Len Deighton - Spy Hook

She was horrified at the idea. 'MI5? The Home Office? No, no, no. They'd know nothing about Our Central Funding. And I work for the Foreign Office. That would be more than my job's worth, Bernard.'

'So what else can you do? You're not thinking of trying to lobby the Cabinet Office are you?'

'Are you saying that you won't help?'

So that was it. I drank some of my whisky, took a deep breath and said, 'What do you want me to do, Cindy?'

'We've got to go through the files and find the orders that created the account.'

'You said you've tried that already,' I pointed out.

'But not in the Data Centre,' she said.

'The Yellow Submarine? Jesus Christ, Cindy! You're not serious. And anyway you're not allowed there.' I could have bitten my tongue off.

'No,' she said. 'But you are, Bernard. You're always in and out of there.' I'd walked right into it. I took a good mouthful of booze and swallowed it quickly.

'Cindy…'

Hurriedly she explained her theory. 'The computer will have it in cross-reference. That's how computers work, isn't it? Instead of me rummaging through hundreds of files, we'd only have to give the computer one hard fact to access everything.'

'And what hard fact could we give it?'

'Jim. Jim was a trustee or a signatory or something. Key him into the computer and we'll get everything we need.'

So this was why I'd been invited along. And Creepy was there to reassure me that Cindy had friends at court, just in case. 'Well, wait a minute, Cindy,' I said as the full awful implications of it hit me.

She said, 'We must see who else had access to it before they are murdered too.'

It was then that I began to think Jim's death had deranged her. 'You think Jim was murdered because he was a signatory to the bank account?'

'Yes. That's exactly what J think, Bernard,' she said.

I watched her as she lit a cigarette. 'I'll see what I can find out,' I promised. 'Maybe there's another way.'

'The Data Centre is our only chance,' said Cindy.

'We could both be fired, Cindy. Are you sure it's worth it?' I asked. Having been warned off by Dicky I wanted to see if she had an explanation.

But she was like a woman possessed. 'There's something damned odd going on,' she said. 'Everything to do with this bloody bank account is so damned well covered. I've handled some sensitive material Bernard but I've never heard of anything buried as deep as this one. There is no paper: no files on it, no memos, no records. No one knows anything.'

'Don't know or won't tell? It might just have a very high clearance.'

'Someone is damned scared. Someone in the Department, I mean. Someone is so damned scared that they had Jim murdered.'

'We're not sure of that.'

'I'm sure,' she said. 'And no one is going to shut me up.'

'Cindy,' I said, and paused wondering how to put it to her. 'Don't be offended. But there's something you must tell me. Truly.'

'Spit it out, Bernard.'

'You're not just putting this pressure on to the Department as a way to get Jim's pension, are you?'

She smiled one of her special Mona Lisa smiles. They've agreed that already,' she said.

'They have?'

'They're paying a full pension to me and a full pension to this American woman who says she married Jim in Mexico.'

'They admitted Jim was still working for the Department?' Now I was surprised.

'They admit nothing. It's one of those "in full and final settlement" contracts. Sign here and shut up.'

'That's unusual,' I allowed.

'Unusual?' she chortled. 'Jesus! It's bloody unprecedented. It's not the way the Department works, is it? They didn't hesitate, didn't confirm with anyone or check anything I said. Okay, they said. Just like that.'

'Who authorized it?'

A scornful little laugh. 'No one knows. They said it was in the file.'

'How could it be in the file?' I said. There couldn't be anything in the file about paying out two pensions to two wives of someone who'd stopped working for the Department years before.

'Exactly,' she said. 'Someone is damned scared.'

'Scared,' I said, 'yes.' She was right: it was me.

Thursday was not a good day. I had to go down into the 'Yellow Submarine'. The Data Centre was just about the only part of the Foreign Office where Cindy Matthews would not be able to stroll past the security guard with some casual chat about getting the tin of biscuits for the Minister's afternoon tea. They were fussy here: uniformed guards with hats on. A photo identity check at the ground floor entrance and more checks at the software library level and video at the third and deepest level where the secrets were really kept under lock and key.

After my wife defected it was several weeks, nearly three months in fact, before I was required to go down into the Submarine again. I had begun to believe that my security clearance had been downgraded and that I'd never see the inside of the place again, but then one day Dicky stayed at home with a head-cold and something was wanted urgently and I was the only one in the office who knew how to work the consoles down there and they sent me. From that time onwards everything was back to normal again as far as I could tell. But with the Department you can never be sure. It's not like a Michelin guide: they don't publish a book each spring so you can find out how the inspectors feel about you.

So I was happy enough to sit at the keyboard and tell the machine my name, grade and department and wait for it to come up with the request for my secret access number. It meant that I was still one of the nation's trusted. Once the machine had okayed my number I spent a couple of hours sitting there, rolling around on one of those uncomfortable little typist chairs, calling up answers on the display screen and printing out yards of pale-green security bumf for Dicky. When I had finished everything he wanted I sat there for a moment. I knew I should get up and go straight back to the office. But I couldn't resist probing into the machinery just once. Just so I could go back to Cindy and tell her that I'd tried. And also to satisfy my own curiosity.

I keyed it in: PRETTYMAN, JAMES.'

The machine gurgled before providing a 'Menu' from which I selected BIOG. More soft clattering came from deep inside the machine before Prettyman's twenty-two-page-long service biography came up on the screen. I pushed the control arrow buttons to get to the end of it and found it ended with a summary of Prettyman's last report. This was the standard Civil Service file in which one's immediate superior comments on 'judgement, political sense, power of analysis and foresight' but it didn't say whether Prettyman had retired from the Department or continued to work for it. When I pressed the machine for supplementary material I got the word REVISE.

So I pursued PRETTYMAN J BIOG REVISE and got REFER FILE FO FX MI 123/456, which seemed an unlikely number for a file. I tried to access that file and found ACCESS DENIED ENTER ARCTIC NUMBER.

I couldn't tell the machine the 'Arctic' number it wanted because I didn't even know what an Arctic number was. I looked at my watch. I still had plenty of time to spare before my appointment with Dicky. Dicky had been in a very good mood for the last few days. The Bizet crisis seemed to have faded. There had been no hard news but he told the Department that the Stasi prosecution office were about to release our men because of insufficient evidence and managed to imply that it was all his doing. It was a total fabrication, but when Dicky needed good news he never hesitated to invent some. Once, when I'd tackled him about it, he said it was the only way of getting the old man off his back.

Today Dicky had gone to lunch with his old friend and one-time colleague Henry Tiptree, who'd left his cosy Foreign Office desk for a job with a small merchant bank in the newly deregulated City. Morgan had gone to lunch with them too. Morgan used to be a hatchet man and general factotum for the Director-General but since the D-G's appearances had become fewer and further between, Morgan had nothing to do but pass queries to the Deputy D-G's office and blow smoke at the ceilings of the City's private dining rooms. I suspected that Morgan and Dicky were cautiously investigating their chances of getting one of the six-figure City salaries that I kept reading about in The Economist. In any case, Tiptree, Morgan and Dicky were not likely to finish judging the Havanas and old tawny port until three at the earliest, which is why I'd brought my packet of sandwiches to the Submarine.