‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked.
Vine shook his head, trying to control his breathing. ‘We have to get everyone out of the Crypt Chapel.’
Cecil sighed. ‘None of this is any longer your business, Vine. One word and I could make sure you never see daylight again. The service is just about to start.’ He began to move away. ‘I’m sorry, but I really can’t …’
‘I know about the MIDAS operation,’ Vine shouted, at last. ‘About what happened. It was your creation. You covered it all up, of course, made sure there was no investigation. And you used Rose to absolve you.’
Up ahead, Cecil came to a halt, suddenly rigid. He turned and looked back, his face drained of colour. He didn’t say anything, just retraced his steps as if in a daze.
‘Yousef’s testimony about the Nobody mole wasn’t about Wilde. There was a real mole all along. It was about Rose.’ Vine stopped. ‘Everyone involved in the MIDAS operation is sitting in that chapel. That is the real target. You are the real target. You always have been …’
Cecil looked directly at Vine, struggling for air. ‘And the video?’ he said.
‘Gabriel Wilde signed his own death warrant the minute he began pretending to be a double and helping Langley with their drone programme.’ Vine tried to keep his voice clear. ‘We have to get everyone out. You have to damn well let me in.’
‘Not possible …’ Cecil shook his head. ‘The bomb squad has sniffer dogs through Westminster Hall every day. They’d have picked something up.’
Vine was newly conscious of the tourists and spectators beginning to stop at the sound of raised voices. ‘She’s played us all. She was the one behind the death of Newton. She was the one behind the death of Yousef. She had all the freelance contacts she ever needed from her time at Thames House, used them against Newton and Yousef and to frame me in Istanbul. She’s been planning this for years. She has access to every part of the Estate, even got you to assign her to the event. Rose is Nobody. It’s been her all along …’
64
Slowly, Cecil began snapping out of shock. He nodded, then stared at his watch and resumed control. His face began reclaiming some colour.
‘Let him in,’ he said to the police officer. His voice was terse and commanding. ‘We need to lock down the Palace immediately. Code Red to all security stations. Get every Cabinet minister out of the Estate as soon as possible. Evacuate Portcullis House, Norman Shaw as well. Alert Downing Street, tell them the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service has just ordered full lockdown protocol.’
The police officer seemed to hesitate, fussing with his radio.
‘Do it!’ bellowed Cecil.
Vine was already pushing past, through the entrance directly into Westminster Hall and the purer quiet inside. He clambered up two flights of stairs and then ran straight across to the entrance for the Crypt Chapel.
There was one police officer on the gate, checking passes and invitations. Vine approached, calculating the quickest way in.
‘Need to see your invitation, sir,’ said the officer. His weapon bobbed uneasily around his upper chest, cutting off easy use of his left hand.
Vine seized on the weakness. He didn’t bother to apologize for what he was about to do. He calculated the exact force necessary to successfully incapacitate his opponent and then delivered a brutally efficient volley of movement – a punch to the head, simultaneous knee to his ribs, then the elbow crushing down on the neck. The combined effort sent the officer sprawling. Almost immediately, mutters were starting to accumulate around him. He could pay for it later, if there ever was a later.
Vine ignored the sound and ran through the wooden door, moving quickly down the stone steps. A rustle of chatter and a heavy burst from the organ rose up to greet him.
He was through the Western Entrance now, confronted by the massed reality of the crowd. He began scanning the rows of people. Despite recent tightening, the security around the event was lighter than might have been expected, with most resources deployed elsewhere in Whitehall. The people here weren’t politicians, but senior civil servants, spies and military chiefs. The protection surrounded politicians who would be in office today and out of it tomorrow. These names were only known to those on the inside, like a secret currency. They were largely free from the trappings of the security state – a sitting target, the puppet masters behind the strings.
He noticed one former Permanent Under Secretary from the Foreign Office. The current Cabinet Secretary and the Principal Private Secretary from Number 10 were sitting in the third row. There were two former Director-Generals of MI5, as well as the serving Director of Special Forces alongside a procession of retired MI6 officers.
He moved further into the chapel. ‘We need to evacuate the building,’ he shouted. He felt his voice die off amid the noise of the organ. ‘This is an emergency. Evacuate the building. This is not a drill. Evacuate the chapel. Now.’
No one moved. Vine bellowed at the organist to stop, spotting a fire alarm near the end of the front row. He moved down the aisle and broke the glass with his bare hands.
‘There is a bomb somewhere in this building,’ he shouted, a wail of noise covering the space around him. ‘You need to evacuate now.’
As he looked across, Vine clocked Cecil emerging from the doorway with two DPG officers from Central Lobby. Both officers began barking out the order, hurrying people away from the chairs. Vine stared round at the smallness of the chapel. It was the perfect place, insulated underground. There was nowhere else for the blast to go.
They would all be killed.
With the fire alarm now sounding, the panic levels had risen, the surge threatening to turn into a fatal crush of activity. As people began stampeding for the exit, he turned and saw a familiar figure emerge from the baptistery. He felt an irrational surge of hope. There was still a chance he could be wrong. Everything could be explained somehow, the inferences and logical connections disproved. He would rather face a lifetime of chaos, of formless anarchy, than live with the pattern he had discovered. But even as he entertained the idea, he felt the other half of his brain absorb a detail, computing its implications.
Rose Spencer was reaching for something in her jacket.
65
For a man approaching retirement age, Sir Alexander Cecil still moved with speed, apparent as he used the split-second to lunge forwards and knock the mobile from her hands, sending it skittering over the hard surface of the chapel floor, the screen smashing.
Rose retaliated with forensic efficiency, a blow to the head that sent Cecil stumbling towards the organ, holding his palm against the wound. He slumped to the ground, blood seeping out across the floor.
Vine felt his breathing become heavy as he approached her, moving back down the aisle. She would have used her position to get through the security barriers unchecked, planting the explosives just before the service started, set on an automatic timer; the phone that had been in her hand was just for insurance, a back-up should anything unexpected happen.
He looked at her again now, desperately searching for some way out. He held her gaze, willing her to look away. But, as he stared at her, he found himself taking in a different person. She had been true to her calling: targeting, recruiting and turning him. He had been nothing more than a means to an end, an operational detail. The eyes he saw glaring back at him were ones he didn’t recognize – tougher, unforgiving, propelled only by the purity of the cause. Guilt had hollowed her out, reshaped her into something else entirely.
He allowed himself to look away, scanning the rest of the chapel to try and figure out where the explosives could be located. The Crypt Chapel lay directly underneath St Stephen’s Hall. If the chapel went, the rest of the flooring above would collapse too, potentially initiating a domino effect on the whole of the Palace. The Estate was crumbling and had been in need of urgent repair for decades. An explosion could bring the entire structure down, and thousands of people along with it.
&nbs
p; Sweat began to slide down his palms, his mouth consumed with dryness, as if he had never tasted water. One of the police officers had gone back to the top of the steps, trying to shepherd the guests safely out into the daylight.
Vine turned to the second police officer. ‘We need bomb disposal down here now. This could go off at any minute. Go.’
There was the sound of final footsteps leaving the Crypt Chapel. The space was now empty. Apart from Cecil’s unconscious form, it was just the two of them.
He waited for a moment, watching what she did next. Then he inched closer, slowly, methodically, showing her that he posed no danger. There was only one question he had left, one final answer he needed.
‘The photograph,’ he said. ‘The family in the photograph.’
She didn’t say anything, punishing him with her silence. When eventually she spoke, the words seemed to pain her, wounds that had no hope of healing. ‘The first strike,’ she said, letting her eyes fix on him again. ‘The intelligence was wrong. The drone hit a wedding instead. Their eldest daughter was getting married …’
The rest of the sentence remained unspoken, the terrible consequences filling the void around them.
He stayed there, looking down at Cecil still lying on the floor, knowing there might only be seconds left to act.
On instinct alone, he reached down and grabbed for Cecil’s arms and started dragging his weight with him towards the door. As he did, he saw Rose watch them silently, blankly; the masks gone, the screams beginning to dim, the weight of her own actions and inactions slowly lessening. Finally tired of all she had done, at peace with what she was about to do. Soon, very soon, it would be over.
Vine was nearly at the entrance to the stairwell. He began lifting Cecil’s body up behind him, straining under the weight, seeing the first glimmer of light from the doorway above them. But it was too late. It had always been too late. As he reached the steps, everything began to slow. His final memory was a haze of colour, more like a dream than reality: the lone figure of Rose in front of him, the golden echo of the chapel carrying her into its fold.
There was a brief pause, a blinding flash. A snowstorm of pieces signalling the start of oblivion. Then darkness fell.
Epilogue
‘Just here’s fine,’ he said.
The taxi pulled to a stop. Vine paid the driver and then looked up at the first of the spring sun as he walked down the rest of the way towards the main entrance of Trinity College.
He reached the porter’s lodge now and stated his position as a former student.
‘I’m here to see the Master,’ he said. ‘The name’s Vine. He’s expecting me at twelve.’
He sat in the waiting room for ten minutes until he was collected and led through Great Court to the Master’s office. He heard the voice before he saw the figure, the slimmer version of Lord Cecil of Burford squeezed into his wheelchair, dishing out instructions to a group of administrative assistants in the outer office. When he saw Vine, Cecil nodded, finished off his instructions and added in a croakier version of his old newsreader’s baritone: ‘Do you mind doing the honours?’
Vine took the handles of the wheelchair, pushing through into the Master’s study, a vast room with views straight out to Great Court. A bulky oak desk sat at the back of the room, covered with a large desktop and piles of paper either side. The room was lined with bookcases, older books kept in glass cabinets under lock and key, others paraded along the walls on either side.
‘Just over here will do nicely, I think,’ said Cecil, indicating the two armchairs slightly apart from the cream sofas in the middle of the room. ‘Do you fancy a tipple of some sort, Vine? One advantage of my new role is a free hand at the college cellar. The embarrassment of riches is quite extraordinary. Some very good Scotch. Margaret, one of the better bottles would help us along, I think.’
Vine helped ease Cecil over from the wheelchair to the armchair, feeling the bonier underside to the arms and body, the effect of months on nothing more than hospital food. Once seated, Cecil seemed to readily adopt his more recognizable shape, almost fattening back to his full plumage.
‘Damn nuisance that thing,’ he said. ‘But, I suppose I should be grateful. A few inches either way, and the wheelchair would have been the least of my problems.’
Vine took a seat in the armchair opposite. He couldn’t help but remember their conversation five months earlier, stuck in the equally decorous surroundings of Cecil’s country estate. Since then, the news had focused on little else but the blowing up of Parliament and the mysterious figures found in the stairwell of the Crypt Chapel, the famous stone all that saved them from certain death.
A few minutes later, Cecil’s PA returned with a silver tray, a bottle and two glasses. Vine poured and handed a glass to Cecil, who raised it.
‘Cheers,’ he said, taking a long sip. ‘So … consultant for the National Security Adviser, or so the rumour goes. Hefty day rates, I hope, all at the expense of the public purse. To what do I owe the pleasure?’
Vine put down his Scotch and crossed his legs. He gazed around the study. During his three years at Trinity, he had only ever been admitted here twice, all to sip lukewarm sherry and make polite chitchat with other scholars in the college. The prospect of entering the secret world had been little more than a hazy possibility in an unknown future. Often he wished himself back to those days, treasuring an ignorance he had once been so desperate to lose.
‘I’ve been sent with a message,’ said Vine, turning his gaze to Cecil now. ‘About the MIDAS operation and the details that came to light.’
Cecil bowed his head. ‘Ah. Some sort of plea deal, I suppose. I write down my confession, and you give me someone to make sure my door is locked at night? That’s why you came?’
‘No,’ said Vine. ‘I came because Cosmo Newton was the best person I’ve ever known. I came because, without you, Gabriel Wilde might still be alive. I came because justice has yet to be done …’
At this, Cecil’s face creased with what looked like a frown before flowering into a gale of laughter. ‘Very noble,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought I heard you weren’t going to be charged with handling stolen classified information. But justice is for other people. Bad people like me, I suppose.’
‘That’s different,’ said Vine.
Cecil laughed again. ‘One day you’ll get it,’ he said. ‘Newton never did, that’s what killed him. You’re not a hero, Vine. You’re a spy. We don’t deal in right and wrong. We deal in advantage and disadvantage. We don’t live in an age of armies and total war, or nukes and mutually assured destruction. We live in an age where death roams our streets. You fell for Rose because you were seeking an absolute – love, justice, truth. Leave truth and justice to the judges, the politicians, the media. We live in the shadows, the grey areas, the no man’s land. No matter how you like to get yourself to sleep at night, you have always been part of it. We exist because we have to. By fair means or foul.’
Vine sat there and traced his finger around the top of his glass. He had said what he wanted to say and could at least visit the graveside with a clear mind. He put down his Scotch, lifted his briefcase and pulled out a folder. ‘I spoke to Number 10 this morning. They will be supporting Valentine Amory’s call for a full inquiry into black ops under previous administrations. All witnesses will be under oath.’ He pushed the folder across the table. ‘As you can see, you will be summoned first.’ He closed his briefcase and got up from the armchair. ‘Good luck, Alex. Enjoy your Scotch. While you can …’
He nodded to the PA outside, then followed the stairs down to Great Court. He looked up and took in a last sweep of it all, the sense of cloistered quiet, suddenly tired of Cambridge, of the stately buildings masking their weight of secrets.
He walked back to the train station, letting the conversation replay itself in his mind. He tried to shake off the shiver of disgust he had felt as he sat in that room and absorbed the cold reality of the words. He could
already see the excuses being prepared, all guilt obscured by official rank and title.
Back in London, he reached the cemetery just after seven o’ clock. The sun was withdrawing and the plots were deserted. He walked down to the gravestone, standing there for hours and letting the lukewarm breeze massage his skin, brushing off the traces of his visit.
As he looked down at Newton’s gravestone, he longed for some answers, to once again distinguish between black and white. Instead, he was merely consumed by a rush of feeling. As a trickle of rain began to beat on the tip of his nose, Solomon Vine closed his eyes and allowed himself one final memory. Then he turned and started back, still able to hear the haunting echo of her voice, growing fainter now until it merged with the wind and the crackle of the trees, somewhere fading into silence.
Acknowledgements
This book wouldn’t exist without the work of Euan Thorneycroft and Pippa McCarthy at A. M. Heath. I owe an incalculable debt to both for turning me into a published author. Thanks, too, to Robert Dinsdale for vital editorial advice early on.
My next huge debt of gratitude is to Rowland White at Penguin for believing in the book and taking it on, honing it even further and providing an invaluable masterclass in the art of suspense writing. Thanks also to Emad Akhtar for his editorial insights, Victoria Bottomley for managing the publishing process and everyone else at Penguin for getting it into the hands of readers. Particular thanks to Chantal Noel and her rights team and to Nick Lowndes and David Watson.
Going through the life cycle of a book has been a fascinating insight into new worlds. Huge thanks to Conrad Williams at the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency for guiding me through the universe of TV production with such style and graciousness. Thanks also to Daniel Nixon.
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