1990 (16 page)

A very worried man, Kyle almost ran to his car, disbelieving her perfectly true reason for being at the Leisure Centre and very nervous about Wainwright.

The flight from New York had just arrived and the General Secretary of the Metalturners Union had been hurried through Customs and into the waiting limousine by the Chief Emigration Officer. As it pulled away, he asked about his luggage and was given a reassuring reply.

'It's being searched for political dirty books, you mean,' Charlie Wainwright observed lightly, covering the tenseness and foreboding which, with the disorientation of jet-lag, gave his face a faintly mask-like rigidity.

He pulled down an arm rest. 'This is civil of the PCD, I must say. What is it? Red carpet or handcuffs?'

'Mr Skardon made all the arrangements personally, sir,' Nichols answered, carefully.

'I bet he did.' Wainwright inspected the interior of the vehicle.

There was a short lull while his escort pondered on the Controller's instructions to be affable. At last he said, 'Did you have a good trip to America?'

'Your gaffers know what sort of trip I had. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent this mobile broadcasting van for me.' Charles Wainwright leant forward to stare into the button-sized lens, almost concealed above the exclusion window to the chauffeur.

'Are you there, Herbert?' he said. 'How's the snooper's army these days? How's the draught from all the little keyholes?'

In the Home Secretary's office, Skardon's reaction was one of tight-lipped annoyance, as the trade union man taunted him from the television screen.

'He'll find out,' he resolved aloud, from between clenched teeth.

'Easy now, Skardon,' Dan Mellor settled into his chair, with a foxy smile. 'The gentle approach first and I'll make it.'

His powerful personality completely dominated this place. It might have been designed specifically for him, as it contained exactly the mixture of ultra-modern gadgetry and traditional accoutrements of status which would appeal to such a man: retrieval systems and streamlined desk furniture, dark panelled walls and heavy velvet drapes framing tall windows, a union lodge banner on one wall and busts of union leaders of old gazing nobly through concealed lighting from a pair of niches. A miner's helmet, complete with safety lamp, hung ostentatiously on the hat-rack, as if to show that Mellor was prepared to descend 300 feet underground at a moment's notice whenever his ministerial open fire needed making up. However, the fire itself burnt logs.

Skardon left this main office as the limousine carrying their victim turned into Whitehall, and Mellor started the re-run of the American telecast onto a big wall screen as the trade union leader arrived.

At the end of the speech, Wainwright was seen nodding acknowledgement as applause thundered out. The politician switched it off and allowed the ensuing silence to sink in.

'Real Nye Bevan stuff, Charlie,' he said, at last, more in sorrow than in anger. 'And most embarrassing for the Government, as you must have known it would be. Not like you, Charlie. GenSec of one of this country's biggest unions. Not on.' He shook his head in apparent bewilderment.

'I couldn't spout the rubbish the PCD gave me. Not in front of real trade unionists,' Charles Wainwright declared, gazing at his old friend earnestly. 'They deserved the truth. They know it, anyway.'

'What truth, Charlie?' asked Mellor. 'A standing ovation from a bunch of foreigners?'

The other waved a hand in dismissive rebuke. 'We were the dissenters once, Jim. The lodge banners at the Durham Miners' Gala, the picket lines, the negotiations, the belief. We were both there.'

Mellor hunched largely over his desk. 'And we won. We sit on every company board. We own 40 per cent of Parliament,' he asserted, forcibly. 'I was a trade union M.P. myself.'

'Won?' Wainwright exclaimed with scorn. 'When everybody does what the PCD tells 'em?'

'We've got Ombudsman's courts, people's tribunals.'

'I had a bicycle bell once that made more noise and was a damn' sight more use than that lot put together,' the trade union leader jeered. He stood up and walked over to look seriously at Mellor. 'Dan, don't you remember? When we were in Sweden? '75, was it? Everybody had a number and there was a data terminal in every police car. If they picked you up, a computer could spill your life history for 'em in ten seconds. Every detail. We all said it couldn't happen here. Well, it has.'

The Home Secretary tutted and returned his gaze with an avuncular smile, 'Progress, Charlie. You'll never change that.'

'I don't want to. I just want to push it along the right lines,' the other pressed, with deep sincerity.

'Skardon thought you might ask for political asylum,' Mellor put in the apparently casual jibe.

'He would. And I was offered it, by four countries,' Wainwright rejected such an idea and stated his faith simply. 'I'll not turn coat, Dan. I'll toe the Party line. But I'll still work for what I believe.'

The Home Secretary got to his feet and paced down the long room, apparently musing, hand to chin, the brows furrowed. 'I had a job to stop the Cabinet stamping you flat and using you for lino; on a treason charge,' he began, finally. 'I said I'd handle it. This is how. I respect your views - we've known each other long enough, but I want your word that when the American speech leaks out...'

'If it doesn't get jammed,' the other interrupted, bluntly. 'We've got the most powerful equipment since Stalin.'

'All right,' said Mellor, quickly. 'If it leaks out - you'll deny it. It was a put-up job. And there won't be any more speeches or statements like it in this country.'

Wainwright's face closed tight. 'I can't promise that, Dan.'

'It needn't alter your beliefs. You can still work for them,' argued Mellor, persuasively. 'Here at the top and privately and in rooms like this. Now, I need your word, Charlie.'

Charles Wainwright hesitated, looking hard into the other's eyes. Then he extended his hand. 'You've got it.'

Mellor took the hand firmly and nodded, satisfied, 'That's been good enough for me for thirty-five years.'

Arm thrown fraternally over the trade union leader's shoulders, he led him to the door and saw him out, smiling and clapping him on the back. Then, standing at the head of the wide staircase, he watched until Wainwright had crossed the entrance hall and been escorted back to the limousine by a commissionaire.

The Home Secretary returned to his desk and pressed a buzzer. Herbert Skardon and the principal of Mayfield Adult Rehabilitation Centre came into the room from a side door.

'Well, you heard it,' Dan Mellor looked at Mark Gelbert, who was carrying a clip board. 'What d'you think, doctor? Megalomania?'

'Oh, no, Home Secretary. Nothing as complex as that. Just common or garden idealism. Quite simple to treat.' He could have been talking about measles and his confidence in the cure had its own menace.

'You're quite sure that the results of the Mayfield experiments are complete?' the Controller worried.

Doctor Gelbert eyed him coldly. 'Clinically and statistically, Mr Skardon. My professional reputation does not allow any margin for either guesswork or error. The Jesuits used to say, "Give us a child before it is seven and we will give that child to the Church for life".' His features, fastidiously pinched round obsessed eyes, took on the mould of a Spanish inquisitor. 'Give me a...misguided, yes, that's the word - a misguided person for seven days and I will give him to any creed of my choosing.'

'
Our
choosing, doctor,' the Controller corrected, with deadly softness.

'Yes, of course,' the man replied, hastily. 'I'm sorry.'

The Home Secretary cut in, 'Right, Herbert. You'd better lift Wainwright and get him down to this mind laundry of Doctor Gelbert's. Nice and quiet. He's still an important man with lots of pull. Thank you, doctor.'

Mark Delbert glanced from one to the other. A prima donna in his own field, he was suddenly aware that this was the real nerve centre and these men were the true manipulators. It made him uncomfortable to be dismissed with so little ceremony, but he was glad to leave.

Mellor turned to Skardon, 'The cover-up'll take some working out. Very, very careful.'

'We've done it before,' the Controller pointed out, with assurance. 'I'll put Miss Lomas on it. Strange, how women have always been much better at deception than men.'

Kyle pulled in to park on the edge of a vast cultivated field. A large sculpture of a family running towards the open space stood on the opposite side of the road, in the centre of an arch leading to lights and heavy traffic. The field was part of Hyde Park.

Waiting nervously, the journalist tapped the steering wheel and softly sang a variant of a 1930s quasi-cowboy song called 'Old Faithful.'

'Old Faceless, we roam the range together.

Old Faceless, in every kind of weather...'

He stopped singing, abruptly. 'Where the social contract are you?' he muttered and peered out into the dim evening light. 'Social contract' had now passed into the language as a mild obscenity.

As though in answer, the souped-up Mini drew in next to his car and one of its dark windows rolled down about two inches.

'About time,' Kyle commented, with unusual sharpness. 'And why Hyde Park? It's patrolled.'

'Old times' sake, Mr Kyle. Spring, daffodils, young lovers, the groomed horses cantering in Rotten Row,' the voice of Faceless was discursive and without urgency.

'O.K., O.K. And now it's soya beans round a school for riot police. What have you got for me?'

'You're nervous, Kyle,' now the voice was smiling slightly. 'Not like you.'

'I've started taking an interest in mental health,' the journalist explained.

'Yes, I know. Liberal indoctrination at the Mayfield ARC. But you were only there for a day. It used to be a stately home, you know, until Wealth Tax ruined the owner. Even his title didn't help him. He's a cleaner in a bus garage now.'

The outdoors seemed to have affected his informant's mind, Kyle thought, irritably, not at all prepared to continue the risk for the sake of idle conversation. 'Serves him right for being patriotic and staying where he was born. What have you got?'

'Mayfield is due to take in its first really important patient quite soon,' declared Faceless.

'Charles Wainwright?'

'You've been studying telepathy, too,' he confirmed. 'Wainwright it is.'

The window of the Mini rolled up and the car moved noiselessly away at speed. Kyle switched on his own engine and headed back to Leisure Centre 28.

Charles Wainwright had already arrived there and was sitting in the booth with Dave Brett, who pushed a glass of brandy towards him.

'You know I don't touch it.' The trade union leader pushed it back and lifted the top slice from a plate of beef sandwiches, which Agnes Culmore had just laid on the table. The meat was generous, bulging the bread. 'Thank you, miss. You don't see beef sandwiches like this often. Not in public.' He scrutinized Brett. 'Black market?'

'More sort of greyish,' the agent gave a grin.

'What about coupons?' Wainwright asked Agnes.

'Mr Brett's seen to that.'

'No, he hasn't,' the other replied, firmly. 'They're not transferable and I'm not breaking any food laws.'

He took a ration book from his pocket and tore out a catering strip, which had a price printed on each coupon. Agnes took them from him and returned to the bar.

'How's your father keeping, young Dave?' The older man's expression relaxed a little, to show he was not really offended.

'Cantankerous as ever. Digging his illegal allotment and giving most of the stuff away, rather than turn it over to the State Produce Centre.'

Charlie Wainwright was beaming broadly now. 'He doesn't change. Where's this friend of yours?'

'Here,' Dave Brett jerked his head and the other turned, recognised Kyle coming towards them and immediately looked angry.

The agent raised a placatory hand. 'Now keep your wool on, Charlie.'

'I'm not talking to him,' growled the trade union leader. 'Bloody gutter-headline merchant.'

'Don't, if you don't want to. Just listen,' the agent appealed, as Kyle sat down in the booth with them.

'What's he want?' Wainwright ignored his presence and addressed Dave Brett.

'An interview,' said Kyle. 'Confirming the gist of the speech you made in America.'

'Nothing doing. That was America. This is here. And God knows how you found out.'

'You still believe what you said there.' It was not really a question.

'Yes,' Wainwright replied, firmly. 'I told the Home Secretary so.'

'Why didn't you take political asylum, Mr Wainwright? Why did you come back?'

'Simple. Nobody ever improved a society from the outside. I belong here.'

'Then let me help. Give me the interview.'

'Not a chance.'

Kyle gripped his arm and pleaded insistently, 'Before it's too late. The PCD are going to put the clamps on you - and you'll stay clamped. You're down for the Adult Rehabilitation Centre at Mayfield.'

The General Secretary of the Metalturners Union shook himself free and glared. 'If you believe that, you've been on too many of these new funnybone pills.'

As the journalist opened his mouth for more argument, George brushed passed the table, tapping rapidly three times, then pointing a forefinger at Wainwright.

'PCD,' Brett warned. 'Come on, Charlie. Move. They want
you
.' He and Kyle were already on their feet.

The trade unionist sat, unshaken. 'You run if you want to. I've no need to scuttle out of back doors.' He felt into his pocket and produced a pipe. 'Dan Mellor said I'd be all right. He won't break his word.'

Kyle closed his eyes at the man's sincere stupidity, before spinning round to follow Brett - always a lightning disappearing artist.

Jack Nichols entered the booth, accompanied by a heavy; all hooligan under a public school veneer.

'PCD, Mr Wainwright,' the Chief Emigration Officer showed a warrant card. 'We'd like you to come with us. Just routine.'

'Routine,' Wainwright responded, calmly. 'In that case, I'll finish these sandwiches.'