The Prime Minister, scribbling something at his desk, looked up and smiled. “So good to have you back, Harry, and good to see you. How did it go? Sit down and tell me.”
Which Miller did.
WHEN HE WAS FINISHED,
the Prime Minister said, “Well, you have been busy. I would remind you, however, that this isn’t Northern Ireland and the Troubles are over. We have to be more circumspect.”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
“Having said that, I’m a practical man. The Russians shouldn’t have been in this Banu place in the first place. They’ll let it go. Whatever else he is, Putin’s no fool. As far as I can see, shooting this wretched Zorin chap probably prevented a serious atrocity. It must have enlivened things for Blake Johnson, though. I’m sure President Cazalet will find his report interesting.”
“It’s good of you to take such a view in the matter, Prime Minister.”
“Let’s be frank, Harry, I’ve heard worse. Charles Ferguson’s people—their activities are beyond belief sometimes. For that matter . . .” He paused. “I know you’ve always kept out of his way, but it might make sense if you two talked. You’ve got a lot of interests in common.”
“If you wish, Prime Minister. Now, if there’s nothing else, may I be excused? It’s Olivia’s opening night.”
The Prime Minister smiled. “Give her my love, Harry, and get going. It’ll be curtain up before you know it.”
CURTAIN UP
was
SEVEN-THIRTY,
and he arrived at the stage door at ten past seven to find Marcus, the ancient doorman, at his desk reading the
Standard.
Marcus was delighted to see him.
“Good God, Major, she’ll be thrilled. And your sister’s with her, Lady Starling. Your wife’s been prepping an understudy. They thought you was still in Kosovo. Anthony Vere broke a bone in his right foot, so you’ve got Colin Carlton. He’s a little young for the part, but then, Madame looks ten years younger than she is.”
“Tell her that and you’ll have a friend for life.”
“You haven’t got long, sir. Front row, dress circle. House seats. I got them myself.”
Miller was at the door of his wife’s dressing room in seconds, knocked and entered, and was greeted with enormous excitement. His wife had her stage makeup beautifully applied, her red hair superb, and was being zipped up in her dress by his sister Monica, who looked lovely, as usual, her blond hair beautifully cut, looking younger than her forty years.
They were thrilled, Olivia actually crying a little. “Damn you, Harry, you’re ruining my makeup. I didn’t expect you’d make it. You usually don’t.”
They kissed gently, and his sister said, “Come on, move it. We won’t even have time for a drink at the bar.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “Never mind, we’ll make up for it afterwards. You’re staying over at Dover Street, I hope?”
“Of course.”
Monica had rooms at the University in Cambridge, but the London townhouse had been the family home since Victorian times. It was close to South Audley Street, convenient to the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, and Hyde Park, and it was spacious enough for her to have her own suite. She also had shared use of Stokely Hall in the Kent countryside, where Aunt Mary led a gentle life, supported by Sarah Grant, the housekeeper, and her husband, Fergus, who chauffeured the old Rolls and turned his hand to most things. They lived in the lodge, and a Mrs. Trumper came in from the village to cook.
In a strange way, all this was going through Miller’s mind as he and Monica made tracks for the dress circle. It was a reaction to what had happened, the violence of Kosovo, the prospect of a weekend in the peace of the countryside in the company of loved ones. He and Olivia had no children, Monica had no children, and dear old Aunt Mary would have been totally alone without them all. As he and Monica settled into their seats, he felt relaxed and happy, back with the close-knit family members who were so important. Love, kindness, concern—these were the people dearest to him in his life and yet totally unaware of the dark secrets, the death business behind his apparently quiet service in the Intelligence Corps.
So many times over the years, family friends had congratulated him on his desk job with Intelligence. He had only two medals to show for eighteen years in the Army: the South Atlantic ribbon for the Falklands Campaign and the Campaign Medal for Northern Ireland that all soldiers who’d served there received. It was ironic when you thought of River Street in Derry, the four dead Provos, and the many similar occasions for Unit 16, and yet the two people closest to him, his sister and his wife, didn’t have even the slightest hint of that part of his life. He’d never go away for more than a week at a time and was always supposed to be at Catterick, Salis *bury Plain, Sandhurst, or Germany, somewhere like that.
He took a deep breath, squeezed Monica’s hand, the music started to play, and then the lights dimmed and the curtains parted. It was the old, wonderful excitement, just what he needed, and then his wife entered stage left looking fantastic, the woman with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love on their first meeting so many years before, and his heart lifted.
THE PERFORMANCE
was a triumph, earning four curtain calls; young Carlton was more than adequate, and Olivia, superb. She’d booked a late dinner at a favorite French bistro in Shepherd’s Market, and the three of them, she and Miller and Monica, thoroughly indulged themselves, sharing a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.
“Oh, I’m very pleased with myself,” Olivia announced.
“And you’ve got tomorrow to look forward to,” Monica told her. “Saturday night and a full house.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Miller put in. “I’ll arrange a car from the Cabinet Office. After the show tomorrow, we’ll go straight down to Stokely, the three of us. Chill out on Sunday, then come back for Monday evening’s performance.”
“Oh, you two lovebirds don’t want me around,” Monica told them. “I’ll stay the night at Dover Street and go back to Cambridge tomorrow.”
“Nonsense,” Olivia said. “It’ll be nice to be together for a change, and Aunt Mary will be thrilled.” She put her hand on Monica’s. “Just to be together. It’s so important. And imagine. We’ve actually got him to ourselves for a change. You and I can go shopping tomorrow.”
She kissed her husband on the cheek, and Monica said, “I bumped into Charley Faversham at a function last week, Harry. He called you the Prime Minister’s Rottweiler and asked after you. I said I understood you were visiting Kosovo. He was there during the war covering it for the
Times
when the Serbs were killing all those Muslims. He said it was as bad as anything he’d ever seen in all his years as a war correspondent. It’s different now, I suppose?”
“Completely,” Miller told her. “And Olivia’s right. You must come down to Stokely with us. After all, there is no one in this life I am more indebted to than the sister who argued and begged me all those years ago to take her down to Chichester Festival Theatre to see Chekhov’s
A Month in the Country.
As you well know, I was never a Chekhov person until the girl from Boston walked in through the French windows.” He reached for Olivia’s right hand and kissed it. “And after that, nothing in my life was ever the same.”
She glowed as she squeezed his hand. “I know, darling, same for me.”
Monica laughed. “I used to despair of him. Women just didn’t seem to be part of his agenda.”
“Well, I was hardly exciting enough, not Household Cavalry or Three Para, no red beret and a row of medals. Pretty staid, a Whitehall Warrior. No real soldiering, I’ve heard that mentioned enough.”
“And thank God for it,” Olivia told him. “Let’s have the bill and go home.”
AFTERWARD AT DOVER STREET
when they’d retired, he and Olivia made love very quickly, genuine passion still there. Not much was said, but the joy was there so strongly. She fell asleep very quickly and he lay there listening to her gentle breathing, unable to sleep himself, and finally slipped from the bed, found his dressing gown, and went downstairs.
The sitting room was his favorite in the entire house. He didn’t need to switch on the lights, because there was enough drifting in from the street outside. It was raining, the occasional car swishing by, and he went to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a very large scotch and did something he only did at times of stress. He opened a silver cigarette box and lit a Benson & Hedges. It was Kosovo, of course, and what had happened, and it made him think back four years to what had got him out of the Army.
The lies, the pretense, the deceit of it all, had been giving him a problem. He was two people: the man his wife and sister thought he was, and the dealer in death and secrets. A new dimension had entered his life, a new kind of terror, just when things were looking hopeful in Northern Ireland. It was called Muslim fundamentalism. It had become apparent to him that this was where his future would unfold, and the prospect filled him with a kind of despair, because he didn’t want to be involved.
But fate intervened, giving him a solution. His father died of an unexpected heart attack and they buried him on a wet and miserable day at Stokely Parish Church. Afterward there was a wake at Stokely Hall, and champagne, his father’s favorite drink, was poured, a great deal of it, in honor of a much-loved man.
Miller was standing at an open window, smoking a cigarette and considering his lot, when he was approached by his father’s political agent, Harold Bell.
“What are you thinking about, Harry?”
“Contemplating my future. If I stay with the Corps, I’ll make lieutenant-colonel, but that’s it. If I leave, what do I have to offer? When I was at Sandhurst, they taught me the seven ways of sorting someone out with my bare hands. I became a weapons expert, acquired reasonable Arabic, Russian, and French. But what do I do with all that out of the Army?”
Olivia had heard as she approached and gave him a gin and tonic. “Cheer up, darling, someone might offer you a nice job in the City.”
“That someone is me,” Bell told them, savoring his drink. “But it’s not the City. The Party wants you to come forward as a candidate for your father’s seat. The local committee is completely behind you. Harry Miller, Member of Parliament.”
Miller was shocked and couldn’t think of a thing to say, so his wife did all the talking. “Does that mean I get him home nights?”
“Absolutely,” Bell assured her.
She’d immediately announced it to the entire room, and he was kissed on the cheek and slapped on the back many times. “Better than Iraq or Afghanistan, old man,” someone said. “You’re well out of that.”
He resigned his commission and was duly elected, suddenly free of what had haunted him all those years, but he should have remembered that nothing ever worked out as expected. The Prime Minister was privy to his Army record and appointed him to the Northern Ireland Office, and when the Irish situation was finally settled, started sending him from one trouble spot to another.
The Prime Minister’s Rottweiler—
that was a good one, and any guarantee he would be home nights had long since gone with the wind, and Olivia didn’t like it at all.
That was one thing, but this—the events at Banu—it was like a return to the past. It could have been a Unit 16 operation. The shooting of the sentry, the instant execution of Zorin. The fact that he’d taken the Browning with him in the first place, using his political clout to circumvent security—what was that supposed to mean?
He said softly, “For God’s sake, Harry, what in the hell happened to you?”
Maybe the genie had escaped from the bottle, but that didn’t make sense. He’d always understood the genie was a supernatural creature who did one’s bidding. In Kosovo, perhaps it was the other way around. Maybe it was he who had done the genie’s bidding.
He shook his head, unable to accept such a thought, even for a moment, and went back to bed.
AT HOLLAND PARK,
Roper had worked through into the middle of Saturday morning, had put together as much information on Miller as he could find. Around ten o’clock, Luther Henderson, the day sergeant, came in.
“Tony told me you’d been at it all night, Major. I asked him if it was anything special and he suddenly turned into Mr. Mystery.”
“You’ll find out at the right time, Luther. What’s new?”
“Levin, Chomsky, and Major Novikova have all begun that induction course at Kingsmere Hall now, trying to turn MI-6 agents into good little Russians.”
“With all their years in Russian Military Intelligence, if anybody can do it, they can.” He shook his head. “Still—they’re supposed to be down at Kingsmere for a month, which means we don’t have them. I hope Ferguson doesn’t regret saying yes when Simon Carter asked.”
“It’s difficult to say no to Mr. Carter, Major, especially when he had the Prime Minister’s backing.”
“I suppose.” Simon Carter was not popular with many people, but he was, unfortunately, Deputy Director of the Security Services, and that was difficult to argue with.
“Is Mr. Dillon in, by any chance?”
“He called about an hour ago, sir, from Stable Mews. Said he’d be in later.” He glanced at the main screen. “What a lovely lady, sir, who might she be?”
“That’s Olivia Hunt, the actress,” Roper told him. “She’s married to Major Harry Miller, who works out of the Cabinet Office for the Prime Minister.”
“Is that a fact, sir?”
“Tell me something. Did you ever come across him, maybe in Belfast or somewhere like that? You did enough Irish time.”
“Five tours. Nothing like you, Major. You were never out of the bloody place. God, but you saved some lives. And that big one at the Grand Hotel in Belfast? Six bloody hours on your own. No wonder they gave you the George Cross.”
“Yes, I was rather good, wasn’t I? Peed myself several times because there was nowhere else to go.” Roper was mocking the whole business now. “King of the castle until the little red Toyota turned up with the supermarket bag on the passenger seat. No big deal, only it was, and here I am. Whiskey and cigarettes, but no wild, wild women like the song said.”