It is not only Neal Marjoram's disgraceful proposition that has spurred Goodhew into action. A week ago, he was nearly crushed to death cycling to his office. Selecting his favourite scenic route ― first west across Hampstead Heath, respecting the permitted cycle paths, thence by way of Saint John's Wood and Regent's Park to Whitehall ― Goodhew found himself wedged between two high-sided vans, one a dirty white colour with flaking lettering he couldn't read, and the other green and blank. If he braked, they braked also. If he pedalled harder, they accelerated. His perplexity turned to anger. Why did the drivers eye him so coldly in their wing mirrors, then eye each other as they edged ever closer, boxing him in? What was this third van doing behind him, blocking his escape?
He shouted, "Look out! Move over!" but they ignored him. The van behind was riding tight against the rear bumpers of the other two. Its windscreen was grubby, obscuring the driver's face. The vans on either side had drawn so close that if he had turned the handlebar, it would have knocked against one or the other of them.
Rising in his saddle, Goodhew drove his gloved fist against the panel of the van to his left, then pushed himself away from it to recover his balance. The dead eyes in the wing mirror studied him without curiosity. He attacked the van to his right in the same way. It responded by inching nearer.
Only a red traffic light saved him from being crushed. The vans stopped, but Goodhew, for the first time in his life, rode over on red, narrowly escaping death as he skimmed in front of the polished nose of a Mercedes.
* * *
The same afternoon, Rex Goodhew rewrites his will. Next day, using his in-house wiles, he circumnavigates the laborious machinery of his own ministry ― and his master's private office ― and sequesters part of the top floor, a rambling set of attic rooms, already a museum piece, packed with electronic stay-behind equipment installed against the day, just around the corner, when Britain will be overrun by Bolshevism. The likelihood is now past, but the grey men of Goodhew's Administration Section have yet to be advised of this, and when Goodhew requests the floor for secret purposes, they could not be more helpful. Overnight, millions of pounds' worth of obsolete equipment is sent to rot in a lorry park in Aldershot.
Next day Burr's little team becomes the tenant of twelve musty attic rooms, two malfunctioning lavatories the size of tennis courts, a denuded signals room, a private staircase with a marble balustrade and holes in the linoleum treads, and a steel door by Chubb, with a turnkey's peephole. On the day after, Goodhew has the place electronically swept and removes all telephone lines susceptible to River House tampering.
In the matter of extracting public money from his ministry, Goodhew's quarter-century before the Whitehall mast is not in vain. He becomes a bureaucratic Robin Hood, fiddling the government's accounts in order to ensnare its wayward servants.
Burr needs three more staff and knows where he can find them? Hire them, Leonard, hire them.
An informant has a tale to tell but needs a couple of thousand up front? Pay him, Leonard, give him whatever he needs.
Rob Rooke would like to take a brace of watchers with him to Curaçao? Is a brace enough, Rob? Wouldn't a foursome be a safer bet?
Gone as if they had never been are Goodhew's niggling objections, the quips, the fey asides. He has only to pass through the steel door to Burr's new attic eyrie for the persiflage to fall from him like the cloak it always was. Each evening, at the close of the day's official play, he presents himself for what he modestly calls his night work, and Burr is pressed to match the energy with which he goes about his business. On Goodhew's insistence, the dingiest room has been set aside for him. It lies at the end of a deserted corridor, its windows give onto a parapet colonised by pigeons. Their billing and cooing would have driven a lesser man crazy, but Goodhew barely hears them. Determined not to trespass on Burr's operational territory, he emerges only to grab another handful of reports or make himself a cup of rose hip tea and exchange courteous pleasantries with the night staff. Then back to his desk and his review of the enemy's latest dispositions.
"I intend to sink their Operation Flagship with all hands, Leonard," he tells Burr with a twitch of his head that Burr has not seen him do before. "Darker won't have a Mariner left when I've done with him. And your Dicky Blasted Roper will be safe behind bars, you mark my words."
Burr marks them but is uncertain of their truth. It is not that he doubts Goodhew's strength of purpose. Nor does he have any problem believing that Darker's people deliberately set out to harass, scare or even hospitalise their adversary. For months, Burr himself has been maintaining a careful watchfulness over his own movements. Whenever possible he has driven his children to school in the mornings, and always arranged for their collection in the evenings. Burr's concern is that, even now. Goodhew is unaware of the scale of the octopus. Three times in the last week alone, Burr has been denied access to papers that he knows to be in current circulation. Three times in vain he has protested. On the last occasion he presented himself in person to the Foreign Office Registrar in his lair.
"I fear you are misinformed, Mr. Burr," said the registrar, who wore an undertaker's black tie, and black protectors on the sleeves of his black jacket. "The file in question was cleared for destruction many months ago."
"You mean it's Flagship classified. Why don't you say so?"
"It's what, sir? I don't think I follow you. Do you mind explaining yourself more clearly?"
"Limpet is my case, Mr. Atkins. I personally opened the file that I am now requesting. It's one of half a dozen Limpet-related files opened and cross-referred by my department: two subject, two organisation, two personal. There's not one of them that's been in existence above eighteen months. Who ever heard of a registrar authorising the destruction of a file eighteen months after it went into action?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Burr. Limpet may indeed be your case. I have no reason to disbelieve you, sir. But as we say in Registry, just because you own the case, you don't always own the file."
* * *
Nevertheless, the flow of information continues at an impressive rate. Both Burr and Strelski have their sources:
The deal is firming up... the Panama connection is on line... six Panama-registered container ships on charter to Ironbrand of Nassau are heading across the South Atlantic bound for Curaçao, estimated date of arrival five to eight days from now. Between them they carry close to four hundred containers en route for the Panama Canal... the description of their freight varies from tractor parts to agricultural machinery to mining equipment to miscellaneous luxury goods....
Handpicked military trainers, including four French paras, two Israeli ex-colonels of special forces, and six ex-Soviet Spetsnaz, met in Amsterdam last week for a munificent farewell rijstafel in the city's best Indonesian restaurant. Afterwards they were flown to Panama....
Tales of large orders of matériel by Roper's nominees have been circulating in the arms bazaars for several months, but there has been a new gloss, which is to say that Palfrey's predictions of a switch in Roper's shopping list have found independent confirmation. Strelski's Brother Michael alias Apostoll has been talking to a fellow cartel lawyer named Moranti. The said Moranti operates out of Caracas and is held to be the mainstay of the shaky alliance between the cartels.
"Your Mr. Roper is going patriotic," Strelski announces to Burr over the secure telephone. "He's buying American."