The Bell Ringers (42 page)

She picked up the knapsack and took out Eyam's paper on Eden White, which she had all but forgotten, together with the papers Kilmartin had given her – the transcript from the Intelligence and Security Committee and the emails in response to Eyam's evidence, and also the executive summary from Eyam's dossier. She put the paper
about White aside and sat down to read the transcript and the emails, but then had another idea and reached for her purse. Nick Parker's business card for Uriconcoins was still lodged amongst her credit cards. She took it out and dialled the number of the part-time coin dealer in High Castle.

‘Hit back,' she said to herself. ‘Hit the bastards hard and low.'

Parker answered.

‘It's Kate – the woman who was in your shop on Saturday with that piece of film that you stored on your site.'

‘Yes,' said Parker unenthusiastically.

‘Is there something wrong?' she asked.

‘A mate of mine – Chris Mooney – has been killed.'

‘I heard.'

‘It's been on the local radio. He advertised his business in the shop. He had a wife and two children. It's brutal.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I want you to release that film. I believe the film has some bearing on Mr Mooney's death.'

‘You mean . . . Chris's death and Hugh Russell's are connected?'

‘That's what I believe, yes.'

‘Jesus! What do you want me to do?'

‘Put that film on the most public site possible – we need people to see those faces. But wait until you get emailed copies of transcripts and emails from a firm in London. Just get it out there and try not to leave a trail of any sort.'

‘This is big.'

‘It's very important, but don't add any of your own comments. Just let people make up their own minds about this.'

‘I'll wait for your email.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘I'll call you when I can.'

Then she dialled one of the partners in the Calverts London office and asked his secretary to collect a package from her address, scan all the contents and send it to the email address written on the top. After that the originals should be returned to her. As she spoke she started making rapid notes on a pad, which she continued when she hung up. With Swift dead and Eyam ill and weak, there was much work to do.

*

Kilmartin had, of course, taken copies of the emails and the proceedings of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and it was these that he pushed gently across the desk towards Beatrice Somers with his fingertips. Baroness Somers of Crompton, a title she had chosen after being ennobled for her thirty-year service in SIS during the Cold War, and much else besides, did not touch or look at the papers but fixed him with hooded eyes which in her eightieth year still displayed unnerving acuity. Beatrice Somers was old-school: no memoirs or indiscretion had flowed from her pen since retirement and she had contempt for those that let slip the slightest detail about the workings of SIS. She had been at the top of the service when Kilmartin was a young man and she was still one of the very few people who could make him feel uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, wondering if she was going to acknowledge what was in front of her, or not.

‘You could have gone a lot further in your career,' she observed, ‘if you hadn't been trying to be two things at once. You can't be an academic and an intelligence officer: I always told you that, Peter.'

‘You were probably right.'

‘Yes. Still, I suppose all of us have to make accommodations with our natures. Talent, character and ambition – you had the first two but not the last. With most intelligence officers it is the other way.' She shook her head with affectionate despair and the dewlaps beneath her chin and the folds of skin where her cheeks ended at her mouth shuddered. ‘I suppose that you wouldn't have been happy stuck in the office.'

‘That's certainly true – I had a good career in the field, Lady Somers.'

‘Don't be such a silly ass, Peter. Call me Beatrice like everyone else does.' In a hundred years he would not be able to bring himself to do that. ‘And you have been working for John Temple, I hear.' She continued looking out of the window. ‘As some form of special envoy?'

He nodded.

‘Yet now you come to me out of the blue with tales of conspiracy and surveillance systems and more acronyms than a person of my age wants to hear. It seems rather disloyal of you.'

‘Maybe, but the evidence is very persuasive and the witness, whose name must remain a secret, is one of the most reliable people I know. I offer my personal guarantee on that.'

She placed her un-ringed left hand on the papers and drew them towards her. She gave Kilmartin one more penetrating look, then put on her glasses and began to read. He watched in awe at the speed with which she seemed to absorb the contents of the pages. Her intelligence was always beautifully camouflaged by a vague manner and her taste for capacious two-piece suits that reached two thirds of the way down her calf. No more than five foot five, she had surrendered to dumpiness at an early age, although her skin and the pale-grey eyes gave some idea of the pretty young woman who had been sent to the British Embassy in Moscow in the late fifties. Her entire career in the field was spent in the communist bloc or in countries threatened by the Soviets. When she returned to the old SIS headquarters at Century House in Lambeth to take up a senior desk job, her colleagues found to their cost that they had made the same false assumptions about Beatrice Somers as the agents of so many foreign powers had done. She possessed a fierce political acumen that had served her well in SIS and was occasionally seen in the proceedings of the Lords and Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights.

She put down the papers and stared from the window across the Thames. ‘I can do little for you on the basis of this evidence,' she said.

‘It is nothing like the entire case,' said Kilmartin.

‘I have to have more to persuade my chairman.'

‘The documents cannot be made available until the committee agrees to hear the evidence.'

‘Well, that isn't on, Peter. I am sorry but I am not prepared to allow this committee to be used. And I can assure you that will be the first thought of my chairman, who is a member of the governing party. I want the name of this witness and as much as you know of what he is going to say and how it affects the business of my committee.'

Kilmartin addressed her demands in reverse order and started by making the case for putting the committee in the forefront of the fight for civil liberties in Britain. She was unmoved by this. Her interest only picked up when he expanded on what she had read about Eden White's penetration of and influence in the highest councils in the land. At length he revealed that David Eyam had faked his own death and had returned to Britain.

She listened without surprise or emotion, her hands resting together on a cream silk blouse just beneath her bosom, her eyes only once straying to the photograph of a young military cadet in a small silver frame on the windowsill. After forty-five minutes Kilmartin found that he'd allowed an old lady who wasn't too good on her pins to pick his pockets almost clean. She hadn't pulled rank on him; she was just damned good at her job.

However, there was one piece of information he managed to keep from her and that concerned the pictures of children found on David Eyam's computer.

Cannon was the warm-up man and the press were having some fun with him about the prime minister's schedule for the week, which had suddenly suffered a number of cancellations. He insisted that the time the prime minister had made available at the end of the week was to oversee government operations to clean up Britain's water supply. No, he said in answer to three questions, he could not say whether an election was going to be called because he was not privy to the workings of the prime minister's mind.

It was the insufferable vulgarity of the British media that Cannon hated – that and the almost total indolence when it came to research and checking facts. The journalists moved on to June Temple's reported remark that half the Cabinet were overweight and that they would all make better decisions if they took exercise before the Cabinet meeting.

‘What sort of exercise has she got in mind?' asked a woman from the tabloids. There were more questions: would June be leading the Cabinet in an aerobics class? Given the title of her new book, did she recommend that ministers make love before Cabinet meetings?

He denied that she had made any such remark and answered no, no and no again. Then he closed his folder and stepped away from the rostrum. A minute later the television lights switched on and Temple arrived with Derek Glenny. Grasping either side of the lectern, the prime minister stood tall and surveyed the representatives of the media with a look of unbowed seriousness, an expression that Cannon thought he did rather well.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this morning I have had meetings with the
Security Council, with the heads of the intelligence services, the government scientists and all the departments concerned with the deepening crisis in our water supply. Since I spoke at the Ortelius Institute for Public Policy Research, the situation has altered. We now have eight towns in the north of England without water, and three more are threatened. Well over forty reservoirs are affected and we cannot say how many more will join those that must be quarantined, treated and fitted with special equipment from America. In a moment the home secretary will speak to you, but it is important that the public understands that the government is taking this crisis very seriously and that we are applying the full might of the state's power to deal with it. That is why I will be making a statement to the House of Commons to explain that I am invoking the emergency powers laid out in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, and why I will address the nation later on today. As a government, we believe the mechanism known as the “triple lock” has been satisfied and that the temporary powers will, as required by law, answer the requirements of
gravity
and
necessity
and will be applied with geographical
proportionality
, which in layman's language means the power will only be exercised where we think the water supply or the public are at risk. Britain's traditions of civil liberties are at the heart of our discussions and we will take all steps to protect them as well as to ensure the public's safety. Now before I hand over to Derek, I will take a few questions on this issue only.'

A reporter from one of the tabloids raised a hand. ‘You say you have had a briefing from the Security Service, prime minister. Is there any suspicion that the red algae is the work of saboteurs, maybe even terrorists?'

‘The important thing in these kinds of situations, Jim, is not to spread alarm. Terrorism is certainly one of the possible causes that we have been looking at. The Security Service has knowledge of at least two groups who have actively considered such an attack in Britain.'

‘So you believe that TRA is the result of terrorist action?'

‘No, I am not saying that. This is one line of inquiry.'

‘But that is your favoured solution?'

‘What I believe has no relevance. I am simply saying these are the
facts. We have two groups capable and willing to poison Britain's water supply. That is enough for us to take action.'

‘Is there any information about these groups?'

‘No, I'm afraid not at this stage. You must understand that the priority is to catch these people and MI5 needs to maintain operational security. But I again stress that this is only one line of inquiry.' He picked up the glass of water next to the lectern but rather than drinking, held it up to the room, so triggering a pulse of two dozen camera flashes. ‘Our main concern must be the scientific and technological response to this crisis so that in a few days every person in the country can drink a glass of water like this without fear.'

All the work Cannon had done on the speech that morning, balancing the three possible causes and making Temple seem calm and statesmanlike had been undone. Half the journalists in the room left or started typing the line about a terrorist attack into their laptops and phones. He looked down at the paper that had been knocked up by Lyme and the chief of press at the Home Office that morning and wondered how Glenny was going to present the sweeping powers that the government was taking for itself.

Glenny stepped up to the lectern and directed a businesslike grin at Temple. ‘You will all have a copy of the special measures that we are taking under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 so I won't detain you by going into a lot of detail. But before I start I would just like to underline what the prime minister has said about the seriousness of this situation, and add that we invoke these powers with a sense of duty to the constitutional rights of every citizen in this country. Security is our top priority, however. As section twenty-two of the act makes clear, emergency regulations may make any provision that the person making the regulations – in this case me – is satisfied is appropriate for the purpose of protecting human life, health and safety.' That sentence was enough to put the room to sleep. Glenny did not make speeches; he intoned in a lifeless bureaucratic plainsong, and never would it be put to effect better than now, thought Cannon, as he watched him begin to read.

‘The powers that we introduce provide for, or enable the requisition of property; provide for, or enable, the destruction of property; prohibit
movement from a specified place; require or enable movement to a specified place.' He stopped and looked round. ‘We further plan to prohibit assemblies of specified kinds at specified places at specified times and make use of the part of section twenty-two that allows for the creation of an offence of failing to comply with provisions of the regulations or a direct order given under the regulations.'

Glenny's list took under five minutes to read. He ended with an apology for the technical language and an assurance that the powers would last for one week only. ‘If the government believes that it needs an extension then we will of course have regard to the requirements of the triple lock safeguard,' he said.