Into the Blue

by Robert Goddard

  It would have been another bomb, at the villa, during his visit to Rhodes, another sister claimed by accident. But I forestalled him. I agreed to help. I volunteered to travel to Rhodes ahead of him and plan the operation in detail. Instead of doing that, however, I made sure Heather would see me and take fright.’

  ‘You let her see you?’

  ‘Of course. Did you suppose I could have been so negligent as to allow her to realize I was on her trail unless it suited my purpose to do so? I knew what her response would be, though I confess the theatricality of it surprised me. My visit to Rhodes was a warning. It was my way of alerting her to the peril she was in.’ Cornelius permitted himself a dry and mirthless snigger. ‘I know what you are thinking, Harry. Why should somebody who aids and abets assassination and arson in Northern Ireland quibble over the execution of one irksomely inquisitive Englishwoman in Rhodes? Why should blood and bombs rest easily on my conscience in Belfast but not in Lindos? Admit it. You had wondered, had you not?’

  ‘Suppose I had. ‘

  ‘Well, there is an answer, though I do not expect you to subscribe to it. The organization I serve is engaged in a morally justified war. But the murder of Heather Mallender could not be defended on moral grounds – or any other. I have my credo and shall be my own confessor. I seek neither your approval nor your comfort. But be assured: she is in no danger from me.’

  ‘Then what … If that’s so, why are you here now?’

  ‘To call off the chase. To cut short your unnecessary retreat. Perhaps I should have acted sooner, but I did not imagine you would ever find her. To be frank, you seemed ill-equipped for the task. Clearly, Alan was a better judge of your capabilities than I. Not that he told me the full extent of the enquiries you were making on his behalf. I think he began to have doubts about my loyalty from the moment Heather fled. I think he identified you as both more reliable and more malleable. Had he taken me into his confidence sooner, of course, I could have told him Dr Kingdom was not sheltering Heather and that deceiving you into believing he was would achieve nothing. As it was, he did not apprise me of the full extent of your activities until yesterday, shortly after you had given him the location of Heather’s hiding-place. Suspicious or not, he needed my help, you see, to travel incognito, to act as his eyes and ears, to spy on Heather and plan her demise.’

  ‘But you refused?’

  ‘No. Refusal would have availed me little. That at least was clear to me. If you are not with Alan you are against him. If you are not his friend you are his enemy. I could see my status was in the balance, so I agreed with as great a show of enthusiasm as I could contrive. I volunteered to come here at once and monitor Heather’s movements until we were ready to proceed against her. At this moment, he must still—’ There was a catch in Cornelius’s voice. He broke off. When he resumed, Harry could almost have believed he was close to tears. ‘I promised him that this time nothing would go wrong. I assured him that there would be no mistakes. And nor will there. No mistakes at all.’ He released his hold on Harry’s shoulder. ‘I have taken certain actions which will ensure Heather’s safety. I have done what I should have done when Clare first came to me last year. But she was all her sister is not: arrogant, spoilt and contemptuous. She threatened me. She offended my pride. That is my excuse for succumbing to the course Alan proposed, the course for which I must now suffer. I thought frightening Heather into hiding might avert a desperate remedy, but thanks to you, Harry – thanks to what Alan inveigled you into doing – I have been left with no alternative but to pull down the curtain on the lie we have lived. ‘You are acquainted, I believe, with an unsavoury journalist named Jonathan Minter?’

  ‘Er … Yes. Why?’

  ‘In tomorrow’s – I should say today’s – edition of The Courier, there will appear a front-page article credited to Minter exposing a long-standing homosexual relationship between a junior minister in the British government and a member of the IRA, between Alan Dysart, that is, and myself.’

  A few minutes before, Harry had cowered in fear of the man beside him. Now, suddenly, everything was altered. And where fear ended, wonder began. ‘You’ve admitted everything to Minter?’

  ‘I have admitted enough to ruin Alan, yes. I have supplied Minter with certain letters which leave no doubt as to the nature of our relationship and which make it clear Alan has long known of my activities in the Republican cause. He will be hounded from public life as a consequence. He will be the subject of universal scorn and vituperation. He will be an outcast from his party and his society, a pariah, a leper, a man disowned. As to murder, both past and present, I have made no mention. Nor have I needed to. Alan thrives on the admiration of his peers. That has always been for him the greatest spur to achievement. That has always been what he most wanted to preserve. To lose it, as now he must, will be a more serious blow than any legal sanction. And once it is lost, Heather will no longer pose any kind of threat. Thus she will have nothing to fear. And nor will you.’

  ‘But you said … You said that if the IRA ever came to know …’

  ‘They would kill me.’ Cornelius took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘They will kill me, Harry, if they ever find me.’

  ‘You’re not going back to England?’

  ‘Hardly. That would be tantamount to suicide. You see me at the outset of a nomadic existence, flitting from one city to another, from one continent to another, always on the move, always glancing anxiously over my shoulder.’

  ‘How long will you have to stay on the run?’

  ‘Forever. For as long as I can. For as long as it takes them to catch me.’

  ‘You think they will catch you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Eventually. When I grow tired or careless. When I can no longer summon the energy needed for continual flight. Then they will find me.’

  The night seemed to grow darker still. In it Harry felt he could sense the certainty of Cornelius’s fate, the certainty which Cornelius would live and breathe every day, for as many days as remained to him. ‘By doing this, you’ve ruined Alan. But you’ve also cut your own throat.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘How could you? When you knew the consequences?’

  ‘I had no choice. I could not permit Alan to continue and this was the only sure way to stop him. When he told me you had found Heather, I realized there was no alternative. I had to act. Minter has long harboured an animus against Alan. His reaction to the material I supplied was that of a greedy young boy for whom Christmas and a brace of birthdays have arrived simultaneously. He will do a good job. Of that I am confident. But he will not understand its purpose, for its purpose is mine.’

  Cornelius was right. His was very likely the only way to halt the murderous trend of Dysart’s life. And so, in spite of all the other reasons to hold him in contempt, Harry could not but admire him. What he had done required a special brand of resolution. What he had done Harry feared he himself could never have done.

  ‘Do you think me brave, Harry? Do you think me courageous to the point of foolhardiness?’

  ‘I suppose I do, yes.’

  ‘You are wrong. Courage is easy to find when you have no choice. Remember Anthony Sedley, the man who carved his name on the font at Burford Church? He was frightened because he knew that if he renounced the principles for which the Levellers stood his life might be spared. He was not held prisoner by a locked door but by his own fear. Only when there is no hope of escape does fear evaporate. And I lost that hope when I understood that the planned and premeditated murder of Clare Mallender was far from the first such crime Alan had carried out – and would not be the last. I confess that part of what drew me to him in the first place was the hint of infinite daring that surrounded him like an aura. But I never guessed the full extent of that daring. I never realized – until it was too late – that Clare had only followed in the footsteps of Ramsey Everett. Do you know what Alan told me the last time we met, late on Friday night? That the pleasure of committing
an undetected murder surpassed any other pleasure he had ever known. Do you appreciate what that means? Its worst implication came to me only later. The motive for pushing Everett from a window, for sabotaging Morpurgo’s car, for blowing up the Artemis with Clare aboard, was purely secondary. The satisfaction of bringing off such deceptions mattered far more than whatever provoked them.’

  ‘What did provoke them?’ The need to know lurched to the fore of Harry’s senses like a sudden thirst. So far, he had gained only hints and glimpses. Now he craved the answer whole, the truth complete.

  ‘As to Clare and Morpurgo, you already know. As to Everett, the information he tried to blackmail Alan with was provocation in itself.’

  ‘What was the information?’

  ‘I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Cannot?’

  ‘I am bound by the promise I made Alan twenty years ago: the promise that I would never reveal what he had killed Everett to keep secret.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘No!’ Cornelius’s voice was stern and commanding, all suggestion of weakness sucked out of it. ‘The act of treachery Alan has forced me to commit is enough. Ask him yourself and he may tell you the whole truth. But you will not hear it from me.’

  Comelius’s code of honour, flawed and distorted though it might be, was evidently inflexible. Harry’s only hope of learning more from him was to reveal the little he had himself learned from Chipchase. As he pondered the wisdom of such a disclosure, Cornelius peered at the luminous dial of his wristwatch and clicked his tongue.

  ‘Time is marching on, Harry. The printing presses of The Courier have ceased rolling. Trains are rumbling out from the termini of London, radiating like splinters in a stone-pierced sheet of ice, bearing their grubby bundles of scandal to the several corners of Britain. Soon the wholesalers’ vans will be speeding along deserted streets in every town from Penzance to Inverness, depositing their cargo beside the milk crates on countless newsagents’ doorsteps. Within a few hours, the early risers amongst Alan’s constituents will be collecting their newspapers from the porch and those who take The Courier, as they yawn over their first cup of tea and cast their blurred gaze across the front page, will see what they least expect to see, and gulp, and start, and rub their eyes, and look again, and realize that they are not dreaming. Alan Dysart’s day is done. And so is mine.’ He sighed and rose to his feet. ‘It is time I was on my way, Harry, time I was on the move.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Many places. It is better you should not know, better that nobody should know. But I would ask of you one favour.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You will see Alan, I have no doubt. You must see him – as he must see you. It is why I chose to confide in you.’ How Cornelius could be certain such a meeting would take place Harry did not know, but there was a force and confidence in his tone that brooked no contradiction. ‘I would like you to convey a message to him from me. Will you do that?’

  ‘If I can. What is the message?’

  ‘Simply this: he left me no choice.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Cornelius took a deep breath, threw back his shoulders and began to walk away. Then, when he had covered no more than six paces, he stopped and looked back. ‘Perhaps one other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell him I forgive him.’ And before Harry could respond with any word or gesture, Cornelius had hurried on into the night.

  58

  An Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence has sustained for many years a homosexual relationship with an active supporter of terrorism in Northern Ireland. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from evidence recently and exclusively made available to The Courier and set out in detail on pages 2 and 3. It is a shocking and scandalous indictment of government vetting procedures and raises a host of disturbing questions about lapses in security stretching back over several years. The minister concerned – Alan Dysart, a former naval officer decorated for his conduct in the Falklands War—

  LARISSA RAILWAY STATION in Athens was a tumult of mass departure. It seemed to Harry that half the city was decamping aboard the Venice Express, taking most of their worldly goods with than. Heavily strapped cases were being hauled aboard by Thessalonian grandes dames with fractious children and yapping dogs in attendance. Whilst Harry, as short of luggage as he was of energy, stood by an open door of the train shouting his farewells to Heather above the cacophany around them.

  ‘I have your word you’ll contact your parents?’

  ‘Yes, Harry, I’ll contact them. But I don’t promise to see them. I’ll let them know I’m alive and well, but for the moment that may have to be all.’

  ‘It’s all I ask.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you’re travelling back by train.’

  ‘Money.’ Harry smiled. ‘All this air travel’s left me short.’ Though that, he acknowledged to himself, was only an incidental advantage of favouring the two and a half day rail route to England.

  ‘When will you arrive?’

  ‘Wednesday afternoon.’ It sounded all too soon to Harry’s ears. By then he would have to decide what to say to Alan Dysart, or to whatever the whirlwind of public disgrace had left of his sometime friend.

  ‘You feel sorry for him, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  Heather’s gaze was sharp-eyed and perceptive. ‘Despite everything he’s done – despite everything you’ve learned about him – you pity him, don’t you? You don’t think he deserved all the harsh things Jonathan wrote about him.’ She held up her copy of The Courier.

  ‘Oh he deserved them all right.’ But Harry knew, even as he said it, that Heather was correct. He had never met Ramsey Everett. He had never spoken to Clare Mallender. They were remote and insubstantial. Even the extent to which he had himself been misled and manipulated seemed of small moment compared with what bulked so large in his thoughts: Cornelius embarked on his hopeless flight and Dysart besieged by the heralds of public ruin.

  ‘It’ll be all over by now, I should think,’ said Heather. ‘He’ll have been forced to admit it’s true. He’ll have been compelled to resign.’

  ‘Yes. He probably will.’

  ‘I’m glad. Glad he’ll have been made to suffer.’

  ‘So would I be, in your shoes.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you?’

  No; Harry was not. He remembered Dysart taking him home drunk one night from Barnchase Motors; rescuing him from penury and bankruptcy; salvaging him from unemployment and self-pity. What he owed Alan Dysart could only be measured by what he would have become without his help, so for him there could be no pleasure or satisfaction in Minter’s double-page spread of gleeful condemnation. ‘I’m glad it’s over,’ was all he could bring himself to say.

  ‘That’s really why you’re going by train, isn’t it? To avoid the worst of it.’

  A fusillade of whistles and slamming doors excused Harry from answering. ‘I must go,’ he said, climbing aboard. He closed the door behind him and leaned out through the open window. ‘Goodbye, then,’ he announced, smiling stiffly.

  ‘Goodbye, Harry.’ Heather craned up to kiss him and for a self-deceptive instant he believed he could see tears glistening in her eyes. ‘And good luck.’

  ‘You too.’ Harry felt relieved that the moment for recriminations had passed with none exchanged. The train lurched into motion.

  ‘I’ll write, I promise.’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘And Harry—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry, you know.’ Now there could be no doubt: she really was crying.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Everything, I suppose.’

  That was the last Harry’s straining ears could detect as the train gathered speed and the shrieked farewells of others buffeted around him. He stepped back from the window, realizing as he did so that he would probably never see Heather again. A dwindling figure on a
mountain path; a vanishing face on a crowded platform: at least this time he understood the moment for what it was. He stumbled down the corridor and began to look for a seat.

  Harry followed the immediate repercussions of The Courier article at several removes, for which he was grateful. The effect was numbing. It lessened the enormity of what had overtaken Dysart. It made it possible to pretend that the man involved was just a disgraced politician with whose fate Harry had no more to do than had any other passenger on the Venice Express.

  According to the selection of Monday morning’s London newspapers which Harry bought that evening during an hour’s lay-up at Belgrade, Dysart’s resignation from the government had been swiftly tendered. A letter to the Prime Minister expressing his ‘deep regret at the embarrassment and consternation the article must have caused’ and insisting that ‘at no time has the security of civil or military operations in Northern Ireland been compromised’ was widely quoted. Dysart’s whereabouts were evidently a mystery, however. There were no photographs in fuzzy long-shot of a strained and fugitive figure, only well-lit portraits from the file, accompanied by uninformative pictures of his locked and empty London flat and some pensive studies of Virginia offering a stern ‘no comment’ on the doorstep at Strete Barton. Emergency meetings of the Cabinet and of Dysart’s constituency party were widely anticipated, a host of political analysts and security experts extensively consulted. Editorially, the press was of one mind: Dysart deserved nothing but vitriolic contempt. He had betrayed his party and his country in a way that was little short of criminal. If he was not technically guilty of treason, then he was morally guilty. As for the revelation of his homosexuality, that, it was pruriently implied, only deepened the dye of his treachery.