She sank into the sofa, feeling momentarily ridiculous as the cushions puffed up around her. “Do you have ice?”
“Ice? What for?”
“My foot. Twisted my ankle.”
He left, clattered, returned with a tall tumbler full of cubes. As she slowly levered the shoe from her foot and began rubbing her ankle with the ice, he stood across the room from her, leaning on the mantelpiece, his arms folded.
“What happened? Did they find you after you went home?”
She told him, briefly, about her visit to Gethin’s house, her brother, the secret room. When she told him that Mark’s colleagues had been spying on her, David interjected.
“They were observing you even on the rig? How?”
“Through Harvey. He was someone I was close to. A . . . friend. Or someone I thought was.”
David nodded, tactful, and she was grateful for his circumspection. She told him the rest: the garden, the bridge, the van.
“And you’re sure they haven’t followed you here?”
“I wouldn’t be here if they had. I don’t think they want to talk anymore. They just want to bring me in.”
David looked toward the window, where the slats were shut against the world, as if expecting them to be kicked in at any moment. “All right. Let’s think about what we’ve got.”
“Well, the first thing—I suppose the only thing, now we know there’s no way of getting close to Gethin—is the photo of Thorne and his colleagues. I retrieved it from my brother’s place before I left.” She pulled it from her pocket and handed it over.
He looked at it as she continued. “I think the box in front there is the thing he wants me to find, and that’s what Warwick and her colleagues are looking for. But it wasn’t at Fisher’s place as far as I could tell. It seems to have disappeared.”
David pointed at the box. “Ellie, you do know what this is, don’t you?”
She looked at him blankly. “No. Do you?”
“Of course I do. It’s a satellite.”
“What?”
“A satellite. It’s not a typical-looking one, but I’m sure of it. Look at this line here. These little gaps; they’re instruments. I’m certain of it. I’ve seen it before.”
Hopper couldn’t believe it. “But . . . I know what satellites look like, and that looks nothing like one. And anyway, they don’t exist anymore. The whole network collapsed. I learned that at university.”
“That’s not true.” He smiled. “One of the advantages of working for the Times is that the government sometimes tell you about things they don’t want you to print. But to do that, they have to tell you exactly the information you’re not allowed to know about. And when I became news editor, I got a briefing on a few topics that were strictly off-limits. They only give you the vaguest information, nothing more than an outline really, but I know for a fact that this is what a satellite looks like these days.”
She felt euphoric. “David, you genius.”
He grinned. “Never thought it would come in handy.”
“So Thorne made one. Maybe he sent it up. And saw something he shouldn’t have done. Some evidence of what Davenport’s doing, or something in the Breadbasket.” Hopper’s heart was racing. If only she’d brought the photo a day earlier.
“Exactly. And that tallies with what we know about Thorne’s career. It’s not surprising that he might have been working on a satellite. His department covered almost everything nonmilitary right before he was fired. Why not a satellite?”
“All right, so this is what we’re looking for.”
David frowned. “The only question is what we can do based on that? It’s not like we can go and retrieve it. If he even managed to get this one into orbit.” He jabbed at the box in the photograph.
“Actually, I think I know where we have to go.”
“Where?”
“Oxford.” The idea had come to her in the park, just at the edge of sleep.
“Oxford? What for?”
“Warwick and her men have been through Thorne’s home. His only other contact we know of was Fisher, and he didn’t get through to Fisher. There was nobody else in his life he trusted, apart from one person. Caroline Heathcote, the warden of my college. She’s the one who took him in when he needed it. He once said to me that she and I were the two people he was closest to. So my guess is that he left it with her.”
“Didn’t the warden force him out?”
“The whole college did. The warden couldn’t resist. Better for her to stay in power, still able to do him a favor.”
“Sounds plausible enough. All right, Oxford then. You’ll need company, though. I’m not missing out on this.”
“Are you sure?”
She had meant it kindly, had meant to imply she didn’t want to burden him further, but he looked a little affronted as he spoke. “Ellie, I’ve made my choice to do this with you. I’m as tired of these people as you are. I was there with you yesterday in the warehouse. I’m here today. I trust you. I’d like you to do the same with me.”
She looked at him, and he met her gaze, and for the first time in years, she felt something less than alone.
“What about your work?”
“Fuck work. I decided for sure last night. I’m not going back. Not after Harry.”
“Do you have a car?”
“I can borrow one.”
“When?”
He looked at his watch. “I’ll phone my friend now. He’s only ten minutes away.”
“Is it safe to phone?”
He shook his head. “Guess not. I’ll go round. Let me dress.”
He left the room. Outside, the sun had vanished behind cloud. Hopper turned to her side; there was a radio there. She turned it on, and after a few seconds of crackle found the right line.
David came back in, dressed. She left the radio on for him to hear the headlines—more news on the American deal—before twisting it off.
“That’s going to be all we hear about for the next year.”
“When shall we head off? Now?” Hopper asked, aware that waves of tiredness were hitting her. “If you go and borrow the car, we can leave in twenty minutes.”
He shook his head. “We’ll be less conspicuous in a few hours. And without wanting to be rude, you look exhausted. I’ll get the car while you rest.”
Hopper started to protest for a moment, lacked the strength, and nodded.
“Good. The bed’s made up in the spare room.”
“Which is that?”
“Your old study.”
She got up, knocked over the tumbler of ice in the process, made it to the door. At the top of the stairs, she glimpsed herself in the full-length mirror on the landing. There were bits of leaf stuck in her hair. Her eyes were bloodshot, her forehead bruised, and her jacket had a torn sleeve. On her feet, she had only one shoe, the other discarded downstairs, and her ankle was a livid red, streaked with white. She was being reduced; boiled down from a scientist, to a citizen, to a woman, to a moving body with only one destination.
Her study had indeed been turned into a bedroom; it had a soft bed, and she found it, methodically took off her clothes, and slept.
THIRTY-FIVE
She was sitting quite still when Thorne arrived back in his office. It was dark—she had not touched the thick blackout blind, and the only light in the room came from the desk lamp she had read by. The air smelled of burned dust.
She had been sitting here for over an hour. She had crept back in on a whim, and then she had looked through his desk, and now she was not sure whether she should stay or go, whether to confront him or simply leave and never speak to him again.
It was not intentional, she kept telling herself; she had not meant to learn what she had learned. As though she need feel any guilt compared with what he’d done.
&nbs
p; She had entered the room almost innocently, convinced she was doing nothing wrong—hardly doing anything at all. Why was she doing this? Because she needed the truth. Because he had been evasive for the whole year about why he had left government, and because she had never quite believed his suggestions that he had been uninvolved with important matters of state.
One of the drawers in his desk had been half-open, and she had idly pulled it, still pretending to herself she might just be looking for one of her old essays, that this was accidental. Near the bottom, a string of words caught her eye: Interior Ministry Confined Reports. It was a plain burgundy folder, wound with a string tie. The date on the front was the year before Thorne had left office.
There were lots of reports inside the file, each taking no more than ten densely typed pages. One report from each department, according to a contents page at the front: Farming (subdivided into Arable and Livestock), Fishing, Energy, Security, Defense, Policing.
The rest of the drawer held more folders full of reports. She picked out the earliest one—from nine years ago, Davenport’s first year in office—and looked at the contents. They were identical, but for one extra category at the end of the list.
English Channel: Emergency Response.
She opened it and began to read.
An hour later, Thorne returned, edging through the door with a stack of books in his arms. “Hello, Ellen. This is a strange time to see you here.” Beyond that, he made no other comment on her presence, nor on the fact that she was behind his desk. Afterward, she thought that in some way he must have known what she was about to say.
She looked at him and had to breathe in and out so her voice wouldn’t shake when she spoke. “You gave the order to sink all those ships. All the ones that came after the Stop. That was you.” She gestured at the pages in front of her.
In the dim light of the lamp, Thorne seemed to age before her. He put the books down on a table, ignoring one that fell to the ground, and moved over, taking a place in the armchair she normally sat in.
His voice, when he spoke, was quiet, unlike his usual tone. “Yes. That was my responsibility.”
“You wrote this.” She picked up a piece of paper she had found in the file. It was dated from a month after Davenport’s takeover—his true takeover, six years after the Stop, when the second collapse was under way—and was headlined Channel Closure and Instructions to the Fleet. It suggested the requisitioning of all civilian boats around the coast for the duration of the “Immigration Emergency,” and that the navy fit any seaworthy vessel with guns. And it proposed that the newly engorged Royal Navy should sink any foreign vessels that entered within a ten-mile zone, irrespective of the nature of the boat. Civilian, military, industrial, trafficker, refugee. Everything. Including any boats flying colors of allies, and any nonmilitary British ships.
At the end of the document, a thin line of black stated: There can be no exceptions to this declaration, as though that was not clear already. The lazy loops of Thorne’s signature as Chief Scientific Officer at the Ministry of Defense were the same three twirls she had seen at the end of her essays. Across the page, the second signature, that of Richard Davenport, granted permission to change the diseased plan into law. The letters of his name were faded black spikes, jutting like iron railings.
A separate document—same author, same coauthor—gave orders, using the RAF, the USAF, and the thousands of rockets pried from the US military, to simultaneously attack hundreds of ports across northern Europe, to demolish as many boats as possible. The big ones—Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Antwerp—were to be treated especially heavily, but countless smaller ports would be smashed, reducing the Continent’s escape routes to matchwood. The same methods were to be employed across northern Africa, to “degrade as far as possible” all ports and all boats over a certain size. The attack was ordered to take place over three consecutive days, to minimize the number of vessels that would survive. No warnings were to be given to civilians in advance of the raids.
This document bore Thorne’s signature too.
“Why?”
“I had no choice.”
“You could have said no.”
He breathed out, long and slow. “The prime minister asked me for a solution, and I provided it.”
“Everyone said it was Davenport’s decision. That’s why he won the election; people thought he was the one who’d seal us off, and he did.”
“He was in overall command. But he wanted me to come up with the method. He liked to ensure people shared responsibility for ugly or unpleasant decisions.”
The blood pounded in her ears. “This wasn’t an unpleasant decision. This was genocide.”
“It was . . . security.”
“Do you know how many died?”
He didn’t answer her question. “Some people were returned to France if their ship was close enough to shore and seaworthy. The majority . . . were not. Those who offered resistance or refused to leave their ships to be returned had their vessel sunk.” His chin was almost on his chest. “Later, it became necessary to sink on sight. Too many traffickers were escaping and returning.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. What was the final total?”
“Perhaps ten million.”
“Ten million. Jesus.” She voiced the thought that had been occurring to her from the moment she had read the document. “My mother was on one of those boats.”
He didn’t say anything.
She was dimly aware she was crying. “You used my mother’s memory to get me to stay here. And you were the one who killed her.” He made no movement. “Why did he . . . Why did you order this?”
“The country was on the brink of collapse. Right on the brink. For six months it seemed probable we would be totally overrun. What do you do if you’re in a full lifeboat and there are thousands more in the water?”
“It wasn’t a lifeboat. It’s a country. We could have taken more people.”
“I’m sorry, Ellen. I really am. But people were starving. It was the only way. If we had failed to act, the whole country would have collapsed.”
“And this is success? Scratching from hand to mouth, two decades of rationing? People screaming in the streets? Living in the woods like animals?”
“I didn’t know what Davenport would become, but I knew what we ran the risk of becoming. A dictatorship is better than a wasteland. We truly believed—I believed—those were the only two options. Barbarity or collapse. He chose barbarity. And I joined him.” Through her tears, Hopper could see he was knotting his hands before him.
“You murdered . . . you don’t even know how many millions of people whose deaths you ordered, one of whom was my mother. And you can’t even admit it to yourself.”
“I can, Ellen.” She felt momentarily revolted at his use of her name. “I can admit it. I cannot change what I have done. The fact that someone else would have signed it if I had not is irrelevant. I signed it.”
“This is why he kept you on in government?”
“It’s one reason.”
“How can you live? Knowing this?”
“I don’t know.” From this angle, his head low, his eye sockets were hollow, and she saw a shadow of the skull beneath the skin. “I have tried to find ways to atone.”
“What could possibly atone for this?”
“Nothing, I know. Nothing.” He was hardly audible.
“Why would anyone go along with this?”
He raised his head. “Do you think there aren’t thousands of people who remember this? The mobilization alone . . .” He waved his hands. “Everyone knew what was being done on their behalf. It was a matter of survival.”
Hopper took a breath. “What if I started telling people, the people who don’t know about this? People my age?”
“I have caused
enough deaths, Ellen. I wouldn’t like to cause yours.”
“Does this still happen?”
He shook his head a little. “The Breadbasket has obviated the need for it. And almost nobody comes to Britain now anyway.”
“I have to tell someone.”
“You would only be telling them what they already suspect.”
“Why did Davenport force you out? If this became open knowledge . . .”
“Ellen, it practically is. People don’t want to know exactly what happened. They want to know they’ll have bread to eat tomorrow, and next year, and they’ll support anyone who gives it to them. If this was on the front page of tomorrow’s Times, Davenport would say he had sorrowfully done the right thing to protect our nation.”
“Why did you leave the government then? Knowing what you know, why did Davenport get rid of you?”
Thorne looked away from her again, to the side. “I can’t tell you.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true, Ellen. I’m sorry. I’m not as brave as I should be. Not anymore. Not with more of other people’s lives.”
“Sure.” She picked up her bag.
“Ellen. Please stay.”
She did not wish to hear any more explanations. She could not bear any more of this. The door was in front of her and she pulled it stiffly open. As she turned back for a moment, she had a sense of him, still crumpled in the armchair, but she averted her eyes and walked out to the hot, close air of the quad below.
She left Oxford that afternoon, changed her address two days later, failed to take her placement in Skye over the summer. By the time she returned in October, he was gone. He had left three letters in the porters’ lodge for her, which she tore in two and burned, unread.
THIRTY-SIX
Hopper was awake again, looking at the ceiling of her study. No, not the study, the spare bedroom. Her former study. It was clean, barring the pile of her clothes in the middle of the floor, almost denuded of personality.
The mattress under her was thick, luxurious; she wondered when it had been made, and where. The only mattresses she had slept on in the last few years were military issue; clotted with lumps and hardly thick enough to stretch a bedsheet tight. The rest of the furniture consisted of a little desk and chair, a wardrobe, and a bookshelf. In the corner was an ottoman she recognized, an old carved thing so heavy and impractical it would probably never leave this room again.
The Last Day Page 26