by David Laws
It was cold. A chill March wind touched by snow whipped across the back garden at Number 10, fluttering the leaves and plucking at the branches. An extra electric heater hummed quietly in one corner.
The Prime Minister rattled her pen on the table, coughed and fiddled with the agenda. It was quaintly headed Time-Limited Implementation Period, referring to the twenty-one months to follow Britain’s Exit Day in which the possibility of a trade agreement was supposedly on the negotiation table in Brussels.
She hardly had time to say, “Good morning” and “I hope we’re all set for a constructive discussion…” before Jake bellowed out his frustration. His neighbour, the Minister for the Environment, was holding tight to his water jug as Jake’s fist hit the Cabinet table again and again, making his own drinking glass jump and rattle, scattering napkins and pens alike.
“The Chancellor and the Home Secretary are doing their best to sabotage this Government’s efforts to negotiate our way out of the EU…”
The fruity voice, familiar to millions from TV, was turned in full volume towards the other side of the long table peopled by a phalanx of former Remainers. The Prime Minister, seated in front of the mantelpiece, was in every other way supernumerary to the proceedings.
“Not so, I’m afraid.” It was a moderate voice. The Chancellor, Lucas Winterman, was not known to be combative. A quiet man of figures, unfailingly polite but just as adamant. “Those of us concerned to safeguard this country’s proper interests are merely cautioning against a heady and irresponsible dash for the exit door.”
“Quite right!” Home Secretary Christopher Tresham joined the objections. “We’re just being prudent.”
“Prudent!” Jake snorted. “Wreckers, more likely…”
Harsh words not normally heard around this table had been spoken all morning: the divorce bill, a transition period, its duration, borders, trade… The Prime Minister acted out the role of referee. She saw herself in the Clem Attlee mould, as chairman of the board, keeping order while the big beasts of the Cabinet (back in 1945, Ernest Bevin, Nye Bevan and Herbert Morrison) did battle all around. “I think we should all calm down and look at this thing rationally, seek to find a middle way…”
Jake was still in battle gear. “We agree to this thing only if we can do deals with whomever we like, no European jurisdiction, no EU rules, definitely no free movement. Otherwise, it’s all off – we go out on Exit Day, finito, slap whopping tariffs on everything they send to us and then watch them sweat.”
At this, Christopher Tresham reacted before the Chancellor could protest again. He waved a dismissive hand, leaning forward. “Ridiculous! Simply cutting our nose off. Flying in the face of common sense. We’ll wreck our trade, wreck the economy.”
“Time to make a stand, Tresh. Stop surrendering. No appeasement!”
“You’ll divide the country.”
“The country has already spoken.”
“The next generation will hate you.”
“All generations like strong leadership, not weak-kneed—”
“I object to being categorised as—”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” The Prime Minister was sighing in exasperation. She’d been on the point of suggesting a walk in the garden. Instead, she said, “I think this would be a good moment to adjourn our discussion until this time tomorrow.”
Chapter 20
18 days to go
Harry was pulling off his gloves and helmet, having just parked the Triumph outside the Grange, when he almost collided head-on with Erika striding from the front door. He jerked to a stop, then took a step back. She had the word CRISIS writ large across her features. The grim set to her mouth, the dead-eyed look that might have launched a thousand rockets, the unstill hands that could strangle a hippo.
He spread his arms.
“It’s Stefan,” she spat. “Kidnapped!”
“Kidnapped?” he echoed in shock, then, “But when – how? And how d’you know?”
“Course I know. Why else wouldn’t he come home from school?”
Harry peered at her. “What have you got in that bag?”
“Never mind!”
“Show me.” He pulled it to him, but she snatched it away. “Show me,” he repeated.
She bared her teeth and opened up the bag to display a selection of kitchen knives. Large, vicious and sharp. Fatally sharp – he’d seen her at work with them in the kitchen.
“Why?”
“When I find them…”
“Who?”
“Them, of course, the men outside my house. Got to be them, hasn’t it – they’ve got Stefan as a way of getting to me.”
“And where?”
“The cottage.”
“Don’t be a fool. They’ll be waiting for you there, hoping you’ll come running, a trap, an ambush… if it is a kidnap… if it is them…”
“Why do you say ‘if’?”
“Got a ransom note? Have they been in touch?”
She didn’t answer, and he knew there had been no contact, so he put his arm around her, gave her a squeeze and gently walked her back into the hall. “Let’s be calm about this and think it through.”
“Damn calm,” she said, “I’ll kill those bastards. I want my Stefan back.”
Slowly, defusing her frenzy, he walked her through the facts, which were slender enough: the boy hadn’t returned from school, two hours had elapsed with no message and no explanation. Erika had phoned her friend Mary who did the school run, but the boy had simply not shown at his pickup.
“He could be anywhere,” Harry said. “A teenage prank. Gone off with a friend. We should call the school. His friends.”
“My Stefan wouldn’t do that. He’s not that kind of boy.”
Harry was forcing himself. He’d never taken to the boy – and anyway, had always shied away from parenthood. Looking at the demands made by his brother’s brood in Birmingham, he doubted he had the patience or resilience for the job. But this was different. This was peril. And it was certainly possible Bruno and his gang had got to the boy as a way of flushing Erika into the open. He glanced down. She was picking up her bag again.
“Sorry, Harry,” she said, “but I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I’m going.”
“I’m coming with you,” he said instinctively, pushing to the back of his mind the foolhardiness of confronting Bruno again. A third physical confrontation was unlikely to end well and common sense dictated a call to the police, but in his mind Harry saw only Sergeant Rudd’s sneering, sceptical face. Besides, the force didn’t take missing teenagers seriously until they’d been gone at least forty-eight hours.
“No, I’ll handle this alone,” she said.
“You can’t. If they’re who we think they are, they’re too dangerous, too many for the both of us – we need backup.”
“I have ways of dealing with these people.”
He put out a restraining hand. “Don’t be ridiculous…”
His words tailed off at the sound of the back door closing. Erika’s expression changed. She appeared immobile, in a trance as quiet footsteps approached, then the familiar face of Stefan appeared around the door.
She was all over him, hugging him, kissing him, holding him. Stefan was trying to disentangle himself without success. When, after several minutes and plaintive cries of “Mum!”, he surfaced, Harry said, “Well? You gave us a scare.”
“Got locked in.”
“Locked in… where?”
The boy held out a scruffy piece of paper on which a childish hand had scrawled: Hey, genius! Get out of this, if you can. From which Harry deduced that the bullies of the form had taken umbrage at Stefan’s remote manner and got their revenge in the form of incarceration inside the geography department cupboard.
“But I am a genius,” Stefan said straight-facedly, “I did get ou
t.”
Harry said, “I’ll have something to say to that school about this.”
“That school!” Erika gestured contemptuously. “After this, he’s not going back there.”
Chapter 21
Tuesday 12th March 2019; 17 days to go
Despite all the setbacks he’d suffered so far, Harry was driving himself on. Sure, he was following his journalistic nose. That was instinct. Reporters are one of a kind; sell your granny for a good story – that’s what they said about you, wasn’t it? Go through hell to get there. Bullets, earthquakes, forest fires. There’s a scribbler with a notebook at the sharp end of every crisis. Everyone expects it, some decry it and society thrives on it.
But Harry still entertained a doubt. He’d told Jake Pinckney at Boston that the Kameraden were in it “up to their armpits” – by which he meant Brexit, but how did he know that? Just a bit of journalistic licence? Did the chase and drama associated with Bruno and his pals really prove it? It was a question that had been nagging away at the back of his mind: whatever the strength or purpose of the Kameraden, why would they have a finger in the Brexit pie?
When he’d repeated this thought aloud, Lufkin told him to make contact with the foremost expert on the subject, but very soon Harry was beginning to have regrets. He’d made his move that morning, sitting at Scobie’s desk, camera trained, looking at his laptop. The screen showed an aged individual with long, drawn features and the baggy eyes of a bloodhound, and it came with a forthright attitude. Perhaps he would have felt better if this conversation had been confined to the telephone, but Skype showed you the whole picture and Harry could never really put his entire trust in a man who wore a cowboy hat indoors.
“I understand what you’re after,” Hans Joachim Bauer said, “but that’s not my focus. Forgive me, you’re talking to an obsessive here, I’ve been told that, but I’ve been after this will-o’-the-wisp since the Berlin Wall came down.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. “Who exactly are we talking about?”
“The man in a mask. Colonel General Wolf Steigel, one-time head of the HVA, the Stasi foreign spying operation; once known as the Man with No Face because he was so reclusive, only now he hides it behind a mask. A precaution against betrayal. He’s a mastermind on the run. Disappeared when the Wall crumbled, along with his regime, and only seen fleetingly since.”
Harry hesitated. What was he getting into here? Obsessive, the man said, and he scratched a sceptical finger over early-morning stubble. “Sounds a bit fanciful.”
The big hat was pushed back in a sudden flourish as Hans Joachim, an occasional contributor to the Neues Deutschland Post, wagged a finger. “Believe it! Fled to Moscow in ’89, gone into hiding, but still active. A trail of sightings. A man of many disguises, a habitué of the night, as afraid of the daylight as any night owl.”
“So you think he’s behind the K?”
“Undoubtedly. The moving force.” The Post man was in full flow: when Wolf ran the Stasi he didn’t just plant sleepers all around the West, he said. His main job was to run high-profile spies at the heart of every targeted political establishment. People who manipulated behind the scenes. Destroyed politicians. Twisted policy. “And who says they all went to sleep in ’89? Wolf operated on a massive scale back then and the word is, he’s not thinking small right now. Deep throats planted in the heart of the Brussels bureaucracy.”
“Yes, but…”
Harry tried to get him back on the Brexit track, but the Post man had more to say: disguise was Wolf’s weapon of choice, and the Intelligence crowd in the West had been hunting him for years. “Rather proves my point. Still active, still feared, still dangerous.”
“Yes, but what about Brexit?”
“All part of Wolf’s grand strategy for the future. Control. Power. Territory.”
“That’s it? That’s what it’s about?”
“The bigger the better. In their fevered imaginations, they see the EC as the Fourth Reich of the future. And they want you all in it. Size matters.”
Harry snorted. “So where is he then, this Wolf?”
Hans Joachim shook his head, evasiveness replacing his forthright manner. “Been chasing his shadow around the globe for years. Berlin, Leipzig, Brussels, Paris, Washington. A ghost, a figure of the mist, but one day I vow I’ll catch up with him.”
“Well,” said Harry, hand on the ‘end call’ button, “let me know when you do.”
“Don’t worry, I intend to tell the world.”
Fine. Harry was always up for a good conspiracy theory, but he wasn’t sure he entirely bought into the tale of the reclusive mastermind Wolf. Nevertheless, he knew that nearer home he’d built up the Right Honourable Christopher Tresham into some kind of desperado. In his mind, the man was far more dangerous than the ’50s Cambridge spy ring of Burgess and Maclean, bringing with it memories of the Red Menace and the Cold War. His father’s generation had lived through it. He recalled one of the slogans: Better dead than red.
Thoughts of his father, however, caused him to put a question mark against his distaste for Tresham. The paternal image was very much his mother’s polished-halo view: heroic, selfless, impeccable rectitude. So what would Harry’s father have told him, had he been alive? Don’t prejudge Tresham? Give him a fair hearing?
This also corresponded to Harry’s own self-image as a dedicated seeker after the truth. Both of these thoughts had caused him to pause – and decide to put the matter to the test. That’s why he was on his Triumph in the evening, following his satnav to Timothy Street in London’s West End. He circled the streets on the big bike, looking for a secure parking place, eventually locating an outrageously expensive underground cavern, then found a tiny corner of vacant concrete and weaved a chain between the wheels. Then he stowed his leathers in the pannier and began the long trudge back to his destination, anxiously checking his watch.
Timothy Hall was an enormous place and Harry worked at mastering the intricacies of its internal layout. He ignored the auditorium, instead walking the back corridors and passing through doors marked Staff Only and No Admittance, ready to pretend to be lost.
The aim was to get as close as possible to view, if not confront, his adversary in the flesh. Of course, he’d seen him on TV, heard him on the radio, read the papers, but still he felt the need to watch the man in action. To get his measure, to make a judgement, to pit assumption against reality.
Tresham was to be the main speaker at a public meeting to discuss Brexit – or, as the billposting asked, A mistake too far? It was part of the policy of Tresham and others to persuade public opinion to turn against the result of the referendum and work to reverse it. Harry wondered if he would succeed in bumping into the man backstage. He thought it unlikely, assuming he would be surrounded by minders. Coming to this place was a risk, but Harry was counting on the safety of a public place. In the event he spotted neither minder nor Bruno, and somehow the absence of the enforcer or anyone like him tended to invest the occasion with the stamp of normality.
Eventually, the inevitable happened and Harry was blocked by a polite but firm security man dressed in a bright-yellow overcoat and shooed back into the auditorium. The hall was filling up, and at the appointed hour the speakers entered from the back of the stage and took their seats. Harry walked to the front row, ostensibly looking for a spare place, and the ruse gave him the chance to study Tresham close up. Open features, serious, but not, he decided, at all vain.
He continued to study the man from several rows back. The platform was full of distinguished speakers, but Harry wasn’t interested in them. His sole focus was Tresham. And when it came to Tresham’s turn, his speech was mild, certainly not the rant that might have been anticipated from a committed ideologue.
“What I want,” Tresham said, “is a prosperous Britain allied to social justice. And I believe we’ll get that best from inside the tent, rather than
outside.”
It was at that moment Harry began to waver. The tone of the speech sounded disturbingly reasonable and he began to entertain doubts. Could this Tresham be a different man from the one who had graduated all those years ago from the Stasi spy school? Could he be a man reborn, a genuine advocate of his cause? Reformed, a changed person? The absence of Bruno or any minders would seem to support such a contention.
The uncomfortable idea came to Harry then that he might be chasing ghosts. That the whole Stasi thing could be merely defunct history. He thought not only about Tresham, but all the others touched by that disastrous dictatorial regime. Was he right to pursue them? Perhaps they were all like Toby, an accountant of no account; innocent dupes who should be forgiven their early indiscretions and the foolishness of youth and left to languish in obscurity. He thought of Corbishley and began to view her as a minor figure, now leading a normal life. Perhaps he had been wrong to search her out. He thought again of his father and his mantra about giving everyone a second chance, of thinking the best of people’s motives rather than the worst.
A storm of applause greeted Tresham’s oratory. Could all these people be fools, or were they listening and reacting to the genuine article?
Harry made his way into the gangway, queuing for the exit, turning over in his mind the conciliatory words of Tresham’s speech. What I want is a prosperous Britain allied to social justice. Who could complain at that?
However, by the time he had stepped out on to the pavement in Timothy Street, Harry was shaking his head and dismissing his doubts as foolishness. Tresham couldn’t possibly be genuine. Stasi spies were resolute and unflinching, the sort who never gave up. And then there was the lecturer Dr Gifford. According to Toby, the man was highly active, almost top of the list, just below Tresham himself. Such a nest of spies could not be ignored and wished away. Harry sighed at his own ridiculous attack of gullibility. You couldn’t ignore the Kameraden, either. Brutish enforcers such as Bruno made the whole idea of Tresham’s innocence a complete nonsense.