After another silence, Jagger said,
"How do you feel about it now?"
"A good question. It embarrasses me slightly, I think. It didn't altogether work the way I'd expected it to. On me, that is. I keep feeling I've gone too far in some way."
"Then you don't really see yourself rushing off some fine morning and dynamiting Westminster Abbey?"
"No, not really. Far too repetitive, for one thing."
"See you stick to that. If you get up to any more of your tricks you might land me in some bad trouble."
"Any…"
"Yes," said Jagger, nodding vigorously. "That's right. You've got it. I'm not going to do anything about it. On account of several considerations. Consideration one. You saved my life just now. I take very kindly to that type of thing. Consideration two. It just so happens I've got it in for God the Father Almighty a bit on my own account. He took my daughter off me the year before last. Thing called disseminated L.E. A disease of the connective tissue. There's not a lot to see, except a red rash on the face that gets worse in the light, so she couldn't go out in the sun. Twenty, she was. Engaged. All that. You know, Hunter, if you ever get round to properly setting up your League you could do worse than rope me in. You can always find me via the Ministry."
"Are you serious?"
"As serious as you."
"Yes. Are there any other considerations?"
"Yes, there's consideration three, which is much more important than the other two. The case is closed. It's better all round that it stays closed. Even if Best recovers we wouldn't bring any charge against him. He was mad at the time of what he's supposed to have done. The real thing, though, is that to have the whole business stirred up all over again might just conceivably interfere with the tremendous success we've had with Operation Apollo."
"Had?" said Hunter. "Aren't you being a bit previous?"
"Oh no. It's succeeded already, old lad. I got the news about an hour ago, just before old Deering started cutting up. I'm afraid I can't say any more. You may find out what I'm talking about in due course. Anyway, we're all highly delighted at the way things have gone. Well. What are you going to do with yourself when this place packs up? I'll tell you what I think you ought to do. Do you mind? I think you ought to get out of the buggering Army and find yourself a nice, decent, steady young somebody and settle down with the somebody. It's been done before now."
Hunter picked up the ewer and filled Jagger's glass.
"You know about style," he said. "But settle down? And throw away the marvelous career I've just opened up for myself? No. I'm going to decide on somewhere nasty, somewhere really very nasty indeed, and get myself sent there. It was being shot at like that that put the idea into my head. I didn't know what it was like before. I found it most interesting in some way I can't quite put my finger on for the moment."
"Sooner you than me. I didn't enjoy myself on that roof one bit, I don't mind telling you. Well…"
After a couple of abortive tries and a bit of shrieking Jagger heaved a loudly ticking watch out of his top pocket and looked at it, then glared at it. He urged himself to his feet.
"Christ," he muttered, "I'll have to run if I'm going to get fed."
"Off tonight, are you?"
"No, I've got a date up at that loony place. It's quite a way, isn't it?"
"Forgive my curiosity, but who's your date with?"
"If anyone wants to know, that fellow Mann, to ask after Best, but really those two pieces in leather who served you your coffee. I ran into them on their way out. I'm afraid I must have spent a bit of time chatting them up when I should have been finding out if you and Leonard needed a hand inside there. Sorry."
"That's all right. You should have an entertaining evening."
"You never know. I suppose you wouldn't fancy changing your mind and coming along to make up the number?"
"No thanks. The setting would be wrong, somehow."
"I see what you mean." Jagger's face became animated. "Here," he said, tapping Hunter on the shoulder, "imagine Leonard not telling us about those two when we were all discussing whether Best was mad or not. Any fellow who dresses women up in that rig-out must be off his trolley. Anyway, you'd think it worth a mention. But Leonard didn't, even though he told me later he had noticed them when he went up to the place for lunch the other day. I pressed him and got him to admit it did strike him at the time as a bit unusual."
"I'm afraid he's rather uninstructed in some ways."
"Now then, you let him be. He's one of the best, is Brian Leonard. He's got first-class stuff in him. The only trouble is, he doesn't seem to get much luck. And that reminds me, my old Max. In the next couple of days you've got the chance of being a real good pal to our Brian. He's going to need one."
"How much do you know about the psychology of the Chinese?" asked Ross-Donaldson.
Leonard hesitated. He was still in a state of unrelieved gloom and foreboding at the ever-present thought of the way he had allowed Deering to steal secrets from under his nose. Bewilderment had been added when he arrived in response to Ross-Donaldson's unexpected summons to find that the latter had had his outer office cleared and an armed guard placed on its door. Leonard's breakfast of eggs bonne femme felt as if it had not quite completed its journey to his stomach.
"Only what I learned in the basic training they give us," he said finally. "I've never done a course on it or anything."
"No. Well, at the risk of covering familiar ground, let me just place the relevant point, which is that they suffer from an unusually wide schemata-data divergence. In practical terms, and as regards their attitudes to the West, this means that their ideology teaches them to despise us and think us stupid, while empirically they're forced into continual ad hoc respect for our efficiency and cunning. Consequently, any project aimed at deceiving them must contain elements of apparent stupidity and elements of apparent cunning in highly critical proportions delicately balanced. Let's just examine those sets of elements in turn as they appear in the project you and I have been concerned with over the past weeks.
"First, the elements of apparent stupidity. At the outset, ostensibly in sole charge of Security arrangements for a uniquely secret Operation, we find you, an inexperienced officer working without assistants. When, later, assistants must obviously be furnished to watch Dr. Best, they're men of tested and proven incompetence. The Chinese agent, Deering, finds no difficulty whatever in becoming your servant, in which position he has at least putative access to your secret files. Your training for this project, by stressing the importance of supposed subtlety and encouraging you to keep those files in the most exposed place possible, ensured that that putative access had the best chance of becoming actual. To a Chinese mind, of course, and to lots of others as well, that supposed subtlety would appear as real stupidity. It was hardly expected that you yourself would train Deering in a highly unsophisticated method of getting at your files, but after some discussion it was agreed that this worked out substantially on the credit side. Finally, there was the almost unbelievable stroke of good fortune whereby you began to concentrate your efforts on Dr. Best, a dangerous man, certainly, but one totally unconnected with the business in hand.