The Wormwood Code (11 page)

'Sir?' said Williams.

'Sir?' said Thackeray.

The PM turned slowly.

'How does it look?' he asked. He was tired; so tired, that he didn't notice that his two men were zombies compared to him.

'It makes five front pages, Sir,' said Williams.

'Five,' repeated Thackeray, who had drunk fifteen cans of Red Bull and was a little wired.

'Any of them positive?' asked the PM.

'You mean,' said Williams, 'something like Proof That The PM Lied, But If He Lied To Us, Then He Can Also Lie To The French?'

'Yes,' said the PM, 'something like that.'

'No,' said Williams.

'No,' repeated Thackeray.

'All bad,' said Williams.

'All bad.'

The PM looked sadly at them and then let his eyes drift away. He needed to get to bed and then wake up the next morning invigorated. Question Time the following evening, and he couldn't afford to be flat for that.

'Thanks guys,' he said. 'Get some sleep.'

Williams nodded.

'Good night, Sir,' he said, and opened the door.

'Sleep, sleep, yes,' said Thackeray, 'nice sleep, precious sleep.'

And off they scuttled.

The door closed and the PM looked forlornly at the dull brown varnish in the dim light of early night. He rested his head in the palm of his hand and wondered if it was too late now to hand the reigns over to someone more honest, someone more charismatic and, more than anything else, someone fresher. Like Igor.

0617hrs

A
n early start. The PM was standing at the window of his office in Downing Street looking out at the grey skies of morning. One hand thrust in his pocket, the other clutching a cup of coffee, already his second of the day. In the room were his two assistants, Williams and Thackeray. The PM, at least, had had some sleep. Williams and Thackeray had spent the night reading the papers, talking to journalists and eating caffeine chewing gum. Williams looked tired and strained, slumped in a chair at the back of the office, rubbing his eyes. Thackeray, however, had overdosed and was chattering wildly to himself in strange tongues, pacing up and down the office, doing a passable Jim Carrey impression.

'We have to do it, Sir,' said Williams. 'It's out there now anyway. We put it on the website, we take the flak for the day, we move on.'

'It's not you who has to take the flak,' said the PM, voice edgy, without turning round.

'Flak, flak,' muttered Thackeray quickly, his mouth guzzling at words like a landed fish at the air, 'noun, anti-aircraft protection, missiles, or fragments, military slang: adverse criticism: heated disagreement, dissension. Flak jacket, a heavy protective jacket reinforced with metal. From the German 'fliegerabwehrkanone'. Flak. Roberta Flack...'

The PM turned and looked at Thackeray who gave a skip and turned at the wall, began to pace back.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

Thackeray muttered at the ground, realised the PM was addressing him. Stopped, did something sudden and unnecessary with his hands and nodded.

'Sure, sure, Prime Minister. Fine, fine, totally, you know, like, fine. I agree with Williams, yes, agree I do.'

'Agree you do?' asked the PM, slightly concerned.

'Yes, yes, release it we must.'

The PM was about to say something else, but he was a little put off by the fact that he was suddenly having a discussion with a Jedi master.

The door opened, and the PM's third, un-credited advisor, walked into the room. Barney Thomson, barber and the PM's new-found sage.

'Barber, barber,' muttered Thackeray, turning his back and scuttling off to the corner, mouth mincing at syllables. 'Near the master, must not let him, no.'

'Barney,' said the PM, raising his coffee mug to him, 'thank goodness you're here.'

Williams rubbed his forehead, sunk another centimetre into his chair. Had been bothered at first, when it had become clear the influence Barney Thomson was going to have over his boss – regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to have any influence – but he was too tired now to get stressed about it. In fact, now that Thomson was here, it took a little of the pressure away from him. Thackeray turned and looked over his shoulder at Barney, muttering darkly. Barney had had an early night, and so was at least in a decent enough state of repair to deal with the morning.

'I came as soon as I could,' said Barney, although it was too early in the morning for that level of humour, and none of the other three men in the room realised he was joking.

'Shite's hit the fan,' said the PM. 'We're discussing whether to release the Attorney General's legal advice on the war in Iraq of 7th March, 2003.'

'You mean, now that it's been leaked and everyone's seen it anyway?' said Barney.

The PM stopped. Held his coffee in mid-air.

'Well, yes, I suppose,' he said.

Barney walked over to the small table where there was coffee, tea and croissants laid out.

'Might as well,' he said. 'Might as well.'

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0814hrs

D
etective Sergeant Tony Eason, undercover at Tory Party HQ, investigating the murder of the PM's previous barber, Ramone MacGregor, who had been brutally killed with a chicken almost two weeks previously, had woken early with a brilliant idea. He needed something solid to take to the Leader of the Opposition, something which would allow him into the man's inner circle, so that he could get closer to one of Count Dracula's PR men, Dane Bledsoe, a shadowy figure who had claimed to Eason to be working for MI6. Eason, who had taken to sleeping with a notepad beside his bed, had woken from a dream with the perfect election slogan for the Tories to use over the final few days of the campaign. This was what the Prince of Darkness had been waiting for. This was what would allow him into the very heart of the Tory campaign.

Eason arrived at work, shirt already flapping out of his trousers, tie a little out of line, and the remnants of a very sugary doughnut dotted around his upper cheeks. He nodded at Chardonnay the receptionist, winked at Melanie the security guard, snapped his fingers at Greta the pastry girl and strode purposefully into the reception area outside the Count's office. His secretary, Loella, looked up from that morning's correspondence.

'Loella,' said Eason, 'hi darlin'. Is the boss in?'

Loella nodded, toyed with a pen at her lips. There was something different about Eason today, and she tried to think what it was.

'See you later, sweetlips,' said Eason, and he snapped his fingers and winked at her. Loella caught herself giggling, but since there were no other women there to judge her for the outrageous retaliatory flirt, she let it go. Eason knocked, then stepped quickly into the room.

The Leader of the Opposition was sitting at his desk, fiddling with his tie. PR man Dane Bledsoe was already there, as was the Shadow Chancellor.

They looked at Eason as he entered and all recognised him as being a marketing executive, which he hadn't had the air of up until now. For the previous few days he'd looked more like a wildebeest at a predators convention.

'Come in,' said the Count. 'You've met Dane. You know Oliver,' he said, indicating the Shadow Chancellor.

Eason smiled at the man, stopped himself winking.

'Love the cooking show,' he said, because he'd never heard of or seen this guy before and couldn't think of anything else to say. The Shadow Chancellor smiled, was about to speak, but his sentence was cut off in its infancy by his boss.

'What have you got for us today?' asked the Count. 'We need something extraordinary, yet solid. Something to back up the leaked Attorney General memo. That thing's good, but not what we were hoping for.'

'Sure, sure,' said Eason. 'I've got it. You listening?'

The two politicians nodded. Dane Bledsoe raised the universal eyebrow of scepticism. Doubted that Eason could come up with a marketing slogan to sell World Cup tickets in Rio if Brazil were in the final.

Eason held his hands up in banner formation.

'We Wouldn't Have Invaded Iraq; We Would Have Caressed It Into Democracy.'

He looked at the three men, waiting for some reaction. Bledsoe knew it was complete mince, of course, and obviously unusable. The Shadow Chancellor knew he couldn't have an opinion until he'd heard his leader's opinion. The Count sat and stared at Eason, all the time running the words over in his head, imagining how it would look in print, and the picture they would have behind the words. Finally he clapped his hands together and broke out into a huge smile.

'I love it,' he said. 'I'm not saying we'll use it,' he added, and the Shadow Chancellor immediately relaxed, 'but it's a quality slogan. Stay with me today on the campaign trail. Dane will fill you in on anything you need to know. Might spark some more ideas.'

The Count rose to his feet, Eason and Bledsoe exchanged a glance. The Shadow Chancellor switched off and once more began to dream about the time when this election would all be over and he could start to mount his challenge to become the next leader of the party.

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1305hrs

T
he PM was having a nightmare. He was Ronaldo and this was the 1998 World Cup final. He had taken his rallying cry of 'Education, Education, Education!' out into the world, and the world had replied with its rallying cry of ,'Iraq, Iraq, Iraq!' Given a grilling at the press conference, he had been forced to rely on the flippin' Chancellor to bail him out, which was disastrous. He was more honour bound than ever now to hand the reigns over to the man when it came to it, and the "it" now didn't seem so far away. He was lying back in a chair, a few minute's respite between vitriol meals, having instructed his personal barber to give him a head massage. That had been a little more close contact than Barney Thomson might have wanted with any man, yet the PM had looked so completely bereft of spirit that Barney had actually found himself feeling sorry for him.

'I mean,' the PM was saying, words burbling forth as they would all day, defensive words – if the Italian team in the 1994 World Cup final had had to defend a war in Iraq, they would have done it like this – words delivered consistently on the back foot, 'what was I supposed to do? It wasn't like George would've held back on the invasion anyway. I couldn't have stopped him. I just thought, well if it's going to happen anyway, we might as well join in, lend a hand. It would've been even messier without us. In fact, if they'd let us do more...'

'I agreed to the head massage thing,' said Barney, 'but it doesn't mean I have to listen to the war justification speech, even one that's more honest than normal,' said Barney.

'Yes, yes,' said the PM, 'I just feel that I must be absolutely firm on this point, so that the hardworking, decent, honest people of England and of Britain, realise that...'

'Prime Minister!' Barney barked sharply.

The PM opened his eyes, closed them again, settled back down. Mouth shut, he thought to himself. Still had to meet the public, still had Question Time on the BBC later. The day might have been going badly, but it was going to get much worse before it got better. He had to take the ten minute timeout.

'I know,' he started again, talking the instant he stopped concentrating on not talking, 'that I coerced the Attorney General, that I lied to the party, parliament and the people. I know I forced MI6 to hand-pick and twist intelligence, I know I paid Hutton fourteen million pounds of government money to denounce the BBC and exonerate us, but what else could I do? You try working with the hand of history on your shoulder, Barn. Barn? Barney?'

He looked round. Barney had gone, walking out on another fine example of his monologuing. The PM glanced at the clock, realised that he would have to be going soon anyway, then closed his eyes and rested his head back against the chair. Suddenly the door burst open, and Thackeray careered into the room, bouncing off the walls.

'Late you are, Prime Minister,' he said. 'Come you must!'

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1317hrs

I
gor, Barney Thomson's deaf-mute hunchbacked assistant, was eating lunch at a small sandwich place not far from Whitehall. A seventeen pound bottle of mineral water, and a cream cheese bagel with blue grapes, red oranges, Senegalese capers and lettuce. He had pitched up with Barney, clutching his broom, for the PM's latest haircut, only to discover that the man had wanted a massage of the hair rather than a cut, and Barney had allowed him to go and find something to eat.

He leant forward, his hump seeming to hang over his head as he did so, and took another bite of bagel, the cream cheese squishing out the side. Mopped at his lips with a napkin, took a drink of water. The seat opposite him was pulled out and a man sat down quickly at his table. He laid out his own sandwich - a lettuce, cabbage and rocket on rye crispbread - and took a drink from his glass of thirty-four pound sparkling water.

'You must be Igor,' said Dane Bledsoe, who had snuck away from Tory Party HQ for a short while.

Igor gave him the once over, did not like the cut of his sleek, public relations jib one little bit, and nodded.

'Arf,' he muttered.

Bledsoe smiled.

'I take it I can trust you to be discreet?' he said, then he smiled again. 'Obviously you're not going to say anything to anyone, but I'm trusting you not to write it down either.'

Igor took a bite of bagel, kept his dark brown eyes locked on the man. Wasn't going to commit himself to anything.

'I work for the government,' said Bledsoe. 'MI6 to be precise.' He glanced over his shoulder to see if there might be any men with raincoats and sunglasses listening in. 'We believe that the Prime Minister is going to resign before the general election takes place next Thursday.'

Igor raised an eyebrow.

'And he's not just going to resign as party leader, he'll resign from the House altogether.'

He let the words sink in. Igor said nothing, took another bite of bagel. Regretted, a little, not going for the smoked salmon option.

'We can arrange it for you to take his place as the Labour candidate for Sedgefield, and then to become leader of the party.'