by Henry Porter
‘So, why fake your own death? Nobody knew where you were.’
‘I advanced my death, as it were, so that I could control things before I actually died. I wanted them to think I was out of the way while activating the process of disclosure, for which in large part I hoped to rely on you. I needed to pass everything on to you in the will and put you in place.’
‘That was a risk. How did you know I would help? We were hardly on good terms.’
‘I relied on your sense of justice. I needed you to put it together and I believed that you would when you saw it all. Then I began to feel better and thought I couldn’t leave it to you. I decided to come back,’ he said.
‘Are you on the new chemo now?’
‘Not at the moment: I have to be able to function, Kate.’ Their eyes met and for a moment they didn’t speak. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I know it’s all been difficult for you.’
She brushed this away. ‘And Russell, did he know?’
‘No.’
‘But he must have, because of the funeral service: the poem could only have been inserted when you knew you were in remission.’
‘That’s sharp of you. Yes, I sent him a letter just before Christmas and I made some adjustments to the will and funeral service.’
‘It didn’t occur to you that I might get killed with Russell?’
‘It didn’t occur to me that they would start shooting people.’
She put her glass down and rose. ‘This all seems so vague and chaotic. I repeat my question. How the hell do you think you are going to beat the government from here?’
He studied her as though for the first time. ‘You look different. Less New York: yes, you seem rested, clear-eyed: somehow more open. Really, you’re looking great.’ He paused. ‘But to answer your question, I think we have a fair chance now I’m back. However, I still need your help.’
‘Of course you do, because you can’t go to Parliament in your shabby clothes looking like a zombie and tell them everything you know about DEEP TRUTH, because they’d lock you up. You want someone to do it for you. That explains these lame attempts at charm.’
‘You’re perfect for the job.’
He smiled but she didn’t return it. ‘Tell me something: I am curious about how one fakes a death these days. What about the body?’
‘That belonged to a male victim of another bomb who was never identified.’
‘I grieved over those remains,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There’s something very dark and premeditated about sending charred body parts across the world for your friends to weep over. It makes me think you are capable of anything. When I found that child porn on your computer I immediately thought that someone was trying to incriminate you, but, hell, now I’d seriously ask myself if you were responsible.’
‘Sis, I am not a paedophile.’
‘Have you any idea of the number of offences you and Swift have committed?’
‘Some,’ he said, letting his head fall back to the wall of the cabin. ‘But this is very important. The stakes are greater than you can imagine.’
She noticed the surfaces of his eyes were covered in an oily film, and his skin, though tanned, seemed stretched across his face. ‘You’re exhausted,’ she said.
‘I’m fine – really.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’
‘Watch Temple make his moves, then make mine. I believe he’s already started.’
‘Kilmartin was at Chequers. He didn’t say why. But he said there’s talk of a snap election.’
‘Bryant Maclean’s newspapers both came out strongly against it today, which makes me think that Maclean has heard something he didn’t like.’
‘Does it really matter? Why don’t you just publish everything about DEEP TRUTH on the web? You could have done that while you were in Colombia.’
‘Because the material would have been dismissed as conspiracy theory: they would deny it, ridicule it and spin it into non-existence. No, the actual documents must be laid before Parliament and given the protection of Parliamentary privilege, because that’s the only way people will take any notice.’ He stopped and closed his eyes again. ‘And there is the symbolic importance of returning power of disclosure to Parliament. But timing is all: we need to put this in the public domain at the point when Temple can’t go back on calling an election, yet Parliament is still sitting.’ Suddenly he grimaced and moved forward as if he was about to spring to his feet. But he waited on the edge of the bench, concentrating on something in the distance. Then he relaxed. She put her hand to his shoulder. Charlie had worn the same expression in his final months. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d better lie down.’
They went into the sparse, gloomy interior, where there was a table and a bed and a sink. It was larger than she had expected and cleaner. Some clothes were folded into square piles. There were half a dozen books on the table and a music player. Eyam sat down on the bed, then lowered himself so that he lay on his side with his legs folded. She gave him some water and perched on a crate at the end of the bed and watched him fall into a fitful, feverish sleep. There was no sound except the birds outside and the creaking of the wood as it warmed in the spring sun.
23
The Oxford Plotters
He woke with a start half an hour later. ‘Sister!’ he exclaimed, momentarily astonished to find her sitting beside him. He ran a hand through his damp hair and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I get these damned sweats when I sleep.’ He lifted his head and blinked. ‘What we need is a cup of tea.’
She used a camping stove beside the sink to boil water while Eyam lay with one arm crooked behind his head staring at the ceiling. They talked about who he paid and how he faked the film and where he’d been hiding, all of which gave her an entirely fresh image of Eyam as someone who could put up with a lot and was comfortable with risk.
He looked a little better: his colour had improved and the habitual smile, which did so much to emphasise, win over and prompt as he spoke, returned to his face. She picked up the box of lapsang souchong teabags and looked at him with eyebrow cocked.
‘There are some things a man on the run cannot travel without,’ he said. ‘I still have a stash of Colombian coffee, but I’m saving that.’
‘When did you leave Colombia?’ she asked quietly.
‘When I knew that my death was being taken seriously. There was a lot to arrange. A man from the embassy – we assume SIS – was sent to check out the explosion and interviewed Luis Bautista. We passed that test. Then I began to feel a lot stronger because of the chemo and I hitched a ride back to Spain in a private plane using false French ID. I made my way to the French side of the Pyrenees – to a charming farmhouse in the Ariège where I stayed for a few days – then travelled north and crossed the channel by yacht, the same way I’d left. Bloody awful crossing though. I was seasick for the first time in my life.’
‘So where does Tony Swift fit in?’ she said, fishing out a teabag.
He looked at her hard. ‘I’m not sure how much I should tell you yet.’
‘Look, you idiot. If they know you faked your death they’ll figure out his involvement. He’s as good as charged. Even he gets that.’ She held out one of the mugs. He raised his head then moved his feet to the stone floor and took it. ‘The last time we were holed up in a room like this,’ she continued, ‘was at the end of your time at Oxford.’
‘I remember it well.’
She turned to him. ‘I guess that’s when I fell for you.’
He looked up. ‘You had an odd way of showing it – going off and marrying someone else.’
‘Oh come on! You weren’t interested.’
He inhaled deeply. ‘It wasn’t that. My mother was dying and I was in a funk about my career. Bad timing. You could have waited.’ He looked up. ‘But, Sis, we’ve had the closest possible friendship.’
‘Not recently: I got tired of your rules. You always manipulated the situation so it was impossible to say
what I really felt about you.’
He shook his head and sipped his tea.
‘People always know when they’re behaving like shits, and why.’ She meant to say it lightly but heard the bitterness in her voice. ‘Why did you use me, Eyam? Why?’
He shook his head. ‘I had to, and I genuinely believed that you would see the importance of all this.’
‘Is that all you can say? How can you expect me to help you when you simply won’t engage?’ she asked.
‘Engage? That’s an odd word to use, Sis, given the extent of your self-absorption these last few years.’
She looked at him, astonished. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. I had an important job to do. Responsibilities! I had to bloody well concentrate.’
‘But your life in Manhattan was something else – so . . .’
‘I was a success, dammit.’
‘But you weren’t a success as you: that’s what counts in life. You were a self-obsessed phoney.’
She looked out of the window then turned to him. ‘You’re a pompous, cold-hearted bastard, you know that? If I am so self-obsessed, why would you trust me to carry out this great mission of yours?’
‘I mistakenly thought you would be outraged by what has happened in Britain. You should be appalled at what is being done here.’
‘By people like you.’
He conceded this with a Gallic nod to his right, then grinned. ‘I suppose I was relying on the awkward libertarian traits I thought you inherited from Sonny Koh.’
This surprised her. ‘I don’t remember you meeting my father.’
‘I did at Oxford one weekend, then at your wedding.’
‘When he got drunk.’
‘He was sad at losing you, Sis. He was one of the brightest and most amusing people I’ve ever met. There’s a lot of him in you.’
‘God, he was funny, wasn’t he?’ She was suddenly disarmed by the memory of her father’s speech at the wedding. ‘He’d see the absurdity of you sitting in this shack planning the downfall of the prime minister.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, his eyes clouding. ‘Yet I have never been surer of what I have to do.’
‘Christ, Eyam, I wonder about your grip on reality. They know you’re alive so there is literally nothing else they need to know. Don’t you see that? Now it’s simply a matter of tracking you down, killing you or arresting you on any number of legitimate charges. You’re finished.’ She got up and placed the tea mug by the sink. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t wait for the election to be called and reveal everything then. A senior official – the head of the JIC no less – going public with that kind of material would have been far more devastating than someone who has allowed himself to be incriminated as a paedophile, flees the country and then fakes his own death. You have absolutely no fucking credibility, Eyam.’
‘But the material does.’
‘Maybe, but why did you have to behave like a criminal? What the hell happened to you? You could out-think anyone; you played the long game. Nobody could beat you. But this skulking about looking like death warmed up . . .’
‘Thanks.’
She reached for him automatically, but failed to touch his shoulder. ‘What I meant was—’
‘I know what you meant. But there’s a point when you can’t go on faking it.’ He let the hand fall from his chin. ‘Are you familiar with Hannah Arendt’s writing?’
‘Some,’ she said impatiently. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit woolly minded for you.’
‘I happened to read something by her which struck me as profoundly true. “No cause,” she wrote, “is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”’
‘This isn’t a tyranny.’
‘No, it isn’t a tyranny yet. But DEEP TRUTH is the perfect totalitarian tool.’
She sat down, leaned forward and slapped the top of her thighs with frustration. ‘Nobody cares, Eyam. That’s the whole point. Nobody gives a shit as long as they feel safe, they can feed themselves and watch TV. Most people have no higher political aspiration than a snail. The public buys the idea that these things make their lives easier and safer.’
‘But they haven’t been given the choice! Officials and politicians lied. Public money was spent without Parliament knowing.’
‘That’s hardly a first. The whole point of governments is that they take decisions about issues the public don’t want to think about. That’s what you spent your life doing.’
He got up, walked to the door and looked out. ‘Tell me you haven’t become as dumb and cynical as you seem,’ he said.
She shot to her feet, picked up the empty mug and flung it at him, missing by several feet. ‘God, you can be so bloody rude and patronising, Eyam. That’s why I didn’t reply to your emails.’
He turned. ‘I’m sorry: that was rude, I apologise. But you don’t seem to see that this isn’t a game: Eden White ordered the deaths of Holmes and Russell to protect his system.’ He moved to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Again he said he was sorry. ‘But their deaths are as nothing,’ he continued, ‘when you really understand that this system has begun to presume to know the intentions of every mind in the country and is penalising tens of thousands of people with increasing vindictiveness. You see, it allows no private realm. People can’t exist inside themselves. It is totalitarian because it dominates and terrorises from within. Once a government has that kind of power it not only develops extremely brutal characteristics as a matter of course, it becomes grossly inefficient because it is no longer accountable and its actions are never held up to scrutiny.’
She shifted under his hands. ‘I don’t need an elementary course in government studies.’
‘We all do,’ he said, ‘because this is the classic totalitarian sickness of the twentieth century, updated for the twenty-first century.’
She looked up to the rafters. ‘Oh please God – save me from this. You were the one who helped Eden White, the man who threatens to destroy the very system you cherished.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You set up the Ortelius Institute for Public Policy Research – his think tank.’
‘Yes.’
‘You gave him credibility. He used your brain, your ideas and policies to get to the most powerful people in the land and become one of them himself. You made it possible for him. He bought you.’
‘Let’s not forget White developed into a murderer and tyrant by proxy long after I worked for him.’
She freed herself gently from his hold and they stood looking at each other.
‘Look, I have to get out of this damp shirt.’
‘Be my guest,’ she said.
He went over to the sink, took off his jacket, sweater and a plaid shirt and washed himself in cold water with a flannel. He was tanned and there was little spare flesh on him. ‘You look fit,’ she said.
‘Thank you, Sis.’
‘I meant you’ve lost a lot of weight.’
‘A couple of stone since I began running: actually that’s why I didn’t notice I was ill. I put my fatigue down to the running. Would you hand me the towel?’
She went over to him with the towel and dried his back. ‘I will help you,’ she said to the back of his head, ‘because you are sick and you are my friend and well, you know . . . for old times’ sake. But there are conditions.’
He turned and reached for a shirt on top of a neat pile. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said.
‘You have to tell me everything you know. Where possible I want to see the documents and the proof. If I think that there is no case to answer, or that your evidence is insufficient, I reserve the right to withdraw my support.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you everything, but as you know the proof is dispersed and hidden. What made you change your mind so quickly?’
‘You can be sure it wasn’t your lecture on twentieth-century totalitarianism. It’s the
illegality of it all – the two murders and the fact they tried to incriminate you as a paedophile. I’m a lawyer: I believe in the law and the rule of law.’
‘Carry me over floods, Sister, carry me to the other side.’
She smiled despite herself. ‘Look, I’m meeting Kilmartin later. I need to think about getting to a place called Long Stratton.’
‘Don’t worry about that: Freddie will take you, but I want you to meet somewhere else – a village called Richard’s Cross.’ He picked up a walkie-talkie, which she hadn’t noticed, and spoke: ‘Give us about an hour.’
‘OK,’ came a voice.
She switched on Kilmartin’s phone. ‘I’ll just text him.’ But before she could compose the message the phone vibrated with an incoming text, which she read to Eyam: ‘Meet 5.00–6.00 – where?’
‘Tell him the parish church in Richard’s Cross. It’s a little way out of the village. We’ll look after the arrangements. Freddie will get your stuff from the Dove and he’ll take things from there.’ He sat down rather heavily on the bed, then lay back and propped himself up with a rolled sleeping bag.
‘You don’t look so good.’
‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘Another cup of tea would be appreciated.’
As she made it, he began to set out the case against John Temple and Eden White. His narrative was clear and unswerving: he did not stray or repeat himself and only paused to drink. He was the best witness that Kate had ever heard and as she listened she knew that he deserved all her help.
The guests at June Temple’s lunch moved slowly along the southern wall of the rose garden in front of Chequers looking at a new collection of narcissi planted by her the year before. Philip Cannon ambled behind the group smoking a cigarette, which caused some annoyance to the prime minister’s wife, who claimed the smell would spoil the scent of the flowers.
Cannon had had his fill of the weekend and took no notice of her, yet he conceded to himself she had done a fine job over lunch, charming a group of well-known guests that included a dramatist with a hit at the National Theatre, a historian, a TV anchorman, an actress, the Astronomer Royal and Oliver Mermagen. Over lunch they had talked of cultural renewal and the government’s campaign against pornography. The guests wore the slightly flushed and thrilled expression that Cannon was used to seeing on the faces of those who approached the centre of power. In his experience it was almost always accompanied by a manner of exaggerated fascination, no matter what the politics of the individual.
