The Secret Servant hm-1

by Gavin Lyall

  Only the tourists bridged the gap between the two Whitehalls, standing in the January rain to photograph anybody coming out of the multi-million-times photographed doorway, then dodging across the road to buy a fresh film, a stale sandwich and an ashtray shaped like the Imperial State Crown. Not lunchtime country.

  Maxim met the Prime Minister on the third day. It was a disappointing meeting but doomed to be, because Army officers have an exaggerated respect for politicians. It can take at least ten years to design, develop, test, redesign, re-test, produce and issue a new rifle. It can take a politician ten minutes in Cabinet to argue that it's the wrong rifle and get it cancelled. The Headmaster – George called him that to his face and he seemed to like it – was shorter than he looked on television, his Scottish accent was stronger, and he spent most of the time talking about his experiences with the 51st Highland Division just before St. Valйry in 1940. Maxim was used to people learning he was an Army officer and then recalling their own military careers, however brief. He was intrigued to find that it applied to Prime Ministers as well.

  The PM didn't tell Maxim any more about what he was supposed to do, so for ten days he did nothing except re-arrange his room, try to work out the command structure in the house, and read some innocuous files that George sent up. Then came what was later known as the Day of the Grenade.

  The first Maxim knew of it was one of the girls from the Political Office put her head round the door and said breathlessly: "You're not to go downstairs. I mean not to the hall, it's a bomb, I think they said." At the same time, the phone rang. Maxim smiled quickly at the girl, who smiled back and studied him a few seconds longer – it was the first chance she'd had – and then rushed off without closing the door.

  It was George on the phone. "Not to panic, old boy, but somebody's thrown a grenade in through the front door."

  "A grenade? I didn't hear anything."

  "It didn't go off, not yet anyway. If you do hear anything, it'll be the Security Officer committing hari-kiri. They've sent for the bomb squad, so all you have to do is nothing."

  "What sort of grenade?" Maxim asked.

  "How the hell do I know what sort? I haven't gone and interviewed the bloody thing!" George slammed the phone down.

  Maxim thought for a moment, then walked out and downstairs. At the end of the corridor leading to the entrance hall, a security guard stopped him. "There's an unexploded grenade down there sir…"

  "Yes. I know a bit about grenades. I just wanted to see it."

  "The bomb squad's on its way, sir…"

  "It's all right, I'm not going to practise penalty kicks with it." He stepped around the guard, who grabbed his elbow and then found his own arm almost twisted from its socket. Maxim's reaction had been quite instinctive.

  "I'm sorry." He smiled at the guard and went on down the corridor.

  The entrance hall was deserted, the front door slightly open. Then a uniformed policeman leaned in from the hats-and-coats lobby and said in a hoarse whisper: "Get back sir. There's a grenade in there."

  Why on earth do people always whisper in the presence of explosives?

  "Where?" Maxim asked.

  The policeman pointed to Chippendale's huge black leather hooded chair. An olive green egg the size of a fist had rolled up on the tiles beside it. Maxim squatted down and peered at it.

  "Sir" the policeman squawked in what was still really a whisper. Maxim bowed down to the grenade. Telling the story afterwards, most people said he was listening to it. In fact he was smelling it. Then he got up and walked across to the lobby.

  The policeman had a phone in one hand: several of the messengers were peering out from behind the rack of visitors' coats.

  "You can cancel the bomb boys," Maxim said. "It's a drill. A dummy." The policeman just stared at him. Maxim went back and met George coming down the corridor, very much more likely to blow up than any grenade.

  "Harry, what the hell did I just tell you? You aren't the bloody-"

  "It's a dud, a drill. But if you want a nice big news story, let the Ordnance come screaming round and put mattresses on it."

  The PM was out of town again, so the story lacked something already. Maybe it could be played down as just a bit of hooliganism, whatever it really was…

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Oh balls," Maxim said, and went back and picked up the grenade and held it under George's nose. "Smell it. There's no fuse been burning. Just fresh paint. You don't paint a grenade before you throw it. But the drill comes in light blue; somebody's tried to make this look live."

  George pushed the grenade gently away. "Harry, if that thing were now to explode. I would never forgive you." He went to find the Security Officer. Maxim walked back upstairs.

  George rang him just after lunch. "You are the hero of the hour. You, with your own hands, nay, your own bare teeth, personally defused several time bombs within split seconds of doom and destruction… you haven't heard any of these rumours? Never mind, in Number 10 the hero of the hour lasts just that long. They've got the chap that did it over at the Cannon Row fuzzery and I think we ought to have a word."

  "Is it all right with the police?"

  "That's fine, all squared away. I'll see you downstairs in five minutes."

  On the way out they passed the Security Officer. He had disliked Maxim from the very beginning; now he gave him a smile of pure hatred.

  Just across Whitehall and down a side street, the police station was a shapeless grimy-black Victorian mass in the shadow of the old Scotland Yard building. They sat in the Chief Inspector's office while a sergeant took Maxim's finger-prints, since he'd handled the grenade without due care and attention.

  "Our friend's name is Charles Farthing," the Chief Inspector read from his notes. "Aged fifty-one, unemployed, there's an address in Barnes that we're having checked out. He's either divorced or getting divorced, but he didn't want to say much about that,"

  "Did he put up a fight?" George asked.

  The Chief had a skull face with curly grey hair and pale blue eyes. He obviously knew George well, but still took a cautious time before answering. "No, he came quite quietly, as I understand it. He just threw the… the object in through the front door, and I believe he shouted 'Grenade!' or something along those lines. Then he let himself be arrested by the constable on duty at the door."

  He had, it seemed or was alleged or was held, got the door opened by saying he wanted to present a petition against some motorway scheme.

  "Has he been charged?" George asked.

  "Only with creating a disturbance. We're holding him so that a doctor can have a look at him, but I wouldn't say he was drunk."

  "Has he asked for a lawyer?"

  "No, sir. He seems just to want to get into court and say his piece."

  "About what?"

  "That's why I called you, sir."

  George stared at his fingernails. "Is it all right if Harry here goes and has a word with him?"

  "It's perfectly all right with us, sir, although the accused doesn't have to answer." He gave Maxim a warning look.

  At the far end of the narrow cells corridor there was a deep washbasin where Maxim got most of the fingerprint ink off. Only one of the cell doors was shut, and on the little blackboard fixed to it was chalked FARTHING DISTURB "Just so that we don't get them mixed up when the van comes for them in the morning," the Chief explained. Maxim thought of saying they'd missed out a do not, but neither the dim corridor nor the occasion encouraged jokes.

  A uniformed policeman peered in through the Judas window, then unlocked the door. It shut behind Maxim with the whirr and snap of an automatic lock.

  The cell looked as if it should smell, but it didn't. It was long and high, lined to head height in glazed white brick and with a wide wooden shelf running right down one side. At the near end it was a bed, at the far end it became a lavatory seat. But there was no cistern or chain, from which you might hang yourself. You pressed a buzzer and sooner or later somebody
came and pulled a chain in the corridor. Even the single light bulb was actually in the corridor, shining in through a thick porthole, so that you couldn't electrocute yourself or slash your wrists either.

  In the gloomy light, Charles Farthing sat on the mattress puffing quickly at a cigarette. He didn't look up. Maxim walked past him and sat further down the bench.

  After a time, he said: "Nice place you've got here."

  "I don't come here often." The voice shook a little. He had a puffy face with sunken eyes, a big nose and thin dry hair. He wore a suit that was some years out of date and greasy suede shoes – though perhaps you didn't put on your best clothes to get arrested in.

  "And who are you?" Farthing asked.

  "Harry Maxim. From the Ministry of Defence."

  "Oh yes." Farthing threw his cigarette against the wall and sparks spattered in the dimness. "The dear old Mine of Dung. They're all honourable men, there. So they sent you down here to shut me up, have they? Well, you can go and tell that I'm going to let it all hang out, as the Americans put it so charmingly. All, everything." His voice had a flatness within the anger, as if a regional accent had been carefully polished out.

  "All what?"

  "I'll tell the court, don't you worry. They can't stop you there."

  "They don't let you make irrelevant speeches, either."

  For a while neither of them said anything, then Maxim asked politely: "What work do you do?"

  "I don't do any, do I? I was twenty years in the arms business, until you people started buying everything from Washington or the Germans. Do you know what we were doing at Warrington before I was made redundant? Sub-contract work on grenades – and even those were really the Yank M26."

  So at least we know where the drill grenade had come from.

  "And you wait and see with these anti-tank mortar trials."

  Farthing went on. "It'll be the same again there. You wait and see."

  "Is that what you're going to say?"

  "It gets worse than that, doesn't it?" Farthing looked craftily sideways.

  "I've never known it when people weren't saying the country's defences were going to the dogs."

  "Yes, but you people weren't always killing people and suppressing evidence to hush it up, were you?"

  "Who got killed?"

  "You know bloody well who!"

  "Sorry, I'm new in Whitehall."

  Farthing's look turned to distrust. Then he lit another cigarette, using both hands to keep the match steady. "Most people think the government makes the decisions, don't they? Or you people. But governments come and go – even you people get transferred every now and then. And you can have three different prime ministers in the time it takes to develop a new tank or field gun. But there's one man who's always there, one man who makes the real decisions and he's not the right man to do it. He'll see us all destroyed, ruined. And I'm going to say it, to tell them. Even if it gets me killed, too." He ended on an almost triumphant note.

  "Who are you really working for?"

  The question knocked Farthing off balance. "What… what d'you mean?"

  "You throw a grenade in the door of Number 10 – that isn't exactly a patriotic thing, is it? You say our defence is being loused up, but not how or by whom. Just whose side are you on?"

  "D'you have to ask that?"

  "With you, obviously yes."

  "Jesus! Well, you go back and tell your bosses that the professor isn't going to… oh no. You slimy rotten sod. Just tell them.. I'll say it all. I'll say it."

  He threw down the cigarette and stamped on it. The floor around his feet was a mess of ash and crushed butts. Others had made their mute protests by scratching names and rude words on the paint of the door.

  Maxim waited, but it was over. He pressed the buzzer by the lavatory.

  "He means Professor John White Tyler, of course," George said. "It's quite ridiculous. He's probably our best theorist on defence since the war – have you read any of his books?"

  Maxim nodded.

  "Well… but he's never had any direct influence until he joined the policy review committee a few weeks ago. Ridiculous."

  "What about somebody getting killed?"

  "He didn't say any names?" But George had hesitated just a moment and Maxim knew he was dodging something. They were sitting in the bleak neon-lit charge room just before the cells corridor. The Chief Inspector had instinctively placed himself behind the desk, leaving Maxim and George in front about to be warned that anything they said would be taken down in writing…

  "No names," Maxim said. Was George a little relieved?

  "Well, I don't see how we can follow that up until he does say something. D'you think he's barmy?"

  Maxim glanced at the Chief, who left the question to him. "I think that's the word I'd use. He's been out of work some time, his marriage is on the rocks, he's about broke… I don't know what it adds up to medically, but if he were in my company I'd make sure he stayed back and loaded blankets into trucks rather than let him near a weapon."

  The Chief smiled his skull smile. "He's not too bad with a hand grenade."

  "So now," George said, "he's going to stand up in court and spout a lot of rubbish with absolute privilege, no libel suits, and muddy the water properly. How long can you delay the case?"

  The Chief thought carefully. "Do you think we ought to hit him with something more than just creating a disturbance?"

  "What have you got on the menu?"

  The Chief opened a file on the desk. "This is something fairly new, from the Criminal Justice Act 1977. 'A person who places any article in any place whatsoever, with the intention of inducing in another a belief that it is likely to explode…' " He looked up. "Fits him like a glove, doesn't it, sir? Up to three months on summary conviction."

  "Well, how long can you wait?"

  "He'll get bail, of course, even if we opposed it. After that, the magistrates won't be in any rush. I'd say five weeks, give or take."

  "It's the best we can do, I suppose."

  "There's just one thing," the Chief said. "The suit our friend is wearing. He was properly searched when we got him in – the suit was made in Canada. Montreal. I don't know if that means anything, sir."

  They dodged through the Grand Prix of Whitehall traffic and into the backwater of Downing Street. George walked with his shoulders hunched against the wind, a petulant frown on his face. The inevitable little group of tourists goggled at them as the policeman nodded to George and had the door opened immediately. The stares still embarrassed Maxim: he always felt a fraud for not being somebody important.

  Once inside, George muttered: "We are going to turn that bastard inside out. I want a witness to every breath he ever drew." He glanced at Maxim.

  "I told you I'm not a detective."

  "I know. This isn't a one-man job, anyway. It isn't a police job, if we've got to back-track him to Canada… You haven't met Agnes Algar, have you? I'll get her over."

  4

  The ladies' annex of that particular club was being redecorated, so for a few weeks women were allowed into what was called the Library, although there was no sign that anybody ever dared touch the leather-bound books lining the walls.

  George introduced them. "Major Harry Maxim – you probably know more about him than I do anyway. Miss Agnes Algar from Box 500, Five, whatever you care to call it."

  "It's nice to meet a real professional," Maxim said tactfully.

  "Thank you, kind sir." Agnes was about Maxim's own age, with an oval face that could be called 'friendly' and looked as if it should have freckles. She had blue eyes, a snub nose and light ginger hair cut straight but in no definable style. She wore a skirt, blouse and jacket in light brown and oatmeal shades, which most women were wearing that season. Being friendly and unmemorable was an important part of her work.

  They sat on huge studded leather chairs in a corner of the room, which was long and tall enough for them to speak normally without being overheard. Agnes kept a hope
ful smile on her face as she studied the man whom the intelligence community was already calling the Unknown Soldier. She had foolishly believed that, after fourteen years of security work, she knew every stupidity that Downing Street could get up to in that field. She had been wrong. They had brought in a soldier, an infantryman, no matter what he might have learned in the SAS and the Ashford course. Presumably he was a crack shot and a born leader who could crawl invisibly across a thousand miles of desert, if that was any help in Whitehall traffic, but probably he knew as much about real security work as she did about the mating habits of the giant squid.

  But he will pass, all things pass, particularly soldiers when their brief postings are up. Until then, she could live with it. Agnes had that most valuable of all talents in the intelligence world, something the MI5 headhunter at Oxford had hoped for but could only guess at all those years ago: loyalty that lasted beyond disillusionment.

  "Does this meeting mean that we have found favour again in the eyes of the All Highest?" she asked. She had a gentle, controlled voice, more Oxford than shire.

  "You have most certainly not. There are standing orders to set the dogs on any of your calling who sets foot within a quarter mile of Number 10."

  Agnes could live with that, too. Prime Ministers also passed, even if each new one was just as paranoid about the security service as the last.

  "All we want-" then George caught the eye of an elderly steward. "What will you drink?"

  "Ow, a small tonic wiv a large gin, pleeze, duckie." Around George, Agnes often slumped into a stage cockney accent, originally intended to embarrass him, now just a habit. Maxim and George both asked for whisky and water. The steward crumbled away towards the service door.

  "All we want," George went on, "is for your mob to dig up everything they can about this Farthing person without triggering off any nuclear disasters or Questions in the House."

  Agnes kept her friendly smile and fumbled in a shoulder bag shaped like a pony express pouch until she found a notebook. "I looked up his file at the Registry."