A Sentimental Traitor

by Dobbs, Michael

  The journalist shrugged, not offended but non-committal. ‘Who can tell?We’re dealing in some pretty dark places.’

  It was Harry’s turn. ‘Then just one question, if I may, Hamish.’

  ‘Asking is free.’

  ‘Abdul Mohammed.’

  ‘Ah, the one-eyed, one-balled bastard.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s him?’

  ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have printed it.’

  ‘And his connection with the Egyptian government.’

  ‘Now that’s a bit beyond my pay grade.’

  ‘But the press has been full of it. They’ve even suggested—’

  The journalist cut him off with a scowl. ‘I’m not responsible for what appears in the tabloids.‘

  ‘Is anyone?’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped your lot straining at the leash.’

  ‘My lot?’

  ‘The government. The Foreign Office. All this talk of sanctions and embargoes.’

  It was Harry’s turn to frown. ‘That’s what’s got me puzzled, too. The connection between our Abdul and the Egyptian government.’

  The Scotsman sipped cautiously. ‘Is there a connection? I’ve never said so.’

  ‘But what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, Harry,’ he said doggedly.

  ‘They can’t just be making it up.’

  Hamish smirked and Harry felt just a little foolish. Governments made things up all the time.

  ‘Maybe they know more than I do,’ the Scot added. ‘Or maybe they’re just terrified of being left behind. Anyway, one dead Arab is as good as another, isn’t that the way it goes?’

  Harry wanted to deny it, to reject the cynicism, but when had cynicism ever let him down? He’d fought in the First Gulf War, with scars and medals to show for it, but had been in Parliament by the time of the second, thank goodness, because he would have had problems obeying orders to go in for that one. They’d invaded Iraq, with all the horrors that were to follow, because some other Arab had flown airplanes into the Twin Towers. That, and because it had oil. Then they’d picked on Libya to invade, because that had oil, too. As Harry had said in the debate, much to the displeasure of his political masters, if only the West had loved oil a little less and understood the Arab a little more, the world might have turned a little more slowly.

  So was it all happening again? The Arab, any Arab, as the whipping boy? He needed to think this through. ‘Let me get you another,’ he suggested.

  The Scot glanced at his watch. ‘If you insist. I can manage a quick one.’

  Harry, with a troubled expression, disappeared inside, leaving Jemma and the journalist on their own. For a moment she was awkward, feeling out of her depth in this murky world. She smiled coyly and allowed her coat to fall open. Teeth and tits, rarely failed, and she could see he’d noticed. ‘Doesn’t your wife get tired of you running all over the world, Mr Hague?’

  He laughed. ‘She’ll be tired enough of me when I retire. Only a couple of years.’ His old eyes smiled kindly. ‘You two been going out long?’

  ‘No, just a very little while.’

  ‘He likes you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Trust me. A lot.’

  She blushed in thanks. ‘Did you . . . I mean, I don’t know, shouldn’t ask, but . . .’ She trailed off, unable to complete the question.

  He came to her rescue. ‘Did I know either of his wives?’

  Her blush deepened, but he shook his head. ‘I don’t know Harry that well.’

  ‘I suppose with all your charging around . . .’

  ‘Me? No’ me, lassie. London to Brussels, Brussels to London. That’s been my life these last fifteen years, and not even enough time to spend the air miles.’

  ‘But . . . your nickname. They call you McDeath. I rather imagined you in all sorts of dark places up to your derringdo.’

  The overtones of Edinburgh were growing stronger in her voice, and his face creased into a conspiratorial smile. ‘Aye, that might be what I tell my grandchildren, but you don’t get this’ – he patted his extended stomach –’climbing anything much higher than a Brussels bar stool.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed in disappointment. ‘And there was me with this image of you riding camels past the pyramids or battling your way up the Nile fighting off crocodiles.’

  ‘I’ve never been, probably never will. Only sand trap I ever want to find myself in is on a golf course.’

  They laughed, two Scots playing away from home, as a motorcycle courier approached and roared past them, its throaty exhaust echoing back from the dark bricks of the Queen Anne terrace. As the noise receded, Harry reemerged clutching fresh drinks. Hamish took his whisky, stared at his watch yet again, and drank hurriedly. ‘I feel I’ve taken your hospitality under false pretences, Harry,’ he apologized. ‘I really must be rushing. Forgive me.’ He finished the last drop of whisky and smiled at Jemma. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, young lady.’

  ‘Say hello to Mrs Hague, if ever you get off your plane,’ Jemma said.

  ‘I’ll be sure to.’ And he was gone.

  They watched as the shambling figure of the Scot in a flapping raincoat retreated down the street.

  ‘Sorry,’ Harry said, ‘rather a waste of time.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Total.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ Her voice was soft, tantalizing. ‘I think I can help you.’

  ‘Really?’

  Her chin came up in defiance. ‘Oh, don’t you go dismissing me as just a silly girl, Jones. That was his mistake.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at him,’ she demanded, just as the rotund journalist finally disappeared from sight. ‘Not the leanest of hunters, is he? Not exactly Woodward or Bernstein.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He’s only giving out what he’s being fed.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Which means that it’s his source who is important.’

  ‘And he’s no more likely to give us that than to sell his grandchildren.’

  ‘Then again . . .’ She smiled coquettishly. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘What’s your price?’

  ‘Venice,’ she replied immediately.

  ‘This had better be worth my while.’

  ‘Take me to Venice, Harry, and I guarantee to make it worth your while.’

  ‘Great, but I can’t wait till Venice.’

  ‘That’s your trouble, Harry, always in a hurry. Just like last night.’

  ‘Jemma, dammit, I’ll—’

  ‘Brussels.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whoever he’s getting it from, it has to be in Brussels.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He doesn’t go anywhere else.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Brussels,’ she whispered. ‘Trust me.’ She took him by the arm and began leading him down the street. ‘You know, if you stopped rushing things, Harry, there’s no telling how far you might get.’

  The hedgerows were hung with berries covered in hoar frost that sparkled exquisitely in the sunlight like precious stones. Underfoot the snow was covered with a thick crust of ice, and at every step their boots hesitated before breaking through to the firmer ground beneath. Felix Wilton followed behind his wife, along the track through the fields, treading in her footsteps. It would be their last outing before Patricia returned to Brussels, and she was lost in thought, her head bowed, heedless of the endless views across Wiltshire on such a crystal-crisp day. There was no sound, except for their footfall. In a few weeks, when the thaw had arrived, the hedgerows would fill with life once more, but for now Felix and his wife were wrapped in a world of white silence.

  They walked for several miles, in tandem, no words, the shadows lengthening, before they came to a farmer’s metal gate in a field above their cottage. Only then did he draw alongside her to open it. ‘Will you want rice or potatoes with your salmon?’ he asked, thinking ahead, his wo
rds emerging in clouds of frost.

  She said nothing, walked through the gate he held open.

  ‘Rice, then,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sorry?’ She looked up, puzzled.

  ‘Nothing.’ She was in another world, and he had learned not to be jealous. She’d been distracted these last few days, withdrawn, sombre, but he hadn’t complained, knew both her job and her ambition were reaching more difficult ground.

  ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, this time meaning it. ‘It’s simply . . . I have this problem.’

  ‘Does this problem have a name?’

  ‘Harry Jones.’

  ‘Ah, the politician.’

  She’d been worrying about it ever since Hamish had told her of the drink, and the digging. ‘He’s asking questions.’

  ‘And that is a problem?’

  ‘It’s a bit like someone continuously opening the oven door to find out how the soufflé is doing.’

  ‘Aggravating.’

  ‘Intensely. Could ruin things.’

  The gate was complaining as it swung to on frozen hinges.

  ‘What do you think I should do, Felix?’ she asked, grasping the gate, needing to make up her mind before they moved on. His hand came and covered hers. While they never slept with each other they would still touch, share moments of intimacy, like this.

  ‘I know what I would do if it were my kitchen, Patricia,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me. I need to know. It’s important.’

  ‘I’d slam his bloody fingers in the oven door.’

  With a jerk he forced the metal gate back into its place. The lock snapped shut, raising a clatter of complaint that rang in their ears. They said nothing more, walking back in silence to their door.

  At the moment Felix Wilton was scurrying around his kitchen to prepare toasted tea cake and coffee for his wife, Harry was settling back in the warm embrace of his bath. He stretched his legs, easing the creases of an afternoon spent bent over his desk.

  ‘You keep your toes to yourself,’ Jemma instructed from the other end of the bath.

  Instead of heeding the warning he tickled her, and what had been a gentle moment cascaded into squeals of outrage and much splashing.

  ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he asked carelessly when at last a measure of order had been restored in the bathtub.

  ‘I was rather hoping you might let me help you with your election campaign,’ she said. His entire afternoon had been taken up with constituency correspondence and he hadn’t even started the process of culling the hundreds of e-mails that had accumulated since he’d last opened his parliamentary account a few days previously.

  ‘No secret I could do with more help,’ he muttered. ‘Since the air crash the atmosphere’s turned, gone sour, our people are sitting on their hands. It was all looking so comfortable just a couple of weeks ago.’ He would be fine, of course, with his thumping majority, but suddenly the polls – and his nose – were telling him that the government could be in for one hell of a fight. Still, plenty of time to go.

  ‘I’d love to help, Harry, if you’d let me. Weekends, and then there’s the Easter holidays.’

  ‘You’d give that up for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It would change things. Jemma would be introduced to his constituents, be seen at his side, the two of them a public item. It had been a long time since there had been anyone to join him on the campaign trail. Perhaps it was too early.

  ‘Elections are bloody hard work,’ he said.

  ‘Try teaching a classroom of five-year-olds.’

  ‘You offering to iron my shirts?’

  ‘I’m offering to pick them up from the laundry.’

  ‘It would mean very little sleep.’

  ‘What, more rushed sex?’

  ‘A million sandwiches to make.’

  ‘So long as you let me make you breakfast first.’

  Damn, but she was good at this game. ‘Then I accept your offer, Miss Laing. Frankly, at the moment, I need all the help I can get.’

  ‘I’m all yours,’ she whispered, her eyes suddenly serious.

  They stopped the banter, beyond it now. He turned the tap for more hot water, wanting to prolong the moment, and the suds, suddenly refreshed, clung gently around her breasts. He stared, provocatively, but when he raised his eyes he found her thoughts elsewhere, a shadow across her face. ‘Already going off the idea?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come back to me, Jem.’

  ‘Sorry, I was thinking . . . you know, those kids. And the more I think about them, the less I understand it all.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘What would be the point of blowing them out of the sky? No one’s claimed responsibility – isn’t that what usually happens, try to humiliate the enemy, announce that it’s all been done in retaliation for some other massacre of innocents? But there’s been nothing. Except for a finger pointed at the Egyptians, and it’s been a pretty wobbly finger, to my mind. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.’

  Harry sank back into the bath, allowing his muscles to relax and his thoughts to float free as the water rippled across his face, until suddenly he grabbed the taps and hauled himself back up with an urgency that sent waves of suds lapping over the sides. ‘Maybe we all got it wrong, Jem. Maybe we’ve been climbing up a slope that leads nowhere. We keep talking about the kids. But what if it was nothing to do with them?’

  ‘Then, why – who?’

  ‘Somebody else on board, perhaps.’

  ‘Who else was on board?’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea. But I think I know someone who might.’ He stretched out from the bath to retrieve his phone from beside the basin and began fumbling with it. He punched a number and, when it had been answered, asked for the Police Casualty Bureau. ‘Shelagh – that you? Harry here,’ he began. ‘No, I’m not in a sewer, I’m in my bath.’

  There was a silence as he listened to the voice at the other end; Jemma thought his jaw stiffened, trying to give nothing away – which meant there probably was something, so far as Shelagh was concerned.

  ‘That would be great, I’d love to catch up, it’s been too long, but in the meantime I need one small favour. Yes, OK, another small favour. The Speedbird crash. Can you let me have a full passenger list? No, not the one you’ve published, I need names, dates of birth, sex, addresses, nationalities, whatever you’ve got. Why? Because you know I’m curious about all sorts of things.’ The voice had dropped and the jaw twitched. ‘Yes. You, too. And thanks.’

  When the call had finished he spent a few moments lost in thought, gazing at the phone.

  ‘You take that bloody thing everywhere,’ she said, feeling an unexpected flush of jealousy. It often rang at some extraordinarily inconvenient moments, could play hell with a girl’s concentration.

  ‘It has everything in here,’ he said, waving it, ‘my entire life.’

  ‘Your entire past life. Sometimes I wish you’d drop it in the water.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Jem, it has its uses.’ He turned the phone to show her the screen. He’d taken a photograph of her in the bath. ‘You know, if I stuck that on my election literature, I reckon I’d be home in a landslide.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Patricia Vaine looked out of the window of the Eurostar at the flat, dreary countryside of northern France, a desolate landscape to which no one had ever paid the slightest attention, except when there had been a war. Nothing to inspire, nothing to write about, except for what it no longer was – a battlefield. And that was the point, wasn’t it? The guns had been silenced, the slaughter brought to an end. One community built from so many dissident, fractious parts. If the wars that had been fought across these fields had been worth so much sacrifice, surely the peace that had replaced them was worth just a little, too? The growing pains of the great European adventure, Felix had said, and her thoughts turned to Harry Jones. A growing pain. Bloody man. She switched off the vanity light and closed her eyes, listening to the
thrumming of the wheels on the rails, hoping it would soothe her troubled thoughts. She could no longer ignore him. He was becoming a pest. First Hamish Hague, now his request for the passenger manifest. That was the crucial moment, the point of no return. She didn’t think he would be able to piece together the fragments, but she was no longer sure, and she couldn’t take the risk.

  Intelligence agencies can never be mere observers. While they watch events, they inevitably get drawn into shaping them, too, which made it inevitable that once Vaine had begun rocking Usher’s boat, she wouldn’t be able to stop. Once the poison had begun circulating around the system, it would carry on, until the end. But now there was Harry Jones, too. He was a different problem. Dealing with Usher was akin to bombarding a castle, you couldn’t miss if you had the right weapons, but with Jones it was more like targeting a single soldier within the walls. Her aim needed to be more precise, more clinical, and she hadn’t the experience. It was experience she would have to get.

  She was still tussling with the problem when she arrived back at her house in Rue Faider, a narrow, four-storey town house that she had bought in dilapidated state for a song and had refurbished into an elegant and exceptional home – her home. She shared it with no one, not even Felix, although his expertise in the antiques world had been responsible for loading the high walls with a kaleidoscope of gilded mirrors, oils, portraits and tapestries that would have done grace to any minor museum. The windows were large, the light gentle, the furniture mostly French, the atmosphere heavy, and in the summer she could catch the scent of sweet honeysuckle that crept in from the small garden. She was preparing herself a lean and lonely dinner when there was a knock at the door. She was startled when she opened it to find a chauffeur at the door, standing in the rain. Behind him, in the back seat of a black Mercedes limousine, sat the Energy Commissioner, a German, Albrecht Genscher. When they had first met he had tried to hit on her, but he was round and fleshy, not her type, and she rarely sold her favours for simple pleasure any more. There were plenty of opportunities, of course, particularly in this capital of exiles, where men took her natural coolness for English allure, and didn’t call her Pat or Patsy but by her full name, Patricia, which sounded all the more elegant for their drawn-out vowels. It was here and for the first time in her life that she had learned to use her sex, to dangle it as bait, although rarely to surrender it. She had slept with only three men since her arrival, on each occasion for professional purposes, men who could help her up the ladder as easily as they had slipped her out of her Max Mara dresses. In any event, the crease of concern across Genscher’s florid forehead suggested he had other things on his mind.