James Long - Sixth Column

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘Your mother doesn’t. She has very firm convictions.’

‘She’s… done a lot of things. She knows… well, she knows more than I do, I suppose.’

‘She was always like that, believe me, long before she knew anything. I would have said that kind of certainty got in the way of knowledge not that it results from it.’

In London a cut glass vase splintered into shards as Lady Viola hurled it against a wall.

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that you’ve been a square peg in a—’ Sir Michael stopped himself. ‘No, better, a round peg in a square hole all your life. We’re not made of square, straight-line certainties, you and I, we’re more blurred, aren’t we? Round suits us better.’

Johnny said nothing. His father sighed and tried again.

‘You’ve been brought up to think that being open-minded is being weak. You’ve been forced to take up positions you don’t really believe in. You’ve covered yourself in layers of camouflage, but I can see you under there.’

Johnny found himself blinking a tear angrily away. ‘You’re guessing,’ he said bitterly. ‘This is stupid.’

‘I’m not guessing. I know you because I know myself.’

‘God Almighty.’

‘Am I not right? Do you really enjoy the sort of company you keep, the sort of things you do? Hasn’t it ever seemed hollow to you?’

Always, thought Johnny. ‘I don’t know where this takes us,’ he said.

‘Back to my question. Which side are you on? I think you probably have to choose.’

‘That’s an odd question, coming from you, isn’t it?’ Johnny said. ‘You’ve set yourself up as the great freethinker, able to see all sides. How can you suddenly divide it up like that?’

‘I never said there weren’t things I’m against,’ said Sir Michael firmly. ‘I’m against people who pervert the truth to sell filthy chemical weapons. I don’t need to be open-minded about that. I’m against the Americans abusing their status as our old allies to sit on our doorstep and listen in on our conversations, though that’s our government’s fault for being so entirely lily-livered about it. I’ve considered the other point of view in both those cases and rejected it utterly. Considering doesn’t mean agreeing, you know.’

‘Hang on. That really is having it both ways. You wouldn’t have known anything about Rage if the Americans hadn’t been bugging that fax.’

‘It’s perfectly true that the Rage material came from Ramsgill Stray but two wrongs don’t make a right.’

‘But you were an ambassador. You knew what Six got up to. You must have used signals intelligence. Everybody does it.’

‘All right. That’s a good question. Heather asked me the same question. I’ll give you the same answer.’

The mention of her name made Johnny suddenly aware of her presence in the corner of the room. He looked at her and she met his gaze neutrally. Sir Michael went on.

‘On one level, there’s the game all the big boys play. We’ve all got dishes. We can all try and listen to the stuff that’s whizzing about in the ether. As you say, everybody does it. I don’t know about the ethics of it but I do know that no one in their right mind expects an international phone call to be secure and as for diplomatic traffic, we break their codes and we always have to assume they’re breaking ours. It’s the law of the jungle and it always has been. But I do draw a line. I think there are times – a few times – when our own government should be able to listen in on our private phones – subject to proper checks and balances, which are, I’m quite sure, often abused. I draw my line when it comes to another government tapping into our domestic system. In my book, that’s simply not on.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

Sir Michael just looked at him. Heather answered, ‘You know what we’ve got, Johnny. I’ve already talked to Maurice Cannon. He agrees. BTRS on that plan has to mean British Telecom Raven Stones. He says the details show clearly it’s a hook-in to our phone system. There’s no doubt. We found the smoking gun.’

Ray Mackeson broke his silence for the first time since he’d started listening to the conversation. He crumpled up his sheet of doodles and lobbed it into the waste bin. ‘Shit,’ he said.

‘The plan doesn’t prove there’s a line there. Maybe it was just an idea.’

‘No, it wasn’t. There isn’t any doubt, thanks to our flight. I don’t think you saw it, but when we passed the Raven Stones tower there were some men working with a little digger, right in the middle of the moor.’

‘They could have been doing anything.’

‘Out there? Exactly in line between the tower and the Stray? No they couldn’t. Whatever they were doing, maintenance, modification, I don’t know, it was right where the line must run.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘We’ll keep the papers safe. We’re not stealing them because we’ll give them back when we’re ready, though of course, we’ll copy them before we do that. When the court case is over, Margo and Jo will call a press conference to display them.’

‘You’ll be there too.’

She just smiled.

You can’t let go of a lifetime all at once. Johnny was playing for time, asking his stalling questions about the marginal points because a seismic disturbance was running through his soul. But he already knew that his deepest unhappiness, the uncertainty that had blinkered and hobbled him, made him an awkward counterfeit of a man for all his adult life so far, was in the course of being unpicked. The man in front of him, the man he had been brought up to fear and loathe with a pathological mistrust, stood revealed as the one who was, in every way that mattered, closest to him.

‘I think I’m ready to answer your question now,’ he said, ‘I’m on your side. I suppose I always was really.’

No one listening to him could have doubted his sincerity and Lady Viola, looking like a day old corpse that had been painted with thin brown varnish, sat down and became extremely still.

‘Welcome,’ said Heather. ‘Now, tell us about France.’

‘There’s nothing else to tell really. That’s where your doctor is going to be. It’s just a case of going and grabbing her.’ Then because he wanted to make some extra act of atonement he said, ‘Why don’t I fly you over there?’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘What in? You’d have to hire a plane.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I have a share in a Cessna. It’s a 172, just like the one we flew up here. It’s at a little airfield just the other side of Basingstoke, a place called Popham. We’d clear customs at Hum. It can’t be more than eighty or ninety miles across from there. I’ve done it before.’

‘We’d need to take Jo,’ said Heather, considering. ‘She’s the one who’d recognize Dr Beevor. It’s got four seats, hasn’t it?’

‘Could I come too?’ said Sir Michael, ‘It sounds interesting.’

Johnny added up rough weights and fuel loads in his head. ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to check.’

They made their plans for the trip then Sir Michael told them stories of his time at the Paris Embassy. Johnny sat back and listened to him, letting the words wash over him, easing away the tension. In its place he felt an enormous weariness creeping up on him, the toll exacted by the emotional stress of the evening. It dawned on him that he had nowhere to stay.

‘Well, if you’ll excuse me,’ said Sir Michael suddenly, seeming to read his thoughts, ‘I think I’ll be getting to bed. Your bed’s made up, John, the same room as before. Heather, you know your way around by now.’