‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ said Miss Forbes.
‘You should have gone home, Nan,’ the minister told her. ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’
‘I saw the papers, sir. I thought you might like a nice cup of tea.’
The minister thrust his hands into the capacious pockets of his trousers. ‘I don’t know, Nan. Tea was good enough for the Blitz; but I’m not sure that it’s going to be good enough for this.’
‘You’ll pull through, sir. Remember the dock strike?’
‘Only too clearly, thank you.’
He pressed the intercom on his desk. The nasal voice of the night telephonist said, ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Get me the Secretary of Defence, would you, Sheila? Oh, and Sheila, scrambled, if you please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Miss Forbes kept hovering beyond the range of the lamplight. ‘Would you care for a drink, sir? We’ve still got some of that brandy we bought for that Nigerian delegation.’
The minister nodded. ‘Very well. Yes, I think I would. Just a small one, mind.’
The Secretary of Defence came through on the red scrambler telephone, and he obviously hadn’t been to bed, either.
‘What do you think, Francis?’ he asked.
The trade minister reached down between his legs to draw up his chair, and sat down heavily. ‘I’m beginning to think that your suspicions are probably rather well-founded, old man. The timing is far too neat. The date of the strike wasn’t announced until after the Yanks made their final decision on GRINGO.’
‘Well, I’ve had some more bad news,’ said the Secretary of Defence. ‘One of our AR7 chaps was found dead, about three hours ago, in Leeds. According to his control, he was on the track of two women who have been travelling around the country, talking to various union representatives about coordinating a nationwide stoppage. He was beaten so badly he couldn’t be recognized at first. Well, it was made to look like a mugging, but the chief constable told me the beating was too professional. Spring-loaded cosh.’
‘That’s very nasty. What does the PM have to say?’
‘She doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions, not at this stage, but I think she took the point that I was making. We’re going to be faced with the choice on May 30 either of maximizing our defence or of keeping most of our essential public services running. Of course, we’ve got the 1977 Contingency Plan to fall back on, not to mention all the emergency powers, in the event of things in Europe going rather further than they’re meant to. But, I can’t say it makes me a happy man, Francis.’
The trade minister glanced up. Miss Forbes was bringing him a small glass of neat brandy on a polished silver tray. He whispered, ‘Ice,’ and when she frowned and said, ‘Pardon, sir?’ he repeated, more loudly, ‘Ice.’
‘What was that?’ asked the defence minister. ‘These phones are getting worse, if you ask me. Like trying to talk with your mouth full of lavatory paper.’
The trade minister picked up the Daily Telegraph and dolefully scanned its front page story. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t propose to do anything just now; not until the morning. You’ve been advised of the PM’s briefing, I suppose? Eleven o’clock sharp. I don’t think there’s much more we can do until then.’
Friday was beginning to dawn across Victoria; out of his window the minister could see the red and white striped brickwork of Westminster Cathedral, piled up against a sky that was the colour of a cheap tin of salmon, watery orange with flecks of grey. He swallowed his brandy, and knew that it would still be pooled in the bottom of his stomach when he went to Downing Street, giving off the fumes of confusion and despair.
*
Three thousand miles away, it was still dark in White Plains, New York, as David Daniels drew up in his red Eldorado outside a block of apartments just south of Mamaroneck Avenue. The night was warm and windy as he climbed out of his car, locked it, and then crossed the pavement and opened the squeaking iron gate. Far away, to the north, a siren warbled through the darkness.
Standing on the concrete porch, David pressed the buzzer next to the label which said R. Cameron. He waited impatiently for a moment, and then pressed it again. A girl’s voice said, ‘Who is it?’ with undisguised anxiety.
‘It’s David. I just got here.’
There was a second’s hesitation, then the buzzer sounded and the door unlocked. David went inside, quickly closing the door behind him, and hurried across the dimly-lit hallway towards the lift. He could just about make out his blurred and worried face in the smeary mirror on the opposite side of the lift. He rode up to the fourth floor.
Esther was waiting for him, the apartment door ajar, but with the security chain still fastened. She unlocked it for him, and let him in, and then hugged him tight. ‘Oh, thank God you’ve got here. I’ve been so scared, I haven’t slept a wink. Every time I heard the lift, my stomach tightened up and I started to shake.’
David tugged off his jacket and tossed it across the back of the sofa. The apartment was plain, plainly-decorated, and modest. Department-store furniture upholstered in beige wool, light teak cupboards, beige and yellow lithographs of forests and oceans. A pottery vase of dried flowers stood in the middle of the dining-table. Ron Cameron was an insurance assessor, one-time college buddy of David’s, now divorced and frequently abroad. He allowed David to use his apartment whenever he was away, although David rarely did. He just liked to think that in case of emergency, he had somewhere to disappear to.
‘It was awful,’ said Esther. ‘That terrible sex club. And she actually nailed his head to the wall. I couldn’t stop looking at it, and yet I couldn’t bear to, either.’
‘It’s okay,’ David reassured her. ‘Come on, sit down now. Is there anything to drink around here?’
‘That’s about all there is, except for some stale Fritos.’
David went through to the kitchen, opened the icebox, and took out a bottle of Miller. ‘What time did you get here?’ he called to Esther. ‘Did you find it all right?’
‘Oh, finding it wasn’t any trouble. I got here around seven.’
‘And you didn’t see anybody following you up from the city?’
‘I kept checking my rear-view mirror, and once or twice I stopped just to see if anybody slowed down.’
David came back into the living-room, pouring his beer into a glass tankard emblazoned with the crest of the 1984 Olympics. ‘I did some checking of my own. The man who called me and cautioned me, well, that’s what he called it, Jordan Crane, he’s a deputy department chief at the National Security Agency. He’s quite legitimate. Therefore, I was being warned off officially. I also had my old police buddy down on the Lower West Side look into the matter of a slight homicide at the Hellfire Club. The police held two people in connection with the death of Wallace Greenbaum: one of them was a well-known sado-masochistic heavy called Winford Ellis, if you can believe it, and the other was a Dutch immigrant alien called Heidi van Cruyf, who came to live in the United States about five years ago.’
Esther said wanly, ‘She must have been the woman who—’
David laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘You bet she was the woman who. My old buddy down on the Lower West Side said that he wouldn’t go two rounds with her, even if his gloves were full of lead. He wouldn’t even lay money on it. The interesting thing is, though, that she was released on $35,000 bail only two hours after she was arrested. And who arranged the bail? A midtown law firm called Fuller, Simons & Halperin.’
Esther shook her head uncomprehendingly. But David said, ‘It just so happens that I know all about Fuller, Simons & Halperin. You remember that congressional inquiry into FBI payments to Mafia informers? Maybe three years ago? Well, Fuller, Simons & Halperin was set up for the sole purpose of laundering FBI payments to what they liked to describe as “helpful undesirables”. In other words, mobsters, stoolies, and spies.’
‘Do you mean that Wally was killed by the FBI?’
‘I don’t have what you might ca
ll trial evidence. But Wally was passing State Department information on to you; or at least trying to; and he was killed before he could manage to do it by a woman whose interests seem to be taken care of by the FBI. I mean, does that lead your mind along certain paths, or doesn’t it?’
David walked across the room, and purred his finger across the spines of a shelf-ful of books. He turned his head sideways to read the title of The City at the End of the Rainbow. Then he said, ‘Wally came across something real big. Somehow, it’s connected with Fidel Castro agreeing to democratic elections, and the withdrawal of Communist insurgents from Central America. Somehow, it’s big enough for the FBI to kill somebody in order to keep it quiet; and big enough for Jordan Crane from the National Security Agency to take the chance of calling me up and making what I can only interpret as a straight threat. Keepa you noss outa dis business, or else.’
David paused, and then he said, ‘They’ll kill you, too, if they can find you; and I don’t have much doubt that if I don’t show them that I’ve well and truly backed off, they’ll put me on the list. Jesus, Jack Levy was frightened for his life. When did you ever know Jack Levy frightened for his life? He busted open that huge story about corruption in the Pentagon last year, and was he worried? But now, it’s all, “Sorry David, no can do! Sorry, I’ve been threatened!” Well, what we have to find out is, what goes on here? What frightens a man like Jack Levy? What frightens a man like me? I mean, I’m not usually frightened, but I am now.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Esther.
‘What, that I’m frightened? Why should I pretend?’
They said nothing for a while. David finished his beer. Esther glanced up at him from time to time, wondering if she ought to ask him what she could possibly do next. She couldn’t live in a fourth-floor apartment in White Plains for the rest of her life, could she? Or could she? She began to understand for the first time in her short career the meaning of political tyranny.
David swallowed, said, ‘I managed to call Jack at his favourite watering-hole. Sayward’s, on M Street. I gave him the number here, and told him to call me when he could. He knows a whole lot more than he told me before.’
‘You don’t think that’s a risk? Jack Levy knowing this number?’
‘My love, everything’s a risk. But we have to find out what’s going on.’
‘Yes,’ said Esther, gently. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I can hardly believe that any of this is real.’
David put his arm around her. ‘You hungry?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘How about a hamburger? There’s a twenty-four-hour hamburger place back on Mamaroneck. Guppy’s, or Wuppy’s, something like that.’
‘I don’t think so.’
David tugged his necktie loose. ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘What do you say we get some sleep? Something tells me we’ve got ourselves a long day in front of us tomorrow.’
They went into the bedroom. Esther had been watching an early-morning movie, ‘The Rose Tattoo’. She took off her nightdress with her back to David, and then climbed quickly back into bed. There was no other light in the room but the flickering blueish glow of the television. She kept the sheet drawn up to her neck, and watched him with careful eyes. He unbuttoned his shirt, and said, ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
Later, at dawn, they made love. He kissed her and her cheeks were inexplicably wet with tears. He touched her nipples and they stiffened, but perhaps it was only from the cool morning air. Her thighs parted, however, and he felt the slipperiness of a woman who was more than ready for him. He pushed into her slowly, trying to be graceful, trying to be stylish, so that she would always remember him as having been the very best. He didn’t know that he never could be; not for her, not for any woman. The only place where he could be the best was inside his own head.
At six, the phone rang. He was still awake, his eyes gritty. He snatched the phone up quickly, in case it woke Esther, who was sleeping with her face against the pillow in a blur of hair. He said, in a low voice, ‘Cameron.’
‘David?’ said Jack Levy’s voice, very distant.
‘Jack! I was expecting to hear from you earlier.’
‘I had to drive around a while. I wanted to make sure that nobody was following me.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘St Elizabeth’s Hospital, on a payphone.’
‘You’re not sick?’
‘No, nothing like that. It just seemed like a good place to lose myself while I made a call.’
‘Have you had any more threats?’
Jack coughed. ‘Nothing direct. But there’s been a black Mercury waiting outside my house for most of the night, and I’ve seen it around the office a couple of times.’
‘Jack, I’m warning you. These people really mean business.’
‘I know that, David. But what’s going down here – well, it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever come across before – I can see why they want to keep it to themselves.’
David said, ‘Did you talk to that friend of yours on the general staff?’
‘Unh-hunh. He wouldn’t say doodly-squat. All he kept telling me was, “Jack, forget it. It isn’t real.” But in the end I managed to get through to some young communications officer who works for the Assistant Secretary in charge of Installations and Logistics. Well, we did some story about him two or three years ago, when he was involved in a court-martial concerning some homosexual incidents up at Fort Dix, in New Jersey, and you could say that he owes me a favour or two.’
‘Well?’ asked David.
‘Well, at first he didn’t want to play. He didn’t know very much; but he did know that something big was going down. That something is called GRINGO. It’s not somebody’s name, it’s not a thing, it’s a military acronym for some kind of large-scale operation.’
‘An attack? You don’t think that we’re planning on attacking the Soviet Union, something like that?’
Jack cleared his throat. ‘No, I don’t think so. The indications are that we may be reducing our military presence in Western Europe, presumably to save money on the defence budget; but we may be doing it kind of sneakily, so that we don’t shake anybody’s confidence, or appear to be welching on any of our commitments to NATO.’
David thought for a while. Then he said, ‘Do you really think that kind of a secret is worth killing for?’
‘People have been killed for lesser secrets. Remember the Charleston Grocery case last month? Three guys murdered, just because they discovered their supermarket was rigging broccoli prices?’
‘Are you going to print anything?’ David asked.
‘Not me, pal, I want my family to stay alive.
‘In that case, do you mind if I raise it with your publisher?’
‘You can do what you want, as long as you leave my name out of it.’
‘Okay, Jack,’ said David. ‘I understand.’
‘Listen,’ said Jack, ‘before you hang up, can I ask you a favour?’
‘Sure.’
‘If anything does happen to me; or to any of my family; make sure they get what they deserve, won’t you?’
David told him, ‘That’s what I’m in business for.’
He hung up. Then he went across the room and found his small black Bijan telephone book; one of the last gifts which his ex-wife Helen had given him, before they split up. He found the number of the publisher of the Washington Post, and quickly punched it out on the telephone.
‘Mr Lewis? This is Senator David Daniels, from Connecticut.’
‘Good morning, senator. Always good to hear from our representatives. But, it’s kind of early, isn’t it, for business?’
‘I think I have a story for you,’ said David.
As he was talking to Cal Lewis, the affable new publisher of the Washington Post, Jack Levy was leaving St Elizabeth’s Hospital on the eastern side of the Potomac, next to the US Naval Station, and climbing into his metallic green Chrysler Cordo
ba. He sat in the driver’s seat, tired and haggard, and brushed back a long strand of thinning brown hair. He was only 48; and yet he was beginning to feel that he was far too old for this kind of story; far too worn-out for this kind of physical and political pressure. You can only open up so many cans of political maggots. After the fifth or the sixth can, you begin to realize that corruption is everywhere, that honesty is the exception. You begin to think, what’s the point? Take the money, keep quiet. It’s safer, and it makes more sense.
He turned the key in the ignition, and for some inexplicable reason he knew at once that he shouldn’t have done. He whipped his left hand to the door-handle, and yanked at it, but then the five pounds of cyclonite which had been planted under his seat detonated with a high, cracking bang, and he was blown into ticker-tape shreds of liver and bone and sinew. The Cordoba caught fire immediately, and stood in the centre of the parking-lot, with black smoke rolling up from every window, its paintwork blistering and its tyres blazing like wreaths at an Indian funeral, until at last it sagged and collapsed on its suspension, and its windows splintered.
The fire department arrived too late to do anything but extinguish the flames, and mask the grisly ruins with foam. They were still standing around the wreck when David finished his conversation with Cal Lewis, and put down the phone.
Esther stirred, and lifted her head from the pillow.
‘David?’ she asked him.
‘Ssh,’ he told her. ‘Everything’s fine. Everything’s absolutely fine.’
Seventeen
‘You knew Nicholas Reed, of course,’ the man told Charles, smugly, as they walked slowly through the decorative gardens of Rosenborg Castle, in the centre of Copenhagen.
Charles looked at him acutely, but said nothing.
The man paused at the end of one of the pathways, between the flowers, and stood with his hands on his hips, admiring the view of the castle and the placid, summer sky. It was Friday, almost lunchtime. Charles was beginning to feel like one of Fiskehusets’ turbot specials; or even a Burger King if Lamprey’s budget didn’t stretch to haute cuisine. He had stayed last night with a Danish friend, an insurance company executive who lived on Ved Stadsgraven. His friend was relentlessly mean, and had given him only one glass of schnapps with his supper last night (three slices of salami and salad) and only skimmed milk and muesli for breakfast. Charles had long ago passed the age where he could function equally effectively with or without eating, and right now, in the gardens of Rosenborg Castle, he was beginning to feel as if his empty stomach was more important than almost anything, including the fate of the Western world as we know it.
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