A Sentimental Traitor (32 page)

Harry was asked to confirm his name and address. ‘Yes, sir,’ Harry replied, standing to attention, on parade. Then he was ordered to sit, and played no further part in proceedings.
He’d been told by van Buren that this would be the case, yet it did nothing to stifle his despair. As he sat down, his defiance seemed to leak away like a deflating balloon. He had wanted to
deny the charges, protest his innocence, but van Buren had said that wouldn’t be possible, not at this stage. Don’t cause a fuss, Harry. In any event, as Harry sat, he found he
couldn’t breathe. He’d often imagined such a scene, not with himself but with his father, who had sailed so very close to the wind that it had seemed merely a matter of time before he
capsized. Only his early death had saved him, a heart attack brought about by overambitious fornication. Harry could hear his ghost mocking – ‘The way to go, Harry, not like this . .
.’

The Crown prosecutor was setting out the case. Section 18, Offences Against the Person Act. The Act dated from 1861, one part of the British legal system that appeared to have withstood the test
of time. Grievous bodily harm, with intent. Trial by indictment. Seek permission for the case to be admitted to Crown Court. That was inevitable, given that the maximum punishment was so severe
– life in prison, as Arkwright had warned him. The Detective Sergeant was sitting in the court even now. He was looking confident.

The prosecutor asked that Harry be remanded in custody, objecting to bail. It was a most serious offence, he said, the evidence the prosecution intended to present would make a custodial
sentence almost inevitable, it was not the only allegation made against the defendant by the witness, there was the all too serious possibility that the defendant might try to interfere yet again
with the prime witness. And more.

Then it was van Buren’s turn. He did his best. Argued that Harry was a man of previous unblemished character, a man who had given immense service over many years to his country, had
medals, was far too well known to hide. This was, the lawyer declared, a man of substance, not likely to run off with his life packed into a suitcase. Yet, after a night in the cells, Harry was
looking dishevelled, as if he were already on the run.

The system of hearings before a district judge has been frequently criticized. Unlike magistrates, they sit on their own, and can come to highly individual and patently idiosyncratic decisions.
The district judge in Harry’s case had never met him but had, of course, heard of the accused, even knew of the allegations of sexual harassment made against him by Emily – well, who
hadn’t? But the judge also knew how casually and unfairly such allegations were thrown around by young women; after all, some years beforehand a close colleague on the bench had been accused
of similar conduct. Hushed up and brushed over, the woman clearly hysterical, but judges rely on their own experience as well as that of legal precedent to reach their conclusions. The judge had a
brother only recently retired from the military, while he himself had once considered a political career, all of which gave him an inclination to trust Harry. They had never met, but there were
ties that bound men like them. What was more, the judge held a pathological loathing for journalists. Now he looked across his courtroom, at those press men present, all poised, ready to pounce,
wanting to devour this man on their front pages. They gave him every excuse he needed. Anyway, the prisons were overflowing like blocked drains. Cuts!

So Harry wasn’t remanded in custody, as Arkwright and the prosecutor sought, but released. Wasn’t even given a tag or put under curfew or required to pay a surety, merely ordered on
pain of extraordinary punishment not to approach any witness and to report once a week to Charing Cross police station. Van Buren blanched, scarcely able to believe his client’s good fortune.
On another day, before another judge, Harry would be chasing cockroaches around the Scrubs.

Instead, Harry was released, into the clutches of a mob of journalists who were determined to get their victim, one way or the other.

Harry suggested they meet up in St James’s Park. He couldn’t go home, which was under siege, and he was feeling desperately claustrophobic, in need of fresh air,
wanting to breathe again. He sat in a deckchair, his face shaded by a sunhat even though the sun had gone, peering out at the pelicans squabbling on their perch in the lake and listening to the
evening serenade provided by the musicians from the Wellington Barracks who were crowded onto the bandstand. Harry had walked through this park for years, from the Parliament buildings to the clubs
and restaurants of St James’s, but usually with his head down, his mind elsewhere. How long had it been since he’d slowed down enough to soak up its gentle atmosphere, smell the
fresh-mown grass, admire the reflections of Buckingham Palace in the lake and the chimes of the light-throated clock echoing from Horseguards? When had he last eaten an ice cream? Now, for a couple
of hours, he’d done all of that. While he sat here, it seemed he had all the time in the world.

‘I was always worried I’d be bored when I left the Commons,’ he declared, as Jemma appeared through the trees and came to sit beside him, ‘but I could get used to
this.’

They both knew he was lying.

‘I’m afraid I can’t cook you that dinner,’ he said, ‘the place is swarming with vermin. You wouldn’t like it anyway. It was only going to be pasta.’

Again, they both knew he was lying. He’d been trained how to live off the land, deep in jungle or on the Arctic ice, but he had never taken to it and was an accomplished cook.

‘Pasta at my place, then,’ she said.

‘I can’t go back to the house, Jem, not tonight. They’ll rip me apart.’

‘Pasta – and a pillow. On the sofa. I’ll cook.’

The look he threw at her suggested he wasn’t sure which prospect he found least appealing. Even she acknowledged that her skills in the kitchen might provide clinical evidence of why the
Scots were burdened with one of the highest rates of coronary disease in Europe. She threw a file of papers into his lap. ‘And here’s a little appetizer.’

He sat up and began to open it. The file contained photocopies of press reports and Internet printouts.

‘We don’t know what we’re looking for but we know it has to be big. Huge, in fact. But I couldn’t find it. I was so desperate, I even began imagining that it might have
something to do with the recent deal between Russia and Brussels for the exploitation of ancient bogs, with some fanatical environmentalist wreaking vengeance on them.’

‘Mind you, they can be ferocious. When I was at uni I spent part of a summer vacation in a protest camp,’ Harry muttered, sifting the papers.

‘Getting to know the enemy?’

‘Were they the enemy? I’m not sure even now.’

‘So why did you go?’

He looked up sharply, a look of incredulity on his face. ‘For the same reason you probably took a gap year and didn’t want your parents to visit your college digs too
often.’

The animated twitching of her nose suggested he had found his target. ‘Leaving aside your dubious environmental credentials,’ she said, ‘I came across this.’ She directed
his attention to a particular press clipping from the file. ‘The Babylon pipeline. It will bring gas from central Asia to Western Europe and save us all from igloos. It’s huge. Original
construction costs eight billion, currently estimated at fourteen, so you can guess there won’t be much change from twenty.’

‘Dollars?’

‘Pounds.’

‘That’s big enough to move a few mountains.’

‘Precisely It’s a huge piece of engineering. But there’s more. The real money comes from the supply of gas itself. Babylon is going to provide fifteen to twenty per cent of the
EU’s gas needs. Year after year. Can you imagine how much power that gives those involved?’

‘So who is involved?’

‘The central Asian republics themselves. The gas companies that do the drilling. But there’s someone else. The countries through which the pipeline runs.’

‘From central Asia? There must be a number of different routes a pipeline could take.’

‘Exactly!’ It was as though her dullest pupil had suddenly discovered the theory of relativity.

He was studying one of the maps in the folder, his finger following the track. ‘From central Asia, to Western Europe, via . . .
Russia
.’

‘It doesn’t own the gas, only controls it – so long as the pipeline goes through Russia.’

‘You remember a few years ago? Russia got into a bust-up with the Ukraine. Some bollocks about unpaid bills, supposedly, but it’s never that simple, not with the Russians. It was all
about muscle. Making sure the Ukraine remembered who the bosses were. So when the guys in Kiev got a bit uppity, the guys in Moscow simply turned off the gas tap and left them to freeze. A gentle
reminder of what the power game is really all about, and how to play it. Two weeks later, the Ukrainian government bends its knee and, like a miracle, the heating comes back on, with Stalin
applauding from the celestial grandstand.’

‘The Babylon pipeline has always had to cut across the Caspian, but it had a choice of two basic routes. One that crossed into Russia . . .’

‘Ah, and one that didn’t!’

‘Russia already controls a huge amount of the gas supply to Western Europe. If Babylon had gone through the alternative route, Azerbaijan and Georgia, or some of their own frontier
republics like Chechnya which they barely control, their stranglehold would have been broken.’

‘Moscow stuffed.’

‘End of empire.’

‘And I can imagine the Russians getting very upset about that. Very upset indeed.’ Suddenly his exhilaration had vanished. He turned to her, the file and its papers tumbling to the
ground, but he didn’t seem to care. ‘Jem, that would explain a lot of what’s happened. Not the details, but the viciousness of it all.’

She waved forlornly at the fallen papers. ‘These are reports, downloads from energy analysts, telling how the Russians offered all sorts of concessions, new licences, Siberian prospecting
rights, in order to get Babylon approved . . .’

Her voice faded away when she saw he wasn’t listening. He was looking at her, pain in his eyes, squeezing her hand. ‘But there’s one thing that makes no sense at all. The
Russians have got the pipeline. So why all this aggravation?’

‘The press cuttings don’t tell me that.’

‘Jem, you’ve got to stop. This is dangerous.’

‘Of course it is. I’ve watched them destroying you, Harry.’

‘They’ll do the same to you if they think you’re getting too close.’

‘I think I am getting close, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

They spent some time staring quietly into each other’s eyes.

‘Are you going to stop, Harry?’

‘You know I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s what I do, what I am.’

‘Then I’m with you.’

‘I won’t let you get hurt, Jem.’

‘Not your choice. I’m a big girl.’

‘Yeah. I’d noticed.’

‘So you’d better take me back to my place. Just in case I need a little personal protection.’

He started to protest some more, but knew it was no use. In any case, he needed her, and wanted her. His shoulders sagged in submission. ‘OK, but on one condition.’

She raised a sceptical eyebrow.

‘Jem, please,’ he said, his voice filled with earnest, ‘let me cook the pasta.’

Harry wasn’t the only one who had been showing an interest in Felix. Another man appeared at the Montreal, asked similar questions and got the same blunt answer from the
barman. But this man had time, and plenty of it. He stayed and drank, and waited, night after night, so long that the regulars stopped taking any interest in this sad, lonely drunk.

It was three evenings later that Felix turned up. That was when the man quickly slipped away, before he was seen, but he didn’t disappear completely. He lurked in the shadows outside, and
waited a little more.