The Wormwood Code (18 page)

Barney nodded and took his place in the seat on the opposite side of the desk. Held the mug in his hands, enjoying the warmth on his fingers, although the room was not itself cold. The PM sat down, seemed to stare off into space considering what he was about to say, and then finally looked at Barney.

Barney had, in fact, been expecting the summons. A few hours earlier Igor had finally told him about Dane Bledsoe and his political machinations, and how even a week earlier he had said that the PM would be forced to resign before polling day. And then, the day before, the PM had announced to his closest advisors that resignation was on the cards. The public had yet to hear about it, his resignation had not yet been tendered, but it was a bolt of lightning about to strike the breakfast news on polling day itself.

'There's a secret,' said the PM, slowly, as if considering each word before he let it out into the open.

'A dark secret?' asked Barney, still not entirely able to take the whole thing seriously.

'Yes,' said the PM. 'Very dark. The man who came here, Bledsoe, if that is his real name, knows it, has proof of it in his possession. He's threatened to reveal it today if I don't resign. I have until 5 a.m.'

They both looked at the clock.

'Why did he leave it so late?' asked Barney.

The PM shrugged.

'Maximum impact, polling day morning. No time for our spin doctors to get hold of it, no time for the party to recover. If I don't resign, we're finished, I'm finished, the party's finished. If I do resign, then they'll hurriedly put someone else in place, probably the Chancellor, and they might get by, given how insipid the opposition is.'

Barney took a sip of tea.

'What's the secret?' he said.

The PM laughed bitterly, shaking his head.

'I can't say,' he said. 'I just can't. But if it gets out, I'm done for, that's all.'

'Bledsoe met with Igor last week,' said Barney.

'Igor?' said the PM, surprised.

'Told him that he was in line for your job,' said Barney.

'Igor. God's sake,' said the PM. 'Anyway, they wouldn't be able to do that, not at this much notice.'

Barney shrugged.

'It's MI6,' he said casually. 'Or the CIA. These people do what the hell they want, they throw money at stuff. Maybe there are fifty thousand ballot papers waiting in Sedgefield with the name Igor written on them.'

The PM breathed deeply. Were they that powerful? He smiled ruefully at the thought. Of course they were. Of course they could do what they wanted. Next to them, next to Murdoch, next to the Americans, next to the banks, his power was nothing. He bit his bottom lip; he shook his head.

'I need you to help me,' he said. 'But I can't tell you the secret.'

Barney took another long drink, staring across the desk.

'You think you can get out of it?' he asked. 'That there's a way for you to stop Bledsoe?'

The PM nodded slowly.

'Yes,' he said, 'I think there is. But I need your help.'

Barney drained his cup and thought about it. Nothing to gain, nothing to lose. Yet, if he helped the PM out and protected his position, how many people would thank him for it, other than the PM himself?

'All right,' he said eventually. 'What d'you want me to do?'

––––––––

0443hrs

T
he same office, a little over an hour later. The grey light of dawn beginning to mix with the soft light of the two table lamps which had burned all night. There was another knock, the door opened, and Dane Bledsoe walked quickly into the room, carrying the same briefcase as the evening before.

'Decision time, my ill-toothed frien....'

He cut the sentence short, looked at Barney Thomson.

'Where's the Prime Minister?' asked Bledsoe sharply.

'He's resigned,' said Barney. 'I'm Prime Minister.'

Bledsoe laughed.

'The friggin' barber,' he said, mockingly. 'What have you done with him? Who are you working for?'

Barney raised his finger and wagged it at Bledsoe.

'No,' he said. 'I'm the PM, this is my house, I'm in charge. None of your crap. Lose the accent, none of your shite, and show me what's in the briefcase.'

Bledsoe walked forward and sat down in the seat opposite Barney. He leaned forward, and started speaking very slowly and clearly, as usual in Barney Thomson's world, after the fashion of George Clooney in
From Dusk Till Dawn
.

'Listen, bud,' he snapped, accent back to the original North American, 'you can't be Prime Minister because you're not a member of the parliamentary Labour party. And if the PM has indeed resigned, which I'm about to make sure of, the name on all the ballot papers for the Labour party in Sedgefield is going to be one Igor Djindjic, not Barney friggin' Thomson.'

Barney was completely cool. A few years earlier he wouldn't have been capable of even sitting here, but he'd been through so much, he'd lived and died, that nothing bugged him anymore. He was cooler than James Bond. Barney Thomson was, without question, the coolest man on the planet. He didn't work for anyone, he didn't owe anyone anything. This was why the PM had turned to him in his hour of need.

'And who's going to testify that I myself am not Igor Djindjic?' he asked. Super-smooth. 'Igor?' he added, voice cold. Felt a little bad beating up on Igor like this, but it was all part of the plan, and Igor wasn't going to come out of it badly. Igor was a pawn in the whole thing, but not one of Barney's making.

'Listen, barber,' said Bledsoe, spitting out the word, 'it's time for you to leave this goddam house and let what's going to...'

His sentence drifted off as Barney held up his hand.

'Wait!' said Barney, his face a smile of curiosity and revelation. 'Say that again.'

'What?' snapped Bledsoe.

'House,' said Barney. 'Say "house" again. Go on.'

Bledsoe scowled at him, the secret agent beginning to lose his cool.

'My God,' said Barney, 'you're Canadian. Who are you working for?'

Bledsoe was simmering, teeth grinding together. If it had been a Warner Brothers cartoon, smoke would've been coming out of his ears.

'The CSIS,' he said. 'Now I'm going to have to kill you.'

'The what?' asked Barney.

'The Canadian Security Intelligence Service,' snarled Bledsoe.

Barney smiled.

'Don't believe you,' he said. 'The Canadians don't have a secret service. I've seen
Bowling For Columbine
, you're all too nice.'

Bledsoe stood up quickly, reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the small revolver with silencer attachment, cloaked with secret film – developed by the CSIS – which meant it hadn't been detected by any scanner.

'Goodbye,' said Bledsoe. 'An hour from now, the contents of the box in this briefcase are going to be revealed to the world. The truth about your undying Prime Minister will be out, and he will have no option but to resign. On polling day. The British election will descend into farce, and the Canadian operatives within British politics will be able to make their move, and we will begin to exert control over the running of this country. First Britain, and soon the world.'

He laughed demonically.

Barney stared down the barrel of the gun. He may have been cooler than James Bond, but at a time like this he had to resort to the same tactics as the big fella. Keep them talking.

'Why Ramone?' he asked.

'Keep me talking, eh?' said Bledsoe mockingly. 'Well, it won't work.'

'You killed him because you were his boyfriend,' said Barney, employing the same mocking tone. That worked for Bond sometimes too.

'He was MI6, you moron,' said Bledsoe, 'and it was the CIA who killed him, not me. It was him who discovered the truth about your PM, the truth which had remained hidden for two millennia. We needed to get it from him.'

'And Thackeray?' asked Barney.

Bledsoe breathed deeply, bringing himself under control. Aware that he was allowing Barney to play him for a fool.

'If only you'd got to see inside this briefcase before you died, you'd know.'

He straightened the gun, aimed at Barney's forehead.

There was a noise behind him, and he turned quickly. The grey light of dawn glinted dimly off the PM's dull grey teeth.

'You!' snapped Bledsoe bitterly, as if he hadn't seen enough of that face over the previous few days.

With Bledsoe's head turned, Barney leapt out his seat across the desk and dived for him. He turned, just as Barney made contact, and the two men fell to the ground, grappling with each other, a gun between them. In struggles to the death such as this, there is always a difference. Sometimes it is that one man is a trained killer; sometimes it might be that that man wants to win too much, while the other is colder and more detached. And sometimes it's just plain luck, over which neither man has the slightest control.

The gun went off. The two bodies slumped to the side. The Prime Minister looked down on the latest death which had occurred in the offices of Number 10 Downing Street.

'Oh, crap,' he muttered.

Bledsoe's armed moved, and then the rest of his body. But the bullet had been fired into him, and the movement was coming from Barney Thomson, who was underneath the Canadian covert operative, pushing him off. Barney struggled out from beneath and then stood up. He had a spot of blood on his shirt from contact with Bledsoe's chest, slightly breathless from ten second's exertion.

'Jesus. You all right?' asked the PM.

Barney nodded. He swallowed, looked down at the latest body in the ever-growing catalogue of death in which he was involved. Then he looked at Bledsoe's briefcase and glanced back at the Prime Minister. The PM nodded. He knew that of all the people in the world, he could trust Barney Thomson.

Barney lifted the case, which had fallen to the floor in the tumult, placed it on the desk, flipped the catches. He looked at the small wooden box, then lifted it out and opened the lid.

He gasped. Even he, Barney Thomson, the emperor of cool, gasped. He swallowed, he glanced round at the PM, he looked back at the box. He felt a slight, involuntary shiver in his fingers.

'It's extraordinary,' he said. 'Extraordinary.'

The PM nodded.

'Yes,' he said. 'I know.'

Barney Thomson, barber, went to close the lid of the small box, which until a few weeks earlier had been unlooked upon by any man for almost two thousand years, but he could not yet take his eyes off it.

'What are you going to do?' asked Barney.

The PM walked over, stood beside Barney and looked down into the briefcase.

'I'm going to win this election, and then I'm going to serve another four or five years as Prime Minister,' he said.

Barney nodded. Good luck with that, he thought.

'Are you going to have to kill me?'

The PM squeezed his shoulder.

'Never,' he said. 'Never.'

Barney nodded. You can always trust the word of the Prime Minister, he thought.

0435hrs

A
lmost twenty-four hours after the Prime Minister had thought he was going to have to resign from his position at the head of the government, he sat and watched the BBC as the election results came in. Labour vote down across the board, their majority vastly reduced, but victory was now assured. He had won an historic third term as Prime Minister and, even if he didn't see it out, even if Barney Thomson's prediction of a few days earlier came true and he was forced out by Christmas, his place in the history books was assured.

As MI6 and the CIA licked their wounds over the Bledsoe fiasco; as DCI Grogan and DS Eason were told to forget everything they'd learned about the murders of Ramone and Thackeray – which hadn't been very much in any case – and to go home and take a week off; as the leader of the opposition crawled into his coffin, and lay in darkness preparing his resignation speech; as the world returned to normal, and as the hardworking, decent, honest people of Great Britain slept soundly in their beds, fully anticipating the result which awaited them the following morning; the Prime Minister tucked into a deliciously urbane New Zealand chardonnay, which he shared with Dan Williams, Barney Thomson, and Igor.

'A toast,' said the PM suddenly, breaking a fifteen minute silence, during which results-fatigue had held sway and three of the four men had been in a state of near sleep. Barney, Williams and Igor leapt into life, or at least staggered into life.

'Five more years of New Labour!' said Williams.

The PM smiled, the fixed smile that was always there, only slightly diminished as he'd been intending to make a toast to himself.

'Five more years!' he said.

Barney said nothing, but chinked the nearest glass he could find.

'Arf.'

The PM closed his eyes and thought about the tasks ahead. Better health care, reduced crime, better transport links with the north, blah, blah, I'm only thinking inside my head, I'm not talking on TV, he had to say to himself. Enough of that. Broker a peace settlement in the Middle East, ruin it by invading Iran and Syria... there were so many options open to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that it seemed so lacking in scope to just concentrate on the mundane.

Finally the exhaustion which had been gnawing at him for weeks and months finally came to call, and his mind began to scramble in all directions, as sleep charged in on its multi-coloured horse and snatched the Prime Minister from the clutches of imaginary future grandeur.

Williams still watched the TV, not about to be comrades with Barney and Igor, himself already dreaming of the weekend ahead. Igor too closed his eyes. He'd had a long chat with Barney that morning. He had faced up to the fact that the Canadian Secret Service plot to make him Prime Minister wasn't about to happen, and he had begun to look forward to getting back to the simple pleasures of life in Millport, away from the pressures of the Big Smoke.

Barney Thomson, barber, had already booked his flight back north for late that afternoon. His work here was done. There were no more decent haircuts needing to be given in this campaign. He checked his watch, looked round at the men who had been his constant companions for the previous couple of weeks, and then he slowly rose to his feet. It was time to get back to his hotel, put his head on a pillow and leave it there.