Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  *

  Davidson sat over the telex machine, and keyed in the enquiry codes for the second time. Regional HQ had been silent since midnight and he guessed they were as much in the dark as he was. The home counties, in any case, had been swamped with refugees from London, and judging by the signals traffic he’d managed to intercept, they had bigger problems on the ground than the likelihood of a nuclear attack. The major arterial roads out of London had been blockaded by the locals, hundreds of families abandoning their cars and taking to the fields, finding food where they could, trying to avoid the squads of vigilantes, with their shotguns and their crossbows. There’d been reports of woundings, and several deaths. The situation, in a favourite Home Office phrase, was ‘extremely fluid’, yet another justification for the restrictions imposed here, in the city, where geography permitted a realistic chance of containing the situation.

  On the whole, he thought, the experiment had worked rather well. The incident at the flats had been nasty, and there’d been worse to follow. But the city was quiet again now, and there was no indication of the trickier Queen’s Gate scenarios ever coming to pass. The Cartwright affair was potentially awkward, but he was sure that Ingle could limit whatever damage had been done. In all, then, a satisfactory result, and if he ever got the chance he’d put together a comprehensive report, and make sure it found its way to the right desks. Brussels gossip about the British being a nation of donkeys, easily straddled, easily led, had – after all – been spot on. With a little guile, and a handful of sit-coms, you could make the Brits do practically anything.

  He punched the last digit of the enquiry code into the small subsidiary keyboard interfaced with the telex machine. He heard the whirr of the decoder. A small, red light began to blink, then changed to green. Copy appeared. It was sourced from London. He nodded, thankful at least that the capital still existed. He read the lines of heavy black print. There’d been local exchanges in the Central Front, light casualties, but no major engagements. The rogue Jaguar had in fact missed the tank park by a comfortable ten kilometres, inflicting only light damage, and SACEUR had gone to considerable lengths to explain the incident. So far, then, the West had only one foot across the nuclear threshold, and the Soviets were showing a restraint which the author of the telex, in an understandably subjective moment, was calling ‘quite remarkable’.

  In the Barents Sea, meanwhile, there were confusing reports of a stand-off, with the Russians electing not to board the stricken submarine, and the US carrier battle group pausing on the edge of Soviet territorial waters. That put the Kennan squarely between the two, and reading between the lines Davidson suspected that something must have gone catastrophically wrong aboard the submarine itself. Perhaps a major radiation leak. Perhaps a problem with one of the Trident warheads. Ironic, he thought. The terrible mysteries of atomic fission take us to the brink, and the same ungovernable energy pulls us back again. For the first time, he permitted himself to think seriously about seeing his home again, the tiny riverside flat with a view across Steven’s Eyot towards Hampton Court.

  There was a knock at the door. Davidson glanced up. House rules dictated that no one but himself should be permitted access to the telex room. He leaned across and unlocked the door. Quinn was standing outside, his gas mask hanging loosely from a webbing belt around his NBC smock. Davidson could tell at a glance that he was playing his new role to the hilt, a bravura performance. He nodded grimly to the Telex machine, now quiet.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Davidson thought a moment about the paragraph from London, careful not to overstate the case, conscious yet again of the perils of optimism. It was like talking about a sick friend or relative, stricken with serious illness. No one was really sure whether it would be terminal or not, so it paid to be cautious. Everything, after all, depended on an accurate diagnosis.

  ‘It’s difficult to be certain,’ Davidson said carefully, ‘but I’d say there were signs of slight improvement.’

  Quinn shifted impatiently from foot to foot.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but what do we do about the city?’

  ‘The city?’

  ‘The all-clear.’ He paused. ‘Everyone’s still waiting for the roof to fall in. It might be kinder to let them know otherwise.’

  Davidson stared at him for a moment. He’d completely forgotten about the carefully rehearsed series of siren blasts – up and down the scale for Attack Imminent, one long sustained note for all-clear. He thought about the telex again, the total absence of instructions or analysis, just the raw data passed on down the line for his own interpretation. He turned back to Quinn, and as he did so, the telex began to chatter. The two men looked at each other, then Quinn turned away, obeying Davidson’s rules to the letter, denying himself first glimpse of the latest news.

  Davidson stooped to the machine, reading the text, line by line, as the paper rolled out. He began to smile. The machine stopped. He tore off the message and gave it to Quinn without comment. In the light of the Jaguar débâcle, the Americans and the Soviets had struck a bilateral agreement on the Washington/Moscow hot line. No first-use of ICBMS. Status quo in Western Europe. The Kennan to be towed to the deepest part of the Barents Sea and scuttled under joint Soviet/American supervision. The crew already en route to specialist facilities in Reykjavik. There was more. Cautious rumours of bilateral negotiations. Some kind of reference to the Security Council. Talks about talks. Quinn folded the Telex and returned it to Davidson. He was clearly bemused.

  ‘Status quo?’ he said. ‘Bilateral negotiations? What does that mean?’ Davidson reached over and put the telex machine on standby. Then he looked up. Quinn was still waiting for an answer.

  ‘It means the game’s not worth the candle,’ he said wearily, ‘Never was, never will be …’

  He paused wishing suddenly that there was a window to stare out through, fresh air at the turn of a handle, the wind on his face. He looked at Quinn again. The man was still bewildered, still trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘So how long have we got?’ he said.

  Davidson shrugged, and then smiled, picking up his jacket from the back of his chair.

  ‘Thirty years?’ he said. ‘Forty? Who knows? It’ll be a while before they get this close again.’

  Quinn stepped back as Davidson left the room, locking the door behind him. He’d been Controller for barely an hour, and there was the faintest hint of disappointment in his face when Davidson took him by the arm and began to walk him the length of the Bunker. They paused by the desk of the secretary who’d earlier been sobbing into her gas mask. Davidson looked down at her. The girl was composed now, back in control again, though there was the slightest tremor when the pencil paused in mid-sentence over the memo pad. Davidson reached down and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘Break out the brandy snaps,’ he said, ‘and ask the siren chap to join us in the office.’

  He looked up, aware of the eyes watching him, the faces upturned, the collective unvoiced question: when does all this end? He hesitated a moment, then reached into his pocket and produced the Telex. He unfolded the sheet of copy paper and cleared his throat. He hated making any kind of public statement, hated committing himself, but he knew that there was no humane alternative.

  ‘This is strictly subjective …’ he paused, ‘… but I think we’re through the worst.’

  There was absolute silence for a second or two, then one of Lipscombe’s staff officers at a desk at the far end began to applaud, smacking the flat of his hand on the desktop. This strange rhythm, bang bang bang, was taken up around the room, gleeful, insistent, capturing Davidson’s news, his cautious prognosis, and turning it into something solid and public, a buttress against anything ever going wrong again, an impregnable dam against groundbursts, and radiation, and the terrible prospect of it all coming true. They’d been in the front line, all of them. They’d sited dressing stations, and discussed the theory of triage, and stockpiled bodybags, and read mor
bid reports on the properties of industrial quicklime, and now – unilaterally – they’d decided that it was all over.

  Davidson waited until the noise began to die down. Then he glanced at the telex again.

  ‘Weather report’s pretty good, too,’ he said, ‘if anybody’s interested.’

  Dawn found Mick and Albie on a small crescent of pebble beach in the shadow of the harbour walls. It was a place they’d both known since childhood, a place where you went as a kid on the hotter days in high summer, a place they now went back to, common consent, half a crate of Grolsch down, six bottles to go. They took with them a big ghetto blaster, and a couple of picnic chairs, and a collection of ancient cassettes they’d retrieved from Mick’s pad. Early Eighties stuff, David Bowie, and UB40, and Roberta Flack. They set the chairs up at the water’s edge, and rolled up the bottoms of their jeans, daring the tide to come in. They coaxed another ten decibels from the big stereo speakers while the grey metallic light stole up from the east, and the sky began to purple, and the big cumulus clouds made way for the first rays of the rising sun.

  By the time they’d emptied another couple of bottles each, they were into a serious helping of Tina Turner.

  ‘Right now I need your loving,’ sang Albie, totally tuneless, big delivery, ‘Right now …’

  ‘La la …’ sang Mick, ‘La la …’

  The record came to an end and Mick looked sideways at Albie.

  ‘You never could fucking sing,’ he said fondly, ‘never.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Albie, ‘but at least I can remember the fucking words.’

  Mick respooled the cassette, catching the end of Overnight Sensation before the big raunchy voice came out again. Albie sat back, giving her centre stage, mouthing the words, a box of stale crisps on his lap, his feet in the sea. Mick sat beside him humming along, throwing pebbles at the flotilla of empty bottles bobbing in the flood tide. Now and again, he’d hit one, the sound of breaking glass, and Albie would scowl and remind him again that there was fifteen pence on each bottle, good money wasted, typical of the endless lost opportunities, small fortunes they’d pissed away in the wind, millionaires in the making, rich for an hour.

  The sun up now, long shadows on the beach; the music came to an end, and then at last they heard the air raid sirens wailing out over the city, one long sustained note. Mick looked at Albie again, his sixth and last bottle raised in salute. The end had come and they’d judged it to perfection.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ he said, ‘happy fucking landings.’

  Albie eyed him, smiling.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘Go for it.’

  They both closed their eyes while Tina Turner launched into I’ll be Thunder and after a while Mick glanced at his watch and put his hands over his ears. Ever since he could remember, he’d hated bangs.

  Ten

  Gillespie was still listening to the last dying note of the all-clear when he heard the footsteps again. He glanced across at Sean. The boy looked asleep, face to the wall, his chest rising and falling. The footsteps paused outside in the corridor, and the door opened. A middle-aged man in a blue uniform was standing in the grey half-light from the window. He motioned Gillespie to his feet. Gillespie followed him down the corridor, and they stopped for a moment outside a yellow panelled door while the guard knocked twice and waited for an answer. Gillespie recognised the door from his earlier visit, the same NO SMOKING sticker, half ripped off. A voice called from inside. They went in. The same big man glanced up from the table. He looked as if he’d just been roused. He was eating a bowl of cornflakes. Gillespie could smell burnt toast. There were crumbs on the table. The big man nodded at the guard.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  The guard grunted and left the room. The big man transferred his spoon to his left hand and extended his right. There were blobs of milk on his sweater. He smelled of cheap cigars.

  ‘Name’s Ingle,’ he said briefly. ‘Should have told you last time.’

  Gillespie nodded, shaking his hand briefly and settling into the chair across the desk. Ingle resumed his breakfast, spooning the last of the soggy flakes into his mouth. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. Gillespie watched him carefully.

  ‘War over, is it?’ he said. ‘All clear?’

  ‘Postponed,’ Ingle said. ‘Till next time.’

  ‘Oh,’ Gillespie nodded, ‘I see.’

  Ingle pushed the empty bowl to one side, and reached back for a large brown envelope on the radiator. He opened the envelope and shook the contents out onto the desk. Upside down, Gillespie recognized his evening’s work at the dock: the faces in close-up, fathers, mothers, kids, the dim shape of the boat behind, the dense black of the night. Ingle spread a handful of the photos on the desk, taking his time. Finally he looked up, curious, conversational, a man expressing a purely passing interest.

  ‘You took these?’

  Gillespie nodded.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the dock.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight.’ He paused. ‘Last night.’ He nodded at the trawler. ‘Before she sailed.’

  ‘I see.’

  Ingle selected a photograph and picked it up. It showed a family of five bent over a small mountain of suitcases. Mick Rendall was clearly visible in the background, gazing at the eldest daughter’s bum. Ingle looked up.

  ‘There by invitation, were you?’

  Gillespie looked at him for a moment, wondering whether to bother with an answer, this big untidy man with his scruffy sweater and his unwashed hands.

  ‘No,’ he said at last.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Ingle let the air escape from the word, trailing off into silence. He sorted through more of the photos, looking for one in particular. He found it. He passed it across to Gillespie. A woman lay sprawled on cold concrete, one hand outstretched. Gillespie looked at it. Her face had come out well. Perfect focus. Ingle shifted his weight in the chair and picked a shred of cornflake from his teeth.

  ‘So what’s all that about?’ he said matter-of-factly.

  Gillespie looked at it a little longer.

  ‘That’s a lady with a flat on the seafront,’ he said slowly, ‘and she’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  Ingle raised an eyebrow, and retrieved the picture, checking for himself. He looked up.

  ‘You sure she’s dead?’ he said.

  ‘Positive. She fell from a balcony. Nine floors up.’

  ‘You checked that, too?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ingle nodded, reaching for a pen.

  ‘Address?’ he said.

  Gillespie gave him the address. Ingle wrote it on the back of the photo. Then he looked up again.

  ‘What’s her name?’ he said. ‘This friend of yours?’

  Gillespie smiled at him, recognizing the old trick. He didn’t answer. Ingle repeated the question, bemused, holding the photo between his big white fingers. Finally Gillespie leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Why don’t you ask your Controller?’ he said.

  Ingle frowned. ‘You what?’

  ‘I said, why not ask your Controller? Who the lady is?’

  ‘You mean Mr Goodman?’

  Gillespie nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I mean Mr Goodman.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  Gillespie shrugged, patient, taking his time.

  ‘Try…’ he said, ‘and you might find out.’

  Ingle nodded, looked at his watch, and began to tidy the photos into a pile on his desk.

  ‘Not going to tell me?’ he said, yawning.

  Gillespie shook his head, smiling, enjoying himself.

  ‘No…’ he said, ‘but he might.’

  The big man nodded and produced a pack of small Dutch cigars. He lit one, and extended the open packet towards Gillespie before hesitating, the apology just a little too fulsome.

  ‘Sorry…’ he
said, ‘sorry … I forgot. You don’t smoke, do you?’

  Gillespie looked him in the eye, acknowledging the real message, so carefully wrapped in the loose, easy, conversational phrase. The file read, war declared, hostilities under way.

  ‘No,’ he said carefully, ‘I don’t.’

  Davidson took Ingle’s phone call in Goodman’s old office. Quinn was down in the well of the Bunker, moving from desk to desk, explaining individual parts of the big jigsaw, the jobs to be done next, now that the worst of the crisis hid evidently passed.

  Since dawn, he’d received word from Corsham that both sides were willing to discuss a formula for starting talks, exploring proposals that would withdraw half a million men from the Central Front, and restore much of the status quo. There were the normal precautionary warnings about ‘early days’ and ‘continued vigilance’, but even the terse Whitehall prose had found room for a postscript. So much for CND, Corsham had signed off, God Save Edward Teller.

  Now, Davidson answered the phone, recognizing Ingle’s hoarse voice at once.

  ‘Morning,’ he said cheerfully, ‘happy Wednesday.’

  Ingle grunted something unintelligible, then changed the subject.

  ‘This bloke Gillespie…’ he said.

  Davidson frowned, remembering Ingle’s briefing. The man with the camera. The man who’d followed Goodman.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Ingle briefly described his exchanges with Gillespie, the rolls of film retrieved from the VW, the pictures spread on the desk. Davidson’s frown deepened, news he didn’t want to hear, the euphoria of the past hour or so quite gone.

  ‘He was at the dock?’ he queried. ‘Last night?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Took photos?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Davidson nodded, thinking at once of the other girl, Gillespie’s little friend, the reporter sprawled in the dust at the roadblock.

  ‘These photos…’ he said carefully, ‘how … ah … comprehensive are they?’

  ‘Very. He did well.’

  ‘Do you recognize any of the faces?’