by Mick Herron
The fact was, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. There were documented activities from her years at the helm Tearney would happily see reduced to a pixelated mash, but the Limitations Committee, with a ministerial hand on its rudder, insisted all such were preserved under Freedom of Information legislation. So, since a nasty cyber-scare two years previously, sensitive records were kept off-grid, either on air-gapped systems or in transcript form, hence the storage difficulties. Anything deemed unsuitable for database entry was either in Molly Doran’s archive, largely dedicated to personal dossiers, or was the individual department’s problem. For Ops, this one had growed like Topsy. Dame Ingrid’s sly jab notwithstanding, operations always produced paperwork: the more secret something needed to be, the more arse-covering was necessary for when it leaked. And nothing covered departmental arse like reams and reams of paper.
For once, it seemed, Ingrid Tearney and Diana Taverner had been of one mind. A Confidential Storage facility was required, separate from Regent’s Park, and ticking three main boxes: acreage, security, and a potential for plausible damage. In other words, somewhere files could safely be said to have been lost to fire and flood, or eaten by rats, or consumed by mould.
And credit where credit was due, thought Tearney—a firm believer in this principle when it suited her—Diana had come up trumps. Which explained the smile Tearney bestowed upon her now, the smile on the face of the owl before it rips the mouse to shreds.
“One might almost say you’re your own worst enemy,” she said. “You’ve been performing these tasks so efficiently, it might almost seem foolish to assign a deputy you can foist them off onto.”
Diana Taverner nodded, upgrading her Well played to Fine shot. Paper-shuffling and throat-clearing from the others, who recognised a shafting when they saw one. Diana Taverner’s chances of getting an admin assistant were being buried in real time, with Ingrid Tearney stamping down the dirt.
At length, Taverner said, “It’s always nice to have one’s efforts appreciated.”
“You’re an ornament to the hub, Diana. I honestly think the Service would grind to a halt without your input. If it weren’t so early, I’d suggest we raise a glass to you. As it is, we really have to press on now and deal with the rest of these matters.”
Diana said, “So there’s no chance of relief, then.”
Dame Ingrid was one hundred percent concern. “Relief? My dear, you’re not feeling stressed, are you? If you’re feeling stressed, then obviously we’ll have to do something about it.”
“I’m not feeling stressed, Ingrid.”
“You’re sure? There’s a very good medical package available, you know, Diana. Absolutely no stigma attached. Just say the word. We’ll ship someone in to man the hub and damn the budget! All that matters is that you’re fighting fit and in full control of all your very commendable abilities.”
A silence fell.
She was not one to fly the white flag, Diana Taverner, but she knew when to make a tactical retreat.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”
“Then let’s continue, shall we?” Dame Ingrid said, and the meeting progressed.
River had read stats on how much of the average Londoner’s life was spent waiting for, travelling on or stuck in public transport: he had a pointlessly good memory for figures, but he’d deliberately suppressed these. Some days you could feel yourself growing older, going nowhere . . . Two minutes on the platform before a train had arrived, six minutes inside it since, leaving what, seventy minutes until deadline? The picture of Catherine seared into his eyeballs: sitting cuffed on a bed, a gag in her mouth. Seventy minutes before her captors loosened their belts . . . His fists were clamped between his knees. He wanted to hit something, ideally the bastard on the bridge. But that would have to wait. The train lurched and hauled itself forward a few yards, then stopped again. He swore to himself, or nearly to himself. It didn’t seem to help.
“This should test your ingenuity,” the man had said.
His tone had that same punchable quality you heard when government ministers dripping with inherited wealth lectured the nation on the culture of entitlement.
Another lurch, and this time the train began to move.
Reaching his destination was one thing; how to go about fulfilling his task once he got there was another. This was one place where his Service ID would be less than no help: he’d stand a better chance if he pulled a gun . . . It was a measure of his state of mind that he gave this more than a moment’s thought. But the nearest gun he knew of was in his grandfather’s safe, miles away.
He unbunched his fists, and stretched his fingers as far as they’d go. Words he’d spoken last night swam into mind, the description of his job he’d favoured James Webb with; that it was designed not just to bore him out of his mind, but to kill his soul one screaming pixel at a time.
Yeah, well, today was turning out a bit different.
And he couldn’t quite quell the little starburst of pleasure this thought gave him, even though that image of Catherine hadn’t left him yet, and even though he hadn’t a hope in hell of fulfilling the task he’d been assigned.
Which of your colleagues would you trust with your life?
None of them would have been the short answer, but Catherine didn’t think that would have sufficed.
But then, parental bonds aside, how many people could answer that without doubt in their hearts? Perhaps there were marriages that strong, though she suspected there weren’t many, and fewer than many married couples thought. Friendships, perhaps. But colleagues . . .
Early in her career, she’d had Charles Partner as her boss. Partner had been a rock of a kind; not the sort you’d want to dash yourself against, but one it was good to know would always be there. Except, of course, he wasn’t, because she’d arrived at his flat one day to find his corpse in the bathtub. This had been after her drying out. Where most anyone else would have shunned her on her return to Regent’s Park—how could First Desk have a recovering alcoholic as a PA?—he’d simply allowed her to slip back into place, and had never spoken of it again. Catherine supposed that that was the greatest act of trust she’d ever had bestowed upon her. Either that, or the way he’d arranged it so she’d be the one to discover his body. It was a difficult call.
And now, instead of Partner, she had Jackson Lamb. Lamb had been Partner’s joe once upon a time, and as fairytales went, that must have been grim indeed. Where Partner had been bank-manager straight—the old kind of bank manager, from the days when they’d been trusted—Lamb was as tightly wrapped as a fart in a colander. This, anyway, was the Lamb who’d come back from his wars, all those years he’d spent hopping this side and that of the Wall. He’s one of a kind, Partner had told her. And so he was, to everyone’s relief. But maybe the Lamb Charles Partner had known had been a different man, one who hadn’t buried himself inside a self-made monster.
In his way, she thought, Lamb had protected her the same way Partner had. When Charles died her career should have died too, but when Jackson Lamb was sent into exile in the reshuffle that followed, he’d taken her with him. And it was true, she knew, that Lamb would never leave a joe in the lurch—having been one himself; having been left there himself, more than likely. So maybe she should have nominated Lamb as the colleague she’d trust with her life, except that there wasn’t much else she’d trust him with. The collateral damage didn’t bear thinking about.
River, though. He’d keep it together. Whatever they asked of him, he’d do his best.
This might turn out to have to be quite good.
Off the train, River took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the “Watch it, mate!” thrown at his back. The sudden brightness of the street pulled him up short: loud traffic, a quantity of pedestrians, the glare and dazzle of a summer’s morning. The heat as thick out here as in the underground, and accompanied with smells of tar a
nd rubber. A clock thumping in his head, reading forty-eight minutes . . .
He crossed the road against the lights, and was nearly clipped by a cyclist—and that too, like the stalling tube train, and the trembling in his knees, seemed familiar, as if racing the clock was an everyday experience, or an everynight one—yes, he thought, running now, leaving the main drag, heading for the leafier areas: that was it. This was the stuff of his dreams. Everyone knew what it felt like, struggling to reach somewhere that receded with every effort made, so your heart felt ready to burst from sheer frustration, though for River it was more of a memory than a suppressed fear; it was what he’d been through, years before, when King’s Cross crashed, and it was all his fault. A training exercise that went wrong, a mis-identified “terrorist”; twenty minutes of slapstick in the morning rush-hour . . .
That was how you got to be a slow horse.
Mind you, he’d had help.
Thank you, Spider Webb.
The pavement widened. There was parkland to his left, behind iron railings, and branches overhead mottling everything with patchy shadow. A couple sat in a parked car, having what looked like a row. River’s lungs were punishing him. Forty-four minutes. He stopped to calm his breathing: no point arriving like a damp rag. He had to look like he belonged, which was exactly what he might have done if not for King’s Cross and Spider bloody Webb . . .
Sometimes, a career went off like a volcano. Somewhere under the ashes of his own hid the glowing coals of what might have been, but only River himself, and possibly his grandfather, still believed they might yet spark back to life. And River only believed that sometimes, and not today.
Today was where he was, though. He ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair, and approached the front door of Regent’s Park.
The meeting had drawn to a close and the Second Desks dispersed, all but Diana Taverner, whom Dame Ingrid addressed on her way out of the door.
“Diana? Could you spare a moment?”
Leaving Diana hovering while Tearney fussed: looking for her glasses, which remained on the chain round her neck; collecting her papers; pausing interminably for no obvious reason, as if struck by an idea whose genius demanded immediate inspection, in absolute stillness. All of it, Diana had no doubt, for the pleasure of making Diana hover.
It was grim. From almost any angle, she knew she held the advantage. Looks: no competition. Height: ditto. Ingrid Tearney was a hobbit of a woman, one Y-chromosome short of being a trainspotter. She did her best—she could afford to—but all the designer labels in the world couldn’t disguise a coypu on a catwalk. Squat body, short legs; and the trio of wigs she regularly rotated, grey, blonde and black, to cover the hair loss she’d suffered in her teens, though moulded by experts to look soft and buttery, still resembled something you might ask to borrow if you needed a bike helmet. Wealth, okay, Tearney had the edge there, but her education was so-so (LSE, as against Diana’s Caius, plus a year at Yale), and her upbringing was Staffordshire or somewhere, one of those counties that only existed because otherwise there’d be gaps in the map. In all those areas Diana Taverner had Tearney beat cold, and if there were any way of making a fair fight out of it, which Diana had been known to resort to when desperate, the result would hardly be in doubt.
But Tearney had other strengths. She was smart—desk smart—committee smart—and what she lacked in sex appeal, she made up for in a nanny-knows-best briskness which cowed the public schoolboy still cloistered inside those other Second Desks, not to mention the weak-kneed politicos of all stripes Down the Corridor. And she had, too, a bred-in-the-bone instinct for knowing how to needle, humiliate and frustrate her underlings. Like now: Diana hovering in the doorway, waiting for her Dameship to finish gathering herself together, which she’d only do once satisfied that Diana was starting to twitch.
Dame Ingrid said, “There. Sorry about that. Walk with me?”
They headed off down the corridor.
“Terribly dull these meetings can be,” Tearney said. “I do appreciate your taking the time to attend.”
Attendance was compulsory. The Service was a corporation like any other.
“I should be on the hub,” Diana said. “Will this take long?”
“I just wanted your confirmation that the records transfer has been completed satisfactorily.”
“As of last month, yes.”
“And we’re talking about records up to Virgil level, yes?”
“As per the brief.”
The grading system changed on a biannual basis, but Virgil was currently the second-highest classification. The service being what it was, this meant that a lot of sensitive data was logged Virgil, on the ground that those most likely to wangle access to intelligence—oversight committees, Cabinet Ministers, TV producers—tended to focus their attentions on the highest grade, Scott-level, on the assumption that this was where the hardcore secrets were. Virgil-level, being more accessible, was generally overlooked. Which didn’t mean Ingrid Tearney wanted those records stored off-site.
“Ingrid, I thought you already knew all this.”
“Merely dotting i’s, my dear. You’ll be warmly acknowledged in HR’s weekly catch-up this morning, I can assure you.”
“I’m so grateful. Was that all?”
“You know, one of the burdens of leadership,” Tearney continued, as if Diana hadn’t spoken, “is not being privy to the gossip below stairs. It can be difficult to take the temperature, if you know what I mean.”
Assuming she was not genuinely being asked if she understood a common idiom, Diana said nothing.
“And it would be good to know precisely how things stand.”
“Well, we’re over-worked, under-resourced and under-appreciated. The general mood more or less reflects this.”
Dame Ingrid laughed, a rather more tinkling sound than you’d expect the warthog to make, Diana thought grudgingly. She said, “I can always rely on you to deliver uncomfortable truths, Diana. That’s one of the reasons you’re such a valuable Second Desk.”
“Is there a problem, Ingrid?”
“Our new overlord is rattling his sabres. He’s spoken of the need for fresh starts, for—I think he said a reboot. Always keen to appear savvy.”
“All new ministers say that.”
“This one means it. Too many skeletons falling out of closets, apparently. As if it were possible to maintain an effective security service without an occasional blurring of the boundaries.”
Which was a polite way of describing, among other faux pas, the wholesale illegal surveillance of the nation’s online footfall, not to mention the toothless surrender of same to a foreign power.
Diana made a non-committal noise.
“We’re not natural allies, are we? You and I.”
“I’m fully committed to the Service,” Diana said. “Always have been. You know that.”
“And you’re currently wondering how best to make that commitment known in the event that Peter Judd succeeds in removing me as head.”
Issuing a denial would have been tantamount to confession. Instead, Diana said, “What makes you think he wants to do that?”
“Because it’s the most obvious way of flexing his muscle, which he’s going to want to practise doing before taking on the PM. Or did you think Home Secretary was the pinnacle of his ambition?”
Nobody over the age of three thought Home Secretary the pinnacle of Peter Judd’s ambition.
“So I thought it best to advise you that any assault PJ makes on the Service won’t stop with lopping off the head. I have it on good authority he’s not keen on the Second Desk role. That he wants an intermediate level built into the command structure, to allow for greater political oversight. This would be by ministerial appointment, you understand. And almost certainly filled from outwith the Service.” She glanced sideways. “As I said, we’re hardly natural allies. Bu
t there’s an adage that fits.”
My enemy’s enemy is my friend, Diana supplied mentally. She said, “And I remain fully committed to the Service. As I said. We’ve weathered ministerial interference in the past, Ingrid. Judd might be one of the big beasts when he’s on home ground, but he’s going to have his work cut out for him if he’s taking on Regent’s Park.”
At that moment, her pager buzzed.
Dame Ingrid said, “Thank you, Diana. I’m glad we had this little chat.”
She thinks we’ve made an alliance, Diana thought, as the Service chief nodded in farewell, and moved on down the corridor.
Then she reached for her pager, recognised Security’s number, and called the front desk on her mobile.
“Ma’am? We have a walk-in, an off-site agent. He says you’re expecting him. But there’s nothing on the time sheet.”
“I’m not expecting anyone. Who is it?”
“One River Cartwright.” Security reeled off Cartwright’s Service number.
“Sign him in,” Diana said. “I’ll be on the stairs.”
Thirty-nine minutes . . .
Being in Regent’s Park always gave River a hollow feeling; the same you might get on stepping inside the marital home once the divorce had come through. Well, he said “always.” There’d been a time when that might have been the right word, early in his career, when it was still a “career”; before he’d become persona non grata, which was Latin for slow horse. Since then, he’d been inside its precincts, what, twice? On one of those occasions, summoned by Spider Webb. That had been Spider rubbing it in; letting River know he might as well be in Siberia. Well, Siberia might as well be where Spider was now: all those endless white spaces, bare of life. Was that what being in a coma was like? River hoped never to find out.