Gerald Seymour - The Contract

For all of them the journey to the capital represented a truncated but welcome escape.

The boy looked around him with the full swing of his neck, the arc broken only when his eyes would have challenged Johnny's. This was the remaining area of his suspicions. With Carter he seemed to have an understanding of sorts, with George he had ploughed a bare field of co-existence, but with Johnny his trust was soured. Johnny and his role in the debriefings fuelled a degree of suspicion that the boy did not feel now for the others. Johnny who was deadly quiet and perpetually in alert motion, Johnny who seemed to be in increasing preparation for an unexplained action. Johnny alone was the block against Carter's protestations that no harm was intended towards his father.

When the countryside was gone from them after the Leatherhead by-pass Carter began to talk, directing himself to Willi, swivelling in his seat, relaxed and confident as if a new era had settled on them. Johnny sat close to the boy, tensed each time the car stopped at traffic lights or slowed behind a lorry, warily watching the boy's hands and the door catch.

' I can't tell you much, Willi,' Carter began, 'because that's not our way, that's not the style that we employ. But the incident of last week is forgotten by us and we've been impressed by your attitude since then.

You have been most co-operative and we don't underestimate the value of the help that you have given us. We're going to continue to ask for that help, and your patience… in a few days' time, less than a month we're going to provide you with a bonus, a present in Christmas wrapping, that you wouldn't have thought possible. That's harder for you to believe than if we'd told you nothing at all…'

The boy listened in a glazed curiosity.

'… you have to be patient with us, as I said, you have to do everything that we ask of you. The worst part for you is finished, not for us, but for you. Help us and we'll help you, and the prize for both of us is very rich.

All right, lad?'

The conflict seemed to rise in the boy's face. The implicit threat and the cold watch of Johnny beside him, confronted by the apparent kindness of Carter, the older man, with the words of honey.

'Yes, Mr Carter.'

'That's the spirit.'

'Yes, Mr Carter.'

'And now we're going to have a hell of a day out and a damn good meal, and we're going to forget about work and all those bloody questions and we're going to play the tourist game.' Carter held up a small camera to amplify his point.

And they all smiled, even Willi as if against his judgement, even George as his eyes hovered between the road and his mirror, even Johnny.

The Deputy-Under-Secretary walked from the Privy Council Office in Whitehall, where his car dropped him, along the underground link tunnel to Number 10 Downing Street. A private man this, from a private world. None of the hundred or so tourists who gathered daily on the pavement across the road from the Prime Minister's home and office would have the opportunity presented them of inadvertently snapping with their cameras the features of the head of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Forewarned from a telephone conversation with the Retired Vice-Admiral, forearmed by an early morning situation report from Charles Mawby of the files that now carried the codename DIPPER, he believed he possessed protection in the coming encounter.

The Prime Minister's Special Branch bodyguard in the hallway on the ground floor rose sharply to his feet.

'Good morning, Mr Havergale.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary saw the pleasure light in the veteran policeman's face. Good to find friends, to find them where he could.

'Good morning, sir, not a bad morning is it?*

'Not bad at all, and I think it's going to brighten a bit more.'

'Could be, sir.'

The usher beside the Deputy-Under-Secretary clicked his heels. 'The Prime Minister's waiting for you, sir.'

'Mustn't keep him waiting, must we, Mr Havergale? Must not delay the Prime Minister's business…'

'Right, sir. Nice to see you again, sir.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary smiled coolly to himself. Briskly, confidently he followed the usher who led him up the wide staircase to the first floor, they paced the length of a corridor, their footsteps hushed by the carpet pile, aware of the murmur behind closed doors of electric typewriters, hearing the trill of a radio from upstairs that played light music… The Prime Minister's wife would be in the attic flat, not really a suitable woman, and she was said to tell anyone who would listen that she detested living over the shop… The usher knocked lighdy on a door.

'Enter.'

They always had their desks at the window and their backs to the doorway, these people. They always had papers that concerned them when a visitor was shown into the presence, leaving their guest standing in awkwardness and at disadvantage.

The papers were purposefully pushed away.

'Good morning, take a chair please.' The Prime Minister removed his spectacles, smiled without affection, turned in his chair. The Deputy-Under-Secretary sat himself down, wondered if there would be pleasantries and preliminaries. There were none. 'We haven't seen enough of each other since I came into office. I believe that one of my predecessors instituted a fortnightly meeting between Downing Street and the Service. I'm inclined towards resurrecting that habit.'

'I'm sure you read the minutes of the monthly meeting chaired by the Permanent-Under-Secretary, the meetings of JIC.'

'I read that.'

'And it's not satisfactory?'

'If I believed that what appears in a page and a half of transcript was the sum total of what was discussed, then I'd be tempted to wind the whole apparatus up, close it down. It's a thin sketch at best. You'll not disagree with that?'

'It contains the traditional elements.'

'Then the tradition isn't good enough.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary was impassive, his eyes taken by a soup stain on the Prime Minister's tie. 'The tradition has not been found wanting in the past.'

'If that's true then I want to be in a position to make that judgement. I don't want to be merely told there are roses in the garden behind the high wall, I want to go into that garden and see them for myself.'

'If the JIC minutes are inadequate then I'm sure the Permanent-Under-Secretary will rectify that situation.'

'I'm not concerned with a carbon sheet of paper. I want a wider picture.'

'I doubt if you could spare the time for that, Prime Minister,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary remarked evenly.

'It boils down to the primacy of policy over the instruments of policy.

Policy is in the hands of government. SIS is merely one of the instruments at its disposal.'

'I think I read that book as well, Prime Minister. A clever turn of phrase I thought at the time.'

The Prime Minister clenched his fist, caught at his temper. 'The issuing of a D notice is not a small matter. We try to keep secrecy within tightly defined limits, and I'm the one who may have to justify the imposition of such measures. I don't expect to hear of sanctions against the media days after the event.'

'The Service has not called for a new D notice in recent weeks.' There was a sweetness in the Deputy-Under-Secretary's voice.

'This East German boy, the defector, there was a D notice put on that, after he ran away

'And requested by Security, Prime Minister, not the Service. You should ask Fenton and he'll corroborate.' The Deputy-Under Secretary gazed calmly back across the room at his adversary.

'I don't have the time to waste in examining inter-depart- mental responsibilities… SIS held a defector, that defector escaped from their care. SIS called in Security and the police to recover him. A D notice was applied. Right or wrong?'