"It was nothing like that," Maxim said with huge relief.
"I suppose I read too many thrillers, but in the end I'd convinced myself you'd got too tough and killed somebody and George was mixed up in that!" She laughed cheerily.
"Ha, ha," Maxim agreed feebly.
Back at the Barracks, Maxim had to wait until after midnight before he had the officers' mess video machine to himself. He ran through the sequence of the shots, listening carefully and timing the spacing with the seconds hand of his watch. Then he picked up a long poker from the fireplace and held it like a rifle when he played the tape again. At each shot he jerked the 'rifle' up, as the recoil would kick it, then re-aimed as fast as he could.
"So you've finally lost your last marble," a voice said from the far end of the room. It was the duty officer, prowling with a cup of tea in his hand. Shamefaced, Maxim twirled the poker casually.
"It's that SAStraining," the duty officer went on. "Learning to live on seaweed and beetles. Bound to have an effect. Can I help by uttering a strangled cry and falling at your feet? Anything for one of the Army'sélite."
"Piss off," Maxim suggested.
"Or have I stumbled on the trials of the Regiment's new secret weapon? Fear not, my lips are sealed. Gad, I never realised what Total War really meant until this moment…"
Maxim left him cackling and slopping his tea with mirth. In his room he unpacked the little portable typewriter that had once been Jenny's, and stared at a blank paper until his embarrassment had faded. Then he began to tap: 'I. The range from the firing point to where the rounds impacted was between 35 metres (the shot that hit Barling) and 30 metres (the ones that hit the pillar)…'
Twenty minutes later he had reached paragraph 9 when a voice from the next room told him that if he were typing anything other than his bloody resignation he should bloody well do it at a more civilised bloody hour. It sounded a senior voice; Maxim went to bed.
18
"All very competent," George said, "though I don't find any significance in the intervals between the shots-but what does it all prove?"
"That they wanted to kill Barling. Himself. Not just smear the KGB by making them seem callously careless in their shooting. The pause after the first shot, making sure they'd killed him, which isn't easy to do with a heart shot, but they couldn't go for the head because the sight line wouldn't fit with shooting at the President's head-"
"Harry, please." George put his head in his hands. "Anything you say, except just don't say it this early in the day."
"Why Barling?" Maxim asked bluntly.
George waved a hand vaguely. "He was an expert on Russian affairs-as much of an expert as MPs get to be on anything-and they made him a junior minister to add credibility to their soft-line policy. He couldn't speak against that policy once he'd accepted a government post. "
"Where did he stand on Berlin?"
"Why Berlin?" George asked suspiciously.
"Miss Tuckey told us to look for a narrow objective within a broader attack. Berlin seems the most immediate. Are we going to demilitarise our Zone there?"
"This is not your concern, Harry."
"The government can give one of two answers to the Russians: we'll talk about Berlin, or we won't talk. After two months we haven't said we won't talk. What the hell sort of secret d'you think you're keeping? The time and place of the talks, I'd say."
"I don't know about that," George grumped.
"Then I hope these people don't know, either, although they seem to know a lot. They smeared Ettington, they drugged Westerman, they killed Barling: I call that escalation. I think they're getting desperate, and Berlin seemsthe likeliest cause. We can't defend on a broad front, George, not just two of us. We have to find the next point of attack and be there first."
"I do hate this remorseless military logic, particularly when-as usual-it is based on an incomplete knowledge of the facts."
"Any general would like to postpone his battles for forty years until the historians can tell him what to do. But he's usually short of time as well as information, same as us. What difference could Barling's death make to Berlin?"
George sighed. "1 may just be able to tell you after his funeral."
"Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God…"
"Romans 8," Sprague whispered. "I believe Barling was quite a devout man. By Parliamentary standards."
"Quite," George said, as the coffin wobbled past his ear. "And we haven't had anything tactless about the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, since your Committee hasn't apportioned the blame yet. Book of Job, I believe."
"One, possibly verse twenty-one," Sprague topped him easily.
The coffin reached the catafalque as the minister finished his intonation: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions."
"And doctrinally at least," Sprague murmured as they sat down, "the Church of England has a seat by the fire in every one."
The crematorium chapel was a large, modern redbrick structure with pews varnished to a garish yellow. It was crowded, despite its size, for Mrs Barling had made no effort to keep it private, and there were TV crews on the driveway outside. A lady, George thought sombrely, with a fine appreciation of the politicalrimescale: comethe inevitable memorial service in three weeks' time, people would already be asking 'Barling? Who was he? Oh yes, him.'
"I held my tongue, and spake nothing: I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me," the minister droned, his voice thin in the unfamiliar acoustics. "My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled: and at the last I spake with my tongue…"
"I do believe that the widow Barling," Sprague whispered, "is trying to tell us something. She must have chosen this psalm. Why not the dear old 23rd?-at least a decent bit of poetry. But of course he never did speak with his tongue, nor ever would have done if he wanted to hang on to his job. They almost never do… is this the moment, George, to tell you something of uttermost Top Secrecy?"
"… and verily every man living is altogether vanity," the minister went on.
"Something the Committee has not yetquite decided," Sprague murmured, thumbing through his hymn book, "but I believe will come to accept shortly. If our dear departed werenot going to speak out against the Berlin talks, as seemed altogether likely, suppose-I must say suppose-that some deranged mind decided to eliminatehim, under the guise of a Muscovite attempt on the dear President? Consider that for a moment, George." He raised a satisfied, bright-eyed smile towards the pulpit.
"Good Lord," George said, bowing his head.
Sprague's smile got even brighter. "If one thinks about it, the President makes an ideal stalking horse. Nobody else could possibly be the target. But, viewed in tranquillity, that is pure theory, so another theory is equally tenable. Think on it, George."
"Why Barling, though?"
"It frees his followers in the House. He would have voted with the government, they would have voted with him. Now we have twenty-five Members, it could be more, floating free and liable to vote their consciences. A frightening thought, for a coalition government. However, there are no signs of a foreign policy debate being forced at the moment, and one rather doubts there will be unless something dramatic happens, so one might say the assassin failed…"