The paratroops took charge. We’ve since searched the tunnel and found what they put in place. Talk about fucking Glyndebourne! Every six miles volunteer doctors, water, soft drinks, Portaloos and sandwiches. Fucking signs with LEDs showing the time and saying ‘UK, so many kilometres, this way’! In the meantime, the refugees have been arriving at the French end – four thousand they trucked from around France, two thousand from the Calais jungle – there’s always a new one. The paratroops search them for matches, lighters, knives, anything which could disturb the arrival of paradise. The refugees co-operate like mad, they’re over the moon. Then they’re shoved into the service tunnel like chop, chop.
Jesus wept. There’s so many of the fuckers it takes until 4.30am, nearly dawn, to get them all shuffling through. The first ones start emerging in Folkestone soon after 9am on Saturday. The rest take half the day to come out. In the meantime, come dawn the engineers pour concrete to close up the French end of all three bores.
Zaf hands over to the police chief. About 5am our time the first rumours begin to circulate on social media; at 5.45am the 24/7 government news centre calls Kent police, who know nothing. The moment the lights go on for the police or the UK Border Force is 8.30am when half the Kent Red Cross turn out with blankets, tea and biscuits. Someone called them to come out for a train smash.
The French don’t talk to us. We’re embarrassing enough on our own – caught with our pants down, hung over, Saturday morning sluggish. Hundreds of refugees escape (the Vigilance are after them) although thousands are happy to be corralled with tea and biscuits behind road traffic cones. What a joke!
Eleven o’clock our time is the moment to read ’em and weep. President Le Pen and the President of the European Commission are on the spot in Calais. They declare the first operation of the European Defence Corps a complete success. The French President promises that there will never be a Calais Jungle again, since the Channel Tunnel is completely sealed. Hippolyte Ducros pats the fresh concrete plugs with affection and crows at scoring a killer blow against Frexit.
Thanks to swarms of media helicopters the world sees the contrast between the two portals: Beussinges is calm, tidy and diplomatically ordered; Castle Hill end is in chaos.
President Le Pen: ‘This operation to safeguard Europe’s borders has been conducted with total humanity as well as exemplary efficiency. Cleansing this festering sore opens a new chapter in relations between France and Europe.’
Ducros: ‘I have to speak honestly about Brexit. It is desperately sad. It is as if Europe has had a miscarriage. But now we can move on. We have cut the umbilical cord.’
***
I throw my mobile at the screen and Ducros’s face shatters. I tell the group that I’ve ordered the EU’s ambassadors to attend a press conference at Number Ten on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, the Vigilance have been instructed to take certain steps.
Annabel nods. ‘We have deployed thousands of drones to Kent, and we have hundreds of volunteers checking all the stations and trains up to London.’
‘We’ve set up road blocks,’ says the Kent policeman.
‘Backed up with tanks,’ says Jennifer. Too bloody right, General; we all read this morning’s headlines: FIRST INVASION OF BRITAIN SINCE 1066.
‘How the fuck did the MOD not see this coming?’ I bellow.
Jennifer mumbles and starts unloading paper onto the table by the ream. I’m about to sack him on the spot when I remember we picked him because he was useless. I reckon we have forty-eight hours, if that, to show the EU this clever dick trick with the tunnel isn’t a patch on what we can do – and for what I’ve got in mind I need Jennifer right where he is.
Patrick steps up. Shima doesn’t, which catches my eye: she’s always acting important and know-it-all, until suddenly she’s not responsible for anything at all. Anyway, Patrick nails it. ‘They fooled us with the paratroop battalion. Our scenarios were a waste of time. They outsmarted us.’
The only sound in the room is my breathing, which is as it should be. Everyone else’s breaths need permission.
‘Bob – look,’ says Zaf. ‘If it’s a question of someone resigning…’
I walk round and clap him on the shoulder. ‘Zaf, there was never any question in my mind.’ For a second he looks relieved – silly bugger. I continue, ‘I told you, Annabel, this morning. I know Zaf – he’ll do the right thing.’
Annabel nods. Zaf stands awkwardly. He whispers out of the side of his mouth, ‘How do I resign?’ but hospital case can’t help himself, let alone his boss.
Patrick steps in once more. ‘Go back to your office, they’ll draft a letter for you.’ Zaf nods gratefully.
I walk Zaf out towards the entrance at 70 Whitehall. Well before we see the doors we can hear the crowd chanting ‘Britain’s Great! End of!’ with swelling anger. Inside the doors I shake Zaf’s hand. On the steps is a member of the Vigilance in a scarlet cape with three chevrons. Zaf isn’t bothered that his car isn’t ready yet – he left the meeting unexpectedly – but the handcuffs which the Vigilance officer snaps on his wrists are a surprise. Then it’s twelve paces in front of the baying crowd to the white prison van.
Like I said, what gets me through days like today is what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The thing is, the same thing goes for your enemies, so it’s best to catch them early. Like Tel, for example.
Roll on Tuesday – but first we need to buy some time with the Vigilance.
42
London, Monday 29 June 2020
Monday was the worst day of Kathy’s life. Like the rest of Main Building she had worked sixteen hours on Sunday, but that was nothing. The first cancer was the news which unfolded all day long, so shocked watchers snatched every chance to be glued to TV screens inside the building. The second was an unpleasantness between colleagues, even friends, which she had never seen before. The third was her churning fear for Zack. She couldn’t but think of him because she was covering Patrick’s absence at critical moments, when he needed to be outside. He had secure equipment to talk to his fellow plotters, but using it inside the building was unthinkable. In one of those absences, she realised that if Zack’s acting broke down, he might be shot on the spot. Why had she never thought of that? Fervently she prayed that it wouldn’t.
Dominating Monday’s news from breakfast were pictures of the Berlaymont, the fourteen-storey cruciform headquarters of the European Commission. Overnight someone had smashed gaping holes in three-quarters of the windows of the top two floors. The plush offices of Europe’s richest bureaucrats now looked like the teeth of a smoker living his last years on the streets. Haze from fires scented Brussels with ash. From the wrecked nests fluttered white A4 birds, officially secret but now released to ride the wind – mostly to Etterbeek, Woluwe and the Free University.
The attack had started at three in the morning. Once the fire-fighters reached the top floors the source was in plain sight, although bulldozers had first to clear paths through a moat of broken glass surrounding the building. Inside the top floors lay more than a hundred triangular drones, buckled from smashing their way through shutters and windows and blown apart by detonating themselves or blackened by service as incendiaries. British social media seethed with back-slapping, high-fiving and video footage of the raid posted by youngsters in the Vigilance.
Downing Street made no comment beyond observing that any reasonable citizen would react to the extraordinarily provocative and highly publicised actions of the European Commission.
Across Britain exuberant crowds of all ages gathered. By lunchtime supermarkets had been emptied of beer. ‘No-one likes us, we don’t care’ bounced off Victorian town halls, echoing from museums and mansions which had been produced by empire. The crowds showed no inclination to move. The government erected giant screens so that people could watch Tuesday’s press conference together.
The euro and the pound plunged, the
pound more so, breaking the buck to settle at eighty-nine American cents. Shock News’ parent corporation took advantage of the turbulence to grab a fifty per cent stake in BBC World at a rock bottom price.
Back in the Ministry of Defence’s three-slice toaster the atmosphere turned sepulchral, unrelieved by humour. The mood was blackest in PINDAR, the command centre in the building’s bowels. PINDAR relayed to Northwood, for encryption and onward transmission to Vengeance, the details required to arm a Trident missile for a 50-kiloton burst at eight thousand feet above specified co-ordinates.
43
Camberley, Monday 29 June 2020
I arrive at the red brick Travelodge in Camberley about eleven-thirty. I’m relieved to be on the point of action, and am sick of picturesque trawlers. Camberley adjoins Sandhurst but the main point is it’s only one junction up the M3 to reach London’s circular belt, the M25. The plan was to deliver me there about four in the afternoon but I have some plans of my own so I kicked off. With curtains-up so close, they humour me. I can’t work out why it’s taken me so long to realise who has the power in my situation: no Zack, no show.
The call to move came on Sunday afternoon. By then we’d seen a day and a half of telly. The tunnel was like that advert in which more people keep climbing out of a Mini, except the six thousand people climb out of the Channel Tunnel. Mary drove in on Sunday evening to give me a hug. I was really chuffed about that.
There was nothing for me to pack. After going back many times to Nassia’s pictures and voice on my tablet, last week I had left three phone messages at her college, all ignored. So by Sunday night I had written her off as well. Yet something must have happened, because on Monday morning I woke to three texts from her during the night (the last, soon after 6am, said ‘Switch on the news!’ ). When I got through she said she had spent the night at Number Ten and could get to the Camberley Travelodge for one.
My minders went ape-shit but I told them to get over it. After ‘taking instructions’ they played ball, on condition they could wire me for the meeting. I’d have my wig on, obviously.
So out of an Alfa Romeo Spider climbs a stunning Oxford professor for lunch with me. On offer is Travelodge’s culinary finest: a choice of three twelve-inch pizzas, quarter pounders or baguettes with tuna mayonnaise, BLT or cheese and tomato.
She doesn’t seem bothered. The cameras in Number Ten haven’t lied: she’s hardly aged in thirteen years. No need for Vogue to cancel her contract, although when her dark glasses come off I can see that she’s been crying.
‘You’ve hardly changed,’ I say.
‘And we live in a society in which that is a compliment?’
Calm down, dear, I know you’ve upgraded from Eton to Oxford. While Christine tells us she will be our waitress today, Nassia scans me like one of the new-fangled machines at airports. We’re sitting at an imitation café table on chairs with backs like musical staves. Nassia has a straw bag; I’m empty-handed, unless you count the wire under my shirt. Once Christine has gone I expose it briefly. ‘I hope you don’t mind if this conversation is recorded for quality and training purposes.’
Nassia frowns. ‘I hope that means you are a player in this game, Zack. Because if you can do something, do it. I spent last night with Bob, and it was awful. He is not coping. You must know what that is like.’
She sips lukewarm tea. Mine’s a Diet Coke.
‘You told me you want to understand your brother better.’
I nod. ‘Yes. If I get the chance to “do something”, it will help if I understand him as much as possible. I used to think I understood him, but maybe I don’t. What I do understand is the way things are going. The former banker who was murdered four weeks ago? He was our friend. Our neighbour.’
Nassia covers her mouth. ‘I am so sorry. You know, it’s not just Bob. There are those who will come after him. His ego stops him seeing that he’s being used.’
I nod.
‘I tried to tell him last night but it was pointless. Look, let’s take our baguettes outside – I need a cigarette.’
I almost ask her for one as we dribble sticky mayonnaise onto the tarmac. It tastes synthetic. Maybe it started life as road marking paint.
‘It’s taken me years to get the measure of Bob. He’s extremely bright, if that’s what you wanted me to say. Close to genius level in some respects.’
‘Just say what you see. When I look at him, I miss things. Or misunderstand them.’
‘But he has a low attention span and extremely friable intellectual foundations. Owing to the inadequate education to which he was exposed.’
Friable foundations – too much egg and chips?
‘His tactical intelligence is tops. Among the highest I have seen, including Oxford, the Sorbonne, et cetera. He also has some strength strategically, because he is neither afraid nor ashamed of what he wants. You might be surprised how common the latter weakness is.’
Too right; I’m afraid of getting what I wanted right now.
‘What Bob cannot do is the middle game – long-term tactics. He gets bored too easily. And yet international relations is eighty per cent long-term tactics.’
‘What did my brother want from you? Originally, I mean, when you were teaching at Eton.’
‘He wanted to know how smart he was. I was a good measuring stick: someone he could work with without too much pain, but also someone of the highest pedigree intellectually. I wondered whether you might want something similar, when I gave you my card. But you never called.’
‘No-one’s ever mistaken me for a genius,’ I reply. Besides, I was a man at the beginning of a marriage, even if the moment with the card has never left me.
‘How are you?’ Nassia continues. ‘You have a contract in the Middle East?’
Of course, Tad at work. I’ve been so busy being Bob that I’m forgetting to be Zack. I smile. ‘Thank you. I can’t say too much – agent problems – but yes, fingers crossed. Money, Shakespeare and air-conditioning – it could be worse.’
She studies me. ‘Getting breaks has been less easy for you than for your brother.’
In a moment of clarity I realise that she has two jigsaw pieces which I want: what she thinks of my brother and what she thinks of me. For a month now I have been reconstructing my understanding of my brother; I’ve overlooked that the process involves reconstructing my understanding of me. Possibly in hours I will be on the other side of the world and an opportunity to put the pieces together will be gone forever.
I blurt words out awkwardly. ‘If I had called you thirteen years ago, it would have been for the wrong reasons. Understandable but wrong. The wise reason would have been to get what you suggest, your assessment of me. So, you study the world. Leave Bob out of it: how do you see someone like me?’
Nassia’s eyebrows rise. She lights a fresh cigarette. In four lungfuls almost all of it is gone before she replies.
‘As a sociologist, my interest is in patterns, more so than individuals. Still, individuals can be interesting. You, I take it, aspire to the middle class. Politicians have long wanted precisely that. Now, the middle-class credo is education and meritocracy. Meritocracy with vast blind spots, naturally, especially around their own children. But still, the middle classes believe self-improvement on merit is possible and a duty. This used to be the religion of your grammar schools, now taken over by business schools and the professions.
‘Such a credo could hardly work for the upper class. Their belief is that everyone – everyone who is in that class, I mean – is more or less guaranteed to survive. Effort is useful but not fundamentally necessary. If you do not understand this, then you are not a member of this class. What is fundamentally necessary in the upper class is to keep oiks out – to be the lid on the system, to keep one’s finger in the dyke, to hold back the surging ocean of the aspirant middle class, and not to be distracted by the occasional storm wave which
breaks overhead from the working class (your brother, for example). No matter if water keeps leaking through and you wade in ten centimetres of it, the dyke will hold. There is very little genetic about all this – the principles apply to élites of all stripes, the rulers in corporate boardrooms, your celebrities who are acclaimed even when they go to prison.’
I’m watching a lepidopterist lay out the board onto which she is going to pin me, but I have the feeling that it will feel more like a skewer than a pin.
‘The upper class share something with the working class: an appreciation of the role of luck in life. This realisation would destroy the middle class, so they do not see it, even when – for example through house prices – luck accounts for more of their success and comfort than effort and talent put together.
‘In addition to luck, the playing cards for the working class come in three other suits – toil, pleasure and survival. To these they add whatever jokers they can contrive to confer possibilities of dignity – respectability, God, family or gang. In this class there is no safety net. Their high watermark of success is the football club manager, well paid and famous for a time, but unceremoniously out on his ear after even a few bad matches. Not for them Teflon positions of leadership from which messages of failure can be returned to sender.
‘So now I can say how you seem to me. What I see is that to the middle class, you are a failure. To the working class, you are a sponge and a traitor. To the upper class, you do not exist. I don’t know, Zack, you tell me. Can you do something with that?’
44
Camberley, Tuesday 30 June 2020
Frank parks the bike in the back corner of the Travelodge, away from the street lamps. A summer shower has left the Kawasaki 1400GTR damp to the touch with steam rising from the engine intake. Is Frank police, special forces or something else? Enough that he is a cheery Geordie who is tickled pink to inform me, deadpan at four o’clock in the morning, that my date with destiny is scheduled for dawn at Heston motorway services. I don’t waste time wondering whether to believe him: where he’s taking me, I’m going.
Time of Lies Page 20