So, bag looped over one shoulder, she left the park to its late-summer sunshine. The year was turning a corner, disregarding the havoc in its wake. One day she’d have time to release a breath, and celebrate recovery. Just now, though, she was wondering who to fuck up, and in what order.
Vassily Rasnokov, definitely. If Lamb’s reading was right, the embassy visit had been cover for a private game, and it didn’t require tactical genius to deduce that this involved concocting an exit strategy. Working for a paranoid psychopath meant walking a constant edge—you never knew what might trigger a rage: a fly landing on a knuckle; a memory whispering from the wings. This many years into the job, Rasnokov must be spending half his time looking for the nearest open door, in case his boss took it in mind to examine his innermost thoughts, perhaps by spreading them across a carpet.
But Rasnokov was back in Moscow, and there were other dangers nearer home. If the Russian’s schemes involved sowing chaos here in London, he’d made a good start: for all Sparrow’s studied indifference to the traditional norms of government, inviting a foreign intelligence agent to help formulate national policy was more than a standard cock-up even for the 2020s. Thanks not least to Sparrow himself, lying in office was no longer a career-threatening felony; the consequence of misleading Parliament was nowadays a lap of honour, and you could even, as a witlessly self-revealing Home Secretary had suggested, be fucking useless and remain securely in post, provided you were no threat to the PM. But inviting a spy inside Number Ten, allotting her a coathook, that was a serious embarrassment. Which meant Sparrow would be hoping to get his defence in first.
Even as Diana was having these thoughts, she was checking her messages. Among them, an alert from the morning’s Times.
Waterproof . . .
The word brought her to a halt, provoking a muttered Jesus from the pedestrian in her wake.
She was a beat behind, and had been for days. Should have known it was a serious matter when Claude turned up at the Park: The word waterproof has been mentioned. Of course it bloody has . . .
But at least this answered a pressing question: who to set about fucking up first.
On the move again, she set her thoughts in order. It was clear she needed de Greer before the Limitations Committee, puncturing any claim that Waterproof had been used, and singing her heart out about Sparrow’s hamheaded gullibility. The PM preferred the public to believe that his ineffectual blustering was a stage act, and he mostly got away with that. But the outing of his sidekick as a Kremlin stooge would puncture the image, and sooner than suffer that he’d bow to Diana’s demands, chief among which would be hanging Sparrow out to dry.
That done, she could get on to the equally serious matter of fucking up Rasnokov, which would begin with Lamb’s observation about the missing whisky bottles.
She rang Josie, who told her: “The hotel’s recyclables are collected twice a week. We went through the dumpsters before the first of those. No Balvenie bottles.”
Diana had the impression of events unfolding on the other side of the connection; movement she couldn’t see happening in the Park.
“And he didn’t have them with him when he left?”
“He had carry-on only. They’d have shown on his X-rays.”
While he could have waltzed them through diplomatic channels, what would have been the point? If he’d intended them as take-home presents, he’d not have paid hotel prices.
“Get hold of whoever cleaned his room,” she said. “And find out politely, or find out the nasty way, if they walked off with a couple of abandoned half-empties. Or took actual empties for refilling with cheap stuff and selling on.”
Josie took a moment to answer. “That’s already been done. I think.”
“Excuse me, am I boring you?”
“Sorry, ma’am, there’s something going on, I don’t know what.”
“What do you mean, there’s—”
The young woman’s voice became muffled, as if she were holding a hand over her phone. Diana thought she heard her own name.
“Josie? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Josie?”
The connection was cut.
Dead phone in hand, Diana turned a corner. She’d reached City Road. There was traffic, moving at an average speed; there was a bus at a stop fifteen yards away, its rear-end mural declaring this her city. There was a helicopter shuttling overhead. And her phone was ringing again.
A hoarse whisper on the other end. “Red Queen. Red Queen.”