* * *
A few minutes of English chamber music while the heads of Air and Naval Intelligence describe their respective successes in tracking the Horatio Enriques. When they have completed their reports they proudly circulate full-plate photographs.
"Looks like a perfectly ordinary tanker to me," says the minister.
Merridew, who detests espiocrats, agrees. "Probably is," he says.
Somebody coughs. A chair creaks. Goodhew hears a kind of regal bray from higher up the scale than he is ready for, and recognizes it as the familiar sound of a senior British politician defacing a point of argument.
"Why is this one ours, anyway, Rex?" the minister wishes to know. "Bound for Poland. Panamanian ship, Curaçaoan company. Not our baby at all, far as I can see. You're asking me to push it upstairs to Number 10. I'm asking why we're sitting here talking about it at all."
"Ironbrand's a British company, Minister."
"No, it's not. It's Bahamian. Isn't it Bahamian?" Business, while the minister, with the mannerisms of a much older man, makes a show of rummaging through Burr's three-thousand word summary. "Yes. It's Bahamian. Says so here."
"Its directors are British, the men committing the crime are British, the evidence against them was gathered by a British agency under the aegis of your ministry."
"Then give our evidence to the Poles, and we can all go home," says the minister, very pleased with himself. "Splendid idea, if you ask me."
Darker smiles in icy admiration of the minister's wit, but prefers to take the unprecedented step of correcting Goodhew's English. "Can we say testimony, please, Rex? Rather than evidence? Before we all get carried away."
"I am not carried away, Geoffrey, nor shall I be, unless it is feet first," Goodhew retorts too loudly, to the discomfort of his supporters. "As to passing our evidence to the Poles, Enforcement will do that at its discretion, and not before a decision has been agreed on how to proceed against Roper and his accomplices. Responsibility for seizing the shipment of arms has been ceded to the Americans. I do not propose to cede the rest of our responsibility to the Poles unless those are my instructions from the minister. We are talking of a rich and well-organised crime syndicate in a very poor country. The perpetrators chose Gdansk because they think they can control it. If they're right, it will make no difference what we tell the Polish government; the cargo will be landed anyway, and we shall blow Burr's source for nothing except the pleasure of warning Onslow Roper that we are on his trail."
"Perhaps Burr's source is blown already," Darker suggests.
"Always a possibility, Geoffrey. Enforcement has many enemies, some across the river."
For the first time, Jonathan's ghostly shadow has fallen across their table. Goodhew has no personal knowledge of Jonathan, but he has shared enough of Burr's travail to share it again now. And perhaps this awareness fuels his sense of outrage, for once more he undergoes a startling change of colour as he resumes his argument, his voice a little above its customary level.
Under the agreed rules of Joint Steering, he says, every agency however small is sovereign in its sphere.
And every agency however large is obliged to provide support in aid of every other agency, while respecting its rights and freedoms.
In the Limpet case, he continues, this principle has come under repeated fire from the River House, who are demanding control of the operation on the grounds that such control is demanded by its counterpart in the United States ―
Darker has interrupted. It is Darker's strength to possess no middle gears. He has smouldering silence. He has, in extremis, the capacity to reverse his position when a battle looks irretrievably lost. And he has attack, which is what he uses now.
"What do you mean, demanded by its counterpart in the United States?" he cuts in scathingly. "Control of Limpet has been granted to the Cousins. The Cousins own the operation. The River House doesn't. Why not? It's like to like, Rex. Your own pedantic rule. You drafted it. Now you've got to live with it. If the Cousins are running Limpet over there, so should the River House be over here."
Having struck, he sits back, waiting for a chance to strike again. Marjoram waits with him. And although Goodhew behaves as if he has not heard, Darker's onslaught has stung him. He moistens his lips. He glances at Merridew, an old accomplice, hoping he will say something. Merridew is silent. Goodhew returns to the charge but makes a fatal error. That is to say, he departs from the march route he has mapped for himself and speaks extempore.
"But when we invite Pure Intelligence," Goodhew resumes, with too much ironic emphasis, "to explain to us just why the Limpet case needs to be taken out of Enforcement's hands" ― he looks angrily round him and sees his master affecting boredom, staring at the white brick wall ― "we are asked to share in a mystery. It is called Flagship, an operation so secret, and so wide-flung, apparently, that it permits of almost any act of vandalism in the civil service calendar. It is called geopolitics. It is called..." He seems to wish he could escape the rhythms of his rhetoric, but he is launched and unable to pull back. How dare Darker stare at him like this? That smirking Marjoram! Those crooks! "It is called normalisation. It is called chain reactions too intricate to describe. Interests that cannot be divulged." He hears his voice shaking but cannot stop it. He remembers urging Burr not to go this very path. But he can't help himself. "We are told of some larger picture that we cannot see because we are too lowly. In other words, Pure Intelligence must swallow up Limpet and be damned!"
There is water in Goodhew's ears, and water in front of his eyes, and he has to wait a moment before his breathing settles down.
"Okay, Rex," says his master. "Nice to hear you in form. Now let's talk turkey. Geoffrey, you sent me a minute. You say this whole Limpet thing as perceived by Enforcement is a load of baloney. Why?"
Goodhew unwisely leaps in: "Why did I not see a copy of this minute?"
"Flagship," Marjoram replies in the dead silence. "You're not Flagship cleared, Rex."
Darker offers a more detailed explanation, not to ease Goodhew's pain but to increase it: " 'Flagship' is the code name for the American end of this, Rex. They gave us a very tight need-to-know as a condition of cutting us in. Sorry about that."
* * *
Darker has the floor. Marjoram hands him a file. Darker opens it and licks a prim finger and turns a page. Darker has timing too. He knows when eyes are on him. He could have been a bad Evangelist. He has the gloss, the stance, the curiously Prominent rump. "Mind if I ask you a few questions, Rex?"
"I believe it is a maxim of your service that only the answers are dangerous, Geoffrey," Goodhew counters. But levity is not his ally. He sounds ill-tempered and silly.
"Did the same source who told Burr about the dope tell him about the arms shipment to Buenaventura?"
"Yes."
"Did the same source get this whole thing going in the first place? Ironbrand ― drugs for arms ― a deal's being cooked up?"
"That source is dead."
"Really?" Darker sounds interested rather than concerned. "So that all came from Apostoll, did it? The dope lawyer who was playing all ends against the middle so that he could buy himself out of prison?"
"I am not prepared to discuss sources by name in this manner!"
"Oh, I think it's all right when they're dead. Or bogus. Or both."