She told God what she intended to do and asked if that would be all right.
She waited for an answer; none came that she could identify. Now she was really on her own. But she would go the whole hog. Rowland Mayes would make a fuss, so would all, or most, of the others. But she would prevail. She would not allow millions of Britons to be slaughtered by a bug. And the Americans could stew in their own juice.
Mrs Heffer, jaw out-thrust, returned to her HQ.
*
“I believe,” Hedge said, speaking now to the Foreign Minister in the Kremlin, around which it was still snowing, “that my Prime Minister is thinking of mounting a strike against the Soviet Union.”
“Yes. We know this. We have already said so to you.”
“Oh. Yes — yes, you have.” Hedge, after his dreadful experience in the interrogation chamber in the Lubyanka, was upset and more than a little bewildered. He was now forced to embroider. Just a little, not much: he knew Mrs Heffer’s wilful and determined character and knew she had no time for communism wherever and in whatever guise (glasnost or perestroika) it might lurk. He could make a good guess. He said, “I happen to know she intends to mount this strike. Positively.”
“Positively. She has entrusted you with this information?”
Hedge took a chance and a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Then you are of very much importance?”
“Some might say so, yes.”
“Of more importance than at first we thought. I wonder why your Prime Minister has made no representations on your behalf.”
“Ah. Possibly,” Hedge said, half believing this himself, or wishing to believe it, “because you might have thought I … knew more than I did. If you follow?”
“But you do know more — you say.”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Then how is this, Hedge?”
Hedge dithered. “Mrs Heffer doesn’t know everything though she may think she does. And talking about knowing … I’m surprised, if I may say so, that your agents in the British Foreign Office have not kept you better informed of Mrs Heffer’s intentions.”
“We have no agents in the British Foreign Office,” T M Voss said calmly.
Hedge indicated the gaunt man, present once again. “He said you had.”
T M Voss waved a hand dismissively. “It is of no matter. Of course we have our intelligences, all countries have, yours included. And of course we know of your Madame Heffer’s intentions. This we know without you.”
“Oh.”
“Unless you have anything else to say, you are superfluous.”
“You mean —”
The Foreign Minister leaned forward, his face hard and threatening. “You know well what I mean. The Lubyanka prison. And pressure — much pressure. We know what your function is in your Foreign Office, that you are very high up in security — and —”
“Not so very high up.” The squeak had returned to Hedge’s voice. “I’m certainly not the repository of all things secret, you must understand that. I’m very willing to help where I can, but … well, I may not be all that much help. If I can’t be, I’m sorry.”
T M Voss appeared to lose patience. He made a gesture to the armed guards and Hedge was seized and turned about with rough hands and marched away.
Foreign Minister T M Voss was reporting to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
“The man Hedge.”
“Yes?”
“He is valueless, Comrade President. He is a woolly-minded idiot. This, Madame Heffer must know.”
“Presumably, yes, since she has not uttered to help him. Or he may perhaps be a plant?”
T M Voss shook his head firmly. “I think not, Comrade President.”
“Yet he seems to wish to help us. He has revealed his country’s intentions — oh yes, these we were aware of already. But now there seems a very clear certainty which our agents were unable to give us.”
“True, Comrade Chairman —”
“Has the man Hedge given us a time for the British attack?”
“No. I understand there is as yet no certainty as to the time, Comrade President. All hangs upon the man Brosak and his threat to the British reservoirs. Or rather, upon whether Madame Heffer concedes or does not concede. Until she has decided, we shall not know her time-table.”
“But we know Madame Heffer’s mind. We know her character, her immense determination. What conclusion does that lead us to, Comrade Voss?”
“That she will not concede?”
“Exactly.” The Chairman rose to his feet, then pressed a bell-push on his desk top. A secretary entered. The Chairman passed his orders: the Presidium and the Council of Ministers were to assemble in full session as soon as this could be arranged. The Defence Minister and the chiefs of the army, navy and air force were to attend. The matter, the Chairman said, was of the utmost urgency.
As the secretary left the room, a telephone burred on the Chairman’s desk. He answered, monosyllabically; then put the instrument down and spoke to T M Voss.
“The man Brosak, the West German — he has been apprehended in Berlin and is on his way here by air.”
16
Gerda Schmidt had said it was not far to where Brosak would be found. A matter of perhaps half a kilometre.
“A taxi?” she suggested. The snow made for uncomfortable walking. Shard veto-ed taxis; he wished for a more furtive arrival. The girl had told him Brosak was living in the flat of a friend, a woman, also one of the Hitler lovers. Shard had a sudden thought that the woman could have had a bearing on Gerda Schmidt’s betrayal of Brosak: jealousy? Just a thought and most probably baseless. Brosak would be somewhat too old for Fräulein Schmidt …
They trudged through the snowstorm, collars pulled about their necks, through the remains of Christmas, the tatty, damp tinsel. The wind blew, tugged at them unmercifully. Shard slowed the pace when Gerda said the flat was not far, a hundred metres along the street they had just entered.
Shard felt for the automatic that he had been provided with by the West German police at the request of an official of the Consulate-General. They were no more than a dozen metres from the entry to the flat, a first-floor one in a modern block, when there was a sudden disturbance. Two men appeared from a doorway in front of them and began walking briskly along the street. From the entry to Brosak’s flat a man came out, looked briefly up and down the street, outlined in the headlights of the passing traffic. Suddenly he seemed to freeze, then reached into his clothing and pulled out a gun. In that instant Shard recognised him: Brosak. Brosak making a getaway? In the instant of recognition, Brosak fired. His aim was bad; the bullet took the front near-side tyre of a big car. The driver seemed to lose control in the slushy conditions, slewed sideways, mounted the pavement. Shard was conscious of the two men moving forward fast towards Brosak, and then the car had hit Gerda Schmidt, running her down and crunching her head into the pavement. As it hit the wall behind and slewed the other way, the back end took Shard and knocked him down flat and his head hit the pavement, hard.
*
Shard, coming round after a couple of minutes, left the scene before an ambulance and the police could arrive. He went fast for the Consulate-General and put through a call to London, to the Foreign Office security section. He spoke to his Detective Inspector.
“Shard. I’ve lost Brosak. I don’t know for sure, but I believe he’s been hooked away. Possibly by Soviet agents, I’m not sure. Yes, I’m all right. Is there any word of Hedge?”
“Nothing further, sir. Still in East German custody so far as I know. What are you going to do now, sir?”
“Try to locate Brosak again,” Shard said, and rang off. There wouldn’t, in fact, be much hope. If Brosak was in the hands of Soviet operators, it would be a case of next stop Moscow. And it looked very much as though he, Shard, had muffed it, finally this time. He gave a bitter, self-deprecatory laugh. Now, it looked as if it might land in Hedge’s lap — Hedge, last reported in the hands
of the East German police, might be in Moscow by now. Hedge, in Moscow with Brosak …
*
No further reports of the finding of plastic bags reached Whitehall. By now the homes and hospitals and workplaces in the area served by the Ladybower reservoir were suffering enforced drought. So far as possible the other two reservoirs in the vicinity, Howden and Derwent, were helping out so the situation was not in fact too drastic. There had been a number of sufferers from botulism and most had either died already or were expected to do so shortly. The main concern in Whitehall was lest the botulism should spread, the bags reaching bursting point in all the other reservoirs.
That, and what Mrs Heffer intended to do next. There was little doubt in the minds of her ministers that she was suffering a bad dose of war fever.
“It’s difficult to blame her,” the Home Secretary said sotto voce. Even though Mrs Heffer was not currently in the room she was known to have long ears and she disliked being criticised. “It’s a very desperate situation indeed, as we all know. I don’t see how she can be expected just to sit back and take it.”
“A very desperate remedy,” Rowland Mayes said.
The Home Secretary shrugged. “Desperate situations call for desperate remedies,” he announced as though he had just dreamed up something new in the way of comment. But he believed what he was saying. Charity, he had always thought, began at home. Of course, it would be hard on the Russians, but there it was. It might even seem to the rest of the world like a dirty trick, to hit a country when it was down — down in the sense of facing so much internal dissent, parts of the Soviet Union itself wishing to break away from Moscow’s domination, and so on and so forth. But you simply had to put your own people first, which was something Mrs Heffer always did. She didn’t, in fact, like foreigners at all and really you couldn’t blame her. The Home Secretary remembered very vividly an advertising slogan from his boyhood in the ’thirties: British Is Best.
How very, very true that had been.
*
Hedge was sent for once again, was brought from his terrible sojourn in uncomfortable custody. He had suffered badly from being unable to lie down, from claustrophobia, and from sheer dread of what was to happen to him next. When the armed men came for him again, he fancied it could even be for his execution or transportation to Siberia. Death and exile were still to some extent rife in Russia; the Russians were not very Christian, he believed, in spite of an agreement in 1989 between the Pope and Comrade Gorbachev to restore freedom of worship. And they really didn’t take much notice of world opinion. In any case if he, Hedge, was to be sacrificed, then not many people in all the world were going to have their sleep disturbed. He wasn’t that important. Britain, these days, had ceased making a fuss about her nationals being taken hostage. These days, no gunboats were sent. The British — or should he say, distastefully, the European — passport was just a sick joke now.
Hedge shivered and shook his way under escort along the dreadful corridors of the Lubyanka, corridors with thick carpets to drown screams, down in the divided two-man lift, a most dreadfully confined space, out into the snow in his dirty clothing, and into the Foreign Ministry which was at least plush and comfortable if such mattered now.
Was he to hear his sentence?
Or was he — sudden happy thought — to be told that he had at last been claimed, or acknowledged, by Mrs Heffer? He dare not dwell too hopefully on that. He must not tempt fate.
He was taken into the room where he had earlier been questioned. The gaunt man, that seemingly inevitable man of evil, was there. So was T M Voss. So were two generals and an admiral.
So was Wolfgang Brosak.
*
Hedge had not previously met Brosak. What he saw was a square-headed man, a man with an unmistakable German look, a man who had quite obviously been subjected to manhandling and worse — torture, very likely. His clothing was badly rumpled and in places torn. There was blood on his face and his left arm hung in an unnatural position as though it had been broken and then left unattended. His lips were swollen and behind them there appeared to be no teeth. Both eyes were blackened and he seemed to be on the brink of collapse.
T M Voss spoke. “This is Brosak.”
Hedge, about to say how d’you do, nodded instead. He had understood Shard to be searching for Brosak, and where was Shard now? In Russian custody, too? Or swanning about like any other policeman in the free world, leaving his chief to face untold horrors in the hands of barbarians?
“Brosak has been questioned. About your botulin, Hedge.”
“Botulin,” Hedge repeated stupidly, not really registering.
They told him. He shook his head. “Rabies,” he said. “Not botulin.”
“Not so. Botulin. It is now known, there is no secret. In Britain, the populace is very frightened. Madame Heffer is enraged. As I have said, Brosak has been questioned. He has not spoken. Not fully. Soon he will, and you will be present to listen.”
Hedge offered no comment. He had been shaken by the implications of botulin; he’d been out of touch and things moved so fast these days. T M Voss proceeded to make something of a speech. It was, he said, incumbent upon the Soviet leadership to assist the West when the West appeared unable to help itself. “We in the Soviet Union have no animosity towards your people. We wish only to help … to prevent the widespread death that is threatened by the unrepentant Nazi Brosak. Do you understand, Hedge?”
“Yes. I think I do.”
“And what have you to say to it?”
“Well … nothing really. Just that I’m very glad.”
“I see. You realise, of course, that we do not wish for war. War must never come about again. We are willing to go to any lengths to prevent that.”
“Yes, I see that.” Hedge was still in a state of utter terror and was much more concerned to know what was in store for himself than with any considerations such as war, botulin or Brosak. But he felt he should show some sort of response to what was apparently a neighbourly act on the part of the Russian Foreign Minister. So he asked in what specific way the Soviets might be able to circumvent Brosak’s botulin. “As I have said, I don’t know —”
“The botulin, yes. We understand it is already in position in your reservoirs.”
“Brosak said this?”
“Yes. Under … persuasion, yes. That much only.”
“But in that case —”
T M Voss held up a hand. “We shall find out more. From Brosak, who wishes to exterminate the Soviets and is willing to this end to exterminate your people if they do not concede defeat.” There was a pause. The people present, all of them except Brosak looking intently at Hedge, were very quiet and very still. There was no sound at all in the room. Hedge found it eerie; and alarming too. Again, perhaps, the psychological build-up, the prelude to disaster, possibly personal disaster. Then T M Voss went on: “The President of the Supreme Soviet has himself personally spoken on the telephone to London. To the British Prime Minister herself. To tell her of our great concern for all your people who are under this wicked threat from a Nazi, a man who reveres the memory of a vile and evil person. Also to assure her of something else.”
“Yes?”
“To assure her that she has a representative in Moscow, a distinguished person from her Foreign Office, who will on her behalf and that of her government and Queen, assist in the smoothing out of all matters to ensure peace.”
Hedge could do nothing but gape.
*
“Who is this man, Roly?” Mrs Heffer had forgotten all about vanished Hedge.
Rowland Mayes blushed with embarrassed pleasure: back to Roly again. She needed him now; the Foreign Office was firmly back in the picture. He said, “Hedge, Prime Minister?”
“You know who I’m talking about, Roly. Is he distinguished?”
“Not a word I would use, Prime Minister —”
Mrs Heffer looked impatient. “Yes or no.”
“No.”
“Then ca
n he be of any use?”
Rowland Mayes blew out a long breath. “He may be, Prime Minister, and then again he may not. It’s a debatable point. One that I’m really not able to give a very clear answer to.”
“So it would seem,” Mrs Heffer said. Rowland Mayes looked cowed. He’d spoken to the Permanent Under-Secretary about Hedge, and Hedge’s suddenly revealed involvement, and the Permanent Under-Secretary had been dubious, to say the least, suggesting without actually saying so that Hedge might well have been responsible for the impasse so far and that if anyone could foul up a situation then that anyone was Hedge. Rowland Mayes prayed that Hedge would turn up trumps. If he didn’t, then he, Rowland Mayes, would get the blame for that as well.
Mrs Heffer spoke again. “Of course I made it quite clear to the Soviets that I would not concede.”
Rowland Mayes, wishing to clear up a point that he had hesitated to put until now, the last moment for peace as it were, but still knowing that he was on slippery ground, said diffidently, “Prime Minister, there’s just one thing.” He coughed.
“Yes?”
“The question of — of conceding. I’m unclear as to what you quite mean.”
Mrs Heffer stared. “What I quite mean? I mean that I won’t concede. Simply that.”
Rowland Mayes ploughed on conscientiously. “Concede what, Prime Minister? Concede to Brosak — not concede, I mean — or to the prospect of war?”
“What on earth are you talking about, Foreign Secretary?”
“There is surely a dichotomy, Prime Minister? As I’m sure you’re aware — naturally you are — there is a feeling in the Cabinet that you’re — well — prepared for war. If necessary, that is.” Rowland Mayes was twisting his body into a knot. “The lesser, perhaps, of two evils. But is that not in fact conceding to Brosak? Of course I do realise that there’s nothing —”
The Logan File Page 18