by Craig Thomas
Jessop lit a cigarette and idly flicked the wipers once more. There he still was, poor little bugger. Moving closer every minute to being turned off, he was… They'll follow me the moment I get up to go, Lloyd realised with a numbing fear. He seemed to look down on his hunched, immobile form from a height, seeing the ridiculous loneliness and isolation of his figure under the drenched table umbrella, the rain still lashing down, the parked car, the openness and betraying space of the Grand' Place at the end of the street. They'll follow me back to the office, back home, they'll know who I am… Rain had soaked his raincoat collar, that of his jacket, his shirt. He shivered, the coldness coming from inside him. Oh you idiot, you bloody idiot-!
Why had he thought it so clever to ring Marian Pyott, why had he denied, when she'd called him only hours ago, that there was anything wrong, that this meeting had nothing to do with her suspicions… when he had already begun to suspect that she might be right, after all? Her suspicions had put him here, she had seduced his curiosity and left him between the man in the car and the man in the cafe and at the mercy of whoever was on the other end of the phone.
Oh, shit It didn't happen. Not here, not like this, not that kind of thing… The flick of the wipers. The man had finished on the phone, he was smoking a cigarette. Before rain slid down the windscreen again, he saw a white hand wave. Instinctively, he turned his head.
Beside the clouded face in the cafe window was another waving white hand.
Both of them were waving at him Fraser caught the mood of the meeting as clearly as he would have sensed a threat to himself. His impressions were like listening to a bug that had developed an intermittent fault, but the quiet, suppressed desperation of the people in the conference room was evident. Their features and hunched furtiveness were unmistakable.
The door closed again. Find out, he had been ordered, who he is then find out his interest in this meeting. Fraser stood in the corridor that smelt of new carpet and recently tinted walls. Ten yards or so away, a maid fussed at her trolley of cleaning fluids, fresh towels and linen.
His mobile phone trilled in the pocket of his raincoat.
"Fraser."
"He's on the move." It was Jessop.
"You want us to follow him, right?"
"I want an ID, quick. Photograph, address, background."
"Is he important?"
"You tell me by lunchtime."
He snapped shut the mobile phone and leaned back against the wall. The unexpected surveillance worried him because it was unexpected and from an amateur. Jessop was certain of that. But not newspaper or TV. Yet there had been photographs… Fraser rubbed his smooth, blunt chin.
Whoever he was, he was a rogue, unanticipated element of the situation.
He stared at the closed doors as if watching the meeting taking place behind them. Aero UK's CEO, screaming rape by MoD because the helicopter contract was going to the Yanks and the shiny new airliner they were building with the Frogs, who were in there, wasn't selling… to anyone. The Euro Commissioners, both of them, squealing because of the pressure they were under to arm lock the national carriers and the various aviation authorities into buying and flying and approving routes and slots for the Skyliner… Everyone hanging on for the new Boeing 777 or he smiled the Vance 494, which had just so conveniently fallen out of the sky.
Aero UK might be going to the wall, which meant his employer would lose millions, and limp away wounded from the collapse. Blackmail, bribery, cut rate special offers… none of it was working in favour of the Skyliner. The man was angry… and his anger could turn against Fraser and his minions.
He rubbed his face. Took out the mobile phone and dialled Jessop.
"Where are you?"
"Rue de la Loi, near the Commission—"
"Is that where he's heading?"
"You'll have to wait for an answer I'm not a mind-reader."
"I'll wait."
The line sounded like a tunnel through which a wind blew coldly, then, after perhaps a minute in which Fraser waited as patiently as a machine:
"He's dropping down into one of the underground car parks — must be a fully paid up—"
"IsCobbwithyou?"
"Yes."
Then find out who he is now."
"How?"
"Use your imagination!"
He switched off the phone, the skin of his cheeks and jaw tight with angry suspicion. The European Commission building… He worked there, in some capacity or other, because he had a car park pass, accreditation. He glowered at the conference suite's closed doors.
There were two Commissioners behind them, engaged in confidential talk with prominent businessmen… which was not criminal. But it interested the man who'd photographed them. He'd wanted to know who, why… Why? Why keep people he worked for, or worked alongside, under surveillance? Was he working for the Euros in the meeting? Against them or against the business interests in the room? Working for the Frogs, who were never to be trusted in anything?
He waited, itchy to move, act but one place was as good as another to wait. The maid had drifted out of sight now and the corridor was empty, airlessly warm, desiccated.
"Well?" he demanded when the mobile eventually offered him its peremptory chirping.
"Who is he?"
"His name's Lloyd Michael Lloyd. A researcher for one of the Commissioners.
It's cost Cobb his mobile. Claimed Lloyd had left it in the cafe and he tried to catch him before he drove off… followed him public-spiritedly to return it. Good deed in a naughty—" ' Which Commissioner?"
Transport."
Who was behind those closed doors at that moment… He had been keeping his boss under surveillance.
"He'll be put on his guard getting a phone delivered that isn't his," Fraser observed.
"Never mind. OK, find out everything about this Michael Lloyd. Who there is around him, behind him, in the shadows. He's interested in what's happening here why should he be?"
"Will we—?"
Take measures to prevent his further interest? I should think so, Jessop. I really don't see why not."
"Just a minute, Daddy I want a word with that weasel over there. Sit tight for a moment—" The Commons Terrace was, as yet, un littered with MPs. There were a few early arrivals scattered at the dark wood tables that reminded Marian of nothing so much as garden furniture from a DIY chain store. There had been no morning business in the House, and there'd be nothing more than written answers to questions on the helicopter contract. Neither the PM nor the Minister would appear if they were wise. But the junior procurement minister from Defence was seated at one of the tables, a gin and tonic sparkling in the sunlight clutched in his long-fingered hand, some constituent or contact opposite him, dazzled by the locale, the occasion.
"Hello, Jimmy," she announced portentously, standing close to him so that he was less likely to stand. The junior minister was languidly, gracefully tall, as all former Guards officers seemed to be, and her protest would be more effective if he remained seated. No, she did not recognise the other man. He was not a Member.
"Marian not here, I think," the junior minister warned.
"Perhaps I should let my rebuke leak out, then?" she snapped.
On the slats of the table lay a jumble of the day's papers, their headlines uniformly gloomy. She had already read every newspaper as if cramming for an examination.
Jimmy's guest appeared slightly wary, intensely curious, as if a spectator at some arcane bloodsport. The junior minister uncoiled from his chair, stood up and steered her firmly away from the table.
"Minimum embarrassment factor, Marian," he murmured.
"Jimmy what the hell's going on? You've been issuing the smoothest assurances for weeks—" Sunlight splintered from glass towers across the river. The flanks of the Commons were serenely biscuit-coloured. Small craft on the Thames were like scraps of coloured paper, "It's no more than a leak at this stage, Marian—"
"A creeping barrage, Jimmy! Why, for heaven'
s sake?"
She confronted him, hands on her hips, the breeze rustling her full cotton skirt around her. The minister smiled condescendingly.
"It's a very good helicopter, the Mamba," he soothed.
"My minister—"
"Has been bought off, Jimmy. It's a bloody disaster for Aero UK, for the subcontractors. It shouldn't have been allowed to happen!"
"Ah, my dear girl, if only we could always do what was most obviously the right thing."
"Your height allows you to patronise me, Jimmy your age and brains don't."
The junior minister flushed, then said: The generals wanted the Mamba.
It makes sense to experts' "I'll be sure to tell my constituents as much, Jimmy. I'm sure it will be a great comfort at the Job Centre."
"By God, she's beautiful when she's angry," he mocked.
A senior Labour backbencher passed, winking at her. She pretended not to notice.
"Angry I am, Jimmy."
"Marian the battle's lost."
"A warning?"
"Just friendly advice from a fervent admirer." He grinned, his early-greying hair distressed by the breeze. He brushed it smooth.
"But you'll no doubt receive the usual encomiums in the press for your stalwart defence of the British aerospace industry…" He was warned by the clouding of her features, and added: "Is that Sir Giles with you? Lunching at the House? I must have a word with him. Excuse me, Marian. Go easy on us poor mortals in government from the moral ramparts of the back benches, won't you?"
He waved a languid hand and returned to his guest. Marian felt her anger tight in her chest. She had hardly begun to discharge it before the conversation was terminated. Reluctantly, she returned to her father, who was engaged with a knight of the shires and senior member of the 1922 Committee. They parted as Marian approached.
"I never cease to be amazed how that man ever rose above the rank of second lieutenant," Giles murmured.
"And you, my girl, look as if you've just suffered a nasty bout of indigestion. No joy?"
She shook her head.
"No hope, Daddy. It's been decided everything's cut and dried. No amount of complaining is going to get us anywhere!"
"Sit down." A Commons waiter had brought their drinks.
"I'm desperately sorry for Aero UK, for the Italians and the Germans
… and your constituents. The problem is there was always very little on paper between the two helicopters, ours and the Americans. In military terms, there isn't a good case to be made in objecting to—"
Her mobile phone trilled and she plunged her hand into her bag to locate it. A lipstick and a handkerchief emerged with it. The tiny folded triangle of cotton flew away on the breeze and Giles followed it, crouching like a hunter.
"Marian?" It was her researcher-secretary, Rose.
"Someone called Egan just rang.
Wonders whether he could snatch a moment with you this afternoon, around three?"
"Egan?"
"Sam Egan. Something to do with the Millennium Project work in the constituency. Egan Construction mean anything?"
"Yes, I know him. Did he say what he wanted?"
"No. Made it sound important."
Marian glanced at her watch.
"Tell him three-thirty. Meet him in Central Lobby, will you, Rose?
Thanks—" Giles had recovered the handkerchief.
"Anything important?"
"Nothing that will interrupt lunch."
"Good."
"Contractor on the fabled Millennium Urban Regeneration thing. Probably wants me to lobby for a bigger EU grant. Nothing unusual." She smiled.
"It won't put people out of work, at least!" Giles was studying her intently as he did habitually, like a doctor for the first signs of disease.
"Daddy," she warned.
"Sorry. Drink up I'm feeling more than a little peckish!"
He had mislaid the number of her mobile phone… mobile phone. He stared again at the phone that had been brought up to his office by one of the commission aires Someone had handed it in one of the men watching him after he had left it on a cafe table. It had terrified him. It was the Black Spot, he had tried — and failed to joke.
Evidently, it had been the excuse to discover his name, his function at the Commission. They knew he worked for the Transport Commissioner, Rogier, and that he had been spying on his own superior. That knowledge would be like a taunt, or the first step in a seduction which would madden and arouse. They would have to know his motive now.
Her home number answered his call, her voice on the answering machine.
This is Marian Pyott, lean't take your call at the moment but if… He waited for the extended, pinging tone, then said breathlessly:
"Sorry, Marian but they're on to me. Some people circling like sharks around that meeting, I don't know who. I'm back at the office now they've taken the trouble to find out who I am…" There seemed nothing he could add, however much he disliked the bleak promise of the facts.
"I–I'll call you again if I learn anything more… "Bye." He put down the receiver quickly.
He sat back from his desk, pushed his chair on its castors to the window. The rain had stopped and the Boulevard Charlemagne gleamed like a mirror. The Schuman station hunched at the end of the boulevard, shiny as a great snail shell. He sat near the window like a mockery of surveillance. How could he pick them out from this high vantage, how possibly?
He was no longer so afraid of them, now that they were again invisible, unidentifiable figures on the crowded streets or on the place in front of the Commission building the curving ugliness of which Marian Pyott had once described as the revenge of concrete on good taste. They were lost to him in the space down there, and he had been able to become calmer, even after the jolt of the phone being delivered to him, masquerading as his own.
Yet he knew no more clearly how to deal with the situation than he had done, stranded beneath the sodden umbrella at the cafe table. Knowledge
… but he had none. There was nothing lying carelessly on his Commissioner's desk, no cryptic indication in his appointments book, nothing that would suggest the need for the men who had had him under surveillance to provide a protective screen around the meeting. Their presence suggested secrecy, an added importance to what he had thought mere bribery, influence-seeking venality.
The men who had taunted him with white, waving hands had altered the construction, even the meaning, of the small drama he had created; they had acquired it, and made its plot cloudier but larger, its action more febrile and mysterious, its figures more sinister. It was as if he had set out to create a mocking little satire upon bureaucracy and they had insisted it become a drama of danger, threat. But he could not, simply could not, comprehend something that would unite the Commission and danger… It was a bad joke. He knew all those people at that meeting, for heaven's sake-!
He picked up the telephone and dialled the number of his flat — before remembering that Marie-Claire was already on her way to Rotterdam to report to Royal Dutch Shell on the lack of success of her lobbying at the Commission.
Brent Spar still floated on the company's horizon like a ship flying the skull and-crossbones, endangering image and sales alike. The Commission was sympathetic only in strict privacy, and was the colour of chlorophyll in all its public pronouncements. Lack of success was slowly driving his delectable partner up the proverbial wall.
He put down the receiver, then once more picked it up. The Commissioner's secretary answered.
"Michael," he said.
"M'selle Fouquet sorry about this, but the Commissioner asked me to research some background for' he hesitated momentarily, before reminding himself that they were already only too well aware of his un authorised interest "Aero UK, the British plane maker and and Mr. David Winterborne's companies." He lightened his voice.
"I think the Commissioner thinks they're lobbying too hard, m'selle. Do you have any idea how urgent it is?"
"A moment, M'sieur
Lloyd." His charm was like thinly spread margarine when applied to Mile Fouquet. He heard her riffling pages.
"M'sieur Rogier is to be the guest of yes, David Winterborne at the family home this weekend. He did not tell you this? I presume he requires your work on his desk before he leaves on Friday. At midday."
As he replaced the receiver, he could not but laugh, even though the noise merely became the exhalation of nerves after a moment of amusement.
Rogier was meeting Winterborne again, in a few days' time. In England.
And he hadn't asked for a background briefing from his senior researcher, something the Frenchman was habitually punctilious about.
They joked among the Commission's junior ranks that Rogier required a detailed briefing before he used the toilet or took his next meal.
Secrecy again… David Winterborne. Was he the reason for the security screen? Why? As Chairman and CEO of Winterborne Holdings, a Singapore-based conglomerate, he was a major shareholder in Aero UK, in some of the subcontractors working on Skyliner — and on the helicopter and a prompt and determined lobbyist for EC funds on each and every possible occasion. And he was a friend of Marian's they'd practically grown up together. He was just another businessman.
Once more, he picked up the telephone. Her answer phone offered its assistance.
"Marian? Is there—?" No, that's not the question. Try again, Lloyd.
"Rogier is staying with David Winterborne this weekend. Mean anything?
Doesn't to me…"
He hesitated, then added: There's no reason for security, unless there's a hidden agenda and this isn't the usual bribery and corruption. Marian is David Winterborne a likely candidate? Your friend Winterborne, that is? Call me—" He put down the receiver, nerved by a sense of activity and insight. He was intrigued; curiosity masked fear, for the moment, and offered him a return of confidence.