Wu Xiaoling had been part of that malady, a whisperer, a traitor. Yet how much had she whispered, how much had she told? And just how much had Mao told her? Fu
hadn’t dared ask, but women had such wiles, could extract so much, infer even more. Fu rejoiced in the fact he had no time for them, it made him feel almost pure.
It was possible that Wu had told too much, had revealed their plans, so Mao had insisted that those plans be brought forward. But we aren’t ready, Fu had argued. Neither are our enemies, Mao had replied, and we must give them no opportunity to prepare. It must be now! The generals wouldn’t care for it, when they were told, but once the plan succeeded they’d be scrambling over each other’s backs to grab a slice of the credit. It was about to start, the great adventure, the moment when China would stand tall once more, their enemies crushed like ripe fruit and their skins left for the birds.
Fu swatted at the mosquitoes hovering around his face. There was no time to waste. As the sullen-faced generals disappeared inside the compound, Fu quickened his pace. More ducks scattered in alarm, seeking the cover of the bulrushes. He smiled as he watched them. In just a few hours, there would be nowhere left for anyone to hide.
Late Thursday night. Moray, North-east Scotland.
‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.’
The air-traffic controller at RAF Kinloss on the north-east coast of Scotland sat up sharply. It was going to be one of those nights. The station com
mander was on the prowl, breathing down everyone’s necks, making one of his unannounced checks, and now this. There’d been an unidentified aircraft nudging into restricted airspace somewhere to the north and a couple of the new Eurofighter Typhoons from the Quick Reaction Alert force had already been scrambled, but the emergency signal dumped the matter directly into her lap. She tugged nervously at the sleeve of her blouse.
‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday,’ the voice repeated. The voice had a dull, dough-like accent.
‘Aircraft calling Kinloss, your Mayday acknowledged. Squawk seven-seven-zero-zero, pass details when ready.’ 7700 was the international distress shout that would alert everyone to the pilot’s difficulties.
‘RAF Kinloss, decline Squawk. Keep situation between ourselves, please. This is Russian military. We are Bear. We have major loss of hydraulics. Request straight-in landing.’
The announcement caused her to catch her breath. This wasn’t some idiot in a Cessna who’d got himself lost in cloud but a big, ugly Russian Bear. Old enmities die hard and the officers’ mess at Kinross was still full of bits that had fallen or been blown from some ancient Soviet warplane, and now she had the latest version, the whole thing. It was a chance for her to shine–and in front of the station commander. Even an experienced controller with the rank of flight lieutenant was allowed to enjoy a moment in the
spotlight. She sipped at her tea; the meniscus gave an expectant shiver. ‘Roger, Mayday Russian Bear. This is RAF Kinloss. Pass your message.’
A silence, as though he were teasing, until: ‘Kinloss, this is Russian Bear. I say again. Major loss of hydraulics. We are one hundred sixty miles–I repeat, one-six-zero miles–north-east of your position. Descending.’
‘Mayday. Stand by.’
The station commander was hovering, trying not to interfere but inevitably drawn like a moth to this Russian flame. The controller didn’t need his advice–had she ever taken advice from any man on this station that hadn’t by the morning seemed limp and ridiculous?–but there was no harm in acknowledging the group captain’s presence. She turned and raised an eyebrow.
He bounced on his toes, as he did when concentrating, hands clasped behind his back. ‘What do you think, Flight Lieutenant? Shall we make it a bit of an exercise? Hold off on the D&D boys and see if we can handle it ourselves?’
She took his point. Distress & Diversion, along with a variety of other support services, would normally be brought in to assist with Maydays, but in a full-scale emergency–with the country under attack, for instance–they might not be available. In these circumstances Kinloss would be on its own, so she was being given a chance to try it out, to stretch her
wings, and she enjoyed that. When she came back on air, her voice had lost its tight, formal edge and reached out with greater confidence. ‘Russian Bear, you are cleared. Straight in Runway Two Six. Report ready to copy weather.’
The voice repeated the instructions, still dull and as heavy as an uncooked pudding, very Russian.
‘Surface wind two-five-zero,’ the controller said. ‘Twenty-three knots. Visibility six miles. Cloud broken two thousand five hundred feet. QNH on one-zero-one-seven.’
The voice copied the information.
‘Russian Bear, this is Kinloss. Do you request radar assistance?’
‘Kinloss, Russian Bear. No. Thank you. We know where you are. And we see you have sent two of your flying traffic policemen to show us the way. We will be with you soon.’
‘Russian Bear, this is Kinloss. Glad to hear it. We’ll put the kettle on for you.’
‘Kinloss, Russian Bear. Thank you. Just a few thousand feet of runway, that is all we need. But tea would be very good, too.’
The controller turned to her station commander. Funny that he’d been here, just at this touchy moment, she thought. ‘English breakfast with a nip of vodka it is, sir.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Then you’d better hurry, they’ll be here in twenty minutes.’
‘I’ll alert the ground emergency services, of course, just in case, sir.’
‘And I suggest you tuck our Russian friends away quietly in one of the hangars. They’ll want to lick their wounds and repair their hydraulics in private.’
‘We let them do just that, sir?’
‘This is a diplomatic situation, not a military one, Flight Lieutenant. We give them whatever assistance they need, then get rid of them.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, an edge of deflation creeping into her voice. No medals, then. No souvenirs for the mess.
‘You did well, Jayne.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ She brightened, utterly unaware of the part she’d taken in a dance of shadows. The station commander’s presence was no coincidence, his orders had come straight from the air marshal in Whitehall. No discussion, no explanation, in fact he had almost as little idea of what was going on as the flight lieutenant, but station commanders tucked up here on the Moray Firth had to be adaptable. During World War Two one of his predecessors had found food supplies so hard to come by that he’d dropped a bomb into Burghead Bay to stun the fish. Nobody had asked too many questions, they’d just got on with it. Now he had been asked to give sanctuary to the crew of a Russian bomber until Sunday–and that’s precisely how long he’d been told they would need to fix their problem. Sunday. The air marshal was a most gifted man but even he couldn’t
know how long it would take to fix a Russian leak, which meant that hydraulics weren’t the problem at all. What the real problem was, the station commander hadn’t any idea, and neither, perhaps, had the air marshal. Oh, and the station commander was also asked to lend the Russian crew his private car. That’s what had kept him bouncing on his toes the entire evening.
He was still wrestling with his thoughts when the Bear landed, its four huge engines trailing smoke. Once it had taxied safely to a halt the emergency services were stood down as the follow-me vehicle led the lumbering bomber to its haven in a hangar that would normally house one of the RAF’s Nimrod MR2 reconnaissance planes. The Bear and all those on board would be secluded there, for as long as they needed.
It was only once he had seen the Russian bomber safely tucked away that the station commander returned to his quarters. He glanced at his watch; he was five minutes behind schedule, but that wasn’t bad, given the circumstances. He picked up a secure phone, dialled a number, and as soon as it was answered said only one word.
‘Bingo.’
That was the agreed signal, a word opaque enough to confuse anyone trying to listen in. That was odd, too, it was as though Whitehall no longer trusted their own secure communications. He glanced down at the blotter on his desk. ‘Beware of Russians bearing leaks,’
he had scribbled. He sighed and scratched his balding head, more confused than ever. Damn world had grown so complicated. Difficult to know whose side you were on. How he missed the Cold War.
Late Thursday night. Balmoral.
The Russians were coming, and so were the Americans, but not without a little difficulty. That difficulty was named Warren Holt. He was caring, boundlessly loyal, prissily Yankee, and hated being left out. And he was knocking at Blythe’s door.
‘You OK?’ he asked as his head appeared round her bedroom door. There were few physical secrets between them, he’d seen her in sickness and in health, in curlers and in nightdress, in tears, in tantrum and in triumph, even in the bath, if the phone call was urgent enough. In fact, they’d held few secrets of any kind from each other, up to now.
‘I need you, Warren.’
He stepped inside the bedroom, and his eyes flared in surprise as he saw her standing over a small suitcase. ‘You’re packing?’
‘I’m going away. A day or so. I want you to cover for me.’
‘But you can’t.’
‘I am.’
He made a noise as though he was being strangled. ‘For heaven’s sake…Where?’
‘That I can’t tell you.’
‘Then why? I don’t understand.’ He was both anxious and a little angry. ‘You can’t just disappear. It’s ridiculous.’
Slowly, she closed the lid of her suitcase and zipped it up. ‘Nevertheless, I’ve got to. And that’s why I need your help.’
‘Come on, get serious.’
She gave him a stare of rebuke that told him she was already so.
‘Madam President,’ he declared, growing a little pompous and stepping further into the room, ‘you’re perhaps not well. You know you simply can
not
do this. Go off on your own.’
‘I’m not sick, that’s just pretence. And I’m not going on my own.’
‘Then…’
‘With Marcus.’
He stepped back, flabbergasted and deeply hurt, the eyes flooded with confusion. A private weekend? With
that
man? Was she on the rebound? Surely it couldn’t be…‘Are you somehow trying to punish me because I didn’t tell you about Arnie?’
So, he had known about Arnie and his little pneumatic
distraction, and kept it from her. Damn him. She was angry now, too.
They had a fine row, raised voices, home truths, the lot, standing toe to toe, and he gave back as good as he got because he was in pain, called her hormonal and absurd, which was half true, and gave voice to his suspicions about an affair with Marcus Washington, which made her burst into scornful laughter, and even while she was shouting back at him she could see the claws of confusion scratching at his face and wondered what she had done to deserve so forthright and faithful a friend as Warren.
‘You’re not going, not without security, not without the nuclear codes!’ he stormed, pounding his fists in exasperation.
She took his hand, slowly unwrapped his fingers, one by one, and held them, not like a president but as an old and very dear friend. ‘Warren, I’m not able to tell you what I am about to do, only that it may turn out to be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have to disappear, until Sunday, and you’re the only one I can trust with that secret, as I trust you with my life. Always have.’
‘You’re worrying the heck out of me, Blythe,’ he said, his anger seeping away through her fingers.
‘I want you to explain to the others that I’m unwell. And I’m going to give you an envelope which you will open only in an emergency. Inside you will find a telephone number and an address, that will be the only
way to contact me for the next two days. You’re to use it only in the most extreme of circumstances.’
‘Define that.’
‘War. Or some similar crisis. Nothing less. In all other matters, for the next forty-eight hours, you’ll have to be the President of the United States, acting in my name.’
‘From a bedroom in Balmoral?’
She held his eyes, and nodded.
‘They’ll lynch us from the White House flagpole if ever they find out.’
‘Which is why that must never happen–and why you are the only one I can ask to do this.’
‘What do I tell Arnie if he calls?’
‘He won’t. And I guess you understand why.’ She had grown distant once more.
He flushed with guilt.
‘How long have you known?’ she asked.
‘Too long. I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but…Heck, there never was a right time.’
‘Don’t ever do that to me again, Warren, not ever, do you hear?’ She was presidential once more, her eyes flecked with resentment, and he retreated.
‘I apologize.’ His shoulders sagged in defeat.
‘Not that in Arnie’s case there will ever be an “again”, not so far as I am concerned.’ She sighed. ‘Time to move on.’
‘Is it as easy as that?’
‘No. But I have to try.’
‘I wish I could help.’
‘You can. Right now.’
‘But…what about the nuclear codes?’ he asked once again, back on the job. ‘And your personal security?’
‘We can’t avoid taking a few risks,’ she said. ‘Call me, and I can be back inside the hour.’ She waved away his protests. ‘Oh, I know that’s not enough, not how it should be, but it’s the best I can do. And as for my own security, that’ll have to rely on the fact that no one, apart from you, will know I’ve gone. Hell, there’s more danger of my being shot by a prince out on the estate.’
‘It’s not the hunting season yet.’
‘It is where I’m going.’
‘Blythe, you’re scaring me.’
‘One other thing. I want you to rustle up the Vice-President, the Secretaries of State and Defence, the Joint Chiefs and the members of the National Security Council–all the usual suspects. But don’t go through their offices, I want you to get hold of them personally. Invite them to a drink with me at the White House for as soon as I get back. Just in case.’
‘Of what?’
‘Make it sound casual,’ she continued, ignoring his question. ‘Don’t get them clucking around like old hens.’
‘Jesus H. Christ, that sounds like a War Cabinet.’
Her silence was intense.
‘You’re meeting with a whole tribe of Congressmen Monday evening. Rearranged from your mother’s funeral. I’ll have to put them off again.’
‘Not Monday, Warren. Sunday. The moment I step off the plane.’
His lips were working with so many unasked questions. ‘You know you can trust me,’ he said.
‘And I do.’
‘But not as much as Marcus Washington, apparently.’
‘You’re missing the point.’
‘I surely am.’
It was at that moment he made up his mind. He stood looking at her, examining her for any sign of fever or distraction, anything to explain what she was doing. Then he stiffened. ‘I’d better go. They’re expecting me downstairs with a report on your condition.’
‘Tell them it’s fragile, not fatal.’
He turned at the door, reluctant to leave. ‘Will you tell me about it, when it’s all over?’
‘If I can.’
It wasn’t the answer he wanted. He slammed the door on his way out.
Midnight, Thursday. M6 motorway.
They were making good time. Harry had been driving almost three hours and they were approaching Stoke. The rhythm of the wheels on the roadway had a hypnotic effect; beside him, D’Arby had been drifting into bouts of silence–or was it sleep?–before suddenly snapping back from whatever world he’d been visiting
in order to start once more on his tale. They were making progress on that front, too.
‘But what I don’t understand is why us?’ Harry pressed as D’Arby stirred once more. ‘What the hell’s driving Mao to take it out on Britain?’
For some while there was no answer, until Harry thought the other man might have fallen asleep once more in the darkness. Eventually, D’Arby shifted in his seat.
‘Why us?’ he whispered. ‘Well, pick any number of reasons. Because of all the many countries that over the last couple of centuries have humiliated and hacked away at China, we are as guilty as any. Because of the Opium Wars, because we got millions of Chinese addicted to the stuff as a deliberate act of policy, because we stole Hong Kong, because we sent gunboats and General Gordon to blast the balls off them, because we surrounded Beijing and looted their Summer Palace. And because everywhere we went we placed less value on a Chinese life than we did on our pet dogs. Because…’
‘I think I get your point.’
‘The Chinese have never forgotten, never forgiven. You remember Charlton Heston saving those brave imperialists from the Boxers in–what was the ridiculous film called?–
Fifty-Five Days in Peking
? For some reason they didn’t make the sequel, the one that came after the siege was lifted when European troops went on a rampage and raped and massacred fifty thousand
Chinese civilians. That was part of our story, too. Not a pretty one.’
‘I suspect you’re going to tell me that’s the bit the Chinese teach in their schools.’
‘But there’s an even more powerful reason, the simplest reason of all. It’s because they can. They can bring us to our knees within days, and no one else’ll lift a finger to stop them, unless I can persuade them otherwise.’
A police car with its blue lights flashing raced past them. Harry checked his speed, it wasn’t the time for them to be pulled over and questioned, with names and details being flashed across the police radio. It went against the grain but he eased back, just a touch.
‘We have friends, allies even,’ Harry pressed, not certain that he’d got to the nub of the matter.
‘Hah! You mean our friends in Europe?’ D’Arby couldn’t hide his scorn. ‘They might send an auctioneer or two to help prepare for the biggest fire sale in history. United Kingdom plc, on the block, and everyone with a dollar or a euro in his pocket on the last flight out of Heathrow.’
He took out a cigarette but Harry told him not to. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to kill yourself, Mark. Wait until we stop.’
D’Arby sighed and crumpled the cigarette, letting it fall to the floor. ‘And there’s Taiwan, too, that other offshore island. A lot like us. We’re the dry run.’
‘OK, next it’s Taiwan. So what the hell we doing on the road to Scotland?’
D’Arby smiled grimly. ‘We’re going to meet an old friend of yours. And perhaps someone who might just become a new one, although I have my doubts. We’re going to spend the weekend with the two most powerful people in the world, Blythe Edwards and Sergei Shunin.’
Harry spluttered in astonishment, struggling to keep the car on line.
D’Arby chuckled drily, enjoying his moment of surprise. ‘But not a whisper, Harry, there mustn’t be. That’s vital. Our security lies in absolute silence. So no telephones, no messages, no tracker devices, no satellite links. Trust no one except those directly involved. We’re all taking this risk, Harry, because the stakes are so high. The Chinese want nothing less than to obliterate us. We have the weekend to stop them.’
‘And we’re going to do it with a beaten-up Range Rover about to run out of diesel.’ He flicked on the indicator and began to pull over towards a service area looming in the distance.
‘Two presidents and a prime minister, Harry. Think about it. It’s happened before. Together, we can achieve almost anything. Otherwise we’ll be picked off one by one.’
‘As your nominated bag carrier I’m delighted your bag is so modest.’
‘No, Harry,’ D’Arby protested, ‘I told you, you’re the only man for the job. I want you to back me up, to use your connections with Blythe Edwards, help me break
down the barriers with Shunin. You’re his type of man, I’m sure. I told you, there’s no other man I’d rather have with me right now.’
Somehow Harry didn’t quite see it, couldn’t get the sceptical buzz out of his mind, but there was no time for further questions. They were pulling up beside the fuel pump.
‘Use cash,’ D’Arby instructed. ‘Don’t want our credit cards leaving a trail all the way up north, do we?’ But his wallet remained in his pocket.
‘Sandwich? Soft drink? Something for the weekend, sir?’ Soldier’s humour.
‘I’ll take a leak. But not here. Somewhere a little darker where we can’t be recognized.’
‘Don’t know about you, Mark, I’m usually recognized by my face, not any other part of my anatomy.’
‘Harry, from what I hear, that’s no longer true.’
Harry filled up the tank, feeling very slightly used–even abused. He paid for the fuel from his own deep pocket and walked back to the car, expecting D’Arby to take some of the strain of driving, but discovered him soundly asleep. With a sigh and a pinch of his own cheeks, Harry turned the key and began driving once more.
As he turned out of the service area back onto the motorway, squinting through tired eyes and chastising himself for not picking up a coffee, he thought about what D’Arby had said. Russia, America and Britain ganging up against the common enemy. Yes, D’Arby
was right, it had happened once before. They’d called it World War Two.
Friday morning. A road leading out of Beijing.
Fly! Fly! Fu Zhang urged his driver onwards. No time to waste, for enemies were lurking everywhere, even in Mao Yanming’s own bedroom. They had dealt with her, but she was not alone, there would be others, always there were others. Even as Wu Xiaoling lay beside Mao, her poisonous heart had been elsewhere, with the British. Now it was their turn to suffer.
The timing was propitious, Mao had argued. The first day of the first weekend of the eighth month–the month when the red-faced British were always caught off their guard, snoring in the sun. And after that it would be the turn of others, those who stood in Mao’s way, who conspired against him closer to home. Even in Beijing. The capital was a long way from Gansu, where Mao and Fu had first begun their journey together, days when their formal schooling had been ripped to rats’ tails by the abomination of the Cultural Revolution, when they had spent three years of their young lives counting the grains of sand in the Manchurian desert for the purposes of their ‘re-education’. Yes, Beijing was an exceedingly long way from Gansu, and even though it was the capital it could never be their home. It was a place of suspicions and disloyalties, Wu Xiaoling had proved that. So Mao had sent him on his way, to cast his
spells in what Mao called his Room of Many Miracles. Mao had instructed him to tell no one, trust no one. Consider nothing safe unless it is locked up here, he had said, tapping his temple with his index finger, but Fu knew that even inside someone’s head, secrets could still be unpicked, given time and the right tools. They’d been in too much of a hurry with Wu, too keen to take their retribution and perhaps a little anxious not to allow her to drag Mao himself into her shame, and they had needed more time with the ambassador–the man was proving stubborn. But they had no more time, not if Wu had talked too much and told the British of their plans, and not if those home-grown barbarians in the People’s Liberation Army had found out about them, either. So fly! Fly! There wasn’t a moment to lose!