h-his tonight.’
Ash stroked his chin. ‘Hmmm. I’d dearly like her to come back here tonight. Call her.’
She shook her head. ‘I c-can’t.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘I d-don’t know her number.’
‘You live together, but you don’t know her number? That’s not a very good lie, Alison.’
‘I’m not lying!’ she whimpered. ‘She replaced her phone a couple of weeks ago.’
‘But you would know her number by now.’
‘I d-don’t! Honest! I just . . . I hardly ever call her, I don’t need to, we see each other all the time.’
He looked down at her, placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face up so that she met his eyes again. That seemed to be the truth. There were no deceitful micro-tics in her expression; no involuntary looking upwards as her mind hastily constructed a piece of fiction.
‘Tell me, what do you think would make her come back here tonight?’
Alison shook her head, ‘I-I don’t . . . kn-know.’
He smiled cheerfully, ‘You know what? I think I’ve got an idea. And you can help.’
CHAPTER 12
11.55 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London
‘Those figures have to be incorrect, surely?’ he said looking around at the men and women sitting at the table with him. ‘Surely?’ he asked again.
‘I’m sorry, those are the figures, that’s our best approximation. ’
The Prime Minister looked down at his legal pad. He had scribbled only a few hasty notes, but the last three words he had written down were the ones he found most disturbing.
Two weeks’ reserves.
‘Two weeks? That’s all we have in our strategic reserves?’
‘Our strategic reserves actually only contain about a week’s worth of oil at normal everyday consumption rates,’ replied Malcolm Jones, the Prime Minister’s Strategic Advisor, and confidant.
‘However, within the distribution chain throughout the country, terminals, depots, petrol stations, there’s perhaps another week’s worth of supply at the normal consumption rate. If we locked down any further selling of petrol, right across the country, right now we would have a reserve that might last our armed forces and key government installations six to nine months.’
The Prime Minister stared silently at him for a moment before finally responding.
‘You’re telling me that in order to supply the army and the government with the oil it needs to keep operating for the next few months, we’d have to suck every corner petrol station dry?’
Malcolm nodded, ‘Until, of course, normality returns and shipments of crude from the Gulf resume.’
‘And the week’s worth of oil in our strategic reserves?’
‘If restricted only to the armed forces and government agencies, ’ the civil servant replied, ‘we could perhaps make it last three or four months.’
The Prime Minister jotted that down on his pad and then looked up at the assembled members of his personal staff. He had his Principal Private Secretary, his Director of Communications, Malcolm, his Chief Advisor on Strategy and Malcolm’s assistant. These were the people he worked with daily, these were the small band of colleagues he trusted. None of them were party members, none of them politicians, none of them secretly jostling for his job. He’d long ago learned that his smartest and most effective decision-making was done here, in this office, with these people, and not around the long mahogany table with his cabinet. The cabinet meetings were where policy was announced , not decided.
‘So,’ he began calmly, ‘how the hell did we let ourselves get so bloody exposed?’
He directed that towards Malcolm. ‘How did we let this happen? ’
Malcolm stirred uneasily, but retained that dignified calm that seemed to stay with him always. ‘We’ve not been able to buy in enough surplus oil to maintain, let alone build up, our reserves. In fact, we’ve not been able to do that for the last few years,’ he replied. ‘It’s been a gradual process of attrition, Charles. It’s not that we let it happen, we’ve had no choice.’
The Prime Minister nodded.
‘And we’re not the only ones,’ added Malcolm. ‘The increasing demand for oil from China and India, combined with Iraq being a damned basket-case and Iran’s continued oil embargo; all of that has made it difficult for anyone to build up a surplus. We’re all over a barrel.’
‘What about the Americans? Can they help us out?’
Malcolm shrugged. ‘They have significant reserves, but whether they’ll share it with us, I’m not sure.’
The Prime Minister cast a glance across the table towards his Private Secretary. ‘Well then let’s ask. It’s the least they can do after all the support we’ve been giving them since . . . well, since 9/11.’
His secretary scribbled that