Disorderly Elements

by Bob Cook

  “Now to the meat of the story. Here is a copy of the Thüringer Neueste Nachrichten, dated May 6. This article here—” he tapped the paper—“completes the picture. Dovetail was shot while resisting arrest at the scene of a café brawl on the night of May 5. Taken to an army hospital, dead on arrival. Or so we are led to believe.”

  “Are you suggesting that Dovetail was blown?”

  “Since they have been rounding up his network one by one, I can reach no other conclusion. And there lies the problem. Dovetail’s set-up was an F-network: so how were the Germans able to arrest the members before the leader? You will note that all the arrests precede Dovetail’s own. But that is supposed to be impossible; none of these people knew the identity of the other members of the network. So if they were arrested before Dovetail, the question arises…”

  “Of how the Germans could have discovered the network?” Owen nodded thoughtfully. “Tricky one, that.”

  “Indeed,” Wyman said. “You see, F-networks were established to avoid precisely this situation. The only people who knew the names of Dovetail’s group were Dovetail himself and us. Assuming that Dovetail did not sabotage his own network…”

  “Good God!” Owen exclaimed. It had dawned upon him at last. “Are you saying that we’ve got a leak in the Department?”

  “No. I’m merely asking you for a better explanation. The only record of network ERF1O6F is kept in one file in this department. As with all F-networks, funding was channelled entirely through the leader, in this case Dovetail. The only entry on the central payroll is ‘Dovetail’, with the network number. All communication with the network was conducted exclusively with Dovetail himself.

  “Therefore, there are only two ways in which ERF1O6F could have been exposed. The first is if Dovetail himself was discovered and made to reveal the identity of his accomplices. The second is if someone here passed on the details of ERF1O6F’s personnel to the Germans.”

  “Good God,” repeated Owen. “This is monstrous.”

  There was a pause as Wyman allowed Owen to register the full implications of his discovery. Wyman noted with quiet amusement a series of Ministerial memoranda on Owen’s desk. They were all concerned with saving money. Wyman knew that within a day the same memoranda would be circulated throughout the Department under Owen’s name.

  “The Minister will have to be told,” Owen said.

  “Of course,” Wyman said. “And he will want to know what we’re going to do about it.”

  “Yes.” Owen toyed nervously with his pencil. There were lingering traces of ear-wax on its point. “This is what every departmental head dreads, Wyman.”

  It occurred to Wyman that Owen must have viewed this eventuality with particular trepidation, since the Ministry manuals had nothing to say on the subject.

  “I have no choice but to put you in charge of the investigation,” Owen said. “You must be thorough, but discreet.”

  “Naturally. I will need to travel to Europe to begin my inquiries.”

  “Why?” asked Owen suspiciously.

  “I will need to find out the exact circumstances of these arrests. Ordinarily I would do so through the normal channels of the Firm. Since we wish to minimize publicity, I will have to avoid these channels and use a back door.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’d prefer not to explain the details, if you don’t mind, but suffice it to say that I do have some contacts throughout Europe who aren’t working for anybody at the moment, and who might have access to the kind of information we need.”

  “I see,” Owen said, though obviously he didn’t see. “Is this all going to be very expensive?”

  “I don’t know,” Wyman said flatly.

  “We can’t afford to finance holiday trips, you realize.”

  Wyman suddenly felt an overpowering urge to grab Owen by the throat and bang his head against the desk.

  “I’ll keep the expense to a minimum,” he said.

  “Do that,” Owen said. “There’s a recession on, you know.”

  Chapter Nine

  WYMAN’S SON RICHARD lived in a squat in Hackney. He shared it with two girls and a fourth party of dubious gender called Leslie. Wyman did not know whether Leslie was a male homosexual or a female transvestite, and he was always too embarrassed to ask. So when Leslie opened the front door one afternoon, Wyman merely said:

  “Good afternoon. Is Richard in?”

  “Why hello, Dr Wyman,” Leslie said. “Yes, he’s upstairs. Do come in.”

  Wyman entered the hallway and noted that Leslie’s hair was now a delicate shade of violet, which clashed with Leslie’s orange eye-shadow and green lipstick.

  “I presume he’s still in bed,” Wyman said. “After all, it’s only three in the afternoon.”

  “He’s a delicate boy,” Leslie said. “He needs rest.”

  “He’s always resting,” Wyman said. “Perhaps one day some one will tell me what he’s resting from.”

  “I’m sure you can guess,” Leslie grinned, winking an eye.

  Wyman shuddered and went upstairs.

  Richard’s door bore the legend “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”. Wyman read it, smiled, and knocked.

  “Richard? It’s your father,” Wyman said. “You know, the man who clears your overdrafts for you.”

  “Come in,” Richard mumbled.

  Wyman opened the door and beheld the cataclysm in Richard’s room. Wyman was not a tidy or fastidious man, but he was positively spartan in comparison to his son.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Richard. He grinned sleepily from beneath a duvet, surrounded by an avalanche of books, records, dirty clothes, magazines, plates of decaying food, coffee cups, bottles and cigarette packets.

  “Good afternoon,” Wyman said. “I see that little has changed around here. You still wake up at the crack of sunset, your friends are still having hormonal crises, and you still have a splendid disregard for those old bourgeois concepts of order and hygiene.”

  “Spare me the irony,” Richard groaned. “It’s too early in the day. Have a seat.”

  Wyman waded through the rubble and found a chair that was relatively free of garbage. He sat down and offered his son a cigarette.

  “Thanks,” Richard said. “What’s new?”

  “A lot, actually. That’s why I called.” Wyman lit both their cigarettes, took a deep puff and continued.

  “Firstly, the Firm is making me redundant, and secondly, so is the College.”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Richard. “What happened?”

  “The Chancellor’s last budget happened. You may recall that two areas were particularly badly affected by the reduction in spending: the ministries and higher education. I am the victim of both economies.”

  “Wow!” Richard repeated. “The Firm…well, I can just about understand that. But the College…I thought you were one of those immovable Honorary Fellows— life tenure, full pension, all that shit.”

  “I was.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “As part of its new economy drive, the College has decided to abolish Honorary Fellowships. The amendments to the College Statutes were voted through at the last meeting of College Council, and they gave us no leave to appeal.”

  “You mean the motion was streamrollered through the Council by the Bursar or someone like that.”

  “Almost certainly. Apparently there was little opposition to the idea within the Council—”

  “And I suppose they didn’t bother to ask the Honorary Fellows what they felt about the idea.”

  “Quite. The issue is settled, so in a few weeks’ time I shall be entirely without work.”

  “That’s bad,” Richard said.

  “The news didn’t fill me with elation, I must confess. But that isn’t all that’s happened. The other news is about Margaret.”

  “How is she?”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s pregnant.”

  “Whaaat…?“ Richard’s eyes bulged with aston
ishment.

  “You heard me. She’s expecting a child.”

  “You’re taking the piss,” Richard said, shaking his head.

  “I most certainly am not.”

  Richard threw back his head and laughed until tears ran down his face.

  “I suppose…I suppose it was an accident,” he gasped.

  “Let’s just say it came as a pleasant surprise.”

  “Are you sure it’s yours?” Richard giggled.

  “Of course I’m sure,” Wyman snapped. “We don’t all take a different partner each night, you know.”

  Richard howled with mirth and reached for a half bottle of Scotch that lay on the floor.

  “This calls for a celebratory drink,” he said, and took a long pull from the bottle. “Here, have a swig.”

  “Don’t you bother with glasses or cups around here?” Wyman asked.

  “They’re either broken or filthy,” Richard said. “Believe me, the bottle’s safer.”

  Wyman shook his head in disgust and drank from the bottle.

  “I don’t believe it,” Richard grinned. “I’m going to have a sibling. Or is she going to abort?”

  “No, we will have the child.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we,” Wyman said. “We intend to marry.”

  “Marry? Wow. This is more news than I can handle at one sitting. Well, congratulations. No one can accuse you of being predictable, can they?”

  It was Wyman’s turn to grin.

  “It does all seem to have happened at once. It will be nice to have another child, but it won’t be easy, given my redundancy.”

  “I bet.”

  “That’s really why I’ve come to see you. I hope you appreciate that my financial position has changed dramatically. Quite simply, Richard, I won’t be able to bail you out next time you get into trouble with your bank. The money just won’t be there.”

  “I see,” Richard said.

  “I hope you do see. I’m afraid you will just have to get used to the idea of working for money, distasteful as it may sound.”

  “It not only sounds distasteful, it is. But I’ll manage.”

  “Most people do,” observed Wyman. “Your mother always felt that I was wrong to reach for the cheque-book whenever you needed money. She believed that I was subsidizing a slothful, unproductive existence, and she was probably right. I didn’t mind very much, as long as the money was there, but now it isn’t there any more. Whatever I have will be needed by Margaret and the child, and…”

  “Don’t worry,” Richard said. “You don’t need to make excuses. I’ve stung you for far too much already. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Wyman said, a little embarrassed.

  “How are you going to manage?”

  “I’m not sure,” Wyman said. “I’ve looked for academic posts, but it’s all science and computers nowadays. There’s little call for philosophical logic, and my field—modal logic—is well and truly in the hands of the Americans. The big man is a fellow called Kripke, and judging by what I’ve read, his whole line of approach is entirely different from mine.”

  “What does all that mean?”

  “It means that I’m out of touch, and I need a research fellowship in a reasonably tolerant faculty that will allow me to find my academic feet again. Outside my university, that’s a very tall order. All I could get would be a fairly junior post in a redbrick somewhere, and I doubt if it would pay enough to live on.”

  “It sounds bad.”

  Wyman shrugged.

  “We’ll see. There’s no point in being gloomy until all the possible avenues have been explored.”

  Richard lit a cigarette and frowned.

  “What amazes me is that you don’t sound at all angry or bitter about what they’ve done to you.”

  “They? Whom do you mean?”

  “The people who sold you out. Your loyal masters in the Firm, and that bastion of traditional virtue, the College. Don’t you feel really pissed off about them all?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Oh come on,” Richard groaned. “You’ve always prided yourself on belonging to the Great British Establishment. All my life I’ve heard you witter on about what a great set-up it is. Now, after all you’ve done for them, they’ve kicked you out. Why don’t you admit that they’re all a bunch of back-stabbing, hypocritical bastards? So much for the old school tie, all for one, one for all, and all that crap.”

  “I’m an academic, Richard. Not a musketeer.”

  “You get my point,” Richard said. “They’ve ripped you off, and you won’t see it. The joke is that you asked for it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re getting what millions of others have suffered before you, and you were quite prepared to vote for it as long as you weren’t in the firing line. In a way, you deserve all this for voting Tory.”

  “And that piece of poetic justice makes everything all right, I suppose?”

  “No, it doesn’t. It’s not that I don’t sympathize, but—”

  “But you find the whole thing rather satisfying. I thought you Socialists claimed to have the compassionate ideology.”

  “You know what I mean,” Richard protested. “I just want you to admit that your great faith in the Establishment was misplaced. The whole justification for that exclusive little club is that it sticks together and leads the rest of the country up out of the slime. Truth is they can’t even take care of their own, let alone anybody else. You’ve spent a lifetime working for that system, and it’s kicked you in the balls when you needed it most. Why can’t you accept that?”

  Wyman stiffened and stared coldly at Richard.

  “Now you listen,” he said slowly. “The ‘system’ you abuse so casually was responsible for your upbringing and education. The only reason why you can afford to lie back and insult my loyalties and allegiances is because this particular member of the ‘system’ has financed your idleness for the last twenty-four years. Despite all your fashionable squalor, your inverted snobbery and your Socialist affectations, you are still no more than a gentleman of leisure, which, I’m afraid, is a phenomenon typical of the British Establishment. My present circumstances in no way reflect badly upon the things I hold dear. Yours, unfortunately, do. The only criticism I can make of the ‘system’ you despise is that it’s capable of producing intolerant ingrates such as yourself. Despite that, I’d be grateful if you showed a little more respect for my values, however eccentric they may appear to your enlightened mind.”

  There was a long embarrassed pause. Richard noticed that his father shook slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize…”

  Wyman shook his head and lit another cigarette.

  “I overreacted. The apologies should be mine. I’ll have another drink, if I may.”

  “Sure.”

  Wyman took another swig from the bottle and grinned sheepishly at his son.

  “I thought I was handling the situation calmly,” he said. “But it’s obviously hurt me more than I suspected. I admit I’m very confused at the moment. You…you touched a nerve, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Wyman waved his hand impatiently.

  “Forget it,” he said. “How’s Cecilia?”

  “Mum’s fine. She asks after you.”

  “Give her my regards. And how’s that fool she’s living with?”

  “He’s fine too,” Richard grinned.

  “Never mind.”

  “Bitchy as ever.”

  “All dons are bitchy. It’s their prerogative.”

  “I agree with the first half of that, but I’m not too sure about the second half. Anyway, you’re not a don any more.”

  “No, I’m not. It will take getting used to.”

  “However distasteful the idea may sound,” Richard smiled.

  Wyman laughed and stood up.

  “I’m afraid I have to go,” he said. “I have a lot of unfinished w
ork to clear up before I leave the Firm, so I probably shan’t see you again for some time.”

  Richard nodded.

  “Let me know when you’re free,” he said. “Perhaps we can meet for a drink—you, me and Margaret.”

  “That would be nice,” Wyman said. “Goodbye, Richard.”

  “Thanks for coming. And…congratulations.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE MINISTER’S CLUB in Pall Mall served a class of men who were no longer supposed to exist. It was comfortable, oak-panelled, leather-furnished and very, very expensive. The same could be said of its members.

  The Minister escorted Owen into the entrance hall and smiled benevolently at the hall porter.

  “Good evening, Whitehead,” said the Minister. “I believe the Russell Room is booked in my name this evening.”

  “Yes sir,” said the porter. “The port’s been put out for you. Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No, that will be fine, thank you.”

  The Minister walked regally up the circular stairs past faded paintings of past members. Owen followed him and noted that the club always smelled of cigars and brandy. When they arrived at the second floor, the Minister opened a large door and led Owen into the Russell Room.

  “Do sit down,” said the Minister. He poured two glasses of dark, viscous port and handed one to Owen.

  “Good health,” said the Minister.

  “Good health,” Owen said.

  They sank graciously into two leather armchairs.

  “So,” said the Minister. “You have something to tell me.”

  Owen explained Wyman’s discovery, and its awful implications.

  “Good grief,” exclaimed the Minister. “This is ghastly.”

  “Monstrous. You agree that we must act?”

  “Definitely. How dare they not decant the port!”

  “I was speaking about Wyman,” Owen said.

  “Ah, yes. What are you doing about it?”

  “I’ve had to put Wyman in charge, as you can appreciate. It is imperative that as few people hear of this as possible.”

  “Quite. However, it’s all a bit embarrassing under the circumstances, what with Wyman being eased out and all that.”