Whispers of betrayal tg-3

by Michael Dobbs

  He leaned closer to Goodfellowe, his breath heated. 'And if you don't know the password, it means you're guilty of deception, personation, theft of Government passes and obstruction of the police in the pursuance of their duty. Might also mean that you're part of this nonsense, trying to bluff your way through. Either way these gentlemen here, under the provisions of the Public Order Act that have placed this area under military jurisdiction, are going to drag you away, throw you in the back of their wagon and take you for a long and very bumpy ride.'

  Even as Goodfellowe watched, the soldiers stiffened and seemed to grow in bulk beneath their uniforms. The muzzles of their short-barrelled rifles kept staring at him.

  'Which specific provision of the Public Order Act?' Goodfellowe demanded, bluffing for time.

  'Let's not worry ourselves about which provision, shall we, sir? Just the password.'

  'The password?'

  'That's what I said.'

  There was a moment's silence. One of the soldiers, young and very spotty, had a bright glazed look in his eye that Goodfellowe found disturbing, as though the lightbulb inside his brain was about to burn out. The muzzle of his rifle was pushed several inches closer. Goodfellowe swore; he was genuinely scared. No one had told him the password. The muzzle of the rifle seemed to be staring angrily at him. There were precious few mosquitoes around at this time of year, so no chance of the bloody thing melting.

  Which is what did it. Melting. Glue. Suddenly he was back in the garden of Downing Street, listening to the Prime Minister ranting about incompetence and death and scorched wings, like an ancient king trying to defy fate. It was a guess, but it was all he had.

  'Operation Icarus?' Goodfellowe mumbled.

  'What was that?'

  'Icarus. The password's Icarus.'

  The word was still hanging in the air when the two soldiers stepped smartly behind him, blocking his retreat. There was nowhere for him to go. The constable approached still closer, his face serious, his breathing laboured as his lips wrestled with the words.

  'I wish you'd said that from the start, sir. Saved us all a lot of trouble…'

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= Two thirty-five.

  Head down, pain in his lungs. Goodfellowe pushes forward through Smithfield Market, its silent streets strewn with the unswept plastic and polystyrene of the previous day's trading. In normal times this is a place filled with the cries of porters and the aromas of uncooked meat and roasting coffee, but today – nothing. Only more scavenging pigeons, which scatter in a panic of feathers as he clatters round the corner.

  And there it is. He looks up, wipes sweat from his eyes, to see glowering dark towers. He is almost there. At the Barbican. A complex of more than two thousand apartments arranged in blocks and towers around remorseless windswept plazas. A Brave New World of angles and of ugly aerials, built from concrete that weeps soot and grime.

  And the tallest and most unforgiving of all the structures that make up the Barbican complex is Shakespeare Tower. Forty-one floors high. Its dark windows looking out sightlessly over the City.

  Goodfellowe is forced to abandon his faithful bicycle. He begins running up stairs of cement and across anonymous brick-paved courtyards that seem to suck in winds and turn them round and round in some eternal spin cycle of litter and dead leaves. As he runs, the echoes of his footsteps leap back at him from the empty doorways and stairwells. It's a ghost town.

  Two forty-two.

  He is by the entrance to Shakespeare Tower. Abandoned, no commissionaire, yet entrance thankfully unlocked. And somewhere, inside, up there, is Amadeus. All doubt is gone now, he knows it's Amadeus. Should've known earlier. They'd thought the original letter of warning was written in gibberish to disguise the identity of the author. If only they'd had the wit to realize that it pointed insistently like a finger of accusation, marking the author as someone who was dyslexic, who had once offered Goodfellowe a shilling for a rude picture of the headmaster's wife and who still seems to have one hell of a problem with authority.

  The address Mickey has given him says that Amadeus lives on the thirtieth floor. He thumps the buttons of the lift, then thumps the wall in impatience, yet even as he bursts panting from the lift he can see Amadeus's front door is ajar. He knows he won't find him there. He doesn't find any trace of Amadeus, for the apartment is overarranged and crammed with pinks and pastels and little sign that a man of military background lives here, until Goodfellowe opens the door to the smallest bedroom. There he discovers a shrine. The memorabilia of a career spanning many years and several wars. A room crammed like a catacomb. No time to take it all in, just fleeting images of citations and photographs, with something called a Prop Blast certificate swinging disrespectfully from the hook on the back of the door. Weapons, too. A semicircle of combat knives arranged on the wall, and several guns. Probably Soviet, hopefully decommissioned. An Argentinian flag, faded, ripped, covered in ominous stains.

  Upward. Eleven further floors, and two more of plant rooms. Lifts. Stairs. Through the door that leads out onto the roof. Two fifty-one.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= The rooftop seemed deserted, occupied by nothing more than anonymous pipework and aerials that bent gently in the wind. The air was so much fresher at this height, and the view breathtaking. On every side stood the glass-eyed monuments to Mammon – the banks, the finance houses, the factories of fortune that were the City of London – and in their midst the cupola of St Paul's, standing guard, defiant, as though reminding them to enjoy it while they could, for all things are fleeting.

  It was the fresh wind that made him realize he was not alone. The strains of a transistor radio drifted on the breeze from a side of the roof hidden from Goodfellowe by a huge ventilation duct. He turned the corner and found himself staring at Amadeus – and yet again at the barrel of a gun, this time a Czech pistol. It was pointed directly at him.

  'Tom.' Amadeus smiled, but the expression failed to stretch as far as his eyes, which were sleepless, disturbed, erratic. 'You were the last one I thought to see. It's been a long time.'

  'Perhaps too long, Peter.'

  'What are you doing here? Come to apologize for standing me up on that drink?'

  'Happily, if an apology is what you want.'

  'Ironic. A little while ago an apology is all I wanted. A few words, politician's words, even. Not the most priceless of jewels, you would have thought. But it's too late for that now. Still, sorry to have to meet like this.'

  'This isn't exactly what I was expecting, Peter.' Goodfellowe was staring at the scene in front of him. Beside Amadeus stood a child's toy, a garish blue-and-yellow plastic shotgun which had a pump action and assorted motifs styled after some kids' TV show. Alongside it, laid out in drill order, were what appeared to be half a dozen multicoloured lightbulbs.

  'What were you expecting, exactly?'

  'I'm not sure. Almost anything. A bomb, a nuclear device, perhaps. Not a children's toy.'

  'I'm putting a little theory to the test. We're at about five hundred feet and this toy water mortar claims to be able to launch its little bombs' – he indicated the light bulbs – 'a further hundred feet in the air and for a distance of three hundred feet while they release their contents. Add to that the prevailing wind' – he licked his finger and held it up to test the breeze – 'I reckon the droplets will reach certainly as far as the Bank and Mansion House. Who knows, maybe as far as the river. Kids' stuff.'

  'And the devil's work…'

  'The gun came from Regent Street, and I've used a scuba tank to put the contents under a bit of pressure, just a couple of atmospheres, to make sure it all vaporizes properly. A little hit and miss, but that shouldn't matter, not for my purposes. One block more or less won't make much difference, will it? By the way, old chap, come and squat under that awning, will you? Out of sight?' The barrel of the most un-toy-like Czech pistol was waved at Goodfellowe. 'Can't have you standing about like a distress beacon for all the world to see.'

  Goodfellowe crouched, very un
comfortable, his knees cracking in protest.

  'Toy water bombs? You plan to destroy the City of London with a plastic water pistol, Peter?'

  'Not quite. You see, these little grenades aren't full of water but a little cocktail I picked up in Kosovo from a Russian captain. Buy anything from the Russians nowadays. It's a binary chemical their weapons people have been experimenting with. Two solutions that are harmless on their own, but once mixed together become instantly virulent. Orange rain, they call it. Brought it back as a bit of a keepsake. Never thought about… this.' He nodded towards the skyline.

  'It'll destroy the City?'

  'Iraqis found it did a damn fine job on several Kurdish villages, apparently. Makes the lungs bleed until you drown in your own blood. But there's an unfortunate after-effect. On exposure to the air the compound quickly corrupts. The droplets turn to jelly which doesn't disperse but sticks to everything it touches and degrades very slowly.'

  'That's a problem?'

  'Sure. It's a persistent agent. This stuff hangs around for a month or more. Doesn't kill maybe, not once it starts degrading, simply causes extreme nausea and temporary disablement. But that makes it very messy, and it's resistant to all the usual anti-agent scrubbing and decontaminants. So you can see why it's a problem. Even when you've taken out the enemy you can't take advantage of it for a long while. Too long.' He paused. 'Although to destroy the City of London, you don't have to occupy it, do you? Just close it down for a month. The Japanese and American money men will do the rest.'

  'Destroy the City?'

  'That's right. Call in Bendall's overdraft.'

  'You think you'd be destroying just banks and companies, for God's sake? Think it through. You'd be destroying lives. The lives of millions. Their incomes gone, pensions lost…'

  'Tell me about it,' Amadeus spat. 'Your Government does it all the time.'

  'But it could never be rebuilt, Peter. This place works on confidence. Cut it to pieces and you can't simply stick it back again afterwards. It would cause a financial meltdown. Hundreds of billions of pounds flooding out of this place at the touch of a button and taking with it the social services, hospitals – yes, and your precious defence budget. The country would be on its knees.'

  'It's already on its fucking knees! I'm giving it the chance to stand tall and hold its head up high once more. All it has to do is get rid of one maggot of a man!'

  'You'll never get away with it.'

  'Why? Because you've arrived? Hadn't noticed you'd brought the cavalry with you. Anyway, nothing's over until the fat lady sings and' – he waved the gun towards the transistor, tuned in to live coverage of the Prime Ministerial press conference due in – what? – seven minutes' time – 'we're only on the overture.'

  Goodfellowe rose stiffly to his feet, his knees screaming with pain. 'I can't let you do this, Peter.'

  The barrel of the gun was pointed directly at the centre of his heart.

  'You've no choice. One step towards me and it's the last you'll ever take.'

  'You'd kill a friend?'

  'Believe me, I've watched many good friends die over the years.'

  'In the national interest.'

  'That seems to be the standard political excuse.'

  'And this is in the national interest?'

  Amadeus grew animated. 'What else can I do? Write letters to the newspapers, for God's sake? Go and lobby my Member of Parliament?' The words threatened to make him choke. 'You see, that's where it all falls down, Tom. Politicians don't believe in country any more. Or conscience. Only political convenience. You talk about being anchored to your principles, but then the wind changes so you pull up anchor and sail off in some new direction.'

  'I don't see it that way.'

  'Of course you don't, because you're a politician. An animal that can barely see at all. You stand for election with stars in your eyes but the moment you get elected they put you in blinkers so you don't get lost going through the voting lobby.'

  'It's a game of give and take. Teamwork. Like football.'

  'It's no game, Tom. It may seem like that at Westminster but out there in the real world it's life and bloody death. You screw up in Bosnia or Kosovo or even in Littlehampton District Hospital, and some poor wretch dies. And how many hospitals have you voted to close in the last couple of years?'

  'The world isn't black and white,' he responded, ducking.

  'What, there's no difference between right and wrong? Between deceit and honour? I know that's how politicians like to make it seem with their spin doctors and compromises, but you'll have to forgive me, old friend, Westminster isn't the real world. You talk about being in touch with the people, but the only time you politicians seem to be in touch with the people is when you're pissing on them from inside the palace.'

  'Seems to me that you're the one who's got himself morally confused. Setting himself up as the nation's conscience. Who the hell voted for you?'

  'It's enough that I swore to defend my country. With my life, if necessary.'

  'I took an oath of office, too!'

  'Political office? You mean that trough of broken promises? Oh, and you act so proud and so principled while you're at it, even with your noses stuck in the swill. But then you get shoved aside – as you all are. You're sacked. You crawl off to spend more time with your family, your ambitions destroyed. It's only then you discover a different set of principles that had been hiding all the while, new principles that force you to turn on your old friends and become a heartfelt critic of the very Government you were so delighted to serve all those years. Christ, don't you guys ever get sick of spending half your life crawling up the backside of a creature like Bendall?'

  Goodfellowe stood silent for a moment, rubbing both his aching knees and his pride.

  'Tell me I'm wrong, Tom. Look me in the eye and tell me you're different.'

  Me – crawl up to Bendall? 'I thought I was supposed to be leading this argument, Peter. We seem to have got our roles a little muddled.' He straightened his stiffening back. He knew he was losing this one. 'But you make an excellent point. I suspect we're both fed up with being kicked around by Bendall. So let's do something about that, shall we?'

  'Like what?'

  'Peter, I'm going to walk over to the radio -'

  'Don't move an inch. I'll shoot!'

  'Your choice, old friend. But there's something I have to prove to you.'

  And Goodfellowe walked, moving across to where the radio had been positioned a little distance from Amadeus to improve the reception. It was only a small affair, the size of a thick book, and from it came the sound of commentators filling the time with empty words as they waited for the three o'clock deadline. In five minutes.

  The barrel of the pistol followed him as he moved. Goodfellowe couldn't fail but be aware of the contrast – Amadeus's hand so steadfast and unwavering, his own shaking like a fish in a net as he took up the radio.

  'The entire country is waiting for this extraordinary event in just a few minutes' time, when Jonathan Bendall will walk out of the door of Number Ten Downing Street to let us know his decision. In all my years in Westminster I have never known another moment like this, when the fate of not just one Prime Minister but the nation's capital hangs in the balance

  With every ounce of his trembling strength, Goodfellowe hurled the radio as far as he could, watching it sail down in a graceful arc to disembowel itself on the concrete hundreds of feet below, and all the while wondering whether he was about to follow.

  'What the f-'

  Goodfellowe had risked his life in a gamble to buy a few minutes' time. He felt profoundly sick, yet he dared not pause or lose the moment. 'You want to stop being kicked around by Bendall? Well, what the hell do you think you're doing right now, hanging on his every word? Without Bendall on the bloody radio you won't know what to do. You're as dependent on him as anyone. I thought I might just make the point.'

  'The point is… the point is that either he will resign, or he won't. I
f I hear about it at three o'clock or five minutes past, what's the difference?'

  'No difference. The principle is still the same. You'll still be sitting on your arse waiting for him to make up your mind for you!'

  'I rather think it's Bendall who is waiting on me. I shall destroy him.'

  'Funnily enough, I think it's quite the other way around. You may be the saving of Jonathan Bendall.'

  'Me? Save Bendall?'

  'Resurrect him. Pull him back from the grave. Make him immortal. You see, I happen to agree with you about our Prime Minister's personal qualities. But after this? You won't destroy him. If he decides to step down and save the City, they'll talk about it as the greatest act of self-sacrifice since the crucifixion. He'll be Jesus and John Kennedy all wrapped up in one. A pathetic excuse of a man turned into a national hero. Think about it. Kind of makes you lose the will to live, doesn't it?'

  Amadeus was shaking his head as though trying to rid himself of bothersome flies. 'No such thing as heroes any more. Give them a god and you always find there's some editor or other non-believer waiting to turn everything to corruption, to make out that we're all the same sort of lowlife. So Bendall as hero? I doubt it. Anyway…' His lips toyed with a restrained smile. 'I'll take my chance. Nice try, Tom, but that one won't float.'

  Then let me try a different boat. Let us set aside Jonathan Bendall, and turn instead to Mary Wetherell and Andy McKenzie. What's to become of them? Or Freddie Payne – although I suspect you couldn't care less for him. Silly, really, what he did, trying to screw a little money out of the system you say you're trying to save. Looks clumsy. Taints them all. But not half as much as they'll be tainted if you let those bloody things off. They'll all of them be accessories before the fact, with the fact being something considerably more unpleasant than the bloody Blitz. Puts them in the same league as Goering and Goebbels in most people's books. So they'll be condemned and then they'll be left to rot.' Time for a slight change of course. 'Correction – you are going to leave them to rot. The Commanding Officer who betrayed his own men.'