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When they arrived at Thames house, the two men went straight to Basement One and knocked on Ruby Parker’s door. No reply.
“Knock again,” Mordred said.
Alec tapped and put his ear closer. “Nothing,” he said, after a few seconds.
“Maybe we should ask at reception.”
They double-backed and looked in the offices on their way out. All empty.
“Where the hell is everyone?” Alec asked. Usually there were at least ten people on this floor. It was like the fire bell had gone off, only it couldn’t be that because they’d have heard it. And there was no sign that anyone had left in a rush.
They got in the lift and went back to reception. Colin Bale stood behind his desk, a bald, stout man with a vigilant expression.
“We were called back here to see Ruby Parker,” Alec told him. “And yet we can’t find her.”
“She’s been at a funeral,” Bale replied. “She’s not back yet and won’t be for some time.”
“Any particular reason you know of?” Alec asked.
“Traffic on the A214, but as well as that, she’s making a detour. I believe the foreign secretary wants a word with her.”
“Where’s everyone else?” Mordred said.
“I take it you haven’t been watching the news,” Bale replied.
“Alec’s got e-mail alerts on his phone.”
Bale smiled in a ‘how quaint’ way. “About what?”
“Jennifer Hallowell in the Med. Is she okay?”
“This isn’t about that, although I must say, you’re not the only person in this building who’s rooting for her. Go Jennifer. No, she’s old news. If I was you, I’d make my way to the second floor, the television suite. They’re all on, all the TVs. The BBC will explain what’s happening better than I ever can. Also, look at a news site on your phone on your way up there. It’ll help prepare you.”
Mordred smiled. “Thanks, Colin.” Their relationship had been a little better of late. Nowadays, Bale seldom treated him with complete contempt, and was occasionally even cooperative.
They took the stairs to Floor 2, and Alec looked at his phone, as advised. “Well, I never,” he said. “There’s some kind of hippy sit-in on Jersey. That’s the headline. That’s the actual headline. Like it’s news.”
“It’s not something I can recall happening before,” Mordred said.
“That’s not the chief criteria for newsworthiness,” Alec replied. “You’ve also got to consider impact. Like ‘will anyone care’?”
The second floor was full of people sitting gazing at televisions showing news programmes. About a hundred souls stood or sat by about fifty desks discussing and pointing. This also wasn’t something Mordred could recall before either. The conversational noise was such that some people had to shout, which made it worse. He guessed it was what 9/11 must have been like up here. Although it surely couldn’t be anything of that magnitude, could it?
Edna Watson came over. Two inches taller than Mordred and three than Alec, thin and black with a 1960s beehive, she was still wearing the beige skirt-suit and heels she’d had on at the wedding. “Welcome to TV hell,” she said.
“Exactly what’s going on?” Alec said.
“How much do you already know?” she replied.
“Next to nothing,” Mordred said. “Alec discovered there’s a sit-in on Jersey.”
She smiled wryly. “Let’s go down to the basement then. I’ve already got a headache and it’ll be quiet down there.”
“Like a ghost town,” Alec said.
They walked into the corridor and called the lift.
“What did you think of the wedding?” Mordred asked her, when they got in.
“I’ve never been inside Tower Bridge before,” she replied. “The food was good, but I’m not keen on eating with strangers, especially the type that keep asking questions. Still, it gave me an excuse to buy a new suit.”
They’d reached the basement now. They went into an office and sat down at a desk topped with a teddy bear, a tubular stationery holder and a monitor.
“I take it that whatever’s happening, it’s pretty momentous?” Alec began. “I mean, judging by the chaos upstairs?”
“The world’s major tax havens have been invaded by protesters,” she replied. “Bern, Zürich, Luxembourg, the City of London, Jersey, Guernsey, Wilmington and Dover in Delaware, Singapore, the Cook Islands, the Caymans, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Bermuda, Turks and Caicos ... Shall I go on? Thousands of protesters in each one, some of them right here in the capital, today. It’s amazing we didn’t trip over them on the way back from Tower Bridge. Well, I didn’t. You might have.”
“What sort of ‘protesters’?” Alec said. “My newsfeed mentioned a ‘sit-in’. I guess that must mean they’re white and middle class?”
She smiled. “It’s a bit more complex than that, sir. We’re looking at a global phenomenon.”
“Exactly like the white middle-classes,” Alec replied.
“Alec’s an unreconstructed rightie,” Mordred told her. “He hates the white middle-classes.”
“And no one saw it coming?” Alec went on, ignoring him. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m only a junior agent. They’re calling it ‘World War Offshore’. Or rather, that’s what they’re chanting.”
“How many protesters in all?” Mordred asked.
“No one knows,” she replied. “Tens, possibly even hundreds of thousands. It’s still happening as we speak.”
“When did it begin?” Mordred asked.
“Sometime while we were at the wedding,” she said. “Obviously, it must have been coordinated, but no one can work out how. Neither GCHQ nor the NSA picked up on it. It’s a significant mystery.”
“Have they a common list of demands?” Mordred asked.
“As I say, sir, it’s still unfolding. It’s probably best watched on TV. Just not on the second floor, because no one can actually hear the commentary.”
A phone began to ring in another office, somewhere down the corridor.
“I’ll get it,” Mordred said, rising to his feet. He looked in two rooms before he found it. Whoever it was, he or she was persistent. Twenty-two rings. Any normal caller hung up after five or six.
“Is this Mr Mordred?” the caller asked. Ian. ‘Young Ian’ as opposed to ‘Previous Ian’ whom no one was still allowed to speak of because he’d gone to Syria to help the Kurds fight ISIS.
“Speaking,” Mordred said.
“We’re going to the projection room to watch BBC News 24. Ruby Parker’s just called reception. She says you and Mr Cunningham are to report there and keep watching until she gets back.”
“We’ll be up pronto. Thanks.”
He put the phone down. There was a lot of overlap between Young Ian and Previous Ian: they both dressed like relics from the 1950s, for a start. He and Edna were roughly the same age –early twenties – but you wouldn’t know it of either of them. Phyllis had been giving Edna style instructions – it didn’t quite capture their spirit to call them ‘tips’ – but Ian had no excuse. Both looked like they were Mad Men fans.
Mordred went back to Alec and Edna. “We’re expected in the projection room.”
“You two go ahead,” Edna said. “I might get a glass of water. The wedding was quite a stressful experience.”
“I didn’t like to ask,” Mordred said, when he and Alec were in the lift again. “How could that wedding be a ‘stressful experience’ I mean, given that Edna’s not me, and that she is training to be a spy?”
“Having to ‘reveal’ to everyone that Annabel’s an escort.”
“Bloody hell, those were her actual instructions?”
“Apparently so.”
“What the hell was Annabel thinking, giving everyone a different story to tell? She must have worked out it’s precisely the sort of thing that’ll make people dig deeper. Does she want them to find out she’s a spy?”
“I wonder whether we should let Ruby Parker know,” Alec said. “She’s behaving like someone who’s on the edge.”
“Probably. I don’t know. Hasn’t she always been like that?”
“No, I believe she’s got worse. Think of the gents’.”
They went straight to the projection room – a forty-seat theatre with a four metre screen - and sat down at the back. People were beginning to leave, presumably to go to briefings or to catch up with their work, but it was clear that quite recently there had been standing room only in here.
The screen showed a middle-aged female presenter with a microphone, in the midst of a large moving crowd, above which could be seen a row of ornate buildings, the HSBC logo, and a tiny strip of blue sky. At the bottom of the screen: ‘Saint Helier Town Centre, Jersey’. Beneath that, a tickertape with breaking news elsewhere in the world. As far as Mordred could tell, all the places mentioned were tax havens, ‘secrecy jurisdictions’ as MI7 tended to refer to them.
“I don’t know whether you can hear that in the studio, Aidan,” she said, holding the microphone out, as if it was a talent show. “‘No more offshore’,” she added, just in case he couldn’t and because, like a lot of live TV reporters, she apparently felt under a contractual obligation to keep talking, no matter what.
“What’s the exact scale of the protest in Saint Helier?” Aidan asked.
“According to my own estimates, here in the capital, we’re looking at about ten thousand people. So far the protests have been entirely peaceful, but it could pose a problem for the Jersey police if that changes. There are only two hundred and forty officers on the island. They’ve been told, I hear, to take a low-key approach.”
“Thank you, Jennifer. Now we’re just going to have a look at what’s been happening in the Cayman Islands, because we’ve just received some footage from a protester on the island. It’s now just gone midday there. It looks like this.”
The screen switched to show marching protesters – men and women of all ages, most of them noticeably less European-looking – chanting ‘no more offshore, no más fraude fiscal’ – with their fists held up. Apart from a palm tree in the background, it could have been anywhere. Most of them didn’t look like they were having a good time. They looked vaguely worried.
“I’ve been told the police have just arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, to monitor the protest,” Aidan said. “They’re not looking to disperse it yet, although the State Governor, Chandler Brydon, has pointed out that it is not a legal gathering, and called on demonstrators to go home. There: you can see the police ... lining the streets. We’ll keep you fully updated on that while we go now to Hong Kong, where it’s one o’clock in the morning.”
More protesters. Then Aidan showed some protesters in Singapore, then Panama, then Zürich, then Luxembourg, before finally coming to rest outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. All the footage was similar, and after you’d seen four or five clips, it began to get a bit boring. Even Aidan seemed to be losing interest. Luckily, someone had dug up a university analyst to talk about how tax havens worked, what companies used them, why, and what the protesters might hope to gain in terms of tighter regulation.
Alec leaned over to Mordred. “What this really needs is some kind of alternative point of view. Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells, maybe, to rail against any kind of dissent. Seriously, where the hell are the politicians?”
Mordred chuckled. “Probably hiding, hoping it’ll go away.”
The analyst started to talk about how the British government had actually made tax avoidance easier in recent years, but ‘only for big companies’. And how the US had felt compelled to follow suit. And how the Bank of England bore a large portion of the blame.
“That ought to smoke them out,” Alec said.
“It’s vaguely surreal,” Mordred said.
“Really? You don’t say. If only every day at the office could be like this. Us two guys sitting on comfy chairs, watching the TV. Maybe we should order some pizza in.”
Mordred laughed. “Imagine Colin Bale. Guy in a Dominos uniform: ‘Mordred and Cunningham live here? Three cheeses and a pepperoni’.”
“‘Oh my, what’s MI7 coming to?’” Alec said in an Edinburgh accent. “‘Oh, my, my.’”
Mordred laughed. “Keep my seat. I’m going to the toilet.”
“Yeah, okay. If I’m gone, it means Ruby Parker’s come back.”
In the toilet/loo/bathroom, Mordred met Young Ian. He wondered how long it would be before he stopped thinking of him that way and he just became Ian. They went to urinals at opposite ends of the row, even though there was no one else in there.
“How are you getting on?” Mordred asked.
“Very well, thank you, sir. I’m enjoying it.”
“What do you think of the protests?”
Young Ian looked as if he’d been caught off guard, but to his credit, he didn’t urinate on the wall. “The protests? How do you mean?”
“Do you agree with them? Do you wish you were there?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether they’re threatening the realm.”
Mordred got it now. Young Ian thought it was a test. How loyal are you to Queen and Country? He was less than ten years younger than Mordred, but Mordred suddenly felt like his dad. “Well, do you think they are?” he continued. “Threatening the realm?”
“Er, it’s not for me to say.”
“Listen, Ian, this isn’t the army. We’re spies. We’re expected to work things out for ourselves. And we’re allowed our own opinions. Take me, for example. I’m a communist.”
Ian urinated on the wall. To his credit, he washed his hands then blew-dry them. Always stay calm when you’re defending the realm. He left without speaking or making eye-contact.
Mordred sighed. Another Christmas card he wouldn’t be getting. When he came out of the toilet, he noticed something subtly different. It took him a moment to realise: everyone was looking at him. Only one or two directly; most people were following him out of the corners of their eyes. As far as he could tell, there was nothing hostile in their expressions, rather a mixture of pity and amusement. Bloody hell, you couldn’t even have a joke in here. What had Young Ian said? It must have been pretty drastic to get everyone on board. Perhaps he’d run out of the building, screaming.
But what could you possibly do or say that would clear up such a misunderstanding? He felt self-conscious now. He was probably blushing a bit. Maybe he should just keep walking till he reached the Chinese embassy. I’m a communist. I’m here to claim political asylum. But not that kind, no. Not the genocidal kind that writes little red books and has great leaps forward.
When he returned to his seat in the projection room, Ian was sitting six rows away next to Edna in the front row. Crisis averted ... probably. Alec was eating an apple. “You’re about to be world-famous,” he told Mordred.
“What do you mean? Where did you get that apple, by the way?”
“I pinched it from the wedding. No one eats fruit at a wedding.”
“How am I going to be ‘world-famous’?”
“They’ve set up a Youtube channel. The protesters. Keep watching.”
“What am I looking for?”
“If I tell you, it’ll spoil the surprise.”
Even in here, everyone was slyly looking at him. A few people changed seats, from the front to the back and wide, obviously so they could get a better look at him. It was starting to feel oppressive, the sort of thing that turns a man into a paranoid wreck. Focus. There was something behind it, obviously. All he had to do, if Alec was right, was keep watching.
Lots more shots of protesters in various parts of the world. He hadn’t noticed before, but the chant wasn’t the only thing all the groups had in common. They were all sporting Jolly Rogers, but not the white-on-black variety, rather, any on any colour. Here, yellow on tie-dye blue, there, multi-coloured on orange, farther afield, purple on pink and white polka dots, and so on. Obviously someone had sat down and made these: there was nothing ad-hoc about them.
He suddenly felt depressed. Something momentous in the history of the world, something good for a change, and what was he doing? Sitting in a projection room with an apple thief and a man who’d just urinated on a wall.
“Meanwhile, in the last few minutes, some of the protesters have set up a Youtube channel,” Aidan the newscaster said. “The movement’s spokesperson in Jersey, music executive Hannah Lexingwood, used that channel to make what she described as an ‘announcement to the world’ a few moments ago.”
From there, the screen cut straight to a head and shoulders shot of his older sister - Lexingwood née Mordred - in Saint Helier. She was addressing a crowd of protesters beneath candy-coloured Jolly Rogers and the red flags of Real Alternative.
He didn’t hear what she said. He was too busy having an out-of-body experience.
