The Dying Light (43 page)

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Authors: Henry Porter

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BOOK: The Dying Light
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One of Cannon’s deputies, George Lyme, read the speech aloud as Cannon made notes and coffee. Then they went through it line by line excising the passages that painted a picture of total catastrophe in the water supply. Cannon’s instinct was to concentrate the science in one part of the speech, having checked every statement with the known established facts. A briefing paper from the Special Committee for Water of the Security Council had arrived by email half an hour earlier. The facts on TRA were these: over thirty reservoirs were showing signs of contamination. Filtration systems were being rushed from a warehouse in Hounslow to every part of the country, but while they were being installed some areas were experiencing water shortages. Six towns in the north-west had no water and would be supplied by army tankers from noon that day. In Yorkshire the supply to Leeds and York was threatened. London was so far unaffected but special security measures had been taken to protect the main reservoirs and pipelines that fed the capital.
‘So’, he said, ‘the PM should not speculate on the means of transmission, but merely state that this crisis needs to be met with the full panoply of scientific and technical responses. All this stuff about terrorism is conjecture and it will land him in trouble if TRA is found to have occurred naturally.’
George Lyme removed the pen from his mouth. ‘Or worse still, it escaped from the government research station at Ashmere Holt.’
‘Where did you get that from?’ snapped Cannon, aware that until that moment such a suspicion had been restricted to the un-minuted proceedings of the Security Council.
‘It’s at the end of the briefing document from the Security Council.’ He then read from a print-out of the email. ‘The DNA profile of toxic red algae is sufficiently close to a species used in experiments at Ashmere Holt to warrant further investigations into the bio-security at the laboratory. While the first reported outbreaks of red algae occurred at fifty miles distance from the facility at Ashmere Holt it should not be concluded that these were chronologically the first to occur. The Swinton and Kirby reservoirs, which are nearest to the government research station, have both been found to have well-developed blooms of toxic algae. Given the documented growth rate of these algae, it may be concluded that the Swinton and Kirby outbreaks were established before the first identification fifty miles away at Crannock.’ Lyme let the email fall from his hands onto the desk. ‘They’re doing some more work on this angle and are going to report more fully. You know why this is at the bottom of the paper? Someone’s covering their arse. Probably the government’s chief scientific adviser: he fucking hates the prime minister.’
‘Possibly,’ said Cannon, picking up the paper. ‘This is a classified document and I don’t want the contents discussed with the press or with anyone else in the Communications Department.’
‘But there can only be three possible causes of the outbreak,’ Lyme said reasonably. ‘One: it has been spread by terrorists.
Unlikely
. Two: it has occurred naturally.
Maybe
. And three: it has been imported or spread accidentally by an unknown agent - probably a bloke in waders from the research station.
Almost Certainly
. With the record of lapses someone is bound to ask about Ashmere Holt.’
Cannon dictated a formula that embraced all three of Lyme’s possible causes and sent the amended speech back to the prime minister’s private office. When the woman from the campaign headquarters disappeared, he leaned forward in his chair.
‘So we have a busy day ahead of us, lads. The home secretary is going to invoke the Civil Contingencies Act. The PM and Glenny are doing a joint press conference at midday followed by a statement to the house at two thirty.’
‘Christ,’ said Lyme. ‘Have you got any idea what’s in that act? There are enough powers to dismantle democracy overnight.’
‘Who said we live in a democracy?’ muttered the other deputy.
‘But not all those powers have to be used,’ said Cannon. ‘You’d both better look at the act this morning. There’s a digest on the government website.’
Lyme snorted contempt. ‘Glenny will take anything he can get. He’s a total fascist.’
‘It’s our job to persuade the media otherwise. Our line is that this course of action is proportionate to the crisis the country faces.’
‘But if these new American filters neutralise the algae and make the water safe, what’s the problem?’ asked Lyme. ‘Where’s the crisis? Haven’t we got enough real problems without inventing another?’
The same thought had occurred to Cannon in the middle of the night but he said nothing and instead swivelled in his chair to face his secretary, who had just arrived, and told her to arrange a meeting of press officers from all the government departments concerned with the water crisis at ten o’clock. Then his phone vibrated with an incoming email. He read it, drained the last of his coffee and made for the door.
‘What a bitch of a day this is going to be,’ said Lyme to no one in particular.
‘It may get a lot worse,’ said Cannon, who suddenly veered from his course and bent down to Lyme, whom he trusted and liked despite the ceaseless stream of complaint and sarcasm. ‘David Eyam has come back from the dead,’ he whispered, ‘and it looks like he’s going to cause trouble.’ He straightened and looked down at Lyme’s stunned expression. ‘Keep it to yourself, boyo. Don’t even think of telling the others, OK?’ Lyme nodded. ‘Right, I’ll see you at ten.’
Temple had taken a chair at the far end of the Cabinet table. In front of him was a Thermos jug of coffee and basket of pastries. Christine Shoemaker had just arrived with a folder of papers under her arm and a young male bag carrier from MI5, who pulled out a chair for her. Jamie Ferris sat at the table with one other man. At the far end of the room was the home secretary Derek Glenny, who was staring out of one of two windows with his fists planted at his hips.
He had just said something about the early spring and Temple was nodding with his automatic smile. His eyes moved to Cannon and he gestured to a seat next to Ferris. Cannon sat down but didn’t draw up his chair to the table, a conscious but oblique signal that he did not want to be there and considered the Cabinet Room a hallowed space that should be barred to the likes of Jamie Ferris and baskets of Danish.
‘The director of the Security Service again sends his apologies,’ said Glenny without turning. ‘I sometimes wonder what we employ him for.’
‘But we have Christine here,’ said Temple brightly, ‘and Mr Foster-King has a lot on his plate at the moment. I understand we will see him at the Security Council meeting in an hour.’ As usual, Temple was crisp in appearance and unruffled in manner. At some stage in the last twelve hours he had managed to acquire a haircut. His skin had a moisturised sheen, which, like his whitened smile, Cannon put down to June’s ministrations. He remembered the title of June Temple’s next book -
Love in the Middle Years
- and wondered how his successors would handle its publication.
‘Good,’ said Temple, taking a last look at the front-page newspaper photograph of himself at the Chequers reservoir. ‘We have half an hour so let’s get on with it. Christine, where are we?’
‘David Eyam is going to be a problem,’ she replied. ‘Last night a farm with extensive outbuildings was located in Wales - we believe that Eyam has been there for at least the last five days. The farm belongs to a company which is ultimately owned by Eyam’s late father’s holdings. We are not sure at this stage how many people are helping him, but by midday we should have an exact list of names. About a dozen people we’ve been watching have all vanished over the last twenty-four hours. None of the standard means of remote surveillance - ID card verifications, email or internet usage, credit card use, phone activity or the ANPR recording of the movement of vehicles registered to the subjects - has picked up anything. This is extremely unusual and it leads us to believe that all these individuals are involved in some kind of operation and have consciously dipped below the state’s radar. Some of them will test positive for tracer chemicals released by drone at Eyam’s funeral last week, but that is a pretty haphazard means of ID-ing people.’
‘You talk about remote surveillance,’ said Temple. ‘Don’t you have anyone on the ground keeping tabs on these people with their own eyes?’
‘You will understand that there are many calls on the Security Service’s watchers, prime minister. Up to now we have tended to keep an eye on the group at High Castle intermittently, believing them to be disaffected but not ultimately a menace. We’ve been testing the water by placing intensive surveillance on an individual for a week or so then moving on, allowing the automatic monitoring and scrutiny systems to take over. But we do have someone on the inside.’
‘That’s more like it.’
‘We expect to hear from her today. We believe that she, like the others, is due to collect a package that Eyam asked her to store for him.’
‘So you know what’s in the package?’
‘No, because she has never looked inside it and we have only just managed to acquire this woman’s services. She has been able to retrieve the package without raising suspicion, the same reason we have not heard from her over the last day.’
‘But you’ve got other names from her?’
‘Yes, and some important information about the coroner’s clerk, Tony Swift, who is clearly responsible for orchestrating the fraud of David Eyam’s death. He has gone missing too, but the coroner is now being interviewed.’
‘I thought we had control over the coroners’ courts these days,’ said Glenny, who had belatedly sat down and flung an arm around an adjacent chair.
‘We do,’ said Shoemaker, ‘but I gather in this case it was thought prudent to give the coroner a free rein in a public hearing so that there could be no suspicion that David Eyam was murdered on the instructions of the British government.’
‘You see,’ said Temple to Cannon with a note of hurt. ‘We make a commitment to openness and transparency and people abuse it.’
Cannon grunted, not in agreement with Temple, but at his delusion.
‘Where are we on Kilmartin and the woman he was going to see?’ asked Temple.
‘Yes, Kate Lockhart,’ said Ferris with a glance to Shoemaker. ‘Eyam’s friend and it now emerges sometime lover. Kilmartin has yet to be in touch but we know that he met her at a remote country church outside the village of Richard’s Cross for twenty-five minutes yesterday.’
‘You observed this?’
‘No, a tracking device was fitted to his car when he was at Chequers. Previously we were relying on the Automatic Number Recognition camera network. We assume he gave a lift to her afterwards because she had not been seen at Eyam’s cottage, and that they departed south together. The car did not stop until it reached London last night at ten.’
‘Where are they?’
Ferris frowned. ‘The car is in a car park in the Bayswater area. There is no record of Kilmartin having an address in London. The short answer is we don’t know.’
‘What about his phone?’ asked Glenny.
‘Switched off,’ said Shoemaker.
‘And hers?’
‘Also switched off.’
‘Well, get hold of him somehow,’ said Temple. ‘Let’s have him in this afternoon after my statement to the House. Is there anything else I should know about?’
‘Mr White is planning to see the Lockhart woman if she can be tracked down,’ said Ferris, who was discreetly consulting the screen of a smart phone beneath the Cabinet table.
‘He mentioned to me that Oliver Mermagen had made an approach,’ said Temple. ‘He seems to think he can prevail on her in some way. Maybe she can be turned. It seems unlikely but I’ve no objections. If he does meet with her, presumably you can keep watch on her from that moment.’
‘Yes,’ said Ferris, who had stopped scrolling through his emails and was reading one message intently.
‘Good, let me know if anything important happens.’
Cannon raised his hand from the Cabinet table. ‘What about the police, prime minister? Surely this is the time to bring them in. They can make arrests on the basis of everything that is known about Eyam and this man Swift, who is clearly guilty of distorting a public process.’
‘That is all in hand, Philip,’ said Glenny. ‘The police will be making arrests.’

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