Launch Code

FIFTY-SEVEN

Megan drove through the potholes on the lane at forty miles an hour, crunching the underside of Brooke’s hired car and jolting its occupants. Alice was in the front seat next to her, and Brooke was in the back.

They sped past the green and the pub and swerved on to the main road.

‘Megan!’ cried Alice, and she reached across to yank the steering wheel to the left. For a second she was blinded by a pair of headlights coming straight towards her, and a horn blared. The car lurched to the left and straightened up.

‘You were on the wrong side of the road, Megan!’ Too late, Alice wondered whether Megan had ever driven in the UK.

‘Only briefly,’ said Megan, as she took a tight curve too fast, the car clipping the verge.

‘Jesus!’ said Brooke from the back.

‘Do you know where we are going?’ said Megan.

‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘Just stick on this road. We go through Old Hunstanton and then we’ll get to the cliffs.’

‘We should reply to Dad,’ said Megan.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Alice. She stared at her own phone screen. How do you plead with your father not to kill himself? There wasn’t time to fashion a well-crafted appeal. Keep it straightforward and quick.

She read it out.

‘That’s good,’ said Megan.

Alice hit Send.

‘Do you think Toby will get there in time to stop him?’ said Brooke.

‘I hope so,’ said Megan. But that’s all it was. A hope.

‘Dad might hesitate,’ said Brooke. ‘You know. He talks to the admiral. Realizes he’s been found out. Decides to kill himself. Sends a message to us. Then… Perhaps he walks around a bit. Can’t make up his mind? Suicidal people do that. Maybe your reply will make him pause.’

But Alice was thinking about something else. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘There’s something not quite right about Henry Greenwald’s story.’

‘What’s that?’ said Megan.

‘Henry said he saw his mother with a naval officer. We assumed that was Dad, right?’

‘Right.’

‘It can’t have been.’

‘Why not?’ said Brooke.

‘Because Henry said he was six. If he was sixteen in 1996, that means he was six in 1986.’

‘And Dad had left the Navy!’ said Megan.

‘Correct. Pat Greenwald was speaking to someone else in a navy uniform.’

‘Lars?’ said Brooke.

‘Lars left the Navy in 1984 too,’ said Megan.

Megan’s phone rang and she passed it to Alice to answer, swerving as she did so.

‘Hi, Maya, it’s Alice.’

‘Alice! Did you see that email from Daddy? What’s going on?’

The fear in Maya’s voice reached out over the Atlantic to her older sister.

‘Oh, Maya, yes, we did get it. And we think it must be a suicide note.’

‘Oh God! Where is he?’

‘We think he’s on the cliffs by Hunstanton. Toby’s looking for him now, and we’re on our way.’

‘Has he jumped? Oh my God, Alice, has he jumped?’

‘We don’t know. We hope not, but we don’t know. Look, Maya. Can you quickly get in touch with Henry Greenwald and ask him if he can remember whether the officer his mother was with in the kitchen was bald?’

‘But Dad isn’t bald?’

‘Precisely.’

Maya was no dummy. ‘I’ll do it. Wait there.’

The car sped through the darkness.

‘So what does that mean?’ said Brooke. ‘I’m way behind, here.’

‘I get it,’ said Megan. ‘Admiral Robinson is bald. It could have been him in the kitchen with Pat Greenwald. Which would mean it was Admiral Robinson, not Dad, who gave the secrets to the Russians.’

‘Dad may have told them about the near-launch,’ said Alice. ‘But Robinson gave them more secrets. The secrets the FBI were asking about in 1996. And he did that over a period of years.’

Within two minutes Maya’s phone beeped. It was a simple text.

‘I thought so!’ said Alice. ‘It was Admiral Robinson!’

‘The admiral has managed to keep what he did quiet for all these years,’ said Megan. ‘But he would have gotten worried when Sam Bowen started asking questions. Especially when Sam mentioned Pat Greenwald to us at Thanksgiving.’

As Megan was talking, the pieces were slipping into place in Alice’s mind.

‘So he had to shut Sam Bowen up. He must have killed him! It wasn’t Dad.’

‘But the admiral wasn’t in England then,’ said Megan. ‘Dad said he flew over here as soon as he heard about Sam Bowen’s death.’

‘That’s true,’ said Alice.

‘We don’t really know that he wasn’t in England,’ said Brooke from the back seat.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He could have been here all the time. Then when Dad got in touch with him, he pretended to fly straight to London.’

‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘But how did he know Sam had mentioned Pat Greenwald?’

‘Perhaps Dad told him?’

‘Dad said he told Lars,’ said Alice. ‘Maybe Lars told the admiral?’

‘In which case, Lars would have been suspicious when Sam Bowen was killed.’

‘And the admiral would need to shut him up too.’

‘If that’s all true, why would Dad want to kill himself?’ said Brooke.

‘A good question,’ said Alice.

But the pieces were tumbling into place in Megan’s mind as well. ‘The admiral needs someone else to be the fall guy, and Dad is the natural person for that. Better than you, Alice. But he can’t risk Dad being arrested. There would be a big trial and an investigation, and his own role might come out.’

‘OK.’

‘And he can’t just kill him, like he killed Lars. He’d be the last man standing – a more obvious suspect.’

‘So he wants to get Dad to kill himself?’

‘He wants Dad to be seen as the murderer. And then push him off the cliff and make it look like suicide, like Dad was overwhelmed with guilt. Everything will be tidied up. With a suicide rather than a murder, the authorities won’t ask difficult questions and the admiral will go free. That’s why he took Dad to the top of a cliff. I mean, why else choose that place to talk? At night, when no one will see them?’

‘And we would back up his story; we’d say we all thought Dad had killed Sam Bowen.’

‘But what about that email to all of us?’ said Megan. ‘Why would Dad send that email?’

Silence for a few seconds as they scrambled for an answer, Megan successfully splitting her concentration between the problem and the dark road ahead.

‘Dad didn’t send it. It was a hack,’ said Alice. ‘Must have been. The admiral made it look like it came from Dad.’

‘The admiral doesn’t look like a hacker to me,’ said Brooke.

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘But he was in intelligence for many years. He’ll know how to find himself a hacker for hire. One who will keep quiet.’ She paused. ‘Wait a moment. When I was in custody, the police accused me of hacking Sam Bowen’s Cloud account, or finding his password and deleting his notes. I didn’t, I wouldn’t know how. But someone did.’

‘It adds up,’ said Brooke.

‘It does,’ said Alice.

‘So what’s happened to Dad on the cliffs?’ said Brooke.

‘The admiral is planning to push him off,’ said Megan. ‘Fake his suicide. And then say he spoke to Dad and told him he had been found out, and Dad took it very badly.’

‘So we’re too late?’ said Brooke.

‘Maybe Toby will stop him,’ said Megan.

‘But Toby doesn’t know what the admiral is up to,’ said Alice. ‘And the admiral would have no qualms about killing Toby if he thought Toby saw him push Dad off a cliff.’

‘Call him,’ said Megan.