1990 (23 page)

'He's useful to us,' she reminded him. 'He tips us off now and then.'

'And then knifes us from behind.'

'It's time he was put down for good.' Tasker knew his observation would irritate her.

'You didn't do our paper on the control of dissidents in the public eye. I did,' she returned. 'I want Kyle subdued. In our time.'

'Before we're all dead, you mean?' Tasker niggled, with an attempt at wit.

'Some of us are.' Her glare would have made sure of it in his case. 'In our good time.'

The PCD boss chose this moment to announce that Kyle had been digging up dirt on the Minister of Trade, but she was unimpressed, maintaining such a revelation would not be difficult for a junior reporter.

'Real dirt,' Skardon stressed. 'Our masters won't wear it.'

'Masters?' she exclaimed, with impatience. 'You mean the political puppets?'

His face changed colour. 'Don't say things like that out loud, Miss Lomas.' He dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief. 'They want Kyle. So do we.'

She threw up her hands in pseudo-hopelessness. 'So we send Nichols and his heavies who vomit with fear at the sight of a twelve-year-old!'

'He did have a gun, Miss Lomas.'

'...then they SOS for transport because their tyres are down!'

Skardon's eyes swivelled with embarrassment. 'That's unfair, Miss Lomas.' But he knew it was not.

'Tyres down. Pants down. A bunch of wets.' There was no stopping her. He was tired. It had been a long week and this would happen on a Friday night. He wanted to get home.

'Just leave Kyle to me,' she concluded.

He wished he could, but the threat of Dan Mellor's axe hung over him by a thread. He shook his head. 'Kyle's a Number One target, Miss Lomas. And Tasker knows how to - er - detach him from the scene, I think.'

They were colluding again. She lit a cigarette and waited.

'I've had several meetings with the computer,' her opposite number began cockily. 'Kyle hasn't declared dollars earned in the States. His house is grossly undertaxed...'

'So you say,' she remarked.

'And so will say his House Taxation Officer presently.... And the Newsmen's Union is ready to accuse him of unpatriotic journalism.'

'He'll ride that,' she observed.

'But not this,' Tasker was triumphantly smooth. 'His son menaced Nichols and his officers with a loaded shotgun.'

'Popgun.'

'Shotgun. Twelve bore. Licence courtesy of you. Catch off. Our Inspector of Juveniles may wish to remove Master Kyle to a sanatorium for his own mental well-being...'

'Not that.' He was really just like Skardon. Clumsy. Without foresight. Next they would accuse her of being sentimental.

'We're not here to be sentimental,' he sneered, right on cue.

'Henry's right,' Skardon declared, true to form. 'Little menace.'

'I can fix Kyle...' she spoke the words with exaggerated emphasis, so that the men stopped to study her. '...And not through his child. That wouldn't be good for our image, would it?'

'How?' The PCD boss asked.

Tasker received a cold look. 'If Henry has a lot to do?'

His eyes hardened and he held his ground. But Skardon inclined politely towards him, 'If you'd not mind, Henry?' And he was forced to leave.

Skardon scraped his chair forward and inspected her, warily. 'Right. Secrets time.'

'I'd like to go to America,' she announced.

'I said the gravy train's not running.' This was annoying of her.

She answered quickly, 'Cost less than all those Krugerrands.'

They contemplated each other : Skardon wondering how much licence he dare give before she cut his throat, and Lomas knowing she was winning.

Old Faceless had peculiar taste. Kyle slid sheepishly into the church, sniffing the incense and veering away from confrontation with the altar. He shivered slightly, with nerves and cold.

Third on the left. He looked round apprehensively. It was all too much like part of his childhood. Those weekly disgorgings of little sins. The man definitely had a warped sense of humour. There it was! Cursing inwardly, the journalist sidled into the confessional.

'You loom large in my Department's headlamps, Kyle. They want you,' the familiar voice announced amiably through the grille. 'And they're putting the foot down. Or the boot in.'

Kyle could just make out the shadow of his face and felt the usual twinge of curiosity. Male, middle-aged, cultured, certainly one of the old school, yet must be senior in the PCD to obtain so much privileged information and to be able to escape from headquarters to pass it on during office hours.

In fact, it would be comparatively easy to trace his identity through the distinctive car alone, but journalists have always been romantics at heart, and Kyle enjoyed the mystery for its own sake.

'How well do you know Miss Lomas?' Old Faceless interrupted his thoughts.

'We've met,' he replied, guardedly.

'Often, I hear.'

'Fairly,' the newsman admitted.

'Would it surprise you to know she's about to walk all over you?'

Kyle blinked, puzzled by this unexpected news. Old Faceless rarely concerned himself with personalities.

'...There's this Vickers chap,' his hidden informant continued. 'Some GP with a grudge, stomping the U.S. with a plea for his wife and child to be let out to join him. Know him?'

'Yes, slightly.'

'Miss Lomas would say you're understating,' the voice probed.

'Normally she'd accuse me of exaggerating.' Kyle's smile reflected in his reply.

'I trust you're not too fond of her.' He did not sound as detached as usual and there was a pause, before he added, 'This Vickers. In his naive praise of those who spirited him out of this sceptred prison isle set in a silver sea, he's been leaving clues like confetti. Our Department now dissects his speeches as if they were Shakespeare's or T. S. Eliot's. And Miss Lomas has a forensic brain second to none.'

'She's diligent. She works hard,' the columnist remarked.

'Especially now,' said the voice, with bite.

Kyle sighed slightly. 'I'll call her.'

'No, Kyle.' It was a command.

'I know her pretty well,' he protested.

'Not well enough, clearly. She's off to Washington tomorrow. He'll get visas for his wife and child, if he'll come back and testify you got him out.'

An image of Delly leaning into a candle to light a cigarette, glossy hair falling forward against her face, flashed through Kyle's mind. 'Bitch of the Century,' he muttered, savagely.

'Don't use words like that in a place like this, Kyle.' Old Faceless was reproachful. The hollow acoustics of the church echoed the muffled shufflings and whisperings of a few worshippers. Old Faceless was still talking, voice reduced to a murmur. 'If it's any comfort she's doing this because Deputy Controller Tasker was set to devour you anyway. It's professional survival.'

'She'd survive a direct hit from an H-bomb,' the columnist responded, cynically.

'I'm in here under false pretences, Kyle. I can't advise.' It was strange to hear the note of concern. 'But if I were you, I'd skip this country with some urgency. I wish you well.'

There was a faint scuffle in the priest's stall followed by footsteps on the flagstones growing fainter. Kyle's hand rose shakily to his forehead to wipe away the sweat. His mind grabbed and discarded instant schemes and solutions for seconds before he tiptoed hurriedly out to the street and to the telephone box on the corner. After a few words, he climbed into his car and drove at once across the bridge to the north side of the Thames, cutting up behind Charing Cross Station.

Despite the urgency, he detoured along the Mall to snatch brief enjoyment from St. James's Park, one of the last to remain intact.

Hyde Park had been ploughed up, along with most other large, open spaces, including Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, as part of the effort to achieve national self-sufficiency. But one or two of the old parks were left, although with their original areas diminished.

St. James's Park remained, strategically bordering Buckingham Palace, as part of the illusion that Britain was still a democratic monarchy rather than a totalitarian bureaucracy. Battersea, with its funfair, had been considered sacrosanct and renamed the People's Park, and Regents Park had been preserved because so many top government and civil service officials lived near it.

Kyle entered Mayfair from Piccadilly and pulled up, uncaring, on a double yellow line in a narrow alley off South Audley Street.

A lean and elegant American came down the U.S. Embassy steps to greet him. They walked off through the square together. It was a cold and windy day and the seats in the garden were deserted. The American took the object from the journalist before they detoured to return to Kyle's car through the other end of the mews.

Dave Brett was interviewing a number of prospective emigrants who had arrived with a colleague in a van. He had just finished questioning one man and called for the next, when the journalist's car came into sight round the heap of metal. His aide quickly shut the door of the van on its occupants.

'Well and properly de-bugged...?' Brett asked, leaning through Kyle's open window, and receiving a nod of assurance. 'Only I hear they've been crawling all over you?'

'Centipedes,' the journalist agreed. 'I'm clean as a whistle, they think I'm in Grosvenor Square.'

By now his bug would be safely parked on a United States diplomatic desk, deep inside the Embassy.

He pulled his coat collar round his ears. 'You don't have any urgent business in the States, I suppose?'

The import/export agent shrugged. 'Unless...' he offered, encouragingly.

'It is unless,' the newsman stressed. 'Can you make the three o'clock Concorde?'

'That old airbus,' Dave Brett demurred.

'Is there a flight that can be in Washington before it?' the other asked.

He was forced to admit, 'The American SST's not leaving Heathrow till four.'

'Concorde it is then,' Kyle directed. 'You're travelling first near a lovely bitch.'

As the journalist drove away again, Brett waved dismissal to the disappointed men in the van, started up his own car and sped off too.

Within two hours he was taking his place in the first class section of the Concorde next to Delly Lomas, already established in a window seat, with a steward obsequiously in attendance.

Kyle was right, the agent thought. She was a dish. He noticed the slim, thoroughbred legs, the long fingers, with well-kept nails, hair dressed by an expert to look seductively casual, the wide, scarlet mouth. A stylish, dangerous dish.

'You must be a civil servant,' he said, easily.

'Yes.' She sounded neither surprised nor inquisitive.

'First class. Window seat. They all go to civil servants,' he shrugged. 'And you'll have a Scotch in your hand before I've even ordered.'

'Brandy,' she corrected.

'Napoleon, I bet.'

'You'd win,' she concurred, giving him a cool look which missed nothing.

'Ministry of Trade?' he pumped. 'Overseas Aid? Delegate to the UN?'

'None of those.' Neither friendly, nor unfriendly.

'I can't imagine,' he persisted.

'Stop worrying, you're doing all right. First class.' It was her turn.

'Out of my own pocket...' he responded, with some pride. 'Don't tell me you're with the spooks?'

The plane had started to taxi down the runway.

'I'm sorry?'

'The PCD.' It was amusing to see her expression of annoyance instantly suppressed. She turned to gaze at him with some firmness, as the steward arrived with the brandy.

While waiting for the elevator to carry her to Alan Vickers' suite, she had compared the five star hotel with the downtown slum booked for her by the PCD. He pressed a buzzer when she arrived and, moments later, a floor waiter appeared with a bottle of Dom Perignon in ice.

Ruefully she remembered the last time she had seen the young man, cringing in the Ombudsman's Court, and could not resist jibing, 'They do you proud over here, Doctor Vickers. Five star hotels all the way?'

'They like my lectures,' he replied without smiling. 'I'm an authority on National Health Services here, you know. And they're just into theirs. So it's five star hotels and dollars galore.'

'But not just for knocking our State Health Service,' she challenged.

'I don't knock it,' he corrected. 'I just tell 'em how good it was before the bureaucrats cocked it up.'

The woman looked severe. 'Not to mention your digs about Britain being a jail.'

'I want my wife and child out,' he retorted. 'All the lecture tour dollars go into the Freedom for Britain fighting fund.'

She eyed him with unconcealed disdain. 'Ambassador for Britain.'

Vickers glared. 'I'll give you jailers no peace till my family's free and not even then,' he vowed in a steely voice.

Unperturbed, she raised her glass. 'Last time I sipped bubbly of this class was with a newsman named Kyle.' She pretended to examine the sparkling contents, before turning penetrating eyes on him, trained to recognise the involuntary quiver of his own glass and the tightening of facial muscles as he adopted an expression of innocent disinterest.

'Oh yes - the one I went to see before the Ombudsman's hearing,' he said, vaguely.

'The one who got you out,' she asserted.

The doctor shook his head. 'Guessing'll get you nowhere, Miss Lomas.'

'Every time you tell these Yanks about him you say the man who got you out is dark, where Kyle is fair; tall while Kyle is lean; Leeds-based when Kyle's a Londoner; Scottish accent, which Kyle hasn't.' It sounded garbled, and she knew it. The whole luxurious set-up had irritated her and thrown her off-balance.

He grinned, infuriatingly. 'You all right, Miss Lomas? Is it jet-lag, or do you often talk nonsense?'

'I've read every word you've said and written over here,' she pressed on, relentlessly. 'I can give at least five quotes that were Kyle to a T...'

The man sipped his champagne and looked back with a sudden hatred, which she ignored as she began to disclose the deal. 'Come back with me and testify against Kyle.'