A Sentimental Traitor

by Michael Dobbs

  Harry took her into his arms, kissed her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.

  She grabbed him fiercely, clinging to her belief. He winced and pulled away. ‘I think I left some of the bloody pins in the shirt,’ he gasped.

  ‘Love can be a real pain,’ she said, grabbing her bag.

  As they hurried away from the building where Jemma lived, they could hear the sound of approaching sirens. It could have been nothing more than the daily life of London, but their pace quickened. They passed the entrance to the Underground where fresh piles of the Standard were waiting to be grabbed by scurrying commuters – the late edition, with a new headline: ‘Ex-MP Link to London Murder’. It seemed as though everyone in the crowded street was looking at them, every CCTV camera pointed at them, every television store flashing images of his face. Harry had been hunted before, many times, but never like this, not in his own country. His legs were beginning to ache in the heat, hinting they weren’t as young as when he’d fled through the mountains of the Koh-i-Baba with Taliban on his trail, or pushed his troop on an insane trek through the Arctic wastes of northern Norway from Bardufoss to Bergen, beating the ferry carrying the rest of the regiment, earning him a cataclysmic bollocking from his CO and bragging rights for years. But, damn it, he was allowed to hurt, from his broken rib, his leap from the drainpipe, and that niggling voice from deep inside whispering that this was one battle Harry Jones wasn’t going to win.

  They were passing a bank. Harry grabbed Jemma’s arm. ‘Sorry to do this, but . . .’ He nodded towards the cash machine. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Everything you can. Full daily limit. Bank accounts, credit cards—’

  ‘Whoa. I’m a primary school teacher with an overdraft. How much do you think there’ll be?’

  Not enough, he feared, and he was right. A meagre £480. She split it in two and gave him half.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he asked, examining his share.

  ‘Just in case.’

  Caitlin’s apartment was on the top floor of a converted Victorian semi, the attic flat. Small, very stuffy in the heat, and smelt of cat litter. A coal-black Bombay stared at them from her perch on the back of the sofa.

  ‘That’s Sammi,’ Jemma said, making the introduction as she threw open windows to let in some air.

  ‘Hello, Sammi,’ Harry said. The cat hissed and disappeared behind a curtain. ‘Join the crowd,’ he muttered.

  The apartment was decorated in an idiosyncratic style that involved trying to recreate the feel of an Indian ashram; the colours were hideous and intensely claustrophobic. Both freezer and fridge were empty, the cupboards Spartanly bare, apart from cat food, but he was in no position to complain. There was a telephone, thank goodness.

  ‘How long have we got?’ he asked, mindful of Caitlin’s return from holiday.

  ‘How long will your Sergeant Arkwright give us?’

  ‘Long enough to contact the relatives, I hope. That’s the key, Sloppy said so.’

  ‘Then I’d better get back to the chase,’ she said, getting out her laptop and her phone.

  ‘No. Landline only, Jem,’ he said. ‘Your mobile could lead them straight here.’

  ‘Caitlin might just come to hate me,’ she said, as she sat beside her friend’s phone, which was pink and in the shape of a sleeping cat.

  ‘We’ll have to get you a throwaway like mine. And then only use them away from here.’

  ‘That’s twenty quid straight of our less than magnificent pot.’

  ‘I’m almost out of credit, too. And there’s one call I’ve got to make while I can.’

  ‘But it’s a risk going outside.’

  ‘It’s a risk staying in this place, too,’ he said, looking around the apartment. ‘I could go colour blind.’

  McDeath was preparing to chip out of the bunker on the seventeenth, twisting his feet, finding a secure place in the sand, knowing that if he got this one right the match was his, when his phone came to life. He ignored it. A substantial drinks tab back at the clubhouse hung on this one. He made a hash of it anyway. The ball rolled back down from the rim of the bunker and finished exactly where it had begun. He threw his wedge away in disgust and then reached for his phone. He didn’t recognize the number of the missed call. ‘Damn your heathen eyes,’ he swore before retrieving his club and starting on his shot all over again.

  It was the height of summer. McDeath was on leave. No one expected him to file anything at this time of year, so when he putted for the match on the eighteenth and missed, he was in no mood to respond to the caller who had cost him so much with anything other than oaths. But McDeath was a polite man as well as an enthusiastic golfer; he always returned calls, although in this case not until after he’d paid for his losses and washed away the pain with a tumbler or two of whisky. He stood on the verandah of the clubhouse, overlooking the final green, thinking of what might have been, and punched the button for his voicemail.

  ‘Well, suck my old granny’s toes,’ he whispered in awe as he listened to the message. He pressed the return call button immediately, walking away to the practice green where he could be on his own. ‘Hamish Hague,’ he announced. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Harry.’

  ‘I was just about to call the Mail in despair.’

  ‘Don’t go cheap on me, Harry. How can I help you?’

  ‘Got a small story for you.’

  ‘Small? Why bother with small when you’re the biggest story around? I walk into my clubhouse and you’re all over the infernal television screen.’

  ‘I want to do a deal with you, Hamish. A little help now, and in return I promise that whatever happens, you get the first interview with me, if you want it.’

  Want it? His editor would expect him to boil bairns for it. Harry was currently the most notorious man in Britain. ‘You’re taking one hell of a risk, Harry. This call alone guarantees me the front page tomorrow.’

  ‘But there’s a much, much bigger one, if you’re willing to be patient. Here’s the deal, Hamish. I give you a story now, a little speculative. I can’t give you proof, not yet.’

  ‘Don’t you read newspapers, Harry? At this time of year the press world is run by cretins who spend their time covering hamster-eating contests and claiming to have unearthed Osama bin Laden’s private love diaries. It’s why I prefer to play bad golf.’

  ‘It’s the Speedbird thing. You interested?’

  ‘Daft question. But why me? You could feed the story to a dozen different hacks.’

  ‘It’s partly because I know you protect your sources, and I’m feeling in need of a little protection right now.’

  ‘So this – whatever it is – doesn’t come from you?’

  ‘You don’t mention me, this call, or this telephone number, to anyone.’

  ‘And the exclusive?’

  ‘From the scaffold, if necessary.’

  A pause. ‘That would make it a very attractive offer. I think I’m your man.’

  So, for several minutes, the old journalist lit a pipe, looked into a setting sun, and listened without a breath of interruption.

  ‘And two other things, Hamish,’ Harry said when at last he had finished. ‘I want you to know that I’ve not done those things they’re accusing me of. I’ve been most expertly set up.’

  The breeze changed, ruffled the Scotsman’s hair, blew smoke into his eyes. ‘If what you’re suggesting is true, perhaps we both have.’

  ‘You weren’t given the full story, I’ll bet my life on it. I might have to.’

  ‘I suppose there’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘Thanks, Hamish. I owe you.’

  ‘You most certainly do. Ruined my game of golf, so you did. Left me well and truly bunkered.’

  ‘I know that feeling well.’

  ‘But the second thing. You mentioned there was something else.’

  ‘It’s about being set up, Hamish. I don’t want you to check this story out with your usual sources.’
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  ‘Why pray?’

  ‘I think they’ll find some way of stitching the story up. Just like they’ve stitched me up. They are very powerful people.’

  ‘But you haven’t the faintest idea who my sources are,’ the Scot protested.

  ‘EATA.’

  There was a long pause as Harry could hear nothing but the sighing of a gentle breeze across the links.

  ‘Tell me I’m wrong, Hamish.’

  But Hamish wouldn’t say. He cut the call.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘How’s it going, Jem?’ he asked when he returned from making his call.

  She was sitting on the sofa, her legs drawn up beneath her, the cat phone at her side. ‘Not great,’ she said, downcast. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many of the relatives are away on holiday, have moved, are out shopping. I called one poor woman only to be told by her deeply distressed daughter that she had died just last week.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You want to take a break?’

  ‘I want to put some pins back in your shirt. But I suppose, like all good things in life, that’ll have to wait for the moment. Meanwhile . . .’ She consulted the file on her laptop, straightened the multicoloured sofa throw that threatened to embrace her like an octopus, and picked up the phone. ‘Good evening, could I speak to Mrs Gracie, please? Hello, Mrs Gracie, I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. This is Jemma Laing – remember me? You very kindly spoke to me a couple of weeks ago about your husband. I’m so sorry to trouble you again but we’re still looking into some of the questions surrounding the crash. May I ask – I hope you don’t mind – but did your husband ever have any connections either with Russia, or gas pipelines, or perhaps even environmental matters? I know this all sounds rather disconnected but—’

  Jemma was listening intently to what the woman was insistent on saying, interjecting with an occasional ‘I see’ and ‘I’m sorry’. Then, after another lengthy pause: ‘Yes, that’s right. My name is Jemma Laing. No, I’m not connected to the police or any newspaper. I’m not a spiritualist, either. I’m so sorry to have troubled you, Mrs Gracie.’ She put the phone down before looking up at Harry, troubled. ‘She said I was harassing her, suggested I was operating some sort of scam. She threatened to report me to the police, Harry.’

  ‘Sorry you had to go through that, Jem.’

  ‘If she did, they could trace us back here, couldn’t they?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘Should we go elsewhere?’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘I don’t know. Friends. Family. Do you have family, Harry?’ she asked. She was surprised she didn’t know the answer; there were still dark spaces in his past she knew nothing about.

  ‘A son. He’s still a teenager.’

  She paused, shaken. That hadn’t made it into his Wikipedia entry. ‘You were married a third time?’

  ‘No. It’s a long story.’

  ‘Oh, I see. One of those stories,’ she said quietly. She didn’t pursue it, not for now. It would wait. ‘Well, look on the bright side.’

  ‘There is one?’

  ‘Our Mrs Gracie. She said the late Mr Gracie had never been to Russia, had nothing to do with wretched pipelines and would never have bothered with any of that environmental nonsense. Her words. So I guess that’s one we can cross off our list.’

  Daily Telegraph. P. 6

  FRESH QUESTIONS OVER GHAZI DEATH

  A new line of enquiry emerged last night into the Speedbird 235 flight that was shot from the skies shortly before last Christmas, killing all 115 passengers and crew on board, and the fate of the terrorist held responsible for the atrocity, Abdul Mohammed Ghazi. Usually reliable sources have suggested that Ghazi was not killed immediately by Russian forces who discovered his hideout in Azerbaijan. Instead, allegedly he was captured, wounded but alive, and subjected to interrogation about the circumstances of the crash. It was after, or during, this interrogation that he died.

  The sources suggested some disquiet in Brussels that Ghazi was not handed over for questioning by the proper international authorities. ‘If this is true,’ the source suggested, ‘it raises questions about what the Russians were looking for – or trying to hide.’

  The Russian authorities have been sensitive in recent months to any accusation of high handedness as they try to repair the economic and financial damage of the recent Great Crash, which hit their wealthy elite particularly hard. Moscow recently signed a multi-billion pound deal for the construction of the Babylon gas pipeline which is seen as being of huge economic and diplomatic importance to both Moscow and Brussels.

  Last night the Russian Embassy denied there was any truth in the allegations, insisting they should be credited with apprehending Ghazi and his gang after all attempts by British and US forces had failed. ‘We take great exception to these reports,’ a spokesman said . . .

  Harry rustled his copy of the paper with a sense of satisfaction. Small, but not insignificant. The Russians knew about it, and so would anyone else who mattered in this mess. Confusion to the complacent.

  He was congratulating himself when his eye fell on another, still smaller story. About a man found dead in his Jaguar XK140 sports car, a hose connected to the exhaust. In a lane just off a Dorset coast road near Abbotsbury, where as a child he had lived. The man had experienced recent domestic and financial problems. No one else was being sought by the police in their enquiries. In other words, a suicide. Another sad, pathetic, loser of a man – the report didn’t say that, of course, didn’t need to. Neither did it say that this man was a man of honour, and of extraordinary courage, a man who had thrown his own body over an IRA grenade to save his colleagues, not aware that it had been badly stored, had rusted, was a dud. A man who had risked his life for others many times, and would have willingly given it, had the call come, and who had been able to live with anything other than shame. A soldier, a friend of many, a father of three beautiful girls, who had lived, loved, drunk, fought and fornicated with the best of them, who had guarded his monarch and fought for the good name of his country when its politicians and puppet leaders had led it astray. A man who believed, almost too much, in honour, and when he failed his own high standards blamed no one but himself. A leader, a brother, a soldier. A man so much better than his faults.

  Not the words of the newspaper, but images and sorrows that filled Harry’s mind, and tears shed for his friend, Jimmy Sopwith-Dane.

  They had been stuck in their psychedelic prison for almost a week, their meagre pot of money diminishing, along with their spirits. Jemma continued with the task of trying to contact the relatives, while Harry beat himself up. He had been the last person to talk to Sloppy, might have talked him out of it, but hung up on him instead. Not his fault, Jemma said. Then whose fault was it? The weekend Mirror carried two pages of invented bilge devoted entirely to him, under the headline of ‘Hero to Zero’, and they didn’t even know about how he’d let down Sloppy. He hated himself, and hated those who were truly responsible all the more.

  ‘Jem,’ he said one evening, ‘I have to go to the funeral.’

  ‘You can’t. It’s too risky.’

  ‘I know. But I have to.’

  She was going to argue, but the pain in his eyes told her it was pointless.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘West Sussex. I’ll need the fare.’

  ‘We don’t have much money left. They’ve stopped my cards, Harry. Just as you said.’

  It meant that Arkwright was getting closer. She was at risk, too.

  ‘I need the fare,’ he insisted again, stubborn, a little fierce.

  ‘You’ll also need a jacket. A suit, even.’

  ‘Oh, save me,’ he sighed wearily, in misery.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take you to my favourite shop.’

  When they found the dark suit at the local branch of Oxfam, it was clear why it had been left behind. It had lived several dry cleanings too far, but it fit, almost.

  They had expected
few to attend. He was a suicide, a failure. A man’s failures linger, long after his triumphs have been mislaid. Not even his mother-in-law would come. There was his wife, of course, and his daughters, mourning the man they had once known, then lost, angry that he had allowed them no chance to help bring him back from the darkness. Yet as the time of the funeral drew near in a Norman church of oak beams and stained glass, the pews began to fill. Men, in suits or dark blazers, old comrades with their regimental ties and memories, enough of them to fill the church all the way back to the old Tudor font. The family turned round, struggling to believe what they saw, but regaining pride.

  The battle flags of the local regiment, long extinct, hung down from their masts along the nave, some so old they were little more than gauze. At the rear of the church the men of the Royal British Legion held their own flags, furled, in gauntleted hands.

  Harry arrived shortly before the coffin. He had no tie and he hadn’t shaved for a week, hoping that it would give him some measure of disguise, but every man there ecognized him. He tried to slip quietly into an end pew yet heads turned. Soon the entire congregation knew of his presence. A man on the run, still one of theirs. Briggsie, the Regimental Sergeant Major of an earlier era, walked slowly up to Harry, with all eyes upon him. He saluted, shook Harry’s hand in welcome, before walking back to his place. Almost everyone there knew of what he had done in Iraq and Armagh, some had even heard the stories of Afghanistan and the Colombian drug trail that had become a legend. That all mattered more than any detective sergeant named Arkwright.

  The coffin arrived, pushed by anonymous men in black on a wheeled frame. As they entered the church, they were stopped, a Union flag appeared from somewhere and was draped over the coffin. Then, as the cortege proceeded, the men of the Legion formed a guard of honour and lowered their flags, now unfurled, in sadness as he passed.