by Mike Binder
Heaton rose, walked to the front window, looked out across Downing Street, over the low floating fog to the Treasury. He turned back when he was sure it was time to turn the screws.
“How about your lover? Does Inspector Steel know? Is that why Darling ‘suspects’?”
Georgia’s face deflated, her breath tucked in.
“Oh come on, Georgia, you think it’s a big secret? Half of Whitehall knows you’re eating this little thing’s pussy.” Georgia’s eyes flared at him with a dark intensity. “If you haven’t yet, you’re dead set on doing it.”
Georgia turned away now, no longer able to look him in the eye.
“Come down off it. You’re the prime minister, for damn sakes. Nothing you do isn’t good for a tongue rattle.”
Burnlee averted his gaze, not enjoying this bit, in directly inverse proportion as to how much Heaton was loving it.
“Is she our problem?… Is she our problem? Because if you say yes, then I swear to you, Georgia, we’re all going to hell in a handbag unless we fix it.”
Georgia still hadn’t answered the accusations. She hadn’t said a word. She was embarrassed and enraged, on the verge of an implosion. She fought with all she had not to break into tears. It would be all too perfect for Heaton if she were to start crying, like dealing him a fourth ace, so she said nothing, her head bent low, like a schoolgirl who had been caught cheating on a test.
“You are in as much deep water as we are, Georgia, no less. If you think you’re somehow closer to the shore, then you’re sadly mistaken. You know the course, and you will goddamn stay it! I won’t be back here again and hammer out this same rotted dialogue for the fifth time. Do you hear me? You push me and I will have this house tumble down with a sex scandal the likes of which has never been seen.”
She wanted to bark back, tell him off, tell them both off, but to what end? What could she say? What kind of bite did she really have to deliver? She was weary. She just wanted to go to bed. She didn’t want a slug-out now with Heaton. She still needed a plan to come together in her mind, something concrete, something to growl back at him when he attacked her.
She needed sleep. She needed pills.
“Fine, David.… Okay. Yes. Yes. We’ll do it your way.”
* * *
SHE WAS DEEP asleep, in her bedroom. She had the strangest dream: Jack Early was there. He led her up from and out of her bed. There was another man; she didn’t know him. He was bald, with a goatee. It was all so odd. Early took her nightgown off and helped her step into a business suit. It was strange to be naked in front of Jack and a stranger like this, but she didn’t mind. The other man just watched. She smiled at him in a groggy stupor. She kept telling Jack she needed to go back to sleep.
She woke up suddenly. Seated at her desk downstairs at Number 10. Jack Early was across from her. He was, it seemed, in the middle of taking notes for correspondence, staring at her. Her vision was blurred. She waited for things to come into view.
“Are you okay, ma’am? Can I get you anything?” She was startled. It had happened again—another jump cut. This time the dream seemed so real. She was sleeping in her bed, then Jack was dressing her, and now, here she was, at her desk in the course of the workday. She had fallen asleep by the look on Jack’s face in the middle of writing a note. She was embarrassed and shocked, sadly bewildered. This was getting worse, not better. Was she losing her mind?
“Should we go on, ma’am?”
“Go on with what? What were we doing?”
“You were writing a letter.”
“I was? To whom?”
“To the press. Telling them what had happened with the bombing. How it had all gone down. Setting the record straight.”
“Setting the record straight?… I was writing a letter?”
“Yes, ma’am, you were going to write out the whole truth.”
TATUM ■ 5
Adam watched from behind the thin walls of the motion picture set. It was a perfect facsimile of the prime minister’s office, right down to the stationery. Early and Turnbull were seated in replicas of their chairs, while three GoPro cameras were hidden throughout the office, recording every word they said from three different angles. Adam watched on a rack of monitors with Beau.
Beau was a rock star. That’s all there was to it. When he and Early arrived with their sleeping guest at the closed-down studio, just after three a.m., he had expected to be alone. They found the Number 10 office set, built and perfectly lit, just as he had asked Beau to do. All the employees had gone home for the night. It was clear sailing as they brought Georgia, still asleep from the car ride, into the stage. Then, just as they entered the blackened cavernous room, someone appeared. They weren’t alone. It was Beau. He took one look at the standing, sleeping, near-comatose prime minister and just about soiled his pants.
“Good god, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“We have no choice. Why are you here?”
“If I had half a brain, I wouldn’t be.” Adam chuckled. He knew why Beau was here. He was a friend. He was here for that reason and no other. It was exactly what he needed now, too. As badly as he might crave water, or air, or food, he didn’t even realize how desperate he was for just one person to be on his side, and yet here he was, this big, tall lug of an Englishman, putting everything he had at risk just for the sake of friendship. It was everything he could do not to pull him in for a hug and a cry.
Beau had set him up with the monitors and helped make sure the lights were right. Adam and Early did the rest. The PM’s secretary knew what he had to do. He stayed on script like a pro, like he’d been acting in movies his whole life.
“Wait a minute. It doesn’t make sense to me, Jack? Why would I write to the press with the truth? The truth? It would seal my fate, send me to prison, crumble the government. It could cause a panic.”
“It didn’t make sense to me, either, ma’am. But you said you wanted to write out the truth about the bombing.”
“That I was involved? Was I going to write that?”
“Yes, you were. That it was Heaton’s idea, but you eventually went along with it. That you had the American unknowingly place the bomb by switching the dossiers.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I know that. I know what we’ve done … but why would we write this letter? I’m confused, Jack. This doesn’t make any sense.” She stood, shakily, reached for the edge of the desk, and hobbled over to the door. “I feel like I’m dreaming. This is all so strange. Even the office. It looks…” She stopped and turned to Jack in midsentence. There was a tear in each eye. After a pause, she spoke again through fractured words.
“Jack, I’m a drug addict.… I’m a drug addict. I’m not in control of myself. I’m lost. I fall asleep out of nowhere. Nothing seems real. I’m in trouble. I’m lost.…” With that she turned and walked to the closed front door to the office.
Adam and Beau, out on the floor of the stage, weren’t sure what to do. That door she was about to open went to nothing. She would expect to see the rows of desk sets and then the long hallway out to the lobby of Number 10, but instead she’d see only an empty, dirty sound stage, maybe Beau and Adam at the monitors, watching. This would be a disaster. There was nothing he could do.
Early jumped up and gently grabbed her arm, just seconds before she was about to open the door.
“Ma’am, just relax. Have a seat. You need to catch your breath.” She was out of it now, her eyes were rolling, her speech stammered.
“No, no, I just need to run upstairs. I need to get something.” Early gently led her back to the desk set and sat her down in her chair. “Oh Lord, Jack. I am so out of sorts, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay. I’m here with you, ma’am. We’ll get through this. You just relax.” She sat back in her chair. He poured her a glass of water. She drank the whole thing, took a deep breath, appeared to calm down. Adam and Beau both simultaneously started breathing again. Early had averted a disaster.
“What have we done,
Jack? How did I let this happen? We could have killed Roland, couldn’t we have? We’ve let so much happen, let so many down. This is a disaster. It’s a tragedy. I’ve done the unthinkable.” She sat there in profound grief. Early just stared at her, not sure if there were words worth calling on. Adam and Beau watched in a stunned stupor.
“I’ll resign. I’ll tell everything—that I was involved in the plot, in cahoots with Heaton, helped place the bomb … that I’ve been covering it up.” Then, as her face shut down, it just as quickly rebooted with another thought. “That I love her. I’ll tell everyone that I love her, that I’ve never loved anyone. I haven’t, Jack, ever, and now I have and I’ve lost her, I’ve lost me. I’ve lost everything. I’m pathetic.” She started to cry now, uncontrollably.
It was almost unbearable to watch. She stood now, with a strength fueled by a weighty anguish. She shuffled to the office door again, this time with a purpose. She moved too fast for Early, who was overcome with his own share of the grief and regret. She beat him to the door and opened it wide, about to step out, only to realize she was stepping into nothing. Pitch-black emptiness. It stopped her cold.
“What is this? What is this?” A man suddenly, instantly, emerged from the darkness, from nowhere—the bald man with the goatee. He came close, was on her before she could even put arms up. He had a cloth in his hands as he pulled her into his long arms, put the small oily towel over her mouth and nose. He pulled his face in close to hers, their bodies in a lock so she couldn’t move, and he wrapped her tight in his grasp as she inhaled a zinc-like scent from the material he was holding over her mouth. She knew who he was now. She saw past the shaved head and the facial scrub, like an old photo in a chemical bath slowly coming into shape. It was him, the American, Adam Tatum. He was nodding slowly, softly, telling her to breathe deeply, and then she was gone. Back asleep. Back into her bed at Number 11.
STEEL ■ 5
The flat had a lingering smell of a fish dinner that had been cooked and eaten a good five hours earlier. Steel’s parents’ place had that ability to hold the scent of the last meal for hours at a time. No matter how much cleaning was done, it always had the downside stench of the prior meal until the new one came along with another blend of fresh scents and odors. It was late. The home was dark and muted. Steel lay in her bedroom under the blankets, fully clothed. Her gun was next to her on the side table, ready to be used.
They would come tonight. She was sure of it. She had seen them outside the shop in the afternoon. Peet and the younger one, the replacement for Harris, the one the American had killed. She felt them follow her and her mother as they left the café and made their way up the street to their building. She knew they were there. It made sense. They would come tonight. Heaton would be sending a message: a grizzly comment on her having placed the final strategic piece to her puzzle. Steel was sure of it.
Sometime after one a.m., they crept stealthily into the flat, right on schedule. They snaked in as quietly as humanly possible. If Steel weren’t awake, if she weren’t trained and focused on every sound, she never would have heard their muffled movements. They were that skilled, were moving with that much practiced patience. She grabbed her gun, held it tight, and waited.
The apartment was shrouded in a cloak of night. She had made sure of it. She made certain all of the lights were off, all of the curtains closed tightly, so no helpful glow could come in off the streets or from the sky. She wanted them to have to work for it, to struggle in the dark for the prize they were after. Their faint, fluid, floating footsteps piled up in count as they made their way up the hall. They came to a momentary pause as they stood outside her door.
She gripped the gun a little harder and waited. They moved on to her parents’ door. She had guessed correctly. They weren’t coming for her. That would be too easy, too obvious. It would be too flammable to kill a police officer. They were there for her mother and father.
She focused again on the footsteps: seven gentle sets of squeaks. Then the doorknob of her parents’ bedroom slowly, achingly, turned. The hinges on their door tried to sound an alarm as the entry was breached, but the movement was laboriously slow; the creak was almost inaudible.
They were in her parents’ room now. The silence took center stage. She sat up at the edge of her bed, her gun now good and ready. She waited and took a deep breath. There was a gunshot: a muffled bang, a silenced pistol. Then another shot. Then two more. For good measure, she assumed. They were pros and would have wanted to make sure her parents were both dead. With the task at hand crossed off the list, their whispering shoes gingerly made their way out of the room, back down the hallway.
Once they were past Steel’s bedroom door, heading to the living room and out toward the front door, she just as silently left her room and followed them into the black. She got comfortably behind them as they fumbled their way out through the dark and then, just before they hit the door, she leaned backward and turned on a wall light and answered their earlier gunshots with a round of her own, just as quick, not as silent.
She wickedly hit Peet in the shoulder that had previously been shot. She shot the second man in the leg. They both went down to the ground. She shot again. She shot Peet in the shoulder once again. The younger man got up and went for his gun, which he had dropped in the fall. Steel came over, her gun trained on the center of his face.
“You have a choice. Your gun or the door. Pick one. Quickly.”
The young man saw the iron in her eyes, turned on his bad leg, and hopped to the door and out of the flat as fast as possible. She went over to Peet, on the floor, wailing in pain. She kicked him in the stomach as hard as she could. She picked up his gun and got the other man’s as well. She put them both into her belt and pulled out a set of handcuffs. She fastened Peet’s good side to the radiator on the wall and then, for good measure, using everything she had, gave him another strong kick.
After dialing the Met for a backup call, she walked down to her parents’ bedroom and switched on the lights. She looked at the two bundles of pillows and blankets under the oversize quilt that she had molded into her mother and father’s sleeping positions and the shape of their bodies. She knew the bedding pieces were all ruined now, soiled with gunpowder and those four troublesome bullet holes, but it seemed a small price to pay.
Her mind was now on Heaton.
He wouldn’t flounder the next time he wanted to lash out at her. She was sure of it. It wouldn’t be as easy as hiding her parents at her uncle’s place up in Biggleswade. Heaton would be coming for her with an even sharper edge in the next round. The whispering footsteps wouldn’t creep past her door a second time. It was up to her now to take the fight to him.
TURNBULL ■ 6
Georgia woke up in her bed early Sunday morning. She thought instantly about her dream—about the confession she was writing out in her office, about how real it all felt. She dressed quickly and scurried down in a pair of Sunday-morning pants and late-Saturday-night hair, quickly said hello to each security officer she passed, to each of the secretaries and civil servants who had the misfortune to draw the Sunday a.m. work card, scuffled quickly into her office, and closed the door.
It was different—a different office than in the dream. She wasn’t sure how, but it was. She sat down and looked across the desk where Early had been taking his notes. She got up, walked to the door, opened it, and saw the desks and the hallway out to the lobby. She assured the two young secretaries seated at the far desks that she was fine. “No, no tea. Thank you.” She shut the office door, with herself alone on the inside.
She paced the room, thinking back to the dream—the American holding the cloth over her face, he and Jack Early standing resolutely as she stood naked while dressing. She turned to the door. She needed to open it again. She did. The two women looked up again, trying hard not to be too curious. She waved them off with a tight smile, then shut the door a second time. There was no doubt in her mind. It was not a dream, and it did not take place here.
It was Early. Early had betrayed her. It had been real. She had been tricked into a confession. Was it a fake version of the office? A replica of some kind? A movie set? Like in that Hugh Grant film? That had to be it. The American had somehow gotten Jack Early to assist him, to corner her. She had been recorded. That’s what had happened. She was sure of it. This was a disaster.
It was all over. She would spend the rest of her life in prison. Her poor father. Her brothers. She would bring so much shame to them all. To her country. Her poor, poor country. What had she done? How had this happened? She wanted to scream, wanted to have someone to blame, but she had no one. She had done this. She had made a mess of her life, of it all, and now she would pay the price.
She walked over to the den and sat down on the far couch, the couch she had sat on so many nights while arguing across the coffee table with Roland. They had traded gallant dreams and brilliant schemes back and forth with each other here. They had the ability to change the world. They’d always come back to that one, so proud of where they’d come from, so much hope while looking to the future: a future that no longer mattered or even existed.
She poured herself a glass of room-temperature water and let the aching horror of the moment painfully settle in. Finally, she picked up the phone and dialed the only ally she had left: David Heaton.
TATUM ■ 6
Kate and the children had actually come to like Ryan Early. He was a nice kid. He had a pleasant, innocent disposition. He was young for his age, closer emotionally to Billy than to Trudy, it seemed. He was enthralled with Trudy, though. There was no question of it. Adam had guessed right and played it perfectly. Kate wondered if they had needed to hold the boy, tie him up somewhere if indeed his plan was going to work. Shouldn’t they bind him? Gag him? She soon came to realize that wouldn’t be necessary.
He and Trudy watched several movies together on her iPad. They played card games. She sang to him, sang “Across the Universe.” Later he asked, and she sang it for him a second time. They talked for hours, all night long, about everything: the differences in life from London to Chicago, the kids at her school, his school. He made her laugh. The time went by, and in truth, for the last ten hours or so, he could have run out into the night anytime he wanted. Kate, quietly listening in, realized that Trudy was doing a far better job of holding the boy there than ropes or a gag could ever have done.