Eyam was found slumped, but conscious, on a park bench in Kensington Gardens by a Spanish student. He was holding his phone. With his remaining energy, he asked the woman not to call an ambulance but to contact his friend whom he was trying to phone. She did both. He was taken to Accident and Emergency at St Mary’s, Paddington. Half an hour later Kate joined him in a curtained cubicle, where she sat watching his tormented sleep and the ceaseless movement of his hands across his torso. He woke fifteen minutes later and turned to her.
‘How did I get here?’
‘You passed out in the park.’
‘Damn!’ he said softly.
‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘Miff and Freddie went to try to get access to Tony’s car. We need those packages. I decided to find my own way to your place – rather foolishly perhaps – taking a walk in the park.’
A young nurse put her head round the curtain. ‘How are you feeling, Mr Duval?’ She looked at the notes. ‘It’s Daniel, isn’t it?’ She smiled at Kate and drew the curtain back. ‘You look better than when you came in. The doctor will be with you when the results from your blood test are back.’
They waited for half an hour gazing on an average collection of London’s wrecked humanity; a hostile young woman who had been punched in the face, a taxi driver stabbed in the hand, a confused old man who was demanding tea and shouting that he hadn’t served in the army for eight years for this, and a large well-dressed Nigerian, whose English wife explained that he was a manic depressive who had been drinking solidly for the last twenty-four hours.
The nurses spoke as though everyone was deaf. People came, wandered round and went – relatives, ambulance personnel, police officers, social workers, cleaners and porters.
‘I think we’d better go,’ said Eyam, but then a young Chinese man in jeans and a white coat arrived at Eyam’s side and began to examine him. He reeled off the treatment he had received over the past year for the cancer – the radiotherapy on his right side, the combination of drugs known as ABVD – Adriamycin Bleomycin Vinblastine Dacarbazine, as Eyam insisted, and its side effects – nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite, and the chemotherapy he’d been given in Colombia.
The doctor sat down and looked him in the face. ‘The level of your white blood cells is very low. You are likely suffering from an infection so I’ll prescribe antibiotics for that, but you should have injections of growth factor to stimulate the production of white blood cells.’ He paused to prod Eyam’s stomach. ‘To be honest, sir, I cannot tell whether you simply need general support or if the cancer has spread. That is my worry. I want to keep you tonight for observation and then you should have a scan and see a specialist tomorrow.’
‘No, I need you to get me through the next couple of days. It’s really very important.’
‘What can be so important that you risk total failure of your health, maybe even death?’
‘Trust me, this is vital. I want you to help me, doctor.’
The doctor consulted his notepad and thought. ‘OK, it is lucky for you that I have some experience of this illness back home. I will do a deal with you, Mr Duval. There are three different types of drug that will need to be taken at strictly regular intervals during the day. But this is only a Band-Aid, Mr Duval. They won’t do you any good in the long term.’ He nodded vigorously to impress upon Eyam the seriousness of the situation. ‘I will also include a prescription for sleeping pills so that you get more than intermittent rest over the next two or three nights. These may help with the night sweats too. In return you must agree to come back here within the next forty-eight hours. Is that understood?’ He put out his hand to shake on the deal, then Eyam’s eyes closed.
He beckoned Kate outside the cubicle. ‘Your friend is at the stage where he needs constant treatment and monitoring. Do you understand? The cancer will spread unchecked without chemotherapy and he may lose his life unnecessarily.’
She nodded.
‘I don’t like doing this, but I know they’re pretty stretched up in Oncology. If you think you can look after him, I can just about agree to his discharge.’
Twenty minutes later the drugs were brought up from the pharmacy and Eyam was wheeled to the hospital entrance where they picked up a cab.
At her apartment she gave him the pills, put him to bed and left him to sleep. After an hour of pacing up and down the sitting room, she buzzed Kilmartin up.
‘How is he?’ said Kilmartin when he came through the door.
‘Not good.’
Kilmartin grimaced. ‘This isn’t going well, is it?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I dislike the good-news, bad-news formula, but I have both. We’ve got a slot in the Joint Committee on Human Rights – that’s the committee that includes members of both houses. No one takes any notice of its reports of course, but it does have the power to accept the material and hear David in an open session.’
‘And?’
‘The bad news is that they seem to have got an informant on the inside of Eyam’s little operation.’
‘They know everything?’
‘That’s about the sum of it, yes.’
‘God, we won’t last until Wednesday when Eyam’s in such poor shape.’
At that moment the door opened and Eyam shuffled in. ‘I’m not dead yet,’ he said.
She turned to him with a smile. ‘Make up your mind: that’s not what you were telling us last week.’
‘The first thing we need to do is to get this man a suit and haircut,’ said Kilmartin before embracing Eyam. ‘Welcome home, dear boy.’
Kate was surprised by the delight flooding Kilmartin’s usually cagey expression. She dispensed more pills and gave Eyam a glass of barley water, an article of faith in her mother’s book of medical care, and stood by him with a matronly air while he swallowed the pills.
Eyam sat down on the edge of the sofa. ‘You heard about the two killed last night?’ he said flatly. ‘That’s three deaths I’m responsible for. I have to make this work.’
‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin. ‘It sounds brutal, but for the moment we’ve got to ignore them and keep going, eh?’
‘It’s not so easy. Tony was a good and dear friend and a wonderfully interesting person. We used to go walking together in the Pyrenees. He was a great naturalist too, you know: very good on plants and birds. Taught me a lot.’
‘Yes,’ said Kilmartin. ‘Look, I’ve found you an assembly point.’
‘Where?’
‘They’ve got an informant, David. So I’ll keep this to myself for the time being, but I think I also have a means of getting your material into the House of Commons.’
‘How did you find out about her?’
‘You said her. So you knew?’
‘It’s Alice Scudamore: a beautiful and decent young woman put under intolerable pressure. Her sister is Mary MacCullum – the woman who helped me and was sent to jail.’ Kate glanced at Kilmartin, who was looking extremely concerned. ‘You see, Alice kept her married name after her divorce and because she always refused to give all her personal information to the National Identity Register, the government never made the connection. But when they did put it together they told her Mary would be sent to prison for another two years unless she worked for them.’
‘Did you know they were sisters?’
‘No, I never met Mary. Naturally, I saw her photograph in the papers but there was very little similarity except that they are both extraordinarily pretty. I didn’t know until Tony Swift told me last week, when he thought she was just about to go over. He was a natural at this game, much more than I ever will be. Anyway, he got her to return the documents I’d asked her to keep for me at the end of last week. He replaced the contents of the package: you see, no one knows what is in their envelopes because they are sealed. Tony told her a cock and bull story about what we planned to do – a press conference at a large hotel in central London. He had the wit to book the room in the name of the Bell Ringers.’ Eyam sighed. ‘Last night we had someone with her all the time – Andy Sessions, one of our best men – so we didn’t think she would be any danger to us. But clearly we were wrong. And now Tony’s been killed.’
‘But she couldn’t have known he would be killed.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘However,’ murmured Kilmartin, ‘she could prove useful over the next day or two.’
‘Maybe,’ said Eyam. ‘Have you got a drink, Sis? I mean a proper drink?’
‘Do you think that’s wise?’ She heard her mother’s voice as she said it.
‘I’m feeling better.’
‘Right,’ she said, unconvinced. ‘I thought you were dead when I saw you on that bed in A and E.’
‘I needed sleep: that was all.’
She uncorked a bottle of red wine. Eyam held the glass up to his nose but did not drink.
‘There is something we need to settle, David,’ said Kilmartin, shaking his head to the offer of a glass and sitting down. ‘If they don’t catch you before, they are going to destroy you with this paedophile accusation. I am beginning to think the only reason that they haven’t gone public on this and the story of your faked death is because they would prefer to get you out of the way quietly. But if you manage to start making your allegations they will hit you good and hard with it.’
‘So?’
‘You know what I am asking.’
‘Did I download images of children being abused?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would it make any difference to your position if I said yes?’
‘Yes, on the grounds that you would not be the best person to appear in front of the committee. I have given personal guarantees as to your good character and reliability.’
He looked into Kilmartin’s eyes. ‘No, of course I didn’t, Peter.’ There was silence.
‘Is there anything else illegal we should know about?’ asked Kate.
Eyam shook his head. ‘I think you both have a rather exaggerated view of my activities.’
‘There were stories,’ said Kilmartin.
‘The stories that circulated about me were intended to harm my reputation. Was there any truth to them? Well, yes there was, but I’ve never done anything that would shock your neighbours in Herefordshire, Peter. As anyone knows, eroticism is a declaration of an individual’s sovereignty.’
‘Anyway, there’s no proof,’ said Kate, seeing that Kilmartin was embarrassed, ‘because the hard drive no longer exists.’
‘They’ve almost certainly got records from the internet provider, or they may have accessed your hard drive remotely,’ said Kilmartin. ‘They will make the case stick if they want to – even now.’
Eyam ran a hand through his hair and looked at them in turn. ‘Tony thought that they’d planted my DNA at the location of a crime. They had access to Dove Cottage. It would have been a simple matter to pick up a few hairs, as indeed they did when they were seeking to match my DNA in Colombia.’
Kilmartin slapped his hand down on the table. ‘Let’s forget this. I’m sorry for raising it. There’s a lot to go over and I don’t think I should be here too long.’
‘The more important thing,’ said Kate, ‘is that someone has to replace Tony as the hub of this exercise.’
‘It’s got to be you,’ said Eyam. ‘We’ll swap phones – mine has got all the group’s numbers and email addresses on it.’
She took it. ‘And encryption?’
‘Up to a point,’ he said.
Kilmartin and Eyam began to talk about the dossier. She went into the bedroom to make two calls. The first was to her mother and lasted no more than a minute. Again she was grateful for her mother’s puzzled but brisk compliance. The second was to a cell phone number in the High Castle area. It lasted much longer and required all her skills of persuasion.
George Lyme was still out at the Security Council meeting when Cannon returned to his desk at nine thirty-five p.m. on that Monday evening. He sat down and scrolled through the emails in his inbox, occasionally firing off terse replies. After dealing with a dozen or so he came to one forwarded from the press officer at the Department of Health with a message written in the subject panel: ‘Read this viral’, then below in the email: ‘Philip, no idea where this comes from but it seems better-informed than usual. If all that stuff at the bottom is true, very damaging. Best Geoff.’ Below was the title Who is Eden White?
Cannon jumped to a section halfway down and read the account of the founding of the Ortelius Institute of Public Policy Research. It began with the allegation that Eden White set up his think tank specifically to infiltrate and influence the British political establishment and press home the sale of systems to government departments. The article described three stages to White’s operation. Ortelius Intelligence Services – referred to as OIS – researched the personnel and policy issues inside government using former civil servants and spies to gain access and information. When they had identified the business opportunity, the think tank created a policy task force, which commissioned research papers and gave grants to friendly faces in Whitehall and the academic world. The policy was drafted. At the moment the policy was published, lobbying and PR companies – owned or part-owned by Eden White – swung into action, gaining support among politicians and in the media. At a time when the country and civil service were short of funds, Eden White was always there with generous grants. He held networking parties and hosted all-expenses-paid conferences abroad.
Seven separate systems had been sold to the government in this way. White’s first big campaign was ASCAMS, introduced to secure the Olympics. There then followed systems sold to the Inland Revenue, the health service, the police and the Departments of Defence and Work and Pensions. The total surveillance system known as DEEP TRUTH came later and was designed to draw on the data collection underway with the other systems. Allies of White’s people who spent time in one of Ortelius’ research projects or who had been given generous research grants under the think tank’s ‘Mapmakers’ scheme were spread throughout the civil service and government agencies. The list included the names of twenty people Cannon recognised – Derek Glenny, Christine Shoemaker and Dawn Gruppo were among them. John Temple had also been involved from an early stage. All those mentioned, said the email, continued to be paid by White and were effectively in his employ. The email ended with a promise of further revelations and documents to support them.
Cannon let out a low whistle and scrolled to the top to read about White’s early years in Africa, his involvement with arms dealing, the arrest warrants, his subsequent flight from Kenya to Switzerland and business school then to the United States and a job working for a gaming magnate with links to organised crime. The account of his business dealings, the remorseless attacks on competitors, his treatment of business partners and the mother of his three children made Bryant Maclean look less threatening than a choirmaster. Feared and hated in American financial circles, White reformed his image in Britain through skilful publicity stunts and charitable donations, research grants and the foundation of yet another organisation called Civic Value, which sponsored various projects of community cohesion.
The intimate portrait of White had to have been written by someone who saw through the ‘hypocritical sociopath’ who went under the guise of social reformer and philanthropist. He was struck by the elegant bite of the article and he knew exactly where he had read that style before: in some of David Eyam’s policy papers.
He dialled the press officer who’d sent him the email and was still speaking when Lyme returned from the Security Council meeting and appeared at the side of his desk. Cannon indicated it was going to be a few seconds before he could hang up. Lyme scribbled a note. ‘Fancy a walk around the block?’
They left Downing Street ten minutes later. ‘What is it?’ asked Cannon when they had gone a little way up Whitehall.
‘What the heck’s going on? Correction: I mean what the fuck is going on, Philip? There was nothing in the meeting about where TRA came from, nothing about the science or the damned filtration systems. Nothing! It’s like they’re preparing for a massive terrorist attack. All police leave has been cancelled. They’re constructing holding areas. What the hell are holding areas, for Christ’s sake? They are even threatening to use army patrols on the streets and to guard all major installations.’
‘Who was chairing?’
‘Glenny. Temple is out at the meeting of world finance ministers.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Cannon. ‘Dawn Gruppo told me he’d be using the next twenty-four hours to work intensively on the themes of his major election speeches. And where is he? Swanning around at a bleeding party. He always disappears when there’s something unpleasant going to happen.’ He paused. ‘Who’s going to be using these holding areas?’
‘Police. They expect large numbers of arrests in central London, and get this: there’s no plan to process these people through the courts – not immediately, anyway. All they talk about is securing major buildings and installations. That’s banging people up without charge or trial.’
‘We already do that,’ said Cannon.
‘Yeah, under terror legislation, but this is under emergency powers – a much more obscure process. It’s not clear these people will have committed any crimes, or present any kind of threat at all. One or two of the securicrats even seemed a bit doubtful about it all.’
Cannon stopped and looked into Lyme’s worried face. ‘Who’s pushing this? Where are these large numbers of people coming from?’
‘It was all a little vague. MI5 has found some kind of site. Shoemaker said that people who log on are being told to go to London over the next twenty-four hours. Three thousand have gone into the site with passwords over the last day or so, but they appear to be communicating with each other using very sophisticated multi-layered codes.’
‘And they are saying these people are responsible for spreading red algae – involved in some kind of plot concerning the water supply?’ Cannon said incredulously. ‘Have they gone off the deep end?’
‘No one made a definite link between TRA and the site, but that was the implication. There was one context to the discussion. I repeat, what is going on, Philip? Has all this got something to do with Eyam . . . or what?’
Cannon didn’t answer.
They turned left as they reached Trafalgar Square, passed under Admiralty Arch and walked in silence. Then Lyme mentioned the name of one of Bryant Maclean’s editors. ‘I had a pretty hostile call from her. They don’t dish out that kind of shit unless Bryant is behind them. She asked whether the emergency powers were an election stunt. She also said the paper was investigating the outbreak of TRA and that her science editor would be putting some tough questions to the environment spokesman tomorrow.’
‘Good luck to them,’ said Cannon. ‘To tell the truth I’ve had enough of today. I’m going home and I’m going to switch off my bloody phone.’
‘What should I do?’ asked Lyme a little plaintively.
‘Nothing,’ said Cannon. ‘On second thoughts, take Gruppo out for her usual gallon of cider. She’s got a soft spot for you. Everyone knows that. See if you can find anything out.’
‘About what?’
‘Don’t be dim, George. About all this, for Christ’s sake!’
He walked off in the direction of St James’s, but before switching off his phone he dialled Peter Kilmartin’s number.
Kilmartin listened to the two sentences spoken by Cannon and hung up. He was at his usual table in Ristorante Valeriano, a reliably good Tuscan restaurant he’d used for the best part of a quarter of a century. What was unusual about the evening was that he was sitting opposite Carrie Middleton, who had arrived in a flawless outfit of dark-blue with a tight skirt and high heels that made the old patron’s eyes swerve to heaven.
‘I’m sorry about that call,’ he said, laying the phone aside, ‘and also for asking you out for our date so late.’
‘Stop apologising,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to be here. I was all on my own so I couldn’t be happier.’
‘I wanted to ask you a favour, Carrie.’
‘I thought you might,’ she said amenably. ‘Is there something special you want me to store for you at the library?’
‘No, I need to lie low for a few hours or so.’
‘But of course,’ she said. Her eyes sparkled. ‘You can stay with me. My flat’s small but you’re welcome to the spare bedroom.’
‘Normally I would use a little hotel in Kensington, but on this occasion I need to remain completely below the parapet.’
‘This has something to do with the men who came to the library and that young woman.’
He cleared his throat. ‘You wouldn’t be doing anything illegal. I’m not on the run or anything like that, but I do need to be sure that my movements cannot be traced tomorrow.’ He stopped as the waiter placed a dish of antipasti between them. ‘Some more Prosecco?’
She smiled. ‘That’s settled then.’
‘There was something else I wanted to mention. You see, the authorities probably suspect I received some information from that young woman – Mary MacCullum – and that it was passed to me at the library. That information has now been made public. I believe she will be arrested and may be forced to say what she did.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘We may have a chance of getting her released if things go well over the next forty-eight hours. It is a delicate situation. To be honest, things could go either way.’ He coughed. ‘But what I wanted to say was that with present exigencies, I may have been guilty of fostering the impression that the library was the proper place for their attentions tomorrow.’ He looked at her.
‘The library! What will it mean?’ He had touched a nerve.
‘Not much – all those buffers returning volumes of Disraeli’s letters and Fulke Greville’s poems over the next days will be subject to rather more scrutiny than usual.’
‘The members, Peter! I mean . . .’
‘Well, it’s about time some of them were brought face to face with their government as it is, not how they think it is.’
She put her hand on Kilmartin’s. He felt a surge of desire that was mixed with awe for Carrie Middleton’s decency and good sense.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she said gently. ‘I want to remember this evening. Tell me about your new book.’ If there was one way to distract Peter Kilmartin, it was to ask about the civilisation of Ashurbanipal II and his predecessors, and Carrie Middleton showed every sign of fascination.
Later they took a cab in the rain to Cavendish Court, a large 1930s block of flats on the edge of Pimlico, and passed through Parliament Square, where the road was reduced to one lane. Army vehicles were lined up along the Treasury building, and riot vans were disgorging uniformed police with shields and batons who were being filmed by TV news crews.
‘People won’t like this,’ she said.
‘That’s the pity of it, Carrie: they’ll think the government is protecting them. They’ll be reassured.’
Eyam and Kate watched the television news in silence – footage of helicopters circling reservoirs in the North of England; people queuing to fill water canisters at army tankers in Blackburn and behind trucks in Humberside where six-packs of drinking water were being dropped to the pavement; aerial shots of the red algae; reporters interviewing scientists in anti-contamination gear; armed patrols of reservoirs near Heathrow; and riot police in Westminster. Then came Glenny and Temple at the news conference, Temple making a statement to the House of Commons and a televised address to the nation filmed at Number Ten that afternoon.
‘He’s enjoying himself,’ remarked Eyam. ‘It’s interesting that nobody is asking where this thing came from. They have the best scientific advice available. I know most of the people involved. They should have got to the bottom of it by now.’
‘It’s bloody convenient that he’s taken these powers just as you’re about to go public. I wonder if they’ve cooked up all this stuff about toxic algae.’
He considered this and pressed the TV remote. ‘No, Temple’s an opportunist and a gambler – he’s just using it.’
She leaned forward from her chair so that her face was just a few feet away from Eyam’s. ‘But the point is, idiot, it’s going to be doubly difficult for you to get into the House of Commons if they’ve got police and armed soldiers guarding the buildings.’
‘I’ll make my arrangements tomorrow. Freddie will have some ideas. I have one or two.’
‘You put an awful lot of faith in that man: where did you find him?’
‘He found us. Fredde is a gangster of decidedly liberal hue. A member of his family had been misidentified by the system, or was at any rate being persecuted in the usual way, and he started to look into it and eventually got in touch with Tony Swift. A lot of people out there are very angry now that they understand what’s been going on.’
‘They know?’
‘Oh, they know all right. They’ve just been keeping quiet.’
‘So your project has become an open secret.’
‘A closely guarded secret among hundreds of people.’ He smiled and her heart turned over.
‘You do look better,’ she said.
‘I feel it. I can’t imagine what’s in those pills.’
‘Raw opium, I suspect.’ She slid from her chair and leaned against the sofa where Eyam was lying. ‘I want to talk about what you’re going to do tomorrow.’
‘Disappear,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t be together. If they arrest me you can go ahead with Kilmartin in Parliament.’
‘You want to be found slumped on a park bench again?’
‘If they don’t find me I’ll be there on the day,’ he said. They both turned their heads to the window that was being pounded by rain. An explosion of lightning right overhead made her jump.
‘Jesus! I think that must have hit the church spire.’ She went to the window, looked out, then turned to face him. ‘I’ve got this feeling I’m missing something, David. What’s the deep truth about you?’
‘Ah, you called me David.’
‘Don’t get cocky – in my mind you’re still Eyam – the object of my eternal scorn.’
He grimaced. ‘Generous.’
‘I’m serious. There’s something you haven’t told me. You’re so good at avoiding the subject.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something essential.’ Her hands rested on the windowsill. She launched herself forward and walked a few paces to stand over him. ‘You were at the centre of things before you took over the JIC; you must have known about this system. It would be impossible for all that money to be hidden without you knowing about it.’
‘Oh, they’re very ingenious at manipulating accounts.’
‘When someone is concealing something from me I’ve noticed that they pick me up on the detail of a question. Forget the particular, what about the general? Did you know, or not?’
‘I knew about DEEP TRUTH from the outset, yes.’
‘So why didn’t you stop it, or go public earlier? Why did you allow Mary MacCullum go to jail?’
‘I didn’t allow her to go to jail. I did nothing to encourage her.’
‘Were you part of the planning?’
‘I was embroiled, yes, tangentially.’
‘You can’t be tangentially embroiled.’
‘Look, I was part of the decision-making process. At the very beginning I wrote something on the bottom of a memo and then forgot about it. Of course it wasn’t called SPINDRIFT or DEEP TRUTH then. It was simply presented as a rationalisation of all data collection systems. You’ve no idea how fast you have to react in that position, or the number of papers you read. Day after day of crisis, policy made on the hoof, a hundred different briefs to master. There’s no time to think. One day blurs into the next. You remember nothing.’
‘But the idea of spying on everyone in the country – that’s not a crisis decision. It’s a long-term project to give the state power over the people. From ASCAMS to DEEP TRUTH is one fluid movement. You’re not dumb. You understood where the process would end.’ She folded her arms, but catching sight of a disciplinarian image in the mirror, let them drop and hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her trousers. ‘You know what pisses me off? When you came to New York and lectured me about the pointlessness of corporate litigation you were actually involved in the planning of DEEP TRUTH.’
‘By then I was trying to think what to do. There was just one memo, which I had forgotten about. I didn’t even make the connection at first.’
‘And you, the great liberator, the slayer of the database state! So when did you fall victim to your conscience?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, raising his head. He leaned forward, blew into his cupped hands then rubbed them. ‘The story is very simple and it involves Tony Swift – Ed Fellowes, as you knew him originally. He asked for a meeting when I inherited the job from Sir Christopher Holmes, and he told me categorically that the head of the JIC had been killed because of his opposition to DEEP TRUTH and his plans to go public on it. He showed me the evidence that the inquest had been fixed and I didn’t believe it. But he didn’t give up. He came back with more proof and won me round. He didn’t tell me much about his circumstances, but it was obvious he’d left London and government and found himself another job.
‘What I didn’t know was that he had gone underground and invented identities for himself before, as he put it, the door slammed shut with the merger of all databases under the Transformational Government project. It was an act of defiance, as much as anything else, because he didn’t believe the state had the right to define or manage his identity. Tony was single and had neither close relations nor ambition to hinder him. That new identity was how he ended up in High Castle as the underpaid drudge of the coroner’s court. He worked himself into the town and listened and watched, and began to see how he could fight SPINDRIFT. He became a member of Civic Watch and the local community tension-monitoring groups which are really the ears of government, made friends and mapped the networks of local informers. He was the perfect undercover agent because he was working for himself, reported to no one, and possessed an unwavering allegiance to his cause. He was also the finest actor I’ve ever met. He inhabited every molecule of the lonely and disappointed figure of Tony Swift, so much so that I still think of Ed Fellowes and Tony Swift as different people.’
‘But why did he need you?’
‘These things don’t start out as a plan, but as it worked out he built an organisation of good people.’
‘You mean Diana Kidd and her Bell Ringers?’
‘Can you just shut the hell up for a moment, Sis?’ he said fiercely. ‘And why don’t you relax and sit down?’ She perched on the arm of the chair opposite him and rested one foot on a low coffee table. Eyam continued. ‘Tony’s organisation was rather bigger than you imagine. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Bell Ringers. To these people he was known as Eclipse. He chose that as his code name because he believed that the darkness would lift eventually. He was philosophically an optimist. Very few people knew who Eclipse was.’
‘Where did you fit in?’
‘I was the evidence – I knew how to get it and organise it. I knew how everything fitted together: the money, the policy, the people behind it and the implementation.’
‘So why did you go and shoot your mouth off at the Intelligence and Security Committee?’
‘We didn’t start out with a plan. Mary MacCullum’s information was leaked not to me, but to Sidney Hale at the ISC. He came to me privately. That was the moment that I decided to put it into the very confined public domain of Westminster village and try to start a debate. Tony was behind the leak. Mary was in touch with him from an early stage, but she never told him about her sister. Mary was an early Bell Ringer and contributed to one of his sites. Eventually she made contact with him. Through her trial and imprisonment she protected him. Never said a word.’
‘So after all that you arrive in High Castle with your hoard of documents and start planning with Tony Swift. It seems all a bit amateurish.’
‘I had acquired most of what we needed by the second appearance at the ISC. It was merely an exercise to establish the existence of DEEP TRUTH. The reaction that followed took us by surprise. So we had to play things cool and wait. If I had gone public then I would have faced prosecution under the Official Secrets Act and received a term in jail. Nothing would have come out. The issue would have been buried. We decided then to wait until an election.’
‘You still could be sent to jail.’
‘The threat seems rather theoretical now,’ he said, glancing at her.
‘Why did they start watching you in the country after Temple had agreed to leave you alone?’
‘Something I did, maybe. We had no idea what it was, a phone call, a tip-off, a piece of local intelligence. Who knows? By that time we had put everything in place and I had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s, and things didn’t look too good. Then I discovered what they had put on my computer. You know the rest.’
‘So Swift had the idea of faking your death?’
‘Yes, though my father came up with the same solution. I talked to him a lot in the weeks before he died. He was very adept with money and made most of the arrangements for me.’
‘Yeah, I wondered why he hadn’t left you anything.’
‘That’s because he’d already made it over to me.’
‘Was there a lot of money?’
‘Yes, that’s how I paid for everything. There still is and it will all come to you eventually, Sis – my only living relation.’ He grinned.
‘I’m beginning to think that I liked you better when you were dead,’ she said, also smiling. ‘Oh, God, this is such an appalling mess, Eyam.’
‘Actually, it isn’t. We have this one opportunity. Everything is right. One way or another, all that information will be pitched into the general election and Temple and Eden White will be exposed. Let the people decide.’
‘That’s what worries me.’ Her gaze travelled around the soulless sitting room with its empty glass cabinet and dreadful oil studies of ballet dancers, no doubt bought in bulk to decorate what was described as an ‘executive haven’. ‘God, I wish you had let me love you, Eyam,’ she said as her eyes came to rest on him.
He flinched, then his fingers, which were formed in a lattice bowl under his chin, opened in submission. ‘We may disagree on the details of that statement, particularly the word let, but what does it matter now? Here we sit, “one another’s best’’. That’s true, isn’t it?’
‘“Our hands firmly cemented with a fast balm.”’
‘Well remembered, Sis.’
‘I should do – you were obsessed with John Donne. You said you were sure that he walked in New College cloisters, although I seem to remember he was at another college.’
‘Hertford when it was called Hart Hall.’
‘And you used to recite his poems from that bench on the green instead of reading economics papers.’
‘God, what a poseur!’
‘No, you were brilliant and beautiful and a little bit conceited.’
‘Come here, Sis,’ he said.
She stood. ‘I will if you never call me Sister again.’
‘Done.’
‘Never?’
‘Never.’ He patted the cushion beside him.
She moved over to him and he sank back on the sofa with his emaciated grin spreading with expectation and a kind of curiosity. She sat down on the edge and turned to look at him, nervous or inexplicably shy – she didn’t know which – and he laid a hand on her shoulder, then his splayed fingers ran up through her hair. She sighed and let her head fall forward, luxuriating to his touch. ‘Can you do this?’
‘Take you to bed? Yes, of course I can.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant are you able to get through the next couple of days on those drugs? Have you got the strength?’
‘Yes, I feel pretty good at the moment. My old self.’
‘Your old self?’ she said, her eyes closing. ‘No, your old self is gone: you’re different. Perhaps we did bury part of you at that funeral. You’re a lot less pompous and not quite so pleased with yourself.’ For a minute or two he stroked her head. His fingers strayed to her ears and neck and travelled across her face, lightly tracing the line of her eyebrows and nose. When she could bear it no longer, she twisted round and seized hold of his face with both hands and kissed him, at first lightly then with an animal need that she had hardly known was there. His hands moved up to her shoulders. She straddled him and he pulled her weight down on him and murmured her name, relishing its novelty. She tried to remember what it had been like during those few days and nights in his college rooms, but all the memories which she’d kept in such good repair seemed to have been suddenly erased, like a dream on waking, and now she wondered whether it had been fantasy. She stopped kissing him, pulled back and gazed down at him. ‘We have done this before, haven’t we? I mean, I didn’t imagine it all?’
He moved his hands to her ribcage and gripped her just beneath her breasts. ‘Yes, and I remember it very well, and you talked all the time.’
‘No, that was some other lover of yours.’
‘No, it was you: you didn’t stop talking – day and night on and on and on.’
‘God, I’m sorry. I was probably so thrilled that I was in bed with you that I couldn’t shut up.’
Eyam grunted sceptically then put his hand up to her cheek. ‘You are loved,’ he said.
She frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s not small print, Kate. It means that you are loved. Loved by me and needed by me and admired by me and that you cause such awe in me, and now such pride, that I feel utterly at a loss to know how to tell you. I am stricken with love. It was right there on the tip of my tongue when I found you in my old suede jacket poking around that shed. That is all I wanted to say when I saw you again, but then you slapped me – quite right too, but I felt less like saying it after that.’ He stopped and considered her, his hand brushing the hair from her face so that he could look into her eyes. ‘You’ve changed too: you’re much more – how do I put it? – self-possessed. You are utterly yourself. I’ve never met anyone who’s so completely uninfluenced by the world, untroubled by what people think.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just an average, pathetically oversensitive, self-absorbed human being. I care what people think about me.’
He snorted a laugh and reached up and kissed her. ‘Delusion,’ he said. Then she just collapsed on him and sank her face into his hair and kissed his neck. He undid the buttons of her shirt, then the buckle of her belt and slipped his hand, rather expertly she noted, inside her waistband. He withdrew to unclip the fastener of her bra.
‘What the hell were we thinking about in New York?’ she said to his ear. ‘Why didn’t we go to bed then?’
She felt his shoulders lift in a shrug. ‘We weren’t paying attention.’
‘No, you weren’t paying attention,’ she said, biting his neck. ‘Your head was full of the UN and swishing about with Temple in an armoured limousine.’
‘That’s unfair,’ he said and pushed her up a little. Her bra was undone and hung loose. He reached up to kiss her breast, his hand cupping and bringing it to his mouth. She heard herself let out a ridiculous moan but held his head there none the less, desperate that he should not stop.
At length his head fell back. ‘I need to lie down,’ he said.
They stumbled to the bedroom, where she tore the ghastly dragon-motif cover from the bed and slipped out of her clothes. Eyam stood watching her, fascinated. Naked, she shuffled on her knees across the bed to help him with his shirt and T-shirt, then his trousers. ‘Kilmartin’s right. You’ve got to get something to wear.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. He was naked and again she thought how good he looked. He shivered and she could feel the goose pimples rising across his back.
‘Come,’ she said, pulling him towards her.
‘I hope to.’
‘Such a very bad joke.’
They slipped between the sheets and she held his head across her chest. ‘You’ve got to get treatment,’ she said to the crown of his head. ‘I can’t lose you a second time. I could not go through that again.’
‘But I heard you were rather composed at my funeral.’
‘More so than Darsh,’ she said and giggled. ‘I wish he’d slugged Glenny.’
He laughed into her flesh and then began to move across her belly with his lips, slowly, deliberately, inch by inch, first circling her navel and then moving up to her breasts, tasting her and murmuring that he had screwed up his life and should have been doing this every night for the last decade; and what did he know about anything if he let such a beautiful woman – his complete friend – languish in New York while he was wasting time with a lot of fucking power-crazed mediocrities. All he wanted was to return to the Dove and wake with her in the morning and, come winter or summer, look across the valley and make love to her and live.
The words came with his kisses, each one planted on her skin, impregnating it with the message of hopeless devotion and love. She absorbed them and responded with her own thrilled endearments, though with nothing like the fluency of Eyam’s requisition of her body. He whispered that he had never expected to make love again, let alone to her. Although he did not say it, she knew that he was thinking that this might be the last time.
She drew his head up so that she could look at him. He moved his hand been her legs and let it graze and explore with the tiniest of movements until she closed her eyes and descended into herself to observe the regular pulses of pleasure build until she climaxed quite suddenly and opened her eyes to Eyam’s steady gaze. She kissed him before pressing one hand on his shoulder to push him on his back. Then she straddled him and made love to him with a slow, rhythmic purpose.
They slept.
At five a.m. she woke to an insistent buzzing. Her mind groped for explanation. The alarm? No. The timer on the cooker? No.
‘It’s the bloody door,’ she whispered. ‘Someone’s at the door.’
She felt Eyam tense beside her. ‘See if they go away,’ he said.
But the noise continued.
‘Maybe it’s Kilmartin or Freddie,’ she said. ‘They may need to be let in.’
She put the light on and scrambled to find her clothes.
Eyam was now sitting up, alert. She went to the intercom and pressed the button.
A voice sounded. ‘It’s Oliver Mermagen, Kate. Can you let me in? I want to speak to you.’
‘Oliver, for God’s sake. What time is it? I’m trying to sleep.’
‘It’s very important that I talk to you.’
Eyam was behind her, fully dressed and doing up his shoes.
‘Hold on,’ she said and took her finger off the button.
‘You’d better find out what he wants. I can make myself scarce, then come back.’
‘There’s a fire exit on the top landing.’
‘Can’t this wait?’ she said into the intercom. Mermagen replied that it was a matter of great urgency. She watched Eyam grab his jacket and seize the drugs from the table.
‘OK, I’ll get dressed,’ she said to Mermagen. ‘Wait there.’
‘No, buzz me up, Kate. There’s no time to lose.’
She released her finger and turned to Eyam. ‘He may have someone with him. Be careful.’
‘If they knew I was here, they’d be storming the place. Phone me when he’s gone.’ He slipped from the door and made for the stairs.
‘Are you alone?’ she asked Mermagen.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake open the door.’
‘OK,’ she said, pressing the second button. ‘I’ll put something on.’ She glanced round the room and noticed the two empty glasses, the bottle of wine and the double indentation in the cushions of the sofa. Having cleared and straightened everything, she arrived back at the door as Mermagen’s frantic knocking began.
‘What do you want at this hour, Oliver?’ she demanded as she opened the door. He was wearing a raincoat and a tweed cap that made him look as if he had just come from some country pursuit.
He took the cap off and shook it. ‘It’s good to see you, Kate, even in these trying circumstances.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘Very simple: you were obviously not in a hotel. I had my assistant check the community charge records for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where all short-term lets have to be registered. You probably didn’t know that. She simply found the address for the apartment let out to Calverts. I am the only person who knows where you are, Kate. Is Eyam with you?’ he asked, looking over her shoulder.
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Ah, but no doubt you know how to get hold of him.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Initially, some coffee, then I want to put a proposition to you.’
‘Tell me while I make it,’ she said. Mermagen followed her to the kitchen, sat down and placed his cap on the table. ‘I tried calling you. But your phone wasn’t switched on. I left half a dozen messages for you.’
‘Oh really,’ she said.
‘As I explained, I’ve been authorised to act as an intermediary by Eden White and to put a deal to you. The long and short of it is that he will guarantee you and Eyam safe passage out of the country in exchange for all the information that Eyam possesses on government systems and of course all the supporting evidence. He further guarantees that once abroad you will not be threatened or in any way disturbed. He still nurtures a deep affection and respect for David Eyam and he does not want this affair to end unhappily.’
‘By that you mean . . .’
‘There are any number of outcomes that you can imagine for yourself.’
‘A sniper’s bullet, a truckload of sand.’
Mermagen shook his head with annoyance. ‘You have very little time, Kate. I will soon be compelled to say where I have seen you. You will be arrested and they will pick Eyam up. He will be charged and put in jail.’ The kettle boiled and she poured the water into the cafetière. ‘They know about Eyam’s money,’ he continued. ‘They have traced nearly all of it and they can freeze the bank accounts under international money-laundering agreements and using terror laws overnight. Mr White guarantees that this information will not be passed to the government and that David will be free to benefit from this considerable fortune, unmolested by the Inland Revenue. However, he insists that Eyam does not return to this country and maintains the fiction of his death. As far as Mr White is concerned, David Eyam will remain dead. He also expects you to leave this country within the next twenty-four hours. Whether you return to the United States or choose another place to settle is of no concern to him, as long as you abide by the agreement not to reveal that Eyam is alive, or anything of the material that he is believed to have collected.’
She poured the coffee into two mugs and pushed one towards Mermagen’s little hand. ‘Tell me something, Oliver. Why haven’t they released the fact that Eyam is still alive? The former head of JIC fakes his own death in a Colombian bomb explosion to escape charges. I mean, it’s a gift.’
‘Because Eden wants to resolve this with as little fuss as possible: he realises that it could be damaging to all the things he holds dear.’
‘No, he read the email that is doing the rounds and realised that Eyam would destroy him. That’s why he is offering us a deal: as soon as we are out of the country he sends a team of assassins after us.’
‘He’s not a gangster. He has a very high regard for both of you. Up until he read that email yesterday he fully intended to offer you a job.’
‘You say he isn’t a gangster, but he worked for some pretty shady people in Las Vegas, Oliver.’ She sipped from the mug. ‘How come you’re acting as his bagman?’
‘I too have a high regard for both of you.’
‘And all your contracts depend on Temple remaining in power with White’s backing.’
‘I have to make a living, Kate,’ he said.
‘Anyway, I have no idea where Eyam is.’
‘And I have no intention of leading you to him. I’ve acted as the pathfinder for one murder: I am not going to do that again.’ The realisation that she might already be doing so gave her an idea.
Mermagen was fiddling with his cap. ‘Call him. Otherwise this is all going to get very messy.’
‘OK,’ she said in a less chilly tone. ‘I’ll talk to him. No harm in that.’
‘That’s good news – very good news indeed. You have my number?’
She nodded.
‘When should I expect to hear from you?’
‘I will be able to speak to him at eleven this morning. Shortly after that.’
Mermagen drained his coffee and got up. ‘I will tell Mr White. You do realise that an awful lot depends on you making Eyam see sense. It’s vitally important for you as well as him.’ He looked at her, his scheming eyes affecting warmth and a regard for her well being. ‘So what are you going to do now?’
‘Go back to bed.’
‘Yes, I quite understand. I’m sorry for coming so early, but I did want to see you as soon as possible. If you’d had your phone on, I could have called you instead.’
She led him to the door. As soon as he was gone, she snatched up a small shoulder bag, unplugged her three telephones and computer and put them in a side pocket. She then chose a dark trouser suit, which she also placed in the bag together with underwear, a shirt and black shoes. She rummaged in the desk and found a padded envelope left by a previous tenant, addressed it and shoved it into the pocket of the jacket she had taken from the bedroom. Then she went round the apartment turning off the lights. A minute or two later she followed Eyam to the fire exit. She hoped to find him there but he had gone so she too slipped into the dank London morning, knowing that she could reach him later.
After walking the half-mile to the Earls Court Road she stopped, turned on her American phone and placed it in the envelope. Then she hailed a cab and, proffering two twenty-pound notes, asked the cab driver to deliver the package to Calverts’ offices in the City.