James Long - Sixth Column

She wasn’t exaggerating. The parts of his face that weren’t black and blue were doubly pale in comparison but he wasn’t about to argue.

‘I’m coming up anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m going to be in court, so of course I’ll drive you.’

They rang Mrs Thompson from a pay-phone at Toddington Services. Sir Michael’s cleaner was at the house, beside herself with anxiety, occupying herself with unnecessary dusting and desperate for news.

‘He’s much better,’ Heather assured her over the roar of truck diesels behind her. ‘His temperature’s down. We talked to the hospital an hour ago. He’s much more cheerful.’

‘Are you all right, dear?’

‘Yes, fine, thank you. So’s Johnny. That’s why I’m calling. He’s driving us up. I’m sure Sir Michael won’t mind him using the guest room.’

Johnny could hear a burst of excitement from the other end rising above the hubbub around them. Heather listened, smiling, tried a few times to get a word in edgeways, glanced at her watch eventually and said, ‘Eight o’clock or so. I’ve got to be at the Hall by nine.’

She turned to Johnny as she hung up. ‘She knows all about you.’

‘Surely not all?’

‘No, you’re right. Just the simple bits. She knows Sir Michael’s found his long-lost son. He’s probably been talking nonstop about that and she knows you saved our lives because she read it in the Mirror . She says she’s dying to meet you. She’s leaving a key under the plant pot by the back door.’

Back on the road, Johnny glanced back at Jo, who seemed to be nodding off in the back seat, and pitched his voice low.

‘How’s your barrister going to play it tomorrow?’

‘It’s my word against Hayter’s,’ said Heather. ‘We’ve just got to get them to believe me.’

‘Maybe I could help.’

‘How?’

‘Supposing I got up as an expert witness, told them my background and said we had evidence that the NSA was tapping British domestic phones.’

‘What background?’ said Jo from the back. Her eyes were still shut.

‘Long story,’ said Heather, ‘Johnny’s got a bit of a past. He’ll tell you some time. Anyway,’ she said turning to Johnny, ‘how would that help?’

‘It might help to justify your going in to the base. At least in the juror’s minds.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said and there was a bleak hopelessness in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. ‘Anyway, wouldn’t you get locked up? Breaking the Official Secrets Act or something?’

‘Well, at least think about it,’ he said.

Ray Mackeson was thinking about it too. There was a war cabinet in session at the Stray. Americans only – modplods keep out. Curtis Walsh was up from Grosvenor Square. The Base Commander made it three.

‘They could call him into the witness-box,’ said Mackeson. ‘He could stand up and say anything he damn well pleases. He could say he’d seen the plans.’

‘The judge would let him?’

‘Sure the judge would let him. Couldn’t stop him. If Kay swears on oath he’s ex-MI5, it’s down to us to disprove it. He’s got credibility on Rage. He’s got credibility on that cable diagram that he should never have been allowed to carry out of here. If he starts waving that plan around…’

He left the thought hanging and if none of them showed any emotion it was only because years of covert service had double-glazed their eyes.

‘Well, then, let’s go over the options,’ said Curtis Walsh. ‘And I think I might be allowed an opening opinion. Letting Kay blow us out of the water is not among them.’

‘You gotta know what Kay’s about,’ said Mackeson. ‘He’s been marinaded in British ruling-class values for three decades. Women and children first. Brought up to help the good guys beat the bad guys.’

‘So aren’t we the good guys?’ asked the Base Commander drily.

Mackeson looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Guess the Brits didn’t hear about the Nineties. Forget the adjectives. We’re the only guys. Masters of the Universe. What more does anyone need to know?’

Curtis Walsh raised an eyebrow. ‘Kay don’t seem to see it that way.’

‘His problem.’

‘Ours too?’

‘It’s my job to make him see. All I need to know from you,’ said Mackeson, ‘is just how far to go in the process.’

Walsh looked into Mackeson’s flat yellow eyes and doubted that anything he said would make any difference. He knew Mackeson had a direct line to higher authority than him and suspected the question had been phrased strictly for the record.

‘There are two projects riding on this,’ he answered. ‘You don’t need me to tell you your job.’

The phone buzzed. The Base Commander picked it up, listened, passed it to Mackeson. ‘Gerow,’ he said.

Mackeson gave a slow grin and glued his ear to it.

‘Yeah?’ He listened. ‘I got it. Good going, Pacman.’

He put it down, smiled some more and drummed on the desk. ‘Our boy and his friends still use telephones. He don’t learn. We got him just where we want him.’

‘Where?’

‘In a tailor-made trap. Down the longest dead end you ever saw. A million miles from help. Remember that movie? In space, no one can hear you scream. My man Pacman’s earned himself a prize.’

It was around 9 p.m. by the time Johnny had taken Jo home, reunited Heather with her car and seen her safely off to the Hall again. It would have been earlier but when they got to her cottage, he’d said, ‘Can I come in for a minute?’

‘Of course. Would you like some food?’

‘Coffee would be nice.’

She was measuring coffee granules into mugs, her back turned to him at the kitchen table, when he gave way to an impulse he could simply resist no longer and moving towards her put his arms round her. She stopped what she was doing, stood stock-still for three loud heartbeats, then put the spoon down and turned round in his arms very slowly. Her eyes were shut. He kissed her cheek then moved his mouth towards hers but she lifted up a finger and put it on his lips.

‘Stop,’ she said.

He relaxed the pressure of his arms just slightly, but she made no move away.

‘All my strength has to come from me tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in the dock before. It’s… not like anything else. All I will have is myself.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘Good. I’m glad, but it doesn’t change things. I have to know that they can’t touch me, that they can put me in prison for a year or for two years and that it doesn’t matter because I know I’m right. You see? No, you don’t see.’

‘I don’t want you to be in prison. Surely you know that by now? I want to be with you.’

‘Don’t tell me that,’ she said sharply, ‘I don’t want that in my mind tomorrow. That gives me something to lose. I don’t want them to see they can hurt me.’

He let his arms drop, kissed her once more, chastely on the forehead, nodded and became deliberately businesslike.

‘Right. I do see. OK, then. Tell your barrister that I’m prepared to testify. Do you want me to take you there?’

‘No… thank you. Margo’s going to take me. She’s been through it lots of times herself. She knows what it’s like.’

‘I’ll be there early in case the barrister wants to talk to me.’

‘You’d really go through with that?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘There’s no of course about it. Courts are horrible. They’d be sure to try to stop you giving evidence. It might get very nasty.’

‘I’ll do it.’

After that she had made the coffee, taken him into the back garden, sat next to him on a bench and explained her life to him, that whatever happened in court, this wasn’t going to be a final victory or a final defeat – that the Stray would still be there and she would still feel just as bound to go on showing that she objected. It would be hard, she explained, for anyone else to share that life with her unless they, at some deep level, felt the same. They couldn’t choose to share it just for the sake of her. That would only come between them. He listened mostly in silence, taking in what she said, determined all the more, by testifying, to put himself through some ordeal of purification for her.