Whispers of Betrayal (32 page)

‘So,’ Bendall broke the spell, ‘Beaky is really Boadicea. From the regiment of Amazons.’

‘Try Signals.’

Bendall shook his head slowly, disbelieving, disliking. ‘How the hell d’you figure that one out?’

‘Look at what they’ve done. Water. Traffic lights. Fairly low grade stuff. But then telephones. Now bombs. That’s technical. Which means we’re probably looking for expertise in communications and explosives. Signals and Engineers. So let me ask – how many
female explosives experts are there who could make a real mess of Battersea power station?’

The Defence Secretary searched for someone else who might help him, but he was on his own. ‘Perhaps about twenty,’ he guessed.

‘OK, twenty. And how many women officers have left the Signals regiment over the last few years? Probably ten times that number. And if Gittings has managed to make an enemy of any woman, there’s got to be a damned good chance she’s in the same regiment. Which means Signals.’

‘You sure?’

‘No. But one of the two’s a woman,’ he insisted.

‘The
two
?’

‘The CCTV has only ever shown four. Four of them stuffing up the water system. Four of them knocking over the traffic lights.’

‘And at Battersea?’

‘After Payne they were down to three. The watchman couldn’t see for sure in the dark, but three chimneys, three chimney sweeps. Stands to reason. Now they’re down to two.’ Goodfellowe winced – God his head hurt.

‘Two. And one a woman …’

‘And if we can avoid shooting her in the back, all the better,’ Goodfellowe added. He didn’t know why he said it but, like the emerging chrysalis, he found himself driven on. It sounded like an accusation, and everyone knew it.

The Prime Minister and the Backbencher. There could be no doubt about it now, theirs wasn’t so much a relationship as a collision, an encounter of fire that one day would burn their relationship to ashes. Maybe that day had already arrived. Every single member sitting around the briefing table was looking at Bendall, waiting for the sign. The Prime Minister clearly should no longer tolerate this insolent man, not if he were to retain his dignity and authority, yet he still needed him. How would Bendall act, from strength or from need? A turning point in the story of both men.

Bendall cleared his throat. ‘Check it out,’ he instructed. ‘Engineers and Signals.’ The creases across his face began to lighten. From a cast list numbering in the tens of thousands, they were now looking for a mere handful. If Goodfellowe was right, the odds had shifted
dramatically in his favour. ‘We need to look for someone with a grievance, or someone who’s been acting strangely,’ he concluded, attempting to appear as if he had taken charge of the proceedings once more.

The members of COBRA sat with their heads lowered, scribbling as though dutifully taking note of his instructions. None of them wanted to raise their eyes and acknowledge that their Emperor no longer had his clothes.

It was as they were dispersing from COBRA that the Prime Minister took Goodfellowe to one side. The top had finished spinning, now things must lie as they had fallen.

‘Trouble is with you, Tom, I don’t always like you very much. The damnable thing is, at the moment I can’t do without you.’

Goodfellowe considered, then nodded. ‘Prime Minister, I think I know exactly how you feel.’

It is the middle of the day, the sun has at last come to London after days of dishwater skies, yet Mary is lying in bed in the small faceless hotel in Bayswater that is all she has left to call home. She is crying softy, shedding tears into her pillow for Scully whom she now knows is dead.

As her tears fall, Mary has no idea how much danger she is in. She is unaware that she is on the list of 286 former women officers of the Signals and REME regiments for whom the security services have been searching frantically during the last twenty-eight hours. She has no inkling that as one by one they have located and eliminated the others, Mary has risen to the very top of their list. She is the one who knew Gittings, who threw a punch at him in the middle of the mess, who had a grievance, who is now acting strangely. Who has left home, but no one knows for where.

Except Barclaycard.

The only advance warning Mary gets is a slight scrabbling at the door before it splinters off its hinges and she is faced by half a dozen armed men in hoods with weapons drawn and pointing at her. She is left defenceless, doesn’t even have time to reach for her clothes or even to shout.

She barely has time to realize that it’s all over, to wonder whether they are going to shoot her, too. She has only a fleeting moment before they grab her. She uses it to squeeze the hand of Andrew McKenzie, who is lying in the bed beside her.

Mickey heard about it over a cup of tea and an Eccles cake she was sharing with a lobby correspondent in the Press Gallery. He’d got it from a colleague, who had picked it up from one of the assistant press secretaries at Downing Street with whom he was trying to start an affair. Something was up.

A call to the Downing Street press office half an hour later had all but confirmed it. The lobby should expect an imminent summons for an important announcement. A Very Important Announcement. Don’t go rushing off for lunch too early, chaps, you won’t want to miss this. You’ll get the summons as soon as the Prime Minister is free from the meeting of COBRA.

All of which, in Mickey’s mind, raised an interesting question. If COBRA was meeting, why wasn’t Goodfellowe there?

The answer proved simple enough. He hadn’t been invited. Obviously some administrative foul-up. So he hurried across to the Cabinet Office, breaking into a skipping run as he crossed Parliament Street, braving red lights and the wrath of taxi drivers.

His efforts were in vain. The meeting had finished. Even as he sprinted up the stairs inside the Cabinet Office, the powers in the land were dispersing to their respective corners of the empire with barely the courtesy of a nod in his direction. He’d missed it. Goodfellowe stood breathing fire, feeling the sweat beginning to gather around his collar, his hair looking as if it were desperate to escape. Then Bendall emerged, with Jumpers at his elbow and surrounded by the usual dithering of altar boys.

The Prime Minister spotted the backbencher, frowned as though in reprimand, then extended an arm. ‘Tom! Walk with me.’

They traced the private way to the back door of Downing Street, through the ancient Tudor corridors of ghosts and faded glories.

‘Glad you’re here. Want to thank you for your help, Tom, now that it’s over.’

‘Now what’s over, Prime Minister?’

‘Of course, you don’t know. We found the last of them a couple of hours ago. Wrapped up in bed together, wouldn’t you know. Mobile telephones by their side. Signals and Engineers, just as we said.’

Goodfellowe noticed the use of the plural pronoun. History was being rewritten before it had time to go cold, and by the morning it would have been entirely Bendall’s own idea.

‘It was good to have you on board, Tom –’

Past
tense?

‘You’re a sour-faced bastard at times, in all honesty you can be a real irritation in the rectal area, know what I mean? I suppose it’s your ability to be unconventional that’s made you useful. Anyway, it’s over. Time to get on with the rest of life.’

Bendall halted his progress and turned to face Goodfellowe in the manner he might use to scold a disobedient spaniel. ‘I’m not sure what to make of you, Tom. Never quite know whose side you’re on. So far as I’m concerned, there’s only one side. Mine.’

‘That’s very black and white –’

‘How black and white do you want it, for Pete’s sake? These bastards’ve brought London grinding to a halt, held the Government to ransom, been responsible for the resignations of two Home Secretaries and completely screwed up my teatimes. To say nothing of what they’ve done to our opinion poll ratings in the run-up to next week’s by-election.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘We need a victory, Tom. We need it rather more than I care to admit, and we need it very, very publicly. Time for a little good news, which I intend to announce in about ten minutes. One dead, three in maximum security. Hell, we’ve ripped the guts out of the bastards! Time to celebrate. And time for you to stop pissing on my parade.’

Bendall took up a brisk pace, intent on leaving his problems behind, sweeping Goodfellowe along in his wake as they entered through the back door of Number Ten.

‘I’m sorry to have missed COBRA. Some mix-up …’

‘No mix-up, Tom,’ Bendall responded, still forging ahead. ‘You weren’t invited.’

‘Not invited?’

‘Understand me. It’s over, finished. I’m fed up with all this discussion. We don’t need COBRA any more. If there’s any sweeping up to do, it’ll be done on a strictly need-to-know basis. And, my friend …’ – Bendall smiled, enjoying his little power play – ‘you don’t need to know.’ It was time to reestablish who called the shots. Goodfellowe faltered, fell half a step behind as they passed before Cromwell’s disapproving eye.

‘You’re saying … I’m out?’

‘Out of COBRA. Out of that loop, yes.’

‘But I gave you everything. The water shares. The Signals woman. Without me –’

‘I’m grateful, naturally. I’m also a man of my word, Tom. Be patient until the next reshuffle. Your Cabinet job is safe.’

‘So long as you’re safe.’

‘And so long as you behave yourself. Learn to be a team player.’ Bendall shook his head slowly, as though the spaniel had peed on the carpet yet again. ‘In all honesty, I get fed up with the lack of respect you show at times. I’m the bloody Prime Minister. I don’t appreciate all this aggravation coming from a man like you.’

‘A man like me?’

‘A man who’s been given a second chance. A man who’s been brought back from the graveyard. A man who ought to be down on his bloody knees with gratitude. A man who’s got no right to play the high-minded moralist and have a go at me in front of colleagues just because some bastard gets himself killed in the process of blowing up Battersea power station. No right at all, not while he’s off screwing some Westminster barmaid while his wife’s in her sickbed. You get my drift, Tom? I’m sure you do. By the way, you’re going to have to sort out that little nonsense. Get rid of the wife or get rid of the girlfriend. I’ll not have any Minister of mine skulking around in the dark like a mushroom waiting for the press to throw thirty kinds of shit over him.’

‘It’s getting sorted …’

‘Good. Great. Nice to know we can do business together, Tom.’

They had come to the entrance to the Garden Room, the basement secretarial room of Downing Street where calm, experienced women translated the frenzied outpourings of the men upstairs into neat documents and coherent English before being transmitted to the farther outposts of Government. On the walls outside hung official photographs of past Commonwealth Conferences where Prime Ministers of many countries sat alongside the Queen. Most of the faces were black, and many had been guests of Her Majesty on previous occasions, mostly locked up in colonial gaols on charges of terrorism or some other form of treason.

‘Funny old business, politics,’ Goodfellowe muttered.

‘Like being roasted on a spit. As they turn you, half of you is overjoyed that things aren’t as bad as they were, while the other half’s just about to suffer a serious loss of humour.’ Bendall indulged the joke, his tone softening. The deed was done, the point had been made. Time to put away his cosh. ‘Tell you what, Tom, how about practising to be Prime Minister for five minutes?’

‘Does it involve either actual bodily harm or goats?’

‘I’m running late and I’ve got to prepare for the “rejoice-rejoice” bit at the press conference in half an hour. Trouble is, I’ve got some ambassador waiting to see me. Apparently he wants to convey a personal and very private message from his president. Usually means the president wants a favour; either he’s trying to get his mentally retarded son into Cambridge or his sister off shoplifting charges, some such nonsense. If only I were the brutal dictator they seem to think I am, eh? Anyway, I need another ten minutes before the press conference – change of suit, different tie, you know. So can you stand in for me until I’m ready? Entertain him. You’ve been a Foreign Office Minister so you’re used to soothing Johnny Foreigner. Push the boat out – I’ll arrange tea in the White Drawing Room, biscuits too. Give him the usual bullshit.’

‘Sorry, I’ve not been Prime Minister before. What is the usual bullshit?’

‘The porcelain pieces on the mantelshelf are Meissen, there’s a Constable landscape on the wall – not one of his best, on loan from the Tate – but a far better oil of St Paul’s by William Marlow, and porcelain miniatures of previous Prime Ministers. Wellington was the one who thought the steam train would never catch on because
they’d scare the horses, Gladstone was the one with the whores, Peel was the one who split his party, Disraeli was –’

‘Yes, I think I can manage the usual bullshit.’

‘So you’ll do it.’

‘Famous for five minutes. How can I resist?’

‘Grand.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Who?’

‘The ambassador.’

‘Hell, I don’t know. Basil or Boris or some such. Should have it on a card somewhere.’ He began scrabbling through the pockets of his jacket.

‘Where’s he from then?’

‘Oh, damn, where is it? That place in the Eisenstein film? You know – the pram and all those steps?’

‘Odessa. In the Ukraine.’

‘That’s it. Odessa.’

Bendall met the Ukrainian ambassador in the gloomy anteroom outside the Cabinet Room and succeeded in apologizing, explaining, and introducing Goodfellowe, all inside sixty seconds. He laid it on with a shovel, not only about his delight at seeing Ambassador Tintulov (he’d at last found the card) but also the historic importance of the press conference he was about to give, as well as the quality of his temporary replacement.

‘Tom here is one of the most important men in my Government, Ambassador. Rumour has it that I’m just about to promote him to the Cabinet. One of our best, otherwise I wouldn’t entrust you to him. Please make yourself at home. But I must beg a favour – make sure that Tom doesn’t make himself too much at home inside Downing Street while my back is turned, eh?’

And he had laughed, smacked Goodfellowe heartily between the shoulder blades and departed on the run.

Goodfellowe had led the ambassador up the great stairs, past the rogues’ gallery of former prime ministers, to the White Drawing Room with its oil paintings and porcelain and too-soft sofas and had waited until the bullshit had all but run out. He had a vague
idea that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had used this room as his bedroom when he was Prime Minister and had died here of a broken heart. Goodfellowe was on the point of embroidering some account of how the room was still supposed to echo with the sobbing of his ghost when, from the clamour that arose from below, it became apparent that Bendall had begun his press conference on the steps of Number Ten.

‘My apologies for the delay, Ambassador.’

‘It is nothing. It is history, so Mr Bendall has said. So why do we not watch?’

Goodfellowe relaxed. A very understanding man, was Boris Tintulov. So they retraced their steps down the grand staircase and came into the hallway of Number Ten with its cold Georgian tiles and empty fire grate, where they took up their position at the window to the side of the gloss-black door. The window was thickly glazed and covered in a heavy net security curtain that muffled the sound, but the picture before them was stark, almost surreal. Bendall stood in the middle of a pool of brilliant light, his back to them, shoulders braced and facing a wall of agitated humanity. Journalists were reaching for him, stretching as near as they could get, everyone anxious to question him first. They seemed to be pointing fingers of accusation, their microphones trained on him like the barrels of guns, while at the very rear stood the unblinking eyes of the cameras with lenses like howitzers.

‘In my country this would seem like a firing squad,’ the ambassador mused.

‘In this country we execute our leaders rather more cruelly. And far more frequently.’

The muffled phrases crept through the windows. ‘… these savage attacks upon the liberty of all Londoners … always made it clear that we would never give in … a day of sadness that such actions were necessary, but a day of celebration now it is over … never shrink from the difficult decisions … a Government strong in purpose and principle … a country safe in our hands.’

It was as he had reached his peroration about the country being safe in his hands that Goodfellowe began pressing his ear to the window in order not to miss a single inflexion.

‘With the passing of this threat, the great city of London has made
a fresh start. It is my view that this fresh start should be matched by the Government. I have always said that the greatest threat to any Government is complacency, and no Government of mine will be complacent. So it is my intention to reshuffle the Cabinet, to bring in new ideas, new energy, new impetus. New passion in the service of the people.’

Cries of ‘When? When?’ erupted from the firing squad. Goodfellowe had his ear pressed so close to the window that he thought he might burst through it, in spite of the fact that it was reinforced and over an inch thick.

‘I intend to reshuffle the Cabinet a week today. This time next Thursday. I look forward to seeing you all then …’

‘Oh, but you can be a brilliant bastard when you put your mind to it, Brother Bendall,’ Goodfellowe sighed, reluctant in his acknowledgement of the other man’s fieldcraft. With one sweep of his arm Bendall had ensured that he would dominate the headlines not only today but for the rest of the week. He would drip-feed the media with a judicious mixture of leaks and speculation; they in turn would fight over it like dogs on a diet, grateful for every crumb. Bendall would be seen to be in charge of events, offering a sense of fresh direction. It might even win him the by-election that was to be held on the same day, and if not – well, the reshuffle would bury any bad news beyond resurrection. He had saved London, now he had begun the process of saving himself.