Joe Country полностью

Anton had spent the night with a mouthful of snow, anaesthetising himself. But while stomping his face might look like back-up, it hadn’t felt like back-up, if he could get Lars to appreciate the difference.

“She wasn’t armed,” he said.

“Just as well.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. If she’d come from the Park, she’d have come strapped on.”

Lars wasn’t buying. “On a home visit? It’s Wales, not Ukraine.”

“Could be High Street Kensington,” Anton assured him. “In response to a joe sending up a flare, the Park would send guns. Not a blonde.”

He hadn’t always worked the grey area—eight years in the BND after six in the military, and one thing you learned on Spook Strasse was, folk drove on different sides, but the highway code stayed the same. The Americans wore fake smiles and the Russians rubber gloves, but the processes for taking care of your own were pretty much fixed across all divides.

“She’s not their exit route, in other words,” he said. “Just an added complication.”

They were a mile outside the village, not far from Caerwyss Hall; the car pulled onto a verge. Driving was slow, like learning to ice skate. The fields all around were smooth plains, and the trees against the morning skyline looked like Christmas decorations. Snow, though. Soft and fluffy on the outside, but ruthless as a shark. It was the fucking Disney Corp by other means.

“Two chicks,” Lars grumbled. “What is this? Charlie’s Angels?”

Anton hoped not. Charlie had three.

“Women have a natural advantage,” he said. “First contact, you tend to pull your punches.”

“It’s working so far.”

“Second time round, it’s a different story.” Anton’s knuckles clicked in the cold still air. The gun in his jacket was a reassuring weight.

“You’re sure then,” Lars said. “They’re still in the area.”

Anton was, for all the reasons he’d just said.

“Just as well,” said Lars. “Because here comes Frank. You can repeat all that to him.”

The Fugue Protocol, thought Lady Di.

She was in her office, Saturday morning. Some jobs don’t respect private life.

The Fugue Protocol: it was a back-door process, dependent on the cooperation of whoever was chairing Limitations. So there’d never been a hope in hell it would be approved, Oliver Nash being far too circumspect to license anything which might cause increased laundry bills round the Cabinet table. Even Oliver, though, had had his antennae up. I can’t help thinking there’s something going on here, Diana . . .

It’s the Secret Service, Oliver. There’s always something going on.

No Fugue, then, but that was fine, because all she’d wanted was her minuted application, so that once the cat hit the fan, spraying blood and fur on the walls, she’d be able to say See? I could have stopped this. It didn’t take genius to work out that Frank Harkness’s presence was part of the deal Peter Judd had warned her about—that he was here to squash whatever had happened at Caerwyss Hall—and nor was it a secret that Lamb was gunning for him. Which he might think he was doing below the radar, but for all Lamb’s street smarts, he was behind the techno curve. It was one thing setting his social retard onto pulling up CCTV records; quite another to expect this to happen unobserved. That particular shit was out of the bag: Diana knew damn well the slow horses had been tracking Harkness’s footprint since his arrival in Southampton, and given their generally poor impulse control, they’d no doubt be haring after him first chance they got. He had, after all, left blood on their carpet last time round.

So yes, things could get messy, and when that happened, whatever you were trying to cover up generally became headline fodder, which in this case meant the Duke’s name being spattered across world headlines. Again. Not in the UK, obviously, where most editors tugged their foreskins when the Palace required, but damage would be done: nothing pissed the public off more than privilege caught with its pants down, and nothing pissed off Lady Di’s own lords and masters more than a pissed-off electorate.

And as with any corporate behemoth, shit cascaded downwards:

The Service isn’t in good odour at present. Too many missteps, too few triumphs. . .

But let’s see how Downing Street enjoyed a scandal that could easily have been avoided.

I applied for Fugue. I could have handled this. But I was turned down.

And then, maybe then, they’d start to listen when she outlined what the Service needed if it were to prosper and protect this increasingly isolated island state.