this was an entirely new domain. He had known that once he entered it he would be a changed man; he had never anticipated what it would change him into. He had feared he might become a haunted creature, forever running as the Furies flew about him, too distracted by their torments to pursue his agendas, hold down jobs . . . would Voss’s ghost pursue him until his murder had destroyed not only the Dutchman, but himself too?
But instead he was a greater man, a more resolute man, a more powerful man, and it had been that man he saw reflected in the glint in Knight’s eye. He felt, like some mystic ancient warrior, that he had absorbed the stature of the man he had slain, and felt a near-convulsive rush of power as the news broke that Voss was dead. He was no longer some cabinet hopeful, jostling for position with the rest as the PM dangled favours above their heads to buy their obedience. He was a man who could order the death of Roland Voss, for the good of himself and the good of the country; a man of strength, determination and resolution.
And such men are born to rule.
For a long time his and Swan’s had been an uneasy alliance. Each understood not only the use the other could be to his own aims, but that they could travel further together than individually. Dalgleish carried more experience, more years, and ties in more places. Older places. Dalgleish had the breeding, the ancestry, the tradition. His mother’s family name had carried weight in the party for centuries – there were many who thought it gravely amiss that a fellow of the Waldemere line had never been PM – and his father’s name represented land and business that went back to the first seeds of Empire.
Swan, on the other hand, understood well how the game was played nowadays. He traded on a success built upon no foundation of ancestry or tradition, portraying himself as living evidence of the achievements of the Thatcherite revolution. He was steeped in the victor’s hatred of the defeated, despising those whose ineptitude left them foundering at the foot of a system he had negotiated triumphantly with vision, sweat and nerve. He regarded it as a direct insult to his accomplishments that those whose efforts (or lack of) had brought them less should be in any way subsidised to compensate for their own shortcomings. “Hunger was man’s first motivator, and remains his strongest,” was Swan’s defining sound-bite, trumpeted joyously by party and press ever since that ebullient fringe meeting at the Conference in ’91.
He was the darling of the thuggish new right: first-generation Conservatives who had cleaned up in the Eighties and were desperately looking for someone to lead them back to that lost paradise, that new Jerusalem of glass towers, red Porsches, champagne and satisfyingly over-priced sandwich bars.
So Swan brought the new right, Dalgleish the old, and together this unusual but powerful alliance made the boss very nervous indeed. Truth be told, each made the other nervous, as their mutual respect for each other’s abilities, connections and resources had meant neither ever tried to pitch himself as the senior partner. What remained unspoken but understood was that one day they might have to stand toe-to-toe, and neither was particularly looking forward to it.
But Voss had changed that.
It had been Swan that he leaned on first. Swan was the one he really needed; Dalgleish was thrown in as an added bargaining tool. It was Swan’s department – Heritage – and therefore it would have been Swan’s call, but the wily Dutch bastard had hooks in Dalgleish too, and had decided to give the lines a little tweak. If it had just been Swan and he said no – if Swan chose to martyr himself – then it would just have been one resignation by a promising but comparatively junior cabinet member; damage could be limited and Swan was young enough to bide his time until he was rewarded for his selfless act by being allowed back on board. Throwing Dalgleish into the equation not only made the hara-kiri option too catastrophic to contemplate, but was intended to strengthen Swan’s hand in asking the boss for what Voss wanted from the government.
Swan had been lost. He had been a man dithering over the choice of method for his own political execution, the last real decision he would have any power to make. It had been Dalgleish who came up with the solution, Dalgleish who resolved to carry it through, and Dalgleish who had command of the appropriate manpower. For a while he had thought about not telling Swan, as the fewer people who knew the truth the better. But he wanted him to know. Not just because the little shit ought to be shouldering his share of the worry, but because it would let him know the difference between them. Swan had flapped and
despaired while Dalgleish had acted, and acted with a power and a ruthlessness that would take Swan’s breath away.
The matter of who was the senior partner was no longer in question. And he could rest assured Swan would never break their alliance in search of the main chance elsewhere. They were tied forever by this act, and true, each had the power to instigate mutually assured destruction. But Swan owed him. Admittedly, in a man like Swan’s world view, that might not count for much or for long, but Dalgleish still found it unlikely the younger man would ever try to deceive, disobey or betray him.
He had friends, you see. Friends in very high places.
And friends in some very, very low ones too.
*
Dalgleish sat at his desk as Knight stood opposite, shoulders back and hands clasped behind him. He had been a soldier once, Dalgleish knew, and seemed to slip back into the role during these debriefings. Dalgleish liked that. It showed respect, and it also kept both men focused on matters at hand. There was a time for drinks and armchairs, and this wasn’t it.
“The prisoners made their escape exactly according to plan, sir,” he said, traces of a Somerset burr nudging the ordered ranks of his firm, unemotional delivery. “Right on schedule.”
Dalgleish nodded, looking down as if taking a mental note, trying to appear as detached and dispassionate as if Knight was telling him his itinerary for the week.
“And do you know where they are now?” he asked, clasping his hands on the polished hardwood surface.
“Oh yes, sir. We have men tracking their movements from a close distance. I will be kept informed of their position at all times, and I will be using this information to direct police operations away from the fugitives. Sir?”
Dalgleish’s brow was furrowed, a hand raised six inches above the desk, wavering in sympathy with his thoughts.
“There have been calls for me to bring in the army, George,” he said ponderingly. “I didn’t actually agree to anything on air, but I’m not sure whether it might look more impressive. Only trouble is that they might do too good a job and actually find the buggers.”
“Sir, I have been monitoring the media’s coverage of events as closely as the events themselves, and I had anticipated this eventuality, particularly given the number of army bases located in the region. I can arrange for a unit to engage cooperatively in the search today.”
“When you say cooperatively . . .”
Knight smiled thinly. “They will diligently hunt down all TV cameras in the vicinity and, with extreme prejudice, walk past them purposefully and impressively in full camouflage gear.”
“The finest soldiers in the world. Thank you, George. Now, we’ll need a bit of time for all this. No-one knew they had escaped until rather late last night, and most of the country were in their beds when I was talking about it on television, so I could really do with the hunt continuing through the early evening slots, up to at least News at Ten and past the morning dailies’ deadlines if possible. I need to get it across to the nation that this is my operation while it is still in progress, rather than look like I’m taking credit for it after the fact.”
“Of course, sir. As I say, I have the fugitives under constant surveillance. Not only can we move in at any time, but we can make sure that they remain safe from the search until you give the signal to end it. However, my men must reserve the right to act independently if they fear a development that we cannot control.”
Dalgleish nodded, lips pursed. “I trust your judgment and that of your men as implicitly as ever,” he said.
“Thank you, sir. Was there anything else?” he asked, noticing Dalgleish’s scrutiny of the desktop, a characteristic symptom of a concern that he was reluctant to broach.
“Well . . .” he said, almost apologetically. “This business with the cyanide. It wasn’t what we discussed.”
Knight breathed in through his nose, pulled his head up as if reined.
“No, sir,” he stated. “It was a field decision. I had reason to believe Mr Lafferty suspected foul play and could not take the chance that he might impart some information which would detract from the plausibility of his later planned suicide. I appreciate that it was not ideal, but we were all a little surprised by the lawyer’s revelations. In an undertaking of this scale, as I explained, it is impossible to anticipate all the rogue elements, but what we can do is lock them down quickly and effectively when they do arise.”
“Indeed,” said Dalgleish. “You acted swiftly and decisively. I can’t ask for any more than that. And have you ‘locked down’ the other problem?”
“We acquired the documents McInnes submitted with his lawyers two nights ago. They contained nothing intrinsically substantial but they did have the potential to encourage speculation, so we destroyed them.”
“And the lawyer?”
“We believed two lawyers posed potential difficulties. We have eliminated one but an equipment malfunction temporarily obstructed our neutralisation of the second.”
“Which one is that? The girl?”
“Yes, sir. But we have her under surveillance and expect her to be out of the equation by close of play today.”
“Very good.”
Knight shifted his stance, the slightest impatience creeping in. Dalgleish appreciated that he had things to attend to.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” he asked.
“Just one final thing, George. The contents of the safe. Any joy yet?”
“Nothing, sir. I have good reason to be confident that they didn’t manage to open it; and I believe it was empty simply because Voss never hid anything in it in the first place. The police have been combing the area looking for the murder weapons; obviously they’re not going to turn those up, but they would certainly have come across anything that was stolen by now. It would have been nice to have a few diamond earrings or a necklace to produce as evidence of what the robbers were up to, once the terrorist motive has been eliminated, but the story of them murdering four people only for the cupboard to be bare has rather a neat tone of tragic irony to it, don’t you think?”
Dalgleish smiled.
“Quite.”
Knight trotted briskly back down the stairs, all the time concentrating on resisting the urge to shake his head in case Dalgleish or any of his entourage saw it. He had heard nothing during their conversation to conflict with his long-held opinion that the man was among the biggest arseholes ever to walk the earth.
He had to stop himself sniggering at the thought of his own “soldier at attention” routine, which Dalgleish lapped up every time. He wished the pompous sod hadn’t been behind the desk so that he could have seen the bulge in his trousers.
“You acted swiftly and decisively,” he thought.
Sad pratt.
Dalgleish was often referred to as being one of the “old guard” in his party, as if he had some rare and precious attributes that were all but forgotten these days. Maybe he did, Knight thought, but he also knew that self-deluding snobs were one species in no imminent danger of extinction.
It was ever thus with blokes like that. It was so simple it was almost laughable, to maintain the illusion that it was they who were in charge, they who were running things. It was easy to convince someone of what they desperately wanted to believe. Dalgleish thought Knight’s colours were tied to his mast, and that Knight’s fortunes would rise or fall, live or die with his, as Dalgleish chased after the fool’s gold that he thought was power. What did he expect ultimately to get? A post near the head of a waning and increasingly ragged political party? Maybe a few years in the limelight before fading back into obscurity as the party or even the country decides it’s time for new faces?
Dalgleish would be a forgotten has-been sitting on useless sub-committees and giving bitter interviews while Knight was exercising the real power he had built, the power to destroy politicians, businessmen and even monarchs. Power that you didn’t need to be re-elected to.
What he always found so eye-popp
ingly incredible about Dalgleish, as indeed about most of them, was that he never suspected a thing. In all the little commissions, all the dirty tricks, the set-ups, the surveillances, it never occurred to the stupid cunt that Knight would be gathering the dirt on him too, filing it away for when it might come in handy like he did on so many others.
The videotapes of Dalgleish and the embassy “secretary” (Knight’s plant) in Singapore typified it. The way he had let her manoeuvre them around the bed as they fucked away, doggy-style, so that both of them faced the two-way mirror.
They were all the same – probably a class thing, a public school thing; they were so busy worrying about the threat from each other that they never suspected where the real danger would be coming from. It just never occurred to them that they had anything to fear from someone who was not one of them, who was not part of their game, and not on what they so arrogantly perceived to be their level.
Dalgleish was far sharper than most, Knight had to admit – that was why he had chosen to hitch a ride on his back all those years ago. Dalgleish had an honest understanding of the depths to which he could stoop, and had not vainly convinced himself that no-one else could be so cunning or so ruthless, which was why he had survived so long and so well. He anticipated the traps his rivals could set for him, even if most of the time they weren’t smart enough to have laid them.
And, he had to admit, only Dalgleish could have had the balls to suggest the Voss thing. Truth be told, if anyone else had suggested it, Knight would have said no, because Dalgleish was probably the only one with the nerve to carry his part of it right through. He wouldn’t have considered anything as risky as this if he didn’t think the man at the top could be trusted not to give the game away through guilt or fear-induced stupidity. So far he was doing fine, but the acid test would be if something got loose that they really couldn’t nail back down.
Country of the Blind Page 16
