The Secret Servant

The man from the Intelligence Service said his name was Guy Husband, so perhaps it was. He was about forty, gangling and donnish, wearing an expensive tweed sportscoat that was rumpled and smeared with pipe ash. He had a high forehead, a breaking wave of wiry brown hair and a long nose. His teeth were rather yellow, and he tapped them constantly with his pen.
"In fact," he said, "this shouldn't really have been circulated at all, even on a limited basis. One might say that it wasn't really developed."
"That's what one might say, might one?" George asked coldly.
"I only meant that our researches are far from complete. I think it was a mistake to pass it on to our sister service-" he smiled at Agnes; "-and indeed, we now know it was a mistake, bearing in mind the loyalties of the man on whose desk it landed." He smiled again.
"Oh quite, " George agreed. "The Headmaster will be, one might say, interested to know that the only way he can find out what his Intelligence Service is up to is by routing through the house of a traitor."
"Well, I don't really think-"
"Particularly when it turns out that they're working on an operation that he has specifically forbidden."
Husband smiled and gave a coquettish wriggle of you-and-I-know-what-prime-ministers-will-be-old-boy. "I do understand that it was Box 500 that was told to cease and desist."
"It was distributed!" George snapped. He took a deep breath. "All right. This material-" he slapped a hand on the glossy prints; "-hasn't got a summary. Give me one."
"I did say it was undeveloped."
"When the Prime Minister gets back here I would like to have something to say to him other than suggest he gets your Director-General around to tell him personally. Just give me everything you've got, developed, undeveloped or still stuck in the mangle."
"We-ell," Husband took a folded paper from an inside pocket. "What it boils down to is that Jackaman had a perfectly legal bank account in France. They owned a holiday cottage in the valley of Loire, and Exchange Control allows one to have funds over there to pay the plumber and window-cleaner and so on… A very nice part of the world."
"I know the Loire valley. Get on with it."
"Ah… then they sold the cottage a couple of years ago, and brought the money back into this country. Unless they were buying something else there, that's legally what they had to do. But the account was allowed to stay open: there would be lingering debts, legal fees and so on. Quite normal. But then the account started building up again. Now, I'm sure you appreciate that France isn't Switzerland-"
"Dear God," George breathed; "although I was not born with football studs growing out of my feet like most people who read Geography, I do know the difference between France and Switzerland. Get on"
Untroubled, Husband continued. "France has nothing like Switzerland's ideas of banking secrecy, nothing like even our own, which really aren't very impressive. They seem to be most amenable. As I say, in the last eighteen months the account has grown, not regularly, but fairly steadily, until it now stands at something a little over fifteen thousand pounds – at the current rate of exchange."
"This would be a non-resident account?" Maxim asked. "Usually only fed with money from abroad?"
"That's quite right. You would need French exchange control permission to put in francs."
"But the account itself can be in francs? Safe from any devaluation of sterling?"
"Oh yes."
"How the hell do you know this, Harry?" George demanded.
"I've spent more of my life abroad than you have, I expect."
There was a short silence. Husband watched Maxim covertly, intrigued to find him in on a meeting at this level. Over at Six, they still weren't sure what to make of the Downing Street soldier.
"And this was all clearly illegal?" George asked.
"In British law, yes."
Agnes said: "Clumsy, too."
"I agree there are more subtle ways of secreting money abroad, but it probably wouldn't have come to light unless we – I'm sorry, I mean first your service – had started looking."
"When was the last payment made?" George asked.
"Last year, shortly before Jackaman died."
"Is there any suggestion," Maxim asked, "that Jackaman was taking Moscow gold?"
Husband and Agnes looked quickly at each other, then shook their heads. This at least was one thing they agreed on. She said: "No. The Centre would never let one of their people do anything so risky."
"So the money now belongs to Mrs Jackaman?"
"A nice point," Husband smiled. "As a true patriot, one really ought to tell the Inland Revenue that Jackaman's estate is some fifteen thousand pounds larger than they first thought. However, perhaps one doesn't want to drag the Jackaman name any further in the dust."
"One doesn't," George said. "Not unless one wants one's Director-General around here on his hands and knees pleading for a job scrubbing out the loos."
Husband's boyish smile became a little strained.
Agnes asked: "Has probate been granted?"
"Yes. He left quite a small estate, but very tidy. Most of the money was tied up in the English house. It's for sale now."
"Where's Mrs Jackaman?" Maxim asked.
Husband now had no smile at all, and his voice was petulant. "You see, that was one of the reasons why we regarded this material as being undeveloped. Her pension is paid into the local bank, but she hasn't drawn any of it out, yet. Their only child lives in America now, and-"
"You mean," Agnes said sweetly, "that you have no bloody idea at all."
 
18
"And that", Agnes said after Husband had gone, "is all that stands between us and the Red Peril."
"There's me and my pistol as well," Maxim volunteered.
George said: "He obviously isn't a field man."
"He isn't even a field mouse."
"They've got some good men over there. I tell you, you're just being old-fashioned." George poured them all another round of drinks and looked impatiently at his watch. "Why the hell don't they broadcast debates? At least they could do it on a land-line to here and the Cabinet Office and the Departments. All right, where are we now?"
Maxim had been picking through the photographs – which Husband had made a feeble attempt to take with him, since they were his service's documents – and found that they spent half a page on Mrs Jackaman's background. Until then he'd known nothing about her except that Who's Who gave her family name as Brennan. He read it carefully.
"We assume," Agnes said, "that Greyfriars' interest in Jackaman is because of their interest in Tyler. And that centres on the famous Tyler letter."
"If it still exists," George said quickly.
Maxim lifted his head. "It sounded from what Zuzana Kindl said that the KGB had only just heard about it. And they weren't working directly on Tyler at that time. So they either tripped over it or somebody…" he let the idea hang in the air like an unmentionable smell.
"Could it have been your little chum Charles Farthing?" George asked hopefully.
"No. He's a bit of a nutter, but a patriotic nutter. He didn't think Tyler was pure enough in heart for us."
"You don't think Greyfriars actually have this letter?"
Agnes said: "I doubt they'd be going through all this hoop-de-ha if they had it already." She looked at Maxim, who shrugged and went back to the blurred typescript in the photograph.
"It all comes back to Mrs Jackaman," Agnes said remorselessly. "If anybody's got that letter, it's most likely her."
"Why did Jackaman commit suicide in the first place?" Maxim asked.
"Or, of course," Agnes added, "the last place."
"Because," George began with the reined-in patience of a kindergarten teacher, "Box 500 confronted him with rumours of his illegal French bank account."