‘No bar code, please professor. It will be a matter entirely between you and Lady Nevinson – and just between the two of you. Not the Home Office or the American Embassy. Please do not discuss the matter outside this room or with anyone other than Lady Nevinson herself.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Livesey quivered with secret satisfaction. ‘I’ll let you know when it is ready and will probably have the final results of the tests we can do here.’
IX
National Security Adviser’s Office,
10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London SW1
Jacot was getting used to the Cambridge train. This time he had not been summoned but had returned to London at his own volition to update Lady Nevinson. He had never liked the term National Security Adviser – the Cabinet Office was not the White House after all. But it looked good on the brass plaque on Lady Nevinson’s door inside the Number 10 complex. He knocked and went in. She smiled and motioned for him to sit on the leather sofa and pour himself a cup of coffee. She was talking on the telephone, apparently to the prime minister.
‘He’s young enough to be my son,’ she commented, putting the phone down and joining him on the sofa.
‘Surely not’, volunteered Jacot.
‘There is no need for your bogus guardee gallantry.’ She laughed though and her eyes shone.
Nevinson was unusual in that she was not exalted by her closeness to the centre of power. Jacot had never seen this before. Even civil servants privately deeply opposed politically to a particular government or policy usually enjoyed working in or close to Downing Street and found it difficult to disagree in person with the prime minister of the day. Nevinson’s attitude wasn’t just unusual it was invaluable. But he wondered how long the prime minister would tolerate her concealed disdain. Like all politicians he was acutely conscious of the attitude of those he felt were not fully onside. The charismatic always agonized about those impervious to their charisma.
She didn’t actually think very much of the current incumbent, if her asides and small talk were anything to judge her opinions by. From time to time though he did appear to win her stern approval. The usual chippy reasons for not liking him were entirely absent from her horizon. Private wealth and a good education were in her view good things in a professional politician. But she worried about his judgment – not political judgment – but what she called “wisdom”. She just could not see or accept that a man in his early forties, with little experience outside politics, could make good decisions. The consequences were that she often acted on her own initiative – using her work title which everyone knew from watching the American television series about the White House, West Wing, was an important and powerful one – to look into areas which really were not her responsibility and to bypass established systems.
To be fair to her, she was scrupulous in maintaining a good relationship with the prime minister, as was her duty. She even learned a little about modern music and football, which the prime minister was keen on in order not to appear stuffy and old-fashioned. What irked her was having to send all intelligence papers to the deputy prime minister as well. She had started with good intentions but Jacot wondered how much actually got through. There were a thousand ‘Yes, Minister’ type reasons why the distribution of such documents should be restricted. Her views on him were unprintable but colourful. One of the many good things about working for an educated and civilised woman was that she never swore. Jacot didn’t mind swearing and had enjoyed the vivid and fruity language used in the army, particularly when things went wrong. But in the end it was over-reliant for effect on the all-purpose epithet that sometimes smothered the joke. Lady Nevinson’s language was cleaner but the humour darker and more savage. Her descriptions of the deputy prime minister’s incompetence and vanity were elegant mini-Haikus of disdain and abuse. Jacot had secretly started noting the best ones down on the pads of pale cream Joint Intelligence Committee writing paper on which he wrote his notes. The “Haiku” file was kept in his safe under a suitably extreme “Top Secret” classification. Perhaps one day, thirty or forty years hence, he might be able to publish a selection.
The deputy prime minister’s staff seemed always to be in pursuit of various documents which they felt their boss should have seen. They became very worked up one day when they somehow discovered that the Palace had received the Queen’s copy a day before their man got his. Lady Nevinson was at her most gracious when she explained that intelligence documents of this type had always been sent to the Queen first. She pointed out that if the unfortunate staffer were to cast his eye over the distribution list at the back of every Joint Intelligence Committee paper published since the Queen’s Accession in February 1952 he would see the same formula – “Copy Number One – HM The Queen.”
The Queen had been reading Joint Intelligence Committee papers for sixty years, possibly longer. One rather hoped that she might make up for the callowness and inexperience of her current and recent ministers. Although a monarchist at heart and by principle, part of the current allure of the monarchy for Jacot and many others was that it answered that age-old question – “Who guards the guardians?” Or as Lady Nevinson sometimes liked to put it “Where the hell are the grown ups?”
In a way not perhaps obvious to the elected and professional politicians the monarch, or certainly this Queen, really did command the loyalty of the armed forces – every last man. Formal real power lay of course in Downing Street with the prime minister who, like the centurion in Chapter Eight of St Matthew’s Gospel, actually decided who went where and did what. But God forbid, if push ever came to shove in some political nightmare scenario, the army and the other armed services would act or refrain to act on the Queen’s orders and no one else’s.
It was an odd situation. Jacot was slightly wary of Lady Nevinson but it was part of his military training to obey orders. He wondered if increasingly she was out to do her own thing. He briefly took her through further developments in Cambridge. She listened intently. ‘Lady Nevinson, the problem is essentially a locked room mystery.’ Jacot looked eager and rather pleased.
She sighed. ‘Jacot, now is not the time for one of your know-all performances. Intelligence work is not like appearing on University Challenge. I like to think I am a reasonably educated Englishwoman. On a damp holiday last year in the Lake District I watched just about every episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple. I therefore regard myself as an expert in detective fiction. And, if it helps, partying wasn’t the only thing Gilles Navarre and I got up to in Saigon and afterwards. He was and is a fan of the Maigret books. Can’t say they especially enthused me but I was young and I faked it. Gilles was obsessed with “the psychological angle” of these books. He would expound on them for hours. Still, better than an existentialist or a man obsessed with football. So in a way I am an expert in French detective novels too. I have spent many hours inside that little flat in the Rue Richard Lenoire.’
‘You are interested after all’, enthused Jacot. ‘Not sure Maigret ever solved locked room stuff. In the meantime just one recommendation for you. My personal favourite is an American called Jacques Futrelle. He wrote perhaps the greatest locked room mystery of all time, The Problem of Cell 13, in which his detective manages to escape from a hermetically sealed cell.’
‘Well, OK can you get me a copy – might be fun to read on the beach.’
‘You are most gracious. But in a way I was being deadly serious. In detective fiction there are about twenty or so ways in which a locked room or something similar can apparently be breached. For instance, take a yacht found at sea with no one on board. The Marie Celeste problem, if you like. How do we explain it?’
Jacot beamed like a schoolboy. Nevinson looked bored but she was prepared to indulge her sidekick. Very often he was on to something.
‘Do tell, Colonel.’
‘The yacht’s cook had poisoned everybody on board and then thrown their bodies into the sea’, he continued. ‘Unfortunately, he was
seen doing so by the yacht owner’s ever-faithful baboon who consequently strangled him in revenge and tipped the body into the sea. It then hid in a secret place above a wardrobe.’
Lady Nevinson tried to look interested.
‘The least interesting stuff is about secret passages and revolving drinks cabinets allowing the murderer access. Useful if you live in a medieval castle or one of those manor houses with priest holes. Even here in Downing Street we have underground passages. The prime minister can access COBRA without having to come to the surface. I think he can even make his way to the command centre in the MOD without having to emerge in the street. Annoyingly, he cannot walk to the House of Commons underground. Something of an oversight. The Old War Office also has them. Profumo as Secretary of State for War is said to have smuggled his mistresses in by one for secret assignations in his office. There are some quite good stories in which fiendish devices are activated once the victim is safely behind his locked doors and windows. What about this: the bed on which the victim slept was hooked from outside with a strong fishing line and moved so that it faced a different direction? The victim was then woken by a very strong light being shone directly into his eyes, and, thinking that he was moving towards the bathroom to switch off the light, stepped through an open balcony window to his death. But if you read enough of this stuff gradually you begin to understand the best techniques. Bereaved baboons are amusing but hardly serious. We are not looking for a bereaved baboon. The best stories, the ones which seem most real are those where the victim is actually killed before entering the hermetically sealed room.’
Nevinson was suddenly alert. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, we know Verney was alive after the feast and we know he was alive when he went to bed and sufficiently compos mentis to bolt his inner door and slide a small chock under it. The rooms in the older parts of some Cambridge colleges have an outer door with a key to lock it and an inner door with a bolt. It’s just like that unfortunate Russian Litvinenko. He was alive when he left the Yo Sushi restaurant on Piccadilly. But he had been done for. The polonium had been administered in his food and he died in agony two weeks later. The murder to all intents and purposes had been carried out. There is no antidote to radiation poisoning. The body can handle a little but not very much.’
‘But there was no radioactivity in Verney’s room,’ said Nevinson. ‘The police are on to Russian dirty trick techniques. And it doesn’t look as though Litvinenko’s murderers cared about covering their tracks, unlike whoever did this. The West End was lit up like a Christmas tree with radiation. And Jacot, the authorities are confident that there are no poisons either.’
Jacot went on, ‘But the real interest from our point of view lies in the basic truth behind all the plots and stories. They are always disappointing. Once we see how the murder has been carried out we always feel slightly disappointed. It never turns out to be as clever as we thought. Like a magician’s trick, once we know the technique we can see how simple it was to pull off.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s something simple. Very simple. Staring us in the face stuff but we can’t see it.’
‘So, in summary, Colonel, you have come up with very little. But just to make sure you have acquired a part of the late General Verney which is in that ludicrous little box; what an Australian would call an “Esky”. And you have acquired the specimen illegally and off the record by suggesting to a Cambridge professor that I might at some point be in a position to get him a knighthood.’
‘Possibly even a peerage. But yes, that’s about it Lady Nevinson.’
‘Who would want a peerage these days Jacot? I received mine a couple of years before the hereditaries were ejected in 1998. I was proud of it: a reward for my distinguished service and an opportunity to serve my country in the future at the highest level. But once most of the hereditaries went the heart seemed to go out of it. The House used to have the civilized custom that when you were breakfasting or lunching on your own you sat at a general table. Some London clubs do this I understand. And you take the next available seat. A kind of pot luck with a bit of speed dating thrown in…’
Jacot giggled. ‘You would not have been at home in a Foot Guards’ Mess Lady Nevinson. At breakfast the places are laid with an extra space in between and if you don’t want to speak to anyone you wear your hat.’
‘A bearskin, surely not!’ exclaimed Nevinson in mock horror and continued ‘I was able to sit next to all kinds of people. There was a hereditary who was a dentist. Another I remember who was a bookie. And many who had had distinguished careers in the military – not as generals but as fighting soldiers in the last war and the various campaigns since. Plenty of spooks too. But now they are all political apparatchiks of one sort or another. An awful crew. Simply awful.’ For a moment she looked deeply depressed. But then she rallied. ‘Well done anyway Jacot. It is for these difficult events that I keep you on my establishment. Let’s hope this professor Livesey keeps his mouth shut. I am sure I can wangle him a knighthood if necessary so don’t worry.’ She smiled.
‘Take me through why exactly you did it though?’ She leaned back into her leather chair and waited for Jacot’s explanation.
‘Most of the people I talked to, including both a hard-headed provincial policeman who has seen it all, and the military police’s brightest detective, think Verney died of natural causes. Even the Regius Professor of Pathology, er, our new best friend, has his money was on it being a natural death. Apparently, it does happen even though Verney appeared to be in good health for a man of his age. The routine toxicology tests have proved negative. No radioactivity or anything like that present, as you said. Just a couple more very exotic poison tests to go and then that’s it. Both the Home Office, and very kindly, the FBI will take care of those but everyone expects them to prove negative.
‘But I am just not convinced. Although I am not a police detective my instincts and capacity for legitimate suspicion have been finely honed working for you these past few years. There is something not quite right. Something we are not seeing. Curiously, Livesey seemed a little uneasy as well when I spoke to him. He was very reluctant to discuss with a non-medical professional the details of exotic, untraceable poisons. There are apparently ways of killing people with poisons that would make our eyes water.’
Lady Nevinson smiled. She was definitely onside and Jacot was relieved. ‘So why the body parts?’
‘They’re not body parts. Or at least I hope not. Inside the “Esky” as you call it are just a couple of small test tubes with swabs in them. That’s what Livesey said anyway. I certainly haven’t had a look.’
‘Charming. It would appear that you trust neither the Forensic Science Service nor the FBI with its extraordinary laboratories to get it right. Perhaps you were going to send them off by post to an address you found on the Internet.’ Lady Nevinson enjoyed her own joke.
‘Well, actually I was going to dispatch them to Vienna. There’s a clinic there, the Rudolferinhaus, which dealt with the poisoning of the president of Ukraine.’
‘Yes. I remember. And I take the point. That whole business about the poisoning of President Yuschenko is still reverberating. One of the counter-allegations is that the Americans doctored the blood samples to make it appear that their man had been poisoned by the Russians to clinch the election for him. It’s nonsense I know, but at least this way we will get an independent second opinion. And no doubt you have friends there. Do you know I can’t remember the name of the Austrian spook organisation? That lovely Count Von something with the beard is their head of station in London. Wonderful party he gives at Christmas in their embassy.’
‘My contacts are with the Heeresnachrichtenamt, the HNA, which is part of their military intelligence.’
Her frown softened. ‘I had forgotten you speak German. Vienna is all very well but what about your contacts in Berlin?’
‘Berlin and Munich. I don’t think the move from Munich will be complete for another co
uple of years. Pretty good too.’
‘I am sorry to hassle you. Of course they are. Don’t worry Jacot. You have done exactly the right thing. Keep them in your fridge and you can bring them with us to Paris tomorrow.’
‘Paris, Lady Nevinson?’
‘Yes. Paris, Colonel Jacot. You make it sound like a dirty weekend. Yes, Paris. Official visit to French intelligence. And you are coming with me. We are off on a jaunt Jacot – you and me and General Verney in his “Esky”. The French are another group independent of the Americans and I am sure their toxicology laboratories will be on the ball. The car leaves for King’s Cross at nine o’clock tomorrow. What was the name of that detective story writer you mentioned? I think I’ll send the car to Hatchards right now. Be fun to read on the train.’
‘Jacques Futrelle.’
‘Funny, I had never heard of him until you mentioned his name a few minutes ago. I hope he is as good as you say.’
‘Well he was a one story wonder in many ways and his career was cruelly cut short.’
‘Oh dear, how?’
‘He went down on The Titanic.’ Thinking this a suitably dramatic punch line Jacot shimmered out.
X
Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur, Paris
7 Rue Nélaton (near the Eiffel Tower)
Jacot always enjoyed the Eurostar. It was an aspect of modernity he never really got used to. As a child a trip to Paris meant a long bumpy car ride through Kent and then sailing on a rather grimy ferry to Calais and then onwards slowly on often cobbled roads to Paris. He had been in Paris with his parents in 1968 and he always remembered a smelly and rather inconvenient city. On his first tour of Northern Ireland nearly twenty years later he realized what the smell had been – stale tear gas. But the Eurostar was a marvel. He settled back with a book and took a sip of his champagne. Very senior civil servants like Celia Nevinson travelled in style and their sidekicks went along with them.
The Falklands Intercept Page 8
