“Do you really think so?” She stood. “Because I believe you’re wrong. I believe that when the public get to hear a younger version of their Prime Minister fretting about pension arrangements for a psychopath, there’s going to be an uproar. I mean, you weren’t cutting his fuel allowance, so there’s that, but does that make it worse or better? You’re the politician. You decide.”
“I was doing my job.”
“Yes, you might want to give that more thought before you trot it out as a defence. It’s famously less effective than you might expect.”
He had removed and folded his spectacles, and clenched them now as if they were a baton, or possibly a buck, he was hoping to pass. “I thought, and I’m quoting, that one of First Desk’s responsibilities is to shield this office from embarrassment.”
“Yes. But if I recall correctly, you relieved me of that position twenty minutes ago. So the stricture no longer applies.”
She might have been imagining it, but his grip appeared to loosen as she spoke. As if he’d just been handed a key, and invited to free himself.
The moment passed; more moments passed. Then she was here in the Park, observing the boys and girls through the glass wall of her office, and Josie was at her door, miming a knock. Taverner nodded, and in she came.
“Mr. Nash has been asking for you.”
Mr. Nash—Oliver—the chair of Limitations, the Park’s oversight committee—was frequently asking for Diana, in moods ranging from petulant to furniture-chewing.
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Apparently there was a shooting last night? An agent-involved shooting?”
Christ, it was like stamping out a forest fire. Every time you quenched a flame, another popped into life. Next thing you knew your shoes were on fire, and it was you who were spreading sparks . . . She said, “That’s strictly on a need-to-know basis.”
“Yes. That’s what people are saying.”
Just when it was clear Slough House had to go, here was more evidence that some kind of admin dungeon in which to dump office embarrassments was necessary.
She said, “People should be reminded that they work for the secret service. Emphasis on both those words. If they can’t keep a secret, they cease to serve a purpose. Is Oliver in the Park now?”
“He’s upstairs, First Desk.”
“I’ll speak to him when I have something of value to impart. Let him know. Meanwhile, I’m observing an op. Was there anything else?”
There was nothing else.
Out on the hub, the boys and girls continued their surveillance of a successful sting. Inside her office, Diana Taverner enjoyed the feeling of being First Desk.
Business as usual.
Judd was in his study, looking down on the lawn where, as recently as yesterday, summer had been in its pomp. But rain was pattering down now, there were no window-threatening frisbees in evidence, nor any lightly clad undergraduates wielding them, and while Xanthippe’s little—well, not so little—chum’s number was still stored in his phone, acting on it was no longer a pressing concern: He hadn’t felt a twitch since escaping the nightclub. It was said that a brush with death inflamed an appetite for living, but all he wanted to do was hide under a blanket, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Well. He wouldn’t have been ashamed, but had no one to admit it to; since Seb’s abrupt departure from his service he had no close male associates, and while marriage was held to be the ideal institution in which to share intimacies, it had been years since he’d confided in his wife, and if she’d confided in him in the meantime, he hadn’t noticed. So here he was, ill at ease with the world, and what he mostly felt like doing was calling Devon Welles. I mean, Christ. All Welles had done was his job, and it was a pretty lucrative gig at that. It wasn’t like they were set to be mates. Always good to share a photo op with a black face, but after that, you started running out of reasons. The man hadn’t even attended a proper school.
He had to tip his hat to Taverner, though. He’d have preferred to sit and watch while someone sawed her head off, but fair do’s: She’d played him. All this time, he’d thought she’d accommodated herself to their situation—that he pulled strings, and she smiled while he did it—but here was the story: She not only wanted him dead but had laid out the groundwork to make that happen. Nearly worked, too. As it was, the old fool had self-destructed like a set of
