much worse could it be for me? Why would I be lyingto you right now? For what earthly reason: a little grease on my noose perhaps?’
Fair point. MacIntyre had already been measured for his MoD coffin. You could almost hear the thing being hammered together. A leak to a friendly journalist on a Sunday paper would do the trick, start the stampede.
So Davane moves in close. Well within MacIntryre’s personal space. She looks up at him, and the heavy layers of her neck dangle as she speaks. ‘You screw me up here, and I will personally make you suffer pain. Vast pain. Understand?’
Understood, MacIntyre nods gratefully. And he proceeds to tell his tale . . .
Earlier that morning Davane’s black Jaguar had nosed out of the MI5 basement car park for this meeting at the MoD, and as the first splats of rain hit the windscreen and the powerful wipers started whup-whupping , her colleague Bill Grainger had asked a straightforward question.
‘I sense you don’t have much time for the people we’re going to meet.’
She had smiled at him. A grim look, because her teeth, like much else about her, she didn’t waste time over. ‘You sense correctly.’
‘So, is this going to be a problem today?’
‘We’ll just have to see where the discussions take us.’ There was a sparkle in her eyes, and it seemed it was all Grainger could do to stop himself from laughing at the prospect of a roomful of stiff military types coming up against Sheila ‘ Noppy’ Davane.
‘I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me as to the reasons for this . . . animus?’
Which is why they had spent the relatively short drive in discussion. Not something she was planning to do, but Grainger had asked, and he deserved to know. And that brief dialogue had brought those dark, angry shapes into sharper focus in her mind, given clarity to what it is that so claws at her . . .
. . . those typecast men who would be around the table (excepting Grainger, of course). Each one red faced and blustering, and but-butting his disapproval.
What steels Davane’s backbone is a profound disrespect for what becomes of officers once they’re sufficiently senior to come into contact with the Sirens of the Ministry of Defence.
They start out so promisingly. Revved up and full of action. We’ll fix this, change that, think outside the box. But as inevitable as the slow creep towards autumn and the dark of winter, the civil servants win out, deaden that reforming spirit with the shrewdness of their indecision: overwhelm them with committees, White Papers, consultations, policy reviews and five-year personnel strategies. And before the reforming zealot knows what’s hit him, he’s been sucked into the system. Suddenly he’s not seeing an issue in black and white, but in all those bureaucratic, indecisive shades of grey.
In all of this, Davane’s affection for the British soldier is real and visceral. This from someone who has given every last atom of her life to MI5, to the service’s motto, Regnum Defende . This after being kneecapped in 1975 and tied up to a lamp-post in Catholic West Belfast. For her, the young men of the British Army were the only force strong enough to hold the line. To keep the United Kingdom whole. And good men – 763 in total – had died delivering something like peace . . .
Traffic was always so slow around Parliament Square. Davane had glanced at a newspaper kiosk, a poster with the first edition from the Evening Standard boiled down into six easy-to-understand words. New Govt Shame Over Injured Troops.
Looking at the queues of people huddling around the kiosk, Davane had spoken quietly. ‘If word of this Ward 13 thing gets out, gets into the media, this government will fall.’
Grainger had sounded shocked. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘Take from the rich, give to the poor, and we’re working the wrong side of the street.’ Davane drew her initials, SAD, Sheila Anne-Marie Davane, in the condensation.
‘I
Fair point. MacIntyre had already been measured for his MoD coffin. You could almost hear the thing being hammered together. A leak to a friendly journalist on a Sunday paper would do the trick, start the stampede.
So Davane moves in close. Well within MacIntryre’s personal space. She looks up at him, and the heavy layers of her neck dangle as she speaks. ‘You screw me up here, and I will personally make you suffer pain. Vast pain. Understand?’
Understood, MacIntyre nods gratefully. And he proceeds to tell his tale . . .
Earlier that morning Davane’s black Jaguar had nosed out of the MI5 basement car park for this meeting at the MoD, and as the first splats of rain hit the windscreen and the powerful wipers started whup-whupping , her colleague Bill Grainger had asked a straightforward question.
‘I sense you don’t have much time for the people we’re going to meet.’
She had smiled at him. A grim look, because her teeth, like much else about her, she didn’t waste time over. ‘You sense correctly.’
‘So, is this going to be a problem today?’
‘We’ll just have to see where the discussions take us.’ There was a sparkle in her eyes, and it seemed it was all Grainger could do to stop himself from laughing at the prospect of a roomful of stiff military types coming up against Sheila ‘ Noppy’ Davane.
‘I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me as to the reasons for this . . . animus?’
Which is why they had spent the relatively short drive in discussion. Not something she was planning to do, but Grainger had asked, and he deserved to know. And that brief dialogue had brought those dark, angry shapes into sharper focus in her mind, given clarity to what it is that so claws at her . . .
. . . those typecast men who would be around the table (excepting Grainger, of course). Each one red faced and blustering, and but-butting his disapproval.
What steels Davane’s backbone is a profound disrespect for what becomes of officers once they’re sufficiently senior to come into contact with the Sirens of the Ministry of Defence.
They start out so promisingly. Revved up and full of action. We’ll fix this, change that, think outside the box. But as inevitable as the slow creep towards autumn and the dark of winter, the civil servants win out, deaden that reforming spirit with the shrewdness of their indecision: overwhelm them with committees, White Papers, consultations, policy reviews and five-year personnel strategies. And before the reforming zealot knows what’s hit him, he’s been sucked into the system. Suddenly he’s not seeing an issue in black and white, but in all those bureaucratic, indecisive shades of grey.
In all of this, Davane’s affection for the British soldier is real and visceral. This from someone who has given every last atom of her life to MI5, to the service’s motto, Regnum Defende . This after being kneecapped in 1975 and tied up to a lamp-post in Catholic West Belfast. For her, the young men of the British Army were the only force strong enough to hold the line. To keep the United Kingdom whole. And good men – 763 in total – had died delivering something like peace . . .
Traffic was always so slow around Parliament Square. Davane had glanced at a newspaper kiosk, a poster with the first edition from the Evening Standard boiled down into six easy-to-understand words. New Govt Shame Over Injured Troops.
Looking at the queues of people huddling around the kiosk, Davane had spoken quietly. ‘If word of this Ward 13 thing gets out, gets into the media, this government will fall.’
Grainger had sounded shocked. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘Take from the rich, give to the poor, and we’re working the wrong side of the street.’ Davane drew her initials, SAD, Sheila Anne-Marie Davane, in the condensation.
‘I
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