"Why are we so squeamish about drugs, anyway?" a Treasury man complained, his thin fingertips propped together like a bamboo bridge. "Service industry. Willing buyer, willing seller. Vast profits to the Third World, some of it's going to the right places, must be. We accept tobacco, booze, pollution, pox. Why are we such prudes about drugs? I wouldn't mind an order for a couple of billion quids' worth of arms, even if there was a bit of cocaine on the bank notes; I'll tell you that for nothing!"
A drenched voice cut through their merriment. It came from Harry Palfrey, a River House lawyer now on permanent loan to Darker's Procurement Studies Group. "Burr's real," he warned huskily, with no particular prompting from anybody. He was drinking a large Scotch, not his first. "Burr does what he says."
"Oh my God," cried the Foreign Office in horror. "Then we're all for the high jump! Right, Geoffrey? Right?"
But Geoffrey Darker just listened with his eyes and smiled his mirthless smile.
* * *
Yet of all those present at the Fiddler's Club that night, only the leftover lawyer Harry Palfrey had any notion of the scope of Rex Goodhew's crusade. Palfrey was a degenerate. In every British organisation there is always one man who makes an art form of going to the devil, and in this one respect Hairy Palfrey was the River House's prize exhibit. Whatever he had done well in the first half of his life, Palfrey had systematically undone in the second ― whether it was his law practice, his marriage or the preservation of his pride, of which the last shameful tatters lingered in his apologetic grin. Why Darker kept him on, why anybody did, was no mystery at alclass="underline" Palfrey was the failure who made everyone look successful by comparison.
Nothing was too humble for him, nothing too demeaning. If there was scandal, Palfrey was ever willing to be slaughtered. If murder was to be done, Palfrey was on hand with a bucket and cloth to mop up the blood and find you three eyewitnesses to say you were never there. And Palfrey, with the wisdom of the corrupt, knew Rex Goodhew's story as if it were his own ― which in a sense it was, since he had long ago made the same perceptions as Goodhew, even if he had never had the courage to draw the same conclusions.
The story was that after twenty-five years before the Whitehall mast, something inside Goodhew had discreetly snapped.
Perhaps it was the ending of the Cold War that had caused it.
Goodhew had the modesty not to know.
The story was that one Monday morning Goodhew woke as usual and decided with no premeditation that for far too long, in the misused name of freedom, he had been sacrificing scruple and principle to the great god expediency, and that the excuse for doing so was dead.
And that he was suffering from all the bad habits of the Cold War without their justification. He must mend his ways or perish in his soul. Because the threat outside the gates had gone. Decamped. Vanished.
But where to begin? A perilous bicycle ride supplied him with his answer. On the same rainy February morning, the eighteenth ― Rex Goodhew never forgot a date ― he was cycling from his home in Kentish Town to Whitehall as usual, weaving between the choked columns of commuter cars, when he experienced a silent epiphany. He would crop the secret octopus.
He would give away its powers to separate, smaller agencies and make each of them separately accountable. He would deconstruct, decentralise, humanise. And he would begin with the most corrupting influence of alclass="underline" the unholy marriage between Pure Intelligence, Westminster and the covert weapons trade, presided over by Geoffrey Darker of the River House.
* * *
How did Harry Palfrey know all this? Goodhew had told him. Goodhew, out of his Christian decency, had invited Palfrey to Kentish Town at summer weekends to drink Pimm's in the garden and play silly cricket with the kids, well aware that, in his shabby, grinning way, Palfrey was near the dangerous edge. And after dinner, Goodhew had left Palfrey at the table with his wife so that he could pour out his soul to her, because there is nothing that dissolute men like better than confessing themselves to virtuous women.
And it was in the afterglow of one such luxurious unbaring that Harry Palfrey, with pathetic alacrity, volunteered to become Goodhew's informant on the backstairs machinations of certain wayward barons at the River House.
FIVE
Zürich huddled low beside the lake, shivering under a freezing grey cloud.
"My name's Leonard," Burr announced, hauling himself out of Quayle's office chair like someone about to intervene in a brawl. "I do crooks. Smoke? Here. Poison yourself."
He made the offer sound so much like a jovial conspiracy that Jonathan obeyed at once and ― though he smoked rarely and always regretted it afterwards ― took a cigarette. Burr drew a lighter from his pocket, cocked it and fired it at Jonathan's face.
"I expect you think we let you down, don't you?" he said, going for the point of most resistance. "You and Ogilvey had quite a how-d'you-do before you left Cairo, if I'm correct."
I thought you let her down, Jonathan almost replied. But his guard was up, so he gave his hotelier's smile and said, "Oh, nothing terminal, I'm sure."
Burr had thought carefully about this moment and decided on attack as his best defence. Never mind he harboured the worst suspicions of Ogilvey's part in the affair: this was no moment to suggest he was speaking for a divided house.
"We're not paid to be spectators, Jonathan. Dicky Roper was flogging some very high-tech toys to the Thief of Baghdad, including a kilo of weapons-grade uranium, which had fallen off the back of a Russian lorry. Freddie Hamid was laying on a fleet of relief trucks to smuggle the stuff through Jordan. What were we supposed to do? File and forget?" Burr was gratified to see Jonathan's face set in the kind of rebellious obedience that reminded him of himself. "There's a dozen ways the story could have leaked without anybody pointing the finger at your Sophie. If she'd not shot her mouth off at Freddie she'd be sitting pretty to this day."
"She wasn't my Sophie," Jonathan put in too fast.
Burr affected not to hear. "Question is, how do we nail our chum? I've a couple of ideas on that subject if you're interested."
He gave a warm smile. "That's right. You've spotted it, I can see. I'm common Yorkshire. And our chum Mr. Richard Onslow Roper, he's quality. Well, that's his tough luck!"
Jonathan laughed dutifully, and Burr was grateful to find himself on dry land the other side of Sophie's murder. "Come on, Jonathan, I'll buy you lunch. You won't mind us, Reggie? Only we're strapped for time, see. You've been a good scout. I'll pass the word."
In his haste, Burr failed to notice his cigarette burning in Quayle's ashtray. Jonathan stubbed it out, sorry to be saying goodbye. Quayle was a bluff, twitchy soul, with a habit of beating his mouth with a handkerchief that he whipped, Services style, from his sleeve; or of suddenly offering you biscuits from a tax-free tartan tin. In the weeks of waiting, Jonathan had come to rely on their quaint, inarticulate sessions.
And so, he realised as he left, had Reggie Quayle.
"Thanks, Reggie," he said. "Thanks for everything."
"My dear chap! Pleasure all mine! Travel well, sir. Keep your arse to the sunset!"
"Thanks. You too."
"Got transport okay? Wheels? Whistle you up a barouche? All fixed? Jolly good. Wrap up warm, now. See you in Philippi."
"You always thank people for doing their job, do you?" Burr asked as they stepped onto the pavement. "I suppose you learn to, in your trade."
"Oh, I think I like to be polite," Jonathan replied. "If that's what you mean."
* * *
As always for an operational encounter, Burr's field manners had been meticulous. He had chosen his restaurant in advance; he had inspected it the night before: an out-of-town lakeside trattoria, unlikely to attract the Meister set. He had chosen his corner table and for ten cautious Yorkshire francs to the head waiter reserved it in one of his work names, Benton. But he was taking no chances.