The bathroom door swung open.
Standing in the doorway was the last person he would have suspected of being a senior field commander of Tenth May Army Group, London District.
The very last person in the world.
PART IV
CHAPTER 22
10.53 WEDNESDAY 5 MAY
Horatio’s eyes popped and his mouth lolled open. He gawped like a halibut on a fishmonger’s slab.
‘Horatio.’ Heather Lestoq wasn’t smiling. It was one of those businesslike, I’ve-just-read-your-school-report faces. He remembered it well. ‘I’m here to debrief you. I’ve been given full negotiating authority by Army Command.’ She was dressed in a bottle-green tweed two-piece. Her hair, usually impenetrably brittle and well-coiffed, looked a touch straggly.
‘How long have you been working for the E.R.M.?’ asked Horatio eventually. ‘And why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?’ Lying there naked he didn’t feel in a very strong position to argue his case. He got out of the bath and wrapped himself in the only towel. It didn’t quite reach all the way around his waist. He looked and felt absurd.
‘We’re employed on a strictly need-to-know basis.’ Smarting slightly from that, Horatio asked how long she had been involved.
‘Since before I even knew your father. I used to work in the European Foundation, a Eurosceptic organisation set up to campaign against ever-closer union back in the Nineties. We campaigned against Maastricht, the I.G.C. sell-out, the soft euro, the hard euro, then Aachen, and I stayed with it after it was forced underground.’
‘When did father get involved?’
‘Oh, it was always me more than Robert. Those bastards’ – he had hardly ever heard her swear before, it came as a shock ‘killed the wrong person. They assumed that because he made the speeches and chaired the meetings, he was also writing the lines and organising the movement. But that was mostly me.’
‘Killed?’ Horatio’s mind was whirring.
‘Robert was murdered. I’ve always been surprised a brainy boy like you never put two and two together. Atlantic Gas was perfectly safe in households by 2016. When I turned up at the flat, with you in my arms, there was no Atgas smell at all.’ She had never spoken to him about that day. Only to Riley, it seemed.
‘You were there when it happened?’
‘Yes. So were you. I remember every detail like it was last Monday. In fact far better than last Monday because last Monday didn’t change my life for ever.’ Her voice had changed perceptibly. ‘Thursday 6 April 2016. I’d just come back from a Bruges General Staff meeting at Bonchurch Road. Everyone had been there except Ella Gurdon, the Group secretary, and Robert, who was being watched too closely. We were planning the next stage of the Insurrection. A mass rally at Trafalgar Square, as it was then called, I remember. Instead of going up in the lift to see Robert, I went down to talk to Evans, our new caretaker, about the power cuts. It was when electricity was being cut almost every day, during the first energy crisis, before they partitioned Saudi. Evans wasn’t there, but after about the same amount of time that it would have taken me – us – to get up to the flat on the third floor, had we been going up in the lift rather than down to the basement, there was an explosion. It rocked the whole block. When I’d got halfway up the stairs it was obvious that the whole flat had been completely destroyed. Parts were still on fire and there was a chance of the whole building collapsing.
‘The firepersons found Robert and Flora, at least most of them, in the drawing room. I’d had no idea she and James were going to be there. We were supposed to be going to meet them for dinner later, they’d probably turned up early and were having a drink before I was due to arrive.’ At last, she started to cry. Horatio was wondering when it would come. ‘Thank God they all died instantaneously. Jim, standing by the window, was blown about a hundred yards out into the street.’ She was speaking in a dead, matter-of-fact voice. ‘When it comes to terrorism, the B.-B.B. have one or two things to teach us.’
Horatio was reminded of a paragraph in a book he’d read at university, called Paris After the Liberation. The authors, whom he seemed to remember were the Beevor/Cooper husband-and-wife writing team, had postulated that gas explosions might have been used by the French Secret Service to eliminate political undesirables in Paris immediately after the Second Nationalist War. ‘What makes you think it wasn’t accidental?’
‘You’re so wonderfully naive.’ She looked tired. ‘When Evans returned he insisted he’d smelt something gassy, but I knew I hadn’t. Yet the next day the papers – all of them without exception – carried the news that it had definitely been Atgas. And a couple of years later they did for Noel Malcolm in exactly the same way. Not very imaginative, the feds.’ Horatio recalled reading about the anti-federalist intellectual’s demise in Riley’s thesis. He’d hitherto assumed it to be one of history’s ghastly but common coincidences.
‘Why did you never tell me any of this? Or about your involvement in the E.R.M.?’
‘I’m not E.R.M.; they’re just politicians. Since Robert, Flora and James were murdered – I’ve been strictly operational. Tenth May.’
‘But I could’ve helped.’ He put on his shirt and trousers.
‘No, my love, you couldn’t. I knew I could always trust you, it wasn’t that. I remember when the Health Insurance Inspectorate tried to recruit kids to inform about how much their parents drank and smoked, you always misled them. While all your friends were busy sneaking on their mothers and fathers, I knew I could be proud of you. But I wanted something better for you than terrorism. I wanted Westminster, Brasenose, All Souls, well-deserved fame. I was so proud of you during all that Carlyle business, and over The Seven Pillars.’
‘You never let me know.’
‘I’m not one for mollycoddling.’
‘You mollycoddle Dick and Marcia.’
‘Do you want to hear my reasons or not?’ He nodded for her to continue.
‘I knew you had a formidable brain, one which the movement could have used. But when it comes to anything at all technical – and much of our work is very technical – you’re a sweet incompetent. Can you change a bulb, Horace, or wire a plug? That’s what terrorism is about, not writing essays.’ Horatio glared at his toes. He felt his cheeks redden. He put on his shoes and socks. ‘You’re not like your father. You’re simply not up to the physical and emotional stress of it all. Your … you know, trouble would have hampered us. I didn’t want to put you under any extra strains.’
‘There’s another reason I’m not like him, isn’t there?’ spat Horatio. He was incensed at her characterisation of him as a bungling, unstable wimp.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not his son. Am I? And you’re not my mother. Are you?’ Silence. He finished dressing.
‘He told you that, did he?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘He wasn’t your grandfather at all. And I am your mother.’
‘Do explain.’ He hoped it sounded sarcastic enough. All Horatio’s assumptions, everything on which he had based his life, were swirling in a maelstrom of conjecture and ambiguity. He again saw the man in the raincoat toppling over. Perhaps this would all end in a recurrence of the problem Dr Virgil had had to treat him for before his Finals. Or even a full-scale, four-funnelled, copper-bottomed nervous breakdown. His Pluszac was back in his flat. He hadn’t taken any for nearly a week. He was entering injury time. If he wasn’t there already.
‘After your father’s death I was short of cash. The movement couldn’t help. It was before they got into computer fraud and all that sophisticated stuff. I’d always suspected what that spineless little shit had done for his so-called jackpot, but there was nothing I could do to prove it. I decided to string him a line about you really being Flora’s son. For the money. It worked better than I expected. I showed him the birth certificates, claiming they’d been falsified. I also told him some mumbo-jumbo about D.N.A. which he swallowed. I didn’t even need to rig a test. Y
ou see he wanted to believe it. He was generous though, I’ll give him that.’
‘Why are you telling me all this now?’
‘Because you seem to have found out most of it and I want to put your mind at rest.’
‘There’s something else, though, isn’t there?’
She nodded. He suspected that the Ebury Street reminiscence had been told in such a graphic way so as to cede her the emotional high ground.
‘The old bastard passed you something, didn’t he? For years I’d suspected what he’d done. I once spoke to him about it, tangentially, but could never face him with it in case he tipped off the P.I.D. So far I’ve been impossibly lucky in escaping detection. They’re suspicious of me, naturally, but nothing’s ever been proven. I expect they think I’m too old now to be a threat. I went quiet after the explosion and they must have thought they’d seen the end of me. From the phone conversation you played me from that pub on Sunday it sounded like he was about to confess something to you. Was it about what he did during the Referendum? If it was, Horatio, I need it more than I’ve needed anything. Please give it to me. I know you think I was never much of a mother to you, so if not for me, then for your father’s memory.’
Horatio wasn’t really listening. He’d anticipated all that part already. He was considering the wider implications of giving his mother the tape. He was thinking, in a way he never really had before, about his country.
The image that filled his mind was of the huge Union flag which flew over Attali House. The navy blue with its twelve gold stars had meant his country for him, all his life. He knew his father had been a nat, of course, but then he had no memories of Commander Lestoq. At school and Oxford he had been taught that the Union was a laudable institution, a force for peace. Uniglobers saw it as the first great step on the road to World Government. It had stripped Great Britain of its independence, of course, but wasn’t that a historical necessity? Surely it had to be done, as the Information Commission kept pointing out, in order to resist the economies of scale wielded by the world’s two other trading empires in the east and west. Didn’t it?
The Union had its faults of course. Which country hasn’t? It was sclerotic, corrupt, mafia-run in some regions. It was also protectionist, introverted and absurdly bureaucratic. But throughout his life it had been his country. Beethoven’s Ninth was his anthem, however much it irritated him. His flag had twelve gold stars against a blue background. Well, more his logo. But a logo which people had fought and died for when the Baltic regions had tried to secede.
Now he’d discovered that it had all come not through the ideals that he had heard about at school, or the speeches of Schuman, Monnet, Pleven, Delors, Santer and Heath. Speeches which, as a child, he had been made to learn and recite along with his multiplication tables. He still had some of them by heart. He knew for certain that the Union had actually come into being through violence, bribery and fraud.
Wasn’t all that in the past? How could raking it all up help the future? Weren’t all nations born in blood as well as bravery? America would have fallen apart in the nineteenth century had Lincoln not been prepared to shed seas of American blood. The Asia-Pacific Economic Zone would never have been created if the Chinese hadn’t finally buried Communism.
And what of British independence? He’d never known the Union Jack. He’d read of nat and Carlist groups waving it occasionally – especially in the anti-Commission riots of the last six months – but he’d never seen it fly over a public building. It was there in the history books of course, a rather ungainly collection of saints’ flags interposed upon one another and often hung upside down. It seemed strange to think that anyone could have been particularly inspired by it, other than as an irrational psychological reaction.
But isn’t that what he was taught nationalism and patriotism always were – irrational psychological reactions? Of course, he occasionally applauded when the Tenth May carried out some particularly daring mission, but did he really want nationalism back?
The Union Jack could only ever have appealed to the people of a few rainy, cold old islands a short way off the continental north-western littoral. It had none of the moral and spiritual – almost religious – significance of that golden halo of twelve stars. Neither did it hold out any special message or hope for Personkind. It was just a bald, territorial, tribal symbol. Yet his mother was standing there in front of him, arms folded, expecting him to betray the U.S.E. for it and the anachronism for which it stood. Viewed logically, which was how his academic background had trained him to view everything, the proposition seemed absurd.
But was it? Might not the British have thrived as an independent nation rather than as five regions out of the thirty-six? Might Westminster have been the right place for the British to be ruled from, rather than the regional bureaucracies of Edinburgh and Cardiff, or the endless corridors of Commission admin units in Brussels? The British had long been great inventors, merchants, soldiers, seafarers and traders. Why could they not have been another Free Norway, a Switzerland (before it was muscled in on) or even a Singapore or Japan? They could have traded with A.F.T.A., A-P.E.Z., Azania, the Commonwealth, the Middle East. The Union, too, considering the trade deficits they used to run. That way they might have been able to retain their ancient rights and liberties into the bargain. They could have inaugurated a real New Elizabethan Age, rather than just the farce of one.
All these ideas flashed through Horatio’s brain as the synapses telegraphed new, contradictory thoughts at a speed faster than the connection made by any microchip yet invented. What about truth? He was a logician and a journalist. He had a duty to it. (At least he did as a logician.) He had discovered the crucial historical fact that the Referendum was fixed. That surely deserved to be known simply because it was true. What right had he to deprive the future of the knowledge that Britain – and possibly other countries too – had been conned into the continental superstate?
And Cleo? Not his sister, thank God. But his cousin. His desire for her had returned in a rush after what his mother had told him. He’d hardly dared spell out the implication – INCEST – to himself before, although it had been grinning at him like a gargoyle ever since he had read the Admiral’s letter. But now that revolting notion had gone, he was swiftly returning to his original infatuated state.
She’d trusted him when he said, despite every appearance and a motive, that he’d not killed her grandfather. She’d offered to help him, at great risk to herself. She’d put her job on the line. What would happen to their relationship – to any chances of future love – if he passed the Memorandum on to a terrorist organisation which she was employed to combat? Yet she had been forewarned about the Entente attack. Why?
The logical thing to do would be to tell his mother that the Admiral had passed on information which was being processed by Europol for a possible prosecution, and that he would not give it to her to use for her own atavistic political ends. She had not trusted him with her secret affiliation all these years – why should he help her? What did either of them know about the stability of Atgas back in 2016, how could he prove that some shadowy group of Berlin-Brussels Bureau zealots had murdered his father twenty-nine years ago?
Because he did know. That was all.
Because they were still killing people a generation later. Because the ‘Spartacus’ man following him earlier had carried a gun. (How had he known where to find him, by the way?) Because Jean was dead. Because you only had to listen to the Admiral’s voice on the tape to know that the Aachen Memorandum was bona fide.
The swine had deprived him of the chance to grow up with a father.
‘Tell me about the attack on the Entente Bridge.’ She looked blank. ‘Was it Tenth May?’
‘Don’t be absurd! King William’s our figurehead, our totem. We want him to be Head of State of a Free Britain. We’d hardly want him dead.’
‘But the news …’
‘Is directed, organised. There was a story planted earlier in th
e week about a plot to hit the Bridge.’ He remembered the Sun splash. ‘Pure black propaganda put out by the Information Commission so that people would blame us. They even claimed a fortnight ago that we’d stolen a heavy-duty military laser. All total rot.’
‘What happened then? I mean about the Bridge?’
‘When you called me to tell me about the attack I contacted one of our operatives who’s liaising with the Kiwis. They moved the King into a different car. You saved his life. How did you get the information by the way? Army Council would love to know.’ Could he betray Cleo? He ignored the question.
‘I’ll let you know in a second. Why didn’t you stop the whole motorcade? I don’t understand.’
‘That was a Kiwi decision. They believed the Europol Diplomatic Protection Unit when they said it was safe. Don’t ask me why.’
‘I lost a friend in that attack.’ He paused. He thought of his last kiss with Gemma. His Adam’s apple felt like a stone. ‘She might have become more than that one day.’
Heather Lestoq walked over to him and enfolded him in her arms, like she had never done enough when he was small.
‘You see what I’ve tried to protect you from?’
‘Why can’t you stop it, Mummy? Give it up. Just accept that the past is gone. The two Englands have been part of the Union for thirty years now. Killing people won’t change that.’
Instantly she took her arms from around him and stepped back. Her face hardened. He knew the phenomenon, the instantaneous withdrawal of affection, only too well.
‘Terrorist movements always get what they go for if they stick it out.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘The P.L.O., E.O.K.A., Algerian F.L.N., E.T.A., Irgun, S.W.A.P.O., Mau Mau, Angolan M.P.L.A., Z.A.N.U., the A.N.C.: they were all victorious. You’ll see, if HomoRage continue this terror campaign against hetero advertising, they’ll win in the end too. Every time C.R.I.P.S. blows up a Metro station without wheelchair ramps and lifts, what happens? More funds start to get targeted on the disabled. In five years’ time the Matterhorn will be wheel-accessible! It was the great lesson of the last century. Terrorism pays. How do you think the I.R.A. got to the negotiating table? Their 7 per cent support at the polls? No, they bombed their way there and so will we.
The Aachen Memorandum Page 20