Billy looked through the grimy windows into the blackness. Panicked, he shouted into his handset.
“Hello? HELLO?”
The young man was right. The line had gone dead.
The voice was gone.
The Select Committee meeting was getting heated.
“With respect, Home Secretary . . .”
“Don’t talk to me about respect, Giles,” Alexia De Vere said curtly. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? These people have no respect. Not for our values, not for our institutions, not for our flag. And we’re too cowardly to stand up to them.”
“Cowardly?” the minister for agriculture muttered under his breath. “What the hell would a woman know about fighting for the bloody flag.”
Alexia turned on him like a rattlesnake. “What was that, Charles?”
“Nothing.”
“No, please. If you have something to say, do share it with all of us.”
The six men seated around the table eyed one another nervously, like schoolboys who’d gotten on the wrong side of their teacher. They were here to discuss the problem of migrant agricultural workers demonstrating in Parliament Square. The protests were becoming increasingly unruly. Last week two Albanian beet pickers had urinated on the Union Jack, an incident that had made the national news and ignited a renewed debate on immigration that the Home Office could have done without. Everyone was on edge, but the home secretary seemed to be particularly waspish this morning. Poor Charles Mosely, the agriculture minister, looked as if he were about to have his balls cut off.
“Do you think I’m some sort of second-class citizen, Charles?”
“Of course not, Alexia.” I think you’re a first-class bitch, and so do the rest of the cabinet.
“Good. Because the last time I checked, women and men were considered equals in this country.”
“I appreciate that, Home Secretary. The point is that none of us feels that throwing the book at these two young men is going to solve anything.”
“They’re very poor.” The trade and industry secretary spoke slowly, as if explaining something very simple to a small child. “Destitute, effectively.”
“Irrelevant,” Alexia said witheringly. “They’re criminal vandals and they’re pissing on the hand that feeds them. They’re turning this government into a laughingstock.”
Walking over to the watercooler, she filled a plastic cup, willing herself to calm down. She knew she was overreacting. Taking everything too personally. But she’d had a frustratingly sleepless night, fretting over yesterday’s meeting with Commissioner Grant, and for some reason the six unfriendly, embittered faces watching her around the table this morning were bothering her more than usual.
Alexia had played things cool yesterday, refusing to show weakness in front of Sir Edward Manning and the commissioner. As a woman in politics, one couldn’t afford to let one’s guard down, ever. But the truth was, she was frightened, filled with a deep sense of foreboding that she couldn’t seem to shake. She’d received threats before, of course, as prisons minister. But this business with William Hamlin and the fire-and-brimstone voice on the phone was different.
And the dog. She felt awful about the dog.
Normally Alexia would have been completely unfazed chairing a meeting in which every man in the room was against her. The envy and hostility around the table this morning was palpable, but it was nothing new. But today she felt tired and vulnerable. To make matters worse, when she finally got to sleep last night, she had a terrible nightmare, of the kind she hadn’t had in years—the drowning dream. Strong, dark currents pulling her under. Lungs filling with water, unable to breathe. Poor Teddy had done his best to calm her down, fetching her a glass of water at four in the morning. Afterward he’d fallen back to sleep, but Alexia had lain awake, watching the dawn break over the river with exhausted, bloodshot eyes.
Parliament broke for the long summer recess in a couple of weeks’ time. It couldn’t come soon enough for Alexia. Just thinking about her summer house on Martha’s Vineyard and spending time with Lucy Meyer, her only real girlfriend, filled her with a longing she could hardly describe.
“Alexia? Are you with us?” Giles Fring, from the immigration think tank Borders, was talking to her.
“I’m sorry, Giles. What were you saying?”
“We need to draft a statement, Home Secretary.” Fring’s irritated sigh spoke volumes. “We must reach some sort of consensus.”
“We have a consensus.”
“No we don’t,” the trade and industry secretary said bluntly.
“Yes we do, Kevin. This is my department, my call. I decide a course of action and you agree to it. Voilà. Consensus.”
The men around the table exchanged despairing glances.
“Our statement is as follows: ‘The government will not tolerate acts of violence or hatred toward Great Britain or her people. It will be up to the courts to decide the fate of Mr. Silchek and Mr. Vladmizc. But the home secretary hereby authorizes the immediate clearing of Parliament Square. Moreover, the work visas of all those involved in last week’s rallies will be reviewed, with immediate effect.’ ”
The room erupted.
“You can’t be serious, Alexia! Revoking visas? What about freedom of speech?”
“Not revoking. Reviewing.”
“But with a view to deporting people! For peaceful protest.”
“There was nothing peaceful about what happened to that flag, Kevin.”
“The prime minister will never allow it.”
Alexia smiled thinly. The trade and industry secretary was really beginning to get on her nerves. “Oh, I think you’ll find he will. Henry’s support is nothing if not staunch.”
Throwing his papers down on the table in a petulant rage, Kevin Lomax stormed out.
Charles Mosely said, “If nothing else, Home Secretary, I would suggest you reconsider the tone of the statement. It sounds . . .”
“Strong?” Alexia suggested.
“I was going to say ‘Stalinist.’ Put bluntly, it won’t win us any votes.”
“I beg to differ.”
“But, Alexia, be reasonable. We all—”
“Meeting adjourned. Good day, gentlemen.”
Ten minutes later, in the back of her ministerial Daimler, Alexia kicked off her shoes, sighing heavily.
“What’s wrong with these men, Edward? They’re all such cowards.”
Sir Edward Manning shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He had bandaged the wound on his finger, explaining it away as a kitchen accident, but the lines that Sergei Milescu had sliced into his chest were far harder to dress. Not only were they agonizingly painful, but they put him in a constant state of fear that blood was about to seep through his shirt. Sergei wanted information on Mrs. De Vere, something scandalous enough and serious enough to have her forced out of her job. Right now Edward had no idea how he was going to get it. All of which made it extremely difficult to concentrate.
“I mean, you tell me, Edward. Have they forgotten how many men died for that flag?”
“I highly doubt Charlie Mosely’s forgotten,” Sir Edward said through gritted teeth. The pain was almost unbearable. “His son was killed three years ago in Helmland. Blown to bits by some roadside bomb.”
Alexia gasped. “Oh God. Really? I had no idea.”
“It was in your briefing notes, Home Secretary.”
“Was it? Shit. No wonder he was so touchy about the flag thing. Why didn’t you stop me, Edward?”
They both knew this was a rhetorical question. For a few minutes the Daimler glided on in silence, each of them lost in their own private thoughts.
Alexia watched Sir Edward Manning as he stared out of the window. He looks even stiffer and more controlled today than usual.
I don’t trust him.
The realization was instant and unexpected, but it was also total, an instinctive reaction rather than a critical judgment.
I don’t trust him but I need him. If I’m going to survive in the snake pit of this job, a good PPS is essential. We have to find a way to work together.
“Do you have any suggestions, Edward?”
“Suggestions for what, Home Secretary?”
“For how I make things right with Charles Mosely. I used the word ‘cowardly’ to a man who lost his son in action.”
“In my experience, Home Secretary, an apology is usually the first step.”
“Should I call him?”
“I would write. A letter, not an e-mail. A formal, handwritten apology smacks of an appropriate degree of contrition.”
Alexia De Vere smiled.
“Thank you, Edward. That’s what I’ll do.”
It took less than an hour for Henry Whitman to hear about the fireworks at the Home Office. Charles Mosely gravely offended. An incendiary statement being drafted for the press, without his knowledge or consent. It was only a week since Alexia De Vere had gravely offended the Russians with a stupid, throwaway remark to Parliament about money laundering. And now this.
He was furious.
“Should I get the home secretary on the line, Prime Minister?” Joyce, Whitman’s secretary, asked eagerly. Alexia De Vere was even less popular with Tory women than she was with the party’s ruling males.
“Yes.” Henry Whitman hesitated. “I mean no. Just put a call through to central office and make sure no statement is released to anybody until I’ve seen the wording and approved it.”