Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(68)
Roddy said, “Told you,” and they all looked at him. “Taverner,” he said. “At the Russian embassy yesterday. Taking a secret meeting, like I said. Simples.”
“First Desk, spying for the Russians?” said Catherine. “That’s quite the merry-go-round.”
Her eyes had grown dark, but no one dared ask.
Somewhat numbed, they set about returning to their rooms, Louisa first rinsing her cup out; Roddy hunting for the plastic top of his unfinished energy drink; Lech putting something in the bin. Ashley paused on the landing. “I’ve never asked why it gets called Red Queen,” she said. “Instead of its proper name.”
“Oh, I’d have thought that was obvious,” said Catherine.
“‘Off with her head,’” said Oliver Nash.
“There’s a process to be undergone,” said Toby Malahide. “Underwent? Either way, we’re hardly hauling her off to the guillotine.”
“No, I meant that’s why they call it Red Queen. You know. Alice in Wonderland.”
“Hmph.”
Malahide was one of that army the Civil Service call upon when asked to put a body in harm’s way: it wasn’t that he was expendable, necessarily; more that his ingrained sense of entitlement rendered him impervious to damage. Early sixties by a mortal calendar, but managing to exude the impression that he’d overseen the Siege of Mafeking, he was the Home Secretary’s choice of point-man for what might turn out to be a tricky undertaking, one of those shitstorms that blow up out of nowhere. The Limitation Committee’s hurried assembly, its single-issue emergency meeting, its unanimous decision that Diana Taverner be relieved of her duties pending investigation of rumours that the illegal Waterproof Protocol had been instigated: all this demanded a degree of arse-covering that would require even the PM to up his game. The stake was worth playing for. If the story proved true there’d be an opportunity to overhaul the Service, the kind of power-grab that doesn’t come along every Parliament. But if it wasn’t true, and worse still didn’t stick, Taverner would burn everyone associated with its having been suggested in the first place. Hence the need for a Toby Malahide. The Home Secretary regarded herself as the consummate politician, and if this was based on little more than the fact that she was indeed Home Secretary, it was generally agreed that she at least offered a synthesis of two main schools of political theory, inasmuch as if she ever became involved in a conspiracy, she’d find a way to cock it up. But nobody disputed her ability to put a large public schoolboy-shaped barrier between herself and impending consequences when the situation demanded.
Meanwhile, Diana Taverner, having somehow caught wind of her predicament, had disappeared into London’s brilliant parade. Her last phone call put her on City Road; her last card payment had her stepping onto a bus. But she hadn’t been on that same bus three stops down the road, when the first Dog on the scene boarded it. “So where is she now?”
“I’m told we’re working on it,” said Nash.
The Park was in a flurry, though you wouldn’t have guessed with a casual glance. The boys and girls of the hub were at their workstations, and there was hush, or what passed for it in an office environment. The usual suspects had shucked their footwear, and were padding around in stockinged feet; the local hardware issued its ambient hum. But Nash, a familiar here, recognised a fractured normality. The figures by the doorways were Dogs, officers of the Service’s internal security division; their presence on the hub spoke of the potential for heads to be thrust upon spikes. An edge had opened up the full length of the building, and all who worked there were balanced upon it. And Nash was acutely conscious of having wielded the shovel that broke the ground.
Malahide continued to harumph. As was common with the breed, he retained a certain bafflement that the position of First Desk had been allotted to a woman; the current complications could have been averted had anyone noticed this earlier and put a stop to it. “Because what the devil does she think she’s playing at? It’s admin, that’s all. A temporary suspension, as laid down in Service Regs, and applied with haste—admittedly—but in absolute accordance with procedure.” He spoke with the confidence of one who’d been in possession of the finer detail for five minutes, and without appearing to remember that Nash himself had supplied this. “What’s called for next is a hearing, at which she’ll be asked to stand down—that’s what the reg demands, that she be ‘asked’—while an investigation is carried out.” He shook his head. “And she decides to play hide and seek. She might as well have signed a confession.”
“That’s jumping the gun,” Nash said. They were in the office adjoining First Desk’s: occupying Diana’s territory would have felt an act of lèse-majesté, or at any rate premature. “Diana is innocent of wrongdoing until proved otherwise. Rather what our justice system is based on.”
“Well, if we’re talking about the justice system, old man, she might argue that one cryptic reference in the Times is hardly enough to base a prosecution on in the first place. Yes, yes. I know.” He waved away Nash’s rejoinder: that the word “waterproof,” in that context, was tantamount to an air-raid siren. “Point is, this might be hush-hush”—and here he made an expansive gesture, taking in the office, the hub, the Park, the secret world—“but it’s still government-issue. Which means appearances matter.”