The Touch of Innocents Read online

  It was killing his self-esteem. Now it was on the point of killing his career.

  ‘Joe, we have a problem,’ Erskine Vandel, the president of Fox Avionics, pronounced in a manner which left not a shred of doubt that it was not he, but Michelini, who had the problem. They were in the presidential suite overlooking a wind-lashed Potomac, the early bite of winter adding exaggerated emphasis to the overcast atmosphere within the room. The president was seated in considerable pomp and splendour on one side of the desk, leaving the planning director stranded in space on the other, entombed in a chair that was deliberately four inches lower. It made Michelini feel uneasy, inferior, by design.

  ‘You know that the MP-Double-A means everything to this company,’ the president continued. ‘To you, Joe. To everyone else who works here. Without it we’re about as much use as a fart in a wind tunnel.’

  Vandel had a strong anal orientation – ‘I’m a seat-of-the-pants guy,’ he would explain to new female acquaintances. ‘You get no bullshit from me. Nothing but the real thing.’ Yet behind the foul mouth there was an astute technologically based mind which had managed to build one of the most successful component supply businesses in the military aviation industry. It was scarcely his fault that the industry itself was less than half its size of Cold War days and was threatened with being permanently grounded. ‘Know how to run a successful small business?’ he would offer to any Congressman within hearing. ‘Build a successful big business, like avionics. Then let the Government piss all over it.’

  ‘So we have this problem, you see, Joe.’

  Joe didn’t, not yet.

  ‘Wilbur Burns, that half-ass who owns WCN, has got it into his mind he wants to run for President. Not one of us, Joe. He’s the sort of moralizing bastard who’ll step out of the shower just to take a piss. Intends to use his station to trail his conscience like a stuck pig trailing guts and, so’s he can establish his credentials, wants to offer up a sacrifice. Us. The MP-Double-A. You. Me. The whole show. And all the while pretending that the funds needed to develop it will pay for the dreams and votes of every mother between here and hell. Horse shit,’ the president snapped.

  Like an affectionate father he began stroking a gold-plated model of the Duster which occupied pride of place on a desk top littered with executive toys and silver-framed portraits of his three daughters. ‘Joe, how long you been with this company?’

  The voice was softer now and Michelini felt the prickle of sweat beginning to foregather on what used to be his hairline. He’d entered difficult territory and did not yet know which way to jump.

  ‘Nearly twelve years,’ he muttered.

  ‘Eleven years and eight months on Friday,’ his president stated. ‘And in all that time no one has ever had cause to question your loyalty. Done a damn fine job for Fox Avionics. That’s why I made you planning director. Gave you a great salary and an expense account twice as big as my own. Surprised you haven’t put on even more weight than you have.’

  ‘I work it off. On your business,’ Michelini responded defensively.

  ‘Never any doubt. You kiss ass over on the Hill like those Senators have got mistletoe dangling from their belts, and get laid so frequently I sometimes think you must be running for President yourself. Eh, Joe?’ He started a laugh which echoed around the large office, but in return Michelini could offer only a taut smile.

  ‘Never any doubt, Joe.’ Vandel was leaning forward across his desk, the humour gradually subsiding. ‘Until now. Trouble is, there’ll be split loyalties. You here at Fox, and your wife the flavour of the month at WCN. Likely to get her own show soon, I understand.’

  ‘Crap!’ Michelini responded. ‘Erskine, there’s no way I would …’

  But already the president was waving down his protest.

  ‘Exactly what I said when some of the boys raised the matter with me. Capital K-R-A-P. Not old Joe, I said. But …’ He flapped his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘This is too big to take any chances. They said. WCN’s the opposition and we can’t afford the risk of having one of our top executives hanging out with them. Sleeping with the enemy. It’s not as if this is the sort of job you can leave behind in the office every night, it’s a twenty-five-hour-a-day commitment.’

  Michelini bit into his lip, angered. ‘If you know what’s going on at the station you’ll also know that my wife is currently based on the other side of the world. This is ludicrous.’

  ‘And every three weeks she flies back here for … well, I guess, a marital update?’ Vandel countered, trying for once not to take the coarse line before quickly abandoning the unfamiliar approach. ‘Shit, Joe, it’s not as if she’s just another one of your casual pick-ups you can fuck and forget. Chrissakes, she’s your wife.’

  Michelini began to laugh through his nose. A hollow, scornful sound. Pillow talk! They were worried about pillow talk! Hell, what was he going to tell them? That he and his wife hadn’t made love – had scarcely even slept together – since the moment she knew the second kid had been conceived. That the baby had been a last and desperate attempt by her to glue back the pieces of a marriage which had been falling apart. That it turned out to be a lovely baby, and a pathetic mistake. The marriage would never be put back together, and now there was an extra child to complicate matters.

  ‘You don’t need to worry, not about my wife,’ he said.

  ‘But I do, Joe, I do.’

  ‘I don’t even know where the hell she is. You do not need to worry. The chance of me and my wife having a meaningful conversation about anything other than the kids is absolute zero. Believe me.’

  And then he knew it for certain.

  ‘There’s something you should know, Erskine. Tomorrow I file for divorce.’ There. It was out. Already he felt better, in control. ‘From now on, the only talking me and my wife are going to do is through lawyers.’

  London was in for a meteorological mugging. Bursts of cold November rain from off the North Sea squabbled their way up the Thames estuary, annoying the seagulls and blowing them inland where they cartwheeled and complained before settling on the turbulent water, only to be disturbed once more by the river taxis forcing passage upstream against the ebb tide. The persistent rain had made the river angry; it scowled at the great city along its banks as it passed. A day for cancelling appointments, for crosswords, for drying out socks. A day when even Detroit seemed to have its attractions.

  In his new office overlooking the Thames, Paul Devereux sat content. While others had been battered by the changing winds, he had flourished. He had the gift which all politicians crave yet which is accorded only to the few, that of luck. Others might have his natural abilities, some of them might even work as assiduously, but none in the last few years had enjoyed the favours of the press and the preferment of the Prime Minister as had he. From insignificance to Secretary of State for Defence in less time than it had taken even his own father.

  He spun the ornate antique globe at his side, another Whitehall reminder of a bygone era with its profusion of exotic and extinct countries ablaze with the distinctive imperial red which coloured the old empire, the world of his stamp-collecting school-days. Gossip had it that this was the globe the private secretary had used to explain to Devereux’s predecessor precisely where was to be found the tiny colonial outpost of Belize with its small but expensive British military garrison and fetid tropical climate that rotted the turbine fans on the Harrier jump jets almost as quickly as it sapped the men’s morale. Faced with the need for yet another round of economies, the Minister had sacrificed the lot, releasing the tiny Latin American country to the predatory clutches of its neighbours. As the story went, although the Minister couldn’t find Belize on the map, neither could he find it on the list of critical Government-held constituencies …

  With a sigh, Devereux turned once more to the unmarked leather-bound folder lying open on his lap which, in the most concise of forms, contained briefing on all issues of substance and urgency that his civil servants thoug
ht appropriate for the new Secretary of State.

  ‘… the SoS can expect renewed pressures from HM Treasury in the forthcoming expenditure round, in spite of recent assurances … These Treasury demands must be resisted at all costs … unforeseen scope of our commitment to the UN peacekeeping operations in South Africa … expected increase in threat from the dispersal of former Soviet nuclear scientists and weapons technologies … rising nationalist extremism in Germany … unpublicized visit last month of Joint Chiefs to Downing Street to discuss their growing concerns … hostile questioning can be expected from the Government’s own backbenches …’

  Devereux smiled. It was a catalogue of horrors worthy of any group of civil servants about to go into budgetary battle with their sceptical and unimaginative Treasury colleagues, who were capable of sinking more aircraft carriers in an afternoon than an entire Nazi wolf pack.

  One item was more specific than most, the language less florid.

  ‘23. In particular, HMG has undertaken to resolve its position on the MPAA, the proposed joint-venture fighter aircraft, by the end of this year. The project, much desired by the US Administration, faces considerable opposition within the Congress. It is unlikely to win Congressional approval without the full-hearted backing of the European allies. Most of our European partners are diffident, recognizing the military value of the MPAA in the increasingly unstable security environment but balking at the expected costs. Germany and Spain have let it be known that they will participate only if Britain does. On that decision will rest US approval itself.

  ‘24. Therefore the role of HMG and the SoS personally is likely to be decisive.

  ‘25. The funding requirements for developing MPAA are significant, but spread over ten years. Moreover, we are in a strong position to negotiate a substantial part of the design and manufacturing work and consequent employment benefits for this country, which will give the SoS a powerful hand in bilaterals with the Treasury on development funding and other aspects of the MoD budget …

  ‘27. Considerable public and international attention will inevitably be given to whatever decision the SoS makes.’

  Devereux snorted.

  ‘Considerable public and international attention will inevitably be given …’

  Encouragement? Or threat? While there was no recommendation contained within the briefing, its positive tone left no doubt as to the desires of the MoD bureaucracy. The Duster was their virility symbol, the project which would redeem them in the eyes of their Whitehall colleagues after years of being squeezed dry by Governments in search of another billion or so with which to build a reelection platform.

  Mentally he ticked off the three alternatives. He could refuse to back the project, thereby earning the gratitude of his hard-pressed Cabinet colleagues. Yet it would also earn him the relentless opposition of those powerful and privileged men within the defence establishment who had killed off more than one of his predecessors. Anyway, political gratitude, Devereux had learned, could be exhausted more quickly than a soda siphon.

  On the other hand he could fight for the project in a public battle which would inevitably be bloody. But whose blood? In victory he would be cast as the most dynamic and successful Minister in the Government, an international figure of stature, a skilled negotiator, visionary politician and ever-rising star, the man most likely to. He could write his own accolade.

  Yet if he fought, and lost, it would be a personal disaster. The successor shorn of success. The defence chief who retreated. Who came, who saw, who surrendered.

  What would his father have done? Got drunk. Then beaten his wretched wife and disappeared to that end of the manor house where the housekeeper lived. The young housekeeper. There had been a steady stream of housekeepers passing through the manor house, all of them young, and all chosen by his father.

  Devereux bit his lip. His father would have fought, and failed. But Devereux wasn’t like his father. He wouldn’t fail.

  And, anyway, he had no need for young housekeepers.

  In the blackness of her mind there was life.

  She couldn’t identify it as such, it kept changing shape, colour, intensity. But it was there. It was as though she and her senses were floating in the vacuum of space, approaching each other, recognizing each other, almost touching, with only the slightest nudge needed to bring them together but unable to find that final extra adjustment.

  Frustration. Anger. I feel, therefore I am. More frustration.

  The bundles of stimuli which were her inchoate thoughts passed by and were lost in the blackness or burned up like a lost body re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

  She preferred those which burned. She took comfort in the light, and all the time there seemed to be more brilliance entering her world.

  Then came the moment when the light turned into the recognizable colours of a rainbow and the dark veil began to lift.

  ‘Mummie-e-e-e-e!’

  The first time she had comprehended any sound, the first time Benjy had uttered any word, since the accident. Her eyes opened, were assaulted by the light but struggled and blinked and gradually found focus until she could see those around her – the diminutive consultant neurologist, Weatherup, with a constrained smile of professional triumph; Primrose, the student nurse, whose smiles showed no restraint at all; McBean, who radiated a quiet sense of privilege at having been party to another of life’s minor miracles, and on whose ample blue-cottoned bosom wriggled the animated form of a young, dark-haired boy.

  ‘B … Ben … Benjamin?’ She formed the sound in the way a foal attempts its first step. Quickly they took away the cuffs and clips of the monitoring equipment so that mother and son could be reunited in an uninhibited and uninterrupted embrace. Soon Benjamin, overwhelmed, had fashioned a face like that of a latex troll and was tearfully expressing his pleasure and relief. Tears began to form in the corner of his mother’s eyes, too, but as yet she had not found the strength or understanding to express her emotions.

  ‘Where am I? What happened?’ she whispered eventually, her hand reaching out instinctively to straighten the young boy’s hair, but the effort proved too much.

  ‘Och, so you’re from across the water. American, are you?’ McBean responded to the noticeable accent. ‘And tell me. What’s your name?’

  ‘Is … Isadora Dean. Izzy.’ The reply was tentative, sounding almost a question. But a start. ‘My fath …’ She started upon her habitual self-conscious explanation that she had been named after Isadora Duncan, the avant-garde dancer and teenage idol of her father, a Wisconsin dentist who hid a number of unpredictable passions behind the crisp formality of his dental mask, but the excuse was absurd and the attempt exhausting. She subsided and concentrated on trying to engage her thumb against her son’s cheek to push away his tears.

  ‘You’ve had an accident, lassie. Been in a wee bit of a coma. But you’re a strapping girl, you’ll pull through it fine. Won’t she, Mr Weatherup?’

  The consultant, who was gently checking the pulse in her wrist, nodded. ‘Your spleen was giving you a little trouble, Mrs Dean, so we had to take it out. But that’s not a problem. You won’t even notice it’s gone, apart from a very small scar on the left side of your abdomen. And you’ve been asleep quite a while, but I think you’re going to be absolutely fine after a good period of rest. So long as young Benjamin here lets you breathe. Steady on, young man,’ he protested with a chuckle, turning to Benjamin whose arms had locked around his mother’s neck in a gesture which defied anyone to take her away again.

  ‘He’s … all right, doctor. Seems he’s got a lot of hugging to make up for,’ she countered.

  ‘You led us a merry dance, Izzy,’ McBean said. ‘Until this moment we had no idea who you were. You are American, aren’t you?’

  Izzy nodded.

  ‘Your son has been through quite a shock, too, was unable to talk,’ Weatherup continued. ‘It was something of a risk, bringing the two of you together. We hoped it might be just the thing to sna
p the both of you back into form yet we couldn’t be certain how he would respond, if it might drive him deeper within himself. But I’m delighted …’

  ‘My baby? Where’s Isabella?’ The voice, until now weak and hesitant, had taken on new strength.

  ‘Mrs Dean, you mustn’t excite yourse …’

  The question came again, slow, precise, unavoidable. ‘Doctor, where is my baby?’

  The neurologist appeared suddenly uncomfortable, couldn’t meet her gaze, buried his hands deep in the pockets of his white coat and cast his eyes towards Sister McBean. She sat on the edge of the bed, placing a hand on both mother and son. Her words were slow, softly formed, trying to wrap the hammer in velvet.

  ‘I’m so desperately sorry, Izzy, my love.’ McBean paused, fighting her own emotions. There was no easy way. ‘I’m afraid your baby’s gone. She didn’t survive the accident.’

  Hammer fall. Destruction. Inside something fractured, forever beyond repair.

  Her face did not move, betrayed no pain, but in the flicker of an eyelid it had lost its flexibility and returning life, become a mask. With agonizing care, the lips sought for a response.

  ‘Didn’t deserve that. Not my poor Bella,’ she whispered, then nothing more. Her eyes went to McBean, beseeching some form of denial, but there was only compassion. A noise began to grow inside her, from deeper within than seemed imaginable, torn out by its roots, which was to burst forth in a sickening wail of grief. And of dismay. Of lost love. Of recrimination. Of guilt. Particularly of guilt.

  A cry for an innocent lost.

  TWO

  Grubb rapped on the door, hesitating fractionally before he entered. Characteristically he was a man who pushed his way around life ignoring the sensibilities and wishes of others and wouldn’t think twice about barging into hospitals, funerals, bedrooms and even ladies’ washrooms in search of his prey, but the managing editor had only recently taken over and was something of an unknown quantity.