But it was the longest of shots that anything would happen, and besides, shying away from risk wasn’t going to win anyone a get-out-of-Slough-House-free card. Sitting at a desk, compiling lists of library users, wasn’t the reason she’d joined the Service. And if most ops involved heavy backup and protective clothing, there were always the off-the-cuff moments when you were expected to rely on your training, and the expertise hammered into you on the mats at the Service schools, or on the plains near Salisbury. Put your hands up, hide in a corner until the worst was over, and you might as well be a civilian. This way, when the score was taken at the end, she’d be able to say she’d been there, and ready. Wasted on a desk job, in other words.
Still, though. Just the one monkey wrench.
But nothing bad was going to happen.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ Shirley said.
‘Thanks for that. You’re having an intuition?’
‘No, I’m having a stomach cramp. I really need to eat.’
‘Shirley—’
‘There’s a takeaway back there. We passed it just before we turned.’
There were people arriving; little groups of the civic-minded, come to take the political temperature. An elderly couple, walking with sticks; another pair who might be students, one carrying a stack of leaflets.
‘There’s no time. You’ll survive.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘It’s an op, Shirley. Not an awayday.’
‘I’m pretty sure Lamb would say yes.’
‘Lamb’s not here. Which means I get to say no.’
‘You don’t give me orders.’
‘No, but I can let you walk home.’
‘There are trains,’ snarled Shirley.
Trains! You had to laugh.
‘As of now,’ Louisa said, ‘we’re live. One of us needs to be in there, to check out the audience. If anything’s gonna happen, we stand a better chance of stopping it if we spot the bad guys before they make their move. So. Are you gonna keep grousing, or get with the programme?’
Shirley mumbled something. Louisa assumed it was assent.
‘You want to be inside or out?’
‘I want the monkey wrench,’ Shirley said.
‘It’s in the boot,’ Louisa told her, and left to join the crowd in the library.
‘I need a cigarette,’ Gimball told his wife.
‘No you don’t.’
‘I’m not going to get through this without one.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘You gave up. Publicly. Very publicly. If I’m seen with a cigarette between my lips again, don’t vote for me. Your words.’
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t
Actually, he reflected, he’d have been better off saying it
‘You’ve done this a thousand times. What are you so worried about?’
He could tell her, he thought. Explain that he was about to get up on stage and ask for acceptance for who he really was. That done, he could probably let slip he was still smoking too, and get away with it. It wasn’t going to be what his audience focused on.
But if he came clean now, and she expressed doubt – which she would – he’d crumble like a cupcake in the rain. He needed her support, and to get that he’d have to present her with a
‘It’s a crunch moment,’ he said. ‘For both of us.’
No word of a lie.
‘We’re keeping our powder dry,’ she told him. ‘That’s all. Doing as Whelan said isn’t the end of anything, Dennis. It’s an interruption.’
He still needed a cigarette.
‘If you get caught,’ she said, ‘you’re never borrowing my Manolos again.’
Which was her way of giving assent. He’d never fit into her Manolos in a million years.
He checked, with a tap of a finger, that fags and lighter were in his breast pocket, then retreated from their commandeered room to find one of the volunteers staggering past under a ziggurat of plastic chairs.
‘Is there a back door? Need to gather my thoughts.’
There was.
River walked the block, and the neighbouring one, to get his bearings. At one point he saw J. K. Coe crossing a junction up ahead, a mobile slouch, and shook his head. Even now, when he could halfway kid himself he was doing something that mattered – was on an op – the reality of life among the slow horses kept asserting itself. His colleagues were mostly useless, so bowed down by issues they might have been in art school rather than the Secret Service. Louisa excepted, maybe. And himself, of course. Always important to remember that: there was nothing wrong with River himself.
