‘It was here,’ he said aloud but there was no one but the larks to hear him. ‘They must have been taking it out.’
The plan. They’d wanted it back so it must have meant something. There had been a link. There must still be a link but it wasn’t one you could dig up.
Mackeson’s voice came back to him. ‘Don’t be neolithic,’ he said, ‘we got technology you wouldn’t believe.’
Chapter Twenty-One
He left the open trench to mark the spot – and painfully, he took the digger back. Then he drove south because there was nowhere else to drive to. The old man in Southampton Hospital was all he had left from the wreckage of his old life and the frost-nipped bud of the new one.
He drove badly, impeded by grief and by the physical pain in his chest, which in the end forced him to stop at an anonymous Traveller’s Lodge Motel, gulp aspirin and lie miserably in bed until low-grade hot-headed sleep crept up on him.
In the morning his chest was stiff and red all down one side and he felt as woebegone as he could ever remember, looking ahead at darkness where a bright future had seemed to beckon. He drove on slowly, uncomfortable even when he changed gear. The Ml seemed rougher than usual. The M25 was a tedious nightmare and in his mind, many hours clocked up before he was on the M3.
At Southampton Hospital, they looked at him as if he was a candidate for the emergency room.
‘I’ve come to see Sir Michael Parry,’ he said, leaning on the desk.
‘Are you all right?’ said the woman facing him, concerned.
‘Oh… yes.’
She phoned, spoke then put her hand over the receiver and turned to him. ‘Who shall I say it is?’
‘I’m his son.’
‘You can go up.’
His father looked much better, smiling at him as he went in and then showing a sudden expression of deep concern.
‘John! You’re as white as a sheet.’
He sat down in the chair next to the bed. ‘I’m OK. I got a few bruises yesterday in court. I don’t know if you heard?’
‘The whole thing. It’s been on all the news and in the papers. Isn’t it marvellous?’
‘Well, up to a point.’
Sir Michael looked at him understandingly. ‘Tell me.’
‘Heather.’
‘Go on.’
‘She’s… she won’t have anything to do with me. I fixed it with the Americans. I didn’t have a choice. There wasn’t any other way of getting her off. I thought they’d just drop charges but they gave Hayter that Rage stuff. That’s why he did what he did.’
‘I know. I had a call or two about it.’
‘The stuff works, for God’s sake. All we’ve succeeded in doing is helping Sir Greville sell it to the Americans.’
‘Up to a point.’ He seemed to be suppressing a laugh.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sergeant Hayter spent the rest of the afternoon listing every single wrong-doing of his long and nasty life. That’s the effect it has. The York police have a very, very long statement, I gather. Anyway, I’ve made sure the right people know what’s going on. I think there’ll be a lot of pressure coming the way of GKC, and the Americans, for that matter.’
‘Oh…’
‘So tell me, what was your side of the deal?’
‘I gave the Americans some documents about Ramsgill Stray that they wanted back.’
‘Oh, dear; and Heather didn’t want that.’
‘No. I can understand. I should have asked her but there wasn’t a chance.’
‘Poor Johnny. She’s very important to you, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You have to see it from her point of view. She’s known you as Johnny Kennedy the pilot, then Johnny Kay the spy. It can’t have been easy.’
‘I’d like to try something else now,’ he said, ‘if it’s all right with you. I’d like to try being John Parry, the person.’
‘That sounds well worth trying,’ said a voice behind him and he turned as Heather stepped out of the bathroom.
‘Let’s forget that Johnny Kay and the things he did,’ she said. ‘John Parry sounds a much nicer person.’
He got up with difficulty. ‘I found where the cables were,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken them away.’
‘Later,’ she said.
Their arms went round each other and she squeezed him hard before she had time to take in his white face. The pain of his broken ribs flared white hot and he sagged unconscious to the floor.
EPILOGUE
There was a sequel…
Lanie Gerow was happier. So maybe Puritan Bluff, Idaho, wasn’t Philly or Baltimore but it wasn’t Ramsgill Stray either and above all it wasn’t an Agency town. Lanie and Pacman had what felt like their final showdown back in England. He accused her of violating trust, of risking his position. She said she wasn’t going to go on being no goddam stooge for no goddam spook like Mackeson. She said she was up to here with the Agency and she was leaving and she’d meant it. Pacman went all quiet on her then and she felt a little bit sorry for him but she wasn’t about to back down. Whichever way it was, her message got through. The next day he came back grinning from ear to ear. She didn’t make it easy for him.
‘You wanna know something?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, baby. I got something to tell you.’
‘Only thing I want to know is when we’re flying out.’ She sniffed.
‘Thursday week.’
‘Don’t mess me around, Pacman.’
‘I ain’t.’
‘So where is it? Alaska?’
With a big smirk, he said ‘Idaho’.
She just stared at him. Couldn’t stop herself.
‘I said Idaho, doll. You hear me?’
‘I never heard of no Agency postings in Idaho.’
‘This ain’t Agency, baby.’
‘You leaving, Pacman? Leaving the Agency?’ She didn’t dare hope it.
‘Yeah, well, not quite. Got me a secondment. You and me, baby, we’re gonna be civilians for a while, maybe a long while.’
And so it was. He didn’t talk about the job at the Facility and she didn’t ask. It was enough to know he was out of it, away from the bugs, away from Ray Mackeson.
Had she known, only half of that was right.
Lanie was out doing the shopping in downtown Puritan Bluff, looking up at the Salmon River Mountains looming behind the Safeway parking lot. It was her dance class night and she’d found a Lycra one-piece at Twinkletoes which did all the right things for her. The clouds were blowing away from the mountains. Maybe they’d go to the lake for the weekend after all. Pacman was so relaxed these days, getting on with Billy, showing him how to fly-fish. He’d even grown his hair longer. It was different in Idaho with no Agency.
Pacman wasn’t thinking about fishing or anything like it. Pacman was glued to a phone and trying to stop himself climbing the wall. Ray Mackeson, now back at Fort Meade, Maryland, was on the other end and Pacman was giving him some of the worst news of his life.
‘He’s out there now, Ray. I mean, what the hell we gonna do? Goddam company’s screwed up on security. I told ’em. You know I told ’em. What did they think? This was some kind of cold cure? I told them, these guinea pigs gonna turn into grizzly bears. You gotta build a strong enough cage to hold ’em in.’
Mackeson, safely away from it, was annoyingly calm. ‘Pacman. Calm down. No one’s blaming you. One man’s out, that’s all. You got the National Guard coming and the Feds. They’ll fix it and I’ll tell you what they’re going to be saying after.’
Lanie was opening the trunk when the white Chevy Malibu came into the parking lot and she stopped to look at it because of the way the tyres were squealing with the speed. Puritan Bluff was a pretty safe town normally. Drivers who drove like that should be ashamed of themselves with kids around. As if to make the point a family came out the door of the Ribs Shack. Three kids, Mom, Pop, Grandma, the kids unhooking one of them shaggy English sheepdogs from where it had been patiently waiting, a picture of small-town American domesticity. That should show the Chevy driver this ain’t the place for screaming tyres, she thought.