Dead in the Water (40 page)

Mark puts his head in his hands. “Oh my God.”

“
I’m OK, Dad. Really. We’re here, aren’t we.”

“
The only person who knew you were heading for Esmerelda is Andrew Linden.” She looks quizzical. “The Foreign Secretary.” He shakes his head. “But it can’t be him. He got you out of Brazil. He rang the Ambassador himself.”

7
0
Saint Pancras and Soho

For better or for worse, Jeremy Peters’ evening is only just beginning. His internal clock is completely out of kilter. By rights he should be utterly exhausted. He ought to set the alarm, have a bath, go to bed. That would be the sensible thing to do. But he’s wide awake.

On his way back to the hotel he bought himself a new pay-as-you-go mobile phone. While watching the highlights of the extraordinary first day’s play of the Test Match, he transfers the address book from the old one, name by name, number by number. Then, when the cricket is over, he cuts the old sim-card into tiny pieces and flushes it down the loo. Using the new phone, he rings Terry Sullivan. He wants to thank him, let him know they’re safely back in England, assure him he’ll get his money. No reply. More than likely, he’s on another dodgy mission.

The cricket was really quite something: the England tail enders thrashed 178 between them in less than three hours, to end up 326 all out in the last over of the day.

By this time tomorrow, the
Newsnight
programme with Rachel’s video and the interviews should have aired. On Saturday he’ll want to relax, put everything behind him, be well out of the public eye; and he can think of no better way of doing that than blending into the crowd at Lord’s. At half ten is it too late to ring Redmond and take him up on his offer? He takes a whisky from the mini-bar.
Bugger it. No harm trying.
Redmond is surely not the kind of guy to want an early night. And it’s a new phone, a new sim-card. Nobody can trace that.

“
Jeremy. Jeremy Peters. Mr Caracas. There’s a fine thing. Just as I thought I was going to be spending the evening on my ownsome. Where are you my friend?”

“
I’m in a hotel. I hope it’s not too rude. I just wanted to ask if you still had a spare ticket for Saturday?”

“
The cricket. Yes, of course, of course.”

“
I hope you don’t think it rude of me ––”

“
I knew you from the first. You’re too English by half. I told you to ring if you wanted it. And you have. So what are you doing tonight? And don’t you go telling me you’re stopping in. You like jazz as I remember.”

“
You have a great memory, Redmond.”

“
That’s as maybe. But are you going to join me? I am bored as fuck and I could do with some company.”

Jeremy has a nagging worry that he should never have even switched on the old mobile to retrieve numbers and addresses. Would that make it traceable? They might be able to do it in Venezuela, where the mobile phone companies can be bribed, but surely not here. On the other hand, if they could trace it to the hotel, they could ask for him at reception. So the anonymity of clubbing with Redmond, if more than a little daunting, seems preferable to nursing anxieties and whisky miniatures in enforced solitude.

“
OK Redmond. You twisted my arm. I’ll meet you. Sounds good. Where are you?”

“
I’m in a taxi, Jeremy. I’ll pick you up.”

Alarm bells sound again, but he’s not sure what’s setting them off. Telling Redmond where he’s staying? Or leaving things in the hotel room?
Bugger it, Jeremy. Just deal with it.

“
Can you meet me at King’s Cross. I have to book a ticket for Sunday. Meet me in twenty minutes. Is that alright?” Crazy! Now he’s got to invent an important train journey to make on Sunday. The Lake District. Why not?

“
Whatever.” Redmond sounds bemused.

Jeremy takes the digi card in its plastic protective case from the hotel safe and slips it into his sock beneath his instep.

“
Strangers in a strange land, eh!” chuckles Redmond, as the lights of Shaftesbury Avenue illuminate the inside of the cab. Jeremy mumbles agreement, wondering what the hell he’s letting himself in for; but presumes, from Redmond’s boasts on the plane about Brazilian night life, that it’s likely to involve drink and sex. He’s relieved and delighted, therefore, when they do after all end up at a jazz club in a side street off The Old Compton Road.

The three piece band is very good, if a little too poppy for his taste. He has to fight the demon in him that’s tempting him to get through the night by drinking himself to oblivion. He pretends to pay close attention to the music – his excuse for drinking slowly. The drummer and bass player, both probably in their mid fifties, are highly skilled and, in a professional kind of way, appreciative of the young female pianist, who looks 19 going on 40. Redmond seems more enthusiastic about the woman’s low cut green satin top than her piano playing. When the set finishes, he decides it’s time to go. He evidently has other treats in store.

Jeremy has paid his way at the jazz club; but his cash is running out fast and he knows he’s not going to be able to afford to pay for even one round in the sex club that Redmond has led them to. Embarrassed, he offers to get a cab back to the hotel on his own; but Redmond insists. “Who the hell do you think I am? A lonely, dirty old geezer who’d go somewhere like this on his ownsome? No, no, no. I’m paying for this one.”

The place is horrid, but things could be worse: the ghastly anonymity offers unexpected sanctuary, and Redmond’s interest in sex seems wholly voyeuristic. There is still something of the anthropologist about Jeremy; he finds himself intrigued by the place and the extraordinary mix of its clientele; surprised by the performers and, yes, he has to admit it, aroused by some of the ‘acts’.

He wonders how Rachel will react when he tells her how he’s spent his evening. He fondly imagines that she’ll be wryly amused at his discomfort, and that her sense of humour will soothe his guilt.

Friday

71
West London

“
What’s going on, Dad?”

He checks himself from saying he hasn’t a clue. Rachel needs her father to be strong.

“
I think…,” he starts slowly, gathering his convictions around him. “I think the London bombings are intended to discredit the environmental movement ahead of the Summit. It’s a distraction. With the summit coming up, who wants headlines about massacres in the rain forest?”

“
Jeremy said the Summit was about setting up a global fund to pay countries to manage their rain forests.”

“
That’s right. Carbon Resource Funding. But it’s not a full Summit. We have five world leaders joining us at Chequers. It’s supposed to be informal. Angela Walker calls it a meeting of like minds to pave the way for the G8 Summit at the beginning of July.”

Mark and Rachel are sitting in the corner of a late night bar a hundred metres from the Edgware Road. It’s not the kind of place that Mark would normally go, but Rachel seems comfortable here, and the noise levels make eavesdropping impossible. Mark’s had another glass of wine, and Rachel a cocktail. Now they’re back to coffee again.

“
Then there is a connection isn’t there. Whoever’s behind the massacre is responsible for the bombs in London.”

“
That sounds awfully like a conspiracy theory, Rachel.” Mark hears himself echoing Linden.

“
Maybe that’s because it is a conspiracy. From what you’re telling me the bombers are very well funded. And what else makes sense? Who do you know in the green movement with the kind of know-how these guys have got?”

“
The security services are following that up.”

“
You’re giving me a line, Dad. Either that or you’re far too trusting. You know what you used to say: never believe a rumour until you get an official denial. Remember that? You should see the video. Maybe that’d make you change your mind.”

“
Rachel, I don’t doubt there’s a connection. Right now I just don’t know what to do about it. And Stephen’s caught up in it as well. God knows how.”

Rachel’s expression sinks. Stephen’s still her little brother. Coming back to England had seemed so simple. On the flight she’d made a plan. Get the video to her dad. Let him get it all sorted. Then go and see Steve. Stay with him for a couple of days, sleep on his sofa, like she did when she came back from her travels last year.

Mark does his best to reassure Rachel that everything will be alright, but the rock face is crumbling and his hands are getting numb with cold.

“
I could do with a stiff brandy. Do you fancy one Rache?”

She smiles. When he calls her Rache it takes her back to safer times. “No thanks. Not now. I’m sure you’ve got better brandy in your flat than they have here. Can we go? Have you got a card reader on your computer?”

“
My computer’s not secure.”

“
Just don’t connect it to the internet.”

“
The flat’s not secure. If they can bug the car, they can bug the computer. Have it transmit without me knowing.”

“
I really want you to see the video.”

“
Believe me, I want to. But we can’t tonight. Jeremy’s got a video card, you’ve sent me one Special Delivery, and you’ve got two yourself, one for the BBC, one to keep. Right?”

She looks him straight the eye. “I know it sounds crazy, but I need to see it before I take it to the BBC. There must be somebody you know…”

Standing on the doorstep outside Sara’s flat, the air is pleasantly cool. Mark isn’t even sure that she’ll be in. He didn’t want to arrive unannounced. Even less did he want to ring through and broadcast to the surveillance teams where they were going.

It’s a betrayal of Sara – he promised her he’d not get in touch again; it’s a betrayal of Joanna. But not going, insisting that Rachel lies awake all night on the sofa bed in his flat, worrying about delivering the video card, that would have been the greater betrayal.

Dressed in pyjamas and the splendid embroidered silk dressing gown that Mark has seen many times, Sara opens the door to the limits of the security chain.

“
It was my idea,” says Rachel. “Sorry if we woke you up. We brought you the video card.” She could be a police officer, polite with chill efficiency.

Mark’s expecting Sara to be furious, but he can’t read her at all. Is this her way of punishing him? To appear indifferent, unconcerned by his presence.

The digi-card slots into Sara’s home video camera, its blue tooth connection automatically powering up the plasma wall-screen television. In spite of the shaky camera, erratic use of the zoom lens, frequent images of feet and sky, and the difficulty of distinguishing between swirling mist and billowing smoke, the video is relentlessly harrowing; Rachel’s occasional hushed verbal commentary on the sound track, her chilling objectivity, almost as disturbing as the imagery.

“
That thumping is a helicopter. I can see its searchlight. It’s still above the clouds… That explosion was a grenade. … The clattering is machine gun fire. … Xiomara… ”

A child runs from a stilt house. A minute or so later, the camera zooms close and the screen is filled with blood pooling around her head. A woman runs to her aid. The woman is gunned down. … Petrol poured onto the buildings. The village ablaze. … The camera pans round to the helicopter. A man steps out, dressed like the others in army fatigues.

“
That’s him,” says Rachel, the first time she has spoken in person since the recording started. “That’s Ray Sanders.”

His face is on screen for less than a second before he turns away. The camera pulls out, catching only a brief glimpse of him walking round to the other side of the helicopter.

“
Just wind back, Sara,” says Mark. “That face is familiar.”

Mark shakes his head as they watch these frames again in slow motion. “Rachel, do you mind if we come back to this after we’ve looked at the rest?” There’s another fifteen minutes – ending with the footage that Rachel took after the attack on the Yanomami. A slow pan across the site of the helicopter crash, and then close-ups of the dead American marine, the contents of his pockets laid beside his body.

Without Rachel’s story, the images of burning wreckage are pictures of a helicopter crash in the jungle. The lacerated bodies, the American marine, the machine guns lying on steaming soil; none of them evidence of anything other than the crash itself.

Stunned by what they have seen, Mark feels as if he were drunk. Sara, who has been sitting on a large cushion on the floor, her legs curled up underneath her, seems equally shocked, holding her hand over her mouth as if she’s about to be sick.

“
People have to see this,” says Sara simply. “But I’m going to be asked why this is any worse than the daily diet of carnage from the Middle East. We have to have Rachel and Jeremy there in person for context.” Then she turns to Mark and says, “And they’ll want someone in from government to comment. Mark?”

“
Problem is I’m merely an adviser, and I’m having problems knowing what the government line is supposed to be – never mind toeing it.”

“
I thought advisers were supposed to advise,” says Sara, turning on him. “Where does toeing the bloody line come in to it? I thought you were supposed to be leading them, not glossing their incompetence and duplicity. I’m sick of ‘advisers’. The people who massacred those FPA people, who attacked the Yanomami village, the people who tried to kill Rachel; they’re advisers, aren’t they. Isn’t that what the Americans call them?”