“He’s on ten days’ leave.”
“And the Royal Military Police can’t find a replacement?”
“But we wouldn’t want that, would we, sir? A stranger in the system? I’ll get a bit of shut-eye. If you need me, give me a bell.”
Roper lit a cigarette and set his main screen alive, bringing up Svetlana Kelly. In her early years, she’d been a member of the Chekhov Theatre in Moscow, which meant she was well grounded in classical theater. She hadn’t been much of a beauty, even when young, but he saw handsomeness and strength there. There was a selection of photos from the early years, and then London in 1981. A Month in the Country at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Fifty-five and never married, and then she’d met Patrick Kelly, the Irish widower and professor of literature at London University. Roper looked at Kelly’s photos-he was strong too, undoubtedly, and yet there was a touch of humor about his mouth.
Whatever the attraction, it was strong enough for them to marry at Westminster Registry Office within a month of meeting and for Svetlana to cut herself free of the Soviet Union. She would be seventy-one now. It was eleven o’clock, and yet on sheer impulse, Roper phoned her. He stayed on speakerphone, he always did, and there was an instant answer.
“Who is this?” It was a whisper in a way, and yet clear enough, the Russian accent undeniable.
“Mrs. Kelly, my name is Giles Roper-Major Giles Roper.” He spoke fair Russian, product of an army total-immersion course just after Sandhurst, and he’d kept it up since. “Forgive the intrusion at such a time of night. You don’t know me.”
She cut in. “But I do. I attended a charity dinner for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital last year. You spoke from your wheelchair. You are the bomb-disposal expert, aren’t you? The Queen herself pinned the George Cross to your lapel. You’re a hero.”
It was amazing the effect of that voice, so soft, like a breeze whispering through the leaves on an autumn evening. Roper’s throat turned dry, incredibly touched. It was like being a child again.
He said in English, “You’re too kind.”
“What can I do for you?”
“May I come to see you tomorrow morning?”
“For what reason?”
“I’d like to discuss a matter affecting your nephew. I’d have a woman with me, a Cambridge don who has just met Alexander in New York.”
“Major Roper, be honest with me. What is your interest in my nephew? You must know I haven’t seen him in nearly two decades.”
To this woman, one could only tell the truth. Roper knew that nothing else would do. “I’m with the British Security Services.”
There was a faint chuckle. “Ah, what they call a spook these days.”
“Only on television.”
“You intrigue me. Tell me of your companion.” Roper did. She said, “The lady sounds quite interesting. If you’re a spook, you know where I live.”
“ Chamber Court, Belsize Park.”
“Quite right. My husband died ten years ago and left me well provided for. Here, I live in Victorian splendor supported by my dear friend and fellow Russian, Katya Zorin, who takes care of the house and me and manages to find time to teach painting at the Slade as well. I’ll see you at ten-thirty. Your chair will not prove a problem. The garden is walled, but the entrance in the side mews has a path that will give you access to French windows leading into a conservatory. I’ll be waiting.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Kelly. I must say, you seem to be taking me totally on trust.”
“You fascinated me at that luncheon. Your speech was excellent, but modest, and so afterward I looked you up on the Internet. It was all there. Belfast in 1991, the Portland Hotel, the huge bomb in the foyer. It took you nine hours to render it harmless. Nine hours on your own. How can I not take such a man on trust? I’ll see you in the morning.”
It was quiet sitting there, staring up at his screens, and he put on some background music. Just like comfort food, only this was Cole Porter playing softly, just as it had been all those years ago in the Belfast safe house not far from the Royal Victoria Hospital. It was a long time ago, a hell of a long time ago, and he lit a cigarette and poured a Bushmills Irish whiskey for a change and remembered.
ROPER / BELFAST
1991
3
Roper remembered that year well, and not just because of his nine hours dismantling the Portland Hotel bomb. There had also been the mortar attack on Number 10 Downing Street. The Gulf War had been at its height, and the target had been the War Cabinet meeting at ten a.m. on February 7-an audacious attack, and the missiles had landed in the garden, just narrowly missing the house. It bore all the hallmarks of a classic IRA operation, although nobody ever claimed responsibility for the attack.
In Belfast, meanwhile, the war of the bomb continued remorselessly, and in spite of all the politicians could do, sectarian violence plowed on, people butchering each other in the name of religion, the British Army inured by twenty-two years to the Irish Troubles as a way of life.
For Giles Roper, scientific interest in the field of weaponry and explosives had drawn him in even during his training days as an officer cadet at Sandhurst, and on graduation, it had led to an immediate posting to the Ordnance Corps. In ’ninety-one, he was entering his third year as a disposal officer, a captain in rank and several hundred explosive devices of one kind or another behind him.
Most people didn’t realize that he was married. A summer affair with his second cousin, a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Howard, during his first year out of Sandhurst had turned into a total disaster. It was a prime example of going to bed on your wedding night with someone you thought you knew and waking up with a stranger. A Catholic, she didn’t believe in divorce and indeed visited his mother on a regular basis. He hadn’t seen her in years.
The ever-present risk of death, and the casualty rate among his fellows in the bomb-disposal business, precluded any kind of relationship elsewhere. He smoked heavily, like most of his kind, and drank heavily at the appropriate time, like most of his kind.
It was a strange, bizarre existence that produced obsessive patterns of behavior. On many occasions, he’d found himself dealing with a bomb and indulging in conversation, obviously one-sided, demanding answers that weren’t there. It was an extreme example of talking to yourself. A bomb, after all, couldn’t talk back except when it exploded, and that would probably be the last thing you heard. However, he still talked to them. There seemed some sort of comfort in that.
His father had died when he was sixteen. It was his uncle who had arranged for his schooling and Sandhurst, and maintained his mother at the extended family home in Shropshire. She was basically there as unpaid help, as far as Roper could see, but on army pay there wasn’t much he could do about it, until the unexpected happened. His mother’s brother, Uncle Arthur, a homosexual by nature and a broker in the city with a fortune to prove it, had died of AIDS and, lacking any faith in his sister’s ability to handle money, left a considerable fortune to Roper.
He could have left the army, but found that he didn’t want to, and when he tried to get his mother her own place, it turned out she was perfectly happy where she was. It had also become apparent that the perils of bomb disposal were beyond her understanding, so he settled a hundred thousand pounds on her, and the same on his wife, and left them to the joys of the countryside.
Before the Portland Hotel, he had been decorated with the Military Cross for gallantry, although the events surrounding it had only a tenuous link with his ordinary duties.