Jeffrey Archer - Cometh the Hour

Karin wished Giles would come and rescue her, but she knew there was no chance of that.

“I’m relieved you’re not foolish enough to deny it, because there is a way out of this mess, as long as you’re willing to cooperate.”

Karin said nothing.

“I’m going to give you the chance to work for this country. I will personally make sure that you are regularly supplied with information that will keep the Stasi convinced you’re still working for them. But in return we will expect to know everything Pengelly is up to, and I mean everything.”

Karin picked up her cup but her hand was trembling so much she put it straight back down.

“I will be your handler,” the baroness continued, “and what better cover could you have than the occasional tea with a silly old bat from the House of Lords? That’s the story you’ll tell Giles, unless you want him to find out the truth.”

“No, that’s the last thing I want,” stammered Karin.

“Then let’s keep it that way. My husband, dear man, went to his grave thinking I was an undersecretary at the FCO, which indeed I was, to all intents and purposes. He would have burst out laughing if you’d suggested I was a spy. I should warn you, Miss Brandt, that if you feel unable to go along with our plan, you will be on the next flight back to East Berlin, and I will be the one who has to tell Lord Barrington the truth.” She paused. “I see you have some feeling for Giles.”

“I adore him,” said Karin without guile.

“So, Sir John got that right. You really did want to escape from East Germany to be with him. Well, you’ll just have to go on fooling most of the people most of the time. Ah, I see Giles heading toward us. If I receive a thank-you note from you tomorrow, I’ll know which side you’re on. If I don’t, you and Pengelly had better be on a flight to East Germany before dusk.”

“Cynthia, you don’t look a day over forty,” said Giles.

“And you’re still an incorrigible flirt and flatterer, Giles Barrington.”

“Guilty. It was kind of you to invite Karin to tea.”

“We’ve had a most interesting conversation.”

“And now I must drag her away as we’re taking my sister out to dinner tonight.”

“To celebrate her birthday, Karin tells me. I won’t detain you any longer.”

Karin got up unsteadily, picked up her shopping bag and said, “Thank you for tea.”

“I do hope you’ll come again, Karin.”

“I’d like that.”

“A remarkable old biddy,” said Giles as they walked down the corridor, “although no one seems to be quite sure what she did at the Foreign Office. More important, did you remember to buy me some socks?”

“Yes, I did, darling. Cynthia told me that she was an undersecretary at the FCO.”

“I’m sure she was... And did you manage to find a present for Emma?”

Emma was running late for her meeting. Attempting to juggle three balls at once was a skill she’d had to learn very quickly, and for the first time in her life there had been moments when she wondered if she had taken on more than she could handle.

Chairing the family company remained her first priority, and what she described to Harry as the day job. However, her responsibilities as a governor of the hospital were taking up far more of her time than she had originally anticipated. Officially, she was expected to attend four board meetings a year and to devote two days a month to hospital business. But it hadn’t been long before she found herself doing two days a week. There was no one but herself to blame, because she enjoyed every minute of her responsibilities as the governor overseeing the nursing staff.

The hospital employed over two thousand nurses and hundreds of doctors, and the senior matron, Mima Puddicombe, was not old school, but ancient school. Florence Nightingale would happily have taken her to the Crimea. Emma enjoyed learning about the day-to-day problems Mima faced; at one end of the scale were grandiose consultants who imagined they were omnipotent, while at the other were patients who knew their rights. Somewhere in between were the nurses, who were expected to take care of both, while making sure a smile never left their faces. It was no wonder Mima had never married. She had two thousand anxious daughters, and a thousand unruly sons.

Emma had soon become engrossed in the daily routines of the hospital and was touched that Mima not only sought her advice, but treated her as an equal, sharing her anxieties and ambitions for the hospital to which she had devoted her life. But the meeting Emma was running late for had nothing to do with her duties at the hospital.

Earlier that morning, the prime minister had visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace and sought her permission to dissolve Parliament, so that a general election could be called. Emma had kept her promise to Margaret Thatcher and joined the election committee that oversaw the seventy-one constituencies in the West Country. She represented Bristol, with its seven seats, two of which were marginal, one of them her brother’s old stomping ground. For the next three weeks she and Giles would be standing on opposite sides of the road, imploring the electorate to support their cause.

Emma was thankful the campaign would be over in a month because she had to accept that Barrington’s and the hospital were not going to see a lot of her until after polling day. Harry never got used to her creeping into bed after midnight and then disappearing before he woke the following morning. Most men would have suspected their wife had a lover. Emma had three.

It was a bitterly cold afternoon and the two of them put on heavy coats, scarves and gloves before they went out for their usual walk. They only spoke of inconsequential matters until they reached the abandoned tin mine, where there would be no colonels, tourists or noisy children to disturb them.

“Do you have anything worthwhile to report, Comrade Brandt, or is this another wasted journey?”

“The Home Fleet will be carrying out exercises off Gibraltar on February twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, when the Royal Navy’s new nuclear submarine will be in service for the first time.”

“How did you get hold of that piece of information?” said Pengelly.

“Barrington and I were invited to dine with the First Sea Lord at Admiralty House. I’ve found that if you remain silent long enough you blend into the background, like wallpaper.”

“Well done, comrade. I knew you’d come good in the end.”

“Can I seek your advice on another matter, comrade director?” After double-checking that there was no one who could overhear them, Pengelly nodded. “Barrington has asked me to be his wife. How would the party want me to respond?”

“You should accept, of course. Once you’re married, they’d never be able to expose you because it could bring down the government.”

“If that’s what you want, comrade director.”

Emma returned home at ten o’clock on the evening of the election, and she and Harry sat up through the night following the results from all over the country. It quickly became clear after the first count was declared in Billericay that the outcome was going to be too close to call, and when the last seat was announced in County Down in Northern Ireland just after 4:30 the following afternoon, the Labour Party had captured the most seats, 301 to 297, although the Tories had won the popular vote, by over 200,000.

Ted Heath refused to resign as prime minister, and spent the next few days trying to cobble together a coalition with the Liberals, which would have given the Tories an overall majority. But it fell apart when Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader, demanded as part of their acquiescence that proportional representation had to be enacted in law before the next election. Heath knew his backbenchers wouldn’t deliver, so he returned to Buckingham Palace and informed the Queen that he was unable to form a government.