Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [14]
15
He'd general y win the respect of the party, who'd see him as 'firm but fair' and an ex-Chancel or usual y stood more chance of becoming Prime Minister than anyone else.
The third senior man, the Home Secretary, was in charge of all matters domestic. And that was the problem. The Home Secretary was the man who had to deal with every child murderer, escaped prisoner, dangerous dog, inner-city riot, drug dealer, illegal immigrant, terrorist, car accident, rapist and cracked pavement in Britain. None of the nice things. It was very difficult to do the job well, the best to hope for was to have a quiet time. There was no foreign travel, both wings of your party would gang up on you when something went wrong and the public blamed you personally every time they ran out of toilet paper. So anyone who wanted to be Home Secretary was an idiot.
The new head of the Home Office fitted the job description better than few before him. His file back at Five was a testament to mediocrity. David Anthony Staines had scraped his second at Oxford. He'd not been popular, although he had met his future wife there. She'd been a party activist, and he'd gone along to the meetings and fallen in with the in-crowd. He'd been secretary of the college party (there hadn't been a rival for the position). Then it was usual path: he stood as a candidate in unwinnable seats for a couple of years while he did his legal training and grew up a bit. He got his own practice the year before his safe seat, Eastchester West. At Westminster, Staines had quickly fallen in with Lord Greyhaven, and for some reason the old fool liked him. So he'd progressed up the party ranks. He'd managed not to acquire any Swiss bank accounts or mistresses, at least none that Halliwell could find, and so he'd got a reputation for "honesty". Now he held a senior cabinet post.
Staines held open the report at the last page, and pointed out each phrase as he came to it. 'Subversive groups operating in London. Security leaks in the press. Terrorism. An increase in gun-related crime. The riots last week.'
'Sir, there is nothing to suggest that these events are linked. There have been terrorist and subversive cells operating in London for over thirty years.'
'That's hardly a reassurance, is it Ms Halliwell? What are MI5 doing?'
'We've kept a lid on it,' she said firmly. 'We know who they are, we know where they are. The moment they do anything illegal we pick them up.'
'Last year there was that book published that blew the gaffe on UNIT, I Killed Kennedy. Why didn't you stop that, then?'
'Policy has always been to let people write what they want about aliens and UFOs. There are so many cranks out there, so many children's stories, that no-one believes any of it anymore. We leant on the publishers and they changed the cover, altered some of the dates and promised not to print anything like it again.' Who Killed Kennedy had got close to compromising UNIT, but as one of the co-authors claimed he'd killed Kennedy himself by travel ing back in time it would have been counterproductive for the government to try to ban it. The last Home Secretary had understood that without Hal iwell having to explain it to him in words of one syllable. MI5 had made sure the book had been marked 'science fiction' and flagged it on their list of subversive literature. The name of everyone who had taken it out of a library or ordered it from a bookshop with a computerised ordering system had been filed away for future reference. Five had also kept track of the authors: James Stevens had gone to ground, but David Bishop was still in London.
Staines' head was agitating from side to side. 'It's not good enough. I want the publishers raided, to see what other top secret information they have, and I want the editors questioned by your people to see what they know. Shut them down, by midnight tonight. You will do that?'
'I will do it under the strongest protest and if I have written authorisation.'