'Come straight up.'
The President sat at his desk in the Oval Office in shirt sleeves signing papers passed to him by the chief of staff. Thornton, also in shirt sleeves, looked up and grinned lopsidedly. 'You look glum, Blake, and no wonder.'
Cazalet leaned back. 'We'll finish these later. So, what now, Blake?'
'God knows,' Blake told him.
'You do think he was pushed?' Thornton asked.
'Of course he was pushed, or else he panicked and jumped.' Blake was exasperated. 'Come on, gentlemen, you know the background, you know the score. Do you really believe this was an accident, Cohan simply leaning too far out over his balcony?'
Cazalet said, 'So let's simplify it. There's somebody out there who's killed the five American members of this Sons of Erin.'
'Closed it down, I'd say,' Thornton put in.
'So what's left?' Cazalet asked.
'Jack Barry hiding out in Ulster, and the Connection here in Washington.'
Thornton said, 'But is this of any importance in view of what's happened?'
'Let's put it this way,' Blake said. 'The Connection's power didn't derive solely from the classified information which came his way. That information was only of use because he had people to act on it.'
'And they're all dead,' Cazalet said.
'Not Barry. He's still alive and kicking and more dangerous than any of them. With the Connection still in place and Barry out there as his gun hand, we've still got a big problem.'
'What do you suggest?' the President said.
'I thought I'd check Cohan's New York background. My friend, Captain Parker, might be able to come up with something.' Blake looked at Cazalet. 'And I think it's time for a full-bore investigation right here in the White House, Mr President.'
'Good. I agree,' Cazalet told him. 'You check on Cohan.' He turned to Thornton. 'And you see what you can come up with
here, Henry. If there's a White House leak, then I think that's a matter for my chief of staff.'
'I'll get right on to it, Mr President,' Thornton said, and he and Blake walked out together.
As they moved along the corridor, Blake said, 'What do you intend?'
'God knows. We need to keep the lid on this. It's political dynamite. You do your thing, Blake. I'll start doing background checks on everyone in this place. I'll put the Secret Service on it.'
'Will you tell them why?'
'Good God, no, not at the moment. We'll just do a discreet check. If nothing shows up, we'll think again. Stay in touch.'
Blake moved on and Thornton watched him go, smiling, no fear in him at all. It was strange how excited he felt.
Blake reported the interview to Ferguson, and Ferguson spoke briefly to the Prime Minister on the phone.
'It really does seem to be getting out of hand, Brigadier.'
'1 obviously take full responsibility for what happened last night.' Ferguson told him.
I don't need that, Brigadier,' the Prime Minister said. 'Not your fault, not my fault, but let's get it sorted,' and he put the phone down.
Ferguson, at his desk, said to Hannah Bernstein and Dillon, east he isn't asking for a scapegoat.'
"What now, sir?' Hannah asked.
It was Dillon who provided the answer. 'It's all up to Blake, I'd say.'
'Yes, I think you could be right,' Ferguson said.
Thornton phoned through to Barry. 'Cazalet, Thornton and Blake Johnson just had a little talk in the Oval Office.'
'Should I get excited?' Barry asked. 'Just tell me.'
Thornton did. When he was finished, Barry said, 'Ah, that's tame stuff. What is there for them to find out about Cohan in New York? Was he into girls, did he use men's toilets too much? Come on!'
'I agree. It's a negative exercise. I don't think we have anything to worry about.'
'We?' Barry said. 'They know exactly where I am. They don't know a damn thing about you.'
'And it will stay that way as far as I'm concerned. So don't go getting any ideas in your head, Barry. Remember, even if they get to you, it won't help them get to me.'
'Bastard,' Barry told him, and Thornton rang off.
Barry lit a cigarette and moved to the window. The rain drove against it. One thing he hadn't told the Connection, of course, was the matter of Cohan's mobile and the fact that the mystery woman was linked to him. It was a bizarre kind of psychological umbilical cord. He turned and looked at his own mobile on the table. Strange how he almost wanted it to ring. To hear her voice.
She was at that precise moment driving back to Norfolk, sitting in the rear seat of her Mercedes for once, the only light the one from the dashboard and the headlights cutting into the dark. She felt very calm, very comfortable. It was that safe, enclosed feeling again.
Music was playing softly, just loud enough to hear. She'd told Hedley to put the tape on, one of her husband's favourites, Al Bowlly, the most popular British crooner of his day, more popular in England in the nineteen thirties than Bing Crosby. Killed in the Blitz.
'I like this one,' she said. '"Moonlight on the Highway". Rather appropriate, but not your cup of tea.'
Hedley said, 'You know my tastes, Lady Helen. I'm strictly an Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie man.'
'A strange man, Al Bowlly.' She lit a cigarette. 'Apparently he was from South Africa, but some people said from the Middle East. In England, he took ten years off his age. Became a big band singer. Women adored him. He dined at the Savoy with the aristocracy, was friends with the most notorious gangsters in London.'
'Some guy,' Hedley said.
'He believed in his personal destiny, especially during the Blitz in London in nineteen forty, when the Nazis tried to bomb us out of the war. One evening, he was walking up a London street when a bomb fell. The blast went the other way. He was unharmed.'
'Hell, that happened to me more than once in 'Nam.'
'Bowlly interpreted it as a sort of sign from heaven. He believed it meant he was invincible.'
'And what happened?'
'Oh, a few weeks later, there was an air raid warning. Everybody at the apartment block was supposed to go down to the cellars. He stayed in bed. Nothing to fear, you see.'
'And?'
'They found him dead in bed. The blast from a falling bomb had blown his door off its hinges.'
'Which hit Bowlly?'
'Exactly.'
Hedley drove in silence for a while and finally said, 'Look, what was the point of that story?'
'Fate, I suppose, and how it can't be avoided. You think you've avoided Death in one place and he finds you in another.'
'Sure, I can see that, but I don't see how it affects you.'
'Oh, I do, Hedley.' She leaned back. 'The story illustrates the inevitability of things.'
'Like you taking on the President of the United States? I can't buy that, Lady Helen, I surely can't.'
'Remember the sign another President had on his desk? The buck stops here? Well, he was right.' She peered out at the dark. 'Oh, look where we are. I need tea and a sandwich. Let's stop.'
They were at an old-fashioned truck stand at the side of the road, one they'd stopped at before, the flap up against the rain. It was almost two in the morning, two roadliner trucks parked nearby, the drivers eating in their cabs. Hedley ordered steak sandwiches on white toast and tea, hot and strong. She joined him, watching the woman who ran the place frying the steaks.
'Smells good, Hedley.'
'It always does, Lady Helen.'
She bit into the sandwich, juice running down her cheek and the woman leaned over and offered a paper napkin. 'There you go, love.'
Rain poured off the canopy, she finished the sandwich and drank the strong bitter tea and when she was finished, said, 'Let's
go-'
She sat in the passenger seat beside him. 'You think I'm crazy, Hedley.' It was a statement.
'I think you're going too far, Lady Helen.'
She lit another cigarette. 'Most people take the other way in life, let things go, all good manners and politeness. I remember once sitting in the corner of a London restaurant with a man who'd been my accountant. Next to us were four women, all smoking, one of them in a wheelchair. My friend whispered that he couldn't take the smoke, would have to leave. The woman in the wheelchair said loudly that it was a pity some people couldn't learn a little tolerance.'
'What happened?'
'I put him in a taxi, then went back and told the woman in the wheelchair that at least she was alive, whereas my friend with
lung cancer had three weeks to live.' She frowned. 'Why am I telling you this? Probably because it was the first time I really stood up, in a public sense, to be counted. I couldn't stand by.'
'Just like you couldn't stand by over the Sons of Erin. Okay, I see that. Only, the President?' He shook his head.
'You don't see anything, Hedley. You're a lovely man, but like most people, you see only what you think you do. You look at me and think I'm the woman I've always been. It's not true. I'm a woman in a hurry, Hedley, because I have no time to lose.'
'Hey, don't say things like that.'
'It's the truth, Hedley, I'm going to die. Not tonight and not tomorrow, but soon, too soon, and I've got things to do, and by God, I'm going to do them. I'm going to Long Island to face the President, and I've got Barry on the end of that coded mobile any time I want him. All I have to do is reel him in.' She took out her pill bottle and shook two into her palm. 'So pass that whiskey flask and put your foot down. We could be home by three.'
But the weather became even worse, the rain torrential, and when they drove down the hill overlooking the village, it was a scene of chaos, the water overflowing a foot deep in the street, and men struggling at the lock gate.
Hedley pulled in at the pub. Old Tom Armsby was putting sandbags at the door and Hetty was helping him. She looked up as the Mercedes stopped and Lady Helen opened the door.
'Looks bad.'
'It is bad, and all down to the Parish Council. The mean bastards wouldn't find the money to fix that lock gate after the last time, when Hedley saved us. Much more of this and every cottage in the village will be flooded.'
Lady Helen turned to Hedley. 'They're ordinary folk, most of them pensioners. It would ruin them.'
'I know.' He got out into the rain, took off his chauffeur's
tunic and rolled up his sleeves, standing there in a pool of water. 'What's that phrase where you have a sense that you've been here before?'
'Deja vu. It's French.'
'Yes, it would be.'
He turned and went towards the men struggling at the lock gate and she got out and waded after him. There was a young man in the turbulent waters below. He was obviously half-dead, but he tried to go under again and was thrown back up, retching.
'Get him out of here,' Hedley ordered. The boy was plucked from the water and dragged up the bank. 'Where's a crowbar?'
Someone held one out. Hedley took it and, without hesitation, plunged in. He surfaced, took a deep breath, went down and felt for the iron clasps on the gate that had been temporarily repaired after the previous occasion. He forced the crowbar in, worked at it, then had to surface, gasping for breath.
He went down again, twice, three times, always more difficult, and then the clasp gave, the gates started to open and then the force of the water drove them wide. Hedley surfaced to a ragged cheer, for already the flood waters were subsiding.
Willing hands pulled him from the water. He got to his feet and stood there in the rain, and Hetty Armsby ran over with a blanket and put it round him.
'Oh, you wonderful bastard. Come on into the pub, and the rest of you as well. To hell with the law tonight.'
Everyone moved forward, and Lady Helen joined Hedley. 'Don't let it go to your head. I wouldn't be as blasphemous as to say you walk on water, but they just might change the name of the church to St Hedley.'
The following morning at Compton Place, the weather was still dreadful, an east wind driving in the rain, waves breaking across the long flat sands of Horseshoe Bay.
Helen, wrapped up in storm coat and hood, cantered her mare through pine woods that broke the worst excesses of the storm, paused in the shelter of the wall of an old ruined chapel and lit a cigarette with difficulty in her cupped hands.
She looked out at the churning sea, and remembered a visit to friends in Long Island some years before, not in the fashionable summer, but late winter, just like this. She'd been shown Chad Luther's mansion, a palace of a place, lawns running into the waters of the Sound, no one in residence, so she didn't enjoy a conducted tour. Chad had invited her many times, mainly because he liked money and she had more than he did. She had never accepted, for a simple reason. She didn't like him. Vulgar, vain, conceited.
