‘So a clean breast to the PM might be self-defeating, don’t you think? I mean, he’s made a career out of gaslighting the electorate, but there’s clear blue water between fooling others and being fooled. And discovering that his intelligence service carried out an unsanctioned hit on foreign coin, well. He hates to be shown up for the dick he pretends to be. You might not get the absolution you’re after.’
Diana was experiencing something like an out-of-body moment, as if she’d just detached from herself, and was floating in the ether, bombarded by raw emotions. Chief among these was shock. She was thinking about those visitors’ tours, designed to show strangers around the Park’s outer corridors. Had she really thrown the doors wider without knowing it? Burned down her own firewalls and allowed a foreign power in?
Judd said, ‘You’re tense. Take deep breaths, then finish your wine. It’ll help.’
‘You fucking maniac.’ Her voice was low, but she might have been shooting off sparks.
‘Careful. This is not a conversation you want overheard.’
‘You’ve put me, the Park, the whole fucking country in an impossible situation. This could start a war, you realise that? An actual full-scale war.’
‘And now you’re being melodramatic.’
What she was was homicidal. ‘Melodramatic? You’re telling me you put Chinese money into a Service op—’
‘No, Diana, I put
‘It’s beyond treason. It’s a fucking
‘Again, melodramatic. But finish your drink. We’re going in for lunch soon, and they’ve a rather nice Zinfandel breathing.’ He downed a healthy percentage of his gin. ‘My backers know nothing of our current, ah,
‘Which you’ll drive a bulldozer through when it suits you.’
‘The point being, it doesn’t suit me. Not as long as we’re on happy terms. An injunction you’re free to interpret as widely as you like.’
Her glass was shaking in her hand, not a huge amount, but enough that he’d notice. She took a swallow, wishing it were brandy, whisky, or something being served at a beach bar many decades away. ‘You wanted Number Ten,’ she said. ‘Always have done. Now your mirror image has got there instead and fouled your nest. And this is your revenge, isn’t it?’
‘Revenge? No, Diana, this is simply me being me. Nothing’s changed. I have plans, and you’ll help me achieve those plans, and nobody need know anything about it. I appreciate that you’re not entirely happy with some of those I recruited—’
‘Cantor’s been dealt with.’
‘Really? I was going to make the offer but, as always, you’re ahead of me. So, yes, we’ll be discreet, and we’ll be careful, and your angelic choir will sing in harmony when called upon to do so. My backers, who are purely businessmen, I assure you – nothing to do with the state apparatus – they’ll remain ignorant of any dealings we have outside the public sphere, and no breath of their financial association with the Service need ever trouble the air. Provided, as I say, that we continue on happy terms.’ He reached across the table, his palm open. ‘So. A moment of truth. The alliance continues?’
Diana finished her drink, not taking her eyes off him. There was a rather nice Zinfandel breathing in the dining room; there were no doubt other delights in store, and every step they took would be dictated by him from now on, until such moment as she could reclaim the initiative. It didn’t seem likely that this would occur within the next few minutes.
She had served for years under Ingrid Tearney, who had occasionally dispensed wisdom.
‘Excellent girl. Shall we go in?’
Like a gentleman, he allowed her to precede him into the dining room.
Sid found River in the kitchen. He had been to the village while she slept, and had returned with the usual provisions – bread, cheese, milk, coffee – all of which were neatly arranged on the kitchen counter, while River himself was on the floor. She found his phone in his jeans pocket, the battery in another. He was still dark, a thought she pushed away. This is how you insert the battery, she told her hands, which fumbled and dropped and had to try again. This is how you press the buttons. She’d called 999 before remembering there were protocols; numbers you called when a Park operative hit the ground. Not that River was Park, exactly, but once you’d hit the ground, the meaner distinctions dissolved. So she called the Park too, its number still high on River’s contact list, as if there’d never been a rift. Nerve agent, she said, toxic attack, and said it again when asked to clarify.
