Dead in the Water (18 page)

“
No you’re not. You’re his mum. And I’m glad you rang. Thank you. I have to go. But thank you. Speak later….”

He puts the phone down, leans back in the chair and, shutting his eyes, massages his face. He feels so tired. This unexpected warmth he feels for Joanna has destabilised his world. The watertight compartments in his life are starting to leak.

It’s only a short walk to the Foreign Office, but ten minutes is time enough to regret not taking an umbrella. The man on the tube was right. You overhear people wondering how Wimbledon is going to take place with only one covered court, moaning that it’s nearly the end of May and so far there have only been two half days of Test cricket this summer, but mentioning the weather itself has become a taboo.

Linden greets him in the vast upstairs office that the Foreign Secretary calls his own. He’s delighted to see Mark and thanks him for the paper copy of the briefing paper; but very much regrets that he can’t spend time on it now. Shrugging the humiliation of this aside, and seizing the opportunity to exploit Andrew’s good manners, Mark says, “Could I ask you a personal favour? I know it’s not a good time.”

“
Please.”

“
My daughter, Rachel, I think I mentioned her over the meal on Saturday…”

On Mark’s way out, Linden’s secretary asks him to e-mail an electronic copy of the briefing paper, and adds, with a sharply polite little twitch of a smile: “The PM wants to see you urgently.”

“
I thought she was in Essex.”

“
That’s been cancelled. She’s in her office.”

She should have been at Stansted airport this afternoon, giving her blessing to a shipment of solar-powered irrigation pumps to Sudan – a government funded export deal that Mark had helped to broker; the kind of small-scale publicity that could help to turn public opinion on the administration’s environmental credentials. But the Hammersmith incident will dominate the evening news bulletins to the exclusion of everything else.

Using the side gate from the Foreign Office through to Downing Street, Mark is in Angela Walker’s office in less than five minutes.

“
Mark,” she says without getting up from the large leather armchair, where she had been reading through briefing papers. “Thank you for getting here so promptly.”

“
I was in with Andrew ––”

“
I know.” She looks up. “What do we do?” Her voice is quiet.

“
About Venezuela? The situation over there is very bloody.”

“
I gather.”

“
We should get a resolution in the United Nations as soon as possible –”

“
Mark,” she interrupts. “We have to go to the UN with the Americans on side – and that won’t happen in public debate.” She glances back at the papers she’s been reading. “I mean here. What do we do here? How much do you know about what’s happened today?”

“
The Hammersmith incident?”

She puts the papers down and looks straight at him. “An old man whose van broke down has been shot by armed police. No bombs. No weapons. No links to terrorism. We urge the public to be vigilant. We assure them there’s no need to panic, and then this.”

“
Was it the BMW then?”

“
A boot full of Class A drugs. They’ve caught him now. A dealer with a known record. Got as much connection to green terrorism as you and I have to Chairman Mao. Robert’s going to make a statement in the Commons.”

The public will be appalled at the police incompetence – the newspapers full of outraged indignation that they managed to get it so wrong. But the real worry is that panic is seeping in to daily lives; that the shooting is symptomatic of the public mood. In previous terrorist campaigns, however unpredictable the outrages themselves, the threat has been specific. The invisibility of this group and the sense that its members are bound together not by race or religion or nationalism but solely by ideology, is creating alarm as profound as a child’s dread of nightmares; the fear that no matter how consoling the nightlight, sleep will return.

“
I asked you in, Mark, because I want to know what you think. They gave us a deadline. What should we do?”

“
I haven’t seen a copy of the e-mail. I’m sorry about yesterday ––”

“
You didn’t miss much.” She passes him a copy of the e-mail from her papers. “I gather Andrew briefed you about the meeting.”

“
Yes.”

“
So… tell me what you think.” Mark nods. “This is not a Cabinet meeting. You don’t have to hedge your bets. Forget protocol. Tell me. You’re paid to have opinions.”

“
I’m in two minds –––”

“
Not what I wanted to hear, Mark. But tell me all the same.”

“
I think we should face them down. We have to be seen to be strong. When we have them locked away, then we can decide how to implement our own policies.”

“
That is what I said to you on Thursday morning. You’re not here to parrot.” She stands up, walks to the window and with her back to him, as if that is the only way she can be conciliatory, asks, “You were in two minds. What would you say if you were still working for
One World
?”

He hesitates.

“
Mark?” she says, still looking out of the window.

“
Forget the
Angels of Light
. They’re terrorists. Deny them any influence on decisions that are going to have to be made sooner or later. The manifesto promised serious actions to counteract climate change. We have to do what we know to be necessary. If I were still working for
One World
, I’d say that environmentalism is not elitist, that taking firm action, even unpopular action is the only way of ensuring social justice.”

“
Thank you,” she says, turning to face him. “Nobody else is telling me that.”

“
I am well aware that it is far more complex ––”

“
You don’t need to remind me that a deeply unpopular government is never going to get re-elected; and that legislation has to be enforceable. I hear it all the time. Not your job. The stench of prevarication oozes from every pore of my Cabinet. If I want to hear what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to say about costs, I shall ask her. Your job, Mark, is to advise me, not to second guess the arguments that fly around an uneasy coalition.”

“
I appreciate that,” he says, smarting.

“
So what is it? Your advice.”

“
Shift the agenda. Introduce fuel rationing on all private motor vehicles. That could be done immediately. And we should bring in The Individual Carbon Allowance Scheme as soon as is practicable. We agreed before the election that ICAS should be at the heart of this government’s philosophy.”

“
Thank you Mark.”

“
And I think that what happens in Venezuela has very serious implications for us in this country. They’re not separate issues. We have to introduce Carbon Resource Funding immediately.”

“
Pay a corrupt government protection money to look after its own rain forests?”

“
The corruption can be dealt with later. The rain forests only get one chance. And we should act unilaterally if needs be. We have to take a lead.”

“
I have to be in the chamber when Robert makes his announcement about the Hammersmith shooting. Do me a paper on what you’ve just said.” Mark stands and offers to shake her hand, but she’s already returned to her briefing papers. “We’ll talk again tomorrow. Jay will give you a call to arrange a time.”

He had gone into the room feeling marginalised. As he walks back to his office in Cowley Street, this turns briefly to shame. How has he allowed himself to get into the frame of mind where Angela Walker gives him permission to have opinions, and then has to drag them from him?

3
2
Amazonas, Venezuela

Rachel wakes to see two young warriors cross legged on the ground, no more than two metres from her, watching her with expressionless intensity. Still in that soft marginal world between dreaming and waking, she looks at them in bewilderment. Memories return in small tattered parcels: her painful trek through the forest, the downing of the helicopter gunship, her escape from the earlier attack. And disorientation gives way to panic. Not knowing whether these men have been appointed as her guardians or executioners, or been given permission to take her as reward for some hunting exploit, she tries to sit upright in the hammock. It twists violently and dumps her onto the soft ground. And over the incessant tumult of the forest she hears a strange sound, alternately soft and silken, shrill and raucous. Is her clumsiness an affront, an insult to the tribe? She scrambles to her feet, ready to attempt an apology, to find that the young warriors, the elder and the shaman are laughing. Not knowing what is expected of her, she glances across at José, who is standing beside his hammock.

Faces appear on the edge of the clearing, indistinct in the forest gloom. With no idea how to interpret the laughter, she chooses to find inspiration in its embrace, holds out her hands, palms upwards, in a simple gesture of friendship. What can she do but smile?

They gesture for her to sit with them. She looks to José for help, but it is her they wish to talk with. Her few words of Yanomami are useless to her. So she brushes the sandy red earth with her hands and in the soil she draws with her fingers a series of pictures to tell how they come to be here: their escape from the settlement, getting lost in the forest, the helicopter gunship attack; and finally a picture of this moment: the shaman, the elder, herself, the two warriors and José. As they look carefully at the pictures, she points to the drawing of the man by the hammock and then to José; to the stick woman on the ground and to herself. The elder nods. And then more, another set of pictures: herself and José on a raft, journeying down a river.

High in a tree not far from the clearing a howler monkey screeches, setting off a raucous fusillade of responses, but Rachel hears only the silence of the four men, old and young. They turn away from her, the elder and the shaman talking quietly one to another. The elder speaks quietly to the warriors. Then he hands Rachel a leather pouch, about the size of a small child’s first school satchel. What she sees inside amazes her: pieces of dried meat, a wad of leaves, some fruit – and her camera, the satphone and the document wallet taken from the wreckage of the helicopter.

She has given the two warriors names: Spider, with his headband from the pelt of a spider monkey, its tail hanging down his back; Blue, with vivid indigo streaks painted on his face. No civilizado would recognise this as a forest trail; but that is what it is. Spider and Blue take it in turns to lead and hack back the encroaching vegetation, Rachel and José always between them. Each of the warriors carries a machete-like implement, wears a bow slung over his shoulders and arrows in waist belts. Rachel has her leather pouch with food and a hide bag into which she has bundled the looted military fatigues. Although the civilizados’ soft skinned feet have been wrapped in animal hide to protect them from thorns, Rachel is already developing blisters. José’s shoulder has been dressed and bandaged with leaves, but he is still in pain. He doesn’t complain, however, which makes her all the more intolerant of her own discomfort.

When she can go no further, José reassures her with a simple “OK,” his throat sounding raw. She nods in gratitude, and takes fruit from the leather pouch. The juice is what she craves. She shares it with José and offers it to the warriors, who gesture ‘no’, taking them instead to a large leaf where fresh rainwater has collected. They drink and encourage her and José to do the same. Soon they are back on their feet again, their pace as exacting as before.

If she had some idea of how much further to the river … But there is only the constant pain in her feet, the throbbing of blood in her head and the stitch in her side. She is so slow, so inadequate in this environment that she starts to fear that they might abandon her. How can José keep going? Occasionally they allow a rest, but only for as long as it takes to find water.

It’s during the fifth rest period, after she has been squatting on the forest floor for several minutes, that she begins to hear something other than her own blood thumping in her ears. It takes a while for her to recognise it for what it is: the sound of rushing water.

33
Westminster and Islington, London

Mark has had a frustrating afternoon. The invigorating new purposefulness which he had fondly imagined would result from the meeting with Mrs W has proved elusive, swiftly crushed by grinding paperwork. And in the background lurks the business of the Hammersmith shooting; the atmosphere at Cowley Street thickening uncomfortably in anxious anticipation of Robert Britton’s appearance in the Commons.

Mark watches the speech on his computer. It is a model of succinctness and clarity. He tells the House that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police would himself be making a statement later in the day; and he, Robert Britton, unequivocally accepts responsibility for the policy decisions, but not for the operational misjudgements. The problems for the Home Secretary and for Angela Walker’s government erupt in the subsequent debate – when the most hostile responses burst out from within the coalition. Accusing the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister of having no coherent response to the campaign of terror, several prominent MPs from the Right argue that the incident was less a case of police incompetence than a gross failure of political leadership. Fortunately for Britton, he is let off the hook by some of the more radically minded environmentalists who dare to suggest that the government’s refusal to embrace an environmental agenda has led directly to the terror campaign. This scandalous notion is greeted with outraged hostility – and is the point at which Mark decides to leave the office and finish off his work at home.