James Long - Sixth Column

In London, Lady Viola, Sir Greville and Ivor Sibley sat frozen to the spot, hanging on every syllable. At the Stray, Ray Mackeson refilled his glass.

‘The job you were set to do. Would you like to tell me what it was about?’

Johnny nodded slowly. ‘Yes, all right.’

‘Do you mind if Heather hears this too?’

‘No.’

Sir Michael went to the door and opened it. Heather was sitting quietly at the kitchen table.

‘Would you like to come in now,’ he said softly.

She came into the room, looking at Johnny as she had always looked at him, with open interest. It’s the way she probably looks at the boys at Tinderley, he thought.

‘John has volunteered to me the information that he went through my desk. He says however that he had no idea before he came up that I knew you, Heather, and he also says the job was… well, a peripheral consideration. I won’t embarrass either of you by repeating the real reason for his trip. He has decided he wants to tell us more about the requirements of this job he’s been doing.’

They both looked at Johnny.

‘I suppose you both know who I used to work for?’

Sir Michael nodded. ‘I do. I have done since you joined, though I regretted it, I must say. I decided Heather could be trusted with the information.’

Trusted. His father was taking his interests into account in this.

‘How did you know?’

There was a sign of a smile. ‘You must appreciate that a lifetime in the Foreign Office in the sort of jobs I had puts one in fairly constant contact with the Secret Intelligence Service. It wasn’t really very difficult.’

MI6. Of course, Johnny realized, his father would have any number of old contacts to tip him the wink, delighted to dish the dirt on their down-market colleagues at 5. Sibley’s organization was stuffed with people from 6. Look at Maggie, he thought. God, Maggie. He hoped devoutly that Sir Michael’s intelligence didn’t run that far.

‘Anyway, when I changed jobs I was told to find out how you’d got your hands on the papers you sent to the Hurst Inquiry.’ He turned his gaze to Heather. ‘You see, I’m sure you didn’t know it but there was a serious defence risk in doing that. This product, CN512, is very important to—’

‘Johnny, just stop there for a moment,’ she said in a voice that was suddenly cold. ‘Don’t start giving me that sort of line. Believe me, you don’t know what you’re talking about. CN512 is one of the most disgusting products ever dreamed up in this country. Do you know what it does? Do you?’

‘Heather, perhaps you would allow me,’ put in Sir Michael. He looked at his son. ‘I’m sure you’ve been given a very partial view of this. I have been able to do a little research by speaking to a few of my old friends. Whatever you may have been told, John, there is no likely application of this stuff for our own armed forces. CN512 seems to be a sort of berserker drug. It takes away most of the inhibitions that make men human. It turns them into beasts, lethal beasts. It’s absolutely no good for a high-tech army. It’s for Third World countries fighting man-to-man wars. It is unspeakably dreadful and your stepfather’s company is seeking to market it like toothpaste, with some awful trade name. They’re calling it “Rage”. Isn’t that dreadful? Anyway I completely support Heather’s decision to send off the papers.’

Sir Greville gave an audible groan at the extent of the man’s knowledge, which went far beyond the intercepted material. He was seeing his avenues of escape from the Hurst Inquiry questions dwindling fast. Sibley looked at him nervously as his own operation was shredded before their ears, thinking furiously through his list of ex-MI6 officers, wondering who was leaking. Lady Viola got to her feet and began to pace up and down. At the Stray, Ray Mackeson drew a dollar sign on his note pad, shading it in to give a 3D effect, and waited for more.

‘I think at this stage,’ Sir Michael said to a mesmerized Johnny, ‘we really have to ask you the question, whose side are you on?’

Six pairs of ears hung on his answer.

Sir Greville Kay looked at his wife with extreme unease, registering the fact that she’d gone an unusual colour, a shade of yellow below the tan. He wished Sibley would stop shaking his head like that. He’d been doing it solidly for the last ten minutes as the diplomat’s voice, relayed with astounding clarity down the lines to their loudspeaker, had laid out the cards before Johnny, painting a damning picture of the Rage business, forcing the boy further and further into a carefully designed corner from which there was no escape.

That was an enormous problem for him and for Sibley but at least it was a finite problem with fixed constituents, a problem they could surely find some way of attacking. Apart from the partial paperwork in the hands of the Hurst Inquiry, the dangers to them were contained entirely in the knowledge in the heads of these people, these disembodied voices. Knowledge, Sir Greville knew, was a flickering, ephemeral affair, reliant on life and breath.

That was something he might be able to solve. In terms of Sir Greville’s personal comfort, which relied heavily on his wife’s continual, innate fury being directed at targets outside the domestic circle, the direction the far-off conversation had now taken was far harder to address.

Johnny and Sir Michael were talking to each other as if Heather simply wasn’t there.

‘I can’t leave your mother out of this, you see, John. It always comes back to her way of looking at things. She’s the power behind your stepfather, you must know that.’

‘But I’ve never known anything else. You can’t just abdicate all responsibility for the whole of my life and then expect me to be your son.’

‘I didn’t really have the choice,’ said Sir Michael in a flat tone. ‘She had all the money. She had a whole cricket team of lawyers. I was pretty junior in those days. I got hauled up in front of my Permanent Secretary, told the department wouldn’t want to see anything dragged through the papers and that – how did he put it – “anything controversial in the field of custody would be fuel for the gutter Press and would significantly impede my career”. Something like that, anyway.’

‘So you put your career first?’ There was some relief for Johnny in anger.

‘Not really. She held all the cards. I didn’t stand a chance of fighting it. In retrospect, I think she probably got one of her friends to put the Permanent Secretary up to it. She’s always had those sorts of friends. In any case, you know, the conventional wisdom of the time was that mothers brought up children, not fathers. Don’t think I haven’t regretted it a million times.’ The old man’s urbanity had frayed edges. His eyes looked momentarily damp.

‘Where does that leave me now?’

Sir Michael’s head jerked up sharply and Johnny got the full benefit of his stare. ‘With yourself, if you know who you are, and I suspect that perhaps you do.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You seem to me to be a little unhappy with the way you perceive yourself.’

‘What?’ Johnny broke the gaze and turned a cross stare on the nearest picture instead.

‘Please. Give me a chance. Listen to me for a minute. I wonder whether you perhaps sometimes wish it was easier to form a fixed opinion, whether you feel at a bit of a disadvantage when you’re surrounded by people who seem to know exactly what they think?’

It felt to Johnny as if the man had reached into his head and put his finger at the exact centre of his brain.