He put Fiona’s schedule to one side, and turned to the rest of the material on the desk. On top of the pile, exhibit number one, was a plan of the city’s bunker. The Bunker was buried under one of the nineteenth-century forts up on the hill overlooking the city. It had been constructed in the early days of 1938, a belated recognition that Hitler might mean business, and since the war it had been modernized and updated on a piecemeal basis – a reconditioned diesel generator, a new air-conditioning system, some modest provisions against gas attack. The current plans looked impressive enough – 3000 square feet of floor space and room for seventy-five souls – but the Civil Defence budget had always been pitifully small, and the yearly maintenance schedule had barely kept pace with the damp, and the mould, and the small army of field mice that had somehow made a home there.
Goodman leaned back from his desk and gazed out of the window. All day, he’d been aware of the sheer volume of decisions tightening around him, isolating him, exposing him, the man at the very top, and it made him realize just how out of condition he’d become. For more than a year, since meeting Suzanne, he’d allowed the job to look after itself. He’d coasted through, getting by with the minimum of effort, while he enjoyed a taste of the adolescence he suspected he’d never had. His times with Suzanne had been the richest adventure, an almost narcotic experience, utterly contrary to the quietly disciplined habits of a working lifetime, and he’d enjoyed it all, thrived on it, come to depend on it, the excitement, and the deceit, and the giddy surrender to something huge and dangerous, and utterly out of control.
Now, though, he knew that it was all under threat, that the fairy tale had been abruptly overtaken by real life. He was due to meet Suzanne at seven-thirty. It was time he knew he couldn’t possibly spare. He’d already tried to phone her on the number at Gatwick. They said she’d left. He’d tried her office in the city. Her secretary said she assumed she was still at Gatwick. He’d even phoned her flat, in case she’d come back early, tired, alarmed, fed up, but there was no reply. He closed his eyes and lay back against the chair. He’d have to face her, to explain the realities of the situation, how dangerous it was, how important it might be for her to get away, abroad perhaps, while there was still a chance. They’d have to come to some kind of arrangement, while events ran their course, and the world decided whether or not to blow itself up.
There was Joanna, too, and the kids. So far, he’d managed to keep these two lives of his apart, not simply in practical terms – the one woman not finding out about the other – but also where it really mattered, in his head. He loved both women, one as a mother and friend, the other as a passionate soul mate, the keeper of his real self. So far, the arrangement had been ideal. But very soon, perhaps even now, there’d be a choice to make, another decision to add to the list, no less momentous for being personal, and infinitely more complicated than anything else on his desk.
He opened his eyes and ran a tired hand over his face, wondering whether it might not be time for a drink. Then he picked up the first of Fiona’s files and opened it at random. ‘Notes on the Payment of Contract Workers during the Transition to War Period.’ He read a line or two of the opening paragraph, and then closed the file and leaned back once again in his chair. He had a good mind, he knew it, and soon he would read the rest of the material, scribbling notes to himself, highlighting key points in red, sorting out the facts from the fantasy, tabulating his decisions in a sane, sensible order. It wouldn’t be perfect, far from it, but he’d do a good job, a better job than anyone else in the building, certainly better than Eric Moody, and at the end of it all, he’d know he’d done his best. The rest, all too probably, would be silence. A ruined city. Mountains of rubble. And a towering cloud of ash. He gazed out of the window, thinking again of Suzanne, where she was, what she was doing. The phone began to ring on his desk. He picked it up. Fiona’s voice, as efficient as ever.
‘A personal call,’ she said, ‘a Mr Harry Cartwright.’
Davidson sat on a bed in the big, bare ward. The place smelled of urine and carbolic soap. There were mattresses stacked against a door at the farther end. The light bulbs were underpowered, casting thin, pale shadows over the cracked green walls. The windows were barred on the inside. It was, as the Principal Secretary had promised, quite perfect.
Davidson shivered, pulling his coat around him. The place was cold.
‘How many of these wards do they have?’ he said. ‘Remind me.’
The other man turned from the window. He was frowning at the dirt on his fingertip. He was tall, bulky, overweight. He was wearing a raincoat over baggy jeans and a rumpled sweater.
‘Ten,’ he said.
‘That’s how many beds?’
‘Two hundred.’ He paused. ‘Double if we push them.’ Davidson nodded, thoughtful.
‘We’ll need them all,’ he said, ‘every single one.’
Four
By 14.30 GMT, the key elements in the US Task Force racing north towards the George F. Kennan had reached lat. 45°N, broadly abeam the Bay of Biscay. At the heart of the Task Force, protected by her screen of missile cruisers, was the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nuclear-powered, she carried an operational complement of more than three thousand men, and a mixed bag of nearly ninety aircraft. The fully-equipped hospital on ‘F’ deck could deal with any of the survivable wounds sustained by the crew of the Kennan. The snub-nosed ‘Phoenix’ missiles, slung beneath the wings of the F-14s could, on the other hand, start the war that would make the option of medical treatment strictly academic.
The carrier’s Captain, and the Rear-Admiral in charge of the battlegroup, convened a top-level meeting for 15.00 GMT. Scrambled satellite voice circuits were cleared to the Pentagon. Sea Knight helicopters ferried key officers from the escorting cruisers. And the carrier’s senior Navigating Officer was tasked to prepare a brief address on the arrival options for what the Rear-Admiral was now calling the HMO, or Hour of Maximum Opportunity.
The meeting began three minutes late. There was a series of brief updates on correlative deployments in the north-eastern Atlantic, movements of other NATO naval units choreographed to keep the Soviets guessing, and to split their primary strike forces, should the shooting start. There was a flotilla of West German missile destroyers edging north along the Norwegian coast. The British had pushed three hunter-killer submarines into the area, and they were reporting dozens of sonar-contacts as Soviet submarines streamed west from the bases around Murmansk. A total of nine American hunter-killers were lurking under the Polar ice cap, awaiting orders, while a further seventeen hunter-killers were in rapid transit from naval bases on the US Eastern seaboard.
NATO C-in-C, Eastern Atlantic, in Northwood, Middlesex, had meantime thought it prudent to withdraw all missile boats, American and British, from their normal stations in mid-Atlantic, to waters rather closer to home. One of the mysteries of the current crisis was what the Kennan was doing off the Norwegian coast in the first place. The big ‘boomers’ were normally stationed well away from the principal Soviet transit routes. In theory, the crisis should never have happened.
The introductory updates over, the Rear-Admiral threw back the black drape on the big tactical display board, revealing a map of the western portion of the Barents Sea. The latest position of the Kennan was marked by a large blue arrow. Surrounding the blue arrow, were a cluster of other markers, some big, some small, all orange.
On the Rear-Admiral’s invitation, the Eisenhower’s Intelligence Officer stepped up and began to detail the orange markers. On the basis of satellite reconnaissance, maritime overflights, and garbled reports from the Kennan herself, the London Fleet Ocean Surveillance Centre had positively ID’d one ‘Kresta II’ missile cruiser, four ‘Kashin’ destroyers, and one of the big ‘Elbrus’ class submarine rescue ships. In less than thirty-five hours, given the current weather in the area, the submarine would enter Soviet territorial waters. Until that moment, the US Navy had a perfect right to secure a line
to the crippled submarine, to transfer the sick and injured, and to tow her away to a port of their choosing. But once the giant hull crossed the line into Soviet territorial waters, the rules changed. Technically, and actually, the US Task Force would be committing an act of international trespass. Their pursuit would be illegal. The rescue would become an invasion.
There was silence in the room. At a signal from the Rear-Admiral’s EO, the Navigating Officer stepped forward. How long, asked the Rear-Admiral, did he anticipate before effecting a rendezvous with the Kennan? The Navigating Officer, a young high-flyer with the cool, crisp delivery of the Annapolis Command Course, looked briefly up at the map display, and then turned to a row of officers sitting before him.
‘Forty hours,’ he said. ‘Minimum.’
Goodman met Cartwright in a small French restaurant tucked away behind the city’s cathedral in mid-afternoon. Cartwright had an interest in the business, and had suggested the rendezvous as an alternative to his office. It would, he promised on the phone, provide them with a little privacy and perhaps a spot of late lunch as well. The place would be empty, but the chef would undoubtedly stay on. Their conversation need take no longer than half an hour.
Reluctant, but curious, Goodman had agreed to the meeting, all too aware that his diary would close that night: no more last-minute appointments, no more spare half-hours, no more time. Whatever Cartwright had to say would be important. Of that, he was quite certain.
He’d first met the accountant six years before. There’d been the makings of a financial scandal on one of the city’s more powerful committees – Tory councillors involved in an elaborate scheme to tempt old ladies into private nursing homes in exchange for the freehold of their own properties – and he’d needed some shrewd financial analysis before the scandal had a chance to surface in the local press. Cartwright had been recommended by a trusted friend, himself a businessman, and he’d taken the worst of the evidence along to Cartwright’s office. He’d closed the door, and sought and received an assurance about total confidentiality, and the little man had run a finger down the figures, and sipped at a glass of water, and asked a question or two, and confirmed what Goodman had suspected for weeks: that the figures were an elaborate fiction, and that the accounts were littered with false trails that had somehow foiled the city’s own auditors. He’d offered the conclusion without surprise, or criticism, or even curiosity. Then, as now, he seemed utterly opaque, a man without personal opinion, or political preference, a small, neat, colourless figure who spent most of his working life behind a desk, and who had now acquired a reputation as one of the city’s sharpest accountants.
Goodman had used Cartwright on a number of occasions since that first encounter, and had come to depend on him for advice, and the coldest of financial appraisals. Their meetings were always brief, uncluttered by sentiment or social ties. There’d never been any question of fees or favours, and from the start there had been a mutual respect, a tacit acceptance of two good minds coming together for the common good.
Now, Cartwright settled into the buttoned Dralon seat and reached for a bottle of Perrier. He poured two glassfuls and pushed one of them across the table towards Goodman. The gesture was an assumption. The wine list lay unopened beside the heavy crystal glasses. These were serious times.
‘Your health,’ Cartwright said drily.
Goodman nodded, raising his glass.
‘And yours,’ he said.
The two men sipped at the Perrier. The restaurant was quite empty, the tables already laid for dinner, the room in deep shadow behind the drawn curtain. The owner appeared from the kitchen, a tall, thin, rather bony man, immaculate in flannels and a striped blazer. He carefully placed a slender glass vase on the table between them. There were freesias in the vase, yellow, and purple, and a deep, deep red. The owner smiled a greeting to both men, but spoke first to Cartwright, the deference obvious in his voice.
‘Will you be eating, Harry?’
Cartwright nodded. He didn’t even glance at the menu.
‘Dover sole,’ he said, ‘and mashed potatoes.’
The owner looked apologetic.
‘We have a problem,’ he said.
Cartwright frowned.
‘No fish?’
‘No chef.’ The owner pulled a face. ‘He’s no longer with us I’m afraid. But I’ll do what I can.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Canada. He managed to get a seat yesterday. His brother lives in Quebec.’
‘I see.’ Cartwright glanced at his watch. ‘Are you any good with omelettes?’
The owner smiled and fluttered his hand.
‘Comme çi, comme ça …’ he said.
‘Cheese omelette then.’
Cartwright looked enquiringly at Goodman. Goodman shook his head. The owner disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the scent of freesias hanging in the air. The two men toyed with their glasses for a moment, then Goodman looked up.
‘What can I do for you?’ he said.
Cartwright gazed at him across the table, no trace of emotion, his face the usual mask. Anyone watching, any stranger, might assume they’d never met before.
‘You’re going underground soon,’ he said. ‘You must be.’
‘We are. It’s no secret.’
‘How many of you?’
Goodman paused for a moment, wondering what was coming next. He’d shared a good deal of information with Cartwright over the years, but he’d never broken the Official Secrets Act.
‘Seventy-eight,’ he said.
‘Married?’
‘Most of them.’
‘Kids?’
‘Quite a few.’
Cartwright nodded.
‘And what happens to them?’ he said. ‘When you all go underground?’
There was a silence. Goodman gazed at the tablecloth. White damask with a lace pattern around the edges.
‘It’s a tricky one,’ he said. ‘There are certain provisions for some of them. The possibility of … ah … selective evacuation.’
‘Where to?’
‘I’m not sure, to be truthful.’
Cartwright nodded.
‘So some families go. And some stay,’ he said. ‘Is that wise?’
‘No, it’s not. Which is why I’ll probably insist they all stay. When the time comes.’
Cartwright fingered his napkin, white starched linen folded into a fan shape on the plate beside his knife.
‘I hear you’re going to close the city,’ he said.
There was another silence. Goodman looked Cartwright in the eye. No point, he thought. No point pretending otherwise. Not with this man.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we are.’
‘And will it work? Will it be …’ he shrugged, ‘watertight?’
‘Yes. More or less. After a while, the country gums itself up.’
Cartwright leaned back, developing the analysis, remorseless, exact.
‘Then your colleagues’ families will be at risk,’ he said. ‘Pen people in. Fence them off. Give them no option but to sit and wait. They’ll become desperate. They’ll do anything.’ He paused. ‘Your colleagues’ families will become sitting ducks.’ He paused again. ‘And your colleagues will know it.’ Goodman nodded, conceding the logic of Cartwright’s argument.
‘Then they have to go.’ Cartwright made a small, neat gesture with his knife. ‘These wives. These children. For your sake. And your colleagues’ sake.’ He smiled, thinly. ‘For all our sakes.’
Goodman gazed at him a moment, sensing at last the drift of the conversation, the shape of the deal.
‘So what do you suggest?’ he said carefully.
‘I suggest we organize a charter. Out of the city.’
‘The roads are impossible. And it’ll get much worse. Even with fuel, there’ll be nowhere to go.’
‘We’ll do it by sea,’ Cartwright said, ‘and we’ll take them to a place of safety.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘M
yself …’ he shrugged, ‘and one or two associates. You’d supply a passenger list, and the appropriate dispensations. For fuel. Food. Plus permission to leave the harbour. The rest you should leave to us.’
‘And who will pay?’
‘It will be self-funding,’ he smiled, ‘as you can probably guess.’
Goodman nodded. Cartwright had a genius for identifying individual opportunities, and indicating ways they could be exploited; tiny, precise gestures with the carefully sharpened pencil he always kept on his desk. This philosophy tallied exactly with the revolution that had swept through Whitehall and had turned the city into a showcase local administration, quoted constantly in Ministerial memos, a model for the new Enterprise Culture. Goodman frowned.
‘Can you be more specific?’ he said.
Cartwright shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not yet.’
‘But it would work?’
‘Certainly.’
Goodman hesitated a moment, knowing only too well that the broad plan made sense. He’d already been wondering what to do with Joanna and the kids. New bulletins all day had been reporting forty-mile traffic queues, and the log-jam on the nation’s roads could only worsen once the petrol stations began to run out of fuel, forcing motorists to abandon their cars and walk. The prospect of consigning his own family to that kind of chaos was unthinkable. There had to be an alternative. Perhaps this was it.
‘Where would they go?’ he said.
‘West.’
‘But where?’
Cartwright shrugged.
‘Ireland. Portugal. Somewhere non-NATO. Somewhere upwind.’
Rules of Engagement Page 11
