John Brady - Unholy Ground

"Poor Combs has no one to come and get him, it seems."

Eilis drew on her cosmopolitan, continental cigarette.

"London. That's a very big place now, The Big Smoke. You'll be wanting to speak with someone in the Met there, will you?"

"I suppose I'd better. Will you find me a name and a number, please? Is there a fella we've dealt with before maybe?"

"There are several, so there are," Eilis replied drily. "The Inspector had need to be communicating with the authorities beyond in The Big Smoke and he keeps in touch with several. 'It's good to have them when you need them,' says the Inspector. Especially when there's wigs on the green over a political thing, I suppose. Extradition and the like. The inspector does be very nervous when that word is mentioned."

"That's a word that'll bring the walls of Jericho down, all right," Minogue agreed.

"I'd suggest that the Inspector could pop a name at you that'd ease your way if you'd like me to phone the hospital for you." Eilis concluded her poor rendition of an imaginary Mata Hari.

"Or I could just pull a name off the card index…" spacebarthing

Kenyon's croissant had given him indigestion. He wanted to summon up a belch so that he might dislodge what felt like a piece of the croissant jammed in his sternum. He would have done so in his own office. Here, however, he could not be sure of concealing the belch under his palm should it erupt now.

Hugh Robertson, the Director of the Protective Security Branch, was reading Kenyon's summary. Although Robertson was Kenyon's immediate boss, Kenyon's liking for him supervened over rank and duties. Robertson had been a Colonel when Kenyon first met him. It was in Malaya, two years after Kenyon had joined the Service. As the Empire had contracted, so had the overseas doings of MI5 become more limited. Robertson was one of the leading brains behind the successful counter-insurgency campaign against the communists in Malaya. He had shunned jockeying a desk in favour of field operations.

Robertson had astonished Kenyon and many others with his bluntness. At a boozy farewell dinner in 1955 for a large contingent of MI5's field force-to hold the party itself was tantamount to mutiny-which was preparing to leave Malaya, Robertson had spoken his mind. He voiced his opinion about the shrinking Empire by saying good riddance to the damn colonies. He had looked around the room and said that now Britain would have to find something else for its second-rate sons and daughters to lord it over. It was only when the audience guffawed that Kenyon had realised Robertson had been speaking to the converted.

"Now, James. Who killed Cock Robin here?"

"I don't know."

"Did the IRA kill him?"

"Very, very doubtful," Kenyon replied. "They'd be sure to tell, loud and clear. That's their propaganda bread-and-butter."

"Burglary?" murmured Robertson.

"The police press release says they're pursuing it as robbery with violence."

Robertson gave Kenyon a stage frown.

"Did we kill him?"

"No."

"That's a relief, I suppose. But what do you want from me?"

"I need your approval. Then I'd be asking for staff to go surveillance on Combs' contacts. We have to get someone into Dublin, too, and pick up the bits. I want the Second Sec at our Dublin embassy for a few sessions. The chap who ran Combs. Name of Ball. That'd be a start."

"Contacts?" Robertson asked.

"These people on the list. The asterisk means that the party is dead. There are eight left. Combs may have sent something to any one of them. We have to find out, that's what I'm saying."

"'Something,' James?"

"I'm taking Combs' threats seriously. He may have prepared some record of his grievances."

"Several years back, wasn't it? I thought that the new man Murray had put in knew his onions, claimed to have this Combs toeing the line. You're discounting the reports sourced through Murray and company."

"I am," Kenyon answered, with enough emphasis to cause Robertson to look up at him.

"Bit of a twerp, is he, James?"

"More than that. He's covering his arse. I don't like the way he's treating Combs' murder. He couldn't or wouldn't say what deals were struck to bring Combs to Ireland in the first place. It's a crucial matter if I'm to make sense of things."

"He doesn't have to, James," Robertson rounded on him politely. "You asked a lot of him, seems to me. We don't give out our more clandestine endeavours, you know."

"I'm not a reporter from the Mirror. We're supposed to be on the same side. I won't be happy until we've had a thorough search through Combs' stuff ourselves," Kenyon retorted.

"Threat, you said," Robertson diverted. "A threat to go to the IRA or someone and tell him that he was doing odd jobs for a British intelligence service?"

"Hardly, Hugh. He had no time for them, I'm sure."

"Or a threat to give out with his war stories, shall we call them? He could have sold that stuff for a tidy bundle here. He was a commie, was he not?"

"He passed some stuff to a Soviet ring in Berlin, yes. That's what we rapped his knuckles for. The real trouble started when he turned us down on staying in East Germany after the Liberation. Never trusted after that."

Robertson cleared his throat.

"Mr Combs didn't say at any time what exactly he had in mind, did he?"

"No," Kenyon conceded. "Murray puts it down to alcoholic raving. I still think that if Combs was threatening anybody with anything, it'd be what we did with him during the war and after. I don't see him betraying any of us to a bunch of thugs like the IRA."

"So… some documents on that, perhaps… notes he might have made?"

"Yes."

Robertson looked up from the papers.

"I see no mention of a joint op with the Secret Service in your brief. Or the Foreign Office itself. Don't trust our friends, do you, James?"

"Ask me after a few drinks at the next Christmas party," Kenyon joked morosely. "But first I need to confirm Murray and this Second Sec at the embassy."

"As to what they do?" Robertson half-smiled.

"For whom do they do what they do?"

"Why they work for our gallant Secret Service, James, our MI marvellous six."

"Just Foreign Office cover?"

Robertson nodded.

"So what is Six doing about this?" Kenyon asked.

"They're doing bugger-all at the moment, James. Naturally they'd like to know who killed Mr Combs and why. Howandever, the Home Secretary 'advised' that we carry it from here. Six will get around to their own investigation, but it won't be fast enough for the PMO. We have finally gotten the Irish to the table on border security. The PMO is more than keen not to have any, let's say, fans invade the pitch… so the game is called off."

"Speed, as well as jurisdiction?"

"How politic of you, James. Yes, yes," Robertson said quietly. He put the sheets back in order and laid the folder on the table between them. "You base your proposal on what you have assembled from Combs' file?"

"Yes. I talked to Murray this morning, too," Kenyon replied.

"You're saying that the risks are too high not to assume some dossier, some notes?"

"Right. Whether Combs was talking in the bottle or not, I'm assuming he made some note or notes. Even scattered notes, something to organise his thoughts. There's the two sides to the knife, though. One is how peeved we were-or SOE was-when we found out he was feeding some material to the Soviets back in '44 and '45. The people running the show back then include a former Minister and a D.G. of the Security Service. Anyway, Combs fouled his nest finally when he refused to go into the East and do low-level stuff. Turned us down point-blank. Wouldn't shop the Soviets, he said. Our allies in a common cause… When we told Combs to get lost then, he knew we were serious, that we wouldn't tolerate any public disclosures. And I must say, the climate was tough enough then with the blockade on Berlin and Stalin throwing his weight about with a well-equipped army sitting half-way across Europe. Still, Combs knew some nasty trade secrets. He knew, for example, that we shopped a fella called Vogel to the Nazis because we found out