Skydancer (6 page)

The pocket notebook open in front of him had its pages half covered with untidy geometric patterns, subconsciously sketched as he had repeatedly pondered the circumstances of this curious case.

There was nothing normal about it; it did not have the ‘feel' of a professional espionage operation. Yet for copies of the missile plans to have been made at all, it must have taken organisation and a treacherous intent, he concluded. But a rubbish bin? Why on earth did
one
page of the plans turn up in a rubbish bin? And what about the other pages? Why weren't they all together?

He had not been at all surprised when Duncan informed him that the Ministry policeman watching the spot on Parliament Hill had reported no sign of anyone subsequently searching there for the file. The vital clue that could crack this case did not lie out on the ground – of that Black was certain. It lay in someone's mind.

In a space still left between the angular shapes on his notebook page, John Black wrote the name ‘Mary Maclean', and underlined it. The woman had been as white as a sheet when she was summoned into his office for an interview, and desperately contrite. She clearly expected instant dismissal from the Civil Service for her carelessness with the secret file keys. Mary Maclean had given every appearance of wanting to co-operate, he remembered, and yet her answers to his questions had seemed hesitant and incomplete. There was something she was holding back, of that he was certain. The woman had a secret, and he did not care for people with secrets.

Black took another pen from his inside jacket pocket. In ink of a different hue, he drew a frame round the name he had written, and then began to colour the
letters, in such a way that the words ‘Mary Maclean' cast a red shadow.

For Mary Maclean the click of the door closing firmly behind her in her garden flat in Chiswick was the most comforting sound she had heard all day. She leaned her head against the door in relief at being home, and snapped the lock shut, holding her finger against it for several minutes as if afraid it might slip open again. She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth against the tears she could feel welling up – tears of anger and self-pity.

Then pulling herself together, Mary Maclean headed for the kitchen. She reached up to the cupboard over the sink and took down a bottle of gin and then another of tonic. She was in a state of shock after the day's events, and was finding it hard to think clearly. She had felt like such a criminal to be interrogated first by Commander Duncan and then by that sinister security man, John Black.

Dropping an ice-cube into the full glass, she took it into the living room and collapsed on the small sofa facing the French windows. The leaves of the flowering cherry-tree outside were deep red and gold, and they were beginning to carpet the lawn. She loved her garden and could sit gazing at it for hours. The autumn colours were so beautiful, yet in a way she dreaded seeing them each year; they reminded her that time was passing and that she faced a lonely future.

‘How could I have been so stupid?' she murmured bitterly.

Keeping that key in her desk drawer had seemed sensible enough at the time. She had dreaded losing it if she had carried it around with her as she was supposed to do. Carrying the key to the desk instead had seemed
a lesser risk somehow. If she lost that, at least the secret papers would still be safe – or so she had reasoned.

The two policemen were clearly unimpressed by this logic, however, and had treated her with scorn and contempt. They had not actually accused her of stealing the documents, but had implied it was primarily her fault that someone else had been able to.

She had mixed her drink with almost as much gin as tonic, and now felt the alcohol spread its comforting relaxation through her limbs.

Mary Maclean was thirty-eight years old and had never married, though there had been a couple of opportunities when she could have done. Each time she had hesitated, unable to make the final commitment. The intensity of feeling she wanted had not been there. She longed for contact with men she could admire, forthright and intellectually dynamic, but those who actually approached her tended to be the opposite, looking to her to inspire and direct their lives.

She had a pleasant face, more attractive for its character than for outright beauty. Her brown hair had a natural wave, and she had concealed recent grey strands by judicious application of henna. Her grey eyes had a look of intelligent intensity which some men found appealing and others unnerving. She wore bright, plain colours and she would not stand out in a crowd, but then she never wanted to.

The beginning of her love affair with Peter Joyce had been totally unexpected. For several years she had known him only on an official basis, whenever he visited the Ministry for meetings. She had assumed he was already married, and had never particularly considered whether or not she found him attractive.

But then, two years ago, Peter was in Whitehall for a routine conference one afternoon when a sudden
drivers' strike had paralysed the railways. He had come up to London by train, and in the chaos of the emergency the Ministry had no official car or driver spare to take him home. It was already late, and since he had to be in London again the following day, he had decided to find a cheap hotel for the night. By chance he had asked Mary to help him, and she had successfully found him one among those listed in the yellow pages. He thanked her profusely and was on the point of leaving her office when he turned back on impulse.

‘Why don't you join me for dinner this evening?' he had asked hesitantly. ‘I hate going to restaurants on my own.'

To her own surprise she had accepted immediately, and then became embarrassed by her eagerness.

They chose a busy little Italian restaurant in Bayswater. Inevitably their conversation had centred on common ground at first, the Ministry and its curious workings. He had been amusingly indiscreet about the way politicians could be manipulated by the technical departments, and she had found her own humour growing waspish as she talked of the odd personalities she encountered in her work. Their conversation had ranged widely after that. They had laughed a lot, and been reflective too. They had compared their upbringings, his in the steely clamour of Tyneside, hers in the quieter comforts of a London suburb. The food had been passable and they had been well into their second bottle of Valpolicella by the time the bill arrived.

It had still been daylight outside, on a fine summer's evening, and they had decided to go for a walk; their second bottle only half consumed, Peter had taken it with him, she remembered. Strolling along the railings by Hyde Park, Mary had burst out giggling.

‘Just look at you with that bottle sticking out of your
pocket!' she had exclaimed. ‘If you're not careful I'll ring the
Daily Mirror
and get them to come and take a picture of you. It'd look good on the front page with “Britain's Mr H-Bomb” beneath it!'

‘But they'd brand you as a Russian spy!' he had countered, smiling.

She had slipped her arm through his, and before long they headed to his hotel to finish the wine. There had been just one glass in his room, so they shared it. It had been years since she had felt so at ease with a man.

‘I want to make love to you,' he had said suddenly.

The hotel bedroom was cramped, and had smelled of stale pipe-smoke. She had blinked at him in momentary surprise.

‘I . . . I think I'd like that.'

It had seemed as if her voice answered without her brain instructing it. His invitation had been so casual and so natural that it appeared simple, yet quite unlike her to agree so readily.

She had already known he was married – he had talked about his family during dinner – but on that evening such knowledge seemed no barrier. Normally she would never have considered such spontaneous intimacy with a man – particularly a married man. But somehow this had not felt like adultery; simply a natural conclusion to an extraordinarily pleasant evening.

It had not stayed so simple however. Perhaps it might have done if they had merely said goodbye the following morning, and returned to their previous official relationship across the desk in the Defence Ministry, but everything had been too good that evening for them not to want to repeat it.

Peter had arranged to stay in London again a few weeks later, and he contacted Mary discreetly a week in advance. On that second meeting she had asked him
more about his wife. She had not intended to at first, but she felt she had to know more.

At first he had joked about his continuing disagreements with Belinda, and the irony of a nuclear weapons specialist being married to an ardent disarmer. Mary had seen behind the humour, though, and realised his marriage was in serious trouble. Instinct had told her to be cautious, but already she was in the grip of a sexual longing the strength of which she had never experienced before.

‘Damn you, Peter!' Mary cursed in retrospect, tightly pinching the bridge of her nose to try to hold back the tears now relentlessly filling her eyes. ‘It's all your fault!'

She picked up the glass from the coffee table and downed the rest of the gin.

‘Oh hell!' she shouted out loud, tempted to hurl the glass across the room.

Three months had passed since he had told her their affair must end, but that still hurt. Feelings of hatred for him alternated with a passionate craving to win him back again. She had been trying to put it all behind her, but now she would not be allowed to. The investigators were starting to pry – and sexual indiscretion would attract them like bees to honey. Her affair with Peter had been so private and secret; now it would become public knowledge.

Mary clasped her arms tightly round her chest and shivered. She stared at the silent telephone, willing it to ring, willing it to be Peter at the other end.

FOLLOWING A DAY
of acute anxiety, Sir Marcus Beckett had just fallen into an uneasy sleep at his Buckinghamshire home. The telephone woke him abruptly soon after midnight. His wife groaned and pulled a pillow over her ear.

‘Great Middleton 2367,' he mumbled automatically into the mouthpiece.

‘Sir Marcus?' came a crisp voice. ‘Downing Street here.'

‘Oh? Oh yes!' he answered, adrenalin pumping into his veins.

‘I have the PM for you, sir. Just a moment,' the telephonist continued smoothly. There was a click and the sound of an extension ringing.

‘Marcus? Are you awake?' a familiar voice bellowed into his ear.

‘I am now,' he answered quietly, struggling to guess the significance of the call.

‘What the hell's going on, Marcus? Have you seen the
Daily Express
?'

‘We, er . . . we don't get the papers until morning out here, Prime Minister,' he winced, dreading what was to follow.

‘H-bomb secrets in litter bin. Defence Ministry secrets probe! That's what the bloody thing says! First edition. All over the front page!' the head of the Government was yelling down the line.

Beckett guessed that a few whiskies had been consumed that evening before the early copies of the Fleet
Street papers had been delivered to Downing Street.

‘Oh, dear God!' Sir Marcus groaned. ‘How the hell did that get out?'

‘More to the point, why the hell didn't I know about it?'

‘I . . . I'd hoped it was a minor matter, a mistake . . . and could be cleared up without bothering you,' he explained lamely.

‘Minor?' the PM shrieked even louder. ‘Doesn't sound minor to me! Bloody retired general spouting his mouth off to the papers about how he found a diagram for the new missile warheads on Parliament Hill. You call that minor? What's the matter with you, Marcus?'

‘General Twining talked to the press? I don't believe it!' Beckett gasped.

‘Well, you'd better believe it, Marcus! So get your finger out of Doris's bum, and come over here right away!'

With that, the phone at the other end was slammed down. That man could be disgustingly crude at times, Beckett brooded to himself as he pulled on his clothes.

It was raining hard as he drove himself towards the capital. Normally he would be conveyed by a Ministry chauffeur, but there was no way of getting his driver to come round to collect him in the middle of the night at such short notice. He was driving his wife's rusty old Fiat, which he now realised had a decidedly worn exhaust. He would take some pleasure in driving it straight into Downing Street and parking right outside Number 10, something normally unheard of for private cars. He hoped the racket of the exhaust would wake up the whole of Westminster.

His mind had fully cleared now, and he had determined to counter the PM's anger with aggression. After all, he had been acting in his friend's best interest, trying
to keep this business out of the political arena. The man should be grateful instead of downright rude, he thought.

‘Good morning, Sir Marcus,' exclaimed the policeman at the Whitehall end of Downing Street, looking uneasily at the car the civil servant was driving. The officer had been warned to expect this late-night visitor, and reluctantly agreed that he could park outside Number 10, but not for too long. He winced at the throaty roar that proceeded on down the street.

In the event, two hours passed before Beckett emerged again, a chastened man. The Prime Minister had been totally unconvinced by the arguments for keeping him in the dark, and he was summoning a full-scale crisis meeting later that morning. It was nearly 4 a.m., and Sir Marcus decided there was no point in returning to his bed. The PM wanted to see all his top officials immediately after breakfast, so Beckett drove across Whitehall to the slab-sided building which controlled Britain's defences. He went straight up to his office on the sixth floor to prepare for the meeting. There were several phone calls he would have to make before long.

By 7.30 a.m. that same newspaper headline had also caused consternation at the Royal Navy's Headquarters at Northwood. Polaris missile submarines are sent their orders from inside a deep concrete bunker there, hidden in the leafy suburban hills north-west of London. The Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy Fleet read the
Daily Express
over his toast and marmalade, sitting at breakfast under the carefully restored
Adam ceiling of his elegant official residence a short distance from the command centre.