Ken McClure: Dust to dust

‘Well, the game’s afoot, Watson,’ murmured Macmillan as he returned from seeing the commissioner out, but there was little humour in it. ‘A drink?’

Steven had no desire to be anywhere near alcohol. ‘Maybe a walk in the park?’ he suggested. ‘Or by the river?’ he said quickly when he realised that seeing joggers in the park was only going to invoke memories of the previous evening. ‘The river,’ said Macmillan, who’d seen the same thing.

They had scarcely started to enjoy the sense of stability that Sunday morning by the Thames was giving them when Macmillan’s phone rang. Steven couldn’t deduce much from his monosyllabic replies. Occasionally, Sir John asked questions but didn’t seem happy with the replies he was getting.

‘That was the commissioner. A meeting’s been called,’ he said, ending the call.

‘Where?’

‘At an MI5 safe house in Kent,’ he said, taking care to enunciate every syllable.

‘What?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘Why on earth…’

‘He told me not to ask any questions. He promised all will be revealed later. The meeting’s been called for eight p.m.’

‘So you don’t know who’s going to be there?’ said Steven, making it more of a statement than a question.

‘No idea,’ said Macmillan. ‘But I do know I don’t like it. I get the feeling HMG are about to ask us to keep our mouths shut. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Foreign Secretary and Minister of Defence show up in person to plead the case for secrecy on behalf of their man.’

‘And if they do?’

‘No deal. You know my feelings.’

‘Bit of an odd venue, though,’ Steven remarked.

Sensing that there was more to Steven’s comment than just a passing remark, Macmillan asked what was on his mind.

‘I just wondered if we’d be coming back from this meeting.’

‘That was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on the phone,’ protested Macmillan. ‘Not some mafia don.’

‘Who has been speaking to MI5 if we’re going to be using one of their places?’ Steven reminded him. ‘But maybe I’m just too sensitive about accidents happening these days.’

‘Maybe you’re right. We don’t know who we can trust. I’ll put everything we know on an “insurance” disk this afternoon and post it to Jean’s home address with instructions as to what to do if anything should happen to us tonight. There would be no point in harming us with that in the wild.’

‘I take it we’ll be going down together in one of the pool cars?’

‘Actually, no,’ said Macmillan, sounding slightly embarrassed in the light of what they’d just been talking about. ‘The idea is to keep the meeting as discreet as possible, no official cars, no official drivers.’

‘Just us… in a remote country house,’ said Steven, without expression.

This reservations were becoming infectious. ‘Do you think we should call off and suggest an alternative venue?’ Macmillan asked.

‘No, I was just playing devil’s advocate. I can’t wait to see which politicians are wriggling on the end of this particular hook.

Steven picked up Macmillan at the Home Office just before six p.m. and they drove down to Kent, first to Canterbury and then on to the village of Patrixbourne where they started following more detailed directions to Lancing Farmhouse, a converted oasthouse on its outskirts.

‘Peaceful,’ said Steven as they crunched slowly up the drive to park in front of the old red-bricked house beside several other vehicles; two Range Rovers, a Volvo estate and a dark saloon which Steven noted had the Maserati symbol on its grille as he passed. It was eight minutes to eight and they were the last to arrive, the commissioner informed them. ‘No one’s going to be fashionably late then,’ said Steven, sounding surprised.

‘You’re about to see why,’ said the commissioner, leading the way through to an inner room where he paused to usher them inside. ‘None of us here do “fashionably late”.’

Steven had to admit he had a point. The people sitting there were the head of MI5, the head of MI6 and the head of Special Branch.

Macmillan seemed immediately on edge. He looked round the room, acknowledging each man in turn before saying, ‘Well, gentlemen, we make a formidable array of monkeys. Might one ask where our political organ-grinders are?’

‘No politicians will be coming, John,’ said the commissioner. ‘Believe it or not, no politician knows anything at all about this business.’

Macmillan looked doubtful but restricted himself to saying only, ‘Do go on.’

The commissioner addressed the heads of the intelligence services. ‘All of us have been aware that something’s been going on over the past few weeks but none of us has been able to nail it down. We knew bits of it but not the whole story. When I spoke to John and Steven this morning, it became apparent that Sci-Med had filled in most of the blanks and well done to them, but after conferring with the rest of you I can now fill in one of the blanks for them, the most important blank of all.’ He turned to Macmillan. ‘John, Steven’s investigations have led Sci-Med to conclude that the operation carried out at St Raphael’s was to reverse the HIV status of a patient and was done as a high-level political favour for a big player in either oil or Middle Eastern politics. You came here this evening to demand that the whole affair be made public.’

Macmillan remained impassive.

‘You’re right about one thing, wrong about the other. George can tell us more.’

George Meacher, the head of MI5, cleared his throat. ‘When the commissioner called me earlier and told me what Sci-Med had come up with, something we’d been working on suddenly started to make sense. Just over a week ago, Sir Malcolm Shand, one of our ex-ambassadors to the USSR that was, had a nervous breakdown and was taken into hospital. Our interest was aroused when it came to our ears that he was insisting his life was in danger and that someone called Monk had been detailed to kill him. Monk’s name has been cropping up quite a lot recently and we, of course, knew well enough who he was. Martin here became involved because of Shand’s past connections in the old Soviet bloc. We both wanted to know what Shand had been up to.’

Martin Cessford, the head of MI6, nodded and said, ‘We went to have a chat with him.’

Meacher continued. ‘As I said earlier, he’d had a breakdown and was in a blue funk about what he thought was going to happen to him so a lot of what he said didn’t make that much sense, but he kept insisting “the others” had decided he couldn’t keep a secret so Monk was going to kill him. We managed to get out of him that the secret in question had something to do with a medical operation but not much more than that. After hearing what you chaps had come up with, we went back to see Shand. We were able to assure him that he was no longer in danger: Monk’s killing days were well and truly over. We let him calm down for a bit and then told him what else we knew… perhaps mentioning that his former friends might actively be seeking a replacement for Monk. He caved in and spilled the lot.’

The commissioner took a photograph from an A4 size envelope and held it up for all to see. ‘This, gentlemen, is Patient X.’

‘Christ almighty,’ exclaimed Macmillan. Steven was too stunned to say anything.

Their reactions seemed to please the commissioner. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘an hour ago I was feeling very alone, standing in front of a fan the shit had just hit. Nice of you to join me.’

Steven and Macmillan were still having trouble coming to terms with the revelation.

‘His father thought they could avoid a monumental scandal by repeating the Berlin experiment so he called on his friends for help. We all know about friends in high places. Well, they don’t come much higher than that. Their mistake was in bringing James Monk on board. They obviously thought that Monk could make sure everything remained a secret, but as we all know it’s not the act that brings you down, it’s the cover-up.’