The Secret Servant

"Yes, yes, I think I did. Right, then-" George turned suddenly brisk, snapping out orders as if he were still a Dragoons subaltern. "You meet this Janza and tell him more or less what I've said. Take a tough line. If his people even hint that anybody on our side is involved – and I mean anybody, not just Harry or Number 10 – then he can start building himself an ark and not to waste time waiting for the animals. Any questions?"
"Is this the Headmaster speaking?"
"No comment. None of this is avowable, of course. All your own work."
"I know." In the patch of windscreen George had wiped clear, snowflakes hardly bigger than dust swirled around as if too timid to risk a landing. Agnes shivered and reached for the door handle.
"And one other thing," George said. "See if you can chase up that STB file on Tyler. I believe your people had it to translate. It's more or less academic interest by now, but we'd like to know…"
"Will try. By the way, what's happened to our favourite fighting man?"
"We gave him a couple of days off to re-group."
"Ah yes. Well, at least you can't say this time that nobody's got killed."
"Not by Harry."
"And not for lack of trying. Give him time, give him time." She opened the door and skipped out. George glowered after her, then turned on the car radio. He'd wait a couple of minutes for her to get clear. Outside, the snowflakes suddenly thickened, gained confidence and started to settle.
Later that day, the second baboon suddenly died, leaving everybody else feeling much better, thank you. Now all the vote was in and could be counted. There would be no public trial with unpredictable witnesses, just a well-orchestrated inquest and – a rare treat – no relatives of the decreased around. Josef Janza quickly accepted Agnes's invitation to lunch at one of the old high-ceilinged railway hotels with wide-spaced tables. Only George, who mistrusted happy endings, seemed to have doubts.
He stayed late at Number 10, working on the draught of the PM's speech in the defence debate and worrying. Certainly the baboon had had every excuse for dying: one lung collapsed by a bullet and with pneumonia, diagnosed too late, in the other. And there was no chance that any cad or rotter could have reached his bedside, where Special Branch men and friends of Agnes far outnumbered the doctors and nurses. But quis custodiet ipsos custodes"! And how do you phrase such a delicate – or indelicate – question?
He was still wondering when Agnes rang to ask if the PM was home and if so, could she bring her Director-General over to see him. Urgent. George established that the PM was already on his way back from the House and told Agnes to come on round.
George shook hands with the D-G, a rather sombre, lean man in thick spectacles, and showed him straight into the Cabinet Room where the Prime Minister was waiting quite alone. Then he took Agnes next door, to the Principal Private Secretary's room, away from the young ears of the duty clerk.
She wore a sexless old sheepskin jacket and an oddly blank expression. George offered her a drink and she shook her head, "The Tyler file. I'm afraid it's gone."
"Gone? Gone where?"
"Home, I imagine." Her voice was blank, too; deliberately drained of expression. "It had been about half translated when Rex Masson – I don't know if you've met him, he's been deputy head of our vetting section the last couple of years – he asked to borrow it. He rang in later last night to say he thought he was going down with flu. Nobody got around to asking any questions until late today, then… he's gone, his wife's gone, the file's gone."
George walked a slow quiet circuit of the nearest desk. "Where did Massen live?"
"Just outside Reigate. He caught a Victoria train at Redhill every morning, so it sounds as if that girl was telling the truth. The Branch is pulling his house apart by now."
"This is what your D-G's telling the Headmaster?"
"Yes."
George walked another circuit. "The vetting section… that would be how they knew about Tylers appointment. He would have had his vetting topped up as soon as he was chosen… Did this Masson of yours have anything to do with the hounding of Jackaman?"
"I don't know." She wasn't even looking at him, just staring blindly at the wall.
"Well," George said, "at least now we know. You win one, you lose one. I can't say how the Headmaster'll take it, but I don't suppose that file would have told us very much. And they had to blow a prime asset to get it back. It must have been the only copy – funny, that."
"You know how they are about copying machines." Then she suddenly burst out: "What is it about Tyler? I know he's a great military theorist, but anybody would think he was the Pope…"
George looked mildly surprised but ignored the question. Agnes looked as if she might be going to cry; George couldn't have stood that. "It isn't your fault. These things just happen. All you can do is keep on carrying the banner with strange device through snow and ice… peculiarly apposite, on this evening." He had left one of the curtains open so that he could see the snowflakes spiralling down outside. It was a rare and restful sight.
"Oh bollocks." Agnes turned her back and blew her nose vigorously. "You just think that it's something that only happens to the Other Mob. Then when it's somebody in your own service… they'll be serving free champagne in Century House tonight." Agnes's view of the Intelligence Service was that the best of them were merely alcoholic transvestites. George had heard her on the subject often.
"That's out of date. Now have a drink."
She glanced at the tall double doors into the Cabinet Room. "All right. Make it a strong one."
George poured them both stiff whiskies. "Enough ice outside, I imagine. Confusion to the enemy." They both drank. "And what now?"
"We spend the night going through every file that Masson could have known about. And the next night…"
They chatted vaguely until the doors opened and the D-G came out. He looked pale: after Jackaman and now this, his job and reputation were teetering on the high wire. No, George thought, his reputation's already hit the sawdust. The job's all he's got left.
"Would you like a drink, Director-General?"
"No thank you, George. Agnes and 1 will be running along. The Prime Minister said he'd call you in a few minutes."
Politely, George saw them to the front door, then went back to work on the speech. The war in Europe ended on the river Elbe… Our front line is still there… no island has been an island since 1940… Europe's defences are in Europe's hands, not in a begging bowl… Apart from that last phrase, it was still crude and certainly too hawkish. But the strange device on their banner had to be Europe. Not NATO, but Europe, Europe, Europe.
Outside, the snow lay smooth and certain. London would be chaos tomorrow. And he hadn't mentioned that second baboon to Agnes. Now he never would.