The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  He barged his way to the door, counting the opposition again. Four – two scribblers and two snappers, one dressed in leathers. The other photographer blocked his path.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Sam brought his knee up.

  ‘Oof! Bastard!’

  Outside on the street, Sam sucked in air and marched. A bus drove past. Throwing himself under it seemed an attractive option. He couldn’t go back to the car. They’d trace him from it.

  The winded cameraman caught up and did that perilous backwards walk which photographers do, snapping wildly. Sam put a hand over his face, with half an eye on the road, praying for a taxi.

  ‘The public has a right to know, Mr Foster . . .’

  ‘They also have the right not to be hounded by the likes of you.’

  Suddenly Sam saw what he’d been looking for and dived towards the kerb, his arm reaching out into the road. The taxi tucked into the side and stopped. As he wrenched open the door Sam heard a motorbike start up.

  ‘135 Clapham Common South Side,’ he ordered. The reporter tried to get in too. ‘Do you mind?’ Sam pushed him back with his foot and slammed the door. He noted the journo scribble down the address he’d just shouted out then leaned forward to the sliding glass. ‘Just drive, chum!’

  ‘Clapham Common, you said?’

  ‘Never mind that. Just get me away from these reptiles.’

  The driver jerked in the gear and accelerated away, stealing glances in his mirror to see if he’d got some celeb in the back.

  ‘I had that Nicole Kidman in my cab the other week,’ he announced stoically.

  They make it up, Sam decided. He twisted round. The motorbike was catching up, the photographer with the leathers astride it.

  ‘Can you lose that bike?’

  The driver looked in his mirror.

  ‘Naah. No chance, mate. Sorry. They’ve got two wheels, see? Go anywhere I can and more.’

  ‘Then take me to a tube station.’ Sam racked his brains. ‘Acton Town. You know it?’

  ‘Course I bloody do,’ the driver bitched, annoyed his fare would be smaller than he’d anticipated.

  The bike was right behind. If it came to hide-and-seek in a train station it’d be him and the photographer. One on one. Odds he was used to.

  In four minutes they were at Acton Town tube. The meter showed £3.20, but Sam thrust a fiver through the gap.

  ‘Keep it.’

  ‘Thanks very much, guv. Hopes you wins.’

  Sam sprinted into the station. An inspector held out his hand for a ticket. Sam held up his membership card to a south coast yacht club.

  ‘Police. Special Branch,’ he snapped, running straight past. ‘Stop that guy in the leathers, okay?’

  ‘Hang on a min––’

  Sam knew this station. There were two main platforms and several staircases. He clattered down the first, praying a train would be waiting. But the tracks were empty.

  He sprinted along the platform, using billboards as a screen. At the far end he risked a look back. No sign of his pursuer. He’d been forced to buy a ticket. Sam reached the stairs at the far end and climbed. The landing above was deserted.

  He waited, chest pounding. God, what a mess. What a stupid, fucking mess. How the hell had he fallen for Julie’s ‘please help me’ act? In the distance, he heard the snick of wheels on track as a train approached. Heading west.

  The snapper would expect Sam to get on the first train that came in, right? So, he would wait for the second . . . And pray a little.

  As the westbound tube came in he heard the hum of an eastbound train sliding into the platform below him. He thanked God for this undeserved blessing, then started down the steps, pausing near the bottom out of sight of those on the platform, waiting for the bleeper warning of the train doors closing. When it came he darted across and squeezed through.

  A handful of occupants in the carriage. Backpackers from a late flight into Heathrow and some Asian manual workers heading into town for a night shift. Through the glass he saw that the westbound tube had pulled out already. As his own train accelerated, he spotted the photographer on the other platform glaring at him. He resisted the temptation to wave.

  The next stop was Hammersmith and he got out, willingly coughing up the £10 fine for travelling without a ticket. A row of phones lined one side of the station lobby. He punched in a number.

  It rang out. Went on ringing. He’d dialled on instinct, needing a clear head to talk to, someone to get sympathy from before the big guns opened up on him. And she wasn’t there.

  ‘Hello!’ An angry voice suddenly, out of breath.

  ‘Steph?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God! You don’t half choose your moment. I was in the bathroom.’

  ‘Got to see you, Steph. Now.’

  ‘Too late for a curry, mate. I’ve eaten already. Cooked myself a nice little stir fry. Should’ve rung earlier.’

  ‘That’s not it. Got to talk, Steph. I’m in deep, deep doo-doo.’

  She heard his anguish. ‘What’s happened?’

  Sam glanced over his shoulder. There were people in earshot. ‘Can’t talk here. Can I come round?’ Steph’s flat was in Shepherd’s Bush, a short bus ride away.

  ‘Umm . . .’ He could hear the cogs turning and knew what it was about. She’d told him that Gerry was the jealous type and had made her promise not to let other men come to the flat. Despite his suspicions yesterday they were clearly still an item. ‘Problem with that,’ she declared. ‘Better to meet in a pub.’

  ‘So long as it’s got a quiet corner where nobody’ll see me cry.’

  ‘Christ! You are in a state.’

  ‘I’ve fucked up, Steph. Fucked up really badly.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Hammersmith.’

  ‘Okay.’ She thought for a moment. ‘There’s a place called the Green Dragon halfway up the road that’d bring you to Shepherd’s Bush. If we both start walking now we should meet there in about ten minutes. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. And Steph . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re wonderful.’

  It was nearer twenty minutes before she joined him at the pub. He’d taken his pint to a table, which if not in a corner was at least reasonably secluded. Stephanie offered him her cheek to kiss, then he went to the bar to get her a gin-and-tonic. She had broad shoulders and a bright, attractive face. She wore black trousers and a dark blue sleeveless fleece over a white cotton shirt. Her straight, brown, collar-length hair was still damp from the hurried shower she’d had before coming out.

  When he returned to the table he let out a long sigh. ‘You’re looking at an idiot, Steph.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve always known that. A lovable idiot, though.’ She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s happened or do I have to guess?’

  ‘I walked into an ambush. Straight in there like a rookie.’

  She made a point of looking him up and down. ‘No bullet holes.’

  ‘Flashguns, not rifles,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh Lord. Don’t tell me. The bait for this ambush had boobs like a Barbie doll and legs up to her armpits.’

  Sam grimaced, embarrassed at being so predictable. Steph inclined her head sympathetically.

  ‘I think you’d better start from the beginning if you want me to do a counselling job.’

  Sam told her everything, almost. Steph was one of the few people in the world he felt he could really trust.

  ‘About five foot four, this Julie woman? Quite petite?’ she asked when he’d finished.

  He looked away, detecting a touch of jealousy. He’d always suspected Steph’s interest in him was not as platonic as his in her.

  ‘I mean I’m not blaming you,’ she went on, unable to resist the gibe. ‘A feller who’s as bad at relationships as you are needs to take his chances whenever they come along.’

  ‘Thanks, Steph. That’s just what I nee
ded.’ He downed the remains of his pint. ‘What the hell do I do, that’s the question?’

  ‘Do your lords and masters know about it yet?’

  ‘No. It only happened an hour ago.’

  ‘Well tell ’em fast before they find out from somebody else,’ she scolded. ‘God almighty, Sam, you’re behaving like a ten-year-old.’

  ‘I reckon I’ve got twenty-four hours. They’re bound to get the lawyers in before publishing anything this sensitive, which’ll make it too late for tomorrow’s papers.’

  ‘But the sooner you get Duncan Waddell involved, the better your chance of surviving the mess,’ she insisted.

  ‘You’re right, of course. I’m just putting off the evil moment.’ He looked down at his empty glass.

  ‘S’pose you want me to buy you a whisky to chase that pint down.’ She got to her feet.

  ‘Well it is your round . . . And if you can see a sandwich in that cabinet that hasn’t curled into a ball, I wouldn’t mind it.’

  ‘I’ll tell ’em to fill it with chicken vindaloo,’ she muttered, making for the bar.

  When she brought it back, it turned out to be tuna mayonnaise. She watched in silence for a minute or two as he ate it.

  ‘I suppose you could try a transplant,’ she said after a while.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The part of your brain that you use for assessing women. I mean I assume the brain is involved at some stage in the process.’

  ‘Steph . . .’ he warned.

  ‘I mean, this creature – a quick flash of thigh and a “please help me I’m so unhappy” and you’re putty in her hands. And that Chrissie . . . How many years was she pulling the wool over your eyes?’

  ‘Steph, I can do without this.’ He glared across the bar which was crowded with a young clientele. All looking so carefree. So together, damn them.

  ‘I think you’d better go and ring the Belfast bully-boy,’ Steph told him, forcing a cheer-up smile.

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘Thanks for listening, Steph. You’re the best. You know that?’

  ‘Go on with you. What are friends for?’

  They finished their drinks, got up and walked out into the street.

  ‘Criminals keeping you busy?’ Sam asked as they stood on the pavement, delaying the moment of parting.

  ‘Up to my neck in fascists,’ she told him.

  ‘The Southall bomber . . .’

  ‘The local station’s handling the scene of crime, but Special Branch is trying to establish if there’s something wider going on here. There were other incidents on the continent at the same time. Neo-Nazis torched an immigrant hostel in Leipzig – three dead – and in Toulon some Le Pen supporters smashed up shops belonging to Algerians.’

  ‘I know. I heard it on the news.’

  ‘Any connection between the incidents is only speculation so far. We’ve no intelligence on it.’ She kissed him affectionately on the mouth. ‘Now be a good boy and go tell Daddy about the mess you’ve made.’

  He gave her a bear hug.

  ‘You know the worst thing about it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bloody woman thinks I arranged for her dad to be killed.’

  She looked at him aghast. ‘You mean you didn’t?’

  He raised an eyebrow, turned and walked back towards Hammersmith, keeping an eye out for a taxi.

  Thirty minutes later, he’d broken the bad news to an apoplectic Waddell, collected his car from the side street in Chiswick and returned to his flat. Once inside, he closed the front door and leaned hard against it as if it was his last defence against a vengeful world.

  One part of him hated Julie Jackman for tricking him, wanting to string her up. But another part was more offended than hurt, distressed that she’d believed her father’s paranoid ramblings rather than his own word.

  Half of him sought revenge for what she’d done, the other simply wanted to set her straight. To make her recognise that he wasn’t an assassin.

  But he needed more from her than that, because the wound she’d inflicted on him affected his pride.

  He wanted her to desire him. With the same blundering blindness that had driven him onto the rocks this evening.

  9

  Brussels

  Monday, 11.00 hrs

  THE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER for Social Affairs was a woman of boundless energy, an elegant and sophisticated Parisian in her mid-fifties whose paramours had included some of the most senior politicians in France. Her left-of-centre credentials dated back to the barricades in the Paris Latin Quarter in the hot, neo-revolutionary summer of 1968.

  Dressed in a crisp, beige suit with a skirt ending just above the knee, she walked the short distance from the metro station to the Brussels headquarters of the Commission. She was entitled to an official car to bring her from her home, but on most occasions she spurned it, preferring to feel the press of ordinary people about her for a few short minutes before plunging into the rarefied world of Euro politics.

  This was to be a busy week for Blanche Duvalier. On Wednesday she was to chair a two-day conference on race relations, a subject close to her heart but one of the hardest to deal with. Improving attitudes to the minorities in their midst required more than brave words. Race hate was a sickness endemic to the human species which she’d campaigned against for most of her adult life. Most of today and tomorrow would be spent in preparation for the conference. Much effort would be needed to prevent it degenerating into pointless polemic.

  The entrance to the Commission building was set back from the road under a huge porch which gave shelter from the elements for the official cars as they dropped their passengers at the rotating glass doors. A few more seconds and she would be there.

  Walking towards her along the pavement was a woman in her forties with wild brown hair in desperate need of a combing. For a moment Blanche Duvalier thought it was one of the journalists from the diplomatic press corps and began to think of a quote. Then she realised that she didn’t know the woman at all. The creature looked an oddity. Face flushed, eyes wide and staring as if driven by some inner demon, her clothes clashed horribly. She was encumbered by shopping bags, the control of which she seemed about to lose as she detached a hand from them to wave it in Blanche’s direction. Did she know this woman after all, Duvalier wondered? The Commissioner glanced behind her and quickly realised her mistake. The wave had been directed at the driver of a car which had illegally halted at the kerb a little way behind her. The passenger door swung open.

  The woman was only a couple of metres in front of her now, eyes locked on the car, when she began to stumble, tripping over heels far too narrow for speed. Too late to take avoiding action, Blanche Duvalier braced herself for the impact. The woman tumbled against her, making no attempt to prevent a collision, her armful of possessions cascading forward. Duvalier felt a sharp prick as the corner of one of the bags jabbed into her just below her left breast.

  ‘Merde!’

  As the woman grappled for control of her shopping, Duvalier felt a second scratch at her flesh.

  ‘Eh alors!’

  ‘Sorry. So sorry.’ The woman spoke in English. She regained her balance and hurried on towards the open door of the waiting car.

  Instinctively Blanche Duvalier rubbed at the place where she’d been hurt. Her fingers touched moisture and she gasped. She looked down and saw blood on her cream silk blouse and a tiny rip in the fabric.

  ‘Merde!’ she said again, spinning round, ready to confront the ludicrous woman who’d caused the accident, but the car was already easing its way into the traffic.

  She looked down at herself again. It was the tiniest of cuts, but the blouse was ruined. Fortunately she kept a spare in the office in case of lunchtime accidents. The blood was continuing to ooze. She took a handkerchief from her handbag, slipped it between the buttons to press against the nick in her skin, then carried on into the Commission building, trying to regain her composure.r />
  She stepped into the elevator and found it occupied by Piers Hyams, her English first secretary.

  ‘Madame, good day to you,’ he began before noticing that all was not well. ‘Something wrong? What happened to you?’

  ‘Some stupid woman crashed into me on the pavement outside. Had something sharp in one of her bags.’ She withdrew the bloodstained handkerchief.

  ‘Oh good heavens! Do you need a doctor?’

  Blanche Duvalier gave him a withering look. ‘Really, Piers! Do I look as if I’m about to faint?’

  The young Englishman smiled weakly.

  ‘But really,’ she continued scathingly. ‘There are some people who simply shouldn’t be allowed out on the streets.’

  Piers Hyams fixed his eyes on the illuminated floor counter above the doors.

  ‘Madame,’ he murmured drily, ‘as Commissioner with responsibility for the elimination of intolerance, let’s hope the media haven’t bugged this lift.’

  London

  Sam Packer caught a mid-morning shuttle from Heathrow, glad to be escaping from the recriminations his controller had hurled at him first thing. Depending on what the Chronicle published, his employment with the Intelligence Service was now in jeopardy. For much of the flight north he despairingly tried to work out what an ex-spy could put down on his CV.

  The flight landed at Glasgow airport at 2.15 and he carried his rucksack straight to the car hire desks to pick up the vehicle he’d reserved. It was a blustery day in Scotland, dark grey boulders of cloud charging across a pallid blue sky. As he stepped out of the terminal the wind hit him, blowing through his brain like a purgative.

  The motorway led westwards along the white-flecked Clyde. The tide was low, the green and red channel markers rising out of the river bed like giant salt cellars. On the far bank a shaft of sunlight caught the russet stone of Dumbarton castle atop its rock. At Greenock the road cut inland before emerging on the blustery west coast. A couple of yachts beating the choppy, grey waters between Ayrshire and the Cowal Peninsula had their mainsails reefed hard.

  Sam tried to envisage his father coming here twenty-seven years ago but couldn’t. Couldn’t because his memory of the man had no bones to it. All he had was a naïve eleven-year-old’s fantasy of a father’s life – heroics beneath the waves, interspersed by short periods at home as head of the family and Sam’s temporary ally in a house dominated by women. A figure who bore no relation to the sex pest and spy that others now talked of. Grudgingly he’d accepted that his sister’s impressions of the man would have been more sharply formed than his own. She’d been fifteen already when their father died. Foreboding gnawed at him. This investigation looked set to destroy an icon, the only one he’d ever had.