The morning was bright, despite Martin Hepton’s mood. He awakened to his clock radio, just in time to catch a studio debate between someone from the Pentagon and the Minister for Defence turning into a full-scale shouting match. The radio presenter sounded genuinely alarmed as accusations were hurled across the table. Lack of co-operation, distinct misunderstanding of the mood of the European Community, defenders not terrorists, never asked to be here in the first place. Et cetera.
Hepton smiled to himself as he listened. If intelligence and communications were good enough, he reasoned, there would be no arms race: everyone would know what everyone else had. That was why he felt no jab of conscience at his job, even when attacked at parties by people who could not understand why he did what he did. Not that he did very much. There would be the occasional full-scale surveillance operation, covering the movements of a suspected spy or some military attaché. Someone in a car might just notice that another car was following, but they couldn’t suspect that they were being watched from space. Mostly these jobs were for the security services. Now and again they were for the military. There had been illicit peeks at what this or that US listening post was up to; the one at Menwith Hill, for example. Against the rules, of course. Snooping on the enemy was all well and good, but spying on your allies...
Maybe that was why NATO was in such a shambles. European countries were squabbling with each other. America was pulling its defences out and retrenching back in its homeland. A ring of steel was going up around the USA: not just missiles and tanks and manpower, but economic steel and the steel of mistrust. The USA could be self-sufficient if it wished, and that was the way things were headed. Companies were finding it harder to export their goods to the States. Diplomacy had about it the air of the refrigerator. What had gone wrong? Just over a year ago, Hepton had been delighted with the way the world was going. The EuroGreens were keeping things sane as far as the environment went, the left wing of the European Parliament was pushing through some worthwhile legislation. The mood was distinctly upbeat. Even Britain was becoming more... well, European.
So what had happened? Hepton had blinked and the edifice had started to crumble: squabbles, economic downturns, the troubles in Pakistan and Turkey... And now the pull-out. He fumbled for the radio’s off-switch and made for the shower. Standing beneath the spray, he thought of the dream he’d had in the night. Mike Dreyfuss had been in it. So had Jilly. They’d been seeking each other, finding each other, but then losing each other again.
When he came out of the shower, he heard the telephone ringing. He ran, naked, to the living room and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Martin? Is that you? Thank Christ I’ve found you. I tried at the base but they said you were on leave.’
It was Paul Vincent, sounding edgy. No, more than that, sounding frightened.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m still at the nursing home. I’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘What’s wrong, Paul?’
‘They’ve got guards watching me, Martin. I mean, they watch me all the time. I can’t stand it. They said I could leave soon, but I think they’re planning something, God knows what. Please, come and get me, Martin. I want out of here.’
‘Okay, Paul, just hang on. I’m coming. It’ll take an hour, maybe a bit longer. Just keep calm. Okay?’
‘Okay. But hurry, please.’
‘Paul, I know there isn’t any Dr McGill. They never did take you to hospital, did they? And you didn’t become ill. Isn’t that right?’
Vincent sighed loudly. ‘Yes. They said they were security. I was on my break. They asked me to go with them. They brought me straight here. I drank some tea and the next thing I knew I’d crashed out for a solid day.’
‘Drugs?’
‘They wouldn’t admit it, but I get the feeling they’d been questioning me during that time. The bastards won’t admit anything.’
‘You mean the staff?’
‘Not all of them. No, these were other people. People brought in by Villiers.’
‘With Fagin’s knowledge?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay, Paul. Hang in there. I’m on my way.’
‘Thanks, Martin.’
Hepton pulled on a pair of denims and a T-shirt, hardly aware of what he was doing. He slipped on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, then took a last quick look around and left the flat, pausing to check that the lock had connected and to turn the key in the mortise. He didn’t believe Harry’s story of finding the door ajar. He had spent over an hour checking for bugging devices that she might have left behind. He hadn’t found any, but that didn’t mean anything. There were many other possible points of entry into a closed environment or a telephone line: no one knew better than he what technology was capable of.
Shit, if they were listening in on his telephone, they would already know about Paul. He had to hurry.
Outside, he glanced around as he unlocked the door to his Renault. He crouched beside each wheel arch and peered beneath the vehicle, running a hand around the body in search of a tracking device. Nothing. No black Sierra parked in sight. No tramps picking fruit off the ground. He got into the car, fired it up and sped down the cobblestoned street. He started to think about Paul Vincent, and the line of thought led him back to Zephyr. How often did Fagin entertain bigwigs? Three, maybe four times in a year? A large coincidence then that he should have one such party in tow on the day Zephyr chose to blow a fuse. Hepton smiled grimly at this, remembering how he had once used the phrase ‘blow a fuse’ when talking with Jilly about the satellite.
‘You mean those things actually have fuses?’ she had said, and he’d had to explain that he was using layman’s language. She had bristled at this, and insisted that he explain things to her in more technical terms. So for over an hour he’d spoken of SIGINTs and COMINTs and geostationary orbits, while she had listened intently, asking occasional questions. At the end of his explanation, she had smiled.
‘You really are a clever little sod, aren’t you?’ she had said, and he’d nodded. What else could he do?
Clever, Martin, but perhaps not clever enough. He was used to being given orders, used to doing what he was told, to being nothing more than an operative. He seemed a long way from that now. Those uniformed high-ups were still in his mind. Three minutes and forty seconds, and they’d looked pleased. What was it about Zephyr? What was it that was so classified even the control personnel couldn’t be told of it? For he was sure now that the malfunction had been a test of sorts, that it had been being put through its paces, with the brass there to watch, and that it had passed the test.
But what was the bloody test?
If anyone was following him, they were good. He didn’t catch sight of a single suspicious car or person on the drive to the Alfred de Lyon Hospital. Everyone was doing his or her bit to seem genuine, from the lady driver who nearly hit him at a junction to the man whose dog ran into the road, causing him to brake hard.
So far so good. Paul Vincent had sounded on the verge of a breakdown. Hepton didn’t feel too good himself. His body seemed extraordinarily tired and sluggish, his brain befuddled. He was hoping that Vincent knew more than he had been saying to date. It seemed the only way to unlock the hoard of answers to this whole thing.
He made good time on the drive, steered the car through the gates of the Alfred de Lyon and sped up the gravel drive. He didn’t bother with the small car park, leaving his Renault outside the main doors to the building. In the reception hall, he went straight to the admissions desk, where the white-coated lady on duty smiled, recognising him from the previous day.