“Good gracious, no!” Mrs Heffer said. “As I’ve already told Henry,” she went on in reference to Her Majesty’s Ambassador, “I’m certainly not going to back down. No, no, the conference goes ahead just as planned so far as I’m concerned.” She paused. “Of course, if you’re frightened by the possible consequences … it is your country, after all.”
She managed to sound as though she was doubtful about even that proposition. The President, caught on a raw nerve by the suggestion of fright, backed down. “Non, non, Madame. Je ne —”
“That’s all right, then,” Mrs Heffer said. After a little polite conversation, she rang off. She turned to the Foreign Secretary. “The French are always co-operative if handled right, Roly. And this conference must go ahead and Moscow put in its place — I can’t consider delay. You know — they’re such frightful people.”
“The French, Prime Minister?”
“The Russians, Roly.”
In Paris the President thought it only proper to call Moscow and never mind the British intransigence; Moscow had been kept informed as to the threat, naturally, and might react to the new development. But they did not. The reply came very positively from the Kremlin: “Niet.”
Next day, two things happened: in Paris there was a conference between the Elysée Palace, the Préfecture, the GIGN, the Defence Ministry and the Embassies of all countries party to the main summit for which the delegations would arrive the following day; and in London Mrs Heffer left for the north to brief the Queen, on holiday at Balmoral, on all affairs to be discussed in Paris. Despite the holiday atmosphere of informality, the Prime Minister was met by a royal car and a prince at Dyce airport and at Balmoral by a pipe band found by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a wish of Mrs Heffer’s that had been discreetly made known in advance of her arrival. As she reported to Roly on her return that same evening, the Queen had been charming, a very good listener as always, no interruptions. She had expressed concern for the missing men, Hedge and Shard; and had been informed by the Prime Minister that their safety would of course be a main consideration.
“Not the only one I need hardly say. The Queen was worried about this wretched threat, of course. As I said to you yesterday, Roly, the Russians are such frightful people. I told her that.”
“Did she agree, Prime Minister?”
“Not agree, Roly. She couldn’t, in her position. I instanced those stories that reached us some time ago — the fact that the Russians had used slave labour on the Siberian end of that pipeline — the gas. Men, women and children, even the sick, brought in from the prison encampments, working under armed guards and whips — terrible. We simply must have this conference, I told her and deflect the French from too much détente … in my opinion, I said, ultimate peace depends on our efforts now …”
The Prime Minister crossed the room and looked into a mirror, critically. She had had an appointment with her hairdresser the day before; she would have preferred today, but there had been Balmoral. Chic, elegance, femininity were much admired in Paris, which was in so many ways more civilised than today’s London, and Margaret Thatcher had always been absolutely impeccable. Mrs Heffer pushed a little at her hair, sighed, and went back to her desk. There was so much to do. What a nuisance people were who went and got kidnapped. She had entirely agreed with the Ambassador’s advice that the man Hedge be played down.
Across the channel there had been a good deal of dissension as the parties, so hastily and unexpectedly summoned together by the President, got down to business. A change in the programme, as suggested by the Ambassador, was the principal subject. But all places of assembly could be equally dangerous and no security was one hundred per cent watertight, as the man from the GIGN insisted, waving his arms in the air and sometimes closing his eyes as he made an emotional point. Yes, some changes, by all means, such was only prudent, but no, he would not commit himself between one suggestion and another. Each had its good and bad points. But one thing stood out to all present: the purely pleasure aspects should be curtailed if not cancelled altogether. The GIGN chief himself made this point firmly; the President agreed. Number One danger might be the two trips on the river.
“The frogmen, the diving teams, they cannot be everywhere at once. It is too dangerous in my view.”
The river excursions were cancelled. Something else could be substituted, but what? To take the delegates to the top of the Eiffel Tower would be lunacy. Besides, most of them could be presumed to have done it before. The river trips had been intended to be different, a pleasant way, if the weather held, of combining a leisurely view of Paris with informal inter-delegation talks on a friendly basis. The President was especially sad to cancel his own idea, the jolly notion of the splendid dinner to be held aboard two bateaux mouches, good food and wine and Paris by night. Even the Russians showed obvious regret when that jaunt was veto-ed; it didn’t show in their granite faces, but there was a hint that they’d been thinking that soft fairy lights, and old stone bridges glimpsed as shadows in the night, and excellent food, and very much good French wine, and brandy, might have induced the French to be even more reasonable in the unofficial give-and-take.
In the end, after a submission from the British Ambassador that whatever was decided upon it would be very advisable to keep the east and west delegations entirely separate when not in conference — because the threat was specific to the Russians, and he didn’t want to incur the opprobrium of letting the Prime Minister be inadvertently blown up, though he didn’t exactly mention this aspect — a decision was reached that no informal festivities at all would be laid on. Just the inescapable official parades, guard inspections and welcomes and so on, nothing that could offer a target unnecessarily.
“No fun?” the American NATO representative asked.
“Non.” This was the French President, and he was firm. But he had failed to reckon on Mrs Heffer.
11
The Dormobile had been driven a long way; for Shard it was an uncomfortable time. The driving was very fast and the vehicle swayed badly on bends. When at last it stopped and Shard was brought out the day had long gone, but in the darkness the sheen of water could still be seen. In the distance something tall loomed; it could be a cathedral. But the immediate surroundings were of less note. Just some sheds of corrugated iron, like wartime Nissen huts, on a river bank.
The Dormobile was run into a garage and Shard was taken under guard of old Nicholas with the Kalashnikov into one of the huts. Mikhail shone a torch into darkness. The light showed up a pile of junk in one corner — sacks, old crates and packing cases. Mikhail kicked some of the clutter aside; a trapdoor showed. He bent and lifted it, shone the torch down. There was a ladder. Shard was helped down this in front of the Kalashnikov. In the torch beam as Mikhail followed Nicholas down with little fat Annie Shard saw three men sitting on a long bench, each of them with an automatic rifle, each rifle fitted with telescopic sights. The men had the same look as Mikhail — cadaverous men with haunted eyes, watchful eyes, and a strange look of withdrawal as though they were unused to normal company — the look of the non-persons, the undead? Shard’s eye took in boxes filled with grenades and other explosives, plus ammunition for the rifles.
“All eventualities covered,” he said.
“All eventualities.”
“In other words, the plan’s not yet finalised.”
There was no answer from Mikhail. He nodded at the old man, and Shard was pushed forward by the Kalashnikov to sit on the bench. His hands were still tied behind his back, but
during the long ride in the Dormobile he had managed to loosen the ropes further. Mikhail spoke in Russian to the armed zombies and received monosyllabic answers. After that there was a curious stillness, a silence broken only by a faint slop of water. Before entering the hut Shard had seen the dark outline of a river barge alongside a ramshackle jetty, and there had been something of a wind. The sounds would be the slop of small waves against the side of the barge. Sitting on the bench,
Shard waited for more questioning; but it did not come. Curiouser and curiouser. Mikhail had gone back up the ladder. Little fat Annie had curled up on the bare floor like a cat, and had gone to sleep.
*
“There’s been a contact,” Roberts-White reported to the Counsellor. “Hedge.”
“Don’t say he’s back?”
Roberts-White smiled. “No. The men who’ve got him — they’ve been in touch. It appears he’s in the hands of CAT.”
“And?”
“He’s being held as a kind of security, a long-stop if you like. They think they’ve got hold of a crock of gold —”
“That’s what HE feared, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Roberts-White said, “but I don’t think it matters all that much. Except perhaps to Hedge … Because of his supposed importance, CAT is putting the pressure on.”
The Counsellor was showing signs of impatience. “Oh, come on. Just tell me what they said.”
“Right. CAT doesn’t want any changes in the VIP programme. Any changes and Hedge has had it.”
The Counsellor stared thoughtfully. “You mean they’ll kill him?”
“That seems to be the idea.”
“But why, for heaven’s sake? Didn’t you say this man Tex was after Mikhail Asipov, not the —”
“That’s right. And the best way for CAT to bowl out the Avengers of St Petersburg is for CAT to know just where to find Mikhail and his non-persons. Or anyway, to have a pretty good general idea where they’re likely to strike, which will obviously be somewhere along the line of the agreed programme. And you see, if there are changes … well, those changes might remain a closed book to Mikhail and his associates.”
The Counsellor blew out his cheeks. “In which case the VIPs are safe. So what’s CAT griping about?”
Roberts-White shrugged. “A question of kudos. Quite apart from the personal Tex/Mikhail angle … CAT wants the glory of having saved a bunch of Russians. At least, that’s my view.”
“What a bloody mess,” the Counsellor said, groaning. “It looks like a straight choice, doesn’t it?”
“Hedge or the Russian bigwigs. Yes. I’m glad it’s not my choice.”
“Nor mine either,” the Counsellor said promptly. “I’ll see what HE says about it …”
*
Food and water had been taken down to the cellar. A man with an old-world candle lantern had opened up a heavy iron-bound door and come down the stone steps, illuminating Hedge sitting in slime on the stone floor with his knees drawn up, looking the picture of misery and abandonment.
His visitor was French but spoke English. He said, “Eat and drink, M’sieur.” He laid down a dish and a jug. On the dish was a filthy mess of smelly meat, some sort of green vegetable, and a potato. Hedge retched; he had no appetite even for good food at the moment.
“I can’t possibly eat that,” he said in a high voice.
“I shall therefore leave it,” the man said. “It will be hard to eat and drink in darkness but the fault is yours.”
“Do what you like,” Hedge said. The man shrugged and started back up the steps. Hedge whinnied after him, “What’s going to happen to me?”
The man stopped, turned, and gave a laugh. “You wish to know, M’sieur?”
“Yes!”
The man told him. Possible death. Hedge gave a gasp of terror. The man turned away again and went through the door, banging it behind him and sliding the bolts across. In the darkness, Hedge shook and felt fresh sweat start. Hedge he might be, Hedge of the Foreign Office, but he was no international figure, no wars would be started on his account. With the Soviet Foreign Minister and a brace or so of Deputy Premiers in the other side of the balance, hope would be a useless thing to have.
*
The Ambassador was in a quandary. Hedge could scarcely be left to his fate; for the British to lose a highly-placed Foreign Office official could be serious. And highly-placed was in certain of its aspects not too much of an over-statement: Hedge did after all have the rank and standing of an assistant under-secretary of state. It was in his personality that he was of not much account, and you couldn’t hang a man, as it were, merely because he was a tiresome bore. But all this, coming as it had on the heels, or to be more precise slightly in advance, of the arrival of the Whitehall contingent in Paris was a confounded nuisance …
“And potentially very dangerous,” he said to the Counsellor.
“Very.”
“I can’t act on my own, that’s obvious.”
The Counsellor raised an eyebrow. “The Elysée Palace, Your Excellency?”
“Time is short. And the President’s unlikely to agree, I imagine. What then?”
The response was pat: “Refer to Whitehall.”
The Ambassador gave him a sharp look; there had been a kind of smugness in the tone, a sort of I-know-what-you’ll-do-next inference, which was unfair, because all ambassadors always referred everything to Whitehall. Just a message pad, the Ambassador thought moodily, that’s all I am … he lost no time in calling Whitehall on the security line, deciding to do this in advance of waiting upon the French President so that, as he said, he knew where he stood. He spoke to a deputy under-secretary of state, who immediately got onto Heathrow and caught the Prime Minister in the nick of time before she went with her retinue from the VIP lounge to the waiting jet. Then he rang the Ambassador back. The answer was straight from Mrs Heffer’s mouth: no British subject would be sacrificed to the Russians.
“Was that all?” the Ambassador asked.
“Yes, Ambassador.”
“Has she considered the matter fully, considered the implications?”
The Deputy Under-Secretary was cautious. “In my opinion possibly not. There was scarcely time.” There was a pause. “She’d mislaid her handbag … she was preoccupied. Very natural.”
“Natural!” the Ambassador repeated bitterly. Lives could hang upon a Prime Minister’s handbag. He cut the call, little the wiser as to what he should do. Dig out Hedge from captivity? A likely prospect in the time available! Ask through the proper channels for an urgent audience of the President of France? No time for that either: the Ambassador reached a difficult decision: to hell with protocol.
He used the telephone.
The President was incredulous. Non, he would not change his mind. Non, the programme would not be restored at the demand of a terrorist. What had the British come to, that they should ask such a thing? He rang off angrily and the bang seemed to go right into the Ambassador’s head.
“Now what?” the Counsellor asked.
The Ambassador spread his arms in despair. Mrs Heffer … a clash seemed only too likely. He said, “We must be very tactful.”
*
Daylight had filtered into the hut, down through the now open trapdoor. None of the non-persons appeared to have slept; perhaps that was why they looked like the undead … only little fat Annie had slept right through the night. Now she woke, got up, grinned across at Shard, and went up the ladder. There was no sign of Mikhail. There were sounds coming from the river as barges moved past. Shard’s guess, and it was no more than that, was that the river was the Seine, the barges were coming up from Le Havre towards Paris and beyond. The cathedral that he believed he’d seen the night before could have been Rouen.
The knowledge didn’t appear to be of much practical use.
Shard looked at the non-persons, the executioners. He wondered where the arms and explosives had come from: old Nicholas, the arranger? But there were always avenues for terrorists, always some arms dealer ready to make money. No sentiment, no loyalties. Cash was the god now. What were the roles of these hopeless-looking men to be? Stationed at strategic intervals along the route of one of the motorcades, peering through their telescopic sights from windows, roofs and suchlike? One at least was bound to get a good opening. No security was hot enough to cover all points even though all buildings from which a threat might be presumed to come would have been checked out, all names
known, passes required and examined. Shard had often wondered why there hadn’t been more assassinations on formal occasions. A fanatic who didn’t mind being caught once he had done his deed would always stand virtually a hundred per cent chance of success. These undead didn’t look as though they had anything to live on for. They looked the fanatic part.
After some time had passed Shard heard a car draw up. A door banged, and voices came. Then silence again. The sun was climbing. This was the day of the arrival of the British team: during the afternoon, Mrs Heffer would alight on French soil. The Russians were due in an hour later, four p.m. French time. Not long. Unless a quick dash to Paris was envisaged, it began to seem unlikely that Mikhail meant to strike along the arrival route from the airport.
The car was heard to leave; Mikhail came down the ladder with two other men, men in jeans and donkey jackets, Frenchmen, tough-looking, both of them dark visaged. Mikhail said, “Now we leave.” He said something further in Russian; the non-persons got to their feet and climbed the ladder, carrying their rifles, their faces expressionless still. Shard was ordered to get up and follow; he went out with Nicholas behind him as before. The old man hadn’t slept so far as Shard knew, remaining on guard throughout the night, as wakeful as the undead, but he had allowed Shard to nod off with his back slumped against the wall.
Outside, the undead were going aboard the barge. Paris was presumably the destination; Shard had no idea how long it would take for them to make the river journey. It still seemed unlikely that the shooting or whatever would come during that first drive into the city.
Once aboard, they all went below. It was a tight fit in the cabin. Shard sat next to little fat Annie, still a happy girl, looking forward to something. The two men who had come in by car remained on deck — the crew. Before embarking they had brought the cases of ammunition and explosives aboard. Within minutes of the embarkation, the barge moved off the jetty under its engine power, chugging along slowly. From the cabin ports Shard could see the countryside going past. Green fields, cows, a scene of peace. From time to time houses and roads and people passing in cars, looking at the barge’s progress, none knowing what it contained, what its cargo was, what the concealed men intended, what trouble would be brought to Paris and the whole of the west if they should succeed.
The Executioners Page 13