Ken McClure - The Gulf Conspiracy

‘Your kid died of leukaemia three years ago. Last year you lost your wife to a brain tumour and...’

‘I killed them,’ said Maclean.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I killed them. The thing I brought back from the Gulf, the thing that’s making me ill, that’s what killed them.’

‘That’s just plain daft,’ said the Special Branch man, although his tone softened somewhat and his voice took on an edge of pity. ‘They died of very different things. It was just bad luck, man. You weren’t to blame.’

Maclean looked at him, his eyes now burning. ‘Like I say, it was that that killed them and some of these bastards at Porton know all about it. I won’t rest until they come clean.’

The officer could see that he was getting nowhere with advice. ‘Go back to Scotland, Gus,’ he said, ‘rebuild your life. Stop tilting at windmills. You can’t win. Believe me; the odds are stacked against you.’

‘You’re not going to charge me?’

‘You’re free to go.’

St James’s Park

London

April 2002

‘You know, Warner, all my life I’ve looked forward to the springtime but not this year,’ said Sir James Gardiner as he and Peter Warner sauntered slowly through the park in the pale yellow sunshine of a spring afternoon. ‘It should have been obvious to me that I was getting old but for some reason it’s come as a bit of a shock.’

‘We all have days like that, Jimmy,’ said Warner.

‘No, I’m serious,’ said Gardiner. ‘I’ve had to face up to my own mortality and come to terms with the fact that it’s just not going to happen.’

‘What’s not going to happen?’

‘Our dream, man. Our dream of making England a place fit to live in again, an England where brains and initiative are rewarded, competition is encouraged and courtesy and manners are the norm. It’s just not going to happen. The party’s still a mess; they’ve had five bloody years to get their act together and they’ve blown it with their continual squabbling and manoeuvring. They’ve ended up with all the credibility of a used-car salesman. It’s quite clear Blair’s going to get in for another five years.

Warner offered no argument.

‘Well, that’s going to be an end to it as far as I’m concerned. By the time the next parliament’s over, or maybe the one beyond that if I’m still around to see it, our future will be entirely in the hands of an whole generation of foul-mouthed, nose-picking louts with degrees in media studies and social work from toy-town universities that couldn’t even teach the buggers to read and write. They’ll sit on their arses and expect to be pampered as their right because they always have been. When they find out that isn’t going to happen, there’s going to be anarchy but by that time there’ll be nothing worth saving anyway. New Labour, the patron saint of mediocrity, the guardian of all that is worthless, shallow and banal will have pissed away our entire heritage against the wall.’

‘It’s not like you to be so negative, Jimmy,’ said Warner. ‘I’ve never heard you speak like this before.

‘I’m not used to losing,’ said Gardiner. ‘It’s a bitter pill to swallow but our England has gone, Warner, it’s just a memory. I want you to call a meeting of the others. I’m going to disband the group and the organisation.’

They walked another ten paces in silence before Warner said, ‘I won’t insult you by asking if you’ve really thought this through because you obviously have but I really must ask you to reconsider, James. Surely at a time like this our country needs people like us more than ever?’

‘As a soldier, Warner, you know better than most that you don’t get into a fight you can’t win and we cannot win this one. We need the party to be in power for us to make a difference. We need a sympathetic infrastructure and that isn’t going to happen. The Tories are spiralling down the toilet in a vortex of their own making. You’d almost think they had a death wish. What ever possessed them to make that idiot schoolboy leader?’

‘He’ll go after the election, Jimmy and then we’ll get a more credible hand at the tiller. Word is it’s going to be Ken Clark. He’ll give Blair a run for his money at the despatch box.’

‘He’ll split the party right down the middle over Europe,’ said Gardiner. ‘Then we’ll be back to square one.’

‘I still think you should reconsider.’

‘No, my mind’s made up. I want you to call a meeting as soon as possible. We’ll clear up any loose ends and that’ll be that.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Alice and I have a place in the Highlands of Scotland where, thank God, it’s still possible to lead a civilised life without demands for wheelchair access and signs in Urdu.’

‘And only the Gordons are gay,’ added Warner with a smile.

‘Being called a nation of shopkeepers was bad enough,’ said Gardiner. ‘But God help us, we’ve become a nation of bent hairdressers. Set up that meeting, will you?’

‘If your mind’s made up I’ll try for next Friday.’

Princess Louise Hospital

Glasgow

April 2002

George Drummond, the lab manager, looked up from his desk and smiled as he saw Gus Maclean come in through the door of the bacteriology department. Maclean was wearing the same navy duffel coat that he seemed to have been wearing for decades. He watched him hang it on his peg by the door and then asked, ‘How did you get on at the weekend?’

‘Quite well,’ replied Maclean, donning his lab coat. ‘The MOD has agreed to look at the position again and come back to us with a new report before the end of the year.’

‘Well done. I’ll say this for you guys, you certainly don’t give up easily,’ said Drummond.

‘Damn right we don’t,’ said Maclean with a conviction that even Drummond, who had known Maclean for over twenty years, found chilling. He saw in his friend and colleague the same obsession he’d seen in certain relatives of those who had died in the Lockerbie air disaster. It was as if their lives had been frozen at a moment in time.

‘We even managed to get a commitment from them to make enquiries as to what was going on at Porton just before the war started,’ said Maclean.

‘Good,’ said Drummond, not at all sure that he meant it. He would much rather his friend had gotten over the tragedy that had struck at his life with the death of his wife and daughter and returned to being something more like the man he had known when they were younger, the man he had gone climbing with every weekend in the Highlands, the bloke who had played the dame with side-splitting success in the hospital pantomime, the bloke he had got drunk with on his stag night and ended up explaining to the police why he happened to be tied to a lamppost wearing a nurse’s uniform at four in the morning. But that Gus had gone. They were still friends but there was no place in Gus’s life for fun any more. The Gulf War had put an end to that. The veterans’ association that Gus led was now his sole reason for being.

‘It looks as if George W is determined to have another go at Saddam,’ said Drummond.

‘So I see,’ said Maclean, without giving anything away.

‘And taking us in with him if the papers are to be believed.’

‘Where the master goes the poodle must follow,’ said Maclean.

‘That’s pretty much what the papers are saying too,’ said Drummond.

‘They’ve probably got teams of writers working on condolence letters as we speak,’ said Maclean bitterly. ‘Rest assured your boy did not die in vain, Mr and Mrs Smith. He died fighting for democracy, freedom, human rights and any other high-sounding crap they can come up with. Bastards. These buggers have no idea what war is really like. They pretend they do but they haven’t. And what’s more, they haven’t even begun to deal with the thousands of guys they maimed in their last little expedition to the desert sands.’