The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  Sims nodded, thanking her. "That is so. But he was only young then, about thirty, and he did not have so far to fall. And also his background was very good. His father had been killed in the Rostock riots of 1931, and it seems that Gustavhimself had for certain been a Worker Youth. "

  "In 1945," Husband said, "they were trading cigarettes -which were better than gold in those days – for Party cards and affidavits that they'd always been true Worker Youths -once they found themselves in the Russian Zone. There were – are still, I'm sure – plenty of overnight heroes of the Resistance with Hitler Youth uniforms buried in their cellars. "

  "Yes, yes, yes," Scott-Scobie said with cheery impatience. "But we can accept that our Gustavwasn't one of those. Apart from anything else, he wasn't even in the Russian Zone to begin with. He actually went East soon after the war ended, if Guy's files mean anything. So his wicked sister's vanished and now he's big man on campus. Let's read on. "

  "In the war," Sims said,"Gustavhad married. He had a son, that is now Manfred, who is a colonel in the SSD. But Gustav's wife was killed at the end of the war. His sister then helped to bring up the child while Gustav wasin Moscow for two years, at the university and taking the political indoctrination. He did not marry again until much later, when he was coming back to political life after the economic changes of 1962, which made the shipping more important. Politically, itis important to be married. It is normal, and the Democratic Republic is very modest."

  "An absolute hotbed of puritanism, " Scott-Scobie cut in. "Rife with morality. When Frau Ulbricht was den mother she ran the Politbureau like a convent school. "

  "So when Gustav Eismarkcame to the Secretariat," Sims went on, "naturally we looked in the files about him. There was not much; we do not have the money to research every politician in the Republic. But now, we said to our people, if anybody has something about Eismark that they had not the money to explore, now we can unlock the money."

  "Standard operating procedure," Husband said, quickly smoothing over Sim's full-frontal use of the word 'money', even though there was nobody there from the Treasury to hear it.

  "And one person said yes, she thought she had something. "

  "Something interesting or something dirty?" Sir Bruce asked.

  Scott-Scobie grinned at him. "Both, we hoped. It's the dirty bits that make the world go round, don't you find, General?"

  "Please… " from Sladen.

  "So we said to go on, to investigate. She reported that she was sure she would be able to prove something, but it needed just one operation, with more money. It was to be in a small town called Bad Schwärzendem."

  "Do you know the place, George?" Scott-Scobie called.

  "A spa witha Gradierwerkdown near Paderborn. I toddled through it when I was with Rhine Army. What happened then?"

  Husband said: "It went wrong, badly wrong," then lit a match and Sims found he was holding the ball again.

  "There was a shooting. Our agent was killed, so was the town registrar. If you read the German papers, it was in there. We lost the money, we did not get the proof. "

  "Ohdear," Agnes said brightly.

  Sim's smile stayed as bright and unchipped as his teeth. "But the identity of our agent was not discovered and the police seem to think it was a crime of passion without any third person involved. We do not expect any blowback."

  "Ah, thatis lucky," Agnes helped. Husband glared at her.

  Scott-Scobie also gave her a look, then past her at George. "I have to say that we in The Office put the highest, thevery highest priority on acquiring this proof- if it still exists."

  George asked: "Knowledge of what? And in what form?"

  "That," Husband said, "is what we would like your Major Maxim to toddle round and tell us. "

  Chapter 10

  The cricket ground was wide and shapeless, surrounded mostly by the back gardens of houses, but one stretch gave onto the main road, where the taxi from Littlehampton station dropped Agnes off. She walked up a gravel drive crowded with large cars, past an old-fashioned wooden pavilion and two clay tennis courts, ignored the adult game going on in front of her and started around the boundary to the second and much smaller game in the far corner.

  Maxim was sitting on a wooden bench in the uncertain shade of a row of poplars and chatting to two small schoolboys in fresh whites. He stood up as she got near, taking off his sunglasses politely, and they shook hands. He wore a loose cottonblousonbuttoned at the waist over a blue tee-shirt and faded khaki slacks.

  The bench was cluttered with cricket gear; Maxim asked the boys: "Could you find us a couple of chairs, do you think?" They rushed away with competitive enthusiasm.

  "The word of command," -Agnes said admiringly. "An Army training has its uses after all."

  "For finding a place to sit down, consult us first."

  "Was one of those your boy?"

  "No, he's batting now."

  "Oh. Which one?" She put on her own sunglasses and looked out across the worn pitch. The umpires looked very big and the ten- and eleven-year-old schoolboys very small, like squat white fleas that stayed still or suddenly hopped about and often fell over.

  "The bowler's end. Not taking strike."

  The other two boys hurried back, each with a folding wooden chair that was probably less comfortable than thebench but certainly newer. Maxim had them set up a few yards away, thanked the boys gravely, and they sat down.

  "It's a very nice rig," Maxim said, "but you didn't really need to get into your Number Ones. "

  "Thank you, kind sir, but I didn't dress for you. I dressed for a meeting whose minutes will be classified Top Secret. "

  "Ah. Sorry."

  "You were one of the main items on the meeting paper. Afterwards, George asked me to come down and see if I could talk some sense into you. From what I learned at the meeting I can't see why he thinks I'm up to such a task, but maybela bête à ses raisons que la belle ne connaît pas. Doyou think you can have some sense talked into you?"

  Maxim frowned out at the cricket. "You can always try. What did he say?"

  "Do you want it with or without the four-letter words? Let me warn you that without them, it's very short. "

  "I think I got most of those yesterday. Go on."

  "Do you have any information – I imagine it would be in documentary form – concerning a certain East German politician?"

  "What?" Maxim looked convincingly blank.

  Agnes sighed. "I should have known it wouldn't be that simple. " She took off her pastel jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. "Aren't you rather hot in thatblouson?"

  "I'm fine. " But he did look a little overheated, so why didn't he at least unbutton it? Because he had a shoulder holster on underneath, of course. Having the hounds from Six on his trail had made him wary – perhaps especially so around his only child. But, she realised, there was a pleasant incongruity about watchingcricket, of all things, next to a man with a concealed pistol.

  "How much did your unwilling informant from Six tell you about Plainsong?"

  "About which?"

  'He didn't tell you much. Plainsong: that's their codename for the whole operation."

  "All he told me was that he was working for the Sovbloc desk at Six, and they were looking for a deserter, but he didn'teven have Blagg's name. He knew who I was, and that's about all. He wasn't likely to run Sherlock Holmes out of business. "

  "No…" She sat silent for a while, making a decision. "As I say, this is supposed to be Top Secret, but you'd better know if you're to be any help. You'd know anyway, if you'd got what they think you've got, whatever that is. Have you ever heard of Gustav Eismark?"

  "New man in the East German Secretariat. Supposed to be a moderate, but has a lot of support from the not-very-political new managers and so on." Maximhad read that issue of The Economist.

  "Correct." Agnes began to explain what little she had gleaned from the meeting. Maxim listened carefully, but with his eyes on the game. Untypically for his ag
e, Chris preferred to play most of his shots to the off rather than drag everything round to leg. But the opposing school couldn't adjust to his rarity and left plenty of useful gaps in the offside field. So he made 32, including two perfect drives that stayed on the ground all the way to the boundary rope. Then, overconfident, he tried a late cut: there was a click, a squeal of joy, and first slip was doing a war-dance. Chris trailed back, dragging his bat in disgust, but loudly clapped by his team and the little group of parents around the scorer's shack in the corner of the field. In a prep school match, a score of 32 rates with a Test century.

  When he had smiled uneasily through the congratulations, and taken off his pads, Chris came down to them. He looked at Agnes with cautious curiosity, and Maxim introduced them. "Miss Algar works for the Home Office and liaises with Number 10."

  Chris shook her hand. He had the natural compactness of a good ball player and a Celtic paleness of skin and darkness of hair, with big golden-brown eyes that saw everything as wildly funny or desperately serious. His mother must have been a smasher, Agnes thought; he doesn't get those looks from our Harry. She glanced covertly at Maxim, who was watching Chris with his usual quiet self-protective smile.

  She said: "A very good innings. "

  Chris shook his head. "I should never have got out like that. "

  "You know what they say in Yorkshire," Maxim offered. "Never make a late cut until September and then only on alternate Tuesdays."

  "You've said that before, Daddy."

  "I'll say it every time I see you contributing to the Slips' Benevolent Fund. "

  Chris looked back at Agnes. "Are you talking work?"

  "Just a spot," Maxim said quickly. "We'll come over for tea." In front of the hut, several mothers were setting a trestle table with crockery and unwrapping polite little sandwiches.

  Who said we'll go for tea? Agnes thought, briefly annoyed. Chris smiled at her and walked away.

  When he was out of earshot, Maxim asked: "Did Six actually admit they were involved in that shooting in Germany?"

  "Yes, but only on the grounds that it wasn't their fault. Even that surprised me until I found out afterwards that George had known about it all along; I suppose they didn't want to risk him bringing it up first. And of course the woman wasn't really one of theirs, just some distant freelance, and the back-up with her was some nutty amateur they'd had to use at the last moment-"

  "D'you mean Blagg? Did he get mentioned?"

  "Not by name, rank or number; I got him out of George afterwards, as well. They said he'd lost his head and started shooting -"

  "Blagg? They're claiming he started it?"

  "Oh yes. George said you'd got a different version."

  "Damned right I have. I've read the German accounts of it all, too. Blagg isn't the type to go off at half cock -"

  Agnes held up a placatory hand. "I know, he's SAStrained. But don't waste it on me in any case: I wouldn't believe Six even if they told me they were lying. So then Sir Bruce got hopping mad because nobody would tell him who they were talking about, and asked why they were so certain you were involved, and Six – it was that luminous dong Guy Husband and some new pin-up boy who runs the East German section -said they had their reasons and George could explain more.

  George justsat there looking like a State Secret. And Sladen didn't know what was going on, either, but I don't think he wanted to; he was just scared that somebody would start throwing coffee cups and he'd get the blame. The FO chap knew all about it, of course, and any time things looked like coming off the boil he dived in and assured us this could be the biggest coup since the Zimmerman telegram. Oh, it was the merriest morning I've spent in a cow's age, and all the work of little you." She beamed happily at Maxim.

  A batsman in the distant adult match clouted a ball that sailed right into the middle of the school pitch. There was a flurry of yelps and scurryings but nobody managed to field it and it rolled almost up to Maxim's feet. He collected and threw it back to the pursuing fielder with an easy gesture – then suddenly clutched at his left side. For a moment Agnes thought he must have pulled a muscle, then giggled as she, and she alone, realised he had come close to spilling his holstered pistol.

  He sat down again. "So what in the end got decided?"

  "Oh, nothing gotdecided, we just provisionally concurred with each other. Except Sir Bruce agreed Six could search your flat-"

  Maxim sat up straight. "Did he buggery!"

  "They'd have done it anyway. This way, he could send an officer along from the SIB to make sure they didn't nick your spoons. And George had to agree to go through your files at Number 10."

  Maxim wondered why he wasn't more shocked at the instinctive distrust implied by that decision, and sighed as he realised it was because he'd been nearly six months in the atmosphere of Whitehall. "Does George – or Sir Bruce -want me back in London now?"

  "At the moment, I think it would suit Georgejust fine if you caught a slow boat to Yokohama. He told Husband he'd have to consult with the rest of the Private Office and maybe even the PM before he could agree to them interrogating you; he may actually be doing that, for all I know, though I think it's more likely he's been waiting for his temper to cool before he briefs you. He's had a rough week.

  "Well, what's happened to Blagg, then?"

  "They lost him, in Rotherhithe, the day they picked up you."

  "Theylost him?"

  "They blame you for that, too. They'd already split their team to cover both the gym and some other place, and then split it again to follow you, so Blagg only got the leftovers, spotted them, and took to the hills. "

  Maxim chewed that over. "They said all that at the meeting?

  "All that except his name and the fact that he was a deserter. I suppose they were scared of what Sir Bruce might say. Whatdoes the Army do about deserters these days?"

  "Gets very uptight and doesn't want to talk about them. We're an all-volunteer force now so you shouldn't have any reason to run away. Mostly it's woman trouble, though there's a few went to Sweden rather than Northern Ireland. Poor bastards." Perhaps they had adjusted to the sanitised neutralism of a Stockholm commune, but it seemed an odd life for men who had chosen to become soldiers.

  The cricket stopped. The boys headed for the tea-table, not quite hurrying, with the two umpires strolling behind and a frigid few paces apart. Each a master from one of the schools, they had obviously totally disagreed on some decision.

  "Good for Blagg," Maxim added thoughtfully. "Giving them the slip."

  "He also did it without use of grievous bodily harm. "

  "I meant in spotting them at all.1 hadn't thought he'd be all that bright at the bogeyman stuff."

  "I don't suppose the team was exactly a thousand-candle-power. You spotted them as well." Agnes clearly wasn't going to take Maxim any more seriously as a spotter of fan clubs than she took Six as an organiser of them.

  "So the position is, " Maxim summed up, "that they assume the dead man, Hochhauser, had some document or other, they assume Blagg picked it up, and now they're assuming he gave it to me."

  Intelligence is mostly assumptions. Tea, however, is fact. " Agnes stood up purposefully.

  The tea was handed round by a posse of mothers who greeted Agnes in a friendly but appraising way which infuriated her. She knew she was overdressed for the occasion but hadn't realised it would make her look both predatory and incompetently so, since one of the main adult sports at Chris's school was trying to get that nice Major Maxim remarried. That, and trying to recruit him to the Parents' Association committee (which was almost the same thing, as the most active women members were divorcees).

  "We only meet about three times a term," one drastically lean lady was telling him; "and the dates are always fixedwell in advance so all you have to do isarrange to be free on that evening."

  "The trouble with my job at the moment is that J, can't guarantee to be free at any given time. "

  "Surely it's just a matterof arrangement
. My brother works for the Department of Health and he can alwaysarrange to get away if he knows the date far enough in advance. "

  "My job just isn't that predictable. "

  "My brother is veryhigh in the Department of Health, " she said warningly.

  "That's just the trouble," Agnes chipped in. "When you're more junior your life simply isn't your own. If somebody sends you off to – say – Acton or Rotherhithe, you don't have a choice. You just have to go."

  "Acton? Rotherhithe?" The lady looked mystified. "Who'd want to go to those places?"

  "Nobody in his right mind," Agnes agreed. "They were just random examples. But I do know the difficulty the Major has in getting away to do his own things. It can be very frustrating."

  She could feel Maxim's steady glare.

  "Well," the lean lady said, "I still feel that something could bearranged. My brother has always found the civil servicemost accommodating…" She drifted away, trailing aromatic dissatisfaction.

  "Thank you, " Maxim said in a sort of growl.

  "Any time."

  Chris appeared with a handful of rather sweaty egg-and-cress sandwiches and a smaller boy who wore spectacles and had a problem. Chris explained: "James here is our scorer and Mr Marshall signalled four wides when there was a wide and the ball went to the boundary, but the other side's scorer says you can'thave four wides at once, only one, and the other three must count as byes. What do you say, Daddy?"

  Maxim was still wondering what to say when Agnes said: '"Certainly you can have four wides off one ball. Look it up. 'All runs that are from a "Wide Ball" shall be scored "Wide Balls", or if no runs be made one run shall be scored.' It doesn't mention the boundary, but it must be implicit. It's Rule 29, isn't it?"

  James dropped his pen, adjusted his spectacles and fumbled through the back of the score-book. "Gosh, yes, 29: 'The ball does not become "Dead" on the call of "Wide Ball" '… Do you know all the rules by heart?"