"As head of department, you'll want to discourage idle speculation."
"Yes, sir."
Lighting a cigarette, the P.U.S. said, "Thank you, Peter, for your guessing game about Carew's boy. If it needs to be taken further I'll handle it. You don't have to concern yourself with the matter. By the by, Peter, you probably heard that there's going to be a gap in Nairobi. Needs a most responsible and sensitive man to fill it. Quite a posting for a youngish man, don't you think, eh, Peter?"
They shook hands, the P.U.S. smiled a watery smile.
Furneaux went down into the underground and bought a ticket. He shrugged. Every man had a price. And he was not much of a mountaineer himself.
•**
The Director General scraped with a match at the mess in the stem of his pipe, and listened.
"Let me give you a scenario. Young Curwen has gone to South Africa, unconfirmed, but possible, and you will check it at once. Through his work he is familiar with explosives, that we know. A bomb goes off in Johannesburg and is rumoured to have been planted by a White. For the sake of our scenario let us assume that James Carew is to hang on Thursday, at the moment intending to take his secret to his grave, and let us assume that young Curwen is arrested in the hours remaining before the execution. What chance then, if they put the screws on him, so to say, that Carew would remain silent?"
The P.U.S. had cut short his lunch and driven to Century House for the meeting. Still the Director General said nothing.
"Or the related scenario: Carew hangs and Curwen is subsequently arrested. How much does the boy know? He met Sandham; Sandham knew only so much and probably hadn't told him. Would the boy talk?"
"Probably."
"I believe it is back to Downing Street, Director General."
"For what earthly reason?"
The Director General filled his pipe. It was a mechanical action. His eyes were never on the bowl, but none of the tobacco fibres fell to the polished surface of his desk.
"I don't intend to finish my career in an expose on the front page of Sunday's newspapers. Never forget, Director General, our job is to advise and to execute. The politicians are paid to make decisions, whatever a ham-fisted job they make of it. Keep this one in the dark and I reckon we'll get swamped by home-flying chickens. Lay it all before them and we safeguard ourselves and possibly them too. I'll fix an appointment for early evening."
"If the Prime Minister's schedule permits."
"No problem. Any Prime Minister I've worked with would meet one in a dressing gown at four in the morning if the matter under consideration involves an intelligence foul-up."
When the P.U.S. had gone, the Director General called in his personal assistant and named a man who was to be called to his office immediately.
•**
Major Swart read the telex.
They'd had to stop once at a service station on the way back to London. Heavy stuff, English beer. He read the telex, then went back to his private lavatory, and back again to the telex.
Shit, and he was half cut. He was never at his best after he had drunk at lunchtime.
He knew the name of Curwen. Checked it out, hadn't he, days before. Checked and found that Mrs Hilda Perry had been married to a James Curwen. Thought he'd cracked the connection between James Carew and Hilda Perry. Had it all sewn up until he had taken the photograph of James Carew to the village in Hampshire and been told four times that the photograph was not that of James Curwen. From Somerset House he knew there was a son of the marriage between Hilda Perry and James Curwen, he knew from those same records that the son had been christened Jack.
Johannesburg wanted information on a Jack Curwen.
They wanted background, and they wanted confirmation of a photo-fit likeness.
Major Swart could have sent off an answer straight away
… But he wanted to piss again… He reckoned he could have established the link between Jack Curwen and Hilda Perry and a letter written from Pretoria Central by James Carew.
With too much beer inside him, and a foul temper still from the encounter at the funeral, he chose a different course.
He would first stitch the matter, then he would send his message.
He would stitch it so tight that there were no call backs, no demands for follow up information.
He rang Erik. Yes, the bloody man had replaced his bloody television set. Yes, Erik would be at the embassy within forty-five minutes. He shouted down the corridor to Piet that if he had plans, life or death, for the late evening then he should bloody well forget them.
And then hastily back to his private lavatory, fumbling with his private key, to leak.
•**
He came heavily down the staircase. A beautiful staircase, oak, probably Jacobean, he thought.
The hostility swarmed from the short, slight woman. The hostility was in the wrinkle lines at her throat, and in the flash of her eyes, and the curl of a tired mouth.
"I hope you're satisfied. I hope you understand why he couldn't come to London to see you."
Mrs Fordham had told the Director General over the telephone that the colonel was ill and could not take a train to London. He hadn't believed her.
They stood in the panelled hallway. He thought the house and its interior were magnificent. Perhaps she read him.
"It was all my money, my family's money. The colonel wasn't interested in material reward, all he cared about was the Service. The Service was his life. And how did the Service repay his dedication? There wasn't even a party for him. More than two decades of work and the Service simply discarded him. We've had just one visit from the Service since he was thrown out, and that was some grubby little man who came here to see that there weren't any classified documents in the house."
The Director General was still shaken by the sight of the shell of the man he had just seen in the large bedroom.
Colonel Fordham, curled in a wheelchair near the window, unable to move and unable to speak, had kicked the fight from the Director General.
"It's a great shame, Mrs Fordham, that you didn't feel able to alert us…"
"I wouldn't have had your people in the house."
They moved towards the front door. No way he was going to be offered a cup of tea. Of course they had retired the crass old fool, and years too late at that. A dinosaur, really, who believed the Service was still packing off agents to suborn the Bolshevik revolution or to run around the hillsides of Afghanistan.
"I came to ask for specific information."
"Then you wasted your journey."
"There was one man who was very close to your husband."
"I'm not a part of the Service, and at this time of the afternoon I have to bath Basil."
She dared him to stay. The Director General smiled. He fell back on his rarely used reservoir of charm. Outside his chauffeur and his bodyguard would be waiting for him, enjoying the thermos and a smoke. God, and he'd be glad to be back with them.
"The man who was close to your husband was called James Curwen. I understand he went by the nickname of
'Jeez'. I need your help, Mrs Fordham."
He saw the same short slight woman, but hurt. He saw her fingers make a tight fist, loosen, grip again.
"That's what did it to him," her voice quavered. "It wasn't long after he'd been dismissed."
"He read of the arrest in the papers?"
"He'd read The Times. He didn't finish his breakfast that morning. He walked out into the garden. It was about twenty minutes later that I went looking for him. He'd just collapsed, the dogs were with him. What you've just seen, he's been like that ever since."
"You didn't tell us."
"After what you'd done to him?"
"You knew Curwen?"
She shrugged. "He lived here when he came back from Albania, before he went to South Africa. He was a sort of batman to Basil, and he did jobs in the house and he drove the car and did things outside."