Land’s end was hauntingly beautiful, the sky’s saffron ripples spreading forever westward over the Celtic Sea, white streaks of foam from an exhausted storm flung in a golden lace about the ancient pink-brown rocks.
Trevor Brenson, M.P., had a soft spot for Cornwall with its moody air of romance and its legacy of smuggling, of defying the proprieties of the establishment. His ancestors on his mother’s side had come from Cornwall, and though he’d been born and raised in London he liked the idea that the genes of Cornish smugglers were in his blood. It didn’t stop him from having his own grand plans for taxing the populace when Labour got into power.
Meiling didn’t comment on this more obvious hypocrisy of Brenson’s. To do so would have upset the mood as Brenson and she walked atop the cliffs, their hair blown roughly by a gusty southerly, the salty air of the sea both invigorating and relaxing at the same time. Turning from the Celtic Sea in the west south toward the Atlantic and the channel, Brenson held her hand with what was for him an uncommon show of affection for his mistress.
“I feel like I’m whole down here,” he told her, his gaze fixed on the horizon where there was nothing but sea. Meiling knew what he meant. The closeness of the sea, the enormity of it, gave them at once a feeling of insignificance and yet integration with the whole world, with one another, with all things. And it was then, as in a quiet moment with a friend, that he apologized for not seeing enough of her lately, for coming to her flat burdened with files and cares of the day. What he said next surprised her, because she had thought that when it happened it would be in the quiet exhaustion of having made love, the most unguarded moment of all.
“We’ve got the Conservatives where we want them,” he explained. “They’re sucking up to the Americans as usual.”
“Oh?” She was careful not to ask why, and looked out to sea, affecting disinterest, listening more out of politeness, her focus fixed on the vista of sea, land, and sky.
“Yes,” he continued. “Yanks want to overfly Europe-bomb China. I don’t know why London didn’t tell Washington to go take a—”
“Is that a petrel?” she asked suddenly, in what she considered a flash of brilliance, even more to convey a profound indifference that only encouraged him.
“What?” he asked. “Oh, yes, I think it’s a petrel. Stormy petrel.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I interrupted. What were you saying?”
“Americans want to send bombers to China.”
“Which China? Not Taiwan, I hope,” she said flippantly.
“No. Of course not. In the far west apparently.”
The west — the “far west.” She felt her heart racing — it had to be the missile site at Turpan. It was the only target of any real military significance. She took his hand. “It’s all right,” she said of his apology for not seeing her enough. “You’re with me now.”
“Yes,” he said, and stopped, looking down at her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you,” she lied, and kissed him. She would have to keep seeing him after she’d passed the message to the Chinese embassy via the dead drop near Hampton Court. Besides, it occurred to her that if she complained about him not seeing her enough over the next week, she might get the actual target, though she believed she probably knew enough already.
On their way back to London they stopped for tea at Penzance, and when she went to the ladies’ room she had the urge to phone but had enough control to stem her excitement, her trade craft quickly reining in her emotional high, reminding her that in a world of beam-fed directional microphones that could pick up a conversation through glass across a street, you were never to use the phone to contact the te wu—the resident or head of station. Instead, that night she worked off her nervous energy by letting him try a half-dozen positions before he finally settled on one — rear entry, mounting her like a dog.
“God, I love you,” he gasped.
“You too.”