The Crocus List

by Gavin Lyall

  "We obviously can't stop them," the DDCR brooded, making invisible doodles with the blunt end of his pen; "it's the whole businessof helping them…"

  "I imagine we can manage it more tactfully than having them import a company of Marines." Tact was always a tactful word to invoke. "And laying out the winged carpet seems a small price for what he'll be doing over here. He'll be meeting the inner Cabinet-"

  "Like blowing a bugle at a tin of dog food. What else?"

  "Doing the Guildhall speech, and the next day he's giving the word to their Air Force people at Lakenheath. He's sure to cover Berlin; it'll get plenty of space. It's all good for the Cause: we do want him to come."

  The DDCR looked up sharply. "Did they say that? -that he won't come unless he gets his APCs?"

  "Not in so many words… but one can see their point of view. Trying times." He sighed.

  "Yes… My God, suppose the Met makes a bog of it and he just gets bumped offby some local loony. What I'd really like to see is our chaps handling the whole security side: some of those policemarksmen, as they call them, don't fire more than thirty rounds a year… All right then, I'll draw up an order for the Director's signature… But when you say it can be just an addendum to Playpen, I don't like shuffling Playforcearound. It's one operation that can only work if everybody sticks rigidly to his task. If we start changing those tasks now…"

  "Form a special unit," George said promptly. "The President's group won't be more than seven, just a single vehicle. But better to have three-say, Saracens, you can borrow them off the TA- and no more than thirty men. Only a platoon-"

  "George-"

  "The obvious people would be the SAS, butit might be even better to get bods just back from Northern Ireland. They're more used to Saracens and street-"

  "George!"There was a moment of heavy silence while George wondered if he hadn't over-mellowed himself. The DDCR took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose; he had a lined yellowish face and moved stiffly in his chair. "George… if you really want to give orders to soldiers why didn't you stay in the Army?"

  Long ago in the days of National Service, George had spent two busy but carefree years in a Dragoon Guards regiment before going to Oxford.

  "I thought I might be more use on the outside," he said humbly.

  "I think so, too. So if you don't mind leaving a few of the mundane details to us… Where I need your help is fending off any flak from the political side. D'you expect any? What about the Foreign Office?"

  "We've got a standing remit to lay on an anti-terrorist alert on these sort of affairs, we can wrap it up in amongst that. No, I don't think we should tell the FO, they'd probably prefer not to know. Then they can say it was just us playing favourites when the French President finds out we hadn't laid on a submarine for him. Not that he's going to find out," George added quickly. "Not unless the worst happens and he can always file a complaint with St Peter as he goes in."

  "Nice to think there'll be a brown envelope waiting for us on the Far Side; gives one a sense of continuity. " The DDCR leant carefully back in his chair. "Good. I'll leave that to you. But we've still got to find somebody from Playforceto act as OC. Can't leave it all to the platoon commander. Somebody with the full Playforcebriefing, and if we're doing it properly, he should have stay-behind training as well."

  "If I might make a suggestion…?"

  "George…" A warning growl, then: "Oh bloody hell, go on then."

  "Chap who's joined you quite recently but 1 don't think he's got a posting yet. A Major-that would be what you'd want, I imagine. And he's got a fair bit of experience working independently."

  "Maxim, I suppose you mean. I wondered when you'd bring him up. Don't you think you've done enough to blight that poor man's career already? I was looking through his 'P' file the other day: the time when he was with you at Number 10 is just aboutblank. He never saw his reporting officer more than once a month and never told him anything then. All the chap could report was that Maxim seemed very security-conscious."

  "There's worse things."

  "Quite. But there's those, too. Rumours. Goings-on. He's got a reputation for being a bit hasty with a gun…" He grunted. "Funny Army when that tells against a man, but… Having his wife killed didn't help, either."

  "You can't blame him for some terrorist bomb."

  "Of course not. But if you really want to do something for him, find him some nice sensible girl close to his own age and get him settled down for a bit."

  "I'm not marrying Harry off to some deb who's half horse and the arse end at the top."

  "You're getting as fixated as the Americans. No, I don't mean anybody particularly County, he's the wrong regiment for that anyway. Just a steady mature girl-"

  "Military or Whitehall parents, maybe a little money of her own…"

  "Just so. Have you got anybody in mind? That's a good half of the reason he got a London posting again: give him a chance to meet somebody. A Playforcejob isn't an arduous one once you've settled in. And I don't imagine he's the type to go wasting his time jiving in discos or whatever."

  "He likes Duke Ellington."

  "Who?"

  "Sorry. Phase One, then: get Harry married."

  "I only mention it because you seem to have so muchtime for other people's affairs. The Army is actually doing its best to advance your friend's career."

  "Is he likely to get a battalion?"

  The DDCR sighed. He should never have let the conversation go this far. But it was no secret that a major in his mid-to-late thirties was at the cross-roads of his career. The next step, to command of a battalion-and preferably his own, the one he had joined twenty years before-was the biggest in an infantry officer's life. Many would retire fulfilled and die happy with that memory alone; most never made it. They might become lieutenant-colonels a few years later, but only in staff postings. They would never lead a fighting unit again.

  Oh well: "You know his background as well as I do. Not having got to Staff College, and those tours in the SAS-all good work, -but he's been away from his battalion too long. They don't know him and he doesn't know them. And you know what I mean about being married. The CO's wife's an absolutely vital person, particularly overseas. All these seventeen-year-old frippets that soldiers marry these days, never been abroad before, trying to bring up babies where they don't know a word of the language… Your Annette would have been first class; you should have stayed in. Might even have stopped you coming to work dressed like a bookie."

  George's usual style of dress was a light grey check, expensively tailored but nonetheless Highly Unsuitable for the Mo D, where the order of this and every day was a dark blue pinstripe. Given the defiant individuality of regimental dress-something the old Duke might have done something about if he'd had his way-Army officers never looked more uniform than in plain clothes.

  The DDCR gave a little satisfied smile as George instinctively sucked in his stomach. "Very well: he probablyis the best man for the job. I'll get him detached from his course tonight. After Number 10, 1 don't suppose there's much they can be teaching him about dirty tricks."

  6

  The sun came up cold and colourless in a sky so polished by the night's rain and wind that you would still be able to feel the stars at midday. That gave the DDCR an uneasy naked feeling as he was driven through the fenced-off streets of central London, already buzzing with police and Army vehicles and dotted with TV trucks, surrounded by early spectators who would gawp at their equipment until the real procession passed. So clear a sky meant enemy aircraft, at least when you were in defence, and the DDCR was feeling defensive and jittery with old memories of doing the rounds of his outposts at dawn.

  That was silly, because if the enemy came it would be in eyeless missiles that cared nothing for weather. And even the thought that it was perfect for helicopters didn't cheer him, because it was also perfect for shooting them down. His determined gloom only lifted when they turned through the archway to Dean's Yard behind
the Abbey, and into the bustle of the workaday Army. The tall buildings enclosing the Yard had held back the dawn and the blaze of headlights-the Army was being as spendthrift as usual with its batteries-darkened the sky again. Parked just to his left against the glowing red-gold creeper on the old walls were three Saracen armoured personnel carriers. Squat and blunt-headed like wheeled elephants, they were a familiar and comforting sight. Less comforting were the patches of white with bright red crosses on each carrier.

  The DDCR erupted out of his car. "Who the bloody hell authorised those crosses? Who's in command here?" His voice had forgotten his retirement.

  A soldier stepped forward from a group around the nearest Saracen and saluted. "I wouldn't touch the paint, sir: it's still wet."

  "Maxim?"

  "Sir."

  "Arethose blasted crosses your idea?"

  "Sir."

  The DDCR glared through the headlights. Harry Maxim was not-quite-tall and, from the way he moved, slim under the loose combat dress and unbuttoned flak jacket. The DDCR should know his age-thirty-seven, was it? The thin almost concave face looked older in the harsh light, with deep lines running down from the nose past the polite, deferential, smile.

  The deference wasn't appeasing. "You can't go putting red crosses on armed vehicles, man! You know the rules!"

  "Ambulances have an easier job through crowds, sir. And it might muddle somebody who was going to shoot."

  The DDCR made a growling noise, but Maxim had a point there. And he must remember that the Americans weren't going to stampede without very good reason. If the missiles were being primed now, who would read the Geneva Convention over the rubble?

  "Oh, all right, then. If anybody else asks, tell 'em we ordered it." Still disgruntled, he noticed the unfamiliar submachine-gun slung from Maxim's shoulder. "And where did you get that thing?"

  "Friends, sir."

  The DDCR growled again. When soldiers were readied for action they always put on non-regulation boots or adjusted their equipment in personal ways. The wise commander didn't nit-pick; you just had to trust to their experience, common sense-and even 'friends' at, he guessed, the SASdepot off Sloane Square.

  "All right. Is everything set up here?"

  "Their Secret Service have got a CP established in the Deanery. That's just through the arch there and to the left." Beyond the Saracens a tall archway, mostly filled in with ornamental ironwork, led to a tunnel ending, after thirty yards, in the gloomy light of the Abbey Cloisters. "If they get the word to go, they'll hustle the President out through the Cloisters and up here, we shove him into the number 2 vehicle and take off."

  "Where are you going to be?"

  "Rear, sir, in number 3. With just a couple of chaps; we'll act as pickup in case the number 2 gets stopped."

  "Good. Make sure the drivers wear respirators; if this actually happens God knows what they'll throw at you. Smoke, gas, I don't know. You might try to make the President put one on, too…"

  The Platoon Sergeant came up with a crisp salute and a mug of tea. Normally the DDCR would have drunk coffee at this time of day, but it would have tasted quite wrong in this scene. He sipped and talked; the sunlight crept down the wall behind him and the headlights were switched off. Radios crackled as they were netted and signallers grumbled at the buildings around them; men tossed down cigarette ends and were told by indignant corporals to pick them up, because this was Holy Ground.

  "… and you'd better run up the engines every half-hour to-oh blast it! I'm getting as bad as your friend George Harbinger, meddling in details that aren't my business. Have you heard anything from him recently?"

  "He gave me a ring a couple of weeks ago, to ask how I was getting on."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I said I was getting on fine, sir."

  "And how was life at Number 10?"

  "Very interesting, sir."

  The DDCR looked at Maxim carefully. "All right, Harry, I don't have to know everything." He sighed and took a last look at the reassuring sight of camouflaged figures crumpled comfortably as cats on impossible niches of the steel Saracens, then turned to his car and the huge lonely possibilities that waited in his office.

  "I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well. Haven't had a chance to say that since I had a sergeant called Harry at the Rhine. Henry the fourth Part One, just before the battle of Shrewsbury." From the extra politeness in Maxim's smile he saw the explanation had been unnecessary. "But I bet you don't remember the line that comes next: 'Why, thou owest God a death.' Put like that, it doesn't seem too much of a debt… You'll have to keep the vehicles here until around 2400: we'll let you know. And I expect the Yeomanry would like them back without the fancy paintwork. I'm sure yourfriends can rustle up a few pints of turps. Good luck, Major."

  As the morning wore on a mutter like surf drifted in through Dean's Arch from the growing crowds. The Yard itself became busy with policemen, American Secret Servicemen and occasional clerics. This aspect of security was nothing to do with Maxim, but he soon realised that it was his job to fend off such people with a salute and some reassuring small-talk, leaving the platoon undisturbed. After one churchman had stopped and goggled openly at his submachine-gun, he told Lieutenant Forrest -OCthe platoon-to get all weapons out of sight and drape something over the machine-guns that had been mounted in the Saracens' little turrets.

  At ien o'clock the Abbey bells, half muffled, began a slow peal. A Secret Serviceman had attached himself to them, wearing an earplug for his walkie-talkie, and reported to Maxim: "Lawman is airborne." A moment later he got the same message from a radio operator in the third Saracen. Forrest, who obviously had more money than responsibilities, had brought along a tiny colour TV set that one of the signallers had set up on the bonnet of a Land-Roverand was constantly tuning. Abruptly it cut to show the wavery shapes of two helicopters grazing the London skyline.

  "Always four pressmen in the back-uphelio,"the Secret Serviceman explained. "Call the bastards the Death Watch. You can figure out why." He smiled without humour. Younger than Maxim, he wore a thin fawn suit and open raincoat in the cool air, but there was a stipple of sweat on his forehead and Maxim could guess at why the hairline had already receded so far. He knew the stress of bodyguard work himself, but nothing like the months and years of watching over the world's most likely target. I wonder if they last for years? he thought, and tried to make his own smile an encouraging one.

  "Lawman is on the ground." And very soon after: "Lawman is in thelimoand moving."

  "Drivers and gunners," Forrest ordered, and they climbed nimbly into the Saracens. Then: "Ready!" and there was a rattle as weapons were cocked. Suddenly they seemed to have the wide Yard to themselves; outside, the cheering came in bursts, drowning the steady thump of the marching bands. It gave a sense of being in the back kitchen while the Grand Ball went on upstairs, but something in Maxim's character made him enjoy that. He would always prefer to stand in the shadows backstage watching how the scenery was shifted and the actors braced themselves for an entrance than sit out front and see nothing but the play.

  Forrest made conducting movements with his hands, spreading those who wouldn't be in the Saracens to cover the Arch and windows around the Yard, in case some sabotage squad knew about the getaway plan. It was an experienced, well-drilled platoon, and Maxim would only have spoiled their rhythm by trying to help.

  "Lawman is at the Abbey… getting out of the limo…" The Secret Serviceman's gaze roved the rooftops and his left hand brushed his mouth nervously, but he seemed pleased at the loudest cheer yet.

  "Lawman is in the Abbey…" The Secret Serviceman relaxed as the responsibility shifted to the soldiers. They waited, very still in the cool shadow of their corner of the Yard, through the roar and music as the Royal Family arrived and the hush when the service began.

  Clay Culliman and a USAF Colonel in uniform, carrying a slim briefcase, walked through the Arch and quickly past towards the Deanery. Culliman's face seemed vagu
ely familiar to Maxim, though he couldn't recall the name, but he recognised what was in the briefcase: the 'codes', whatever that meant, that enabled the President to trigger the USA's own nuclear forces. He realised with a jolt that he was within yards of one of the two great power centres of the world; for this hour, it wasn't the Kremlin and the White House, it was the Kremlin andhere.

  Instinctively he began watching the sky. If it came, would he see anything? One plunging spark, one rip of vapour trail, before the flash dissolved him?

  "I just hopesomething bleeding happens," one of the soldiers said, and was told toshut up by his mates beforeanybody more senior could say it. Maxim woke up to the Abbey choir, chanting unsyqchronised from the TV and the loudspeakers relaying the service to the streets outside, and knew the men were getting over-tense. They were taking their mood from him, as they were supposed to, and he scowled at his idiocy in gazing at the sky; hadn't he learntanything in the last nineteen years? If only he still smoked he could hand round cigarettes, try to wind down the atmosphere.

  Forrest did it for him. "Right-half of you out for a stretch and a drag. Corporal Monro, Clarke, Higgs…" The soldiers moved and Forrest glanced a reproof at Maxim, who accepted it with a sad nod and forced himself to stand relaxed, watching the TV.

  "Clever little things, these," the signaller said, doggedly twiddling to cure the unstable picture, "but it don't stand a chance, not really. The high-frequency stuff that's being pumped out round here… Not just TV, but did you see what the Yanks have got next door?" He jerked his head at the Deanery. "The kit they've got… You can pick up the handset in there and a voice comes right on: 'White House, Washington,' and you say: 'White House, London here' -wherever the President goes, that's the White House as well-when they open the door of his plane, first thing a bloke runs down the steps with a white handset and sticks it on a little stand thing, so the President's always supposed to be-"

  Forrest said: "If you'd shut up, we might be able to hear something even if you have screwed up the picture. And if it doesn't work back in my room I'll have your bollocks."