Old Enemies (4 page)

‘Harry’s always been a careless sucker,’ Ebinger said as the Filipino steward started pouring a fresh bottle. ‘Been collecting scratches ever since I’ve known him. Even managed to get himself shot in his rear end during the First Gulf War – isn’t that so, Harry?’

‘I guess I was a little unlucky. My backside was about the only thing the Iraqis managed to hit during the entire conflict. I shouldn’t have been playing ostrich in the desert.’

The others laughed, but the silver-haired Ebinger wasn’t going to let him get away with that. He knew Harry too well, from days when he’d been a visiting lecturer at Cambridge and Harry was a mid-career student still in the British army. ‘I seem to recall it wasn’t exactly like that,’ he said in his professorial manner. ‘The version I remember was that you were part of an SAS raiding party, sent into Iraq before the shooting war had begun to snatch one of their generals from his bed. There was some sort of screw-up – over-baked intelligence – and instead of one sleepy general there was a whole welcoming committee of the Republican Guard waiting for you.’ The National Security Adviser puffed on his pipe and blew smoke at the chandelier, knowing how to play an audience. ‘The reason Harry’s ass was sticking in the air, Mr President, was because he’d thrown himself across a wounded colleague, trying to protect him. Harry then carried that soldier for three days and three nights through the desert to get him back home.’

No one was laughing any more.

‘He made it OK, the other soldier?’ Munroe asked.

‘I’m afraid not, Mr President,’ Harry replied, his voice subdued. ‘He died on the second night.’

‘But Charley said you got him back home . . .’

‘He was a friend. He had family. They needed to say goodbye. You have to bring them home, if you can.’

Harry had carried the body of his friend, despite his own wounds, until the Iraqis had lost all interest in chasing them.

‘Hell of a story, Harry,’ the President said, using his first name, stretching to lay a hand on his guest’s arm. ‘Privilege to have you at my table.’

It had been a rare honour. Just two nights ago. Now Harry couldn’t get back into his own bloody country. ‘Welcome home, Jones,’ he muttered to himself as the phone continued to vibrate. A blocked number. His finger slid across the screen.

‘Mr Jones?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Mary Mishcon, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary.’ Her voice rose, as though in question, as if she was uncertain her name would be recognized even though she was known to everyone in Westminster, an iron fist clad in cashmere.

‘Hello, Mary, you well? That father of yours still chasing seagulls down in – Hastings, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, thank you, still waving his stick around. As is the Prime Minister. Wonders if you could pop in to see him.’ Again the rising tone, the gentle touch.

‘I hope he’s not in a hurry. I’m standing in a line for Passport Control at Heathrow. Could take days.’

‘Perhaps we could send a car.’

‘No, not necessary, Mary. Just my little joke. When does he have in mind?’ Harry asked, mentally flipping through his diary for the next couple of weeks.

‘In precisely an hour.’ No upward inflexion this time. She was delivering an instruction, no trace of question about it.

Ruari shivered. It was now bitterly cold inside the passenger compartment of the helicopter. They’d been in the air for almost an hour. They had kept to the mountains and were flying to the north of the Matterhorn, roughly following the route of the Rhone. Soon they had crossed into Italy, but no one out there knew. Air traffic control in Milan had no brief to follow a small helicopter that was no more than a fly against the massive Alpine sky, and as it was hugging the valleys at under four hundred feet they wouldn’t have been able to track it even if they’d tried. As for the inhabitants of the scattered communities it disturbed along its route, it was of no more interest than the flapping crows. They were getting on with their day, embracing the brilliant winter sun, unaware that inside the helicopter growling in the distance, a young man was sitting staring at the barrel of a pistol.

‘What do you want with me?’ he asked, shouting across the compartment.

‘We take you on a little trip,’ the gunman replied. His accent was fractured, his English poor, his face utterly without expression.

Ruari struggled to gather his thoughts. The noise of the helicopter kept battering at his senses, the cold was growing acute, and he was terrified. The only thing he was certain about, which he focused on, grasped with all his strength, was that they hadn’t killed him. Casey, Mattias, both gone, the pilot, too, but he remained alive. There had to be some purpose to it, although he couldn’t guess what, and in that purpose lay hope. They wanted him alive.

In the lee of a nearby mountain, the helicopter flew into turbulence. It kicked as the autopilot corrected the course and Ruari was shaken back to life. His gloves were still around his neck, not on his hands, his fingers had grown to sticks of ice, so he buried them deep within the pockets of his ski suit, and that was when his hand settled around his phone. He, too, was armed. Slowly, his fingers stiff with cold and fear, he began to make out its shape, to follow the familiar contours of its buttons, and an idea began to form. The phone was switched off but if he could switch it back on, if he could identify the right buttons, and if there was a signal up here – if, if,
if
, too many of the wretched things! – then perhaps he could call home, let someone know what was happening. Even to try would have its risks, what with that unshaven shit-for-brains sitting directly opposite him only an arm’s length away, but anything was better than staring numbly at the stupid gun. His mind was made up. He twisted in his harness and stared sharply out of the open hatch, as though something had caught his eye, trying to drag the gunman’s attentions that way while he fumbled within the pocket of his ski suit, trying to remember which button activated the speed dial, and which one was programmed for home. But his fingers were like lead, his actions too clumsy.

‘What you do? What you do, you little bastard?’ the gunman demanded, suddenly suspicious.

The pistol waved menacingly and the boy hesitated. The gunman screamed again, sending flecks of spittle flying across the compartment, hitting Ruari in the face. There seemed little point in pretence. Slowly, Ruari’s hand emerged from his pocket, clutching the phone.

When he saw it, the gunman nodded. ‘Good, very good,’ he muttered. ‘That will be useful.’ He held out his hand.

Ruari felt sick. Of course the bloody thing would be useful. His entire life was on this phone, names, numbers, class times, bank details, even the text he’d got from Casey first thing that morning. It had been so simple. ‘2nite,’ it had said. And now the bastard was going to get it all.

The gunman flapped his hand in impatience, once, then again, demanding the phone. Ruari saw that the screen was lit, he’d succeeded in calling someone, though he couldn’t tell who.

‘Give it to me, little shit!’ The gunman was stretching, insisting, holding out his fingers like a bird’s claw, but in the restraints of his harness he couldn’t reach far enough to grab it, and Ruari didn’t want to give it. He hated this man so much he’d do anything to frustrate him, and there was also another thought buzzing around inside his head. If they hadn’t killed him so far, they wouldn’t kill him now, not for a miserable phone. It was a gamble, but in the end his hatred proved stronger than his fear. He hurled the phone out of the open door.

The gunman stared impassively through his reflective glasses. He gave no immediate reaction, there was no obvious anger, save for a slight setting of the lips, and he said nothing. Then he hit Ruari, in the face, with the gun. It sliced through the cheekbone and across the nose. There was no pain, not at first, that would come later, but for a few seconds Ruari’s senses were scrambled and a ball of light exploded inside his head, blinding him. When eventually he regained his sight, he saw blood pouring down his chest, like a stuck pig, gathering in a darkening pool on his lap. That was when the pain began. Someone was holding a blowtorch to his face. He knew his nose was broken.

Directly across the cabin, the gunman’s lips parted, briefly spreading into the thinnest of smiles. It was the first emotion he’d shown of any sort.

Tears now began to mingle with the blood, but Ruari didn’t cry out, wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. He sat, eyes closed, and desperately frightened, waiting for whatever was to come.

Always in that damned hurry yet, despite it, Harry was late. Not even an Old Testament prophet could have parted the traffic and made it from Passport Control to Downing Street in an hour, not when some idiot had somehow managed to turn his car over on the approach road to Heathrow, bringing the entire circus to a halt. How was it possible to
do
that in a forty-mile-an-hour zone? But Mary, having rearranged the diary to fit him in, had rearranged things yet again. That in itself made Harry’s new ear tingle in anticipation – yes, he could feel it, not as well as the old one, but it seemed to respond to his mood and was telling him that something was about to erupt. It wasn’t every day that the Prime Minister’s diary was so blithely reshuffled. That usually meant at least a minor war or a major bankruptcy, or that something lurid and deeply personal was about to appear in the press.

‘What’s up, Danny?’ Harry enquired as he handed his suitcase into the care of the Downing Street doorman.

‘I hav’nae the foggiest,’ Danny replied in a broad Scots accent that came from somewhere north of Glasgow.

‘And that is one thing I’ll never believe.’

Danny saw it all, the comings and goings, the strangled tears, the less frequent triumphs. He was a master at interpreting the gyrations of the prime ministerial eyebrow that might imply delight but usually foretold of disasters to come. No matter who crossed the threshold Danny was always there to offer a smile of congratulation or conspiracy or, when needed, of condolence. The trick for visitors like Harry was to know which one it was.

‘I think you’ll be knowing the way, sir,’ Danny said, testing the weight of Harry’s suitcase as the black steel door closed behind him. ‘Good luck.’

Harry’s heels clipped out across the black-and-white marbled floor of the hallway. He passed the hooded leather chair in the corner that in days long past had shielded Danny’s predecessors from wind and rain, and came complete with a drawer beneath it for hot coals, which during long nights of old had been used to heat tea and scones. A few strides took Harry into the long carpeted corridor with its deep primrose walls and Henry Moore sculpture that led towards the Cabinet Room, but before he reached as far as the inner sanctum he was intercepted by Mary.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said.

‘No, it’s the Prime Minister who apologizes,’ she replied.

‘That’ll be a first.’

She pretended not to hear. She led him not to the Cabinet Room but into the claustrophobic lift that served the five ramshackle and much reconfigured floors of Number Ten. He was surprised to see her punch the top button – the private quarters, way up in the attic. She didn’t bother knocking, but took him straight in through a ludicrously small hallway and into the sitting room.

Iain Campbell was sitting on a windowsill on the far side of the room, his bottom warming above a radiator, his body twisted so that he was looking out through nearly two inches of blast-proof glass across the military parade ground of Horseguards. He seemed slow to react to the intrusion, lost in thought as he stared into the gathering darkness of the winter evening, turning stiffly and almost in surprise to face Harry, by which time Mary had already gone.

‘I come up here to think,’ he said, as though he felt the need to offer an explanation. ‘Cabinet Room’s no bloody good. Even on a clear day you have trouble seeing further than the end of the garden. Sometimes you need a little more than that.’ He rose to shake Harry’s hand. It was when he got to his feet that it became clear how small he was – in fact, the smallest man in the Cabinet. ‘More Tom Cruise than Napoleon,’ he had claimed to an election interviewer, though only idiots believed him.