The Secret Servant

"You could have gone to the British consul," Agnes pointed out.
"You mean just walk in and tell some little trade official that my husband's defected to Russia and I think the KGB's after me? Oh no thank you, Agnes. He'd've thought I was mad."
"You could have rung us. You know the number."
There was a tense silence. Maxim got up, switched on a lamp with an old parchment shade, then fumbled the curtains shut. The room took on a warm, firelight glow.
"Perhaps," he said, "you didn't want to risk being the first to break the news."
"I think perhaps that was it," Mrs Masson said gratefully. She swung her feet onto the floor and sat up, flexing her shoulders. "I suppose he might have changed his mind and come back. And anyway, would you have believed me, Agnes?"
"It's our job to believe things like this," Agnes said tunelessly, watching Maxim.
"And there," Mrs Masson said, "they did catch me."
Probably they'd spotted her at the airport but not risked making a pass then. Now they found her alone in a corner of the concourse, searching for change in her handbag. One snatched the the bag, the other stepped in to block her from view, and she thought he had a gun in his hand. Then before she had time to decide whether to scream or not, the bag had been thrown back at her and they were gone, hurrying but not running, and lost in a crowd that looked quickly at her and quickly away, uninvolved.
She was shaking so badly that she could hardly stand as she reached down for the bag to see what they had left her. And the answer was everything – except her little camera.
"Was there a film in it?" Agnes asked.
"Well there was, yes, I'd just put it in. I'd noticed there were only two shots left in it, so I used them taking a picture of the house – I don't suppose they'll come out, in that light – and bought a new film in Victoria."
"What did you do with the old one?" Agnes asked, her voice very controlled.
"It's somewhere in my airline bag. I was going to get it developed."
"We'll do that for you."
There was a distant thump as the police moved some heavy furniture. Mrs Masson shuddered. "It's like having the burglars in, grubbing through your clothes.. Oh, Agnes, just tell me who I married."
Agnes had come down by train and Maxim offered to drop her at Redhill station. His own drive back to London was going to be murder in that weather, and she had the film to develop. Ferris watched, shivering, as he backed a cautious three-point turn among the parked police cars and vanished as they started down the rutted ice of the drive.
"What happens now?" Maxim asked. "I mean to her: What does she live on?"
"Tricky question. I suppose we might get his pension paid to her – somehow. We can do things with money that would have you jailed in more respectable departments. So she could be lucky that far."
As they turned onto the wooded suburban road, the car slid broadside across the camber until it hit the piled snow on the verge. Maxim eased it out with very delicate use of the clutch. "D'you know what she told me, while you were getting your coat? That he made love to her, that last night in Vienna. It seems they hardly ever slept together any more. She thought it might be a sort of fresh start."
"The bastard," Agnes said unemotionally.
"So probably he guessed she wouldn't go with him."
"Always leave them laughing."
 
17
It was past nine o'clock when he parked in the bright, wide empty stretch of Whitehall. The journey had been a crawling chaos, even though he was running against the commuter tide, but central London was spookily quiet in the snow. It could have been three in the morning.
For once there were no tourists, just the policeman stamping his feet and punching his gloved hands together outside Number 10. Maxim went through to George's room, but there was only the duty clerk there.
"They're in the Cabinet Room, Major. Would you go straight in?"
Back down the corridor to the corner, where visitors to the Cabinet Room passed through the haughty marble gaze of Wellington – whom the French politely believed was Julius Caesar – and tapped on the door. George shouted: "Come!"
He and Agnes were alone in the tall room, seated together at the near end of a vast boat-shaped table, with red-leather-padded dining chairs all around it. There was a scatter of glossy black-and-white prints on the brown baize tabletop.
"D'you want a drink? I should think you must." George waved at a trolley of bottles and glasses by the fireplace. There wasn't any beer, so Maxim mixed himself a long whisky and water.
"That's the film, is it?"
"See what you make of that." George shoved a photograph into his hand.
It was a negative print, white lettering on black. It seemed to be a straightforward typed document, with unfamiliar numbers and letters as references, then a heading.
Gerald Jackaman
Maxim sat down and began to read. The print was almost life size and only slightly blurred by the grain.
When he'd finished he said: "We knew just about all this already. You could have worked this up from the files."
"It gets better later," Agnes said. She seemed surprisingly cheerful.
George pawed among the prints and thrust another one at Maxim. "Try that for size." Agnes's cheerfulness certainly wasn't infectious.
This page began: Joint account in the names of Gerald and Mary Jackaman at Compte Nationale d'Escompte, Boulevard Heurteloup, Tours. The rest was a mixture of figures – mostly francs and dates – which Maxim might have been able to analyse if he had the time. But he felt he had to say something.
"There's no classification," he said, inspired.
"The Other Mob," Agnes said, "don't classify their documents. They regard every piece of paper they handle as above and beyond NATO Cosmic. I believe they file used loo paper under-"
"Shut up" George said.
"This was put together by MI6, then?"
"In direct contradiction to a hands-off order distributed by the Headmaster. Then, in a rare fit of brotherly love, they showed it to Box 500-"
"Massen probably asked for it," Agnes said.
"With what excuse?"
She shrugged. "Nobody believes excuses in our trade so you don't usually give them."
"What a beautiful world."
"If you want to send a gunboat instead, go right ahead and send a gunboat."
Hoping he was peace-making, Maxim asked: "Has the Prime Minister seen this?"
George glowered. "He's still at the House. There's the Defence debate on, remember?"
"Yes. Sorry." Maxim realised that George, as the PM's defence adviser, would far rather have been down there playing nanny. "I'm not used to the idea that debates really happen except in the newspapers, and that people have to be there to make them happen."
"You share that simple failing with most of the Honourable Members of Parliament. At one time, there were only seventeen, seventeen of them in the Chamber while the Defence Secretary was speaking. And this is about war and peace, the lot, everything."
"Perhaps," Agnes said, "they've just come to realise that it's the civil service and the trade unions who run the country."
"What?"
"Just a quote from our latest traitor."
George stared at her, then got heavily to his feet. "I need a drink."
Agnes caught Maxim's eye and smiled gently. "We're waiting for a gentleman from Six to come round and explain his service's little antics. Don't stay if you can't stand the sight of blood."
Maxim smiled back, sipped his drink and looked around. The room seemed cold, or perhaps it was just that it was so empty. He had been in here only once before, being 'shown around' by George. It was longer than the Private Secretaries' room next door, but built in exactly the same style except for two incongruous pairs of pillars holding up the ceiling at one end where a wall had been knocked down to add an extra few feet. The walls were painted oyster white and had only one picture, a portrait of Sir Robert Walpole, over the fireplace. The writhing brass chandeliers had been put in by Sir Anthony Eden, he remembered George saying. He wondered if the cleaners had got around to thanking him yet.