The Hornbeam Tree (59 page)

‘Sure.’ He was at the bar now, pouring a large shot of vodka into a tall glass. ‘Are you going to have one?’ he asked.

‘Yep, same as you. What news on Nick and Max? Any idea where they are yet?’

‘Ideas, yes, but no confirmation,’ he responded, managing to keep his dislike of her concern for van
Zant
out of it. ‘Their abruptly aborted missions are forming part of the highlights.’ He passed her a glass and drank deeply from his own as she made a quick call to Michelle.

‘That should help repair relations between her and Katie,’ she said, as she put the phone down. ‘It’s been a very stressful few days. Anyway,’ she clinked her glass against his, ‘it’s good to see you.’

His eyes were penetrating as he watched her drink. Then tilting her chin he traced her mouth with his thumb. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said gruffly.

‘I’ve missed you too,’ she responded, and her eyes fluttered closed as he stooped to kiss her. It was neither a passionate nor a demanding kiss, but one full of tenderness and promise.

‘Has she gone for good now?’ she whispered, when finally he pulled back to look at her again.

‘I’m daring to hope so.’

‘Even if she hasn’t, she won’t win,’ she said.

‘Of course not,’ he murmured. This was the first time they’d been alone together since that disastrous scene out on the landing, and not wanting to spoil these moments of closeness with any more reminders of someone he’d rather forget, he kissed her gently again and said, ‘Any messages?’

‘A few,’ she answered, ‘they’re still on the machine. Nothing that needs immediate attention.’

With relief, he said, ‘I feel that we could benefit from some of that, don’t you?’

‘Immediate attention?’ She smiled. ‘I think you’re right, but unfortunately only one of us has the time.’

He pulled a face.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she reminded him. ‘I’ll be right here, lending support, doing whatever you need me to, though with only one laptop between us right now …’

‘You could end up cooking dinner,’ he said, his mouth still almost touching hers.

Thankful for the calming effect a few days apart seemed to have had on them both, she pressed herself more closely to him, and felt the pleasure of his desire starting to spread through her.

‘We’ll pick this up later,’ he murmured, when finally he let her go.

‘I’ll keep you to that,’ she promised, and after making him laugh with a smouldering look, she took herself off round the bar to begin a raid on the fridge, stopping en route to answer the phone.

‘Yes, he’s here,’ she said, in response to the voice at the other end. ‘Can I tell him who’s calling?’ As she heard the name her eyes shot to Elliot. ‘OK. Hold on please.’ Covering the mouthpiece she whispered, ‘Jolyon Kember.’

His exasperation was immediately evident.

‘I’ll top that up,’ Laurie said, taking his glass as she passed him the phone.

Putting the receiver to his ear, Elliot said, ‘If you’re about to get on my case about leaving the country without a passport …’

‘Please listen, Elliot,’ Kember interrupted sharply. ‘This isn’t about your passport, your trip to France, or the personal consequences you could be facing for assisting a suspected terrorist …’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Elliot snarled.

‘Yes, I know he has you convinced,’ Kember responded. ‘He has most of the rest of your
profession
convinced and has for years, but that doesn’t alter who he is, or what he was planning to do before the US authorities …’

‘Jolyon,’ Elliot cut in, ‘save your spiel for the punters, it’ll get a lot more play with them, because you know as well as I do that your propaganda machine’s the biggest …’

‘Elliot, once again, I ask you to listen,’ Kember interrupted. ‘I have a message for Tom Chambers that you need to relay. Do I have your full attention now?’

‘Of course,’ Elliot said, taking his glass back from Laurie.

‘Good. You need to let him know that the net is about to be cast differently, and in a way that he won’t be able to evade as effectively as he has recently. Make it clear to him that unless he hands himself over to the US authorities, all future access to the United Kingdom, either as a visitor or as a resident, will be denied. I stress the second category as we both know that he has plans to settle here, but he will render them impossible if he doesn’t comply with law enforcement. He has twenty-four hours to respond.’

Elliot looked at the receiver as the line went dead. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, still assimilating.

‘What did he say?’ Laurie prompted.

He quickly repeated the message for Tom, watching her disgust match his own at the despicably low tactics they were now resorting to. ‘It’s an effective way to get him to come in,’ he said, ‘because even though he can hardly move anywhere while there’s a warrant out for his arrest, they’re letting us know that if he runs the story and
gains
public support they’ll have their revenge by tying him up in legal battles for years that will deny him access to this country. In other words, drop the story, or kiss goodbye to your loved ones.’

‘We can’t let this happen,’ Laurie said. ‘Michelle’s pregnant, they want to get married, provide a home for Molly, and Robbie … We’ll have to drop it.’

Elliot was shaking his head. ‘No, what we’re going to do is play them at their own game,’ he said decisively. ‘We’ve obviously already achieved our purpose in getting the terror threat removed from the election strategy – they can’t go that route now, because we’d blow them clean out of the water. So what they want is assurance we won’t run it anyway.’

‘Then why not just ask for it?’

‘Because then they’d be confirming it as a reality. No, they’re not going to give us anything to back up our suspicions, they just want to make Tom aware that his life is going to be a misery if he continues to mess with them. They’ll pull his IRS records, screw up his credit, lean on our own immigration to stop him coming and going, run this press campaign against him, and even try to nail him for terrorist activities. So what’s holding them back? Why haven’t they gone for it yet? Because they’re not confident of winning. So what we need to do is prepare a story tonight.’

Laurie regarded him curiously.

‘Not Tom’s story,’ he said. ‘Our own – about how a US journalist is being persecuted by his own government and threatened by ours, to prevent him exposing something that the world – the UK in
particular
– needs to know about. Then we’ll email it to them with a set of conditions of our own.’

Laurie could already feel the adrenalin buzz. ‘The conditions being?’ she prompted.

‘That they cancel the arrest warrant for Tom, release all hostages including Josh Shine and Farukh Hassan, remove all listening devices and phone taps, rescind any instructions to interfere with immigration processes, and immediately return all computers.’

‘In return for which we’ll drop the story?’

He slanted her a look.

‘So they win?’

‘Possibly. Possibly not. Let’s just deal with this first. We’re going to need another laptop so you can write this with me. There are a couple of spares at my office, I’ll call Murray and have him bring one over. Meanwhile, I’ll make a start on a first draft, while you go out to a payphone to let Chris know what’s happening so he can get word to Tom.’

‘I’ll pick up a Chinese while I’m out,’ she told him, going for her coat and bag, ‘and get Murray to meet me halfway.’

As she left he was already setting up his laptop, while assessing how he was going to approach this without impinging on the major scoop. That was wholly Tom’s, but the more he thought about the action he was taking now, the more convinced he was becoming that it was absolutely the way to go. Set the scene, let everyone know how Britain was to be exploited in a US hard right election strategy, and these were the lengths the neo-cons were going to to prevent American journalist Tom Chambers from exposing it. He’d then detail everything that
had
happened from the time the damning documents had come into Tom’s possession, to the raid on his apartment, the freezing of his bank accounts, the harassment of his girlfriend, right through to the warrant for his arrest and an FBI agent’s tirade that more or less confirmed the campaign that was being planned against him. He’d add that even as he wrote Tom Chambers was in hiding, afraid for his freedom, if not his very life.

Should he actually go to print with all that – and he would if his conditions weren’t met – there was no doubt that the entire House of Commons, along with the British public, would be on their feet demanding to know what the documents contained, and not one of them would sit down again until it had been revealed. At that point Tom could produce them, along with his theories and his conviction that a highly secret pre-emptive task force was at work in Pakistan, without having to prove anything, for the Special Operations Executive and their actions had more or less already done that for him.

By the time Laurie returned Elliot was reading through the overly long first draft he’d compiled, and barely looked up as she put the Chinese takeaway and laptop down on the table he was working at. He started to talk to her about what he’d written, asking her opinion, suggesting she read it herself, until finally he realized she wasn’t responding. Looking up he saw, to his surprise, that she was extremely pale, almost angry.

‘What is it?’ he said, frowning. ‘Did something happen?’

She took a breath, then dashed a hand through
her
hair. ‘I just saw Andraya, coming out of a restaurant downstairs,’ she answered. Then in a voice tight with fury, ‘Of all the restaurants in London she has to choose Le Pont de la Tour. What’s the matter with the damned woman? Doesn’t she know when to let go?’

Elliot was on his feet, coming round the table to pull her into his arms.

‘If you’d seen the way she looked at me …’ She shivered, still feeling the way those brazenly feline eyes had raked her with an expression of such malicious triumph that it was hard not to wonder if she knew something Laurie didn’t.

‘She’s not going to win,’ Elliot reminded her, tilting her face up so he could look into her eyes.

She stared at him, and felt her heart turn over. She loved him so much, but that woman, the memories, the images in her mind …

‘Laurie, I love you, and I’m not going to lose you,’ he told her firmly. ‘She was the biggest mistake of my life, but she can only come between us if we allow it.’

‘But what if she’s stalking us …’

‘Even if she is, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s nothing as far as I’m concerned.
Nothing
. Now you have to make her nothing to you, so that our relationship becomes only about us. We need to be together now, Laurie, no more running away from each other, or giving each other space, or hiding from truths, we have to start going through this. It’s the only way we can put it behind us.’

She swallowed and nodded in agreement. ‘I know,’ she responded, and allowed him to enfold her in an embrace.

A few moments later she pulled back, and after slanting him a wry sort of smile, she said, ‘I’ll read the first draft.’

He let her go, and went to stand behind her as she slipped into his chair and started to read. After a while he put his hands on her shoulders, and she rested a cheek against one, letting him know she wanted him to keep it there. Gradually he sensed her being drawn back into the story, and as she sat forward, he began to set up the other computer.

‘It’s already quite powerful,’ she told him when she’d finished reading.

‘How long will you need to transcribe the Fellowes tape?’ he asked.

‘Probably no more than an hour. I just want to make a few changes here first, if you come and look at what I’m doing.’

After they’d completed a quick edit of his draft, she moved to the other laptop and set up the Fellowes tape, while he went to the phone and dialled Kember’s number.

‘We need your email address,’ he told him, and after jotting it down he rang off without explaining why, and began dishing up the Chinese food.

An hour and a half later, with Laurie’s input absorbed into the main body of the text, their conditions detailed at the end and Tom’s hotmail address included in the distribution box, they were ready to transmit one of the most damning and sensational articles they’d ever compiled together.

‘It needs a covering note,’ Laurie said, starting to compose one.

The attached is self-explanatory,

and will be sent to press unless

the conditions detailed are met

within …

She glanced up at Elliot. ‘Twenty-four hours?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s as long as they gave us.’

Afer typing it in, she directed the cursor to send, then reached up for his hand. ‘OK?’

‘OK,’ he confirmed.

She clicked the mouse, waited for confirmation to come up that it had gone, then let her head fall back against him. ‘So what do we do now?’ she asked.

‘Wait,’ he answered.

She closed her eyes, and as he pulled her up from the chair to stand her in the circle of his arms she felt nerves and anticipation in a way that reminded her of their early days together.

‘I think we have some unfinished business,’ she whispered, as he touched her face, and slid his fingers into her hair.

‘Yes, we have,’ he murmured, and covering her mouth with his he pushed his tongue gently inside and drew her against him.

She could feel his desire growing with the same intensity as her own, though his hands were unhurried as he began to peel away her clothes. So much emotion was filling her, bringing tears to her eyes and such a powerful longing to her body that she could hardly bear it. This was where she wanted to be, where she belonged, in his arms,
with
his breath on her face, his eyes on hers, and his body claiming her. Nothing could ever match the way they were together, it didn’t even come close. She wanted him inside her so badly that she might have torn at his clothes, but she could tell that he wasn’t going to let her lead the way. He knew her body even better than she knew it herself – for him it was an instrument that only he had the skill to tune.