Ferrebee was looking down at Scott-Scobie as if he were a blocked lavatory. "There was a time when a statement by the Primate of All England on the morality of a given foreign policy was, had to be, taken seriously."
"There was a time," Scott-Scobie said, suddenly morose, "when the word of an Englishman meant something. It meant that, no matter what he'd said, he'd act in his own best interests. It doesn't even mean that, now. Berlin today, Sodbury-in-the-Wold tomorrow. I think I'll become a drunk like George."
George couldn't even summon up the spirit to feel offended.
13
Old pilots, ones who first trained on slow propeller-engined aircraft, cannot watch the countryside flowing past a train or car window without subconsciously evaluating fields for an emergency landing: length, slope, obstructions on approach, surface… It is much the same for career soldiers: to Maxim, the low steep Cotswold hills with their clumps of woodland were close-combat country, difficult for tanks and air reconnaissance, needing tight control to attack. It reminded him of the north bank of the Marne, around Château Thierry and Belleau Wood where the German advance of 1918 had been fought to a halt and the American Marines had left one of the most impressive cemeteries of the war. Battles in such countryside would always leave impressive cemeteries; you got too close to take prisoners.
Miss Dorothy Tuckey's 'cottage'-an honorary title in the Cotswolds just as 'Colonel' is in Texas-sat in a web of low walls like roots of the building spreading above ground. Just across one wall were the trimmed yews and squat tower of a church, so perhaps it had originally been built for the verger. Like the village beyond and everything they had passed for the last ten miles, it was made of local limestone, grey-yellow as if the bleak sky had seeped into the stone the moment it had been cut from the earth. Indeed, given the mossy sway-backed roof and baize-green lawns, the sky was the only thing that saved the cottage from looking as charming as a kitten in a basket; George had pronounced the gusty showers as "typical Cotswold weather" before they had cleared London.
The figure in the front garden was very different from the Miss Tuckey Maxim remembered at the Fort. Squatand booted, an old anorak rucked up above a wide trouser seat and the hood pulled lopsidedly over her tall curls, she was eyeing the flowerbeds with the grim resolve of a drill corporal meeting a recruit platoon.
"Mr Harbinger?" Spectacles and teeth glinted damply under the hood. "I won't try to shake hands. It's such a mess, I haven't even started on the bulbs… Hello, I've met you before." She beamed at Maxim. "You were on course at the Fort. Jabberwock, wasn't it?"
George introduced Maxim properly, then stood in the drizzle to enthuse over the roses while Maxim, who hadn't touched a garden since the age of six, shuffled his feet on the flagged path. It pleased Miss Tuckey, but he was glad when she took them inside and made tea.
"Now what brings the War House out here on a Saturday afternoon?"
George coughed and said gruffly, "I'd like you to be quite sure who I am"-he handed over his Mo D pass -"and I'm going to sound a bit pompous and mention the Official Secrets Acts-"
"Oh yes, I have to sign a declaration every time the Army takes me on for another job. I think I've got the gist of them by now. "
"Good. But I want to emphasise the need-to-know principle and ask you not to discuss this business with anybody except myself. Not even Harry here, if you can't get me. And if nothing morecornesof it, perhaps you'd just forget we were ever here… I'm sorry to sound melodramatic. "
Miss Tuckey laughed a blast of cigarette smoke. "I've spent most of my life getting mixed up in things that sound melodramatic from the outside. Carry on."
But it wasn't that easy for George. He took a thin sheaf of badly typed-by himself- papers from his briefcase and shuffled them as if reluctant to let them go. He had, although he would have snorted at the idea, a civil servant's fundamental fear of seeming ridiculous. It might have been his subconscious self, being more honest, who had insisted on Maxim giving up a day with his son to come and make sure he went through with this.
"I've gotrésumésof… ah, happenings, spread over the last two months which I'd like you to look at. See if you can give an opinion on whether they're related."
"Happenings?" She leant to take the papers but George clung on to them. "In my sort of field? Do you mean acts of sabotage?"
"Er… could I just say 'covert acts'? The word'déstabilisation'has been mentioned…"
"A carpet-bag word these days, Mr Harbinger. If you only have a list ofhappenings-is that the latest Whitehall word?-it's likely to be very incomplete. I don't mean that unkindly: déstabilisationis usually a very wide affair, trying to change a whole climate of opinion, and you use as many methods as you can. You spread rumours that somebody is too old for the job-as a faction seems to be doing about a certain church-warden in this village, although they'd be horrified to think they were using the tactics of the more activist intelligence agencies."
"But not only rumours?"
"Oh no. That's just one element. At the other end of the spectrum, terrorism is also destabilising: blackmailing a government into changing a policy, or destroying the government by showing it can't maintain law and order. Are your happenings doing that?"
"Ah-no."
Miss Tuckey pondered. "I'm not too sure how much help I can be… I preach Resistance against illegal governments; déstabilisationis a way of putting in an illegal government. Of course, there may be some overlap of basic techniques in the field of secret behaviour… Well, I can but try. "
But George stayed clutching the papers. "If you could just… see if there appears to be any pattern, any direction…"
Miss Tuckey raised her eyebrows above her elegant glasses. "Surely, if any pattern of events were directed against the State, it would be for the Security Service to make a judgement?"
George snorted. "Not with that old blatherskite in command. And that's really why I didn't want to become too official at this point…" Since he found it difficult to be unofficial without sounding more official than usual, healmost added 'in time' but stopped himself, in time. "So if you'd be kind enough…?" At last he let go of the papers.
Once you have a low-ceilinged rambling room with a big fireplace and leaded windows, it would probably look 'cosy' if you furnished it with one of Security's ICL2980 computer banks. As it was, Miss Tuckey had left the furnishing to time: the room seemed to have been filled by inheritance, travel, and the need for things to put things in and on. George was wallowing on a shapeless chintz sofa, while Maxim sat in a 'modern' Danish chair that looked more out of date after twenty years than did the Regency table under the window-a north window, to protect the rosewood top from the sun-where Miss Tuckey spread out the papers. She lit another cigarette and called over her shoulder: "Help yourself to more tea, please."
George made one polite wriggle like a beached whale and let Maxim pour, then wander round to look at the pictures and books. There were lots of both, by now covering all but a few per cent of the yellowing wallpaper so that redecorating the room was virtually impossible. There were engravings of Frenchchâteaux, water-colours of the Holy Land and Scotland in the style of travelling clerics and maiden aunts, and photographs in whatever frames happened to fit them: a college graduation group, portraits of men and women in 1945 uniforms, other small groups in more modern plain clothes.
"You've included the Reznichenko Memorandum," Miss Tuckey commented. "Do you have any… particular reason for that?"
"I'd prefer if you'd just judge fof yourself," George said politely, "from what shows above the surface."