"They've been there. I don't know what they asked, I didn't get to talk to the boys… maybe they'll think they filled each other in, I don't know. If nobody makes a complaint… What are you going to say?"
"Nothing if nobody else does. " Maxim had a sore forearm and. stomach, a slight headache and a torn seam in his lightweight jacket. "I'll send you the tailor's bill."
"You do that, Major,"Dannsaid heavily. "You do that."
"And I still want to know where Ronnie Blagg is."
"So do I. I'm not arsing you around, I just don't know. When we got him out of here, a couple of the boys had a cuppa with him at a caff down the road. An hour later, he rings in, he says he thinks somebody's following him. That's all. Nobody's seen him. I said something to the lads, I don't knowwhat, like your people had caught up with him… They must've got the idea from that, called Dave Tanner and got him to set you up… I mean it was stupid, just plain wet-nappy stupid. "
"D'you have any idea where he might have gone?"
"He had a mate in the country. Kent, I think. "
"I know that one. He's not there."
"Was it your people? I mean the Military Police – what's the Army call them: the Redcaps?"
"Actually the Army calls them 'those fucking MPs'. No, they wouldn't have followed him, they'd have grabbed him. He belongs to them, now. I don't know who it was. " He took a drink. "You can't think of anybody else he might go to?"
"Tanner, he'd be the only one. "
There was a silence. Dannlooked at Maxim's glass, then took a bottle of gin from a desk drawer and refilled his own. He wasn't a drinking man. At fifty-five his stomach was as flat as an ironing board. He took a big swallow and sighed.
Maxim asked carefully: "Did he see you before he went to the country, when he first came back from Germany?"
Dannconsidered. "Just a minute or two."
"Did he say anything why he deserted?"
"He said… This is unofficial? – I really mean that."
"Yes."
"Well, he said he might've killed somebody. "
"He told me he had, quite sure. "
Dannlooked relieved, then curious. "And you didn't tell nobody?"
"Not officially."
"I'm buggered if I understand that Army of yours."
"Me too. But you were never in the services yourself?"Dann wascertainly the age for National Service, if not the war itself.
He tapped his left ear. "I've got about twenty per cent hearing in this one, that's what they said last time. That happened in the ring, we didn't have head-guards in those days. When I was just seventeen. That's why I took up PE, training. Another punch and I could've lost the lot. " Could you have been a contender?"
Dannthought for a moment. "You have to say yes. You have to believe it. But how much does anybody else know about… about Ron and this business?"
"I've read the German papers and there's nothing been said, so we don't think they've made the connection. So if you see Ron, tell him if he goes back and keeps shut-up, he'll only have the AWOL to answer for. But I'd still rather talk to him myself."
Dannnodded slowly, then asked:"Who d'you mean by 'we'?"
Maxim grinned suddenly at the idea of dragging George openly into this. "Nobody's who going public on it. So if he does get in touch…" He stood up and wriggled carefully. "I'm stiffening up. I'd do better to jog home than drive."
Dannstood up, too. "You did better against those… thosetwats than I'd've expected. Some of them must be near half your age. I still don't like you much, Major, but I don't say I've liked most of the best fighters I've trained. In a way, I won't say I like Ron too much, and he could have been a contender. "
"In its small way, the Army also contends. You've still got my number in case anything comes up? It could be important. And still unofficial. "
He walked slowly towards the hall, stretching at each step like a newly awakened cat. He had an early appointment the next day.
Chapter 9
Agnes Algar had dressed with particular care on Friday morning. She chose a slightly flared skirt of fawn flannel, plain white silk shirt with a demurely high neckline, a jacket in soft pastel-brown tweed with a standing collar, absolutely plain but very expensive Italian court shoes and a matching handbag that was small enough to be ladylike but not so small as to seem frivolous. Around her neck she put a thin early Victorian gold chain, on her right hand a fire opal she had recently had reset in a simple gold ring, on her left wrist the gold Baume amp;Mercierwatch.
Agnes thought of her clothes and jewellery in such terms, just as she thought of her car as a two-year-old 3-door Chevette ES in Regatta Blue with wing mirrors and two radio aerials. She lived in a world of detail and precision, of getting the names right and the appearances correct, and had done ever since she joined the Security Service straight from Oxford fourteen years before. She would have described herself quite objectively as aged 35 and looking neither older nor younger, height 5 feet 4 and usually just under nine stone with a figure that was well kept rather than dramatic. Her hair was light ginger and she had long ago given up trying to curl it; she had a snub nose and blue eyes in an oval face that was cheerful but perhaps forgettable. But being forgettable was part of her job; a jigsaw piece that fitted invisibly into any puzzle.
However, that morning Agnes intended to be neither forgettable nor invisible. Only a few hours earlier an unexpected Meeting Notice had been issued, the agenda being simply 'To consider the conduct of Major H. R. Maxim'. Since her job was to maintain liaison with Number 10, which made Maxim technically a colleague, she was to represent the Security Service at the meeting. She had no idea what that 'conduct' had been – a few early morning phone calls had produced more bad language than information – but she knew what 'to consider' meant in Whitehall, and frankly Harry had had it coming. Not that she had anything against him. She had no prejudice against any of the Army's trigger-happy desperadoes – not in the right place. Number10just wasn't that place, and she didn't mind who heard her say so.
But what concerned her even more was that the Notice had shown the meeting would includetwo members of the Secret Intelligence Service. That sounded bad. Long ago, the legend said, the security (or spy-catching) service and the espionage (or spy-hiring) service had been born next door to each other in rooms 5 and 6 of the corridor where Military Intelligence first nested in Whitehall. Nostalgically, the old door numbers still stuck among the mass of code and jargon names slapped on the services since then. Thus the Intelligence Service could be MI6, just Six, or The Firm, The Friends (said with a knowing, slightly twisted, smile) or, if you were one of Agnes's mob, the Other Mob.
That is, unless you happened to be about to meet them across a conference table. Then you reminded yourself that they were a bunch of gilded pederasts who spent what little time they could spare from betraying the country's secrets in stealing the Security Service's territory, influence and share of the Secret Funds. If it had ever existed, the cosy Whitehall corridor was long gone, though Agnes sometimes wondered what it would be like to concern herself with frustrating only other countries' spies. But she always dropped the thought as frivolous speculation.
"The room was swept just three days ago," the uniformed messenger said, and Sir Anthony Sladen thanked him automatically, although everybody knew the remark was meaningless. Listening devices didn't grow like bacteria: they had to be planted. The room might have been 'swept' three minutes or three months ago, but what mattered was what had happened since then. Three minutes is a lifetime to a good wire man.