A Sentimental Traitor (12 page)

Harry sank back into the bath, allowing his muscles to relax and his thoughts to float free as the water rippled across his face, until suddenly he grabbed the taps and hauled himself back up
with an urgency that sent waves of suds lapping over the sides. ‘Maybe we all got it wrong, Jem. Maybe we’ve been climbing up a slope that leads nowhere. We keep talking about the kids.
But what if it was nothing to do with them?’

‘Then, why – who?’

‘Somebody else on board, perhaps.’

‘Who else was on board?’

‘I’ve absolutely no idea. But I think I know someone who might.’ He stretched out from the bath to retrieve his phone from beside the basin and began fumbling with it. He
punched a number and, when it had been answered, asked for the Police Casualty Bureau. ‘Shelagh – that you? Harry here,’ he began. ‘No, I’m not in a sewer, I’m
in my bath.’

There was a silence as he listened to the voice at the other end; Jemma thought his jaw stiffened, trying to give nothing away – which meant there probably was something, so far as Shelagh
was concerned.

‘That would be great, I’d love to catch up, it’s been too long, but in the meantime I need one small favour. Yes, OK, another small favour. The Speedbird crash. Can you let me
have a full passenger list? No, not the one you’ve published, I need names, dates of birth, sex, addresses, nationalities, whatever you’ve got. Why? Because you know I’m curious
about all sorts of things.’ The voice had dropped and the jaw twitched. ‘Yes. You, too. And thanks.’

When the call had finished he spent a few moments lost in thought, gazing at the phone.

‘You take that bloody thing everywhere,’ she said, feeling an unexpected flush of jealousy. It often rang at some extraordinarily inconvenient moments, could play hell with a
girl’s concentration.

‘It has everything in here,’ he said, waving it, ‘my entire life.’

‘Your entire
past
life. Sometimes I wish you’d drop it in the water.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Jem, it has its uses.’ He turned the phone to show her the screen. He’d taken a photograph of her in the bath. ‘You know, if I stuck that on my
election literature, I reckon I’d be home in a landslide.’

Patricia Vaine looked out of the window of the Eurostar at the flat, dreary countryside of northern France, a desolate landscape to which no one had ever paid the slightest
attention, except when there had been a war. Nothing to inspire, nothing to write about, except for what it no longer was – a battlefield. And that was the point, wasn’t it? The guns
had been silenced, the slaughter brought to an end. One community built from so many dissident, fractious parts. If the wars that had been fought across these fields had been worth so much
sacrifice, surely the peace that had replaced them was worth just a little, too? The growing pains of the great European adventure, Felix had said, and her thoughts turned to Harry Jones. A growing
pain. Bloody man. She switched off the vanity light and closed her eyes, listening to the thrumming of the wheels on the rails, hoping it would soothe her troubled thoughts. She could no longer
ignore him. He was becoming a pest. First Hamish Hague, now his request for the passenger manifest. That was the crucial moment, the point of no return. She didn’t think he would be able to
piece together the fragments, but she was no longer sure, and she couldn’t take the risk.

Intelligence agencies can never be mere observers. While they watch events, they inevitably get drawn into shaping them, too, which made it inevitable that once Vaine had begun rocking
Usher’s boat, she wouldn’t be able to stop. Once the poison had begun circulating around the system, it would carry on, until the end. But now there was Harry Jones, too. He was a
different problem. Dealing with Usher was akin to bombarding a castle, you couldn’t miss if you had the right weapons, but with Jones it was more like targeting a single soldier within the
walls. Her aim needed to be more precise, more clinical, and she hadn’t the experience. It was experience she would have to get.

She was still tussling with the problem when she arrived back at her house in Rue Faider, a narrow, four-storey town house that she had bought in dilapidated state for a song and had refurbished
into an elegant and exceptional home – her home. She shared it with no one, not even Felix, although his expertise in the antiques world had been responsible for loading the high walls with a
kaleidoscope of gilded mirrors, oils, portraits and tapestries that would have done grace to any minor museum. The windows were large, the light gentle, the furniture mostly French, the atmosphere
heavy, and in the summer she could catch the scent of sweet honeysuckle that crept in from the small garden. She was preparing herself a lean and lonely dinner when there was a knock at the door.
She was startled when she opened it to find a chauffeur at the door, standing in the rain. Behind him, in the back seat of a black Mercedes limousine, sat the Energy Commissioner, a German,
Albrecht Genscher. When they had first met he had tried to hit on her, but he was round and fleshy, not her type, and she rarely sold her favours for simple pleasure any more. There were plenty of
opportunities, of course, particularly in this capital of exiles, where men took her natural coolness for English allure, and didn’t call her Pat or Patsy but by her full name, Patricia,
which sounded all the more elegant for their drawn-out vowels. It was here and for the first time in her life that she had learned to use her sex, to dangle it as bait, although rarely to surrender
it. She had slept with only three men since her arrival, on each occasion for professional purposes, men who could help her up the ladder as easily as they had slipped her out of her Max Mara
dresses. In any event, the crease of concern across Genscher’s florid forehead suggested he had other things on his mind.

‘Patricia’ – he pronounced it Patreezia – ‘may I?’ he asked through the open car window.

Soon they were sitting in her study, before the ornate marble fireplace with its nineteenth-century clock on the mantel, with substantial glasses of wine and smoke from their cigarettes trailing
up to the high ceiling.

‘Patreezia, I am sorry to intrude but I have a problem,’ the German began.

‘Then
we
have a problem, Albrecht,’ she said softly, crossing her ankles, and making sure he noticed.

He nodded in gratitude. ‘It is the pipeline.’

He didn’t need to be specific. The Babylon pipeline was the project on which he had staked his reputation, a pipeline that once it was built would guarantee for a generation supplies of
gas to Europe from the new republics of central Asia and put to flight those doom mongers who predicted that within five years much of Europe would freeze. Its potential was fabulous, and so was
its cost.

‘The contracts are prepared, everything is ready, everyone wants to sign. It will transform our future. But . . .’ He sighed. ‘We have encountered a little local
difficulty.’

‘Of course, Albrecht. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

‘The final piece of the jigsaw are the environmental approvals. You know what it’s like. We have to certify that construction of the pipeline will not do damage.’

‘“
It is our duty to set the standards, not just for the continent
of Europe but in all the corners of the world”,
’ she declaimed with only a hint of
mockery, reciting a phrase that their Finnish colleague Illka Lappi, the Environment Commissioner, was fond of preaching.

Genscher smiled, and nodded, but there was no humour in it. ‘Yes. Of course. Standards.’ He took a mouthful of wine. ‘But there has been an accident.’

‘What sort of accident?’

‘The task force we sent to the Caspian to conduct the environmental and seismic studies has had their offices burned down. Everything has been destroyed.’

‘I see.’

‘A formality, of course, but . . .’ He waved his fleshy hand.

‘So you have no report.’

‘I am very confident that the report would have been favourable,’ he said quickly.

‘But of course.’ Her eyes strayed to the photograph in a silver frame that sat on the side table. It was of her in a private audience with the Pope. She was bowing, her head covered
in respect, as he blessed her, but her faith didn’t blind her to the realities. Genscher was a thug, and she knew full well that the report would be favourable because he would have ensured
the outcome from the very start. Fixed the casino. Something had gone badly wrong.

‘No backups?’ she asked, arching an eyebrow.

‘Sadly, no,’ the German said uneasily. ‘The research facility was very isolated, all the records were kept on site, the computer backups, too. Now – gone.
Everything.’ He dived once again into his glass of wine. She poured him some more.

‘So what do you need from me?’ she asked quietly.

‘There is no time to repeat the studies,’ he said. ‘If we delay any longer, governments in the countries through which the pipeline passes will change, get greedy, make
impossible demands. Not to speak of all those fanatical environmentalists. It has taken us years of negotiating to get to this point, now it is all about to fall apart.’

‘And we will be forced to live in windmills,’ she said.

‘We must have that pipeline! Otherwise Europe will enter another Ice Age,’ he said, agitated, banging the arm of his chair.

‘I thought you said it was a little
local
difficulty.’

‘Illka. It is in his hands. He can still approve the pipeline even without the environmental report. Override the system on the grounds of the security of the Union.’

‘I assume he is being stubborn.’

‘You know Illka, he is a bloody idealist. If we could burn his speeches we’d have an unlimited supply of energy, but he’d rather sit in the snow and beat himself with birch
twigs.’

‘You want me to change his mind.’

‘Could you? Of course you could. You are a remarkable woman, Patreezia. What I mean is – would you? That’s what I’m asking. A huge favour.’ One that would require
repaying at some point. ‘You know what this means tome.’

Genscher was not simply a political thug, he was a most effective Commissioner. There was even talk he would in his turn become President of the Commission, the top man, which would make him a
friend in a very high place. But not if his favourite project collapsed around his ears. As he drank, he failed to notice that she hadn’t touched her own glass. The atmosphere had grown
intense, almost claustrophobic. The walls were painted in a deep, rich red, and covered in heavy gilt frames that created an almost Renaissance intensity amidst the haze of blue smoke, as they sat
like cardinals in some papal palace, conspiring.

She made him wait. Then she dialled the EATA duty office. She drummed her fingers in impatience as she waited for it to be answered – thirty seconds, unforgivable even on a Sunday night,
something she would sort out in the morning. ‘There is a third-floor apartment on Rue de la Croix,’ she said, when at last her call was answered. She gave the street number. ‘It
will have a landline. I want its number. And we’ll treat this as an initiative test, Fabiano. Let’s see if you’re quicker at digging out information than you are at picking up the
phone.’

From the chair opposite Genscher was waving his mobile, mouthing that he had Illka’s number, but she shook her head dismissively. It had to be the landline. Illka had to know that she knew
precisely where he was.

It took some time for Illka to answer the phone, when at last she rang, and when he did he didn’t announce himself, merely uttered a curt ‘Yes?’

‘Illka, it’s Patricia. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

Disturbing him? Of course she was disturbing him, pushing him to the brink of mindless panic, that was the point. He was standing naked but for his socks in the living room of a small apartment
that no one was supposed to know about, but for his tarts. He was a pillar of family values and also of the Evangelical Lutheran church, a man whose ambitions were as broad as his wife was
narrow-minded and unforgiving. He wanted to become President of Finland one day, not dragged down by lurid media revelations about his appetite for underage sex.

‘Delighted to find you here on a Sunday evening,’ she continued. He still hadn’t said a word, hadn’t dared draw breath.

He wasn’t the only one, of course. Ridiculous men. When they arrived in Brussels on a Sunday evening in preparation for their working week, they were faced with a choice – a lonely
evening with a takeaway, or some more exotic form of distraction, what she called a Sunday Night Special. During a visit to Chicago she had been shown a collection of Saturday Night Specials,
small, cheap handguns used by petty criminals, and although the Sunday Night versions referred to casual women they could prove to be just as deadly in the wrong hands. Particularly in her
hands.

Still he hadn’t spoken. She knew he was debating whether to put the phone down, deny it all, but she knew he wouldn’t, not in the end. There was no point. She knew.

‘How can I help you, Patricia?’

‘A quick point, but really rather important, Illka. The Babylon pipeline. It requires either an environmental impact report or your waiver, in the interests of the Union’s security.
So I’m calling to set your mind at rest by assuring you that the pipeline, and your approval for it, are most certainly in the interests of our security.’

‘I see,’ he muttered dully.

‘Look, Illka, I know about your deep-seated principles in all sorts of areas, but life is complicated. Sometimes you have to shout out loud about things, other times it’s better just
to keep quiet and avoid a fuss. You understand what I mean?’

He was about to ask her how the hell she’d found this apartment, tucked away so anonymously in the tourist district that even he had difficulty in finding it in the dark, but he knew it
was pointless. Secrets were her business.

‘Is there any point in a discussion?’

‘No.’

‘You strike a hard bargain,’ he complained, his tone bitter.

‘It seems to me a very fair one.’