The Edge of Madness (18 page)

‘Five hundred? Five thousand?’ she persisted.

‘You can’t put numbers on it, Madam President.’ His tone was dismissive.

‘Many fewer than between us we have killed in Afghanistan,’ Shunin added.

Washington turned from the window. ‘Madam President, this is the most significant moment of your
presidency. One way or another it’s what you’re going to be remembered for. Please don’t let it be dictated by cheap newspaper headlines.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘It’s omelettes and eggs. Some things have got to get broken. That’s what war is all about. Hitting them. Hurting them. But only enough to knock them to the ground. This isn’t Vietnam or Iraq, this is sweet and sharp. Just how wars ought to be fought.’

Harry, the soldier, winced.

‘Ten, twenty thousand.’ Shunin wheezed, scrabbling for his nebulizer. ‘To the Chinese, that’s no more than a flea bite to a camel.’

‘I thought we were talking five,’ Blythe retorted sharply.

‘The Chinese themselves execute almost that number each year,’ Shunin replied. ‘They drag them off to some football stadium or stretch of waste ground and put a bullet in the back of their neck. So let’s not shed tears for the crocodile.’

‘We are not like the Chinese, Sergei. That’s the whole point. We put a different value on things.’

‘Which is exactly why we must do this,’ Washington said. ‘Because we put value on human life. Particularly on American lives. That’s our job.’

‘My job above all,’ she snapped, stung by his tone.

‘But we’re not talking troops on the ground,’ he countered in impatience, as if she were a freshman student who hadn’t grasped the point. ‘No American casualties,
just in and out with a few missiles, and then a media onslaught on world opinion, hand in hand with our Russian friends. Do it right and the two of you will probably end up with a Nobel Peace Prize.’

‘And what if they retaliate? Use their own missiles?’

‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he said, spreading his hands in exasperation. ‘That’s why they’re going cyber. We’ve got so many more missiles than they have. And ours work.’

‘I need to think,’ Blythe insisted.

Washington slapped his thigh, his voice rising. ‘George Washington didn’t need to think, Madam President. He didn’t hesitate. He just rowed across the Delaware and…’ And beat the crap out of the British. Perhaps the comparison wasn’t entirely apt. He let the words fade away, leaving a trail of heat.

‘Marcus, I think you and I are going to need a little talk about respect after this.’

‘We get this wrong and there ain’t gonna be no “
after this
”!’ he exclaimed, his voice adopting the defiant drawl of a Southern slave.

Her eyes flamed with fury at his insolence. ‘I believe you owe me an apology.’

But he remained mute, sullen. The two of them had jumped into a fetid swamp that sucked them back through three hundred years of American history layered with injustice, slavery, sexism and guilt. She was the most powerful woman her country had ever had, he one of its most prominent blacks, and neither had made it this far by giving way.

Their confrontation faded as they became aware that the others had been drawn to the television screen. It had been left on by D’Arby, who seemed to be addicted to it, with the volume muted. Now the pictures were demanding their attention. The Prime Minister hurried to turn the sound back on.

The screen showed amateurish and jerky pictures of a US warship, sitting in the sun and stranded, according to the commentary, on an Iranian sandbank. Small patrol boats were circling the ship, their Iranian revolutionary flags streaming in the wind. The lens of the camera, which was clearly located on one of these boats, foreshortened the perspective to make it seem as though Iranian hornets were buzzing tight in upon the flank of the hapless American vessel. The images panned in to show the warship, its superstructure, its armaments, its flag. The caption on the screen revealed its name. The USS
Reuben James
.

The Iranians were accusing the Americans of an act of deliberate aggression that had been foiled solely by the vigilance of the Iranian coastal defence forces, the commentary said. The Americans, in turn, were blaming catastrophic computer failure in the navigation systems and were seeking Iranian understanding.

‘This can’t be coincidence,’ D’Arby whispered. Blythe gave a moan of despair.

As they continued to watch, the Iranian craft kept circling, mocking, tormenting, their banners flying in triumph. Then the tug, low, squat and ugly, came into
view. Hawsers were cast to secure it to the frigate. They were going to attempt to drag the
Reuben James
backwards off the sandbank, like a beached whale, all in front of the cameras. The American humiliation was complete. Even if the incident could be restricted to nothing more than a war of words, it was clear that the Iranians had already achieved a spectacular victory.

Saturday, 5.32 p.m. Castle Lorne.

They had taken a break, discouraged by the scenes of the
Reuben James
and exhausted by their own bickering. For a few moments Blythe Edwards had debated whether she should return immediately to deal with the crisis, but was persuaded to stay by the knowledge that their other crisis was still more pressing. Yet whatever it was they decided, they knew it had to be decided that night. Time had become their enemy, too.

Harry was resting on his bed, trying to clear his thoughts, when he heard a knock at the door. It was D’Arby. The Prime Minister smiled as he entered, but in a manner that didn’t reach his eyes.

‘We’re running out of options, Harry.’

‘What can I do about it, Mark?’ Harry replied wearily.

‘Nail Blythe.’

‘What?’

‘Bring her alongside, Harry. You may be the only one who can.’

Harry swung his legs over the side of his bed, but didn’t get up. He felt wounded by what D’Arby had suggested. He was a man who relied on his instincts, they’d kept him alive more than once, yet right now the tingling feelings swirling in his gut were pulling him in different directions. D’Arby was a long-standing colleague and friend–
political
friend, at least–and there was no doubting that this was one of the most perplexing and dangerous moments that either of them had ever faced. It was a time for leadership and D’Arby, his Prime Minister, was calling on his loyalty. Yet D’Arby was also using him, using everyone–nothing wrong in that, except it felt like a snake wriggling up his trouser leg. And there was still so much about this business he didn’t understand. Throughout his life Harry had done the loyalty thing and done it very well, yet right now he didn’t want to turn out for D’Arby’s team any longer.

‘Do your own dirty work, Mark.’

‘What?’ The Prime Minister’s face was tired, grey with fatigue.

‘You brought me along to be your conscience, so you said. But you don’t want a conscience, you want a pimp.’

‘Harry, no. I didn’t mean it like that. Look, this Chinese thing, it’s sweeping aside all the niceties. But right now it’s the only thing that matters. We have to fight it, beat it, no matter what it costs.’

‘Do we? Do we really, Mark?’

‘But of course…’

‘On my mother’s grave I wish I could be as certain about anything as you seem to be about everything.’

‘Harry, my friend, the evidence is irrefutable.’

The Prime Minister took a step forward to bring them closer, but as he did so Harry’s gut gave another turn. ‘The only evidence I have for any of this comes from you, Mark.’

D’Arby sighed. It was a sound like a wind in autumn. ‘Your point being?’

‘I don’t think I trust you any more.’ Harry could scarcely believe he was hearing the words, least of all that they were his, but that instinct kept screaming at him. Don’t stay here, this is not a safe place to be!

‘You think I’m lying about the Chinese?’ D’Arby said.

‘I’ve begun to doubt your judgement, Mark. I’m feeling manipulated, just like you’ve been manipulating everyone else. You’ve goaded Washington, incited Shunin. Now you want me to do a snow job on Blythe.’

‘Harry, this is the only chance we have. We bring them all together in the next couple of hours or Britain goes under. We leave here without an agreement and we’re dead men walking, all of us. You seriously want that on your conscience?’

‘I don’t want World War Three on my conscience.’

‘I never thought you’d be one to run from a fight. But you can’t be neutral in this one, Harry, there’s no place
in this for priests and hand-wringers. You’re either with us—’

‘Us?’

‘The country, Harry, with your country. Your poor fucking country.’ Despite the coarseness he spoke slowly, softly, and he was staring at Harry, assessing him dispassionately, like a surgeon. ‘Last time I looked I was the country’s Prime Minister. And in this you’re either with us or…Or you’re not. It’s simple, really.’

‘It doesn’t seem simple to me.’

‘I’ve always admired you, Harry–envied you, your strength of character, your independence. So rare in the sport we play at Westminster. I should have realized you wouldn’t be like the others. My mistake. A pity. For both of us.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Oh, I thought I was flattering you. But…’ D’Arby wiped the corner of his mouth, his pale blue eyes bored into Harry. ‘Whatever it takes, Harry. Whatever it takes.’

‘You brought me here to watch your back. Now it seems I’ll have to watch mine.’

‘We all dig our own graves,’ the Prime Minister whispered, before walking out the door.

Saturday, 5.53 p.m. Castle Lorne.

Harry needed fresh air. The castle, with its deceits and conspiracies, was growing claustrophobic, so he set out
through the strengthening breeze towards the ruins of the chapel on the cliff. He wasn’t a religious man, he questioned too many things, sometimes to destruction, even at times himself, yet he respected those who were able to embrace firm beliefs, so long as they weren’t trying to put a bullet in his back.

The pathway up the cliff was well trodden and as he approached the chapel he could see why. A small graveyard lay close by its entrance, family graves, and Alan MacDougall’s the most recent, with fresh flowers leaning against a simple dark granite headstone. The chapel itself was small, no larger than a cottage, the glass of its narrow windows long ago carried off by sea-borne storms and its roof a patchwork quilt of old, failing slates. A weathered wooden door pierced by deep cracks hung from a single hinge, yet the walls still stood thick and firm in the afternoon sun.

As he stepped inside, Harry blinked in the sudden darkness. The chapel was completely bare, its artefacts and furniture long since gone, but despite the signs of decay the uneven stone floor was clean, with no sign of debris blown by the wind or dragged in by birds. Someone still cleaned in here, still cared. The atmosphere was dark and intense, yet on the bare stone wall, near where the altar would have stood, the sun was piercing through the battered roof forming a crucifix of light that stretched from the floor almost up to the rafters. A sign, for those who believed in such things. Around the walls ran a narrow stone ledge, worn with
age and on which, in the times before pews, those who had come here would have seated themselves. And on that uneven ledge, in the chapel’s gloomiest corner, his knees pulled up beneath his chin, sat Lavrenti Konev.

‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to barge in on you,’ Harry said.

Konev shook his head, as if the interruption was of no consequence. ‘I came here to think,’ he replied quietly from the shadows. And to drink. Beside him stood a bottle of Flora’s finest. It had already suffered considerable damage, and he took another substantial swig.

As Harry’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he noticed a vivid fresh wound on the Russian’s cheek. The eye above it was closed. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked in concern.

Slowly, and for the first time, Konev turned his face towards Harry, his fingers tracing the path of the wound. ‘A small misunderstanding,’ he whispered.

‘With a door, I’m told.’

‘Something like that. Yes, it must have been a door. How stupid of me.’ His words were slurred, his tone ironic. He gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘So what of our little enterprise, Mr Jones? What do you think about the fact that we’re going to make war on the rest of the world?’

‘It might be easier to understand if we weren’t so busy making war on each other.’

Konev nodded awkwardly. ‘I fear we shall find rivers
filled with much pain in which we shall all drown.’ He paused. ‘That’s what I told him. That’s what I said to Papasha.’

‘War has unpredictable consequences.’

‘Families, too. They have consequences,’ he mumbled. ‘But there are some things we know all too clearly, Mr Jones. Papasha has already spelled them out. He will use this war to make all argument and all opposition disappear. The landscape around him will be flattened in every direction and Russia will bleed, just as Russia has always bled.’

There was an unmistakable edge to his words, Harry felt. It was as though every mention of Shunin, and of Russia, was being carved into Konev’s flesh with a blade.

‘Mr Washington was wrong, you know,’ the young Russian continued. ‘It’s not the system we have to fear, it’s the people who control it, who bend and twist everything to their own purpose. Get rid of those individuals and you have no system. And then, please God, you would have no war.’ He looked up with his one good eye, which seemed empty, like a lump of coal in the snow. It reminded Harry of a wounded soldier, on morphine, senses dulled to kill the pain. ‘Getting rid of one man can make all the difference,’ Konev continued, mumbling past thick lips.

‘You mean Mao?’

Konev wrinkled his drunken brow as though testing
out a new thought. ‘Perhaps.’ He sighed. ‘We all have to die. You. Me. No choice in that, Mr Jones. And sooner than we would like. Papasha will make sure of it. Didn’t you know? He kills everyone.’ He began to laugh until, suddenly, it seemed as though the joke was sticking in his throat and choking him. He struggled for a few moments, heaving, then he reached for the bottle once more before closing his eye and drifting off into another world.

Saturday, 8.18 p.m. Castle Lorne.

The venison that Flora MacDougall served them for dinner was as close to perfection as ever Harry had tasted, yet it would prove scarcely more successful than her lunch. The mood of the company was as dark and forbidding as the skies gathering outside. Their conversation was desultory; they’d gone over the details of what was proposed to the point where there was little purpose in pursuing them further. All that was required now was a decision. And that required Blythe Edwards.

Yet she hesitated. She had learned from the mistakes of others that war, so hastily gathered, was yet so difficult to put aside. There were many other reasons for caution, too, although somehow as the day had dragged on they seemed to fall out of focus and grow elusive. She was finding her isolation difficult to deal with. The others had come to their conclusion, had been able to see things
more clearly than she. Where was the weakness in it all, was it in their argument, or simply in her? She had to consider that possibility, that she was the one who was missing the point. Was she being blinded by emotion, distracted by the loss of both her mother and her marriage?

The images of the
Reuben James
had affected her deeply. The gunboats circling the frigate weren’t jeering simply at the ship but at her nation, mocking the entire American dream, a dream that was threatened from so many quarters. Any sign of hesitation and that trickle of derision might grow into a flood that would sweep her and all she stood for to one side. She was a Harrison, and she couldn’t allow herself to be accused of allowing the dream to die, least of all without a fight. On the other hand, she wasn’t ever going to let herself be buried in the same bottomless pit as George W.

It was while she was lost in her world of indecision, toying with the food on her plate, that the lights went out. Every single one. The power had been cut. There was no panic, there were candles aplenty on the table, and soon Mrs MacDougall was fussing around in the manner of a farmyard hen to bring them more. She assured them this was not an uncommon occurrence, nothing more than another sign of government incompetence–‘There’s no underestimating the uselessness of those ne’er-do-wells in Edinburgh,’ she said, ‘on account of their being half-English.’ D’Arby roared with amusement, although he wasn’t entirely sure whether she was joking. Yet, as they returned to their
venison, the same thought began to insinuate itself into all their minds. Was this mere coincidence?

When, after a few minutes, the lights came back on they all prayed quietly in relief.

‘You know, for a moment there, I thought it might have been the Chinese,’ Blythe suggested, giving shape to their doubts, ‘that we had been discovered and somehow they’d managed to focus in on us–just us. Turned the switches off.’

‘Not possible,’ Shunin answered gruffly, seeking reassurance in his glass.

‘But I’m afraid it is,’ D’Arby countered. No sooner had he spoken them he bit his lip as though regretting his words. He gazed round the table; he saw they were all waiting for his explanation, and his expression grew mournful. The silence became acute before he broke it, addressing himself directly to the American President who was sitting beside him. ‘I hadn’t wanted to tell you, Blythe, not yet–it didn’t seem relevant–and you’ve had enough pain to deal with. In all honesty, I never knew when the right moment would come, so I…’ His words faltered. ‘Please forgive me.’

‘For what, Mark?’ She sounded more curious than alarmed, but even as she posed the question the balance was shifting.

He stared at her for some while, then he whispered. ‘Your mother.’

‘My…mother?’ Her lips twitched in pain.

‘Your mother was a diabetic, I believe.’

She nodded awkwardly. ‘They discovered that in the hospital.’

‘Where her life was sustained by insulin. Regular doses. Delivered by something called an infusion pump. It sat at her bedside.’

‘What are you suggesting, Mark?’

‘The infusion pump was controlled by a computer.’

The words pierced her like a knife. She screamed silently, as presidents must. ‘No, please. You can’t be telling me…’ She couldn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.

‘I’m so very sorry, Blythe. What can I say? It was an unimaginably despicable act. But it seems the Chinese have the capacity to fine-tune their cyber systems to an extraordinary degree.’

‘They chose my mother?’ The words had to fight their way past her trembling lips. ‘But why her?’

He held her eyes, but hesitated before he replied, very slowly, as though in pain himself. ‘Because she was your mother. What other explanation could there be?’

She could hold back on her emotions no longer. They burst forth in a moan of despair that was ripped from a place very deep within her and that left the candles guttering in protest.