A Sentimental Traitor (4 page)

‘Christ, it’s cold,’ he muttered to himself as for the first time in days he felt the bite of the British winter. He wondered if that’s what it had been like for King
Charles. 1649. A freezing January day, so it was written, when he’d stepped out from the Banqueting Hall just a little way along Whitehall and onto his scaffold. The King had worn two shirts
in order to stop him shivering, in case the crowd mistook it for fear. At this moment, Usher felt very close to the King.

Somehow the years of experience kicked in, and he found the words. Not the precise and carefully crafted phrases that had been prepared for him but thoughts that came from within, that’s
what mattered now, some sincere-sounding reflection that might do justice to the fact that there had been no survivors, not a single one. He spoke of sorrow, of unfairness, of pain spread wide and
tragedy shared. About children who had carried the futures of their families with them, of others who had been hoping for nothing more than to share the special spirit of Christmas with those they
loved, of pilots who had done their duty with courage and huge skill, and had avoided an even greater calamity.

‘I can’t pretend to imagine what’s going through your hearts right now,’ he said, speaking directly into a camera lens, trying to reach a conclusion. ‘If it were my
own . . .’ There was an unmistakable catch in his voice; there was no need to finish the thought. ‘Perhaps all I can do right now is my duty. And that, it seems to me, is to make one
promise above all else to those families – British, American, Belgian, French, the others, too – those of you who have lost loved ones and will find Christmas such a desperately painful
time this year. To you, I promise you this.’

Flashbulbs blazed away, the television lights shone into his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing. He spoke very slowly.

‘We will find out what went wrong.’

It wasn’t much of a commitment, not if anyone stopped to analyse it, nothing more than what would happen as a matter of course, but it was necessary that he should say it. There had
already been so much speculation about poor design and inadequate maintenance, even a bird strike, a flock of Canadian geese that might have been ingested into the engine and blown the front off.
Just a few more days, then they would know for certain. Give those who were suffering some sort of reassurance, and perhaps they would stop blaming him. Pity’s sake, it wasn’t his
fault, yet still he felt responsible and that sense of guilt drove him on.

‘I vow to you all,’ he said, his voice swelling with passion. ‘We will discover what happened. And who was responsible.’

No! It was supposed to be
what
was responsible, not
who.
But it was too late, a slip of the tongue, a frozen thought. It had been said. Only a couple of words, but already more
than enough.
It was someone’s fault! Someone was to blame!

And the media weren’t going to stop until they had that someone and had dragged him out into the cold, just like poor King Charlie.

Despite the season, Patricia Vaine sat at an outside table on the Place de Luxembourg in Brussels, her coffee neglected, her cigarette turning to ash, shivering in her overcoat
despite the glow of the overhead heater, staring into nothing.

Vaine was English by birth, European by employment. A sound Catholic education at St Mary’s in Ascot and a rather more adventurous few years spent stretching her mind and occasionally her
legs at Oxford, had taken her on a rapidly rising track through the labyrinth of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but she’d always suspected she would never be allowed to make
it to the top. Partly it was her Catholicism – the Blairs had made being a ‘left footer’ unfashionable – but perhaps more so because she was intellectual, better than most,
and there were times when she couldn’t resist the temptation to show it. She was forty-six, had blue eyes accentuated by a well-boned face and carefully built blonde hair, and if her
hairdresser was aware of the first signs of grey, he hid it so well that few realized she wasn’t, and never had been, entirely the genuine article. For a middle-aged woman she had the ability
to cross and uncross her legs to the distraction of most men, an asset she had found more effective in Brussels than ever she had in stuffy London. Intellect and ankles; she used both as
weapons.

Distraction formed a large part of her remit; indeed, it was possible to spend a long time walking through the corridors of the European capital without ever finding out what she did there, and
even if one did stumble across a clue, most men usually got confused by the seductive combination of perfume and tobacco, or the ridiculous notion that a woman couldn’t do ‘that sort of
job’. From behind the inconspicuous but carefully monitored security of the building on Avenue de Cortenbergh, Patricia Vaine headed up EATA. Her operation rarely appeared on organizational
charts, and even then only as a footnote, as a subsidiary of Europe’s External Action Service. Yet in truth, as the European Union’s fledgling intelligence service, EATA was potentially
one of the most influential centres of power in Brussels.

It wasn’t supposed to happen, no national government had agreed to it, but neither had anyone objected. It was inevitable that something like EATA would come into being. The European Union
had all the other trappings – a flag, an anthem, a president, a seriously screwed-up currency and a foreign policy of sorts. And, inevitably, ambition. They needed their own intelligence
operation, a full hand of cards, and Vaine had set about delivering it. EATA was housed in a modest office block a short walk from the park, and lacked any sign of the usual extravagance that
accompanied most European buildings like the Commission offices at the Berlaymont, and least of all the imperial splendours of the Parliament itself. The only clues that gave away EATA’s home
were the air-tight security pods through which staff and visitors alike had to pass, and the guards, who were all armed. This was Patricia Vaine’s kingdom, and she had shown herself to be
remarkably inventive, like an alchemist of old creating gold from nothing – although that was an easier trick in Brussels than most capitals.

That was another thing, money was never a problem, even though EATA wasn’t supposed to exist and couldn’t be identified in any budget. It had been twenty years since the EU had last
had its accounts signed off by its auditors and everyone was in on the game – Irish farmers, who got subsidies for flocks of sheep that didn’t exist, as well as Spanish fishermen who
were paid to throw fish back into the sea. It was inevitable that Greek farmers would join in the fun. They were given millions for growing tobacco, even while the EU spent still more millions
trying to persuade people to give up smoking. ‘There’s no accounting for ideals,’ as one Commissioner had blithely explained. And if in its early days EATA couldn’t hope to
match the resources of its national rivals, there was nothing to stop information liaison officers wining and dining every political hack, opinion former and press man in the business. Why pay for
information when you could rent it by the meal?

And, as EATA’s ambitions grew and its demands inevitably became more complex, they could always outsource, hire in a bit of muscle or experience, lean on friends. It was through one of
Vaine’s contacts in this world of dusty mirrors that she had first picked up reports about a notorious Islamist gun-for-hire who had been spotted scurrying through northern Europe. There was
talk of a deal being done in some dark place, whispers about a surface-to-air missile. Dirty, delightful stuff. It seemed to Vaine to be a solid lead, and since it was
her
lead she’d
decided to cook it a little longer, follow it a little further to see where it might take her. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time; after all, she needed a few prize scalps to establish
EATA’s credibility. Dear God, she’d had no idea that it was all so imminent, or the intended target a plane full of kids.

Which left her with this huge bladder-bursting problem that made her head ache and her coffee go cold. If she were to reveal now what she had known but hadn’t understood and had kept
hidden for too long, she would be shown no mercy. Her organization would be ripped apart. Rivals would say she was more guilty than the terrorists themselves. It would bring an end to her career,
to EATA, to all her dreams. And where was the benefit in that?

She couldn’t speak out, yet she knew she couldn’t simply leave the matter. Pity’s sake, she wasn’t a monster. Despite the glow from the gas heater above her head, her
hands began to tremble with cold, and the long trail of cigarette ash dropped helplessly to the floor.

Concentrate, damn you, don’t drown in cheap emotion! But what to do? She had to rise above it, remember there was a bigger game being played here. The European Union needed time to take
more solid shape, there were bound to be growing pains, weren’t there? She believed passionately in that dream, of Europe, as one, united, renewed. That’s why she had come here. And
there was always a price to be paid for dreams.

She’d sat outside the coffee shop so long that the light was beginning to fade. A sparrow hopped onto the table, watching carefully, cheekily, bobbing its head several times before darting
forward to grab the crumbs of biscuit that lay in the saucer and fluttering away with its evening meal. But she saw nothing, except what was playing in her mind. Only when the cigarette had burned
so low that it scorched her fingers did she come back to reality. And reality, she had always believed, was what you made it. She took one final lungful of tobacco before pulling out her phone and
scrolling through her list of contacts.

‘Hamish, this is Patricia Vaine,’ she said when at last a man’s voice answered. ‘I need to see you. This evening.’

Her fingernails tapped impatiently on the glass tabletop as she soaked up the man’s protest.

‘No, Hamish, I’m afraid you’re going to have to disappoint your wife and be a little late for that dinner, no matter whom she’s invited.’ Whom, never who; she was
always careful to use the correct pronoun, even when it seemed a little clumsy. ‘Why? My dear Hamish, because you’re a journalist. And you’re just about to get a story. Rather a
big one. Perhaps the biggest of your dull and undistinguished career.’

‘Mr Jones?’

The bar steward raised an eyebrow. Harry looked at his watch, inspected his empty glass with a frown, as though it were a museum exhibit, then nodded. He’d intended to wait until his
friend arrived, but ‘Sloppy’ was late and Harry’s spirits low.

He’d spent much of the afternoon on the banks of the Thames, watching the recovery of the wreckage. The river wasn’t particularly deep at this point but the hours of daylight were
short, the navy divers could work only at low tide and the visibility was zero. Often they had to use their fingertips to work out what they had encountered, and there were still bodies unaccounted
for. It made for slow progress. Aviation fuel was leaking and the tide swirled the pollution back and forth.

They recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders first, from the tail section that was still sticking grotesquely from the water. Then it was the failed engine, dredged from the dark
mud, and after that the tail itself, its colours made more brilliant and grotesque by the beams of a thousand spotlights as it was grappled by a floating crane onto one of the barges moored
alongside, and slowly brought towards a low-loader lorry from the Joint Air Recovery and Transport Squadron. As it was hoisted onto the flatbed it swung to and fro, and seemed to take for ever to
be manoeuvred into place and made secure. Whenever it twisted, even a little, a stream of dark, filthy water gushed out, spattering around, like blood.

As a matter of course it was treated as a crime scene, but the police didn’t bother trying to restrict those tens of thousands who came to watch. Tower Bridge was closed, as was St
Katherine’s Dock alongside, and for their own safety the air space above was denied to news helicopters, but for the rest the river provided the most popular, yet sombre stage in town. The
crowds were so thick in places that those at the back couldn’t see; they waited their turn. There were tears, many prayers both silent and spoken, particularly when motor launches of the
river police drew alongside, and bodies were brought up from the darkness. The police tried to provide some sort of screen, for dignity, but there were television cameras on every roof and balcony,
at every angle. The world saw everything. The salvage workers paused, a hush of grief and respect fell along the riverbanks, and all that could be heard was the timeless lapping of the Thames.