‘They didn’t shoot you down, then.’
Heather laughed. ‘I took Johnny in over the wire afterwards. We got all the way in to the new bunker before Hayter caught us. We came out with something pretty good. I’ll show you later.’
‘Got it on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t take it home. They might come with a warrant again.’
‘No, I’m sure… our usual friend will look after it.’
‘Did Hayter behave himself?’
‘Yes, he did.’ ‘No he didn’t,’ said Heather and Johnny simultaneously.
‘Johnny’s very well brought up. He didn’t like Hayter’s manners,’ Heather explained with just a trace of irony in her voice.
‘If you wind up without bruises, we reckon he behaved himself,’ said Margo.
‘I’ve got bruises,’ said Johnny, with feeling, ‘the back of my head met a wall thanks to him.’
Margo didn’t look impressed. ‘You should ask Jo about Sergeant Hayter.’
‘That’s what Heather said.’
‘Why don’t you talk to her now. There’s five minutes before it starts.’
By this time the hall was three-quarters full but the platform was empty, waiting for the panel. They made a space at one end of a row for Jo’s wheelchair and Johnny sat down beside her.
‘You want to know about my little shindig, do you?’ she said. Her voice was gravelly but amusement bubbled in it and behind her heavy-framed glasses her eyes were friendly, shining.
‘What happened?’
‘Last year,’ she said, ‘Thanksgiving. We heard they were having some speeches at the base so we thought we’d go and join them. Share a bit of turkey. Make a few points maybe. See what the Base Commander reckoned there was to give thanks for. Anyway, the modplods had instructions not to let us spoil their fun. We gave them the run-around. Some of us got over all three of the triple fences round the Sieve building.’ She laughed. ‘It’s good fun that, because the modplods don’t have the keys and they can’t climb like we can so they just had to stand there until someone came and opened the gates for them. You know Binny?’
‘Er, let’s see. I think so.’
‘She’s the tall one over there talking to Heather. She was with me while Margo and Elsa took the rest of them over to the housing area, singing songs and sort of holding up proceedings. Now usually they would have hustled us right off the base but they knew we’d be straight back in and they didn’t want that, not with the speeches coming up so instead they grabbed us all and they bunged us in a kind of storeroom place. There were fourteen of us all squashed against each other and it was tiny and bloody hot in there because there was a radiator going full blast.’
She fell silent for a moment, remembering, brooding suddenly, then gave a little shrug.
‘It was like the black hole of Calcutta. Anyway, after a few minutes, I started having an asthma attack. Well, it shouldn’t really have been a problem, but my inhaler ran out and I’d left the spare outside the gate in my car. The others all started shouting and banging on the door until Hayter came. They told him what was going on and he just laughed and walked off.’
‘And?’
‘And no one came near us for an hour so I never got the inhaler. At least not until the speeches were over. By that time I’d nearly croaked. Roger Mitchell came by then. He’s one of the more decent plods, and he whistled up an ambulance. I was in hospital three weeks and now I start wheezing soon as I try walking.’
Johnny was shocked to his core. ‘I suppose Hayter didn’t realize how bad it was?’
‘You reckon?’
There was a silence between them for a few moments.
‘Can’t you sue him?’ he said.
‘I’m trying, believe me, I’m trying, but that’s another story. It was hard enough just serving the writ.’
He wanted to know more but just then the audience fell silent as an elderly man in a grey suit stepped on to the platform and raised a hand for silence.
Two hundred miles south in Mayfair another meeting was in progress. Normally, NSA business was conducted in the heart of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, on the fourth floor, just above the CIA office. This time, SUSLO had decided to do business at home, in the comfortable Bryanston Square flat just to the north of Marble Arch, an easy ten minutes from the Embassy. SUSLO, the Senior US Liaison Officer, was Curtis Walsh and Curtis Walsh ran NSA affairs in Britain. There was a secure room in the flat, regularly swept for bugs and out of reach of focused laser window-pane snooping devices.
He was lounging back in his chair with his feet on his desk, trying the owlish look he was cultivating, peering with a wrinkled brow over the top of his bifocals at Miriam and Ray Mackeson.
‘So that’s what happened,’ he said, looking down at his notes again. ‘Four circuits of the Stray then they took a guided tour of the moors. No reason to call in the marines, surely? They didn’t drop bombs or anything?’
Mackeson grinned. ‘Maybe if I told you that this is the son of Sir Greville Kay?’
He took his feet off the desk. Slowly, it’s true, but nevertheless off the desk and Miriam, watching carefully, knew Mackeson had scored a hit.
She chimed in. ‘Maybe if I added that he was an MI5 staffer until last month and he’s now believed to be working for Calstock’s organization.’
Walsh grunted the grunt of someone caught out by a good practical joke. ‘And Calstock’s organization is working for GKC?’
‘You got it.’
Curtis Walsh liked Miriam. She reminded him just a little of his own daughter-in-law and his son had inherited his father’s taste in women. She was sharp as a knife – new here, straight from Siglnt City, the huge NSA headquarters halfway between Washington and Baltimore at Fort Meade, Maryland, after spending two years shuttling between Fort Meade and nearby Langley on CIA liaison. She was used to operating in the clear air of the leafy fringe of Washington, where the political rules were still fairly straightforward. He didn’t want to see her tripping over herself in the byzantine coils of the special relationship.
‘Look, Miriam,’ he began cautiously, ‘I just want to know something.’
‘Yes?’
‘UKUSA,’ he said, ‘give me the quick version. I’m sure Ray won’t mind.’ He pronounced it ‘Yookooza’.
‘UK-USA Signals Intelligence Pact 1946. The deal by which we’re here at all. We share Siglnt with the Brits. Everything they get through GCHQ, we see too.’
‘And vice versa?’
She just laughed.
‘And bases?’
‘Pretty much the same. We can put listening posts on their turf. They can put theirs on ours.’
‘Right. We’ve got eight bases in Britain. How many do they have in the US?’
‘Like none.’
Curtis tried looking over his glasses again. He was getting it right now, building in a bit of extra subtlety with the eyebrows. ‘1946 is a long time ago. What did they tell you in Fort Meade ’bout how we stand now?’
‘“The wars of the future are commercial wars,”’ she quoted. ‘“The NSA’s role in Eastern-bloc surveillance may have been scaled down but it has been more than replaced by the need to keep a close watch on undesirable commercial developments in the distribution of advanced technological and defence products where full information may not be provided by the vendor.” Meaning, we don’t like other people selling whizz-bangs to the spics, wops, towel-heads and slant-eyes instead of us. Brackets, if those other people are our old Cold War allies, tough shit, business comes first, close brackets.’
‘Cynical.’
‘True.’
Mackeson nodded. ‘Look, Miriam,’ he said, ‘it’s like this. When I first came over, I was teamed up with this Brit called Nigel. GCHQ liaison. MI5 from birth. Positively vetted on the way out before they’d let the midwife cut the cord. Now you couldn’t ever have called him smart but he was steady, very steady. He was a one-joke man, Nigel. Every time we met, “Hello, Ray, we’re a pair of buggers, aren’t we?” Never missed it. He knew we were on the same side, fighting off the Red hordes. He’s been put out to grass. He’s Sir Nigel now, off in some country bog-hole walking his dogs all day long. The Cold War warriors are drawing their pensions. MI5 spend as much time talking to the French and the Germans as they do to us.’