The Night Watch

by Julian Dinsell

  “Everything is connected. He wasn’t rambling, he was trying to tell us something,” Thornhill said.

  “Connected, how in the hell is that?” Mantoni asked.

  “St George and the dragon, Rock and Roll, Lakehurst, Baldwin, Elijah, the wilderness, that’s the riddle we have to solve.”

  Turning the questions over in his mind, Thornhill lifted a cup of tea and stared through the steamy windows into the street. The rain was unrelenting and vehicles threw up huge sheets of filthy water that had collected in the deep potholes of the dilapidated roadway. Through the spray, Thornhill’s vision locked onto a bank of television screens in an electronics store across the street. What he saw drove the riddle from his mind. There was a brief image of Arnold Morgenstern on CNN. It was gone almost as soon as he recognised the face. He slammed his teacup down.

  “We need to get to the office, now. I need to use a computer.”

  “Okay, what do you have in mind?” Mantoni asked.

  “The fate of an authentic American hero.”

  Mantoni look puzzled but didn’t ask questions. “There’s no way we’ll get a cab in the rain. I can call a car from base or we can take the subway.”

  “The subway; we can’t wait for a car,” Thornhill said.

  By the time they got to the subway station they were soaked and joined the steaming humanity compressed into the Uptown Express. The dash to the office provided a second drenching.

  Suddenly, the cold, stress and fatigue hit Thornhill with physical force. He tried to stop himself shivering but didn’t succeed. Mantoni was concerned.

  “You look like you need a hot shower and a stiff drink.”

  “There are some weekend clothes in the operations room locker. That would help,” Thornhill said.

  In the familiar territory of the visitors’ office, Thornhill began to change into the friendly warmth of a wool shirt and the shivering began to fade. He was still changing clothes while he switched on the computer and logged onto the CNN website. As he began to pull on a pair of rough tweed trousers, Morgenstern’s picture appeared on the screen. The news story read: ‘…a mugging that went wrong in a seedy part of Washington … two shots to the head … another digit in the statistics of a violent city…’

  The shivering returned and slowly Thornhill began to weep. Mantoni found him sobbing, with his trousers round his ankles. He quickly closed the door behind him and locked it to prevent intrusion by any of the staff. Mantoni mistook tears of cold fury for grief.

  “What is it, boss?” he asked hesitantly.

  “I was thinking of Machiavelli,” Thornhill said.

  Chapter 26 - Chelsea, London

  Thornhill was in the club lounge at Newark Airport when he received an alert on his secure mobile phone. It was Lloyd-Emlyn.

  “I’m speaking from the satellite office. Zulu from Petersen.”

  Code Zulu was one-way traffic; there was no means of replying. Zulu status was given only to highly sensitive sources that feared a reply would compromise their safety.

  “Seems that Celastacom have been buying up vast quantities of their own shares. Blatant insider dealing. They’re also stripping out their city offices in New York, Washington and LA. Just secretarial staff left; computers, files, everything gone. Rumour is it’s all going to the Domes.”

  Thornhill didn’t react. “Thank you,” he said as he switched off.

  His mind was racing. Another act of recklessness; first the shooting of Morgenstern and now financial irregularity on a huge scale. It demonstrated a frightening confidence in the future. And what of the removals to the desert? What did that foretell?

  Thornhill opened his laptop and began carefully to compose an Eyes Only message, outlining Petersen’s warning, to Patricia Lathkill’s secure email address. The message stressed that these new developments called for an emergency response. She replied just as the flight was being called. Reluctantly she agreed to see him.

  *

  “How was America, Sir Jack?” The uniformed driver of the dark-green Jaguar was in an irritatingly cheerful mood.

  “Instructive,” Thornhill said from the back seat as he tried to make sense of the psychiatrist’s report on Murphy’s behaviour that he had received on his mobile phone.

  It had been dark when the aircraft landed at Heathrow and the sky was only a slightly lighter shade of grey when the car got to the handsome Georgian house close to the river in Chelsea. Thornhill mounted the short flight of Portland stone steps, rang the bell and waited. He was used to meticulous preparations for important meetings. Now there was no time. He felt shabby and unkempt. The flight had left him with a dull headache and a strange taste in the mouth. The toy razor from the in-flight goody bag had made little impression on his stubble and he was suddenly aware of the frayed edges of his ancient weekend clothes.

  He was about to press the bell for a second time when a buzzer sounded and the door opened. The hallway was empty. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “Good morning.” The Baroness emerged from a doorway to his left. Despite the pre-dawn encounter she was dressed in her customary cashmere and pearls. “You’re early,” she said accusingly.

  “Sorry, tail-winds over the Atlantic.”

  “You seem to be propelled by a great deal of tail-wind, Sir Jack,” she said as she led him into the large living room.

  It was starkly furnished. The only concessions to decor were two French Impressionist paintings and a single Chinese vase on a mahogany stand. In the splendid Adam fireplace, there were the remnants of a coal fire, but the room felt cold. There was no offer of refreshment.

  “You received the document?” Thornhill asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I will come straight to the point,” Thornhill said. “The Prime Minister must not be allowed to go to Geneva.”

  “Quite impossible, every other leader of significance will be there. How could he possibly be absent?”

  “This is not merely a matter of protocol or prestige. You’ve seen the latest developments. This is much more than speculation, it’s a threat of the first magnitude, to the Prime Minister personally, to the nation and to the international community.”

  “But you have no proof of any of that.”

  “I have the strongest possible circumstantial evidence. You’ve seen it in black and white.”

  “What I’ve seen is the alleged eyewitness account of an elderly Polish academic and your interpretation of subsequent events.”

  “You’ve also seen the Zulu message from an entirely new source. It shows that November and his people are behaving as if the world ends next week. Are you going to avoid facing that issue too?”

  She did not rise to Thornhill’s anger. “My point is that none of this creates any kind of convincing link with Geneva, let alone the personal safety of the PM. It’s information that can be interpreted in a number of ways.”

  It was only at this point that Thornhill noticed they were both still standing. He had not even been invited to sit down.

  “What about Bermuda? A rocket-propelled grenade attack is a matter of fact, not interpretation.”

  “Sir Jack, the world is full of RPG attacks. I don’t doubt that the orbit you inhabit is peopled by ruthless characters. Nor do I doubt that it is your job, from time to time, to annoy some of them and to deal with the consequences of such activities.”

  Thornhill knew that only one option now remained open.

  “Baroness, I must formally request an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister.”

  “You know I cannot agree to that.”

  “And you know that I have to ask.”

  “You went to Washington without consultation, and despite well-known American paranoia about the safety of the President you failed to get past a first hearing. Now you come back with your tail between your legs and try the same thing here.”

  “So this is revenge for going over your head?”

  “No, Jack, it’s reality.” To Thor
nhill’s surprise her tone softened. “You’d do the same thing in my position, and I must warn you not to try a backstairs approach in Downing Street. I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to be.” It was clear that there was nothing left to say.

  He moved towards the hallway and the Baroness followed him.

  At the front door Thornhill said, “Good people have risked their lives to provide us with these warnings and several of them are already dead.”

  She gently put her hand on his arm. “Jack, I am not your friend but over the years I have often been your admirer. Don’t destroy yourself over this.”

  Thornhill stepped into the street. He looked at his watch. The most important meeting of his life had lasted less than ten minutes. The driver had been watching the house and the car drew up outside the door.

  “Where to next, Sir Jack?”

  “Home.”

  *

  At the flat, Thornhill told the driver to get breakfast at the café in The Cut and to pick him up at eight forty-five sharp.

  Jane was away with Mary Finch-Hatton and he was surprised how much he missed the ritual of the warm croissants.

  During the flight from Washington his anger had distilled into cold calculation. Now, in the bedroom, he laid out his clothes with the care of a mediaeval knight preparing for mortal combat. A suit, handmade by Jones Chalk & Dawson five – or was it ten? – years ago still fitted perfectly and the precision cut of the dark-blue wool was a renewed satisfaction. Alongside it he laid a Jermyn Street shirt and a silk tie from Florence. Though he appreciated the eccentricity of this often repeated ritual, somehow it was comforting. He laid out socks and underwear and then carried a pair of Lobb brogues into the kitchen for an extra shine. He took a long meditative shower and his thoughts were interrupted only when the water began to run cold.

  When he had dressed, he sat at his empty desk and stared at the river. Big Ben struck eight and the clock on the mantelpiece was a chime late. He knew he’d been way too long and felt a flash of bitterness at his having achieved so little. He adjusted the clock, returned to the desk, picked up the phone and pressed the 10 Downing Street direct dial key.

  “Private Office.” He recognised the voice of Rebecca Brook, daughter of a friend in the Diplomatic Service.

  “Rebecca, this is Jack Thornhill. Can you put me through to Sir Thomas?”

  “Good morning, Sir Jack. I’ll see if he’s arrived yet.”

  Tommy Thompson, one of the Private Office Secretaries, came on the line immediately.

  “Jack, before you say anything, I’ve been warned that you were likely to call. The PM is absolutely off limits on this. You must drop it.”

  Without replying, Thornhill put the phone down and sat looking at the lightning sky. Emerging from the fog of circumstances he recognised a personal dilemma of a kind he had never before had to face. He dialled the combination of the safe buried in the concrete floor behind the desk. From beneath a pile of papers he took an unusual weapon, a small Russian pistol made of high-grade ceramics; a souvenir of less complicated times. Because it was not made of metal, conventional security devices could not detect it. It would not survive a sustained firefight but could accurately deliver a full eight-round magazine at close range. More than enough, Thornhill thought. He laid the weapon at the centre of the desk and closed his eyes.

  He could hear himself, in his junior days, giving a familiar lecture to trainees: ‘In our trade, the most common cause for the use of firearms is a failure of judgement.’ Though his sense of defeat was partly anaesthetised by anger, he knew the failure was not simply one of gamesmanship. He was being manoeuvred into a course of action he believed to be immoral and the inescapability of it weighed heavily on him. Through his entire career he had remained aloof to dilemmas of this kind. Calvin November had changed all that. Wrestling with his thoughts, he took a single piece of paper from a drawer. On it he wrote a list of names. He began with Bullivant and Morgenstern, and then the catalogue of others whose deaths November had caused. After the briefest of pauses, he added: Murphy?

  “The second thing to remember is that automatics jam at the slightest provocation,” he heard his own voice say. Especially those made of china, he thought. “A failure of judgement might be survivable; attempting to retrieve it with a failed weapon would almost certainly be fatal. You must be sure: two to the heart and one to the head.”

  With great care he dismantled the weapon, then cleaned, lubricated and reassembled it. At eight forty-three the intercom sounded. He slid the safety catch on, locked the weapon in his briefcase and put the list back in the desk drawer. In the hallway he took a heavyweight Loden overcoat from the closet. As he closed the door of the apartment, Big Ben struck the quarter-hour and he heard the mantelpiece clock chime in synchrony.

  *

  The ponds at South End Green, at the bottom of Hampstead Heath, were unexpectedly frozen. The sharp overnight frost had coated the trees and the rising landscape beyond with ice crystals. It was one of those rare events in London – a beautiful winter’s day. Thornhill stopped the car.

  “I’ll walk from here. I’ll meet you up at the house.”

  The wheels of the Jaguar slid, then the tyres bit through the slush and the car pulled away up the hill. Thornhill needed thinking time and knew that the exertion of a long, steady climb would help. It was a decisive mile.

  Trudging across the virgin-white heath he resolved to kill Calvin November. Whichever way he confronted the issue, he could not escape the certainty that the viscous circle of November’s power had to be broken. Because he had so far failed to achieve this through the system, he became resolved that it must be done by his own personal direct action.

  He tested each element of his conclusion: the names of the dead people on the paper in his desk drawer constituted the motive and the Russian automatic the means. The unresolved question was whether Geneva would provide the opportunity.

  He reached the house and stood for a moment, taking in the distant view of St Pails and the City.

  “Earth hath not anything to show more fair.” The ever-cheerful driver was keen to make conversation.

  The snow had muffled his footsteps and Thornhill had been unaware of his approach.

  “Depends whether you believe Wordsworth or Keats,” Thornhill replied as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Outside the conference room door stood an unfamiliar heavily built figure.

  “I’m Hampton, Sir Jack, Sergeant Bullivant’s replacement.”

  “Welcome aboard, Hampton,” Thornhill said as he shook hands. “How are you settling in?”

  “Fine, sir; everybody’s been very friendly.”

  Thornhill turned to leave.

  “There is just one thing, sir. Please, no jokes about Cockney rhyming slang.”

  “What’s that? I’m not sure I understand.”

  “My name, sir. Hampton. Hampton Wick, rhymes with pric–”

  Thornhill interrupted. “Yes, I see. Not a word, Hampton, not a word. Tell me, is Mr Darcy in there?”

  “Yes, sir, he was here at six thirty.”

  “Would you ask him to come out and see me?”

  Darcy emerged looking tense and sleep-deprived. Thornhill led the way to a pair of armchairs beside the picture window overlooking the heath.

  “Tell me about Warsaw,” Thornhill said.

  “How long have I got?” The question was practical, not sarcastic.

  “For now, five minutes. I need to know anything that may influence discussions in there,” he said, indicating the conference room.

  “Okay, here it is,” Darcy said. “They’ve moved out and cleaned up. They covered their tracks by putting a group of druggies in there and giving them free dope.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You know everything turns on this,” Thornhill said gravely.

  “They killed Jakob, Wolski’s friend. It was him who set up the original meeting with you,
” Darcy faltered.

  “Go on.” Thornhill was conscious that Darcy was showing signs of serious stress.

  “Then they kidnapped his daughter.”

  “Is she dead?” Thornhill asked.

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I got her out; you don’t need to know how.”

  “I do need to know, I need to know everything about it, but not now,” Thornhill replied.

  “You said five minutes,” Darcy said. It was clear that he didn’t want to say more.

  “Would I be wrong in suspecting that this has become a personal matter?” Thornhill asked.

  “No, you wouldn’t be wrong,” Darcy replied.

  *

  Everyone stood up as Thornhill entered the room. For a moment he wondered whether Mantoni had leaked news of his emotional state in New York, but quickly realised his fear was groundless. Mantoni was not made that way.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. Everyone had breakfast?” he asked.

  There was a murmur of affirmation. The team had been assembled by phone during Thornhill’s trans-Atlantic flight. There was no time to try out untested working relationships.

  Morag and Darcy were part of Thornhill’s inner circle. The others were specialists he knew personally: Angus McKenzie, a dour political analyst able to express complex ideas in very few words; Anwar Darzi, a criminal psychologist who had been with them during the attack in Bermuda; Winford Hicks, an expert in security countermeasures, a sly man in a trade where that was an advantage. The potential for a time-wasting clash of personalities was obvious. Thornhill decided to tackle the issue head-on.

  “Gentlemen, let’s establish the ground rules. First, no minutes or formal record of this meeting are being made. Whatever takes place in this room will have no place in history. Please remember that we have desperately little time. You’re all here because your reputation precedes you, so there is no necessity for displays of ego or virtuoso performances. I’ll try and apply the same rule to myself.” The remark produced a couple of laughs. “Morag, is everyone briefed?”

  “Yes, we’ve been over the ground as thoroughly as a couple of hours allows,” Morag replied.