State Secrets

by Quintin Jardine

  She was running on adrenaline and confidence as we set off, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that she was scared too.

  ‘What are we into here, Bob?’ she asked. ‘What has happened? Boil it down for me.’

  ‘We’re looking at the murder of the Prime Minister, by John Balliol, and an orchestrated campaign to cover it up, led by her successor and the Chancellor, involving the kidnap and potential blackmail of Nicholas Wheeler, a Cabinet Minister. Explain it any other way if you can.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she admitted.

  ‘Was Evans actually going to kill Wheeler?’

  ‘Neil knows more about that anaesthetic than me, but he reckons that if he’d given him all the contents of the syringe, he’d have gone to sleep for ever.’

  ‘You’ve got us that far,’ Amanda said, ‘now tell me: why? Why did Balliol kill her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen, but with the Balliols, father and son, nothing can be dismissed as impossible. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, the man’s developed a weapon system that’s going to change the entire world order, so what’s a wee bit of murder to him?’

  ‘But you say he denies it,’ she pointed out, cautiously.

  ‘So did Peter Manuel.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘A mass murderer from close by my home town, before my time. He showed the police where he’d buried a poor girl victim, but he still denied doing it.’

  ‘Is he still in prison?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes. He was buried there, after they hanged him.’

  My phone sounded in my pocket. It hadn’t locked on to the car’s Bluetooth. I took the call, putting it on speaker. It was Neil, still on the road.

  ‘Mickey Satchell,’ he sighed, with a tone of inevitability in his voice that told me what was coming, until he proved me entirely wrong. I’d been expecting her to have been found dead in her bath with an armful of morphine, a bellyful of whisky, and a suicide note left on her computer confessing to killing Emily during some trivial argument. But no.

  ‘I tried calling her in her office in Portcullis House,’ Neil said, ‘but got no reply. The Commons switchboard couldn’t find her either. I was on the point of sending those guys to kick in her door, but something made me call Hamblin before I ordered that.

  ‘He knew where she was all right; I’ve never heard a man sound so cynical. She’s the new Home Secretary. It’ll be announced in an hour or so, before the Commons sits this afternoon.’

  ‘Bought off,’ I exclaimed. ‘She’s such a weak character, that possibility never occurred to me.’

  ‘There’s more to come,’ Neil retorted. ‘John Balliol’s being given a peerage and a seat in the Cabinet. They’re going to call him Secretary of State for Innovation; that’ll be held back until after the Spitfire announcement.’

  I looked sideways at Amanda; her knuckles were white on the wheel, a worrying sight, since we were doing ninety. ‘They really have locked it up,’ I growled, ‘haven’t they?’

  Forty-Two

  The extent of the cover-up made us worry even more about Wheeler’s physical safety. To be sure, Amanda called Thames House from the road, and ordered that two more operatives be sent the very short distance to the former Defence Secretary’s flat to treble the guard on him. Then she drove even faster.

  Happily all was quiet in Smith Square when, to my relief, we arrived. With Daffyd Evans in hospital, incommunicado, and Balliol and Ellis locked up in Greystone Cottage, there was no way that news of our intervention could have made it to Downing Street. The minder’s absence would be noticed sooner rather than later, but I hoped that Kramer would be too busy preparing for the big announcement in the Commons, less than two hours away, for it to become an issue.

  When Ian let us into the penthouse flat, we found Nicholas Wheeler looking a hell of a lot better than when last we’d seen him. A Security Service-approved doctor was with him, packing her kit away in a bag as we came into the room.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she told Amanda. ‘I’ve given him a shot to help his recovery from the drug. He might be a little nauseous for a while, but that’ll pass.’

  As she left, Wheeler pushed himself out of his soft cream chair and extended a hand in my direction. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s been made pretty clear to me that you saved my life.’

  To my surprise, I felt a little embarrassed. ‘Forget it,’ I mumbled. ‘It’s what we do.’

  ‘That man was there to finish me off, wasn’t he?’ he continued.

  I nodded. ‘He knew how much was in the syringe. Proving it, though, that’ll be a different matter. I can tell you now that his story, if he says anything, will be that you’re a junkie and that he was trying to wean you off your addiction to thiopental.’

  ‘Who is he?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you,’ I replied. ‘It’s possible that you might be required to pick him out in an ID parade. The last thing I want is to prejudice any prosecution.’

  ‘You can identify him, can’t you? Even if I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, but only as the man who was about to inject you. I can only place him in that room, not here, and not as your abductor.’

  ‘I’ll be struggling to do that myself,’ Wheeler confessed, as he dropped back into his chair. ‘I never saw him properly.’

  ‘Not even when he attacked you?’ Amanda exclaimed.

  ‘No. He came out of the lift wearing a balaclava; he hit me and I remember nothing in any detail, just haziness and dreams, until I started to come round in that place this morning. I’d let him come up because he said he was from Number Ten and had a document from Emily.

  ‘I was here on my own, you see. The night before I’d sent my protection officers, Dave and Sarfraz, away, so I could have some privacy. They were due to collect me later to take me to the Commons for Emily’s statement.’ He paused, peering at us as if we were slightly out of focus. ‘What happened about that? Did she . . .’

  ‘Ms Repton is dead, Mr Wheeler,’ I told him, speaking softly, hoping that I sounded sympathetic. ‘She was found in her Commons office, unconscious, with a blade embedded in her skull. She never came round and passed away yesterday morning. It’s our belief that what happened to you was part of a cover-up.’

  I stopped, letting silence fill the room, watching Wheeler as the shock hit him. ‘She’s . . .’ he murmured after a while.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I said. ‘We know why you sent your protection people away. It was Ms Repton’s privacy you were really protecting, not your own. We realise that.’

  ‘And the statement?’ he whispered.

  ‘Spitfire hasn’t been announced yet,’ Amanda told him. ‘You’ve missed a lot. Roland Kramer is now the Prime Minister, and you are no longer Defence Secretary. The statement that was to be made on Monday will happen this afternoon.’

  ‘Ahh.’ He gave a great gasp and sagged into his chair, his head falling backwards against its cushion. For a moment I thought he’d passed out again, until he continued. ‘Oh no it won’t. Not the one that was supposed to be made.’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered, as my lurking, unspoken, theory of everything came to proof.

  ‘Emily came here early on Monday morning,’ Wheeler said, his voice strengthening. ‘She and I, we were close; not in love, or anything as dramatic as that, but we were close colleagues and we were confidants.’

  ‘The royal-ish girlfriend that the tabloids are all over,’ I said, ‘she’s just a smokescreen, I take it?’

  ‘Yes; a friend, a partner at public events, but no more than that. Emily and I were in a loose relationship, outside our offices; I could never go to her place, obviously, but occasionally she’d escape from Number Ten and come here. That’s what happened on Monday morning.’ He stopped and looked at us, more sharply than before. ‘Ho
w much do you know about Spitfire, Mrs Dennis, Mr Skinner?’

  ‘All of it,’ Amanda replied. ‘Up to and including the meeting in the Chancellor’s house where the final decision was taken and the deal done with Balliol. You were at that meeting; you signed the minute.’

  ‘Yes, I was and I did,’ he confirmed. ‘But I was there as . . .’

  My phone rang. I checked caller ID and saw ‘Sarah’.

  ‘Sorry, I have to take this,’ I murmured. ‘Honey,’ I said as I picked it up, ‘what’s up? Are you finished?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but there’s something I need to know. Were any crime scene photos taken?’

  ‘Of course, but by me, not a CSI photographer.’

  ‘I’d like to see them, not necessarily all of them, just the ones that show the body . . . the victim,’ she corrected herself, ‘in situ at her desk. Can you mail them to me? To my phone?’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Hang up and I’ll do just that.’

  I walked over to the room’s big picture window, ignoring its panoramic view of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament as I selected the images Sarah wanted from their folder and fired them off, one by one, to her email address. I didn’t have time to wonder why she wanted them.

  When I was finished, I turned back to Wheeler and Amanda. ‘Apologies, but that was necessary. Please continue. You were at Ellis’s meeting . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘with Les, Roland, the foul Radley and John Balliol. Les’s son was there too, and Kramer’s creepy minder, although he stayed in the hall.’ That told me there was no chance of him picking Daffyd out of a line-up. They’d met before; defence counsel would walk through it.

  ‘What the rest didn’t know,’ he went on, ‘was that I was there with two hats, mine and Emily’s. She inherited the Balliol project from her predecessor, George Locheil.

  ‘He had agreed to the deal and to the cost but he wasn’t involved in any of the discussion with Balliol. George is a cautious guy; he wanted to leave himself wiggle room. He wanted to be sure that if anything went badly wrong, like blowing up bloody Aldermaston by accident, the blame would fall on Kramer, Radley and Ellis, not on him.

  ‘Emily took the same line, but for a different reason. She was always ambivalent about Spitfire at best. Its potential frightened her; it brought with it power that she wasn’t sure one person should have. In that, she was out of step with Kramer and Ellis, and Radley too. They were zealots, all of them.’

  He paused. ‘Sorry, can I get myself some water. My throat, it’s very dry.’

  ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ Amanda asked. ‘I’ll fetch a glass.’

  ‘Mr Skinner,’ Wheeler whispered, as she left. For the first time I appreciated how young he was. ‘You are real, aren’t you? This isn’t part of my nightmare, is it? Emily really is dead?’

  I reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘I’m afraid so, lad. She is, and you’re not. But I’ve got the fucker that killed her, and now I’m going to get the people who sent him.’

  ‘Here.’ Amanda returned and handed him a glass of water. ‘Sip it,’ she warned. ‘Remember what the doctor said about nausea.’

  ‘I will. I don’t feel anything at the moment.’ He took a sip. ‘Back to the meeting,’ he said, revived. ‘Emily wasn’t invited, but Roland did tell her about it. She asked me to attend and to report back to her, but not to rock the boat. So I did, I agreed the deal and signed the minute. But I told Roland I’d convey the terms of the agreement to Emily, and I added that the final decision had to be hers alone, as she was the Prime Minister and she held the nuclear codes.’

  He sipped some more water, rinsing it around his mouth before swallowing. ‘Roland didn’t like that. He insisted that the decision we’d just reached could not be overturned. I begged to differ and we had a bit of a shouting match. It was loud enough for his minder to come in to find out what was going on, but Les shooed him away.’

  ‘That matches what James Ellis told me this morning,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve seen James?’

  ‘He was in the house where you were held,’ Amanda volunteered. ‘Do you have your copy of that document?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s in my safe, set in the floor under the rug beside my desk. Emily asked me to keep it here.’

  ‘What happened on Monday?’ I asked, moving him on before he tired.

  ‘Emily came here; she walked, as always, and I let her in. When she called, she’d said she couldn’t sleep on her own and wanted company, but I could see it was more than that. She had barely taken her coat off when she said, “Nick, I can’t let our country do this. I’m going to override the Spitfire agreement, whatever the unholy trio may say. Are you with me?” As if I wouldn’t . . .’

  His voice broke, and so did his composure for a second or two. ‘I just hugged her and said, “Thank you for doing the right thing.” Then I asked how she was going to go about it.

  ‘She had thought that through,’ he continued. ‘We sat down with my laptop and drafted the statement that she’d have made, if she’d been allowed to do it. By three a.m., we were finished. She printed out two copies, and then we grabbed as many hours’ sleep as were left to us. She left at seven thirty to walk back to Downing Street.’

  ‘What did she do with the copies?’ I asked.

  ‘She took them with her.’

  ‘You don’t have one?’

  ‘Not printed, but it’ll still be on my computer. Give me a moment.’ He rose, none too steadily, and went through a door at the far end of the living room, returning a few seconds later, clutching a slim laptop in a hard blue case. He fired it up, found what he was looking for and handed it to me.

  Amanda joined me on the sofa; I angled the screen so that we could both see without distortion. There was a file on the desktop, named ‘Spitfire’. I clicked on it, and it opened. We read it, in solemn silence.

  Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement of vital importance to the nation and to the world.

  Just over two years ago, in the administration of my predecessor, senior ministers, specifically the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary of the day, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were approached by an entrepreneur, Mr John Balliol.

  Mr Balliol, a man of great wealth, had been funding private research, in Brazil, on a new type of laser propulsion. Initially it was seen as having value in space exploration, but as Mr Balliol’s team progressed their work, it became clear that the system’s potential was far greater.

  PAUSE

  Projectiles using the laser propulsion drive could operate within the atmosphere and beyond, at speeds far greater than anything previously contemplated. Unmanned, and operated remotely, they could deliver, undetected, a payload to any target in the world in well under two hours, and return to base.

  PAUSE

  I have to advise the House that a research and development programme, which was carried out in total secrecy at the Aldermaston Weapons Establishment, is now complete. This country has in its possession a craft of immense power that makes all other weapon delivery systems virtually obsolete. It is ready for deployment carrying a full range of weaponry, both conventional and nuclear.

  PAUSE

  ‘It has been given the name Spitfire, for sentimental and historic reasons. I have to say that I find that inappropriate since the original Spitfire was built purely for defensive purposes; today’s is the opposite. It is an offensive weapon of terrifying capability.

  Mr Speaker, honourable members, we now find ourselves in possession of what is the ultimate deterrent.

  PAUSE

  However,

  PAUSE AGAIN, BRIEFLY

  I do not believe that we, or any other nation, is sufficiently responsible to be the custodian of such a system.

  PAUSE

  Consequently, I in
tend to place the Spitfire system in the hands of the United Nations, and to seek the adoption of an international treaty, under which all nations would pledge never to develop a similar system for military purposes.

  PAUSE

  I will ask the Foreign Secretary to convene an immediate meeting of the Security Council to discuss my proposal. I have already spoken with the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China. All three declared their support for my proposal and undertook that they would be co-sponsors and signatories of the United Nations treaty.

  PAUSE

  Technology can never be uninvented, but it is my belief that if Spitfire is maintained under international control, for use purely as a deterrent to the ambitions of rogue states, we will enter an era when all other nuclear arsenals in the world can be dismantled.

  I commend this statement, etc.

  There have been a few occasions in life when I have been rendered speechless, but I can’t recall another when I found my hands shaking at the same time, and a cold fist gripping my stomach.

  ‘No other copies?’ I whispered, when I could, looking at Wheeler.

  ‘None. She might have photocopied it in Downing Street, but I can’t imagine her doing that.’

  ‘Then why did she make two?’ I wondered. Seeking an answer to my question, I called Neil McIlhenney, and asked him to do something for me.

  When that was done, I made another very simple request of Amanda. I didn’t need to explain its purpose; she’d guessed. Her mind really is disturbingly similar to mine. If we ever did work together full-time we’d be seriously dangerous.

  Forty-Three

  I was emerging from the shower when Louise handed me the phone. ‘It’s you know who,’ she announced, more than a little tetchily.

  When I’d arrived home she’d been less than impressed by my appearance, and by what I’d told her was mud on my trousers. She’d been about to put them in the washing machine when I snatched them from her grasp.

  ‘They’re for the bin,’ I told her. ‘They were past their best anyway; that’s why I wore them.’ The truth was that I didn’t want her to see the colour that would have come out of them, even diluted by water and detergent.