by Alan Judd
Mikolas turned to Charles. ‘Please explain radiation.’
Charles turned to the others. They spoke rapidly to Mikolas, who asked questions. An argument developed. All three became exasperated. ‘He is worried that radiation will harm his bag,’ said Anatole.
‘There isn’t any. We’ve just been told. What’s in it?’
‘He refuses to say.’
Mikolas appealed to Charles, wide-eyed again. ‘Mr Charles, is OK?’
Charles patted him on the shoulder. ‘Is OK. You can keep it.’
Mikolas hugged it to his chest with both arms as they followed Jackie, who had been holding the door open. ‘Always one, isn’t there?’ she whispered.
They were shown the cooling chambers, the turbines, the transmission connections to the national grid and finally the control room, filled with switches and coloured lights and staff who looked like bored people trying to look like preoccupied people. There they were given another explanatory talk before returning to the briefing room for a sandwich lunch.
‘When will they tell us about security?’ asked Anatole.
Jackie said that the briefing request from the Foreign Office had specified an introduction to peaceful nuclear technology and had not mentioned security. Site security was another matter. There wasn’t anyone who could talk on that since the whole subject was under review. Anyway, they’d all need security clearance.
Charles took a chance. ‘They’ve got that. To a very high level.’
‘They’d still need a special security briefing by someone from security.’
‘Couldn’t you ask someone?’
‘The briefings have been stopped because of the policy review. There isn’t much at the moment, anyway.’
‘Much what?’
‘Security. Because of the review.’
‘But you must have some basic physical security we can look at, even if there’s no policy.’
Jackie’s smile looked increasingly strained. ‘Well, there’s a man on the gate. And there’s the perimeter fence. It’s quite high, with barbed wire on the top. I could take you to see that if you like.’
Anatole and Adrienne were whispering to each other. Mikolas was munching sandwiches, one in each hand. ‘Better than nothing. Anything you can say to jazz it up a bit.’
‘Or we could look at the reactor core. It’s normally locked but I happen to know it’s not at the moment.’
The core was in the heart of the complex, reached through several doors of which none but the last was locked. ‘They’re normally all locked,’ said Jackie, ‘but we don’t bother at the moment because of the review.’
‘All these doors are normally locked and guarded,’ Charles told the others. ‘They’ve been opened for us.’
They had to wait for the final door to be opened by a cross-looking, overweight woman in jeans.
‘Visitors to see the rods,’ said Jackie.
The woman nodded, saying nothing, and walked back to a glass-fronted box marked ‘Control’, where there were two other overweight women. Jackie led them on to a steel platform circling what looked like a very large metal plate punctured by holes capped by black discs. ‘The rods are in there,’ she said, ‘inserted in the reactor to create the nuclear reaction that releases energy to drive the turbines that produce electricity.’
They all stared. Nothing moved; there appeared to be nothing happening, the chamber was still and quiet. The three women in the control box were talking and laughing but no sound came through the thick glass.
‘It is safe, really?’ asked Adrienne.
‘Perfectly safe,’ said Jackie. ‘So long as the rods are in their pods. It wouldn’t be safe when they’re taken out. We wouldn’t be allowed in then.’
Mikolas stared intently, as if he could see into the reactor core. Eventually, he turned to Charles. ‘Missiles are there?’
Anatole laughed. ‘He means anti-aircraft missiles.’ He spoke rapidly and contemptuously to Mikolas. ‘I tell him that the anti-aircraft missiles are around the perimeter, not in the reactor, and that probably we are not able to see them.’
‘You’re right, I’m afraid. They’re not on display today.’
‘If they really like radioactive things I could show them something else if it’s still here,’ said Jackie.
‘They’d love it,’ said Charles.
They were taken to a squat concrete building just inside the perimeter and surmounted by the sort of crane seen in goods yards and dockyards, a thick steel joist with a heavy pulley and supported at each end by a triangular structure, in all more than twice the width of the building and significantly higher. There was room on either side for a lorry to pull in beneath the structure. Each wall bore the large yellow radioactivity symbol and a notice on the door forbade unauthorised entry in red capitals. There was an unadorned flagpole beside it.
‘Doesn’t look as if it’s working at the moment, so we should be allowed in,’ said Jackie. ‘But we’ll still have to wear protective suits. Will they be all right with that?’
‘I’ll tell them if you can tell me what it is.’
‘It’s a lump of something highly radioactive which they use for blast-cleaning medical instruments and other things that have to be biologically clean. Food sometimes, so we don’t get upset tummies. It’s nothing to do with the power station, really. We’re just a convenient place to keep it, I suppose, readily accessible, and we’ve got the gear to move it when it has to be replaced.’
Charles explained. ‘Will it kill us?’ Anatole asked with a smile.
‘Not today.’
‘When?’ asked Mikolas.
Jackie left them outside for a few minutes then showed them into an anteroom in which white suits and masks hung on pegs, like an unusually clean rugby changing room. Jackie introduced Eric, a dapper man with neat black hair and a trim black moustache. ‘Let me assure you, lady and gentlemen, that so long as you are properly attired and stand where you are told there is no danger,’ he said, smiling whenever he spoke, just as Jackie did. ‘Now, before we start, a brief word about what you are going to see and what it does. Forgive me if I’m teaching granny to suck eggs.’
They looked puzzled at that but Charles let it pass. Eric explained that they were going to see a lump of cobalt-60 that looked like an oversized house brick. It emitted alpha radiation, waves that passed through a substance destroying anything biological but without leaving any radioactive particle behind, so that the irradiated substance was thoroughly cleansed without itself becoming radioactive. ‘If directed at you it would kill you within seconds, even at a considerable distance,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘That’s why it could be one of the materials of choice for a dirty bomb. Something of a misnomer, really, given its cleansing properties.’ He laughed and rubbed his hands. ‘But you’re in luck today, lady and gentlemen, because we have an array of instruments and utensils awaiting others on the conveyor belt so we can give you a brief demonstration. Now, if you would please don your suits.’
Mikolas touched Charles’s arm. ‘Don?’
Suited, masked, gloved and booted, they looked like astronaut snowmen. Everyone laughed behind their masks except Mikolas, who had to be persuaded by Charles to hide his bag beneath the bench. ‘Otherwise it will be killed,’ Charles said.
Eric led them through a steel door and down a spiral staircase on to a platform inside a circular concrete chamber, with a circular well about ten feet in diameter in the middle of the floor. Above the well was a miniature version of the hoist outside, with two taut wires running from the pulley into the water. Above that was a heavy steel trapdoor set into the ceiling. Around the perimeter of the well was a low wall with a gap on the far side. Behind the wall was a miniature version of an airport luggage conveyor belt, emerging from the platform beneath which they stood.
Eric, not yet masked, grinned at them all. ‘Ready?’ He turned to Adrienne. ‘Would you like to press?’
‘I press?’
He indicated a gre
en button on a control panel next to him. ‘You press.’
Gingerly, she did. The conveyor belt started with a click and a whirr and the pulley wires began to move. A number of silvered objects that looked like medical instruments appeared on the belt from below the platform. The colour of the well water changed from dark and opaque to something lighter, then a hint of blue, then bluer still. By the time the first of the objects reached the gap the water was almost cerulean. Just beneath the surface, suspended by wires, was a rectangular lump about a foot long and so blue it seemed the source of all blueness. The only sound was the faint slither of the belt.
Eric turned to Charles, his voice now muffled by his mask. ‘Now you can say you’ve seen the most radioactive source in Britain. Deep Blue, it’s called. Boil your liver, it would. In seconds.’
‘What did you call it?’
Chapter Fifteen
The Present
Charles met Sue in the cafeteria in the crypt of St John’s, Smith Square, convenient for her office in Thames House. ‘Never seem to get out for lunch these days,’ she said, as they queued at the self-service counter. ‘Not like it used to be years ago when we first met and everyone went out to lunch. Now we have sandwiches at our desks. Makes us a dull lot, not enough play. Surprised the great C has time for lunches.’
‘I do almost nothing but. Official visitors and whatever. Makes a change to get out and see someone I actually want to see.’
‘Don’t tell me it’s for my beautiful blue eyes. You must want something else now. No thanks.’
She was refusing the offer of wine. ‘Yes, we will,’said Charles. ‘A bottle of Sauvignon.’
She looked askance. ‘Knocks me out in the afternoons. You’ll have to drink most of it.’
‘I probably shall.’
They took their trays to a table in an alcove that once held coffins. ‘So, what is it?’ she asked. ‘D’you want more vetting files sent over? Did you get the ones I sent?’
‘I did, thanks. Haven’t read them all properly yet, just skimmed. I was hoping they’d have more in them about James Micklethwaite than they do. Would the rest be on his personal file? He must have had one.’
‘He did indeed: Trotsky Jim. Still a political groupie now, isn’t he? But I couldn’t legitimately call for it even if it still exists, which it probably doesn’t, unless we were properly vetting him or his lady friend. And you’re not proposing that, are you? Supposedly, you just wanted basic tracing details. I sent you more than I should, anyway.’
‘But she must have been vetted, mustn’t she? Given what she now has access to.’
‘As a SPAD she gets routine clearance up to Secret. The Home Office wouldn’t have bothered with any more. Now she’s with us she ought to be fully vetted and I put it up to the DDG but still haven’t got an answer. You know what Simon’s like; they’re all like that now. Terrified of being accused of anything ideological. Combating Cold War subversion is now seen as spying on loyal patriotic trade unionists, which it never was, KGB spies like Jack Jones et al notwithstanding. What more d’you want to know about Trotsky Jim, anyway? Not thinking of resuming relations with his sister, I hope?’ She smiled.
‘I want to test your memory of our trip to the North East. See if it accords with mine.’
‘Oh, God, that was a century ago. Why?’
‘Because I think it holds the key to something going on now.’
‘Sounds like a two-glass subject.’ She poured them both more wine. ‘Go on, take me back there.’
The 1980s
Charles recalled that once he had settled the group into their Hartlepool hotel, he had rung the SIS switchboard in search of Hookey, who couldn’t be contacted, then the MI5 duty officer in search of Sue, who also couldn’t be found. He left messages for both. The next problem was what to do with his charges while he called on James, notionally to retrieve his book. Janet had arranged with James that he would call at about seven. His charges, meanwhile, had indicated that they wanted a typically English dinner. Silently despairing, Charles flicked through the tourist guide in his room and called the concierge, who recommended a new place down by the dock called Roast Beef&Frills. He didn’t much like the sound of it when he rang but was assured of typically English fare, as interpreted by the tourist industry. He booked a table for nine o’clock, allowing time for his call and for Anatole and Adrienne to enjoy the pre-prandial session they so obviously desired. Neither answered their phones, so he was reduced to knocking first on Anatole’s door, then on Adrienne’s. Anatole answered at the third knock, a bath towel around his hips. Charles explained, unable to suppress a smile. Anatole smilingly thanked him and said that they were both too tired to go out and would put up with room service ‘in our rooms’.
Charles returned to find Mikolas at his door, clutching his bag. ‘I am ready.’
‘Good, good. The others won’t be joining us. They’re busy.’
‘They are tired. We go to typical English pub?’
‘Something like that.’
‘We go now, please?’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to rest first?’
‘I am ready.’
‘I’ll have to leave you there because I have to see someone before dinner. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait here?’
‘I am ready.’
The streets of Hartlepool were almost deserted and there was a pervasive smell of chips. The tourist map was grossly oversimplified. ‘It is longer? How much?’ asked Mikolas after about twenty minutes.
‘Not long now.’
‘I have been here before. Already I have seen this church.’
He was right but Charles didn’t want to admit it. ‘Churches are very similar in Hartlepool.’ He had seen only one other, which was quite different.
‘Always I am with my bag.’
‘I’ve noticed. What’s in it?’
‘My book. I am writing book about the psychology of the world, of all people.’
‘That sounds very interesting.’
‘There are no people in my book because our psychology, we all share, we are all one.’
‘Of course.’
‘You would like to read my book?’
‘Very much. Here we are, look. Over the road.’
It was an incongruous black and white mock-Tudor building not far from the fish dock. The central portion was red brick, all that remained of the former pub which had turned itself into a club and now charged for entry. Inside were tables with red lamps and shades, with a wide bar in the gloom beyond.
‘You can sit here in the bar until I get back,’ said Charles. ‘Then we’ll go into the restaurant and eat. I’ll sit with you while we order drinks.’ He was anticipated by a waiter with an ice-bucket and champagne. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Champagne good,’ said Mikolas, smiling for the first time.
Two girls in high heels, black stockings and suspenders, knickers and bras appeared behind the waiter.
‘Thank you,’ said Charles, ‘but I don’t think—’
Mikolas’s laugh was startling, like the bark of muntjac in Charles’s native Chiltern beech woods. The waiter poured champagne and the girls sat. ‘I’m Jane,’one said to Mikolas. ‘What’s your name, love?’
‘I’m Jennifer,’ the other said to Charles. She was older than her companion, with wrinkles around her mouth and eyes and stretch-marks on her breasts. ‘What company are you with, love?’
‘My own, it’s my company.’
She paused with her glass at her lips. ‘Not paying yourself, are you?’
This was a woman he could do business with. ‘Tell me the score.’
She lowered her voice. ‘You’re drinking a hundred quid from this bottle. Then there’s the table charge, another hundred. Then there’s us two and we don’t come cheap. Then there’s dinner. Then if you want extras, which your friend looks as if he might . . .’
Jane was provocatively refilling Mikolas’s glass, making the most of her cleavage.
<
br /> Charles slipped a folded twenty-pound note across to Jennifer. ‘Thanks for that. I’d better get him out of here.’
She slid the note into her knickers. ‘Best we go first, otherwise the bouncers won’t let you out. You’ll still have to pay for the bottle and table.’
‘My problem is I’ve got to leave him here while I go to another meeting for an hour and a half. Anywhere nearby you can suggest? Somewhere not too expensive but where he’d be happy to wait?’
She leaned forward, as if in intimate conversation. ‘The Fishermens Bar here, other end of the building. It’s just a bar, no food but the booze is cheaper and one of us can pop through now and again to keep an eye on him, make him feel a bit wanted.’
‘Perfect.’ He slipped her another note.
The Fishermens Bar was adorned with nineteenth century sea-scapes, ropes and netting. Charles put Mikolas in a corner with a bottle of house wine. ‘I shall be about an hour and a half. You can write your novel.’
‘You go with Jane?’
‘No, nothing like that. I’m going to a meeting.’
‘With Jennifer?’
James’s flat was a short minicab ride away, inland from the brewery and on the ground floor of a small 1960s block. He and Charles had last met over Sunday lunch at his and Janet’s parents’ house in Surrey. They had been as civil with each other as it was possible to be without any meeting of minds. This time, each appeared exactly as the other would caricature him. James answered the door wearing jeans deliberately holed in the knees and a floppy roll-necked jumper. His hair was in a ponytail and he had not shaved. Charles was wearing tweed jacket, corduroys and tie. He couldn’t help smiling at their mutual self-caricatures. There was immediate and forced good cheer on both sides.
James led him into a sitting room dominated by a nuclear-disarmament poster on the wall and smelling strongly of curry and cigarettes. Charles’s copy of Beware of Pity was on a drink-ringed coffee table by the ashtray. ‘I’ve been meaning to give it to Janet for ages,’ James said. ‘I remember it whenever I see her but not before.’
