by Alan Judd
Rob’s fingers rested on the ignition key. ‘But if it tumbles out rather than just slides out it might zap us before we get far enough away.’
‘Not if the container’s between us and it.’ James’s anxious expression was at odds with his confident tone. ‘Come on, we’ve got this far, let’s do it and get back. The results will be worth it.’
Rob paused a moment longer, then turned the key. He raised the forks by a foot or so and turned on to the ramp, descending slowly. ‘I’ll get as far as I can into the water,’ he shouted over his shoulder, ‘but I don’t want to stall it.’
‘Remember we’ve got to get to it to push the container over.’
Neither noticed the dozen or so children who ran out of the trees away to their left, then stopped, looking on. Rob slowed as the slipway steepened. Like a flock of starlings after a pause, the children started making a noise again, shouting to each other. Rob looked round suddenly, inadvertently turning to the left. It wasn’t much but enough for his front wheel to slip over the edge, causing the truck to bang down hard on its frame, rocking on the side of the slipway. The pallet, already steeply angled towards the loch, slid slowly off the forks. The container toppled with a crash on to the concrete, skidded a few feet and tipped into the water. The lid came off as it struck the concrete and a smaller, cylindrical container with flanges around it was thrown out. This stayed on the slipway, half-skidding, half-rolling into the shallow water, where it came to rest against one of its flanges. It had either never had, or had lost, its lid, and a lump of material about the size and shape of an overlarge house brick slid half out. Almost immediately the surrounding water began to turn blue.
After another, briefer, pause the children’s excited shouting resumed as they ran towards the slipway.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Present
After leaving the filling station, Charles never caught up with the lorry while it was still on the road. ‘Shouldn’t we at least try to let the police know what’s happening?’ asked Sarah. ‘Seems irresponsible not to if we’ve lost the lorry.’
‘OK, ring Bob.’
Bob’s mobile and direct line were unanswered and the HQ switchboard would only leave a message for him to ring back. Then they lost signal. Charles pressed on, touching eighty on the straights and braking hard at corners or whenever they approached a possible pull-off place.
‘I like this car,’ said Robin. ‘Let me know when you want to sell.’
‘Have it now as far as I’m concerned,’ said Sarah. ‘Smells horribly of petrol in the back.’
Soon they were in the hills above Kilcreggan and out of sight of the loch. ‘Think they’re making for Coulport?’ asked Robin.
‘There’s nowhere else to go. Unless they find a convenient spot on the way. They just need to get the thing into the water without irradiating themselves. Doesn’t matter where they do it so long as it’s water used by the subs.’
‘They could just drive the lorry into it and jump out.’
‘No point if it’s still in its container.’
‘Slow down.’ Robin spotted the picnic area and the minibuses before Charles. ‘You’d think they might have tried that. Perhaps they’ve already done it.’
‘Not enough room for the lorry.’
‘There they are, look. There.’ They passed the gap in the trees at sixty but there was just enough time to glimpse the lorry backed up to the slipway and three figures at the back with the forklift. ‘Don’t think they saw us,’ said Robin. ‘No one looked up. What are we going to do – go back and confront them?’
There was room to pull on to the verge after a couple of hundred yards. ‘Any mobile signal here?’ There was, but still no answer. Sarah left a message for Bob to call back. Charles was still undecided about the answer to Robin’s question. What did confrontation mean – a fight, a chase, exposure of them all to Deep Blue? The answer was a recce, surely. A recce was nearly always best, looking before leaping, acting in the light of knowledge rather than the darkness of ignorance. ‘We’ll leave the car here and nip back and see what they’re up to. We may be able to stop them dumping it but if we’re too late and they’ve got away at least we’ll know where Deep Blue is and it can be recovered before it does too much damage. Through the woods, not the road.’
They all three set off through the birch trees, which were not too dense and allowed for rapid walking. Sarah switched her phone to silent but kept it in her hand. They soon heard and then glimpsed through the trees a long line of children walking with two or three adults in parallel off to their right, along the shoreline. ‘Keep away from them,’ said Charles quietly, ‘but their noise is useful cover.’ They quickened their pace.
They paused just inside the trees, about forty yards from the lorry, in time to see the forklift almost tip over and the container bounce from the slipway into the water, bursting open. The man on the forklift jumped off and ran out of sight the other side of the lorry. The other one, James, ran towards the intersection of the trees and road, where they had paused. The lorry started and its rear wheels span, spurting sand and stones as it headed slowly for the road, revving loudly. At that moment, Charles saw that the leading half dozen or so children had burst out of the trees by the shoreline and were running towards the slipway, calling and shouting.
Afterwards, he allowed it to be said that he had reacted instinctively, since people found it an acceptable explanation for rashness. But he knew it wasn’t only that; there was calculation, too. He shouted to Robin and Sarah to ring 999 and stay where they were, then ran towards the slipway. Absurdly – and this truly was instinctive – he half waved to James as they sprinted past each other, James fleeing Deep Blue and Charles heading for it. He ran between the children and the slipway, shouting and gesturing to them to keep back. They stopped and stared, silent now and open-mouthed. He saw the spreading blue in the water as soon as he reached the slipway. Only once there was he conscious of thinking. It mattered least that he should die: he was the oldest, it was partly his doing, the end would be quick, his internal organs failing or erupting in an overwhelming storm of alpha radiation. The thing was to act now, while he still could. If he could get it into deeper water there was less chance it would harm anyone on shore. He walked deliberately down the slipway to the upturned container, the restless ever-bluer water up to his knees. Resisting the impulse to take off his tweed jacket and roll up his shirtsleeves, he stooped and picked up Deep Blue. For a moment he imagined he was back in childhood, with his mother scolding him for getting his sleeves wet again. It was heavy, much heavier than it looked, and not blue at all when lifted clear of the water, just a dull grey-black. Balancing it in one hand, he bent sideways like a shot-putter and heaved it as far out as he could. There was a gratifying splash and then nothing.
He stood looking at where it had disappeared, waiting to feel. To feel what? He had no idea. Perhaps he would simply black out. Above the loch a great flock of gulls headed right to left, going seawards. The breeze had stiffened and the wavelets lapped faster. Blacking out would be a good way to go. Upsetting for Sarah but at least she would be out of it. The water was cold. He turned to wave goodbye.
Sarah and Robin were shepherding the children back into the trees, their backs to him, Sarah holding her mobile to her ear. The lorry, its ramp still down and its open rear doors swinging, was pulling on to the road back towards Garelochead, leaving the forklift behind. Next his ears were filled with a great noise, a clattering roar. A sustained blast of warm air almost unbalanced him. For half a second he thought this was it, this was dying, before turning to see a helicopter rounding the nearest trees and skimming across the water towards him. It was so low that he crouched, his thighs and backside in the water. As it passed overhead its wind buffeted him sideways, leaving him sitting in the water and struggling to right himself against the slope of the slipway. The helicopter landed on the beach where the lorry had been, disgorging helmeted uniformed figures with POLICE SCOTLAND emblazon
ed across their backs. As its engine and rotors wound down there were sounds of sirens from the road and flashing blue lights showing through the birches. Charles crawled up the slipway, soaked through now and wondering if he would be able to stand when he got there.
He could, albeit that he felt weak and unreal. He assumed this was the onset of radiation poisoning, but would otherwise have put it down to cold. Uniformed figures were up by the road in two clusters either side of the entrance. An older man in civilian clothes was rather cautiously descending the short ladder from the helicopter. To his left, the entire party of children and teachers were gathered by the trees, looking on. Robin was talking to one of the teachers and Sarah was walking towards the slipway, smiling and waving at the man leaving the helicopter. No one seemed hurried or bothered.
‘That was brave,’ she said, ‘and very, very foolish. You must be freezing. Maybe you can have a bath in that hotel in Faslane and I’ll buy some clothes, if there’s anywhere that sells any. Or you could borrow a navy uniform. I’d like to see you in uniform.’ She laughed and kissed him. ‘Ugh, you are cold.’
Charles, as puzzled as he was relieved by her flippancy, almost gave in to indignation ‘You shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous, you should stay up by the road. And the children—’
She tugged at his wet jacket sleeve. ‘Calm down, it’s all right, it’s not dangerous, or not any more. It never was, it turns out.’
‘What do you mean?’
She nodded at the man from the helicopter, who was walking towards them, grinning. ‘Bob will tell you.’
Bob Shea held out his hand. ‘Owe you an apology, Charles. Not just for making you take a cold swim but for letting you run off on another wild-goose chase. Remember I took a call when you were in my office? It was from MI5, Simon Mall. Seems they’d decided to take this thing seriously after all. He had the good grace to say you’d alerted them to it but didn’t know you were off trying to sort it out yourself, running your own little operation up here. Said he’d tried to contact you but your office said you were on leave on a walking holiday in Northumbria, out of contact. When I said you were sipping coffee in my office he said to say nothing, to leave you be, wanted to tell you himself. Don’t think he thought you’d get very far with what you were doing, though if he’d asked me I could’ve told him you wouldn’t let it go, not after our earlier escapade. You had a score to settle.’ He laughed. ‘Better come and get dry. I’m sure they can sort something out back at the base, even if it’s only wetsuit and flippers.’
Charles didn’t move. ‘But Deep Blue, it’s still out there, it’s—’
‘Deep Blue’s safe at Sellafield where it belongs. What our merry men hijacked was a harmless substitute packed with dye. We didn’t even have to follow them till they got up here, thanks to the tracker in the lorry.’
‘So the demo tomorrow . . .’
‘Our friends won’t be attending, sad for them. It’ll be two short. Nor will there be any sensational announcements about nuclear warheads poisoning the whole of Scotland. All’s well that ends well, eh?’ He laughed again and clapped Charles on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get you back to your car. Unless you want a lift back with our friends?’
Up at the road, James, Rob and Zac, all handcuffed, were being helped into separate police cars. James looked round just before the policeman holding him pushed his head down to get in the car. For a long moment he and Charles stared at each other.
‘It’s OK, I’ll drive,’ said Charles.
‘I’ll drive,’ said Sarah, determinedly.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Present
Elspeth Jones sat in the Windsor chair now placed among the sofas and armchairs in the Foreign Secretary’s office. She was a short woman and the leather club seating that had served for years made it embarrassingly difficult for her to sit with her feet on the floor. Also, the Windsor chair meant that she sat higher than everyone else. She placed her teacup delicately back in its saucer.
‘It’s really Robin you should thank,’ she told Charles. ‘He spotted the loophole, or at least persuaded the Chancellor’s SPADS that there was one. So you have agreement in principle to move, you just need to find a building.’
‘And you think Victoria Street is now taken?’
‘It’s not clear,’ said Robin. ‘We’ll know in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the important thing is, your request to leave Croydon is on paper as having been formally agreed before the Chancellor’s ban on further moves. The fact that it wasn’t until I wrote that post-dated piece of paper is neither here nor there now that it’s been accepted, since no one will look at it again.’ He smiled across the rim of his cup. ‘It’s only putting on paper what had been orally promised anyway. It’s too trivial for the Chancellor to bother with and everyone’s happy except Melanie Stokes, late of this parish.’
Melanie had resigned in the wake of the Deep Blue revelations. Charles realised he was probably alone in feeling any sympathy for her. Ambitious and self-seeking, certainly, but she wasn’t the only one in that world; she fought her corner, was loyal to those she was close to, didn’t kiss-and-tell. The day the story broke it was clear she was under threat: James’s media profile and links to Triple A ensured widespread coverage of his arrest and plot. Her twin positions as James’s partner and adviser to the Home Secretary with responsibility for security matters gave the story legs and within a couple of days the Opposition was asking in Parliament about her role as his ‘close and long-term confidante’, calling for an inquiry into the circumstances of her appointment. Once the Home Secretary became part of the story, there was no doubt she would have to go; she resigned promptly, giving no interviews and putting the bare minimum on social media.
Coverage then shifted to the plot itself, with speculation about the consequences had it worked, the extent to which it was known about by others in the Triple A leadership and even a reference to James’s role in its forerunner many years ago. Gratifyingly, there was no mention of Charles, which was what convinced him that Robin was the source. By the weekend, all that was left for the Sunday papers and TV and radio analysis was fearful examination of the little-known role of radioactivity in cleansing and preserving vegetables and salads, causing predictable outrage in sections of the population. When the fuss died down, he thought, he would buy Melanie lunch.
‘The police and MI5 came out of it well, gratifyingly for the Home Secretary,’ said Elspeth with a small smile. ‘And, equally gratifyingly, you seem to have kept yourself and MI6 out of it, Charles.’ She turned her smile to Robin. ‘A low profile makes the office move a little easier to handle. And now, with the Triple A discredited and the Opposition forced to distance itself from them, it’s easier for us all to get on with representing and securing the interests of this still-United Kingdom.’ She turned back to Charles. ‘Thank you, Charles, and well done. Shows it pays to be persistent. Sometimes.’
Afterwards, on the stairs, Robin produced from his pocket a white envelope. ‘The proposal form for membership of your club. I’ve completed all the CV bits, you just have to add your paragraph of unstinting praise and sign it. No need to find a seconder. Turns out I was at Cambridge with the club secretary’s son. We had a good chat when I called in to get this. He’ll find a tame committee member to second me. Hope you don’t mind.’
For a moment, Charles hesitated, but only for long enough to consider what Josef and Federov would have done. They would never have hesitated. What to him felt like a compromise, albeit a minor one, would to them have been an incomprehensible scruple. The goal had been achieved, the bad prevented, the good ensured. It would be unseemly to quibble. He took the envelope. The feeling of being manoeuvred, if not quite outmanoeuvred, was novel. And the man had demonstrated he could be a useful ally in Whitehall. If survival was success, it was built on compromise. He smiled. ‘Look forward to seeing you there, Robin. Come and have a drink.’
Alan Judd is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in t
he army and at the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the Westminster Prize. Two of his novels, Breed of Heroes and Legacy, were filmed for the BBC and a third, The Kaiser’s Kiss, has just been filmed as The Exception, starring Christopher Plummer and Lily James. Alan Judd had reviewed widely, was a comment writer for the Daily Telegraph and writes the motoring column for The Oldie.
Also by Alan Judd
Fiction
A Breed of Heroes
Short of Glory
The Noonday Devil
Tango
The Devil’s Own Work
Legacy
The Kaiser’s Last Kiss
Dancing with Eva
Uncommon Enemy
Inside Enemy
Slipstream
Non-Fiction
Ford Madox Ford (biography)
The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (biography)
First World War Poets (with David Crane)
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2017
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Alan Judd, 2017
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The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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