‘Patricia’ – he pronounced it Patreezia – ‘may I?’ he asked through the open car window.
Soon they were sitting in her study, before the ornate marble fireplace with its nineteenth-century clock on the mantel, with substantial glasses of wine and smoke from their cigarettes trailing up to the high ceiling.
‘Patreezia, I am sorry to intrude but I have a problem,’ the German began.
‘Then we have a problem, Albrecht,’ she said softly, crossing her ankles, and making sure he noticed.
He nodded in gratitude. ‘It is the pipeline.’
He didn’t need to be specific. The Babylon pipeline was the project on which he had staked his reputation, a pipeline that once it was built would guarantee for a generation supplies of gas to Europe from the new republics of central Asia and put to flight those doom mongers who predicted that within five years much of Europe would freeze. Its potential was fabulous, and so was its cost.
‘The contracts are prepared, everything is ready, everyone wants to sign. It will transform our future. But . . .’ He sighed. ‘We have encountered a little local difficulty.’
‘Of course, Albrecht. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘The final piece of the jigsaw are the environmental approvals. You know what it’s like. We have to certify that construction of the pipeline will not do damage.’
‘“It is our duty to set the standards, not just for the continent of Europe but in all the corners of the world”,’ she declaimed with only a hint of mockery, reciting a phrase that their Finnish colleague Illka Lappi, the Environment Commissioner, was fond of preaching.
Genscher smiled, and nodded, but there was no humour in it. ‘Yes. Of course. Standards.’ He took a mouthful of wine. ‘But there has been an accident.’
‘What sort of accident?’
‘The task force we sent to the Caspian to conduct the environmental and seismic studies has had their offices burned down. Everything has been destroyed.’
‘I see.’
‘A formality, of course, but . . .’ He waved his fleshy hand.
‘So you have no report.’
‘I am very confident that the report would have been favourable,’ he said quickly.
‘But of course.’ Her eyes strayed to the photograph in a silver frame that sat on the side table. It was of her in a private audience with the Pope. She was bowing, her head covered in respect, as he blessed her, but her faith didn’t blind her to the realities. Genscher was a thug, and she knew full well that the report would be favourable because he would have ensured the outcome from the very start. Fixed the casino. Something had gone badly wrong.
‘No backups?’ she asked, arching an eyebrow.
‘Sadly, no,’ the German said uneasily. ‘The research facility was very isolated, all the records were kept on site, the computer backups, too. Now – gone. Everything.’ He dived once again into his glass of wine. She poured him some more.
‘So what do you need from me?’ she asked quietly.
‘There is no time to repeat the studies,’ he said. ‘If we delay any longer, governments in the countries through which the pipeline passes will change, get greedy, make impossible demands. Not to speak of all those fanatical environmentalists. It has taken us years of negotiating to get to this point, now it is all about to fall apart.’
‘And we will be forced to live in windmills,’ she said.
‘We must have that pipeline! Otherwise Europe will enter another Ice Age,’ he said, agitated, banging the arm of his chair.
‘I thought you said it was a little local difficulty.’
‘Illka. It is in his hands. He can still approve the pipeline even without the environmental report. Override the system on the grounds of the security of the Union.’
‘I assume he is being stubborn.’
‘You know Illka, he is a bloody idealist. If we could burn his speeches we’d have an unlimited supply of energy, but he’d rather sit in the snow and beat himself with birch twigs.’
‘You want me to change his mind.’
‘Could you? Of course you could. You are a remarkable woman, Patreezia. What I mean is – would you? That’s what I’m asking. A huge favour.’ One that would require repaying at some point. ‘You know what this means tome.’
Genscher was not simply a political thug, he was a most effective Commissioner. There was even talk he would in his turn become President of the Commission, the top man, which would make him a friend in a very high place. But not if his favourite project collapsed around his ears. As he drank, he failed to notice that she hadn’t touched her own glass. The atmosphere had grown intense, almost claustrophobic. The walls were painted in a deep, rich red, and covered in heavy gilt frames that created an almost Renaissance intensity amidst the haze of blue smoke, as they sat like cardinals in some papal palace, conspiring.
She made him wait. Then she dialled the EATA duty office. She drummed her fingers in impatience as she waited for it to be answered – thirty seconds, unforgivable even on a Sunday night, something she would sort out in the morning. ‘There is a third-floor apartment on Rue de la Croix,’ she said, when at last her call was answered. She gave the street number. ‘It will have a landline. I want its number. And we’ll treat this as an initiative test, Fabiano. Let’s see if you’re quicker at digging out information than you are at picking up the phone.’
From the chair opposite Genscher was waving his mobile, mouthing that he had Illka’s number, but she shook her head dismissively. It had to be the landline. Illka had to know that she knew precisely where he was.
It took some time for Illka to answer the phone, when at last she rang, and when he did he didn’t announce himself, merely uttered a curt ‘Yes?’
‘Illka, it’s Patricia. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
Disturbing him? Of course she was disturbing him, pushing him to the brink of mindless panic, that was the point. He was standing naked but for his socks in the living room of a small apartment that no one was supposed to know about, but for his tarts. He was a pillar of family values and also of the Evangelical Lutheran church, a man whose ambitions were as broad as his wife was narrow-minded and unforgiving. He wanted to become President of Finland one day, not dragged down by lurid media revelations about his appetite for underage sex.
‘Delighted to find you here on a Sunday evening,’ she continued. He still hadn’t said a word, hadn’t dared draw breath.
He wasn’t the only one, of course. Ridiculous men. When they arrived in Brussels on a Sunday evening in preparation for their working week, they were faced with a choice – a lonely evening with a takeaway, or some more exotic form of distraction, what she called a Sunday Night Special. During a visit to Chicago she had been shown a collection of Saturday Night Specials, small, cheap handguns used by petty criminals, and although the Sunday Night versions referred to casual women they could prove to be just as deadly in the wrong hands. Particularly in her hands.
Still he hadn’t spoken. She knew he was debating whether to put the phone down, deny it all, but she knew he wouldn’t, not in the end. There was no point. She knew.
‘How can I help you, Patricia?’
‘A quick point, but really rather important, Illka. The Babylon pipeline. It requires either an environmental impact report or your waiver, in the interests of the Union’s security. So I’m calling to set your mind at rest by assuring you that the pipeline, and your approval for it, are most certainly in the interests of our security.’
‘I see,’ he muttered dully.
‘Look, Illka, I know about your deep-seated principles in all sorts of areas, but life is complicated. Sometimes you have to shout out loud about things, other times it’s better just to keep quiet and avoid a fuss. You understand what I mean?’
He was about to ask her how the hell she’d found this apartment, tucked away so anonymously in the tourist district that even he had difficulty in finding it in the dark, but he knew it was pointless.
Secrets were her business.
‘Is there any point in a discussion?’
‘No.’
‘You strike a hard bargain,’ he complained, his tone bitter.
‘It seems to me a very fair one.’
Another silence, before: ‘This week. I’ll make the arrangements.’
The phone went dead in his ear as she cut the connection. From across the room Genscher shook his head in both disbelief and admiration. ‘I owe you, Patreezia.’
‘Oh, my dear Albrecht,’ she whispered, coyly recrossing her ankles, ‘you most certainly do.’
When Harry was eight his mother had turned up at the apartment his father used for business and found her husband in bed with another woman. The other woman had a similar coloured dress to his mother, although she hadn’t been wearing it at the time. ‘What a coincidence,’ his mother had exclaimed. It had kicked Harry’s belief in coincidence to death. So when he received an invitation to meet with the director of Europe House, the EU’s headquarters in London, he accepted with a degree of suspicion. Brussels had begun to occupy too big a chunk of his life for comfort.
With a delicious sense of irony the EU had even set up its London base in a building in Westminster’s Smith Square that had once been the headquarters of Margaret Thatcher, the most Eurosceptic of Prime Ministers, until her party had run out of money to keep fixing it. Now it had been refurbished, extensively and expensively, and the EU flag flew alongside the Union Jack above its door.
Security in the reception area was tight, with scanners, CCTV and guards. They even asked him to hand over his mobile phone, something he’d not been requested to do since he’d last visited Downing Street. Still, Jemma would approve. He passed it across the counter with reluctance; in return, they handed him a receipt.
As he passed through the foyer he found posters announcing the shortlist for The European Parliament Film Prize, which dealt with ‘integration and youngsters, economic crisis and solidarity, the rules under which we live and the rules that drive our hearts’. God, there were rules for that, too? The films ‘examine European issues with originality and sensitivity’. Last night Jemma had thrown a pillow and called him the most insensitive bastard she’d ever met, so he guessed this might be one prize he’d never claim, but there was little need for him to worry, there was a mass of others: youth prizes, journalism prizes, community prizes, even a viral video prize. In the new Europe, it seemed that everyone was a winner.
The director’s office was large, designer decorated, overlooking the square and the deconsecrated church of St John through the bare branches of a London plane tree. She was named Mary-Anne, was in her fifties, hadn’t been in post long, she explained, and hadn’t got to know many MPs, so she was taking the opportunity to put right that omission – although Harry hadn’t heard of any other politician getting this hands-on treatment. There was tea, the offer of biscuits, and did Harry have any special interests with which Europe House might help? It was all desperately nondescript stuff. It seemed only as an afterthought that they bumped into the subject of the crashed airplane. Such a tragedy, she said. And there she left it, waiting for Harry. What was Brussels’ involvement, he asked, nonplussed. We are doing everything we can, she said, to support the British government in their efforts to get to the bottom of the matter. We stand ready to tighten sanctions against the Egyptian regime, if the Foreign & Commonwealth Office requests it, details to be agreed, of course.
And that was it. A young aide entered the office, nodded, with regret the next appointment was waiting, and Harry was ushered out of the room. He hadn’t known what to expect, or what was expected of him, and as he walked around Smith Square, dodging taxis and scattering pigeons, he was still none the wiser. Perhaps it had been intended simply to dispel the myth of extravagance that surrounded the EU, washing it away with a simple cup of tea.
He had no way of knowing that while he was sipping his tea, his phone had been cloned and all the information on it, the contacts, calendars, notes, e-mails, even the photo of Jemma in the bath – everything – had been copied. The phone was protected, of course, with a four-figure parliamentary pin code, but even an amateur could break that. And it gave access to all his other security-coded accounts – banks, credit cards, investments, even his medical records. What was more his SIM card had now been replaced by a ‘smart SIM’. It contained all the information of the old SIM and looked identical, but with one or two additional hidden tweaks. It had an embedded GPS, which meant they would know his whereabouts every moment of the day. And every call would be redirected through a proxy point where it would be monitored. ‘Tapped’, in the language of old. They would be able to listen to every call he made. Harry’s life was now theirs.
Or, at least, hers.
The life of a politician has many parts that are dreary beyond belief. These men and women come to Westminster fully intending to slay dragons, yet discover they are spending most of their time picking up other people’s rubbish. The headlines would have them as power brokers, surrounded by an expansive group of aides with fingers in every pie; the reality is that often they are Don Quixotes who end up making their own tea. Of course it’s different if you are Prime Minister: you’ll get your tea made, but rarely get time to drink it. Downing Street is littered with half-finished mugs. In fact, there were times when Ben Usher thought that might be an appropriate title for his memoirs. A Half-Finished Mug.
An election year that had held such exciting prospects was turning into a time of torment. An abominable crime had been committed in the heart of the capital and people demanded two things. Answers. And revenge. He could give them neither. It was all very well blaming Abdul Mohammed Ghazi but the evidence for his guilt was painfully threadbare, little more than the fact that he was a man of known violence who’d been chasing around the right part of the world at pretty much the right time. It was entirely circumstantial. The Dutch even found the vessel that had been used – yes, a bloody fishing boat without a transponder – but although the owner had been interrogated and probably beaten, he could tell them little other than that it had been hired by three men, one or two of whom might have had dusky faces. They talked English, but with an accent – didn’t everybody? There were no adequate forensics; any useful evidence that might have been left had long since been washed away in seawater. And most predictably, Usher had learned of this first from the Telegraph rather than the Dutch authorities. European cooperation was all very well, but paying a few backhanders worked a hell of a lot quicker.
And still there was the tantalizing question: Why? Where was the motive? There were two schools of thought on this, the first that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had a longstanding record of anti-Western behaviour and felt duly aggrieved by any number of slights, real and imagined. Anyway so the argument went, they were Arabs. Motive enough. And the more Britain and aggrieved America demanded evidence from them, the more the Egyptians grew stubborn, silent, refused to cooperate, couldn’t find Ghazi, accused the West of intimidation, racism, militarism, Zionism, using threats of violence. Which only served to raise more lurid accusations. The truth no longer mattered any more, dragged down within a whirlpool of accusation and mutual loathing. It was like Iraq and Libya all over again.
There was another school of thought, there always was. This suggested that all the evidence against Ghazi was circumstantial, and in any event there was no clear connection between him and the Egyptian government, apart from the fact that he had been born there. One or two bold souls in MI6 even suggested that perhaps they had jumped to hasty conclusions, that perhaps they should be looking elsewhere, but ‘perhaps’ was quickly overwhelmed by the collective certainties of group-think and the demand for black-and-white answers that could be easily rendered into headlines. Both ‘Ghazi’ and ‘Egypt’ fitted headlines very well, so they were both guilty.
There was proof, of sorts, and at least enough to satisfy the Americans, who were offering fifteen million dollars as a bounty on Ghazi’s
head. While Egypt itself had never been supplied with Grinch missiles, they had been sold to Gadaffi in Libya, and after his overthrow so much had gone missing. It was easy to suppose that some had ended up on the back of a truck and carted over the border to Egypt. So there it was. Even if the motive was a little hazy, the weaponry was very solid, and diagrams and updates on it so easy to download.
In an election year and prodded on by the Americans, there could be no pause for doubt, so the rhetoric was ramped up, the moral outrage stoked to overload. Civil servants scuttled throughout Whitehall finding draconian new initiatives for the purposes of their political masters. An arms embargo was slapped on, then ramped up, ambassadors were withdrawn, trade agreements broken. The British and US authorities were now talking of imposing travel bans on a number of named leaders in the Egyptian Brotherhood, the next step would be to freeze their foreign bank accounts. It was becoming very personal, and for no one more than Ben Usher. As the mood had hardened and events moved beyond his control, he had become accustomed to making a grab for the Telegraph even before he had risen from his bed. One morning he found the front page dominated by a cartoon that depicted him gazing out forlornly from a window of Downing Street. Behind him, on the wall above his desk, was an election poster with a simple message. ‘Get Elected. Get Ghazi.’
None of this made life any easier for government candidates like Harry. There was no way his seat could be considered marginal, in danger, but even so he found that his constituents were no longer giving their usual tens or occasional hundreds of pounds for his fighting fund, and neither were they giving much of their time. Wars require foot soldiers, there were envelopes to be stuffed, leaflets to be delivered, doors to be knocked on, websites to be updated, yet instead of shouldering arms the troops were sitting in their fox holes reading the bloody newspapers. The government was in danger of losing this war.
A Sentimental Traitor Page 9