The Secret Servant

"Could you tell me why you began all this?" He wasn't at all sure it was the right question.
She looked up, sharp and sly, and reached into her handbag. "I'm not breaking any law, Major, not a single bloody one. Because do you know what is the best book I've ever read in my life? It is this book, Major Harry of the British Army."
She waggled an Irish passport in his face.
"When I married I got dual nationality, but Ireland won't let you have but one passport so of course I had to have a British one. But now, now I'm back home again. And I'm not breaking one single Irish law, Mister Major Harry." She took a triumphant swig of beer.
"That doesn't tell me why you approached them."
"I don't have to tell you any reason at all."
"No."
She stared ahead through the windscreen at the misty hills on the far side of the Lough. "It is a gentle land. And now at last it is making some money. Have you been here long enough to see that?"
Maxim nodded. Every little house he had passed seemed freshly painted and the cars on the road were new and shiny and plenty of them. It had impressed him.
"He promised that when he retired," she went on, "we should buy a place here, in the old country. He had been very careful about his life insurance. But do you know what happens to life insurance when you are driven to suicide, Major Harry?"
It was as simple as that. Agnes's Mob had robbed her of a husband and a second home and real security. Of course she hated them, and this was a beautiful two-pronged revenge because it could turn into money as well.
"I'm sorry about that," he said lamely. "I hadn't thought…"
"They could do it to you, too."
"Not quite…" Maxim squeezed the steering-wheel very tight for a moment. "And… have they made you an offer yet? We know they want that letter badly."
"What letter?"
"The letter about Professor Tyler. If we aren't talking about that, then I'm sorry to have troubled you."
He watched her as she carefully and rather drunkenly tried to work out whether it was in her interest to lie to him.
"The funny thing," he went on, "is that Tyler says the thing must be a fake. He never even knew that chap in Canada, whats-his-name…"
"Etheridge," she said automatically.
"That's him." Maxim tried to keep his voice calm. "Tyler says publish and be damned. Anybody who does will just make fools of themselves."
"You're a bloody liar," she growled.
"I'm not," Maxim lied. "But Tyler could be, I suppose."
"Somebody bloody is," she said, suddenly happy. "Or why would he be wanting to buy it off me as well?"
Oh God, why hadn't he thought of that, of her offering it to Tyler as well? If she was trying to turn the letter into money then an auction was so obvious…
"You're into a rather high-stakes game, Mrs Jackaman," he said thoughtfully, "trying to play off Professor Tyler against the KGB. They won't mind a bit of argy-bargy about money – they're quite used to that – and they don't have cash-flow problems. But had you thought how they'd feel if they believed they were going to lose, not going to get the letter? They've already been looking for you, ever since you contacted them."
She glanced at him suspiciously.
"Oh yes. All the letters and classified ads and telephone calls aren't what they really want: they want to meet you. And a lonely houseboat is just where they'd choose. We knew you were in the Shannon area because the defector told us. After that, it took me just two and a half hours of phoning around until I found out just where-"
"Who told you?"
"It wasn't their fault; they didn't know you wanted it kept a secret. The point is that if I can do it, anybody can."
She brooded on that for a moment. "I'm getting cold. Can we go back?"
"Of course." The car skidded across the greasy grass as he turned around onto the road.
He walked her to the gangplank and as she unlocked the door she said: "You'd better come in and get warm, Major."
They went through a small cabin that was just for summertime, with big windows and wicker furniture that had once been gilded. Then down past a tiny kitchen – or galley? – into the main cabin. It was stuffed with furniture and as precisely tidied as a Victorian parlour. Everything that could be centred – the fruit bowl on the table – was centred, everything that could be polished was polished, and the books and magazines in the shelves stood as rigid as Guardsmen at a Trooping.
From the corner, she said: "I'm having a small Jameson – will you join me?"
"Yes, please." He moved carefully through the cabin and sat on an utterly un-seagoing chair at the table. None of the furniture was particularly good, or even matching, but it was clean. Probably she had nothing else to do, except drink. A warm paraffin smell crept up on him; she had turned up an unseen heater.
"Well, Major Harry," she put a heavy glass down before him, on a small embroidered mat to save the table surface. "Well, and what do you really want me to do?"
"Tell me what's happened to the letter."
"Ah, now that would be telling." She smiled coyly.
"Will you sell it to us? You know there are secret funds for this sort of thing."
"Perhaps I've sold it already. I might have sold it to Professor Tyler, mightn't I?" She took a big sip of neat whisky. "Shall I tell you something about Professor Tyler, Major Harry? He gets people killed."
"I don't think he had anything to do with your husband's death."
"He put the Security people onto him."
"I doubt he did, Mrs Jackaman. Your husband was making his objections to Tyler in the Whitehall circuit. Not in Tyler's world."
"It's the same thing." She got up to refill her glass. He waited until she came back.
"Has that letter really gone to the Russians?"
"You're thinking like an Englishman, Major Harry."
"If they ever come across the Elbe, Mrs Jackaman, do you think they're going to stop at Holyhead?"
She sloshed the whisky around in her glass, looking moodily down at it. "Do you know what Gerald wrote before he died? Do you know that? No, of course you don't. You never saw it and nobody else did either. Except me. Now you're going to ask me why I didn't show it to the police. A bloody silly question, Major Harry Whatsit. Bloody silly." Quietly, she had gone over the top into real drunkenness. Maxim sat still and folded his hands around his glass.
"I can translate it for you, Major Harry. I can remember it. He said that the Security Service had been planting money in our French account just to discredit him. He'd found they'd been doing that. Now what do you think ofthat, Major Harry?"
Maxim took his time answering.
"But it wasn't, Mrs Jackaman. It was you, putting in money without him knowing."
She stared at him with watery red, deep-sunk eyes. "I should have had to get to the bank statements from the Compte Nationale before he did."
"I think you did. You must have handled that side of the marriage anyway, or you wouldn't have risked it."
"And where do you think I got that much money?"
"Nobody said anything about how much money." There was a long silence while she frowned and tried to remember, then took a mouthful of whisky and shrugged. Maxim went on: "It was probably an inheritance or selling property in your own family, over here. It might be easier to move money out of Ireland to France. I don't think it's any more legal."
Outside, the afternoon was beginning to darken, and a new wind made the water slap irregularly but monotonously against the metal hull. She eased out from the crowded table and went to the corner cupboard, then came back without having refilled her glass.
"All right," she said wearily. "What do you want me to do?" She took a small orange from the bowl and began tearing the skin off; the sudden sharp smell cut through that of paraffin.