by David Laws
Conspiracy, chaos and treachery on the countdown to Brexit on 29 March 2019.
An out-of-favour journalist tracks down a ring of spies bent on sabotaging Exit Day... a senior Minister leaks Cabinet secrets to Brussels...an assassin stalks the Prime Minister.
When an old lover turns up on Harry Topp’s doorstep, she brings with her an explosive “gift”: a list of deeply buried secret agents in Britain. The star name on the list is the Cabinet minister.
Harry is shocked to discover a friend is one of the spies and soon finds himself caught up in a covert war between rival sets of spooks.
Worse still, he’s up against a conspiracy by a group of fanatics, led by a shadowy figure called the Wolf.
What Harry doesn’t realise is that while determinedly chasing his story he’s been hatching a cuckoo in the nest.
Of all the undercurrents in the Brexit controversy, this is the one scenario you would never expect.
Praise for Exit Day
A gripping read. Laws creates a scenario that seems eerily plausible in the chaotic run-up to Brexit. He takes us on a wild ride… a great storyteller who leaves us guessing right up to the last page.
Gillian M.
A well-written and fast-paced thriller with many ingenious twists and turns.
Karl G.
David Laws’ cliffhanging denouement throws up shock after shock... hugely enjoyable.
Tony Boullemier (Author of The Little Book of Monarchs)
Exit Day treats the reader to a feast of conspiracy, chaos and treachery.
Ray King
This cleverly written book is a real page turner which you will find hard to put down.
Alastair McIntyre, Editor, Daily Drone
For full reviews see end pages
Copyright © 2018 David Laws
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Leipzig, East Germany: 9th November 1989
Chapter 2
Saturday 2nd March 2019; 27 days to the deadline, the day Britain formally quits the European Union
Chapter 3
London; 27 days to go
Chapter 4
Suffolk; 27 days to go
Chapter 5
27 days to go
Chapter 6
27 days to go
Chapter 7
Sunday 3rd March 2019; 26 days to go
Chapter 8
26 days to go
Chapter 9
Monday 4th March 2019; 25 days to go
Chapter 10
Tuesday 5th March 2019; 24 days to go
Chapter 11
24 days to go
Chapter 12
24 days to go
Chapter 13
24 days to go
Chapter 14
Wednesday 6th March 2019; 23 days to go
Chapter 15
Thursday 7th March 2019; 22 days to go
Chapter 16
22 days to go
Chapter 17
Friday 8th March 2019; 21 days to go
Chapter 18
Sunday 10th March 2019; 19 days to go
Chapter 19
Monday 11th March 2019; 18 days to go
Chapter 20
18 days to go
Chapter 21
Tuesday 12th March 2019; 17 days to go
Chapter 22
Wednesday 13th March 2019; 16 days to go
Chapter 23
16 days to go
Chapter 24
16 days to go
Chapter 25
Thursday 14th March 2019; 15 days to go
Chapter 26
15 days to go
Chapter 27
Friday 15th March 2019; 14 days to go
Chapter 28
Sunday 17th March 2019; 12 days to go
Chapter 29
Monday 18th March 2019; 11 days to go
Chapter 30
Tuesday 19th March 2019; 10 days to go
Chapter 31
10 days to go
Chapter 32
Wednesday 20th March 2019; 9 days to go
Chapter 33
9 days to go
Chapter 34
9 days to go
Chapter 35
Thursday 21st March 2019; 8 days to go
Chapter 36
8 days to go
Chapter 37
Friday 22nd March 2019; 7 days to go
Chapter 38
Saturday 23nd March 2019; 6 days to go
Chapter 39
6 days to go
Chapter 40
Sunday 24th March 2019; 5 days to go
Chapter 41
5 days to go
Chapter 42
Monday 25th March 2019; 4 days to go
Chapter 43
Tuesday 26th March 2019; 3 days to go
Chapter 44
3 days to go
Chapter 45
Wednesday 27th March 2019; 2 days to go
Chapter 46
2 days to go
Chapter 47
Thursday 28th March 2019; 1 day to go
Chapter 48
Friday 29th March 2019; Exit Day, 18 hours to go
Chapter 49
17 hours to go
Chapter 50
16 hours, 45 minutes to go
Chapter 51
8 hours to go
Chapter 52
7 hours to go
Chapter 53
6 hours to go
Chapter 54
4 hours to go
Chapter 55
3 hours to go
Chapter 56
2 hours to go
Chapter 57
90 minutes to go
Chapter 58
1 hour to go
Chapter 59
Exit Day plus 1
Chapter 60
Exit Day plus 3
NOVELS BY DAVID LAWS
Chapter 1
Leipzig, East Germany: 9th November 1989
The three women linked arms to push their way through the thickest part of the crowd. Erika, Anneliese and Renata were acutely conscious of the toxic mix that night: excited empowerment overlaid by trepidation.
No doubt about it, there was extreme danger close by. They’d all seen the lines of police trucks parked up in the streets around the edges of the ring road; noted the water cannon; noted the morose expression of troops idly fingering weapons. The sense of waiting, a sense of foreboding. Rumours of tanks. Talk of an order to open fire.
Yet here were the people. A crowd so immense that its size could not accurately be measured – some said fifty thousand, possibly sixty, perhaps more. The trams had stopped running, no vehicle could move in the streets. The people had taken over the city. There were chants of “We are the people” and “An end to the bullying.” A placard demanded: Democracy now!
Erika, Anneliese and Renata nodded enthusiastic approval and moved on, anxious to cross the boulevard by the main station and link up with the fourth member of their group, Helmut, a signwriter by trade, the man with their prepared placards, waiting for them at their usual rendezvous.
Soon Erika had to lead the way, single file down the narrow streets leading to the centre of the old city. The usual flurry of bikes was missing. So were the cars. The owners of the Trabis and the Wartburgs had taken care to get them out of the city centre. Other things had also disappeared: the chairs, plant pots and umbrellas used by the pavement cafes. Most of the shops were closed in anticipation of trouble but a few brave bakeries had opened up, long queues snaking along the cobbles. It seemed to Erika that most of the city’s offices had closed for the day, their staff out on the streets. She glanced up to see the traffic lights uselessly changing from red to green and back to red.
The numbers were even greater in the old market square. Here, out of the three of them, only Erika was tall enough to see over an ocean of bobbing heads to the Renaissance masterpiece that was the old city hall. Momentarily, she marvelled, as she often did, at the height of the magnolia clock tower and vastness of the peppercorn roof.
“Anneliese!” A shout from a thin man with a bobbing Adam’s apple, one of her fellow teachers, this one still employed. “Just heard about State Security,” he said. “Honecker’s given them the order to fire.”
“Who says?”
A shrug. The febrile talk of the crowd, fearing the worst from their First Secretary. “Who knows?”
Erika began pushing for the arcade that led to the Arabischen, their favourite meeting place. Normally, they’d glory in its comfortable seediness and history as the country’s oldest coffee house, but today it was packed, both downstairs and up, standing room only even on the winding stairs. And there was no sign of Helmut.
“Not a good sign,” muttered Anneliese. “Let’s try the church.”
The trio pushed their way back to the square and across to the Thomaskirche, hub of the anti-regime protesters. Despite the cold, struggling through the crowd and over the cobbles was punishing work and Erika had worked up a fine sweat. She had on her warmest coat, a large black-and-white check pattern. She’d put it together using a sewing kit from a magazine. So had Anneliese, in a long white raincoat. It made them stand out from the crowd. Most people, like Renata, were in beige or brown anoraks.
Renata talked earnestly to a tall, lean man by the church entrance. He wore a leather cap and looked shifty, eyes scanning the crowd, checking for disguised watchers. He was shaking his head.
It was bad news. Helmut had been taken in the night. His placards had been just a little too visible to the Vopos, or the Stasi, no one knew quite which.
Grimly, the trio retraced their steps. How many more would be arrested this day? Who would be next? Erika’s confidence in the crowd’s ability to hold sway faltered momentarily and she exchanged uncertain glances with Renata, whose pallid features began to look almost translucent. Anneliese’s jawline, by contrast, was thrust forward in a gesture of defiance. As they turned down the Thomasgasse towards the ring road they were held up by a crowd peering into a shop window, one of the few not shuttered. It was a television shop with several sets tuned in and showing rolling news of the demo. One Western channel, given access to official functions, had placed its cameras at the top of a tower from where the immense crowd on the ring road could be seen; a vast sea of heads covering every space and illuminated by blazing torches and the lights of the nearby buildings.
Now it was clear why the police were nowhere in evidence. They’d all seen the TV pictures of the preparations for this day: rehearsals by State Security troopers in white helmets and white shields. But no force on earth could contain such a mass of people, short of starting a shooting war.
“They won’t do that,” Anneliese said confidently. “Not after Tiananmen Square. Face the contempt of the world? Even Honecker couldn’t stand that.”
Erika looked at her quizzically. Her friend was buoyed and excited by the expectation that they were on the cusp of momentous events. It was a day of conflicting, see-sawing emotions.
On another TV set was a close-up of a tram bound for Klemmstrasse that had become stuck in the crowd, its driver glumly surrendering to his fate, head in hands.
Slowly Erika, Anneliese and Renata eased their way on to the ring road and round to the infamous bend in the street that had become the focus of the demonstration.
More chanting. Banners demanded freedom of travel, freedom of expression, democracy and prosperity. A florid-faced woman next to Erika was more specific: “Fed up with the shortages,” she said. “Lousy bread, rotten veg, tiny apartments, no travel.”
All ages seemed to be represented. A young student in concrete-splattered trousers complained, “A compulsory six weeks on a building site and four in military camp – what kind of university course is that?”
But just as Anneliese was talking up her enthusiasm, Renata was losing hers. She looked around and whispered, “This is all getting far too dangerous.” She’d always been the cautious member of the trio and her fears were well-founded. If the revolution turned out to be a turkey, merciless recriminations would follow. A reinvigorated and vengeful Stasi wouldn’t just tear up your holiday coupons. They’d cancel your dental, doctor or hospital appointments, block your promotions, probably rob you of your job. It was illegal to be unemployed. And then they’d isolate you, slowly dismantling your personality.
Erika, momentarily distracted, lost sight of her worried friend, then felt a hand on her sleeve. It was Anneliese with an altogether different message. “Just remember why we’re here,” she called. The natural leader, the trio’s spokesperson, the writer of slogans, a teacher still smarting at her exclusion from the classroom. “Clear them out. Demonstrate to the people the true extent of the state’s abuse of citizen rights.” Then she turned up the volume. A shout: “An end to them!”
“Aye!” A chorus of agreement as eyes turned up to stare at those other faces high up at the first- and second-storey windows of the Runde Ecke, the round-cornered headquarters of the city’s secret police. The faces that belonged to the representatives of everything that was abhorrent about this decaying dictatorship. The most visible, the most representative, the most obvious form of the regime – the Stasi. No longer were the secret police masters of the streets, no longer able to arrest, harass and imprison at will. Now they were cowering, penned and besieged, in their own offices.
Hands and fingers pointed upwards. “Stasi out! Occupy the offices.” The cries became a chant. “Stasi to the factories. Throw them out. Clear the offices. Open up the files.”
The hated files. The mountains of paper, the records of all the snitches and informers on the people. The bureaucratic raw material that fuelled the repression.
Erika felt herself trembling. Was it excitement or fear?
Anneliese had always been the one for fine words, but Erika’s intentions were simpler. And a lot more personal. “Enough talk,” she said. “Time to get in there!”
It was at this point that the pushing and the chanting eased. The crowd became inexplicably still. There was a tense hush. At first Erika was mystified – then she saw it. Smoke. People were looking up, pointing. Smoke issued from the windows and chimneys.
“They’re burning the files. Destroying the evidence.”
The mood turned hostile. Fingers pointed at the gate. At the guards.
“The cowards are trying to hide their crimes.”
A well of noise rose up. “Enough. Stasi out now! No more waiting. Open the doors!”
Erika resumed her pushing to make a path through the crowd in a determined bid to get to the entrance of the building, known by its street name, the Crooked Corner.
“They’ve got guns,” the florid woman warned. “I’ve seen them at the windows.”
“If they were going to shoot,” Erika said over her shoulder, “they’d have done it by now.”
“You can’t be so sure!”
“Yes I can. I know them. They’re more scared than you are.”
Erika’s fears were receding. Forgotten was all talk of hospitals being stocked up with blood plasma. Close to the steps up to the big, ornate marble entrance, people were chanting at the soldiers who stared back, white-faced. She reached the front, pushed up against the first step, inches from the men in uniform. She pointed an accusing finger. Fixed with a stare the principal guard with three stripes on his serge tunic. Screamed at him, her voice harsh, the loudest of the protesters.
“You! Clear the way. Now!”
History books would later record this moment as the storming of the Stasi offices, perhaps the most significant day in the dismantling of that repressive regime, but for Erika it had been an entirely personal matter.
The anger and the fury quickly dissipated as soon as the crowd surged through the entrance. The first thing that hit Erika was the smell. An unpleasant scorched odour that pervaded the place – not the normal homely aroma of coal on a hearth, but a pervasive, acrid odour of scorched paper. It was evident the Stasi had given up, having spent the last few hours frantically shredding and burning as much as they could before bowing to the inevitable. The men in uniform knew they were pariahs and didn’t wait for the prospect of personal retribution, leaving without hindrance from rear exits to the staff car park. Rumour had it there was even a secret tunnel.