Walking in Darkness

‘If you want your father to run in the presidential race, Mrs Brougham, you’ll stop making this fuss and let us take her away,’ he intoned in that same cold, tight voice. ‘Your father will explain what she’s been up to when you see him tomorrow.’

Cathy clenched her hand into a fist and punched him angrily. ‘Get your grubby fingers off me, you big ape!’

The next second she found herself falling backwards on to the couch, was stunned to realize the man had hit her, and then heard with terror Sophie screaming as she was pulled out of the room.

‘Anya, Anya . . . help me . . .’

Steve and Vladimir had been lucky not to get stopped for speeding as they did a hundred miles an hour along the motorway, putting London far behind them in the race to get to Sophie, they hoped, before any of Gowrie’s people caught up with her. It was a chilly night and there wasn’t much other traffic around, or they might have had far less luck. The moon had risen, showing them the shadowy countryside they were driving through. The stars were white-hot points of fire high above them; frost began to make the tyres slip, and it sparkled white on the grass along the motorway verges, and into the distance the rolling English fields, backed by dark shadows of hills.

‘A small country,’ Vladimir said, staring. ‘Very tame and domesticated, no wonder the English are so prim and two-faced. They grow up with this neat, cute countryside, like growing up in Disneyland.’

‘But with far more prickles. They can be bloody-minded, too,’ said Steve. ‘Don’t mix them up with us Yanks. We’re far more conventional than they are. We find eccentricity a little worrying; the English love it.’

Vlad laughed. They drove in silence then he said, ‘So, you really think Gowrie will still go to this dinner in the City of London?’

‘Does the tiger turn his back on fresh meat when he’s starving? Gowrie can’t afford to miss it; this dinner is a biggie, a major platform for an American politician fighting for presidential nomination. With a good speech he’ll make the TV news headlines back home, and all the breakfast shows, too.’

‘Television has become too important; it distorts politics,’ Vladimir said with heavy Slav gloom.

‘It’s here to stay, though. No turning our back on it, and what’s coming may be worse. The technical revolution gets faster and faster. We could all be born robots in a hundred years and there may be no more humans then.’

‘I wonder how many there are now? It is happening in my country now; we had the grey boredom of government lies for so long, and secretly made fun of them all, we stayed sane in a mad world that way – but now we have the gaudy colours of the rich corporations advertising every night, and nobody laughs any more! We began with such hopes for democracy, and already we follow America down the wrong roads.’

‘Hell, Vlad, we all get what we say we want, that’s our tragedy. No such thing as a free gift. There’s always a price. In the States we’ve talked endlessly of wanting democracy, praised the age of the common man. Now we’ve got it, we’ve got mindless game shows and chat shows, porn films, vacuous soaps; we’ve got the TV the common man wants, and the common woman, and it’s no good saying you don’t like it, it isn’t what you meant. Democracy is the lowest common denominator and the fastest method of communication, which means TV as we know it and love it.’

‘And it’s what you live by,’ Vlad said softly, taunting him, amused and yet cynical.

Steve grinned wickedly, angrily. ‘I know, and I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me, but, hell, owing everything I’ve got to it doesn’t mean I can’t see where we’re all going, and I don’t have to like it.’

‘You should be in politics, yourself; you’ve got the gift,’ Vlad said, grinning.

Grimacing, Steve told him, ‘Once upon a time I might have gone into politics, but that was before I realized how low you have to sink to get anywhere in that game.’ Steve stared ahead, his jaw taut. ‘My father was involved in politics all his life; he had a thousand friends in the party, all good old buddies, every last man. Now he’s just waiting to die and his good old guys have vanished like snow in June.’

Vlad looked at the grim face behind the wheel and then at the road and the other vehicles they flashed dizzyingly past. ‘For Jesus’s sake, Steve, slow down. I’m too old to die and go to hell.’

‘Sorry, but I want to get to Sophie as fast as possible,’ Steve said in a hard, angry voice. ‘And when I get to her I’m going to bawl the shit out of her.’

Vladimir shot him another look and smiled with sudden, surprising sweetness. ‘You’re crazy about her, aren’t you?’

Steve flushed and did not answer.

The angry scene inside the house, Cathy’s protests, Sophie’s screams, had managed to drown a sound outside the house: a helicopter landing in the dark parkland, blades whirring, the engine slowing as the great metal insect lowered itself to rest on a well-concealed landing pad among the grass. Only when the lights surrounding it were switched on could you see the pad; unless you walked right up to it, it was hidden from view by grass and shrubs discreetly planted as cover.

The occupants of the helicopter took half a minute to spring down and run, crouching, towards the house, straightening only when they were out of reach of the lethal, rotating blades.

The security men pulling Sophie out of the house walked straight into Paul Brougham and his own security men.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Paul rapped out, confronting the men, staring in bewilderment at Sophie. ‘Who are you people, and who is this?’

The older man, who had recognized him immediately with dismay, believing him to be in London at the Guildhall dinner, in spite of Cathy telling him otherwise – but then women always lied, a wise man never believed a word they said – began a smooth, careful answer, ‘Well, Mr Brougham, sir, we were sent down here by Senator Gowrie. We’ve been having trouble with a dirty tricks gang sent over here by one of the senator’s competitors and –’

‘Paul!’ Cathy ran out of the house and straight at him, and Paul’s arms closed round her, held her close to his heart, her head nestling against his chest so that she heard the beating of his heart right under her ear, a strong, fast beat that was the sound she went to sleep with every night, but nearer, then, because neither of them ever wore anything in bed, their bodies entwined naked under the sheets, legs tangled, arms across each other, the closer the better, one flesh, warm and relaxed after love.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked with fierce anxiety.

Relief was making her feel sick. She felt safe now he was here; she always did.

‘Tell them to let go of Sophie,’ she told him, lifting her head to glare at her father’s men. ‘And to get off our land!’