by Craig Thomas
"How did you come by it?" He handed the card to Giles, who nodded his agreement. Marian leant forward in her chair.
"Oslo. I went looking for a guy I found him. Part of a team. They weren't waiting for me, but they found me fast enough."
"Does this involve Vance Aircraft?"
Gant nodded. The second 494 to crash was serviced overnight in Oslo.
There was a guy there who claimed Vance sent him, after the first crash, after Alan and I—" Again, he shrugged. Then he looked up bleakly.
"I need to know why the French security service is involved in this."
"What was their interest?" Aubrey asked.
Mrs. Grey brought the refreshed cafetiere, another Crown Derby cup. In an exaggerated politeness, Gant stood up. Mrs.
Grey at once warmed to him, poured him coffee. When she had gone, Gant said:
"Hostile action. They tried to take me out."
"Why?" There was a tremor of excitement in Aubrey's voice. It was another moment like that on the terrace at Uffingham, or when he had discovered Marian in the hall of the house, having overheard David.
Marian's moral outrage, Gant's intrusion, even Giles' protective fluttering, all like breezes exciting the calm lake of his old age.
"It was sabotage each time," Gant announced.
Aubrey heard Marian's easy, immediate shock in her breathing and the rumble of Giles' disbelief. For himself, the past had bullied its way in.
"You're certain of this?" he said.
"Yes."
"And you know who?" Aubrey blurted, realising an angry excitement about Gant.
"A guy called Strickland. Former Company man. It's his career. I recognised him on videotape they have it now, I guess. I didn't retrieve it."
"You mean' Marian burst out "Alan Vance was the victim of sabotage, that someone employed this man Strickland to make certain the 494 was a disaster?"
Her eyes were drug-bright.
That's about the size of it."
"Who?"
"I don't have the answer. French security is protecting Strickland in some way. It's a cover-up."
"Kenneth!" she exclaimed.
"Kenneth…?" Her voice tailed away into sombre reflection. Her hands were agitated in her lap, amid the huge flowers of her full skirt.
"Wait, Marian, wait," he urged.
"Mitchell tell us what happened to the first aircraft, then to you…
Please. Take your time."
As Gant's brief narrative concluded, Giles was the first to speak.
"You're certain of everything you've told us?"
"I am, General. Burton wants me to follow up, but I don't think it's anything but polite interest. He doesn't want to know what's really going on—"
"Do we?" Aubrey asked sharply.
"Not you, Mitchell, not you we three?" Gant's sense of wrong was primitive. His motive had been evident in the way he spoke of Vance, or perhaps more accurately, of his aircraft and his ambition. But this
…?
He was afraid of Marian's keen intuition. It was much like his own.
Would it lead her to—?
"You think this effort to discredit ruin the Vance 494 originates in Europe, don't you, Major?"
"I'm not sure. Does the French security service freelance, sir?"
"Infrequently," Aubrey admitted.
"Kenneth stop dragging your feet," Marian said, her brow creased, her eyes staring at the carpet as if reading some hieroglyphic text. Her hands made small, decisive chopping motions as she spoke. The two things have to fit together. The consequences of what the major has discovered have been of the greatest benefit to Aero UK, to David."
Gant's attention was hungry, fixed.
"No, don't interrupt me Tim Burton has been won over, Skyliner is on the brink of worldwide acceptance when it was a dead duck only a couple of weeks ago. Aero UK flourishes, when a fortnight ago it was about to collapse." She looked up, her eyes hot. Two plane crashes have made all the difference in the world!"
"You mean you know—?" Gant began. Marian nodded, but Aubrey protested.
"We know absolutely nothing, Mitchell nothing!"
"Kenneth, that's just obfuscation—"
"Marian, you're letting your imagination run away with you," Giles warned. He glimpsed the realities, but they made him only more determined to avoid them for his daughter's sake.
"Am I? Well, Kenneth, am I?" she challenged.
"We know Aero UK has been kept afloat by fraud. Perhaps it needed murder to make certain of the eventual outcome!"
"You're talking about business rivalry, not some vendetta!" Giles objected angrily.
This is all nonsense."
"Well, Kenneth?" she asked again. Aubrey merely shook his head. He appeared old, somehow uncomprehending, and her disappointment with him was mirrored in Gant's expression. She added: They killed Michael Lloyd for the sake of his silence. What would a few aircrew and some passengers all total strangers matter?"
To Marian, Aubrey's complacency seemed little more than slowness of mind, her father's defensive tactics and dismissal of what was so glaringly obvious merely tiresome; even Gant was no more than a messenger bringing confirmation of her own insight. The French security service was involved because of BalzacStendhal, obviously. The sabotage had been a kind of violent asset-stripping, a dawn raid with real weapons. She fumbled her cigarettes from her handbag and lit one, puffing furiously, waving her hands as she continued to berate the men in the room.
There are just too many coincidences, too many common factors. There's Fraser and the death of Michael there's my lucky escape there's Tim Burton changing sides, if you like the two sabotaged 494s the attempt on the major's life everything! If you can't see that it all forms one design, not two, then you're being wilfully complacent, Kenneth!"
The silence that followed was charged. Aubrey dissembled, she realised, in maintaining his lack of expression. Her father's nervousness was apparent, an admission that he agreed with her and was afraid of the consequences of the truth.
Gant asked:
"Can you explain what's the problem over here?"
Leaning intently forward, Marian jabbed her cigarette in his direction in accompaniment to her hurried explanation. She felt her cheeks flush, her body quiver with her unsuppressed anger. She had been right all along! David had planned this, he had employed a professional saboteur to remove the rival to Skyliner. Following the collapse of the helicopter project, it had been ever more urgent that he display some kind of success. He had had to bring down a second494 to make certain.
And he'd done it, just as easily as he might have ordered dinner in a restaurant.
"I'm certain the fraud and the sabotage are linked," she repeated.
"Both companies would have been ruined, the fraud would have come to light, if Artemis had bought 494s and then other airlines had followed suit. The helicopter cancellation was the last straw. They had to act, and act quickly!"
She sat back, stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another.
She poured herself more coffee, her gestures as theatrical and calculated as those of an actress.
She had to persuade Gant and Aubrey and her father that this must be pursued. Its scope, its daring, its moral vacuum affronted her. Her father and Kenneth could have all the comforts of claiming that it was none of their concern, that it was civvy street to them and bore no relation to the battlefield or the intelligence world of the Cold War but not at the price of denying the facts. Her father's expression pleaded with her, as if she could will a self-imposed amnesia. Kenneth was owl-like, patricianly dismissive.
"Nothing to do with you, Kenneth?" she taunted waspishly.
"Other side of the street, someone else's concern?"
"Marian!" her father snapped in the voice with which he had upbraided lapses of good manners during her childhood.
Gant's expression was thoughtful. She suspected that he was more than half convinced Looking challengingly at Aubrey, she
asked: "What do we doT After a long silence, Aubrey sighed heavily.
"Very well," he admitted with as bad a grace as he could muster.
"Very well."
He was irritated, as if woken from a nap, having missed the fall of two wickets after a too-good lunch. Marian realised that she had hooked his curiosity like a fish. Her father appeared infuriated that Kenneth had been won over. He wanted nothing more than her safety… Marian suppressed the shiver that threatened to reveal her nerves. That fire
… they had tried to kill her. She breathed slowly, deeply. Even so, Giles was aware of her disquiet. His expression pleaded with her to give it up.
"Kenneth—" he warned.
"Yes, old friend, I understand," Aubrey murmured.
"But these two young people have already excited the curiosity of interested parties, even their counter-activity.
We cannot now leave things as they are. Twice they have tried to kill
Mitchell and—" '-once in Marian's case," Giles said heavily, and then immediately burst out: "But we're talking about Davidherel How can we be discussing the son of our oldest friend in this way?"
Ungenerously, deliberately, Marian snapped: "Who else could be behind it, Daddy?"
The French Coulthard…?"
"Hasn't the brains for it," she retorted.
Then the French."
"It isn't primarily an intelligence operation, Giles," Aubrey smoothed, waving Marian to silence with an angry little flap of his hand. They would do it for la France or la gloireor reasons of state, even for business… but they don't appear to be the prime movers here. They have no direct involvement with the city regeneration scheme and the massive fraud. David's companies do. David is involved in Aero UK, David has met the European Commissioners Marian suspects Lloyd's former superior among them and David is concerned at any and every interest shown, whether by myself or Marian. David…" He shook his head, more sorrowful than enraged.
"You mustn't, Kenneth," Pyott pleaded.
"Giles, I must help if I can." He assayed an ingratiating smile.
"You, after all, couldn't forbid her."
"Clive must never, never be involved, Marian. Or know that any of us are involved." He turned his back on them the moment he finished speaking, as if to disown them, and stared out at Regent's Park in the midday sunshine.
Aubrey asked quickly: "Why do you wish to pursue this, Mitchell? Why are you here, precisely?"
"Are you asking me why I need to do it, or if I can do it?"
"Perhaps both."
Marian was shocked by Aubrey's bluntness, his sudden recovery of concentration.
Gant was aware of her surveillance of him, more challenged by her than by Aubrey.
"Vance built a good airplane. Someone decided they couldn't compete and changed the odds by killing people. Some of them were friends of mine." His admission, to Marian at least, seemed more like a duty than an affection. Then Gant added:
The pilot of the first airplane, Hollis… I couldn't be at the funeral. I should have."
He looked up at Aubrey, his eyes hard.
"When you've taken the bones out of that, yes, I can do it. I know Strickland. He's just one of the psychopaths I've run across. He did these things. For big business, right? So the stockholders aren't disappointed at end of year." Marian saw the utter contempt, his narrow, upright suspicion of politicians and businessmen in suits with manicured hands and dead eyes.
"I can find him. I called a guy in Langley, someone who owed me. They always keep records, especially on people like Strick-land. He called me back when I was on my way here. I have an address in France."
"If you have the address, so do they," Aubrey remarked.
"I guess so."
"I'd like Strickland alive."
I'll try for that." Gant seemed to dislike the idea.
"Strickland is like someone off religious TV. Big business would like him. He would make it easy for them to go down his road. Any suit who needs an edge can have Strickland call by his office, in a jacket and tie, and the arrangements are easy."
Marian realised there was something compulsively moral about his disdain, and it strangely thrilled her, such was its lack of compromise.
"You think your man is using Strickland, right?"
Heavily, Aubrey replied: "Possibly. It does seem so."
"If I bring you the proof you need, you'll just do the English thing, you and the general, and tell him to lay off. Right?"
There isn't another way, Mitchell. This hasn't entirely crossed the border into our country. There are different priorities—"
"Your man crossed over."
"Yes, I think he probably has." He felt suddenly invigorated. He clapped his hands together, startling them, eyes alight. He cleared the fug of moral and emotional considerations as quickly as Mrs. Grey would clear away the crockery that lay on the coffee table.
To work then," he beamed.
"You, my lady, are to maintain a low profile no, I mean that. David is already suspicious of you he must not be alarmed."
"I'm not going to sit on my backside, Kenneth—"
"You must!" he snapped.
"Mitchell, where is Strickland now?"
"He has some place in France a farmhouse. The Dordogne?" He evidently did not know the area.
"You know exactly?" Gant nodded.
"Very well. We'll discuss the details in a moment. Will he be there?"
"He's owned it for some time."
"I remind you again tfieywill know that."
"Sure."
Then we must prepare. I think—"
"Kenneth," Giles said quietly, "I am quite sure your flat is under surveillance." He turned casually from the window. They must have followed Gant here. What do you recommend we do, in the circumstances?"
CHAPTER TEN
Festung Europa "Well, where's the charabanc?" she called with an attempt at gaiety that was utterly at odds with the last, draining effects of shock.
The members of the Commons Select Committee for European Affairs were gathered near St. Stephen's Porch like school-children, awaiting the transport that would take them on their eagerly anticipated outing.
Indeed, there were two members of the Committee old enough to remember having been evacuated as children during the war. They were the ones whose smiles were broadest at the joke she intended to lighten her own mood.
Cromwell's statue seemed to frown at the little group in Old Palace
Yard as they waited for the liveried minibus that would transport them to Waterloo and the Eurostar high-speed train. The air of holiday that hung about the party of ten two researchers had managed to wangle their way on to the junket to Brussels failed to infect her. Her colleagues had murmured soothing, anodyne sympathies regarding the fire and her escape from it. Remembering it was still like touching at new, painful skin over the childhood burns.
It was not the fire, however, that preoccupied her. There was another terror, more slow and acidic, that she wished she could put at a distance. Only a few minutes before leaving her London flat, she had discovered that it had been expertly burgled while she was in the constituency. Someone had broken in without leaving any trace and stolen the scribbled notes and the photographs that Michael Lloyd had sent her. Her computer had been wiped clean of everything she had transferred to it concerning-David… the fraud… her suspicions…
Michael Lloyd. No shred of proof, or evidence, had been left behind.
She wished she had not checked the hiding-place before leaving for the Commons, for then she would not have known how completely and expertly they were moving against her… Her long fingernails were hurting her palms as she squeezed her hands into fists. Pull yourself together, she instructed herself sternly. But all the proof's gone… Then you'd better find some more.
She shivered, alerting the attention of a senior Opposition MR a Eurosceptic ally on the Committee. She smiled disarmingly at him. He was as unpopular with his party's leadership as she was with t
he government. The old man turned away and she felt the memory of the burglary press at her again… This time, she was able to fend it off.
She breathed deeply, calmingly.
Another sceptic from her own party was very obviously consulting his watch.
Typical! I don't doubt the champagne will be too cold, too!" His adopted squirearchical manner was a better joke; his parents had been teachers, he an estate agent in one of the larger London firms.
Typical of you, Roger," offered one of HM Opposition's most vociferous and unquestioning Europhiles. His nom-de-guerre throughout Westminster was Ethelred the Undoubting. Some — the irredeemable called him Euro-Jew. A darkness passed over Roger's narrow features. An irredeemable? She rarely made common cause with Roger, even over Europe.
The familiarity of the company, the mere prospect of the trip to Brussels, was working on her like a restorative. She did feel calmer.
"Settle down, children," she offered, smiling with an almost polished brightness. The time for squabbles is on the way back, when you're all tired out ah, here we are!"
Suitcases were at once snatched up with that eagerness she only ever witnessed among Honourable Members when they were travelling first-class and without payment and heading towards a fleshpot or a trough. Brussels offered almost everything your average MP could desire, except a permanent posting! That had not been one of her jokes. The Eurostar livery gleamed in the morning sunshine on the flanks of the stretched minibus as it pulled up in Old Palace Yard as near to the group as was respectful.
She picked up her own small suitcase and, as she straightened and was saying in an ironic tone:
"I see the boys are pushing to the front as usual-!"
— saw David Winterborne crossing the cobbles in the company of the Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry. Her suitcase felt awkward, heavy in her grip. The members of the Committee pressed on to the minibus, their cases loaded at the back by the uniformed driver, the bright, empty chatter of the hostess merely bird noises. David's features darkened stormily for just a moment, then his carefully nurtured aplomb was recovered.
"Marian! How wonderful-!" His hand was extended towards her. The junior minister, knowing their long acquaintance, noticed no tension between them. She took his cool, slim hand.