Michael was a senior researcher and aide to the EC Commissioner for Transport, a Frenchman but then he spoke four languages fluently and had once been one of her more dazzling undergraduates during her time as a junior Fellow at Oxford. And he was her conduit into the Byzantine politics, gossip and machinations of the European Commission.
"Hi, Marian," she heard.
"Hi, Michael what news?"
He sounded slightly breathless, but it was often his amusement to make much of little, act the role of a conspirator or double agent.
Probably, he would have been recruited by dear Kenneth during the Cold War. Now he was her man in Brussels, an alliance that had sprung as much from mutual amusement at the EC and its bureaucratic labyrinths as from any other motive.
'… whether it's significant, I can't say, Marian but I know my Commissioner has a very big meeting arranged for tomorrow… with, among others, the CEOs of Aero UK and Balzac-Stendhal, and your friend David Winterborne. It's not taking place at the Commission, but one of the big hotels. I'll try to find out more — might be interesting, you never know… It was arranged at the last minute, and my Commissioner looks a little put out, to say the least. Like someone who's had his breakfast stolen from under his nose." The young man laughed. Marian pictured his long fair hair, easy charm, stereotypical good looks. Her mother would have characterised him as perfect for modelling knitting patterns. He had employed all that considerable and effective charm for the purpose of seducing his tutor in modern history — she had been able to resist it, she remembered, smiling at herself in mockery as she continued to watch the streaming sunlight working like fingers among the planted rows of the Physic Garden. Just resist. Michael had forgiven her, with as easy a charm as he had employed in his seduction, and become instead her friend and ideological acolyte.
"I still can't put my finger on anything that suggests the slightest impropriety regarding funding I think, my darling woman, you're barking up the wrong tree there. Even in this hall of mirrors it would be very difficult to hide wholehearted subversion of EU funds and subsidies…
Sorry about that. I'll ring off now talk to you soon."
She finished her drink as the tape rewound in the answer-phone. Working day at an end. Idly, she flicked the remote control for the hi-fi, and the music began. At once, the intense, swelling drama, the celebration of human joy, the rhythmic intoxication of Beethoven. Her lips moved, her fingers tapped around her tumbler, in time to the music.
She was disappointed but, then, the idea had always seemed too brilliant; too unlikely therefore to have any foundation in reality.
She had asked Michael whether there was any evidence of continuing, secret and illegal funding from the Commission to the plane makers the partners in England and France engaged in building the monumentally expensive Skyliner. She knew that the Commissioner for Transport was engaged as deeply as a major shareholder in lobbying the national airlines to buy the plane but she had wondered whether there was more than influence, more than lobbying and arm-wrenching and seduction involved… whether, in fact, money had changed hands. Taxpayers' money going into the pockets of private industry without the knowledge of the Council of Ministers and the House of Commons.
Kenneth Aubrey had somehow encouraged her suspicions… but it wasn't, after all, like one of his Cold War be devilments There was no truth in the suspicion. Aero UK was bleeding from the wound of the Skyliner's costs, its banks were nervous even the sale of its car division to the Germans hadn't made its books much healthier.
However, by her father's best guess, they should be in pole position to acquire the contract for the army's new attack helicopter, which they'd developed in cooperation with the Germans and Italians. It would certainly be less controversial to buy third-British than wholly
American. Anyway, apparently Aero UK was not being kept afloat by secret subsidy.
Too much to hope for, she acknowledged, smiling at her disappointment; it was as if she had lost the matches that would have lit a fierce blaze under the pro Europeans in her own party and the government. It would have been so nice to have been right about large-scale corruption… Gradually, she let herself move into the music, into the hypnotic, intensifying dance of the symphony's allegretto, moving like a dancer around the lounge of the flat in her cream silk robe, her fair hair drying un regarded Then, as the music reached a further height of intoxication and purpose, she caught sight of her flushed, angular features in the mirror behind the French clock. Her hair was making every effort to become a fright-wig, her cheekbones were livid, her full mouth opening in realisation.
Michael had sounded frightened… no, nervous rather, like someone trapped in a small, fragile car, hearing the unavoidable approach of a juggernaut. She switched off the music and hurried to the answer phone accelerating the tape through the mundane in a rush of incomprehensible, birdlike calls, until she heard his voice.
'… taking place at the Commission, but one of the big hotels… it would be very difficult to hide… I'll ring off now talk to you soon."
He was frightened like someone who had woken to a strange noise in the night and remained awake, hardly breathing, waiting to hear it again.
The layers of pleasant assurance were penetrated by a sudden doubt, as if the implications of what he had said had only just struck him, so that the farewell faltered in his throat. Michael had had some insight regarding that meeting in Brussels which had unnerved him.
She replayed his words twice more. It was, she thought, almost as if he were not alone in the room…
CHAPTER TWO
The Needle and the Damage Done The telephone brought Marian quickly awake. The radio alarm showed some minutes after six-thirty, and she groaned with irritation. Light was promisingly bright beyond the heavy, closed curtains.
"Marian Pyott." She cleared her throat.
"Marian it's Bob here." The breathless voice of the young, ambitious
MP with whom she shared an office in the Commons. Formerly in advertising, currently in self-advertisement in the hope of a junior ministerial post.
"What is it, Bob?" She made no attempt to disguise her irritation.
"I thought you'd like to know' he was strangely, childishly disappointed at her apparent indifference 'the papers are full of an
MoD leak about the new helicopter contract. The army's going to award it to the Yanks. The Mamba, or whatever the machine's called."
"What?" she breathed, feeling winded, and weirdly guilty, as if she had committed some obscure betrayal.
"It's still at the level of a rumour, this leak?"
"Looks pretty deliberate to me you know.
"Don't let me catch you leaking this to the press, but here's the editor of The Times' number, just in case you've forgotten it."
"Oh, shit! Aerospace UK will- God, this could absolutely finish the company.
The banks will be circling like sharks. Where's the leak?"
"Fraud the Telegraph but it's already on the radio and TV."
Then it's the minister who's leaking. And the PM's caved in to the Treasury and the Chancellor on the grounds of cost. He said he wouldn't…" She had had a private meeting with the PM — briefed by her father and his group of lobbyists in favour of the Eurocopter only the previous week. And had been assured, really assured, that it would be a decision based solely on quality, not cost.
Into her silence, Bob offered:
"I just thought you'd like to know well, not like, but…"
"Yes. Yes, thanks, Bob."