Exit Day: Brexit; An Assassin Stalks the Prime Minister

by David Laws

  Gifford kept running, saying nothing.

  “Unless you co-operate with what I want, I’m going to blow you wide open.”

  There was a derisive snort between panted breaths. “If you’re some kind of muckraking journalist, you should know I don’t talk to the capitalist press.”

  “Pity; you’ll soon be plastered all over it. The nation’s number-one pariah. The man who sold out his students to the reds. Who spied for the most hated secret police force. Betrayed his country… and is still doing it even now, to some bunch of diehard nutters.”

  “No apologies for my past. I did what was right at the time.” The pace was beginning to tell on Gifford. His words were coming in short gasps, and he was getting angry. “Be warned, I could set the dogs on you.”

  Harry was beginning to fade. His words became shorter. “By ‘dogs’, I take it you mean old Bobble-Hat Bruno and his mates. Forget it, they’re way behind.”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “Got a fair idea.”

  They rounded a corner, Harry close on the man’s heels, but his chest was hurting. A long avenue, still and slumbering. More heavy breathing.

  “A deal,” Harry said, “in exchange for co-operation.”

  “Don’t do deals with scribblers from the tabloid press.”

  “Got your picture, got the list, got eyewitnesses.”

  “Lies! Who’d believe it?”

  “Detailed accounts of what you did, what they did, the whole Stasi shebang.”

  They were huffing badly now, passing a large, parked white van, and Gifford loped through the gap between it and a large hedge, then unexpectedly came to a stop. Harry tensed and looked about. A trap? Had he been led here to be beaten up? There was no sign of Bruno.

  Gifford paused, breathing heavily, then his tone changed from supercilious hostility to quiet and reasonable. “Look, this isn’t exactly what you think. You’re blundering into a tense situation and making it worse.”

  Harry, hands on hips, said, “How’s that?”

  Gifford’s demeanour had changed completely. He now looked utterly hunted. “We can’t stand here.” His eyes were swivelling round in every direction. “It’s dangerous. Someone will spot us. Eyes everywhere.”

  “There’s nobody about…”

  “I simply cannot afford to be seen having a conversation with you in the street.”

  Harry looked across the road to a low wall and jerked his head. “Behind the church then, well out of sight.”

  Gifford hesitated, then nodded.

  Night mist clung to the grass as they stepped gingerly through a gap in the wall and across the graveyard, weaving between headstones leaning at drunken angles, their inscriptions long lost to wind and weather. Gifford was shaking his head, but Harry led the way towards the tower. The going was uneven and raindrops fell inside Harry’s collar after the branches of a big bush plucked at his face. Rounding a dark corner, there wasn’t yet enough light to see more than shadows.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Gifford drew in his breath, clearly stricken. “Just can’t… but… there’s someone who will.” He was working his pockets, finding a small diary, tearing out a page and scribbling down some figures. “Ring this number, mention Mandelbaum and you’ll get what you want.”

  “You think I’m that daft?” Harry’s raucous laugh cut the stillness of the night, causing Gifford to issue a schoolmasterly shushing noise. “A meaningless number and you disappear, never to be seen again?” Harry’s sarcasm was full on. “You must think me green. No, no, I don’t get put off that easily.”

  Gifford was still, breathing hard, blinking a lot. “This is not a trick. I just can’t be seen talking, I can’t be delayed… or there’ll be questions.”

  Harry was shocked at the change in the man.

  “But I promise this.” Gifford was persistent. “If you don’t get satisfaction from the number on this paper I’ll be at the Arcadia restaurant at one tomorrow. However, I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Now, be a good chap and bugger off. You’ve no idea how dangerous this is.”

  Chapter 28

  Sunday 17th March 2019; 12 days to go

  Harry regretted not pressing the matter further with the lecturer. What had he got? A traitor’s promise and a number that was probably false. However, he thought he detected something genuine behind Gifford’s bluster and hoped, rather than expected, he was right when he picked up the telephone at 9.30 in the morning and tapped in the numbers.

  A male voice answered with a simple hello, and Harry said, feeling somewhat foolish, “Mandelbaum suggested I call this number.” He was already having doubts about being dragged into what he regarded as asinine spook speak.

  “Ah,” said the voice, “good day to you. Mandelbaum said you’d call; good to speak to you, glad you got through.”

  Harry grinned to himself at the hail-fellow sort of voice, that of everyone’s favourite uncle, which was continuing blithely on its way.

  “The thing is, we’d rather like to explain a few things to you, just so as you don’t go off chasing the wrong hare, so to speak.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” Harry butted in, “if I’m a little sceptical about all this. And a little wary.”

  “Of course.” More soothing tones. “Quite understandable. We’re anxious to set your mind at rest on all these matters.”

  “You know what I’m talking about? The inquiry I’m making?”

  “Mandelbaum gave us the drift. Look, perhaps we could meet up for a chat – better than the telephone, don’t you think?”

  “Again, this could compromise me. I’ve had a few bad experiences already, what with a big chap I’m calling Bruno and his boys.”

  “So I understand. Highly regrettable. And there’s no prospect of any recurrence of that. If it helps, may I suggest you choose a time and place to suit, to reassure you on the question of your security?”

  Harry was shaking his head. This conversation was surreal, but was it advancing his cause? He could still go back to the restaurant, but he doubted Gifford would show up as promised. Was this voice on the phone just some soft-soap operation to tell him a fairy story, that the new Stasis were really just a bunch of harmless campaigners? He’d not stand for that.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “And if I don’t find this arrangement satisfactory” – he gave himself another smile at adopting the benign tone of the speaker – “I reserve the right to go back to source. And however much he wriggles, I’ll find him, I’ll get to him.”

  “Of course. We understand that.”

  “Right.” Harry considered possible meeting places. Somewhere large and open, he thought, with lots of people and no danger of any rough stuff, and even an easy escape route if things went wrong. Then it struck him: the place he’d last met his aunt up from Bognor on her day out to London.

  He gave the location. “OK, ten tomorrow,” he said.

  It was a lovely summer morning, the sun was out, the rush-hour traffic fumes had diluted and the marigolds made a spectacular splash of colour. Harry had eyes everywhere. At the evergreens that shielded the lower halves of the towering blocks to his right, and at the tall hedge on his left that hid the road and the River Thames. These weren’t just pleasant greeneries. They were potential hiding places from which Bruno or his cohorts might suddenly spring. Harry made a mental note of the exits, thankful for a plentiful sprinkling of tourists on the path. They might not be potential protectors, but he hoped they represented a deterrent to an aggressor.

  His aunt had been almost gushing in her nostalgia for this place. How the firemen of the London Blitz used to lie on the grass, sleeping off their terrors of the
night. How the office girls brought them sandwiches at lunchtime. And, Harry thought, how the office girls of the twenty-first century would soon be bringing their own sandwiches to eat at lunchtime.

  He walked cautiously along the gravel path, past statues of generals, Brunel and John Stuart Mill, past manicured beds of rhododendrons, always with an eye for danger. Would Bruno put away his bobble hat and appear in a City-slicker suit? He spotted the cafe and lingered some way off, studying people sitting outside under umbrellas, then turned his attention to the interior. He looked behind to check for idling figures, then mounted the steps and pushed open the door. Just three people were seated inside. Two others were queuing for drinks and cakes as the coffee machine blasted out an industrious roar.

  Harry didn’t linger, instead retreated down the steps to the umbrella area that became a concert bandshell in the summer. He took a seat on the far side closest to the through path, directly opposite a memorial to the Camel Corps. “Embankment Gardens in the sunshine,” his aunt had lauded, “one of the little treasures of London.”

  Carefully, he ran an eye over every sitter: a young mother with two children, an old couple with walking sticks, a woman tapping at a laptop and another with a straggly pageboy haircut and glasses. Harry turned away, his thoughts on Dr Gifford – code name Mandelbaum, German for almond tree. He’d already met Larchen (his friend Toby), and been fobbed off by Apfelbaum, Marianne Corbishley, the apple tree. But his ultimate target was the Right Honourable Christopher Tresham, Home Secretary and erstwhile Secretary of State for Defence, code-named oak. Would this park meeting bring him any nearer to Eiche? And what did these people really hope to achieve? Turning the EC inside out? Surely it was dominated by big business and international finance which would resist major change. He would demand an answer – along the same lines as the conversation he’d had the night before with a friend from The Anglian.

  “Well,” Mortimer Curtis had said, “Brussels has been accused of all sorts of things. A nanny state? I suppose it could slide further and further down that road.” He was sucking his pencil; usually did the nature notes on a Saturday. “Regulating absolutely everything? Hmmm. A very German sort of thing.”

  Just then Harry glanced up to find the woman with a untidy haircut staring in his direction. He looked at her properly then, noticing that she wore a mauve print shawl, ripped jeans and running shoes. She was eating a muffin she must have bought at McDonald’s and was dropping crumbs all over the floor. Sparrows hopped around her, sensing even more treasures to come. Harry thought she looked like someone’s nanny on a day off, and was taken aback when a thin voice addressed him: “Would it be Mr Topp?”

  “Er, yes,” he said uncertainly, and cast a quick glance behind, but Bruno wasn’t there.

  She smiled, picked up an empty teacup and approached his table.

  “May I?”

  “But the voice on the phone…” he said uncertainly. “I was expecting…”

  She seated herself, pushed the teacup to one side and said, “That was just a voice on the telephone. ’Fraid you’ve got me; is that going to be a problem?”

  Harry shook himself. “Not at all,” he managed, although lacking in full-blooded conviction.

  “Patronella,” she said. “Just call me Pat.”

  “OK, Pat.”

  “The thing is, Mr Topp…”

  There it was again. She might be female, but she was using that old-boy vernacular, just like the telephone voice.

  “To put it bluntly, Mr Topp, we’re going to let you in on a rather big secret.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not something that’s normally done, and I’m afraid it’s going to mean that you may be required to sign the Official Secrets Act.”

  Harry clapped his hand to his head. It was like being hit by a boomerang. Official secrets! He’d been set up! He wasn’t talking to the Stasi or the Kameraden, as he had assumed, but was clearly in the midst of a British Intelligence sting.

  “No need to get excited, Mr Topp, it’s just that Mandelbaum happens to be one of ours.”

  “And you are…?”

  “Security, obviously.” She dug in her jeans pocket and came up with a bent and dog-eared leather badge with a crown and a photo that looked even worse than the reality.

  Harry scratched an ear. “He’s one of yours, but he’s on the Stasi list.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So that makes him a—”

  “Speak it gently in the park, Mr Topp, this is not really the place. Let’s put it this way. His security and safety are paramount, a major consideration to us. The other side must not get an inkling that he’s playing—”

  “For both sides?”

  A nod. She leaned in closer. “Provided you’re now reassured about your security, shall we continue this conversation in the car?”

  The official Rover was parked up on the Embankment. The driver, oblivious of parking regulations, was drinking tea at a roadside stall. Harry looked inside the vehicle.

  “Just us, Mr Topp,” she said, and when they were seated she demonstrated that beneath her undemanding demeanour there was a brain and authority to be reckoned with. “It so happens that we approve of your inquiry very much.”

  Harry’s face creased with incredulity. “You do?”

  “We do. We think you’re on the right lines, and we’ll even give you every assistance that we can in pursuing them. There is, however, one proviso.”

  He sank back in the leather seat. “There always is.”

  “No mention or contact must be made with or about Mandelbaum.”

  “So what do I get in return?”

  “We – that is, the Foreign Intelligence Service—”

  “Oh, so you’re Six?”

  “Correct. We’ve known about this list of yours for some time and Mandelbaum has been an invaluable source to us.”

  “You’ve known about the list?!” Harry was shocked. “Then why haven’t you done something about it, arrested the traitors still in place?”

  “Same reason that you must tread carefully. The list would be denied as a fabrication. Powerful political friends are protecting certain important persons who are named, and I think you will recognise who I’m talking about. And there’s another problem: as an overseas Intelligence service we cannot operate officially on home territory.”

  “What about the other lot – Five?”

  She paused. “Diplomatically, they appear to be tied in with certain personages, which restricts their area of action.”

  “I get it. You mean MI5 are in Tresham’s pocket.”

  A ghost of a smile. “Your mission is also our mission, Mr Topp. We can provide you with all sorts of information and context but, like you, we need hard evidence before we can act officially. We can’t be seen to be operating on home soil but…” Here she smiled, and it transformed her. “We think you may be able to get that evidence for us.”

  “You mean, you want me to do your dirty work.”

  “We could make a great team, Mr Topp. Good news for you, hard evidence for us.”

  Harry decided to make himself difficult to please. He wasn’t going to roll over for any old spook, although Patronella – and he couldn’t resist a smile at the contrast between the name and her image – had set out an enticing stall. He insisted she prove who she was, that she wasn’t some imposter in the park. “That badge doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “You could be anyone – a fraudster, a scammer, one of the enemy.” He warmed to his theme, assertive, independent.

  “Oh, so just anyone has a Ministry car these days?” she said with a certain acidity of tone.

  “Who’s to say you are who you say you are, or what game you’re playing?”

  She gave him a look that said he was the one playing games, then signalled to the driver. Harry heard her whisper two words: “The Cross.”


  That’s when he knew they were being driven to the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross.

  He tried not to grin as the car glided smoothly past Parliament Square and along Millbank before dipping down a sharp ramp. A massive black iron grille on rollers clanged shut behind them. Patronella (“Call me Pat”) instructed him to stay in the car while she got out and used a card reader to gain entry to a door.

  Harry sat back, feeling better about himself than he had for days. His fortunes had taken a sudden leap. What other member of the fourth estate had penetrated the country’s most famous spy hub? He tried to make small talk with the driver – after all, it’s what every journo does with a taxi driver – but the man behind the wheel remained passively silent, protected by his closed glass panels. Harry looked around in a bid to mentally record the scene, but a basement is a basement in anybody’s territory: blank concrete walls, fire hydrants, hosepipes, grilles, drab green doors.

  “Come!” Pat instructed, suddenly opening the car door and breaking into Harry’s reverie. He was led through an open door, along a featureless corridor and into some kind of reception centre dominated by a hairless bull of a man in police uniform. He sat behind a counter, guarding yet another door.

  “Show him,” instructed Patronella, and the bull gave Harry one of those stares policemen reserve for the incorrigibly guilty before slowly turning a computer monitor in his direction. The action was so deliberate it radiated controlled hostility.

  On the screen was a simple personnel file, clearly intended for identification purposes at the gate: nothing more than a headshot, name, number, job description and date. There she was, her passport-style picture looking even more nondescript than the reality: Patronella Magdeleine Taylor, 888900678, case officer, accreditation date 2006.

  “How long have you known me, John?”

  “Must be years, ma’am, long before this,” the bull said, indicating the date.

  “Satisfied now?” she asked Harry.

  “Can I ask a question?”