He said, “Legend doesn’t do this place justice.”
Lamb seemed to consider several responses before settling for a fart.
“Or you,” Whelan added.
“Maybe leave the door as it is,” Lamb suggested.
There was a visitor’s chair, so Whelan took it.
Not much of Lamb’s office could be seen in the gloom. A blind was drawn over the only window; a cork noticeboard hung on one wall. And there was a clock somewhere, which Whelan couldn’t see; instead of ticking it made a steady tap-tap noise, a dull repetition which seemed to underline how appalling the passage of time could be.
Lamb refilled his glass, then reluctantly waved the bottle in Whelan’s direction. When Whelan shook his head, he set it down again, unstoppered. “Can’t remember the last time we had First Desk here,” he said. “No, hang on, yes I can. Never.”
“We don’t usually make housecalls,” said Whelan. “But in the circumstances . . . ”
“What, dead agents? Yeah, that’s always a photo op.” Lamb rested his glass on his chest, his meaty fingers embracing it. “Did you tie a teddy to a lamp post?”
Whelan said, “You wanted a meeting. We could have done this at the Park.”
“Yeah. But that would have involved me making the effort instead of you. Frank coughing his guts up?”
If the sudden switch fazed Whelan, he hid it well. “He’s been . . . cooperative.”
“I’ll bet.”
“We’ve not had to adopt unorthodox measures to make him talk, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lamb said, “I was thinking you’d have to get seriously innovative to shut him up. I mean, he told Cartwright his life story. It’s not like he’s shy.” He raised the glass to his mouth without taking his eyes off Whelan. He resembled a hippo enjoying a wallow. “But what surprises me is you took him alive. I’d have thought Lady Di would have had the trigger pulled as soon as he broke cover.”
“That was her stated preference, yes.”
Lamb looked interested. “You overruled her?”
“We’d reached a point where I either agreed to do her bidding evermore, or drew a line in the sand. And there’d been quite enough blood shed in London’s streets for one week.”
“Not only its streets,” said Lamb. “So what’s he had to say for himself?”
Whelan shifted in his chair. He was finding it difficult not to stare at Lamb’s feet. It was like catching sight of a joint of meat hanging in a butcher’s window and wondering what the hell that had been when it was still attached to its body. He said, “Lamb, your team’s been at the sharp end, I appreciate that. And you’ve suffered a loss. But that doesn’t make you privy to classified intelligence. What Frank’s had to say is being analysed as we speak. And in due course there’ll be a report. But it’ll be eyes-only, and your eyes won’t be on the list, I’m afraid.”
Or anywhere near it.
Lamb nodded thoughtfully. “Good point. I mean, a lot of this has gotta be pretty sensitive, right?”
“Precisely.”
“Like how Frank’s whole operation was originally funded and resourced by the Service. I presume that’ll be bullet point one when the report’s finished.”
The tap-tap-tapping, Whelan belatedly realised, wasn’t time hammering away but water dripping, off a loose section of guttering perhaps. Leaks can happen anywhere.
He said, “I’m not entirely sure it would be in everyone’s interests for that . . . supposition to be made official.”
“So Lady Di’s influence hasn’t left you entirely unsoiled.”
“I wasn’t wholly naïve to start with, you know.”
“We’ll get to that later,” Lamb said. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”
“I don’t want to deprive you. Your bottle’s nearly half empty.”
“I know where I can lay my hands on a fresh one.” He indicated a second glass, hiding behind the phone on his desk. To Whelan’s surprise, it looked more or less clean.
He’d never acquired a taste for whisky. More of a brandy man. But he was developing the sense that he wasn’t going to get through this conversation unaided, so this time accepted the offer.
While Lamb poured, he said, “There, that makes this just a nice friendly chat, doesn’t it? Colleagues winding down after a hard week. Nothing official about it.”
“If you’d come to the Park,” Whelan said, “there’d be a recording.”
“Now you’re getting it.” Lamb leaned back. “Bad Sam Chapman put in some hard years for the Park, and he was a good soldier. Leastways apart from losing all that money he was. And Longridge had his moments when he wasn’t pissing his salary away on the slot machines. And if nothing else, I reckon I’m owed something for the mess they’ve made of my carpets. So let’s hear the edited highlights of Frank’s post-Agency career, shall we? All unofficial, like.”
A good operative, Whelan had heard, knew how to make a threat sound like a digression.
He took a sip of whisky. He had spent all day at the Park; had arrived there before dawn, leaving Claire asleep—he’d looked in, but hadn’t wakened her—and for most of the hours since had been watching, rewatching, footage of Frank Harkness. Lamb was right: getting him to talk hadn’t been a problem. It rarely was, with unhinged narcissists.
“You know about Les Arbres,” he said.
“A nursery for terrorists,” Lamb said. “Yeah, I’d grasped that much. What was he doing, training them in black ops before they’d done their ABCs?”
“Pretty much. And there was a KGB hood too, who specialised in what Harkness called mental calibration.” Whelan sighed, and let his head rest on the back of his chair. What he could see of the ceiling was a scarred, cobwebby expanse of distempered plaster. “You know what Harkness identified as the biggest threat to our way of life? Here in the west?”
“Radio One?”
“That we encourage our kids to think for themselves. While those who’d bring our towers down teach their children to sacrifice their lives without a moment’s thought. No, more than that. Teach them that death, their own and ours, is their victory, their apotheosis. And we’re trying to fight them with kids who’ve grown up thinking their Smartphones are a human right.”
“And Frank thought this paranoid bullshit made him a visionary?” said Lamb. “He should have written a blog. Saved us all a lot of grief.”
“He’s not entirely without a point.”
“And the west isn’t entirely without weapons of mass destruction. Let’s not pretend we’re babes in the wood.”
“Either way,” Whelan said, “what Harkness wanted was that same dedication, the same energies, only—as he put it—on our side.”
“Jesus wept,” said Lamb. “And that’s what he got.”
“And that’s what he got. Eventually. A troupe of young men trained in all the black arts at Frank’s disposal. Which, seeing as his crew was made up of a bunch of former Cold War warriors, was pretty much all of them.”
Lamb was empty again. He remedied this situation, making sure that it wouldn’t reoccur in the foreseeable future by filling his glass to the brim. “Then what?” he said.
Whelan said, “There have been several . . . events, over recent years.”
“‘Events.’ There’s an administrator’s word.”
“Frank’s team ran terror operations in cities throughout Europe. Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Barcelona, others. Some quite small towns too. Pisa. That struck me as odd, I don’t know why. But lots of tourists, I suppose.”