have examined and approved them.’
‘Did he say which highest authorities?’
‘Two. There is no clash of interests. Full and frank disclosure on all sides. Three, the decision not to proceed with Rosebud was taken in the national interest after due consideration of all aspects of the case. And four, it appears I’m in possession of classified information I’m not entitled to, so keep my fucking mouth shut. Which is what you’re about to tell me too.’
She was right, if for different reasons.
‘So who else have you told? Apart from Dom and me?’ I ask.
‘Nobody. Why should I?’ – in a return to her earlier hostility.
‘Well, keep it that way. I don’t want to be vouching for your good character at the Old Bailey. Can I ask you again: how long have you been consorting with these friends of yours?’
No answer.
‘Before you joined the Office?’
‘It might have been.’
‘Who’s Hampstead?’
‘A shit.’
‘What sort?’
‘A forty-year-old retired hedge fund manager.’
‘Married, I take it.’
‘Like you.’
‘Is he the same person who told you the Baroness looks after Orson’s offshore bank accounts?’
‘He said she was the City’s go-to investor for rich-shit Ukrainians. He said she could play the financial authorities like a harp. He said he’d used her himself on a couple of occasions and she’d delivered.’
‘Used her for what?’
‘To get things through. To circumvent regulations that don’t regulate. What do you think?’
‘And you passed these rumours – this hearsay – to your friends and they took it from there. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What am I supposed to do with the story you just gave me? Assuming it’s true?’
‘Fuck all. That’s what everyone does, isn’t it?’
She is standing. I stand with her. A waiter brings the exorbitant bill. We all look on while I count twenty-pound notes on to the plate. She follows me into the street and grabs hold of me. We have the embrace we never had, but no kiss.
‘And just remember those draconian documents that Human Resources made you sign when you left,’ I warn her in parting. ‘I’m just sorry it ended badly.’
‘Well, maybe it didn’t end,’ she retorts. Then hastily corrects herself as if she has misspoken: ‘I just mean, I’ll never forget, that’s all. All you super people. My agents. The Haven. You were all great,’ she goes on too merrily.
Stepping into the road, she waves down a passing cab and slams the door on herself before I can catch her destination.
*
I am alone on the baking-hot pavement. It’s ten at night but the day’s heat is coming up at my face. Our tryst has ended so swiftly that, what with the wine and the heat, I am tempted to wonder whether it happened at all. What’s my next move? Have it out with Dom? She did that already. Call out the Office’s praetorian guard and bring down the wrath of God on her friends, whom I picture to be a bunch of idealistic angry kids of Steff’s age who spend their every waking hour trying to shaft The System? Or take your time, walk home, sleep, see what you think in the morning? I’m about to do all of those things when my Office smartphone peeps an urgent incoming text. Stepping away from the lamplight I tap in the requisite digits.
Source PITCHFORK has received decisive incoming. All Stardusters to assemble in my room 0700 tomorrow.
Signed with the symbol of Guy Brammel, acting head Russia department.
13
Any attempt on my part to set out in neat order the operational, domestic and historic events that crowded the next eleven days is doomed to failure. Footling episodes intrude on others of vast significance. The streets of London may be languishing in the record heatwave, but they are swarming with angry marchers with banners, Prue and her left-leaning lawyer friends among them. Improvised bands pump out protests. Gas-filled effigies sway above the crowds. Police and ambulance sirens scream. The City of Westminster is unapproachable, Trafalgar Square uncrossable. And the reason for this mayhem? Britain is rolling out the red carpet to an American President who has come to sneer at our hard-won ties with Europe and humble the Prime Minister who invited him.
*
The 0700 meeting in Brammel’s office is the first in a non-stop string of Stardust war parties. It is attended by the all-important Percy Price, dean of surveillance, and by the elite of Russia department and Operations Directorate. But no Dom, and significantly nobody asks where he is, so I don’t. The redoubtable Marion from our sister Service is accompanied by two upstanding