The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  "A strong sense of pension," George suggested, taking a fresh Scotch from Miss Milward.

  "Anyway, he got cold feet and Told All, which wasn't very much since he was still in London and supposed to be maintaininga façadeof Business As Usual. So he doesn't know where they're keeping her except that theydid have that 'strange van' and the handover point hadn't been fixed, only that it's tomorrow some time."

  "We're pretty sure it has to be to an East German ship, " Agnes said. "I don't see how it can be any other way, not if Eismark's going to keep the whole deal in his own hands. He still must have a very big influence in Deutfracht, their freight line."

  "That's the whole point." Scott-Scobie stood up, then hoisted his trousers after him. "Sims is bypassing all theapparat, giving Eismark a chance to buy back the only witness to his guilty secret. To that extent Plainsong's stillvirgo intacta, as one might say. "

  "So she's still worth something in the market place." George cruised down behind the desk to stare out of a window at the lunchtime traffic and the trees of St James's Park beyond. "I've always thought this room was particularly splendid for forming British foreign policy: all the windows look firmly inland and you only see the sun when it's setting."

  "George, will you please stop trying to drink us out of Arab's Ruin and concentrate on the fact that we are faced with a whole unit of the Intelligence Service trying to defect?"

  "The kidnapped lady apart, how much of the family jewels did he actually get away with?"

  "Just about nothing, thank God. Guy at least had the sense to keep the unit in quarantine, gave them their own house but had his own people to handle their communications and requests for filed info. But it isn't just what they're taking, noteven kidnapping a British citizen, it's a whole part of the service going over to the Other Side. It'll make us a laughing stock with the Big Friends, and ruin morale inside the rest of the service foryears. "

  "Could they have been planning this all along?" Agnes asked.

  Maxim found himself instinctively shaking his head, agreeing with Scott-Scobie before he even spoke. "No, no, snatching the sister like that was just an act of desperation. When Sims came back from Germany empty-handed and Guy confronted him with having sent armed men after your runaway Corporaland getting one of them killed, well, I gather they had a bit of a barney and I suppose Sims saw his whole unit being wound up. So he grabbed the petty cash and ran. Guy's handling of the whole thing seems to have been consistent right down the line. "

  "Whereis Husband?" George asked.

  "In bed with the vapours." Scott-Scobie showed a certain relish. "He's having a little trouble adjusting to the new reality."

  Mutineers get shot, Maxim reflected, but when that's all over, their commander is quietly posted to run a carrier-pigeon loft on Rockall. "Simscertainly felt the heat was on out in Germany. He came near to killing a man who was holding out on us." -"That you did not tell me," George said sternly.

  "I didn't think it would improve your day. But if we're sure it'll be a ship, there can't be that many East German ships coming in: can't Agnes's mob and the local Special Branches watch them all?"

  "Major," Scott-Scobie said, "if we arrest them we have to try them and have the whole thing come out in court. If I could be sure they'd keep quiet about it, I'd far rather they got clean away with it and we wrote Sims and Plainsong off to experience. But you know perfectly well they can't keep quiet. They'd have to make a big song and dance just to explain why they're accepting Sims back to the fold. Normally they'd just shoot him."

  George sat heavily in the Foreign Secretary's chair andswivelled himself from side to side. "You're quite sure there isn't some gamy piece of blackmail we can pull to buy their silence? – in exchange for letting the whole boatload goover?"

  "George, the cupboard is completely bare of British sporting spirit as far as East Germany's concerned. That was why we needed Sims and his blasted gang in the first place. And we've got no hold on them personally; one of them's left his wife here, but there's nothing we could do to her, not even illegally, with them pointing the spotlight from the Magdalenenstrasse. Anyway, you know what people like that are about wives. Of course, if Plainsong had actually comeoff." he waved a hand and strode the length of the conference table and back.

  "Very well," George said. "I have to accept all that."

  Agnes turned on the sofa to look at him suspiciously.

  "Major-" Scott-Scobie jingled coins in his pocket "- so what do you think you can do for us?"

  "You mean the SAS? I can tell you who you'll be talking to there, but you still -"

  "No, I don't mean them. I mean you. You've displayed a certaininitiative ever since you got involved in this business, so perhaps you can keep it up by solving this little problem for us."

  Agnes stood up slowly and faced Scott-Scobie. "You cannot do that," she said in a flat voice. "You cannot let Harry go out and take on Sims and his mates by himself and -"

  "No nono. He can recruit whatever help he likes. It just mustn't be official, that's all. It isn't as if your own service is prepared to take it on. "

  "A thing like this, you know perfectly well we can't act except through the police. But why can't The Firm mop up after its own puppies?"

  "Agnes my dear, you know they just don't have these sort of people. Your own service has done as much as anybody -far more, indeed – tostop The Firm building up a rugger club of its own. The only musclemen they've got in this country turn out to be in Sims's unit and that was only because we gotthem sight unseen as a going concern." He looked back at Maxim. "So, Major?"

  Maxim stood up, too. "I'm working to Number 10."

  George cleared his throat. "I can't possibly give you orders on this one, Harry. I've told Scottie you could be asked and that the Number 10connection can be severed in good enough time. But you don't have to go."

  Agnes stared at Maxim, willing him ferociously to smile and say No.

  "Don't I?" Maxim said. "The Army's always the last resort. It's what we're for."

  "This most definitely is not an Army matter," Scott-Scobie said.

  "You call it what you like. I wouldn't be any use to you if I wasn't Army. How many people are we talking about?"

  "Sims and two others is all we know about. What comes in with the boat we don't know at all."

  "Except that one of them has to be Gustav Eismark inperson."

  "Quite. If he's buying back his Shameful Secret he can't do that by proxy. And I wouldn't have thought he'd risk bringing much of an entourage, but / won't get hurt by being wrong. "

  "Sims andco. arearmed, I assume?"

  "Sure to be. We can ask our drop-out friend what they've got, if he knows."

  "I'd like that done."

  George took a folded paper from his inside pocket and passed it across the desk to Maxim. "Harry, if you wouldn't mind…?"

  Maxim read it, smiled briefly, signed and passed it back. "How is the Prime Minister?"

  Agnes demanded: "What was that?"

  "My request to be relieved of my post at Number 10, dated two days ago."

  "Youbastard," Agnes told George.

  George ignored her. "He's resigning as soon as he can see a clear patch, so that he doesn't seem to be going under pressure…"

  "Also very much Top Secret, Major," Scott-Scobie put in.

  "He _knows_ that!" George spat, then controlled himself. "But I'm not asking because of him, it's more than…"

  "That's all right. I wasn't looking for reasons." Maxim turned for the door, then back to Scott-Scobie. "One thing: the way I go about this, I don't see where any Top Secrecy comes in. A lot of people – certainly on their side – are going to know what's happened. "

  "Oh yes, they'll _know_. But they just won't _know_ out loud."

  Maxim said: "Oh."

  Chapter 25

  Jim Caswell was running the garage by himself when Maxim got there. Blagg sat in the tiny office listening to the radio and guarding the telephone; he grinned and
made a joky salute through the window to Maxim.

  "Did you find me some wheels?" Maxim asked.

  "Yep: a Renault 16TX."

  Maxim looked dubious. "Ouch. It's complicated…"

  "It's in good nick. I've got it up on the lift now." He ushered Maxim through to the rear half of the garage, a gloomy and grimy workshop shut off by big sliding doors. A ragbag collection of cars sat around awaiting buyers or, for some, a generous scrap dealer.

  Caswell caught Maxim's look. "Yes, the old man isn't going to get any Rolls-Royce dealership, he's let this end of the business go. But that one's all right."

  The Renault up on the lift was dark green and several years old – indeed, the model had been out of production for several years-but looked reasonably clean and undented. Not that Maxim knew all that much about cars: he just thought Renaults were too complicated for most British garages to understand.

  "I've checked it all over," Caswell went on, "your brakes, lights, exhaust, cooling, tyres. It's allright. They don't have all that much acceleration, but it cruises like a bird and you said you wanted to go a distance. And it's a family car, a thing like this: big boot, bags of comfort. It's not a tearaway's car; the law doesn't get suspicious about these things. I suppose you are going to break the law with it?"

  Maxim nodded. "Oh yes. I'm going to break the law, all right."

  "D'you want to tell me?"

  "Yes, I want to tell you."

  When Maxim had finished, Blagg was staring open-mouthed. Caswell ground out his cigarette, nodded to himself, and said: "I knew they had some real fruitcakes in The Firm, but they must've gone right to the back of the oven for that lot. "

  "They can't always be choosey; they have to take the people with the experience and the contacts, and they're competing with all the other intelligence services – the CIA, France, Israel. You can't run it like a security service, handpicking your people and training them up yourself." Perversely, Maxim found himself defending Six, though the words were George's.

  "It was those buggers that shot me?" Blagg wanted to be certain.

  "Yes, but you didn't do too badly yourself."

  "All right if I come along?"

  "Are you fit?"

  "Let them worry about that. "

  Caswell said: "He's a bloody sight better than you'd expect. I suppose you're offering me a job, too?"

  "Yes." Maxim forced himself to look Caswell in the eyes. "I've got no bullshit to spread on it. It's a good job to say No to. You're a married man."

  "I've been a married man as long as you've known me. It didn't stop you trying to get me killed before. "

  Maxim smiled. "I'd still settle for the wheels and whatever you've got in your bottom drawer. "

  Blagg looked puzzled; Caswell moved very slowly to light a fresh cigarette, one-handed, and said with wide-eyed innocence: "I wouldn't know what you're talking about, Major."

  "I don't either, but I'd still like to borrow it. I've heard you often enough about what the world's coming to and how when you left the service you were going to be damn sure you had something to defend your home and family with. "

  After a pause, Caswell said: "There's an automatic shotgun."

  "Automaitc?"

  "I know, I know." Soldiers despise the automatic shotgun, which is strictly speaking only semi-automatic, reloading itself after each shot, as being too complex and likely to go wrong. The SASpreferred a pump-action type for blowing away locked doors and sometimes softer targets. "But you try using a pump-action with a stiff elbow; take you a week. It's the usual Browning; holds five."

  Blagg asked: "Aren't theylegal?" That idea seemed to shock him as much as the automaticness.

  "Oh yes," Caswell said, "if you've got a licence. I have."

  "I'll take it," Maxim said, "if the shot's the right size."

  "Special SG." That was a form of buckshot, quite big enough to kill a man at twenty metres. "But why are you scratching around for stuff like this?"

  "Jim, you just don't know how unofficial we are. All I've got so far is two thirty-eights, mine and the one Ron was using."

  Blagg's knobbly face cracked into a happy smile, showing very white but irregular teeth. "You hung onto it, then. I was beginning to like that one." What he meant, Maxim reflected, was that he'd killed two people with that pistol – though that was no bad reason to like a gun. "Mind," Blagg added, "I'd as soon use the Browning, if you don't want it, sir?"

  "That's mine, lad," Caswell said. "You can use the grenades."

  Maxim stared. "Whatgrenades?"

  "I was going to tell you about them."

  Maxim took his own car down to the village to stock up on food and put together a first-aid kit from a chemist that stayed open late. When he got back the garage hadclosed signs out and Blagg was checking the tyre pressures of the Renault on the forecourt. Caswell waved Maxim through the sliding door to the harbour of lost cars; both he and Blagg had changed into baggy trousers, drab shirts and jackets with lots of pockets. Agnes must have rung.

  "We're all loaded up," Caswell reported crisply. "The young lady from Five rang to say they're as sure as they can be about the place. She didn't say where, just to meet her outsidethe old John Barnes building at Finchley Road station; she said you'd know it. I told her we'd be there at 2100. " Half an hour ago, he'd have said nine o'clock.

  Maxim parked his car among the drop-outs, a little saddened to see how well it fitted in, and carried the bag of first aid and his holdall out to the Renault. They helped him. The hatchback was open before he got there – the Browning and grenades had to be in there somewhere, but nicely and casually concealed – and they stowed his stuff for him, smiling cheerfully the while. Then Caswell held out the keys so that he could drive the first stretch, to get to know the car, the way a commander should.

  God damn it!-this isn't an exercise. It isn't even The Real Thing, a Widow's Pension or Glory. It's just an amateur-night effort to save something from somebody else's cock-up. And yet they're grinning like chimpanzees at their first tea-party, even Jim with those years of service, and they don't even know…

  They know, he thought, oh theyknow. It might be a lot easier for me if they didn't know.

  He took the keys. "All right, gents: we're off to war in the usual way and for the usual reasons."

  Getting to Finchley Road station meant a diagonal grind right across south-east and central London, and Maxim hoped to hell there was some point in it and that they weren't going to have to turn back to Tilbury or out to Harwich. But it was certainly a chance to get to know the car, both on the brief snatches of motorway and in traffic. It was much as Caswell had said: a high-revving hot-running engine giving a very comfortable fast cruise but not much jump-off from traffic lights.

  Every now and then Maxim caught himself feeling guilty about not watching the mirrors enough, or taking too direct a route. But this was one time he knew nobody was following. Sims was busy and nobody else wanted to know.

  Agnes was waiting for them, wearing brown slacks and a worn but expensive suede jacket and carrying an airline bag.

  Maximlooked at her suspiciously. "Now hold on, you're not joining the People's Private Army. "

  "I'm liaising, duckie. You get information out of my service only through me. Aren't you going to introduce me?"

  Maxim did. Agnes smiled at Blagg and nodded. "Ah yes, we've heard quite a lot about you of late. How are you, now?"

  "I'm fine, thanks, Miss." Blagg was suddenly all big feet and hands and a bashful grin. He simply wasn't at ease with women.

  "A good car. Inconspicuous," Agnes commented, and Caswell chuckled. "Who's driving?"

  "You can if you want to. " Maxim didn't want either of the others tiring himself out. He slid into the passenger seat. "Where are we going?"

  "Goole."

  "Where's that?"

  "Humberside. About forty miles upstream from Hull and Grimsby." She slid the car out into the Finchley Road again, heading north.

  Maxim
opened the AA Guide. " 180 miles. About three hours or a bit more; it's mostly motorway. How sure are you about this?"

  "It's only about fifty miles from where Mina Linnarzwas living, up in the Dales beyond Harrogate. Andjust a few hours ago, Deutfrachtchanged the destination of a coaster they had coming in to Hull and booked a space in Goole instead."

  "Is that so odd?"

  "They haven't made a change like that for months; it means going another forty miles upstream, over some dicey sandbanks so you have to take on a pilot, and then pay God-knows-what to get the lock gates opened and watermen to push you into a berth. So you're losing time and money and all for slightly better road and rail links. Only for them there's another advantage: you know what most docks are like, all fences and high walls and gates with coppers on them? Well, Goole's wide open. You can walk in there day or night."

  "That sounds bloody odd," Blagg said, remembering his own dockland childhood, then: "I'm sorry, Miss."

  "It's bloody odd, all right: there's even a public right-of-way across the main lock gates. It could be that there isn't much worth pinching there; it started off as a coal port, now it's mostly importing wood."

  "You've been swotting," Maxim said.

  She grinned. "That's right. We aren't expected to know every British port by heart, though we do keep a fairly active eye on them."

  "When does the ship get there?"

  "Around midnight, it's the tide. They start unloading in the morning, so if they're going to push the old lady on board it has to be some time between them getting through the lock and tying up, and dawn. "

  "You mean like they work at night?" Caswell asked, not believing it of civilians.

  "They get paid for it. Ships have to come up just about at high tide – it's those sandbanks – so they lose twelve hours if they wait for the next one. "

  "4.43,"Caswell said.

  "What?" Maxim twisted round to look; Caswell was consulting a diary.

  "Sunrise. Be a bit earlier up there. Call it first light around four."

  "It'd take about three-quarters of an hour to berth her," Blagg said. "So whatever happens, it'll be between one and four – I mean if it's the right ship. Begging you pardon, Miss."