Secret Asset

52

Liz drove down to Oxford with Wetherby very early in the morning. She had been awake most of the night, thinking of the day ahead. She’d finally fallen asleep, but it was only two days after the summer solstice and she had soon been awakened by the dawn light flooding through her bedroom window.

As they came down through the chalk cut at Stokenchurch, and the Thames Valley opened up ahead of them, Wetherby broke the silence to say, “Part of me is hoping we’re wrong.”

“I know,” said Liz.

“On the other hand, if we are, it may be somewhere else.”

They took the Oxford exit off the M40, then got held up for several minutes queuing at the roundabout on the eastern outskirts of the city. As they sat in the traffic, Wetherby spoke again. “Where do you think Tom’s gone?”

“God knows,” said Liz. “Even Margarita didn’t have any idea.”

“Do you think he would have met up with the terrorists?”

“He might have been in touch, but no, I don’t think he’d take the risk of seeing them. Why, do you?”

“No, but I can’t see him leaving the country either. Not yet, anyway. He’d want to see the job done. Job!” he said with uncharacteristic scorn. He pulled out into the roundabout and overtook a lumbering lorry, then slipped neatly into the road towards Headington. On the pavement children were walking to school, little ones accompanied by their mothers, groups of older children playing tag. It seemed such an ordinary day, thought Liz.

They stopped at the Headington traffic lights. “Do you feel you understand him now?” Wetherby asked.

Liz watched as a Jack Russell chewed at its lead, while its owner stood and talked to a large woman in a summer dress. She replied, “Given the resentment he must have felt about his father’s death, I suppose I can understand the IRA’s appeal, especially when their approach was made by a charismatic figure like O’Phelan. What I don’t get is how it could be switched to another set of terrorists and another cause. Especially since I don’t think Tom has any particular sympathy for Islam.”

“Does he believe in anything?”

“Not in the sense of a credo. That’s why I don’t understand what he’s trying to do today—assuming we’re right. An old Tory is becoming Chancellor; the Peruvian Ambassador is getting a degree. What on earth would be the point of killing them?”

“Don’t forget, he murdered O’Phelan,” said Wetherby. They were passing Oxford Brookes University now, new inhabitant of the grey mansion where Robert Maxwell had lived for so many years. “And caused Marzipan’s death, even if he didn’t kill him.”

“They threatened to get in his way.”

“Get in the way of what?”

Liz shrugged, thinking of the bombers. “Presumably whatever he’s planning. That must be of critical importance to Tom. Though to want to kill all these people today—I simply can’t fathom it.”

“Neither can I,” said Wetherby. “It doesn’t sound right somehow.”