A Very British Coup (3 page)

The desk was a large Queen Anne affair, empty save for a tea mug full of felt-tip pens, a teak letter-opener and a framed picture of his wife and daughter. To one side, within easy reach of his swivel chair, stood a visual display unit, still encased in the blue plastic cover in which it had arrived five years ago. Sir Peregrine had only to tap the requisite code into the keyboard of the VDU in order to summon instantly to the screen the most intimate secrets of any one of the two million
or so people said to be on the Curzon Street computer. He had only to tap another button and a print-out would slide silently from the belly of the machine.

Gone were the days when clerks and secretaries commuted between the principal floor and the basement of Curzon Street House. Gone were the days of filling in requisition forms, frantic telephone calls to the Registry demanding reasons for delay. Today, on the application of a few simple codes, the secrets of the Curzon Street computer were instantly available.

Not that Sir Peregrine had much time for technology. He was one of the old school, trained in the days of triplicate memoranda and beige files. He had never made any serious attempt to master the VDU and so it stood unused, spurned, beside his desk, an incongruity among the Vietnamese watercolours and the Burmese Buddhas.

Sir Peregrine pressed a buzzer and immediately a side door opened to admit a sharp-featured young man wearing a dark suit and a blue and white striped shirt. This was Fiennes, personal assistant to the Director General. Fiennes was a high-flyer plucked straight from St Antony's College, Oxford, on the recommendation of his tutor.

“Things not going too well, are they, Fiennes?”

“No, sir.”

“What have you got for me, then?”

“Actually, sir, there is not very much.” He handed Sir Peregrine a beige file labelled ‘Perkins, Harold A., Member of Parliament (Labour)'. The file contained about 200 sheets of computer print-out, including records of telephone conversations, photocopies of letters and details of Perkins' voting record on the Labour Party National Executive. There were also some photographs taken at demonstrations. On the top was a short summary of the contents, typed by Fiennes. Sir Peregrine read this and then looked up. “Is this the best you can do?”

“Seems to be all we have, sir.”

“What about his sex life?”

“Not married, sir.”

“Precisely. The man must have buggered or screwed somebody at some time or other.”

“Not to our knowledge, sir. Lived with his mother in Sheffield until she died about ten years ago. Then he moved to London and bought a flat near the Kennington Oval. Leads a fairly humdrum sort of life.” Fiennes flicked a lock of his blond hair away from his forehead.

“What about East European embassies? Surely he's in and out of those all the time. Most of these lefties usually are.”

“Perkins never seems to have been much of a one for freebies, sir.”

“Well, we are going to have to do better than this.” Sir Peregrine closed the file and handed it back to Fiennes. “When the new Cabinet is announced I want you to go through their files with a fine-toothed comb. And not just the Cabinet. Every minister of state, every under-secretary and, above all, any political advisers they bring in with them.”

“Yes, sir,” Fiennes was heading for the door. “And there is one other thing, sir.”

“What's that?”

“Ebury Bridge Road have been on. They want to know if they're to keep the phone taps on Perkins and the other Labour people.”

Sir Peregrine smiled. “Why not? Since the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary are theoretically our authority for tapping phones, Perkins and his men will be in the unusual situation of authorising taps on their own phones. I think that's rather amusing, don't you?”

Around the corner from Curzon Street, almost within sight of DI5 headquarters, the nightshift were reporting for duty at Annabel's. Annabel's was not the sort of place where Harry Perkins had a big following.

“Why doesn't someone turn that rubbish off?” A slick young man in a red velvet dinner jacket gestured to the colour
television set on the bar which was displaying the beaming features of Prime Minister-Elect Perkins.

“Sarah couldn't come tonight,” said a girl in a light blue jumpsuit. “Her father said if she didn't go down to Sussex and vote Conservative he'd stop her allowance.”

“Oh, the beast. Poor Sarah.”

“Brilliant idea of Charlie's to come on here. We'd have been cutting our throats with depression at the Cavalry Club. Who's for a drink before we start noshing?” The young man in the velvet dinner jacket reached for his wallet.

At the bar a woman strung with pearls the size of gobstoppers was saying she was too depressed even to
think
about food.

Someone hung a gravy-stained napkin over the television screen, obscuring the view of Perkins.

“Simply frightening that a man like that could become Prime Minister,” said a slightly balding young man parked next to a bottle of champagne. “Shows how low the country's sunk.” He was addressing nobody in particular.

“That's Roddy Bluff. He's microchips. Frightfully rich,” whispered a slim blonde girl in a Fiorucci skirt. Lady Elizabeth Fain was the daughter of a Somerset landowner. Although she had left a fashionable girls' boarding school in Sussex at sixteen, and her higher education consisted of a finishing school in Switzerland, she knew more about the world than most girls of her background. For a start she read newspapers, a habit that made her unusual among the female clientele of Annabel's. She had also travelled, with a girlfriend, around India and Thailand, staying in cheap hotels and using only public transport. She even had friends who were left-wingers.

One in particular, Fred Thompson, was a journalist working for an impoverished publication called the
Independent Socialist
. Fred often joked that she was his one contact in what he called the master race. “I'm relying on you to use your influence to get me out when the coup comes,” he used to say.

They had last met about three weeks ago, just as the
election campaign was getting under way. Fred had been in a serious mood. “They'll never let a Labour government headed by Harry Perkins take power,” he told her.

“Who're ‘they'?” she had asked innocently.

“Your friends in the City, the newspaper owners, the civil servants, all them sort of people.”

Elizabeth had laughed at him. “You socialists are all the same – paranoid. Always thinking somebody's tapping your phone or blaming all your troubles on the capitalist press. Of course Perkins will take power, if he wins the election.”

“I don't mean he'll be chucked in jail or anything crude like that,” Fred had countered. “They'll do what they did at first in Chile. Slowly strangle us by cutting back trade and investment and delivering us into the hands of the IMF and the World Bank. I wouldn't be surprised if our ruling class don't team up with the Americans to help de-stabilise us.

“This is Britain, not Chile,” Elizabeth had responded firmly, “and Britain is a democracy. That sort of thing will never happen here.”

Sitting in Annabel's with the television pundit now predicting a Labour majority of 100 seats, she reflected on her argument with Fred. She had not taken him seriously at the time because, quite apart from the fact that she had been brought up to believe that parliamentary democracy was the greatest thing since sliced bread, it never really occurred to her that Harry Perkins would win. After all, he was an extremist, and she had also been brought up to believe that the British people would never vote for an extremist.

On the night of the Labour landslide in the 1945 general election a woman at the Savoy Hotel is reputed to have said: “My God, they've elected a Labour government. The country will never stand for it.” And now at Annabel's on this fateful night history was repeating itself. “The trouble with the socialists,” intoned the lady with the pearls, “is that they don't give a damn for the ordinary people of this country. Like us. They dish out wages to the unions all right, but what about the ordinary people of this country?”

Nearby a straight-faced waiter was presenting a folded bill
to a young man sprawling shoeless on a pile of floor cushions. His girl-friend was glued to the television and eating chocolate peppermints. “Con Hold? Julian, where's Con Hold?”

Outside there was a slight drizzle and the young man in the red velvet dinner jacket was puking in Berkeley Square.

Harry Perkins first entered the in-tray of the American President at about 8.30 pm Washington time. The President was giving a dinner party for the executive members of the John Birch Society and their wives when an aide came to whisper the news.

“Jeeeesus Christ,” hissed the President, his cigar quivering in sympathy and causing ash to spill on to his lapel. Those nincompoops in the CIA had screwed it up again. For months they had been telling him not to worry. This Perkins fellow did not stand a cat in hell's chance, they said. Trust our boys in London, they said. Never been wrong yet. Until tonight.

The President stayed just long enough to make a short speech to the John Birchers, who had made some generous contributions to his campaign funds. Then without going into details he referred to a threat to the Free World which required his urgent attention and headed for the elevator with a posse of secret service agents in tow.

By the time the President reached the Oval Office the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State and the President's National Security Adviser were already waiting.

“Okay, George,” the President addressed the CIA chief, George McLennon, “how do you explain this one? Only two days ago your people were assuring me that Perkins was a busted flush. Now it seems he's going to be around for some time.”

“Sorry, Mr President,” stumbled McLennon who was already dreaming of the arses he was going to kick when he got back to Langley. “All I can tell you is what the British boys have been telling us and they've been saying everything
was under control.”

“That'll teach you guys to take any notice of what that pack of amateurs in London have to say,” said the President with venom. Then he nodded towards a man with white cropped hair and cold blue eyes. “Anton, what's your assessment?”

Anton Zablonski, National Security Adviser, an old school world conspiracy man, big on bombing and direct action. Zablonski looked the President straight in the eye, “Mr President, this could be bigger than El Salvador. Perkins' boys have been talking about making Britain a neutral country. That means withdrawing from NATO, kicking out our Third Air Force and doing away with their nuclear submarines. We also lose a base for our cruise missiles. In budget terms Britain is the biggest contributor to NATO, but the main effect would be political, not military. Without Britain the whole alliance could disintegrate.”

Despite forty years in the United States Zablonski had not lost his thick Polish accent. The more doomladen his pronouncements, the thicker it became. “Italy's always been wobbly,” he went on. “France opted out years ago and the Dutch have never taken the Soviet menace as seriously as we have. Until now Britain has always been our strongest ally, almost a sort of satellite state. We only had to say jump and they jumped.”

“Vernon?”

The President had turned to Admiral Vernon Z. Glugstein, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the man who had once described ‘peace' as the most dangerous word in the English language. Glugstein gave a deep sigh before speaking. “I agree with Anton, Mr President. For all practical purposes Britain's gone over to the other side. Neutrality and Communism are the same thing in my book.”

“Easy, Vernon,” McLennon interrupted, “it's early days yet. The British Labour Party's notorious for saying one thing in opposition and doing the opposite in government. Let's wait and see what happens.”

“Nobody's suggesting we should rush into anything,” said the President, “but we'd better make darn sure we're prepared.
I don't want any more fuck-ups. The future of Western security is at stake. George, what have we got on the files for de-stabilising Britain?”

“Nothing much, I'm afraid, Mr President. Last thing I can find is dated July 1945. Apparently the Defense Department threw together a plan for a full-scale invasion if the Attlee government went too far. All looks a bit crazy to me.”

“Perhaps I can help,” interrupted Marcus J. Morgan, the Secretary of State, a corporation lawyer, very fat and very rich. “I had the backroom boys at the National Security Council throw together some options.”

“Go ahead, Marcus.”

“The key is the British economy. It's in pretty bad shape and not in a position to stand up to much pressure. The first point is, we own about ten per cent of it. Bought it up cheap, after the war. We could easily persuade one or two of the bigger corporations to pull out. Some of them want to anyway.”

He was interrupted by the rustle of silver paper. The President was unwrapping a spearmint chewing gum. The President was big on spearmint chewing gum. “Go on Marcus, go on.”

“Secondly, there's trade. We account for about twelve per cent of Britain's exports and, if necessary, we could go elsewhere. Thirdly, there's the IMF. Britain is running a very big balance of payments deficit and before long they are going to have to look for a loan. Since we are the biggest contributors to the IMF, we're in a strong position.”

The President palmed the silver paper into a neat ball and, with expert aim, lobbed it into a wastepaper bin by the door. Morgan turned the page of his NSC brief and continued. “Fourthly, there's sterling: the United States and the oil-producing countries hold large deposits in London banks. We could start selling and persuade the Arabs to do likewise. We'd have them by the balls, if we did that. Finally, there's covert action: our embassy in London has a few small programmes running. We could expand these. Buy up a few trade union leaders, some Labour MPs, that sort of thing …”