A Sentimental Traitor

by Dobbs, Michael

  CHAPTER TWO

  All politics is image, and throughout his career Ben Usher had tried to build the appearance of a Man with the Common Touch. That’s why he and his entourage had flown back home on a scheduled flight, which made communication difficult, and in business class, which made sleep well-nigh impossible. When eventually he touched down at Heathrow he was tired and knew he had already lost control of events. Not a good place to be.

  His car was waiting at the foot of the aircraft stairs to whisk him away, avoiding the media melee that was waiting for him. Usher wasn’t hiding, merely finding the space to collect his thoughts; he knew there would be an even larger pack of hounds waiting for him at Downing Street, and he was old enough to remember the fate of Jim Callaghan, another Prime Minister who had returned from sunnier shores during troubled times. Callaghan hadn’t dodged the Heathrow pack but had spoken to them, very briefly but unguardedly. ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ the headlines reported him as saying. In truth he’d never uttered those words, they hadn’t even passed through his mind, yet that hadn’t stopped them being engraved on his tombstone a few months later. A Prime Minister couldn’t be too careful, not with en election in the offing.

  On the road back in to central London, a Stars & Stripes dangled limply beside a Union Jack from an overpass. As they came closer to the centre, there were more, from lamp posts, in windows, stretched across barriers. Usher telephoned ahead to make sure that the Downing Street flag was flying, and at half mast.

  When he arrived he walked directly to the Cabinet Room, which was crowded. He was quickly brought up to date with developments – there weren’t any of substance, apart from the bodies, which were still being washed up on mudflats and shorelines downstream. The wreckage was being recovered, the Air Accident Investigation Board already at its work, the flight recorders already being decoded in their laboratories. In the meantime few facts, only theories, and none of them explained how he could deal with the families’ grief. A message to say that the American ambassador had called, twice. A shower, a change of clothes, a careful selection of a sombre tie.

  There was no one else on the stairs as he walked slowly back down from the top-floor apartment. He had this feeling of being entirely alone. He struggled to find some words he might use, a phrase or two that might help bring a traumatized country together. Put him back in control. Something that came from within. But he was tired from the flight and he felt empty.

  He was still juggling phrases in his mind, dropping them, when he reached the black-and-white marble-tiled hallway. He could hear the buzz of impatience from the crowd beyond the steel door. He was making one last check of his tie when he found his political secretary at his elbow. A young man, always eager to please, sometimes too much so.

  ‘The American Embassy on the phone again.’

  ‘The ambassador?’

  ‘No. His wife.’

  ‘Save me from this . . .’ Usher muttered, trying to turn away.

  ‘Wants a quick word. Just one. Needs it, she says. Now. She’s hanging on.’

  The ambassador’s wife was a delightful woman, a Virginian, big blue eyes, late thirties, just a little flirty in the way diplomatic wives are encouraged to be, who played her part to the full but who had never wanted more than to be a softball and cookie-baking mom. Yet now . . . Now Usher felt himself go solid inside. Like a machine. He’d talk to her later, knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it together if he did it now. Already the polls were showing he was being blamed, not for the accident but for his poor choice in being elsewhere, in the sun while little children suffered, and he knew he could afford no more slips. So no distractions, not even for her. He shook his head. The young man backed off, a look of disappointment creeping into his eye. And once more, Usher was on his own.

  He had been rushing, trying to cram too much in, and was sweating a little when at last he emerged from the front door of Number Ten to face the massed ranks of microphones, camera lenses and television lights, every one of them pointed at him.

  ‘Christ, it’s cold,’ he muttered to himself as for the first time in days he felt the bite of the British winter. He wondered if that’s what it had been like for King Charles. 1649. A freezing January day, so it was written, when he’d stepped out from the Banqueting Hall just a little way along Whitehall and onto his scaffold. The King had worn two shirts in order to stop him shivering, in case the crowd mistook it for fear. At this moment, Usher felt very close to the King.

  Somehow the years of experience kicked in, and he found the words. Not the precise and carefully crafted phrases that had been prepared for him but thoughts that came from within, that’s what mattered now, some sincere-sounding reflection that might do justice to the fact that there had been no survivors, not a single one. He spoke of sorrow, of unfairness, of pain spread wide and tragedy shared. About children who had carried the futures of their families with them, of others who had been hoping for nothing more than to share the special spirit of Christmas with those they loved, of pilots who had done their duty with courage and huge skill, and had avoided an even greater calamity.

  ‘I can’t pretend to imagine what’s going through your hearts right now,’ he said, speaking directly into a camera lens, trying to reach a conclusion. ‘If it were my own . . .’ There was an unmistakable catch in his voice; there was no need to finish the thought. ‘Perhaps all I can do right now is my duty. And that, it seems to me, is to make one promise above all else to those families – British, American, Belgian, French, the others, too – those of you who have lost loved ones and will find Christmas such a desperately painful time this year. To you, I promise you this.’

  Flashbulbs blazed away, the television lights shone into his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing. He spoke very slowly.

  ‘We will find out what went wrong.’

  It wasn’t much of a commitment, not if anyone stopped to analyse it, nothing more than what would happen as a matter of course, but it was necessary that he should say it. There had already been so much speculation about poor design and inadequate maintenance, even a bird strike, a flock of Canadian geese that might have been ingested into the engine and blown the front off. Just a few more days, then they would know for certain. Give those who were suffering some sort of reassurance, and perhaps they would stop blaming him. Pity’s sake, it wasn’t his fault, yet still he felt responsible and that sense of guilt drove him on.

  ‘I vow to you all,’ he said, his voice swelling with passion. ‘We will discover what happened. And who was responsible.’

  No! It was supposed to be what was responsible, not who. But it was too late, a slip of the tongue, a frozen thought. It had been said. Only a couple of words, but already more than enough. It was someone’s fault! Someone was to blame!

  And the media weren’t going to stop until they had that someone and had dragged him out into the cold, just like poor King Charlie.

  Despite the season, Patricia Vaine sat at an outside table on the Place de Luxembourg in Brussels, her coffee neglected, her cigarette turning to ash, shivering in her overcoat despite the glow of the overhead heater, staring into nothing.

  Vaine was English by birth, European by employment. A sound Catholic education at St Mary’s in Ascot and a rather more adventurous few years spent stretching her mind and occasionally her legs at Oxford, had taken her on a rapidly rising track through the labyrinth of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but she’d always suspected she would never be allowed to make it to the top. Partly it was her Catholicism – the Blairs had made being a ‘left footer’ unfashionable – but perhaps more so because she was intellectual, better than most, and there were times when she couldn’t resist the temptation to show it. She was forty-six, had blue eyes accentuated by a well-boned face and carefully built blonde hair, and if her hairdresser was aware of the first signs of grey, he hid it so well that few realized she wasn’t, and never had been, entirely the genuine article. For a middle-aged woman she had the ability to cross a
nd uncross her legs to the distraction of most men, an asset she had found more effective in Brussels than ever she had in stuffy London. Intellect and ankles; she used both as weapons.

  Distraction formed a large part of her remit; indeed, it was possible to spend a long time walking through the corridors of the European capital without ever finding out what she did there, and even if one did stumble across a clue, most men usually got confused by the seductive combination of perfume and tobacco, or the ridiculous notion that a woman couldn’t do ‘that sort of job’. From behind the inconspicuous but carefully monitored security of the building on Avenue de Cortenbergh, Patricia Vaine headed up EATA. Her operation rarely appeared on organizational charts, and even then only as a footnote, as a subsidiary of Europe’s External Action Service. Yet in truth, as the European Union’s fledgling intelligence service, EATA was potentially one of the most influential centres of power in Brussels.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen, no national government had agreed to it, but neither had anyone objected. It was inevitable that something like EATA would come into being. The European Union had all the other trappings – a flag, an anthem, a president, a seriously screwed-up currency and a foreign policy of sorts. And, inevitably, ambition. They needed their own intelligence operation, a full hand of cards, and Vaine had set about delivering it. EATA was housed in a modest office block a short walk from the park, and lacked any sign of the usual extravagance that accompanied most European buildings like the Commission offices at the Berlaymont, and least of all the imperial splendours of the Parliament itself. The only clues that gave away EATA’s home were the air-tight security pods through which staff and visitors alike had to pass, and the guards, who were all armed. This was Patricia Vaine’s kingdom, and she had shown herself to be remarkably inventive, like an alchemist of old creating gold from nothing – although that was an easier trick in Brussels than most capitals.

  That was another thing, money was never a problem, even though EATA wasn’t supposed to exist and couldn’t be identified in any budget. It had been twenty years since the EU had last had its accounts signed off by its auditors and everyone was in on the game – Irish farmers, who got subsidies for flocks of sheep that didn’t exist, as well as Spanish fishermen who were paid to throw fish back into the sea. It was inevitable that Greek farmers would join in the fun. They were given millions for growing tobacco, even while the EU spent still more millions trying to persuade people to give up smoking. ‘There’s no accounting for ideals,’ as one Commissioner had blithely explained. And if in its early days EATA couldn’t hope to match the resources of its national rivals, there was nothing to stop information liaison officers wining and dining every political hack, opinion former and press man in the business. Why pay for information when you could rent it by the meal?

  And, as EATA’s ambitions grew and its demands inevitably became more complex, they could always outsource, hire in a bit of muscle or experience, lean on friends. It was through one of Vaine’s contacts in this world of dusty mirrors that she had first picked up reports about a notorious Islamist gun-for-hire who had been spotted scurrying through northern Europe. There was talk of a deal being done in some dark place, whispers about a surface-to-air missile. Dirty, delightful stuff. It seemed to Vaine to be a solid lead, and since it was her lead she’d decided to cook it a little longer, follow it a little further to see where it might take her. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time; after all, she needed a few prize scalps to establish EATA’s credibility. Dear God, she’d had no idea that it was all so imminent, or the intended target a plane full of kids.

  Which left her with this huge bladder-bursting problem that made her head ache and her coffee go cold. If she were to reveal now what she had known but hadn’t understood and had kept hidden for too long, she would be shown no mercy. Her organization would be ripped apart. Rivals would say she was more guilty than the terrorists themselves. It would bring an end to her career, to EATA, to all her dreams. And where was the benefit in that?

  She couldn’t speak out, yet she knew she couldn’t simply leave the matter. Pity’s sake, she wasn’t a monster. Despite the glow from the gas heater above her head, her hands began to tremble with cold, and the long trail of cigarette ash dropped helplessly to the floor.

  Concentrate, damn you, don’t drown in cheap emotion! But what to do? She had to rise above it, remember there was a bigger game being played here. The European Union needed time to take more solid shape, there were bound to be growing pains, weren’t there? She believed passionately in that dream, of Europe, as one, united, renewed. That’s why she had come here. And there was always a price to be paid for dreams.

  She’d sat outside the coffee shop so long that the light was beginning to fade. A sparrow hopped onto the table, watching carefully, cheekily, bobbing its head several times before darting forward to grab the crumbs of biscuit that lay in the saucer and fluttering away with its evening meal. But she saw nothing, except what was playing in her mind. Only when the cigarette had burned so low that it scorched her fingers did she come back to reality. And reality, she had always believed, was what you made it. She took one final lungful of tobacco before pulling out her phone and scrolling through her list of contacts.

  ‘Hamish, this is Patricia Vaine,’ she said when at last a man’s voice answered. ‘I need to see you. This evening.’

  Her fingernails tapped impatiently on the glass tabletop as she soaked up the man’s protest.

  ‘No, Hamish, I’m afraid you’re going to have to disappoint your wife and be a little late for that dinner, no matter whom she’s invited.’ Whom, never who; she was always careful to use the correct pronoun, even when it seemed a little clumsy. ‘Why? My dear Hamish, because you’re a journalist. And you’re just about to get a story. Rather a big one. Perhaps the biggest of your dull and undistinguished career.’

  ‘Mr Jones?’

  The bar steward raised an eyebrow. Harry looked at his watch, inspected his empty glass with a frown, as though it were a museum exhibit, then nodded. He’d intended to wait until his friend arrived, but ‘Sloppy’ was late and Harry’s spirits low.

  He’d spent much of the afternoon on the banks of the Thames, watching the recovery of the wreckage. The river wasn’t particularly deep at this point but the hours of daylight were short, the navy divers could work only at low tide and the visibility was zero. Often they had to use their fingertips to work out what they had encountered, and there were still bodies unaccounted for. It made for slow progress. Aviation fuel was leaking and the tide swirled the pollution back and forth.

  They recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders first, from the tail section that was still sticking grotesquely from the water. Then it was the failed engine, dredged from the dark mud, and after that the tail itself, its colours made more brilliant and grotesque by the beams of a thousand spotlights as it was grappled by a floating crane onto one of the barges moored alongside, and slowly brought towards a low-loader lorry from the Joint Air Recovery and Transport Squadron. As it was hoisted onto the flatbed it swung to and fro, and seemed to take for ever to be manoeuvred into place and made secure. Whenever it twisted, even a little, a stream of dark, filthy water gushed out, spattering around, like blood.

  As a matter of course it was treated as a crime scene, but the police didn’t bother trying to restrict those tens of thousands who came to watch. Tower Bridge was closed, as was St Katherine’s Dock alongside, and for their own safety the air space above was denied to news helicopters, but for the rest the river provided the most popular, yet sombre stage in town. The crowds were so thick in places that those at the back couldn’t see; they waited their turn. There were tears, many prayers both silent and spoken, particularly when motor launches of the river police drew alongside, and bodies were brought up from the darkness. The police tried to provide some sort of screen, for dignity, but there were television cameras on every roof and balcony, at every angle. The world saw everyt
hing. The salvage workers paused, a hush of grief and respect fell along the riverbanks, and all that could be heard was the timeless lapping of the Thames.

  The cockpit section had broken in two. As they began lifting the main fragment, it reminded everyone of the iconic image of the Lockerbie disaster, and when it suddenly twisted in its cradle the crowd began to scream, as though at any moment they might see the body of the pilot still strapped in his seat, waving like Ahab lashed to the whale’s back. They needn’t have worried; the captain’s body still hadn’t been found.

  Harry walked to his next appointment, needing the bite of the air to cut through his melancholy. Four miles, which even at his pace took him over an hour. His destination was the Special Forces Club, located in a modest Edwardian terrace behind Harrods. Its origins, as the name implied, was to provide a watering hole for those who had served in any of the clandestine forces, as Harry had in the Special Air Service, and although in recent years the club’s financial plight had forced it to loosen its membership requirements, it still retained its air of mystery. From the outside the building was as anonymous as any of the other buildings in the street, apart from the nest of CCTV cameras above the door, while inside the receptionist was always welcoming and quietly observant. A small notice requested members and guests to leave their ‘cloaks and daggers’ in the downstairs hallway, while the modest but elegant staircase was lined with a double row of photographs, portraits, mostly black and white, of men and women who had served and often died heroically in their country’s service. Small legends beneath each portrait related their tales and kept the memories fresh. When Harry had made it up to the first-floor bar he had ordered a bottle of champagne, trying to revive some of the Christmas spirit, and waited for his friend, but he had almost finished the second glass by the time he saw his arrival on one of the CCTV screens behind the bar. He watched as Jimmy Sopwith-Dane, known as ‘Sloppy’ to his many friends, paused on the pavement, took a deep breath of winter air, then hauled himself up the few steps to the front door, using the railings for support.