1990 (19 page)

Kyle and the agent waited tensely as the Home Secretary stood to one side, clapping his hands. Wainwright approached and peered over the lectern, hesitantly.

'Fellow-citizens and brothers in the trade-union movement,' he began, very slowly and obviously reading. 'I've come to you with a problem which has been worrying me for a while now. For...a...while...' He blinked and rubbed his forehead.

At one side of the interview room, Gelbert hissed at a floor manager, 'Tell that idiot producer to slow the teleprompter down. It's losing him.'

Then Wainwright continued, synchronising again with the teleprompter and looking totally uncomprehending. 'I've had full and frank consultations with my good friend, Dan Mellor, with my loyal and hard-working Assistant Secretary, Ivor Griffith, and with the dedicated Executive of my union. I'm not getting any younger and my health isn't what it was. What...it...was....'

He looked round him, confused, and Dave Brett in the Leisure Centre clenched his fists and bunched his shoulders in bull-like rage.

'That isn't Charlie Wainwright.'

'Surprise, surprise,' responded Kyle, bitterly.

'I've started to make mistakes,' the trade union leader continued, pathetically. 'As you all know, it is the patriotic duty of every Briton to assess his own job-fitness, answerable to his local job-grading tribunal. I've done that. I don't measure up any more. My sad duty tonight is to resign formally as GenSec of the Metalturners, a position I've been proud to hold for...hold for...' The figure eluded him and he squinted forward again.

In the newsroom, Greaves had switched off the sound in disgust and was staring at the strained elderly face on the screen.

'That blows it,' he said to himself, glumly, before asking the switchboard to put through Somers, the printer. 'Rip out Kyle's story. Put in that pre-set about import controls reducing living standards. Yes, I know it's got whiskers on it, but there's nothing else. Wait a moment.'

Greaves shouted to ask Pearce if he had checked that the editions could get on special national trains for distribution.

'Not a chance,' the young reporter replied. 'Just a big PCD horse-laugh.'

'Cut the run, Mr Somers. Local distribution only.' The news editor sighed as he put the receiver down. 'Another PCD lesson on what happens to us when we try to get clever.'

'Or tell the truth,' offered Pearce.

'No such animal, laddie,' returned his boss. 'Not in their book.'

Wainwright was stumbling to the end of his speech. 'I've tried to set an example all my working life. I'd like to end my career still setting that example. Thank you, fellow citizens and brothers, and Rule Britannia.'

He nodded his head awkwardly as the television interview room resounded to the sound of applause and stamping feet.

'Five seconds, then cut the canned applause,' Delly Lomas instructed the floor manager, who nodded and looked curiously at Wainwright.

The ex-trade union leader was bobbing his head, acknowledging a bare wall, where his mind could see serried ranks of delegates and hear their roars, supporting belief. He walked from the lectern towards her.

Dan Mellor moved in to shake his hand, warmly. 'Well done, Charlie. One of the best speeches you've ever made.'

'Congratulations, Mr Wainwright,' Griffith put in, mechanically.

Charlie Wainwright looked at them, blankly, and asked, 'Who are you?'

'Bastards, bastards, bastards,' Dave Brett mouthed silently, his eyes suspiciously bright. Then he turned to Kyle and said, audibly. 'Charlie Wainwright turned into a zombie. I remember him singing "Jerusalem" and really believing in it.'

'Not any more,' said the newspaper man.

'Kyle.'

'Yes?'

'If ever they throw me in one of those places, get in somehow and kill me.'

The journalist looked at his friend, nodded the promise and meant it.

The servant's bored eyes questioned him and Kyle shook his head almost imperceptibly, then watched the Minister of Trade deftly relieve the tray of another large Scotch, before the man slid on his way through the clusters of diplomats.

Burdon, the Minister, leaned back on his heels for a moment and surveyed the coterie of black envoys around him with that condescending bonhomie unique to tall, upper-middle-class Englishmen with generous paunches. The magnificent room with its brilliant chandeliers, respectful attendants and low voices became him, as a polished remnant from what had been known as the Stockbroker Belt, before top civil servants bought all the houses.

Catching the columnist's eye, he raised his glass in self-satisfied salute.

'If Britain can't extend a helping hand to an old friend, it's not worth its place in the First Division of the world's nations.'

'We're not in the First Division, Minister,' Kyle responded.

'There! What was I saying?' the politician exclaimed. 'It's doom-drips like you, Kyle, who're to blame for so much of the world's misery. I bet you see the rainbow in various shades of black.'

One or two Africans looked severe, but Burdon remained oblivious.

Kyle retorted, 'I don't write about the weather.'

'More your line, I'd have thought. All those natural disasters...' The group relaxed and laughed at the jibe. '...Though you'd be lost for something to say when the sun shone and the harvest was bountiful.'

'Bountiful's the word for this trade deal you've signed. Britain could have got copper a lot cheaper elsewhere,' the journalist observed acidly, aware that the foreign and trade office negotiators behind him were beginning to shuffle uncomfortably.

The Minister of Trade frowned and delivered a snappy sentence on the need to make up for the sins Britain's white forefathers had committed against their black friends. He waved expansively at his host, the ambassador of an emerged African State.

'We're the poor relations now,' Kyle pointed out.

Burdon snorted and gave a shrug of appeal to the group. 'See! Self-deception! He even believes his own lies.'

The deal, which had been announced without warning and after precious little discussion between the Africans and the Minister, involved payment by the U.K. in both cash and goods, in particular the mountain of surplus dairy products created by severe rationing. It was a combination totalling a price considerably higher than the current world market value of copper.

'It's like Oliver Twist tossing anglodollars into Rockefeller's begging bowl,' the newsman declared, angrily.

The Minister's genial expression stiffened into a waxwork mould. 'Crawl back among your characters from the past, Kyle,' he snarled, between grinning teeth. 'It's where you belong.' And he turned his back deliberately to exclude the columnist from the circle, saying smugly, 'Some among us will never understand that there's more to trade and aid than greed and profit, that friendship and generosity between nations yields gains that can't be measured by money-men.'

As a little round of applause broke from the toadies, the journalist felt a hand press his arm.

'You're the joker tonight, Mr Kyle,' a voice murmured.

He turned to see the young African he had noticed staring when he arrived at the reception.

'My name is Paul Bright and I'm proud to meet you,' the stranger continued. 'In some countries you would be in jail.'

'Give 'em time. The British need time,' he pointed out, grimly, giving the other a guarded look.

'All I need is a few minutes,' the soft voice paused. '...Outside.'

But the newsman remained wary and played for time. 'It's raining.' PCD spies materialised in all settings and colours.

'Better wet than bugged,' the African returned, looking at him firmly.

'As you all know, I'm dedicated personally to deep and lasting friendship between our two countries and there's nothing I will not do to cement it.'

The Minister's voice booming in the background forced a decision. Kyle swung irritably away to join Paul Bright in the doorway outside the Embassy.

'He's a humbug,' the young diplomat commented.

The columnist grimaced. 'Who isn't? Most of my friends are striped.'

'And a corrupt one...' the other added, significantly.

They both registered the PCD man hovering nearby and speaking discreetly into a wrist-watch mike.

'Even if you are bugged, I'll go on,' Bright emphasized. 'I've had my bellyful.'

'I'm clean,' the newsman assured him. 'I hope you are.'

The African smiled. 'Virginal white.'

As they walked out into the Belgravia downpour, the PCD shadow stared into the distance and pointed a finger at them. Yards away, his colleague squinted out through an observation slit in a parked surveillance wagon and locked an ultra-sensitive, miniaturised sound camera onto the target, then turned up the sound. A screech and hopelessly scrambled speech filled the van. The driver looked round, enquiringly.

'One of them's using a scrambler. Or both,' grumbled the PCD technician, as he adjusted the sound without success. 'I'll try a big close-up and see if the office can lip-read the bastards.'

The lens sucked up a larger image of the two men. Kyle looked straight to camera and, as he opened his mouth to speak, the scrambler switched off.

'That's a PCD spy wagon,' he announced, poker faced and pointing straight at it; then continued loudly and carefully, as though to an extremely deaf listener. 'They have highly qualified pensionable lip readers back in their fortress, did you know that?'

Paul Bright looked amused and joined in, 'I'm an amateur ventriloquist, should we try them?'

But Kyle had had enough of the game and, with a parting gesture to the camera, steered him towards the gardens of the square. An excellent shot of their backs came up on the VTR screen in the van and the scrambler screeched on again.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, the journalist cautious, waiting.

A gleaming hearse of a car purred to the columned porch opposite. The uniformed chauffeur jumped out to open a door and a red-haired woman in full-length furs swept past the butler and into the house, followed by a purposeful male companion.

Number eighty-six. Home of Lady Emma Tarnagh. A favourite haunt of Dan Mellor and other members of the elite. The door closed. The car glided off to its centrally heated stable. Some survive, Kyle thought to himself.

'We've given Burdon his own Aladdin's cave - in a bank vault in Zurich.' Paul Bright spoke suddenly.

'Our Minister of Trade?' The newsman was instantly attentive.

'Your man from Integrity,' the African agreed, quickly checking the distance between them and the PCD tail. 'He's a bit of a sailor now. We've got him up with an ocean-going yacht name of
Manuela
, berthed at Monte Carlo. Twin screws. Fully comprehensive radar. And a main cabin with twelve portholes and six Picassos.'

The newsman whistled. 'Originals?' he queried.

Paul Bright looked back in mock reproof. 'Kyle! Would a rich nation like his deal in prints?'

'He'll evade Wealth Tax on that lot, if he stays outside the twelve mile limit.' The journalist's innate puritanism was offended.

'That's what he said,' his informant grinned.

They had reached the far side of the square and were momentarily protected from PCD eyes by a clump of bushes. Kyle gave Bright a quick tap of thanks and farewell before eeling down a dark mews. By the time the PCD man rounded the corner, he had disappeared.

The technician in the van scowled at the VTR picture. 'Close up of damn all. I'd best wipe this. If
he
sees it, he'll have us at the re-training camp before you can say Skardon.'

This was a serious underestimation of the PCD boss's response. With the number of illegal emigrants rising and the increasingly wide circulation of underground news sheets of protest and the continued refusal of the politicians to allow him additional manpower, Herbert Skardon's reaction to failure was growing progressively more dangerous. The arrival of another damning video-tape from the United States the following morning did nothing to improve his mood.

Lomas and Tasker were summoned, directed to chairs in front of the wall screen and not offered coffee. The Controller stayed sulkily behind his desk, watching them watching the playback.

It began with a close-up of a streamer poster, reading :

FIGHT

FOR

LIBERTY

IN

BRITAIN

And a man's voice, 'I tell you this, my American friends, your moral and financial support is vital to those brave men and women who resist the evil system that is snuffing out freedom in the United Kingdom...'

Applause sounded and the camera swung to focus on the speaker. It was Doctor Alan Vickers addressing a campaign meeting from a rostrum draped with the proclamation:

UNITED STATES ACTION GROUP

FOR A FREE BRITAIN

(U.S.A.G.F.B.)

'...They work ceaselessly. They work without thought of reward. Don't swallow a word of the British Government's propaganda about those who risk their own liberty to smuggle out people like me, whose only crime is to be well trained.'

The young doctor leant towards his audience with anxious sincerity. '...Don't for one moment believe that those marvellous men and women do it for personal gain. They don't. When I came out, I offered cash to the man who fixed it, one of those Scarlet Pimpernels of 1990...'

Skardon choked and stood up. 'Scarlet Pimpernels!'

'...who have the notorious PCD running around like panicky Doberman Pinschers.'

'He must have somebody writing for him,' Delly Lomas put in, sourly.

'And let me tell you what he said. "Keep your wallet zipped tight, mate," he said, "till you've made a packet in the States". Does that sound like a mercenary?'

Skardon buttoned off the tape with some violence.

'It sounds like a traitor who shouldn't be on the loose.' He turned to Delly. 'You met this smart-alec rabble rouser before he skipped, didn't you?'

She nodded. 'In the Ombudsman's Court that rejected his appeal for an exit visa.'

The head of the PCD crossed to the rain-streaked window, his hands clasping and unclasping with frustration behind his back. The deputies looked at each other in some trepidation, temporarily closing ranks against the threat of another explosion.