Saul comes back into the kitchen.
‘I’m not actually all that tired,’ he says.
‘Me neither.’
‘You want a drink? I think there’s a bottle of wine here somewhere.’
He finds it and sits down with two tumblers, a radio on in the background playing country music. I pour the wine and we toast the weekend, glasses clinking over the table. A car drives past outside, close to the house at a crawl, and I think that it might be about to stop on the drive when it suddenly moves away.
We talk for perhaps an hour, and it surprises me how easily I disguise my apprehension from him. I am thinking always of the consequences of telling Saul about JUSTIFY, of asking him to release details to the press and on the Internet should anything happen to me. But I can stay focused on what he is saying: any thoughts I might have about the timing of a confession exist only as an undercurrent to the conversation.
Saul is preoccupied by his work, thinking of chucking his job in and going into finance. He says:
‘After university, we all went into television for the glamour. I thought TV would provide some outlet for self-expression, but a lot of the time it’s just tedious and vain, full of guys with goatee beards wearing Armani suits. I need to make some money.’
I don’t try to sway him one way or the other; I simply hear him out. It is the longest and most fulfilling conversation we have had in over eighteen months, just the two of us talking into the night. All the time I am conscious of a thawing in Saul’s attitude towards me, the gradual reconciliation of a ten-year friendship that had been allowed to fester and grow stale. The old-established ties were always there: they simply needed to be rekindled.
Then, when both of us are slightly drunk and, although not tired, starting to think about going to bed, Saul’s mobile phone goes off. It is still packed inside his overnight bag on the kitchen floor, the ring muffled by clothes.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ I ask, looking at the clock on the wall. It is half past three in the morning.
‘Probably Mia,’ he says, getting up out of his chair and struggling to retrieve the phone. ‘She always calls late. Doesn’t sleep.’
But it is not her.
The signal is bad and Saul has to go outside to take the call and when he comes back into the kitchen he tells me that Kate and her boyfriend have been killed in a car accident. He tells me quickly and without inflection, the news of her death first, then the place where the crash took place, and the name of the boyfriend. William.
He says that he is so sorry.
I cannot stay in the room with him. I do not even ask a question. I am outside, through the open door, and stumbling on gravel, his voice behind me just a single word: ‘Alec’.
There is no feeling in me but rage. No sadness or pain, just a sense of powerless anger, like punching air. I turn and am conscious of Saul standing in the doorway, his head absolutely dropped, not knowing what to do or say. She was his friend, too.
And the boyfriend. He got caught up in it and they took him as well. His life meant nothing to them.
‘Who was driving?’ I say, and at first Saul does not hear me. I have to repeat the question, my voice louder.
‘Who was driving?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replies, and he uses this as an opportunity to come towards me, out on to the drive. ‘It was Hesther who telephoned. She had to tell her parents. That’s where she was calling from. Said they were at a party or something. Coming back. That’s all she said.’
‘No other cars? No drunk driver or…’
‘Alec, I don’t know. She didn’t say. Do you want to go back to London? What do you want to do?’
When you are with somebody, when you love them, you think about their loss, what it would mean to suffer their dying. I thought of this always with Kate: illness, accident - even a car crash. Her going off on a journey and simply never coming home. And I was aware that these fears contained an element of expectation, perhaps even of hope that something might happen to her. Why? Because that would make people sympathetic towards me; it would give my life a certain drama. To lose your first love. It had the character of tragedy.
There is nothing of that now. Only the hideous noise of impact, an inhuman sound. And Kate’s eyes at this moment. I see Kate’s eyes.
How did they do it? Brakes? Tyres? Were they forced off the road? What person has it in them to order the deaths of two young people?
‘What happened?’ I ask Saul. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I really don’t know. You can imagine, Hesther was…’
‘Yes.’
‘We should go back,’ he says. ‘Maybe sleep and then go back to London.’
I agree with him instinctively, without thinking it through, looking directly at him for the first time. We just stand there, saying nothing, and Kate is dead and Saul does not know why.
And now the first doubts come, the first ugly glimpses of self-interest.
I realize that I am not safe - that Saul is not safe - not here or in London, not anywhere now that this has happened. They will find us and, without hesitation, move again.
He is offering me a cigarette, already lit, and I take it.
‘Let’s get in,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
In the house, things move slowly. Saul is quiet and still, sitting at the kitchen table, knowing that there is nothing he can say. I move about the room, boiling a kettle, making tea; I find that it helps me not to stay in one place. Occasionally he will speak - a question, some expression of his concern - but I barely respond. I can say nothing of what I am really feeling, for the simple reason that it is inexpressible without resorting to the truth.
With the clock at five thirty I suggest to Saul that he go upstairs and get some sleep. He agrees and turns at the door and asks me twice if I will be all right. I nod, manage a smile even, and say that I will wake him in a few hours.
‘I probably won’t sleep,’ he says.
As soon as he has gone upstairs I go out on to the gravel drive and walk along the main road, heading downhill in the direction of the sea. The colour of night has shifted to a deep blue, which makes it easier to spot the telephone box on the first corner leading into Padstow.
The door to the booth opens heavily. I struggle with it, weakened by the hopeless knowledge that this is all that I have left. Three phone calls.
I put a pound coin in the slot and dial Katharine’s number.
It connects immediately, but there is only a rising three-note message where her voice used to be.
The number you have dialled has not been recognized. Please check and try again.
I press redial, forcibly with the point of my thumb.
The number you have dialled has not been recognized. Please check and try again.
She has gone, on a plane to join Fortner in the States. The man who is not even her husband. Their work is done.
I try Hawkes.
Nothing. An engaged tone both at his house in the country and at the flat in London. Both lines busy at a quarter to six on a Saturday morning. If he is here, he knows about Kate. He knows that I want to talk to him. They are all of them cowards.
I have one final chance. The number rings out and I hold on, for twenty or thirty seconds, waiting. Then, finally, a woman’s voice, tired and suspicious:
‘Two-seven-eight-five.’
‘I want to speak to John Lithiby. This is Alec Milius.’
She buys time.
‘Who?’
‘This is Alec Milius. Put me through to John Lithiby.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. Mr Lithiby will not be available until Monday morning.’
‘Then give me his home number.’
‘You can understand that -‘
‘I don’t give a fuck about what I can understand or what kind of policy you’ve been told to follow. Just tell him that Kate is dead. Tell him that Kate Allardyce is dead. They killed her and they will kill me unless -‘<
br />
‘Dead?’ she says, as if she has heard of Kate, as if she knows who Kate is.
‘That’s right. In a car crash. Tell him this. Get him to ring me. Tell him that if he doesn’t contact me I will put everything on the Net. Do you understand? Everything. There is someone else who knows. Tell him to speak to the Americans, let them know that. Someone else. Get Elworthy if you have to…’
There is a brief silence and then I can hardly believe what happens.
The woman says:
‘I will be sure to give Mr Lithiby that message on Monday morning.’
And she replaces the handset.
I stand in the phone booth holding the receiver and there is nothing left to do. I press redial, but the line has become busy. I try Hawkes again at both numbers but it is pointless: he is still engaged, town and country. Caccia will be the same, Sinclair also. I do not know how to reach Elworthy. I push open the door of the phone booth and go outside.
They had no intention of striking a deal with the Americans. They do not even know that I have threatened to expose them. The Americans have no idea what is at stake.
This is what they have decided on: to ignore Milius, to exclude him until he is taken out of the equation. They are counting on the Americans. Counting on a shared understanding. A special relationship.
Saul must be told what has happened. They have to realize that there is someone else who knows. That is the only way. And yet to tell him is to place him in danger. To tell him is to make him into another Kate.
Walking back up the hill I can see a light on in his house. Saul’s bedroom. He may still be awake.
But when I get upstairs he is slumped in an armchair, still fully dressed, but asleep.
I close the door and walk back downstairs to the kitchen. My laptop computer is on the back seat of the car in a plastic bag. I find Saul’s keys, go outside and take it out.
Then, at the kitchen table, I begin to write everything down.
At nine Saul comes downstairs, saying that he has managed a few hours of sleep. I am standing by the sink.
‘How about you?’ he asks, glancing at the computer and frowning. He is wearing a different shirt.
‘I’ve just been thinking about things. I can’t seem to remember anything about Kate. I’m trying to summon up memories but they’re just not there.’
He nods, still unsure of how to look at me.
‘Maybe it’s too early,’ he says.
‘I can’t seem to picture or recall anything we did together. All I keep thinking about is her mum and dad, and William’s parents. Did you ever meet him?’
‘A couple of times.’
‘It just seems so long ago now. Two years since we split. She had a whole life that I knew nothing about. It’s as if I was a different person back then.’
He does not answer.
I had boiled the kettle shortly before he woke up, and he makes himself a coffee, going out on to the drive with the mug.
This is probably the best time. When he’s outside. Still early in the day.
Always where Saul is concerned there has been this conflict in me between doing what is necessary and expedient, and what I feel is right. Always I have been trying to suppress my more calculating instincts in order to behave as would a good and loyal friend.
But it is hopeless. I am so inured to moral consequence that I do not even consider whether or not he will forgive me. I simply walk outside into the gathering light and open the driver’s door on the car. Reaching inside I switch on the radio, tuning it to the nearest station.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks gently.
‘It’s necessary,’ I reply, and Saul looks bewildered. A song is playing and I turn up the volume, leaving the door of the car open.
‘What do you mean, “it’s necessary”?’
I have to keep him out of the house, in case they have had it wired.
‘Don’t go back inside for a bit, OK? And don’t get too close to the car.’
‘Alec, turn it down, what are you…?’
‘I know what happened to Kate. I know why they were killed last night.’
‘But we both…’
He starts to reply but then stops, putting the mug of coffee down. Saul looks up at me, his face suddenly altered by fear.
I come a step closer to him. I want to lay a hand on his shoulder, to assure my friend that everything is going to be all right. And then I say:
‘There are things that I have to tell you.’
Acknowledgements
I am enormously grateful to the following people for their assistance and encouragement: Lucy Almond, Otto Bathurst, Lucinda Bredin, Camilla Campbell, Alex and Jonathan Capel, Henry Carpenter, Jolyon Connell, Jeremy O’Grady and all the staff at The Week, Marcus Cooper and Grahame Cook at BP, Ian Cumming, Leslie Daniels, Caroline Dawney and Jago Irwin at PFD, Sarah Day, Janine di Giovanni, Angus Graham-Campbell, Melissa Hanbury, Annabel Hardman, Rupert Harris, Ed Heathcoat-Amory, James Holland, Trevor Horwood, the late Mary Huffam, JJ Keith, Nicki Kennedy and Jessica Buckman at ILA, Jeremy Lewis, Nick Lockley, Tif Loehnis at Janklow & Nesbit, James Maby, Josephine Mackay, Jamie Maitland Hume, Rupert Morris, Kerin O’Connor, Charlie Oliver, Simon and Caroline Pilkington, Andrew Ramsay, Katharine Road, William and Mary Seymour, Simon Shaw, Christian Spurrier, Hilary Tagg, Martin Vander Weyer, Ralph Ward-Jackson, Joanna Weinberg, Rowland White and Tom Weldon at Michael Joseph and Angus Wolfe Murray.
For additional information about the secret history of British Intelligence after 1945, I relied on Tom Bower’s excellent biography of Sir Dick White, The Perfect English Spy. Pete Earley’s account of the Aldrich Ames affair, Confessions of a Spy, was just as helpful.
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