She wore a sexless old sheepskin jacket and an oddly blank expression. George offered her a drink and she shook her head, "The Tyler file. I'm afraid it's gone."
"Gone? Gone where?"
"Home, I imagine." Her voice was blank, too; deliberately drained of expression. "It had been about half translated when Rex Masson – I don't know if you've met him, he's been deputy head of our vetting section the last couple of years – he asked to borrow it. He rang in later last night to say he thought he was going down with flu. Nobody got around to asking any questions until late today, then… he's gone, his wife's gone, the file's gone."
George walked a slow quiet circuit of the nearest desk. "Where did Massen live?"
"Just outside Reigate. He caught a Victoria train at Redhill every morning, so it sounds as if that girl was telling the truth. The Branch is pulling his house apart by now."
"This is what your D-G's telling the Headmaster?"
"Yes."
George walked another circuit. "The vetting section… that would be how they knew about Tylers appointment. He would have had his vetting topped up as soon as he was chosen… Did this Masson of yours have anything to do with the hounding of Jackaman?"
"I don't know." She wasn't even looking at him, just staring blindly at the wall.
"Well," George said, "at least now we know. You win one, you lose one. I can't say how the Headmaster'll take it, but I don't suppose that file would have toldus very much. And they had to blow a prime asset to get it back. It must have been the only copy – funny, that."
"You know how they are about copying machines." Then she suddenly burst out: "What is it about Tyler? I know he's a great military theorist, but anybody would think he was the Pope…"
George looked mildly surprised but ignored the question. Agnes looked as if she might be going to cry; George couldn't have stood that. "It isn't your fault. These things just happen. All you can do is keep on carrying the banner with strange device through snow and ice… peculiarly apposite, on this evening." He had left one of the curtains open so that he could see the snowflakes spiralling down outside. It was a rare and restful sight.
"Ohbollocks." Agnes turned her back and blew her nose vigorously. "You just think that it's something that only happens to the Other Mob. Then when it's somebody in your own service… they'll be serving free champagne in Century House tonight." Agnes's view of the Intelligence Service was that the best of them were merely alcoholic transvestites. George had heard her on the subject often.
"That's out of date. Now have a drink."
She glanced at the tall double doors into the Cabinet Room. "All right. Make it a strong one."
George poured them both stiff whiskies. "Enough ice outside, I imagine. Confusion to the enemy." They both drank. "And what now?"
"We spend the night going through every file that Masson could have known about. And the next night…"
They chatted vaguely until the doors opened and the D-G came out. He looked pale: after Jackaman and now this, his job and reputation were teetering on the high wire. No, George thought, his reputation's already hit the sawdust. The job's all he's got left.
"Would you like a drink, Director-General?"
"No thank you, George. Agnes and 1 will be running along. The Prime Minister said he'd call you in a few minutes."
Politely, George saw them to the front door, then went back to work on the speech. The war in Europe ended on the river Elbe… Our front line is still there… no island has been an island since 1940… Europe's defences are in Europe's hands, not in a begging bowl… Apart from that last phrase, it was still crude and certainly too hawkish. But the strange device on their banner had to be Europe. Not NATO, but Europe, Europe, Europe.
Outside, the snow lay smooth and certain. London would be chaos tomorrow. And he hadn't mentioned that second baboon to Agnes. Now he never would.
14
Professor Tyler dined with the Master of his college that night. Just the two of them, alone in the big warm twinkling room, huddled at one end of the long triple-pillar table, backs to a crackling log fire. A silent maid came in and out, offering second helpings of everything, which they always refused.
"I imagine you would have to be very rich," the Master said, "to live privately in the style we decree for ourselves." Tyler made an agreeing noise, knowing that the Master had married quite enough money to live in any style he chose, private or public.
"Was it still snowing when you came in?" the Master went on. "So I suppose that tomorrow there won't be any trains or aeroplanes or buses, just because we live in a country which lies on the same line of latitide as Minsk and Hudson Bay." He gave a whimpering laugh. "But I like snow. I didn't see enough of it in London. How is London these days?"
"Cold," said Tyler. "That was nearly a week ago."
"Oh yes, your committee. When do you expect to report? – or is that Top Secret?"
Tyler smiled politely. "The final report won't be much more than a public relations exercise, Master. It's what we can persuade the joint chiefs and politicians about before then that will really matter."
The Master's bleary baggy eyes lit up suddenly. He had decayed to a fat blotched grub of a man who moved in slow motion and occasionally missed his mouth with a forkful of food, but he remembered thirty glorious years of academic and political intrigue as one of Whitehall's top scientific advisors. A whiff of conspiracy was like cannon smoke to an old war-horse.
"But do you believe you can achieve anything significant, I mean really significant, without theimprimatur of our Big Brothers in Washington?"
"I think," Tyler said carefully, "that it isn't so much a question of whether we can, but that we're going to have to."
"They've come to thinking that, have they? De Gaulle really must be grinning in his grave. So you think the Americans are going to retreat from Europe? – or let their forces come down below – what do you call it?"
"The hostage level."
"Ah yes. Do you believe that?"
"Let me put it this way. Master. Ten years ago it would have been unbelievable. But the last ten years of American policy, in the White House particularly, have been unbelievable. Now nobody's sure about what can be believed any more."
After a time, the Master said vaguely: "Yes, I suppose it has come to that. But you're going to need the French, John. Of course, you get on well with them. They don't respect anybody who doesn't speak their language properly. And who isn't a bit of a gangster besides." He shook with wet, almost silent, laughter. "I suppose you'll be looking for a common nuclear targetting policy. Do you have anything to offer Paris on that?"
Tyler's smile was quick, almost defensive. How, in this great collapsing grub of a man could there still be a small bright worm of intelligence gnawing its way to the heart of every question?
He put his knife and fork down very precisely. "I think it matters less what we can offer than that we can get them to accept the principle of joint targetting. We can always change the targets later."
"Do you think they're ready for it?"
"I think they may be. They haven't had a really coherent nuclear policy since de Gaulle, and some of their Force de Dissuasion is getting a little tired by now – it was never very long-ranged anyway. Their Murage IV's are all of fifteen years old, you know."
"Ummm." The Master rang a small handbell, then got up very slowly and carefully, tiptoeing along the edge of pain. "We'll have coffee by the fire, shall we? Will you take port? The Mad Doctor says I mustn't touch it any more. And a cigar?"
He gave orders over his shoulder to the expressionless maid, who collected the dishes and went out. Tyler stared after her, trying – for no good reason – to guess at her age.