Whispers of Betrayal

by Michael Dobbs

  Bendall? Resigning? If Bendall were to resign it would be the end of all Goodfellowe’s hopes. No Cabinet post and, without that, how would he be able to hold on to Elizabeth? Everything of importance in his life had somehow got round to depending on Bendall. The thought made him queasy. No, it couldn’t be, Bendall wasn’t the resigning type. He dismissed it as idle gossip.

  It was as he listened to Mickey turning the rumour mill that Goodfellowe’s eyes wandered around the telephone box in which he was standing. It carried that antiseptic odour of very recent cleaning, yet already it was covered once more in the lurid tits-and-bums cards of the good-time girls offering everything from Swedish lessons to something called Ethiopian aerobics. Goodfellowe scratched his nose but it didn’t help. He still didn’t understand Ethiopian aerobics. Yet even in this place of squalor the forces of righteousness were not to be denied. A little black-and-white card had been inserted amidst the moral debris. ‘If you are tired of Sin, read John 3:17,’ it proclaimed stubbornly. Beneath it someone had scribbled: ‘If you’re not tired of sin, ring Tray-cee after 3.30 on …’ Scribblers had been busy elsewhere, too. One lurid card sought new converts: ‘Bored out of your knickers? Get rid of your old M&S, get into a little S&M. Ring Sadie for a stimulating new position …’ Beside which somebody had scrawled ‘Dyslexics need not apply.’

  In the jumble of notions that were stirring inside his head, one suggestion more irrelevant than all the rest snagged upon the card and its grubby message. That of his old school chum. Poor old Amadeus, he wouldn’t be able to play. Couldn’t spell, so not invited to the party.

  ‘Shut up!’ he ordered.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘Be quiet a minute. Let me think. There’s something …’ He collided with the thought yet again.

  Amadeus. Couldn’t spell. Not invited to party. Seriously pissed off. Couldn’t spell. Couldn’t spell any more than, it seemed, could Beaky …

  It was preposterous. Amadeus? But suddenly his schoolfriend had both motive and mucked-up means.

  ‘Mickey, darling, need something in a bit of a hurry. Our friend Amadeus. What’s his address?’ But Mickey only had a telephone number. She offered to call it. ‘No, don’t call him, call up the Telegraph’s letter page instead, they’ll have the address. Find out where the hell he lives, will you? In a hurry.’

  Goodfellowe was cycling back down the Bayswater Road in the direction of Marble Arch, getting soaked in foul-smelling fluid from the windscreen washers of some moron’s passing car, when his pager stirred. He wobbled dangerously as he attempted to read and ride.

  Oh, save us all.

  Shakespeare Tower.

  In the Barbican.

  The heart of the City of London.

  Amadeus is inside the ring of steel.

  TWENTY

  Betrayal. Not so much an absolute concept as an art form, a point of view, and one that is constantly being updated. Life tells us we should expect betrayal, yet somehow it always succeeds in taking us by surprise. We never learn.

  Betrayal can’t exist on its own, in isolation, for in the end it’s nothing more than the twisted reflection of feelings such as passion, and love, and that strange thing called honour. Betrayal is a mirror-image in which everything becomes confused. What for one man may seem little more than an innocent or idle word can be taken by a friend as a grotesque obscenity, and what, for a woman, may be a practical course of action, is to her lover the most unpardonable offence. It all depends upon the mirror.

  Yet unlike the reflection of a mirror, betrayal lingers, eats away at us all like anorexia of the soul. And when we have been betrayed by those we loved and once trusted, it seems as if there is nothing left for us in the whole world.

  Except revenge.

  Amadeus had woken that morning feeling numb. He had shared his fitful dreams with Scully and all those others he had known who had died for honour and love of their country, and who demanded that they not be forgotten.

  He hated this place, this city of dark weathered façades they called the Barbican, a universe of concrete poured into the middle of Wren’s great city. Barbican. It meant a Roman fortress. An appropriate place for a final defence of honour.

  He had remained inside his apartment since Monday evening, not venturing out, not willing to run the risk of being stopped and questioned by those who searched for him. No one knew he was there. He had lit no lights, sounded no sounds, made no music other than on his Walkman, and then only Mozart and his Requiem.

  ‘Day of wrath and doom impending, David’s word with Sybil’s blending, heaven and earth in ashes ending …’

  Not that there was anyone left in Shakespeare Tower to hear. The city was inhabited by ghosts. The people had fled.

  Now he would ensure they did not return.

  The Barbican was little more than two miles from Marble Arch. As he pedalled Goodfellowe tried to maintain a steady pace to quench the alarm that was rising inside him, but failed miserably. His suspicions were ludicrous, extravagant, entirely inappropriate, yet with every turn of the wheels he had this appalling fear that nevertheless they might be correct. His collar was beginning to grow damp and discomforting as he passed the department stores and boutiques of Oxford Street. They stood unnaturally quiet, some firmly closed, others cheerfully advertising an End of the World sale. ‘Everything must Go! Before We Get Going!!’ Almost twenty past two. Push on!

  Goodfellowe knew his fears were preposterous, but nevertheless he knew he ought to share them with others. Filled with misgivings, he pulled over at a callbox and dialled Downing Street, knowing he was about to make an utter fool of himself. He was almost relieved when he got an engaged tone. He tried half a dozen times, same result. The world was about to end and the entire system of government was being overwhelmed by concern. Goodfellowe made up his mind to try again in a few precious minutes but, as he clambered back onto his bike, the appalling truth of his circumstances struck him. The last thing he could afford to do was to tell anyone about Amadeus. For Peter Amadeus was his friend. Amadeus was the man he had invited for drinks inside the House of Commons even as London was being torn apart in search of him. Even more disastrous, Amadeus was the man for whom he had gained vital time by telling COBRA they were a gang of four, not five. They were going to say it was all his fault. Even part of the plot.

  Suddenly, being wrong and being taken as a fool seemed the least of Goodfellowe’s concerns. Being right about Amadeus would be far, far worse, for in that event they would simply drag him away as a conspirator and each of the security services would take turns in tearing him to pieces. He would never be able to escape the suspicion of collusion, his career would be dead.

  No, he could tell no one. He’d have to sort it out by himself.

  Onward, driven by lurid imagination and more than a little fear. He was beginning to sweat freely as he passed Red Lion Square. He was making good time, there was little other traffic, and none of it heading towards the City. All the lights seemed to be standing at red, demanding that he stop, but he ignored them, pushing on, pushing on. Up ahead he could see the Tube station at Chancery Lane. He found it shuttered, its mouth gaping empty and black, and this was as far as he could go, for the Tube station stood at the City limits. Beyond it he could see a blockade of barriers, guarded by an elderly constable, and behind him a patrol of camouflaged soldiers, standard-issue SA80s at the ready, thirty high-velocity rounds in the mag. Goodfellowe knew a little about the weapon, a fragment of absurd and amusing clutter he’d picked up at a Select Committee hearing. Apparently the SA80 wasn’t all that it might be, since the mosquito repellent issued to the British Army had the effect of melting the weapon’s plastic sheathing and turning it into something resembling superglue. The knowledge gave him precious little comfort, however, since this wasn’t the jungle. It was Chancery Lane, and the weapons were pointing directly at him.

  He came to a stop with his front wheel resting against the first line of defences. The constable, his unifor
m adorned with the gold insignia of the City of London police force, took one look at the perspiring and crumpled figure in front of him and reached for the obvious conclusion.

  ‘Not today, sunshine.’

  ‘Oh, hell, here we go again.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It’s not what it looks like, Constable,’ Goodfellowe puffed.

  ‘Why’s that, then?’

  ‘I’m a Member of Parliament.’

  ‘Sure. Makes no difference. You could be Claudia Schiffer but you’ll not get through here today.’

  Goodfellowe reached into his pocket and waved a plastic photographic pass, a pink and grey ID with an encoded metal strip on the reverse that he was forced to carry in order to be allowed into the Cabinet Office and COBRA. He’d always found its colour scheme ridiculous and rather resented having to carry it, until now.

  ‘I’m part of this operation, constable, part of COBRA. You know what COBRA is? And you must let me through.’ Part of COBRA, indeed. Well, true up to a few days ago. It seemed a small exaggeration in the circumstances.

  The constable took the pass for inspection, then examined Goodfellowe still more carefully before retiring a few paces to seek guidance from his radio. The instrument at his shoulder spat and sighed as he consulted higher authority, while Goodfellowe was left to wonder at the strangeness of this place, normally a maelstrom of traffic and congestion yet now as quiet as any backstreet of Chernobyl. Even the pigeons were scratching around in puzzlement.

  As was the constable. He had crossed to two of the soldiers on duty and muttered something while nodding in Goodfellowe’s direction. All three then advanced upon Goodfellowe in a manner that was undeniably smothered in menace.

  ‘We’ve got that sorted, sir. So I tell you what we’re going to do. If you’re who you say you are, you’ll know the password and I’m instructed to let you proceed.’

  He leaned closer to Goodfellowe, his breath heated. ‘And if you don’t know the password, it means you’re guilty of deception, personation, theft of Government passes and obstruction of the police in the pursuance of their duty. Might also mean that you’re part of this nonsense, trying to bluff your way through. Either way these gentlemen here, under the provisions of the Public Order Act that have placed this area under military jurisdiction, are going to drag you away, throw you in the back of their wagon and take you for a long and very bumpy ride.’

  Even as Goodfellowe watched, the soldiers stiffened and seemed to grow in bulk beneath their uniforms. The muzzles of their short-barrelled rifles kept staring at him.

  ‘Which specific provision of the Public Order Act?’ Goodfellowe demanded, bluffing for time.

  ‘Let’s not worry ourselves about which provision, shall we, sir? Just the password.’

  ‘The password?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  There was a moment’s silence. One of the soldiers, young and very spotty, had a bright glazed look in his eye that Goodfellowe found disturbing, as though the lightbulb inside his brain was about to burn out. The muzzle of his rifle was pushed several inches closer. Goodfellowe swore; he was genuinely scared. No one had told him the password. The muzzle of the rifle seemed to be staring angrily at him. There were precious few mosquitoes around at this time of year, so no chance of the bloody thing melting.

  Which is what did it. Melting. Glue. Suddenly he was back in the garden of Downing Street, listening to the Prime Minister ranting about incompetence and death and scorched wings, like an ancient king trying to defy fate. It was a guess, but it was all he had.

  ‘Operation Icarus?’ Goodfellowe mumbled.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Icarus. The password’s Icarus.’

  The word was still hanging in the air when the two soldiers stepped smartly behind him, blocking his retreat. There was nowhere for him to go. The constable approached still closer, his face serious, his breathing laboured as his lips wrestled with the words.

  ‘I wish you’d said that from the start, sir. Saved us all a lot of trouble …’

  Two thirty-five.

  Head down, pain in his lungs. Goodfellowe pushes forward through Smithfield Market, its silent streets strewn with the unswept plastic and polystyrene of the previous day’s trading. In normal times this is a place filled with the cries of porters and the aromas of uncooked meat and roasting coffee, but today – nothing. Only more scavenging pigeons, which scatter in a panic of feathers as he clatters round the corner.

  And there it is. He looks up, wipes sweat from his eyes, to see glowering dark towers. He is almost there. At the Barbican. A complex of more than two thousand apartments arranged in blocks and towers around remorseless windswept plazas. A Brave New World of angles and of ugly aerials, built from concrete that weeps soot and grime.

  And the tallest and most unforgiving of all the structures that make up the Barbican complex is Shakespeare Tower. Forty-one floors high. Its dark windows looking out sightlessly over the City.

  Goodfellowe is forced to abandon his faithful bicycle. He begins running up stairs of cement and across anonymous brick-paved courtyards that seem to suck in winds and turn them round and round in some eternal spin cycle of litter and dead leaves. As he runs, the echoes of his footsteps leap back at him from the empty doorways and stairwells. It’s a ghost town.

  Two forty-two.

  He is by the entrance to Shakespeare Tower. Abandoned, no commissionaire, yet entrance thankfully unlocked. And somewhere, inside, up there, is Amadeus. All doubt is gone now, he knows it’s Amadeus. Should’ve known earlier. They’d thought the original letter of warning was written in gibberish to disguise the identity of the author. If only they’d had the wit to realize that it pointed insistently like a finger of accusation, marking the author as someone who was dyslexic, who had once offered Goodfellowe a shilling for a rude picture of the headmaster’s wife and who still seems to have one hell of a problem with authority.

  The address Mickey has given him says that Amadeus lives on the thirtieth floor. He thumps the buttons of the lift, then thumps the wall in impatience, yet even as he bursts panting from the lift he can see Amadeus’s front door is ajar. He knows he won’t find him there. He doesn’t find any trace of Amadeus, for the apartment is overarranged and crammed with pinks and pastels and little sign that a man of military background lives here, until Goodfellowe opens the door to the smallest bedroom. There he discovers a shrine. The memorabilia of a career spanning many years and several wars. A room crammed like a catacomb. No time to take it all in, just fleeting images of citations and photographs, with something called a Prop Blast certificate swinging disrespectfully from the hook on the back of the door. Weapons, too. A semicircle of combat knives arranged on the wall, and several guns. Probably Soviet, hopefully decommissioned. An Argentinian flag, faded, ripped, covered in ominous stains.

  Upward. Eleven further floors, and two more of plant rooms. Lifts. Stairs. Through the door that leads out onto the roof. Two fifty-one.

  The rooftop seemed deserted, occupied by nothing more than anonymous pipework and aerials that bent gently in the wind. The air was so much fresher at this height, and the view breathtaking. On every side stood the glass-eyed monuments to Mammon – the banks, the finance houses, the factories of fortune that were the City of London – and in their midst the cupola of St Paul’s, standing guard, defiant, as though reminding them to enjoy it while they could, for all things are fleeting.

  It was the fresh wind that made him realize he was not alone. The strains of a transistor radio drifted on the breeze from a side of the roof hidden from Goodfellowe by a huge ventilation duct. He turned the corner and found himself staring at Amadeus – and yet again at the barrel of a gun, this time a Czech pistol. It was pointed directly at him.

  ‘Tom.’ Amadeus smiled, but the expression failed to stretch as far as his eyes, which were sleepless, disturbed, erratic. ‘You were the last one I thought to see. It’s been a long time.’

&nb
sp; ‘Perhaps too long, Peter.’

  ‘What are you doing here? Come to apologize for standing me up on that drink?’

  ‘Happily, if an apology is what you want.’

  ‘Ironic. A little while ago an apology is all I wanted. A few words, politician’s words, even. Not the most priceless of jewels, you would have thought. But it’s too late for that now. Still, sorry to have to meet like this.’

  ‘This isn’t exactly what I was expecting, Peter.’ Goodfellowe was staring at the scene in front of him. Beside Amadeus stood a child’s toy, a garish blue-and-yellow plastic shotgun which had a pump action and assorted motifs styled after some kids’ TV show. Alongside it, laid out in drill order, were what appeared to be half a dozen multicoloured lightbulbs.

  ‘What were you expecting, exactly?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Almost anything. A bomb, a nuclear device, perhaps. Not a children’s toy.’

  ‘I’m putting a little theory to the test. We’re at about five hundred feet and this toy water mortar claims to be able to launch its little bombs’ – he indicated the light bulbs – ‘a further hundred feet in the air and for a distance of three hundred feet while they release their contents. Add to that the prevailing wind’ – he licked his finger and held it up to test the breeze – ‘I reckon the droplets will reach certainly as far as the Bank and Mansion House. Who knows, maybe as far as the river. Kids’ stuff.’

  ‘And the devil’s work …’

  ‘The gun came from Regent Street, and I’ve used a scuba tank to put the contents under a bit of pressure, just a couple of atmospheres, to make sure it all vaporizes properly. A little hit and miss, but that shouldn’t matter, not for my purposes. One block more or less won’t make much difference, will it? By the way, old chap, come and squat under that awning, will you? Out of sight?’ The barrel of the most un-toy-like Czech pistol was waved at Goodfellowe. ‘Can’t have you standing about like a distress beacon for all the world to see.’