I knew for certain then that I was as much a traitor to my country as were the Macleans, Philbys and Blunts whom I’d despised so much in my youth.
I observed Percival’s meteoric career, as he progressed all the way to the job he now holds as one of the most powerful regional Commission Secretaries in the Union. I knew what he and his friends had done. They must have had – must still have, mind you – many well-placed confederates inside and outside the Commission. Examination of the Referendum results in the other two regions where there were large pro-Aachen majorities, Southern and South-West Central, has convinced me that the same electrode-switching probably went on there, too. Together, we three regions delivered the majority for the blasted Treaty. And that’s only in Former Britain. God knows what went on in places like Denmark, Greece, Portugal and Sweden.
All I know for certain, though, is that as Official Chief Scrutineer for South-West Region I hereby declare – albeit thirty years too late and posthumously – the result of the Aachen Referendum in my Region to be invalid.
Over and out.
CHAPTER 19
12.45 TUESDAY 4 MAY
Horatio could not help marvelling at the depth of their cynicism. They had not attempted to manipulate the voting figures once they were collected – fiddling a million here, half a million there. They had automatically assumed that the majority of Britons would be against Complete Union and therefore transposed every ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ in certain key regions.
They had simply taken it for granted that the British people would not want to lose their thousand-year-old nation state, but they thought, with that invincible conceit of the Europhile, that the man in Whitehall knew it all. British sovereignty was betrayed through a nifty piece of electronic legerdemain. It was almost enough to turn Horatio into a rabid nat.
And what brinksmanship! Had the majority been much larger someone would surely have smelt a rat. But at 52–48 per cent it was close enough to convince. Equally tight results were recorded in at least four other regions. It would certainly be worth investigating some of the referendums there, too.
It must have helped enormously, Horatio surmised, that pre-vote opinion and exit polling had been banned a decade earlier, ostensibly for being ‘anti-choice’ and ‘bad for democracy’. They would have shown up the discrepancies. Deconstructing all the Referendum machines the very next morning was smart too. There wasn’t even a museum piece in existence, as Horatio knew from his attempts to track one down for an illustration for the first of his Times articles.
Then the very simplicity. Whoever thought of using the binary nature of computers was a near-genius. And the audacity. Had it leaked out that the Referendum had been fixed there would have been a lynching. The revelation that elements in the Commission – right up to and including the Foreign Commissioner himself – were using the Lottery as a slush fund would be explosive enough. Horatio could not help but be impressed by what he was up against.
He looked across at Jean. Tears were coursing down her chubby, warty old cheeks. She was hyperventilating. Horatio had been so absorbed by the high politics of the situation that he selfishly hadn’t bothered to think about what effect the tape would have on her.
‘Jean? Jean, are you all right? Pull over here.’ She was in the slow lane in any case. She veered off right and came to a halt on the hard shoulder. She pulled her I.D. out of the ignition. Horatio leant across and wrapped his arms around her. Then she put her head on his ample breast and cried and cried. After a few minutes, sniffling, she asked for a handkerchief. He pulled out the silk one from his breast pockets to give her to dry her eyes.
‘I can’t blow my nose on that, it’s silk.’
‘Go on, it doesn’t matter, I don’t mind,’ he said, hating himself because he did.
What did Jean dislike most about all of this, he wondered? The original crime? The political side? Jake’s greed? The treachery?
‘We don’t know how they threatened your husband. They probably told him they’d harm you if he spoke out. He really had no alternative. It just shows how much he loved you.’ He stroked her hairy forearm gently, desperately trying to think of something else soothing to say. Eventually she composed herself enough to speak.
‘You must tell everyone, Horatio.’ A hardness had entered her voice for the first time since she had stuck the gun in his back. ‘It’s your duty to Jake and Sir Michael. And really, as well, when you think of it, it’s your duty to Britain too. You must let everyone know what these evil, evil people have done to all our lives.’ Britain, as opposed to North England, or Wales, or Scotland, sounded unfamiliar to Horatio. Strange, romantic, and somehow right.
‘I know. I will. We will.’ He judged she had turned the corner from despair to resolution. ‘But right now we badly need to get to London. If we stay here much longer we’ll be stopped by the police, and then where’d we be?’ The Nicotine Inspectorate roadblocks they sometimes had at Chiswick, and the cameras at the various tollbooths, were enough of a worry without their being photographed by the hard shoulder emergency services’ cameras.
‘I’m all right now,’ she said, blowing her nose again on his thirty-euro silk handkerchief. ‘Let’s go.’ She pushed the I. D. card back into the ignition. ‘It was hearing Sir Michael’s voice that set me off. Thinking that I’ll never hear it again. He was the best friend I’ve ever had. I’m going to be so lonely.’ They set off again, with Jean driving at 70 kph, as fast as the speed governor on her auto would allow her.
One fat, selfish, hypochondriacal academic and one even fatter, ugly, moustachioed old widow. Trying to alter the course of history.
As they entered central London, Horatio devised a plan to lose anyone who might be following. He asked Jean to pull into the auto battery recharging depot halfway down Piccadilly. He told her he would then get out, attach the recharger line and make as if to go into the depot office to pay in cash. Instead, he would nip out the back and onto Regent Street. It meant they could not say goodbye properly, or make any gesture to imply he was not coming back. She was just to wait for as long as she could, then get out, pay normally and drive back to Ibworth.
Jean, still looking distraught, nodded bravely. Could he leave her in such a state? Without even saying goodbye? He had to.
It worked. Three minutes later he was halfway down Regent Street. Safe. Alone, of course, but in control. He did not so much fear the cameras which were stationed at the beginning and end of most streets, it would be terrible luck if he was spotted from those. Much more dangerous were the ‘Have You Seen This Person?’ photographs which he now saw on the front pages of The Mail, Sun and European.
There were other photos of him now, including a particularly unflattering one taken after his graduation ceremony, complete with mortarboard and an incredibly self-satisfied ‘I’ve-just-taken-a-starred-first’ smirk.
Fortunately, the Indy had photographs of First Lady of The Union Cheryl Cole on holiday with her billionaire husband at their Malibu dream home, so he was off that front page at least.
Through a combination of trams, taxis, walking and endless doubling-back, Horatio reached Knightsbridge without – he was certain – being spotted. Walking down the Brompton Road, he saw the huge white Catholic church ahead of him. He had an idea. Stopping at a corner newsagent’s, he bought some detox dealcohol chewing gum.
Entering the Brompton Oratory he walked twelve pews up on the right, genuflected and entered. Then, with the 14.00 service about to begin, he knelt and pretended to pray. As he did so he slipped the tape from his inside pocket and, removing the gum from his mouth, attached the tape container securely to the underside of the seat in front. He feared for a moment that a priest walking towards him had spotted something, but she walked past oblivious. He wished he had had time to make a copy, but every minute spent on the streets increased his likelihood of capture. And he must not have the tape on him when that happened.
Sitting silently in the ornate baroque splendour of the Oratory
, Horatio’s thoughts turned to questions of the spirit. His mother was not his mother. His lover was his sister. He had every right to go mad. Why could he not just opt out altogether? Live abroad like Marty suggested? Forget what he had learnt? The glorious Italian altarpiece and high altar were, he remembered, originally from St Servatius Maastricht in Rome. That brought him back to the political aspect. How much of a nat Fifth Columnist was he? Really? He had secreted the tape, but what next? He felt like a whist-player whose only good card in his hand was the ace of trumps.
Leaving the church he turned right and then right again up Exhibition Road. He could see Hyde Park in the distance at the other end. He walked past the Victoria and Albert Friendship Museum on his right and Federation College of Science, Technology and Medicine on the other side of the road. Stopping at a phone booth halfway up he called Cleo, taking care to cut off the vid link. He attached his pager phone-scrambler to the receiver. He had forty seconds.
‘Do you remember where you said you used to play as a child, and I said I did too? Meet me there. Now. Don’t get followed.’ He hung up before giving her a chance to answer. She’d come.
He then walked up the rest of Exhibition Road, crossed Kensington Gore at the Euro-Geographic Society and set off towards the Albert Memorial. The morning’s clear, light blue sky had clouded over since he’d left Jean. It was Major-grey now and threatening rain. On the north-east corner of the memorial, emerging from the permanent blue plastic awning, was a group of larger-than-life-sized statues representing Asia. A half-naked female pharaoh sat astride a haughty camel. She was flanked by a sphinx and a handmaiden on one side, and a fierce, turbanned bodyguard armed with a scimitar on the other. Horatio recalled that the sculptor, John Foley, had reputedly died of a cold caught from the wet clay he kept on his lap while lovingly sculpting young Asia’s breasts. Cleopatra would know where to come.
His sister, he thought, a shudder at the reminder of what they had committed together replacing a kind thought at the last moment.
He resolved not to tell her. What possible good could come of filling her with the same sense of self-disgust that he felt? The Admiral was dead. Heather – his aunt – could be trusted to continue to keep her twenty-nine-year silence. He would do the manly thing for once and not unload his guilt onto someone else.
He saw her get out of a taxi at the entrance of Albert Hall across the road and step inside. He did not see her emerge but five minutes later she reappeared almost next to him. True tradecraft.
‘Darling, what’s happened to you?’ She tried to kiss him on the lips but he turned his head at the last moment so it landed ineffectually on his left earlobe. Anything more would have scalded him.
‘Just about everything. What’s happened to Marty?’
‘He’s off the scene altogether. Either suspended or sacked, I can’t find out which. For freeing you. I’m putting my job on the line seeing you now. And sod all thanks it seems I’m getting for it!’ She looked around, almost theatrically. ‘Who knows who may be watching us now with some ultra-lens. Or listening in. We’ve got gadgets that you just point at someone and you can hear what they’re whispering half a kilometre away. It was such a stupid place to choose!’
She was starting to get emotional, drawing deeper and longer breaths. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d never met you now. I’m sure grandfather would be alive if you hadn’t pestered him. I’m beginning to think …’ Big, pear-shaped tears started to well up in the corners of those transmarine eyes. The sexual element completely banished now by his special knowledge, Horatio was not about to buckle. She was rubbing her tears away with the back of her hand. The gentlemanly, brotherly thing to do would have been to comfort her, but Horatio needed to interrogate her further. ‘Why did you leave this morning?’
‘I had a watch-phone message calling me into work. To prepare for this rally on Saturday. I didn’t want to wake you. When I got there I heard they’d tracked you back to your flat. They were about to send in a S.W.A.T. team. I warned you on your modem. Bugger all thanks I’m getting for that too!’
‘Is it traceable?’
‘I sent it via Marty’s terminal, but it still might be.’
‘Who do you think killed your grandfather?’ Our grandfather, thought Horatio for the first time.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you the slightest idea where Marty might be?’
‘No. He’s just disappeared. He’s taken your file with him. We’ve searched his flat and put a watch on it.’
‘Why did he provide the police and E.B.C. with my photo?’
‘I don’t know that either. His job’s on the line. One thing’s for certain though, you mustn’t trust him anymore. Darling?’ She looked down at him. He walked up two steps of the Memorial to return her gaze. ‘You do remember last night?’ The thought repelled him now. He nodded. ‘You trusted me then. Why can’t you trust me now?’
‘In what way?’
‘Tell me what you went to see grandfather for. I might be able to help. I know you didn’t kill him – though I’ve no evidence for it – but I believe you. You’re no murderer, although I can’t persuade P.I.D. of that any longer. Especially now you’re on the run.They’ve got the Bridge and every port and airport covered in case you try to skip the region.’ She ostentatiously looked behind her. It reminded him of the Widow Twankey in pantomime. ‘But soon enough you will be arrested and this period will count heavily against you. Please just trust me. The clue is obviously in what he wanted to give you. What was it?’
Horatio thought for a moment. Then handed her his shorthand transcript.
She read it, nodding and every so often looking up at him wide-eyed. Occasionally her pretty chin dropped in astonishment. ‘What’s this, a copy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it’s genuine?’
‘It fits in with other evidence.’
‘Such as?’
‘A note I’ve found relating to Percival bribing a scrutineer, analysis of the Referendum results, the repetition of a killer’s name, the murder of a judge named Minter thirty years ago. And so on.’ Actually there wasn’t much in the way of ‘so on’, and the rest was completely circumstantial. The Referendum machines were destroyed, Percival’s note was ambiguous, the interview had been wiped and Minter had been declared as suicide. It really all hinged on the Admiral’s tape.
On what he now thought of as the Aachen Memorandum.
‘My God.’ She sat down on the steps as the full implications of the Admiral’s revelations sank in. ‘It’s enough to shake one’s faith in the Union, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is. And you work for it. Imagine what effect it’ll have on ordinary people. Let alone nats! Do you know Percival?’
‘No. Well, I know of him of course. But I’ve only met him once myself. I saw something of him at school. I was there with his daughter.’
‘The one who works at the glistening bank?’
‘That’s right. She surveys their French Impressionists and Dutch Masters. She was at Marty’s party the other night. Goes out with David Fraser.’ Was there anything that hack would not stoop to? A father-in-law like that could fix him up as a M.U.P. in a nanosecond. Or, if he was interested in serious power, Percival would find Fraser something substantial in the Commission. What an operator.
Cleo set her jaw. She studied Horatio for a moment and said; ‘Together we could take the lid off this whole thing. This alone, in your handwriting, wouldn’t stand up for a second. We need the original to initiate a prosecution. We can do it, though, I know we can!’ He was proud of his sister’s resolution.
‘How?’
‘For a start we could bring Percival in for questioning. You won’t get anything better right away my darling. No newsagency would touch it with our libel laws. But with the original of this, Europol might be able to interest some serious people. Important people. Brussels people. A tough interrogation of Percival might bring something out.’
‘He’
d outwit any interrogator you have. And as for Brussels! You do see the political implications of all of this, don’t you?’ He hoped he didn’t sound too patronising. ‘It’s not just Percival who’ll go down if this gets out. The memorandum calls into question the whole post-Aachen constitutional settlement, our place in the Union, everything political we’ve taken for granted all our lives!’
‘First things first. The law’s the law. My superiors will obviously need the original of the document. Where is it?’
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Right now, I don’t even trust my mother,’ said Horatio, with more truth than Cleo could possibly have imagined.
She held out her hands. He put his in them. She looked soulfully into his eyes, but the hypnotic effect was no longer there, not now that the sexual element had been eliminated.
‘I love you and you must trust me,’ she whispered. ‘We can only hope to succeed in this if we work together. I know love is a big word for people who’ve only just met, but I really feel there’s something between us.’ If only she knew what it was, he thought. ‘They’re looking for you,’ she continued, ‘but I could get it easily. Now where is it?’
He shook himself free. He wasn’t about to put his twin in that kind of danger. Being in possession of the tape could be a death sentence for her. It was time to take responsibility. To do something a Hunky-Regular-Guy would do.
The Aachen Memorandum Page 17