The Hornbeam Tree (35 page)

Katie spluttered with laughter, and reached for more tissues. ‘Actually, this is probably the very scene Laurie would like to catch on camera,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘And it’s the very scene that gives me serious reservations about going ahead with it all. It’s not what Molly’s going to want to see. It’ll be hard enough for her when I’ve gone, without having to watch how hard it was for me.’

‘Then tell Laurie that,’ Michelle responded. ‘She’ll understand.’

Katie sighed and nodded. ‘I’ve promised to give it a go with the camera,’ she said, ‘so I won’t let her
down
. At least, not before I’ve given it a chance.’ She looked at Michelle’s reflection. ‘Are you starting to read this the way I am?’ she said. ‘That I’m using Laurie’s interest to keep her coming here because it’s a wonderful distraction, and a bit of a boost to my flagging ego? The promise of more limelight is helping me to go on showing off how brave, or clever, or witty I am, even though it’s all an illusion.’

Michelle reached for the brush and started to tidy Katie’s wispy tufts of hair. ‘It’s not an illusion,’ she informed her gently. ‘You’re all that and more.’

Katie’s eyes closed as she enjoyed the sensation of the brush on her scalp, and neither of them spoke again until the phone started to ring.

‘I’ll get it,’ Katie said. ‘I expect it’s to tell me my prescription’s ready.’

As she walked over to the bed Michelle put the hairbrush down again, and fought the urge just to cry and cry as she dropped the balled-up tissues in the wastebasket.

‘Hello?’ Katie said into the receiver.

‘Katie?’ a voice at the other end asked.

‘Yes? Oh, Tom, is that you?’

Immediately Michelle’s heart reacted.
Please let it be him, please, please
.

‘It’s me,’ Tom confirmed. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Great,’ Katie assured him. ‘Wishing you were here. We both are.’

There was a smile in his voice as he said, ‘You did a great job with your notes. I owe you.’

‘It was mostly Michelle. I wrote them up, but she did all the work.’

‘Have you read Laurie’s email?’

‘Not yet, but it’s here. I’ll read it now, and pass you over to Michelle.’

Taking the receiver Michelle spoke softly as she said, ‘Is this wise?’

‘A few seconds and I’ll be gone,’ he told her. ‘I just wanted to hear you.’

The echo of her own longing created a surge of warmth inside her. ‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘OK. How about you?’

‘Worried about you.’

‘Don’t be. I’m fine.’

Aware of how little time they had, she said, ‘Has anything happened since Laurie saw Malton this morning?’

‘A couple of things,’ he answered. ‘Max has received confirmation of Josh Shine’s arrest, which apparently only happened two days ago. We’re not sure where he was before that, Max is still working on it, and the charges aren’t clear at the moment either.’

‘Doesn’t he have a lawyer?’

‘Yep, who’s with Josh even as we speak, so Max hasn’t had a chance to talk to him yet. It should happen in the next couple of hours.’

‘And the second development?’ she prompted.

‘Nick van Zant’s found someone who can get us a copy of the 1997 version of the 21 Project, so with any luck we should be cooking with gas any time now.’

‘That’s excellent news,’ she said, easily able to imagine his pleasure, for she’d often been with him at the time of a breakthrough. ‘I want to ask when we’re likely to see you,’ she said, ‘but I guess you don’t know.’

His voice became lower and more intimate as he said, ‘Believe me, you can’t want it more than I do.’ Then he added, ‘I had to be crazy to think I could let you go.’

Emotion tightened her throat as the very words she longed to hear stole into her heart, seeming to renew her strength and build her courage in a way only he could. ‘I was never going anywhere,’ she whispered.

‘I guess I know that now,’ he said.

Katie was watching her as she put the phone down, and seeing how emotional she was she drew her into her arms. ‘He’ll be all right,’ she assured her.

‘Yes, of course,’ Michelle agreed, wishing she knew why she was finding it so hard to believe. ‘I don’t know why I’m reacting like this, I’ll have myself together in a minute.’

Katie smiled and hugged her tighter, then they both winced as a voice from next door suddenly yelled, ‘Mum!
Mum!
’

Seconds later the door bounced open to admit a smouldering Molly. ‘Mum, I’ve got
three
spots,’ she declared in outrage.

‘Oh now, that’s just showing off,’ Katie told her.

Michelle laughed and Molly glared at her. ‘I’m serious,’ she cried. ‘You’ve got to get rid of them.’

Katie looked at Michelle – and her flawless skin. ‘Are you starting to feel left out?’ she asked.

‘
Mum
!’ Molly raged.

‘All right. All right,’ Katie said hurriedly. ‘Let’s get you into the bathroom before you start erupting.’

‘You are
sooo
not funny,’ Molly told her.

‘Then why are you laughing?’

‘I am not,’ Molly responded, as they marched out on to the landing.

‘Yes you are. Now, hold your face up to the light and let me see. Oh my God, no wonder you’re panicking.’

‘Oh, don’t say that!’

Katie frowned and peered a little closer. ‘Where exactly are they?’ she asked.

‘Here, on my chin.’

Leaving them to continue their search, Michelle walked on along the landing to her room and closed the door. Though she wanted to be a part of the light-hearted moments, Molly still wasn’t ready yet, and right now, feeling as troubled as she did, she wasn’t able to think of a way to help things along.

Tom and Elliot were on the main piazza in Pietrasanta drinking coffee outside one of the cafés, while Elliot talked to Nick van Zant on the phone.

‘It turns out there have been two revisions of the 21 Project,’ Nick was telling him. ‘One in 2000 and the other in 2002.’

‘What about the original ’97 version?’ Elliot asked.

‘I’ve got the first twenty pages. They’re not giving us much so far, but my contact’s not happy about sending the entire document all in one go.’

‘OK. Can you email us what you have?’

‘Sure.’

‘Tell him to copy it to Michelle and Katie,’ Tom reminded him.

Elliot passed the message on and said, ‘Laurie tells me you’re back in England at the weekend.’

‘That’s right,’ Nick responded. ‘You too, I hear?’

Assuming that was van Zant letting him know he’d spoken to Laurie, Elliot resisted the urge to hurl the phone against the nearest wall, and submerging his feelings beneath a neutral tone he said, ‘That’s right. I need to start talking to a few people myself, find out what they know about this P2 project.’

‘Everyone I’ve spoken to is convinced it’s a spin-off from the 21 Project,’ Nick told him. ‘No-one can confirm it’s ever made it off the page though.’

‘I don’t think we’re in much doubt of it now,’ Elliot retorted.

‘No, of course not. Let me know if I can be of any help.’

‘Thanks. I will.’ He wanted to add,
just stay the hell away from Laurie
, but what he actually said was, ‘How’s Max doing with Josh Shine’s lawyer?’

‘He’s over at his office now, so no more news on that front yet. Something that did come up before he left though, was an email from an anonymous dot-gov source which I’ll forward on to you.’

‘Tell me what it says.’

Nick read it out. ‘“Look for missing names and facilitating factor.”’

Elliot frowned, and repeated it to Tom. ‘What does it mean?’ he said to Nick.

‘We haven’t figured it out yet. Does Tom have any suggestions?’

Tom shook his head. ‘I’ll need to see it,’ he said, ‘but it sounds like another guiding hand from our secret source. Does Max have any more on this confidential committee?’

‘It’s calling itself a Special Operations Executive,’ Nick answered when Elliot asked, ‘and Deborah Gough’s chairing it. Apparently the FBI’s counterterrorism chief is also on it, along with the other names Max gave you.’

‘And their brief?’

‘Codeword/top secret,’ Nick replied, quoting the CIA’s highest classification level.

‘OK, call if there’s any more news,’ Elliot said, and clicked off the line.

Trying not to run with how pissed off he was that van Zant had been the one to connect with the ’97 version, even though he’d known he’d be the most likely to, he turned to Tom as Tom said, ‘If it weren’t for the Sizewell issue, I’d be inclined to back off this now, because the situation in Pakistan has to be addressed. But if they are setting it up like this, letting an entire nation believe they came within a cat’s whisker of nuclear disaster as a means of getting re-elected, then going on to an end game that fits in with their world-dominance Project just fine and dandy …’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘You know what makes me really mad?’ he said. ‘The case for sending the military into Pakistan is a slam dunk in comparison to going into Iraq. The Pakistanis have got nuclear weapons for God’s sake, and no-one’s denying it – and nowhere else on earth are they more likely to fall into the hands of terrorists.’

‘If you’re a neo-conservative with global ambitions, then manipulating the situation this way will be seen merely as a matter of expediency,’ Elliot stated. ‘Or killing two birds with one stone.’

Tom slanted him a look. ‘We’ve got to get proof
this
is happening,’ he said. ‘We need to be able to lay it out that the P2OG has morphed from paper into reality, and this is the kind of operation they’re being briefed to carry out.’

‘I’m not going to argue with that,’ Elliot responded, ‘but what’s bothering me is why our anonymous source isn’t providing the proof. Can it be that difficult?’

Tom picked up his coffee and drank. ‘It’s bothering me too,’ he confessed, ‘because the answer could be that it doesn’t exist in a form that’s usable. Or that it’ll be an obvious trace back to him if he does provide it.’

Having come to much the same conclusions Elliot said, ‘OK, so back to Christopher Malton. His interview with Laurie will have permeated through to the right channels by now, so the question is, how are they going to respond?’

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Tom said.

‘I’m thinking that apart from issuing you with another invitation to an embassy near you, and reminding me I’m supposed to be writing my memoirs, they’re either going to try and brand you some kind of terrorist sympathizer with what they found in your apartment, or they’ll start a serious manhunt to track you down and bring you in.’

Tom was nodding thoughtfully. ‘There are a lot of charges they could cook up against me right now, yet they haven’t run with any of them. Why?’

‘We could be about to enter some kind of standoff,’ Elliot suggested. ‘They won’t go for you, if you don’t go for them.’

Tom was still pensive. ‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘that they haven’t played the “compromising national
security”
card yet. I thought they would have by now.’

‘Not if it can be used in evidence against them,’ Elliot pointed out, ‘and it could, if it’s in print, because it’ll suggest an eagerness to get those documents back that would seem overstated for something that’s supposed to be false.’ As he finished he was using his XDA to access his email. Frowning as he saw the messages from Nick, he said, ‘There are two dot-gov messages here. Another must have come through since we spoke to him.’ He opened the first to find it was the one they already knew about. Then after opening the second his eyes started to widen with interest.

‘Read this,’ he said, handing the organizer over to Tom.

‘“Deduction of election strategy correct.”’ Tom turned back to Elliot. ‘Laurie’s reference to that was pretty subtle,’ he said, ‘but someone’s picked it up right away – and that someone hasn’t wasted any time letting us know we’re on the right trail.’

‘Coming this soon after the meeting with Malton,’ Elliot said, ‘it has to be someone on that executive, or pretty damned close to it.’

Tom was nodding agreement. ‘So what do we do now?’ he said, starting to assess the significance of the message.

‘Right now, apart from analysing the pages being fed through to Nick, there’s nothing we can do,’ Elliot answered. ‘The next move has to be theirs, though it might be a good idea to start working on our own strategy in the event they do manage to pick you up before we’re ready.’

Tom seemed only to be half-listening as he
focused
on something across the piazza. Then turning back to Elliot, he said, ‘Talk to me about your pilot friend, Chris Gallagher. Just how trustworthy is he?’

‘Daughters of Lilith, are you ready to communicate with our Mother?’ Cecily asked in a low, preacher-ish tone. Her richly charcoaled eyelids were respectfully lowered, while her sparkle-glossed lips gleamed in the candlelight that cast tall, spooky shadows around Allison’s bedroom.

‘We are ready,’ Allison, Molly and Donna responded.

As they joined hands to form a circle around the ouija board spread out on the floor, Molly felt Allison’s pearl bracelet drop against her own wrist. She’d bought it with the ten quid she’d stolen from her mum’s purse, which she was definitely going to pay back once she’d managed to save up enough.

Cecily gazed down at the order of ceremony that she’d carefully devised by pulling information from the Net and writing some of it herself. Incantations were burbling from the CD that she and Donna had recorded the previous night, while outside a rumble of thunder shuddered in the heavens, making Molly’s skin go all goosey.

After checking that the others were studying their copies of the ceremony, Cecily began. ‘Allison, Daughter of Lilith, please bring fragrance to our Mother,’ she instructed.

Letting go of Molly’s and Donna’s hands, Allison quietly opened a box of matches and lit the tiny wands of incense that were arranged like a bouquet at one end of the board. When she’d finished, she
retook
the other’s hands and solemnly bowed her head.

‘Donna, Daughter of Lilith, please bring beauty to our Mother,’ Cecily gently commanded.

Getting silently to her feet, Donna scooped an armful of flowers from the bed, and scattered them randomly around the group, before kneeling and retaking Cecily’s and Allison’s hands.