A Sentimental Traitor

by Michael Dobbs

  Harry was stunned. It took him some time to understand what it all implied. ‘So all the Egyptian nonsense . . .’

  ‘Had many benefits.’

  ‘It was all to cover up your own mistake.’

  ‘That’s not how I would put it but . . .’ She nodded in acceptance.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘We both came here to understand. I think we have.’

  ‘And to finish it.’

  ‘Yes, that, too. You’ve played superbly, stretched me almost to my limit, Harry.’

  ‘But this isn’t a game of tennis.’

  ‘You’ve scored some excellent points, taken a couple of sets off me, perhaps, but despite it all I’m afraid the match is mine.’

  He said nothing, waited.

  ‘What were you expecting when you came here? A polite little chat? That I would withdraw quietly? An early retirement to my cottage in the countryside?’

  That was when he knew for sure he was going to die. He had always known it was the most likely outcome, which was why he’d written to Usher, telling him so, knowing that his death would give his words more power. Now only the means of death was to be decided.

  ‘Why, Harry?’

  ‘I had to know the truth.’

  ‘But I keep telling you that the truth is a hideously dangerous weapon. That’s why it’s entrusted to people like me.’

  ‘To twist. To hide.’

  ‘What isn’t known can’t hurt.’

  ‘The gospel of the whore.’

  ‘Only the really good ones.’ She laughed, the gold bangles at her wrist jangling in applause.

  ‘Didn’t take you long to get bored with playing the grieving widow.’

  His words brought her mockery to an abrupt halt. ‘You know, Harry, you’re truly a remarkable man, willing to die for a cause. I admire that. It’s such a pity you’ve chosen the wrong one.’

  She produced a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one. The smoke hung languidly in the heavy air. ‘I told you, Harry, that the Russians sometimes help me deal with . . .’

  ‘The messy bits.’

  ‘Exactly. Right at this moment a rifle is trained on you, has been from the moment you stepped out onto this roof. A Dragunov SVD.’

  He recognized it immediately as the standard Russian sniper rifle. Brilliant scope. Could take out a man at more than three-quarters of a mile, so long as it wasn’t silenced, and what would be the point of that in these parts?

  ‘Forgive my slight deception, but I fear that’s become part of our relationship.’

  He resisted the futile temptation to glance round, to try to fix the location, where the bullet would be coming from. Instead he stared at her. Now the sweat was unmistakable, beading on her brow.

  ‘For the greater good, Harry.’

  ‘Spare me the sermon, I’ve seen it done so much better.’

  She took another deep lungful of tobacco, the tip of the cigarette glowing bright as it was consumed. ‘Don’t blame me for the children. Not my fault. It’s what I want to stop, all this unnecessary dying, all your ridiculous wars. That’s the dream, that’s what we can achieve together. No more wars, Harry, no more battlefields, no more victims.’

  ‘Except one.’

  ‘The final casualty. That’s not a bad epitaph, when you come to think of it.’

  ‘I might drown in gratitude.’

  She raised the cigarette, examined its glowing tip. ‘As soon as I throw it away . . .’

  ‘You couldn’t do it yourself, then.’

  Her expression suggested she had never considered it.

  ‘Your kind never can. All those ideals you’re happy for others to die for, so long as don’t get your hands mucky. That’s why you won’t win, not in the end, because one day you’re going to run out of friends to do your dirty work for you.’

  ‘It’s a point of view, Harry. Who knows, maybe you’re right? But I’m afraid you won’t be around to see it.’

  She held the cigarette out at arm’s length. He watched, exhausted, the fight gone. He wasn’t afraid. There was no pain in death. Yet suddenly he was in pain. He realized that his dying would make no difference to anyone, and that hurt. Hurt so much.

  Her hand was trembling, unsteady, her breasts rose and fell rapidly beneath her crisp cotton blouse as she snatched for breath. She hesitated. ‘Bye, Harry,’ she whispered. Then she dropped the cigarette.

  It took the 54mm round little more than a second to travel from the muzzle to its target. Harry sensed rather than heard the air about him being torn apart. The bullet casing for the Dragunov is made of thin steel with a small lump of lead at the rear, which is designed to thump forward as soon as it hits the target. The explosive effect can be terrible. Harry watched as a small, neat hole appeared on Patricia’s forehead and a hideous mist erupted into the air around her. The world seemed to freeze, turn silent, solid. Was it his imagination, or did those eyes of blue ice sparkle in surprise, in that moment before she collapsed to the ground? She lay staring at him, her eyes still open. He was glad he couldn’t see what little lay behind them.

  Then the world returned. The rooks rose from their roost, squabbling as they fluttered into the haze-filled sky above Upper Marlsford, but otherwise the village remained untouched. Yet Harry couldn’t move, overwhelmed in disbelief, struggling to comprehend. There was no point in throwing himself behind the parapet for protection, not any more; if they’d wanted them both dead he’d be there now, lying alongside Patricia. Someone, somewhere, had changed their mind. He had been spared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Athenaeum sweltered in the heat, as did all who entered. It was so unrelentingly hot that even the gilded statue of the virgin goddess after whom the club had been named seemed to shimmer in sweat. The doors had been thrown wide open in an attempt to catch stray zephyrs, but all they got was traffic fumes.

  The three men lunched on the terrace beneath the shade of a sprawling umbrella, in a corner and in shirtsleeves, thanks to the relaxation of the strict dress code by the club secretary, with the neighbouring table left empty to give them a measure of privacy. Even in this club whose membership was made up of the most illustrious figures from the British Establishment and where all men (if not women) were held equal, these were individuals who made their own rules. Harry sat with Ben Usher and their host, a man in his fifties with a long aquiline nose, immaculate silver hair and a complexion like fresh blancmange. His name was Sir Rupert Mowbray. He was the head of MI6.

  ‘Roop and I wanted to say thank you, Harry,’ Usher was saying, as they began attacking a salad of salmon.

  ‘Most assuredly,’ the spymaster echoed in an accent that betrayed his Etonian and Scots Guards origins. He stretched for the bottle of Chablis; the wine steward had been discouraged from hovering. ‘You’ve been most hugely helpful.’

  ‘In all honesty I have difficulty trying to comprehend what you’ve been through,’ Usher added, ‘yet still you had the sense of public service to write me that letter, Harry. Forgive me, I know such things are entirely superfluous in your case, but that was the mark of a very special man.’ The former Prime Minister raised his glass in salute.

  ‘Illegitimis non caborundum,’ Harry muttered, raising his own. He noticed the slightest wrinkle of doubt on Mowbray’s face. ‘Never let the bastards get you down,’ he translated, very roughly. ‘Oh, I know it doesn’t scan or parse or whatever it is you classical scholars do, Rupert, but I always think in English. Especially when my balls are roasting.’

  ‘Ours is such a convenient language,’ the spymaster added. ‘Why, almost everybody speaks it nowadays.’ He nodded to the maître d’, whose name tag identified him as Alonso, and the plates were cleared.

  ‘You fully recovered from it yet, Harry?’ Usher asked when they were alone once again.

  ‘Batteries recharging. Slowly.’

  ‘Take your time, as much as you need, but you know we want you back in Westminster. Not just in harness
but right at the top.’ Usher reached over and grasped Harry’s sleeve, squeezing his arm. ‘Now your name’s been cleared, the world’s your oyster.’

  ‘Must be early stages, Ben. Just feels like a bit of grit.’ His dreams were still filled with nightmares, and much of his days, too. He rolled his glass between the palms of his hands and studied it; even this grand cru tasted flat. ‘You know, I don’t understand why I’m here, why I wasn’t the one shot. That was the plan, must’ve been. I’m still trying to piece it all together . . .’

  ‘I think,’ Mowbray said, in the manner of a man who knew many secrets and enjoyed handing them out in a parsimonious fashion, ‘you might owe much of your survival to the blessed Ms Vaine.’

  ‘Then I’m filled with surprise and disgust.’

  ‘Nothing totally clear in this murky world, but reading between the lines . . .’ Mowbray paused to make sure they couldn’t be overheard. ‘She rather jumped the gun, you see, put the Russians in a very awkward position. Imagine it. They’d been working for years to secure the pipeline contract, and suddenly they wake up one morning to discover they’ve got everything they want and even a little bit more, thanks to Ms Vaine’s machinations. For a while they’re willing to go along with her plan. They have the contract, the West is getting itself bogged down ranting about yet more mad Muslims, while the men in Moscow have entirely clean hands and are busy running their eyes over the specs for their next generation of super-yachts.’ He paused to wipe a stray flake of salmon off his shirt cuff with the corner of his napkin, very fastidious. ‘Christmas came early for them, and the New Year was all about sitting back and making money. You know, occasionally on a dull afternoon I get the impression they’re tired of always being put on the naughty step, they think it’s someone else’s turn.’

  ‘And we gave them their chance in the form of the Egyptians. Not our finest hour,’ Usher said, making it sound as if it had been entirely someone else’s fault while he buried the admission beneath a forkful of lettuce.

  ‘It continued. Got better. Once they had hold of the unfortunate Mr Ghazi and presumably ripped the last crumb of truth out of him, the Russians had an additional prize, their boot on the testicles of some vile neighbouring despot who is now in the uncomfortable position of having to jump every time the Russians stamp their foot, or be exposed as an international mass murderer responsible for shooting babes and sucklings out of the sky. American sucklings, what’s more, and you know how sensitive the Americans get, particularly in an election year.’

  ‘But – who?’ Harry asked.

  Mowbray furrowed his brow, sipped his wine. ‘That’s what’s been bothering us, too. Not sure yet. It’ll come out eventually, of course, some defector selling his story, or perhaps we’ll have to wait for Putin’s memoirs. But for the moment you can take your pick. Georgia, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Chechnya. Some lowlife republic with an alternative interest in the pipeline or who hate the Russians so much they’d skin their own grannies to get back at them. My guess is the Chechens but of course the Russians aren’t letting on, deny all knowledge of it. And why the devil should they let on when they can still squeeze more out of the situation? It’s like money in the bank for them.’ He shook his head in the manner of a schoolmaster confronted with a page of appalling maths. ‘For a while all of this seemed wonderful, but Ms Vaine proved to be . . . well, a bit of a wasp in the wine glass, and everything got out of hand. Moscow yearned for the quiet life, yet suddenly they were being asked to get involved in assaults on the streets of London, burglaries, beatings. They lost the unfortunate Felix.’ He paused, his voice a little lower. ‘Then they were asked to assassinate you, Harry, bodies littered around the countryside. I think that was probably when they fell out of love with her. I’m speculating here, but I suspect they remembered all that fuss a few years ago when they poisoned Alexander Litvinenko – you recall that, of course. Polonium in his teacup. Not a pleasant way to go. Not something they wanted to risk again.’

  Harry nodded. The wretched Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent and outspoken opponent of Vladimir Putin, had been poisoned in a restaurant less than five minutes’ walk from where they were sitting. It had taken him three weeks to die, in agony.

  ‘It’s my reading of it all that someone in Moscow concluded she was causing more trouble than she was worth. They sought a life of tranquillity and instead they got Patricia Vaine. A woman out of control, which is not at all the Russian thing. She proved to be a little too enthusiastic even for their taste.’

  ‘But she was their woman,’ Harry said, yet to be convinced.

  ‘No, never that. Her husband was their man, surely – presumably some embarrassment in his private life that they were able to exploit, but she was never truly theirs. A very inconstant lover, was Ms Vaine. And the men from Moscow would eventually have found themselves dragged into her little foibles. Then there was an article in the Telegraph about some Russian double-dealing, not coming clean on what they knew of the crash. You saw it, Harry?’

  He nodded, very slowly.

  ‘Pretty speculative stuff, frankly, but it came from the man whom the lady had clearly been spoon-feeding. That stirred the chamber pot, raised doubts, suggested she might even be playing some sort of double game, and so . . .’

  ‘Her instead of you, Harry,’ Usher said, completing the thought.

  ‘But she was their line into EATA, everything right from the top. One hell of a prize to throw away.’

  ‘Oh, don’t suppose for a moment she was the only rotten Russian apple within that rather undistinguished barrel,’ Mowbray continued with an air of disdain that had been nurtured over many years in Whitehall. ‘They’ll have more, rest assured, you know what those bloody Cossacks are like.’

  Rest assured? When had he last done that? ‘What the hell am I supposed to say at the inquest?’ Harry asked.

  Mowbray took his time before replying. He put aside his knife and fork in a deliberate manner that made the gesture seem significant. ‘Glad you mentioned it,’ he said, not meaning it. The words came slowly, as if they were being forced to clamber over some obstruction before they emerged. ‘There’s not going to be a public inquest, actually. Everything under wraps for this one, being handled in camera. Friendly coroner. National security grounds. Taken out of the hands of the police. You know how it is. A suicide after the tragic death of her husband.’

  ‘Suicide?’ Harry almost spat out a mouthful of salmon in surprise.

  ‘Didn’t you know? Apparently they found a shotgun up there on the tower.’ The spy chief stared brutally at Harry, almost challenging him to contradict.

  For a moment Harry was lost. There were so many lines that didn’t join up. He’d been in shock for some time up on that tower, didn’t know for how long. Her phone had rung, several times, went unanswered. Shortly after that people had started arriving – police, a medical examiner, an unmarked ambulance, but also men in well-cut suits who seemed to have some sort of authority over the others. Harry had been taken away, questioned but not interrogated by the police, with the men in suits in constant attendance. The next thing he’d known he was being invited to lunch.

  ‘It’s a delicate matter, Harry,’ Usher joined in. ‘If this all came out right now, God knows where we’d be. The truth is . . .’

  ‘A dangerous weapon,’ Harry whispered, remembering her words.

  ‘Well put. We’ll sort it, of course we will,’ Usher assured.

  ‘Sort . . . what exactly?’

  ‘Everything. You, for a start. Get you up and running again. The first safe by-election.’

  ‘And forgive me if this seems a little like asking coal to come to Newcastle,’ Mowbray weighed in, ‘but I happen to know for a fact that the energy companies involved in the pipeline project would welcome someone with your experience being brought on board. Very much welcome.’

  Harry sniffed the air, didn’t much care for the smell of it. He was being bought off. ‘The pipeline? But won’t there have to b
e a rethink, at least a pause for consideration?’

  ‘No one wants delay, Harry, it’s too important, any more than we want the bloody thing running through bandit country,’ Mowbray said.

  Harry pushed his plate away, his appetite evaporating in the heat. ‘Forgive me, but you’ve just told me the Russians are hiding a mass murderer.’

  ‘Speculation – and a short-term situation, I’m sure,’ Mowbray said.

  ‘There’s a limit to how much pressure we can put on them,’ Usher joined in.

  ‘After all, this pipeline is important to everyone,’ Mowbray came back. ‘We have to share the bathroom with some pretty unpleasant people; the view is that at least the Russians are learning to flush.’

  ‘But the children . . .’

  ‘I think you can expect total satisfaction on that front,’ Mowbray said. ‘In a few days’ time there will be a joint announcement from Moscow and Brussels that the Speedbird sabotage wasn’t the responsibility of the Egyptians after all, that Ghazi was acting to sabotage relations between East and West, which isn’t far from the truth. As for the victims, we’re going to set up an international fund to support the families and it’ll be jolly generous, I can assure you. There’ll have to be a little shading of the details for a while, no mention of any connection with the pipeline – which in any respect is entirely supposition. Washington will give the whole thing a warm welcome – after all, it rather lets them off the hook, along with us. Frankly we’re not getting anywhere with all this Egyptian nonsense. There’ll be vague words about an aid package for them, too. So, end result – everyone happy.’ He smiled like the conjurer he was.

  ‘How about it, Harry, old friend?’ Usher pressed. ‘Come back on board.’

  But Harry shook his head wearily. ‘I need time.’