Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

"Did we announce allí/iaí?"

"Doesn't make your job any easier, huh? No, it wasn't announced: it leaked. It's good to know ours isn't the only State Department with too many back doors." There was a hard edge on Culliman's tone.

"I doubt I'd be involved," Maxim said slowly, thinking fast. "The President's unit was a one-off thing…"

"Well, I guess once we hear it officially, I'll be drafting a note saying we don't think it's a frightfully spiffing idea." He grinned and shook Maxim's hand again. "Hope to be seeing you, Major."

Maxim trailed into the room behind him, vaguely looking for a fresh drink and finding Agnes instead, who had been more than vaguely looking for him. "Mixing in White House circles, are we, Harry? What changes in American policy can we hope for as a result of your high-level talks?"

"He was telling me about the Russian visit."

"Oh yes." Agnes's face became grim. "I just got that myself. Good old Britain: not only doing the wrong thing but unable to keep it secret. Great start to a party." Looking around, Maxim saw the Ambassador already making defensive gestures to a couple of guests. He also caught a number of covert glances at himself: was that what a few moment's conversation with a presidential aide did for you in this town?

"Let's get out of here," he said irritably.

"An old line, but welcome nonetheless. No, Jerry, you can't have him-" to Colonel Lomax, who was waiting to pounce. "Harry's carrying my books home from schooltoday. And he's taking me shopping in New York tomorrow. Christmas is coming and he thinks I ought to know about some little joints called Tiffany's and Bloomingdale's. Is that all right with your Office? He can't pawn his ticket home if he's flying Riff-RAF airlines…

"He had the look of somebody about to invite you home to cold chicken and salad with a mug of real warm English beer," she continued as they walked the long black-and-white-tiled corridor. "Don't bump into those pillars, they're fakes, they don't really support anything except an illusion of Empire… Yes, I spoke to Mo Magill, he'll see us tomorrow morning, we'll fly up on the shuttle, I don't know what we'll get, but… and I've got a line into St Louis: there's a thing called the Western Manuscripts collection at UMSL-ghastly word, but they use it themselves, it means University of Missouri-St Louis-that latches on to the papers of operations like CCOAC, and they've got them. Can you imitate an academic?-like not washing or changing your shirt for the next few days…?"

Her car was utterly undistinguished, a distinction that would not please its makers, but suited Agnes's instinct to choose the average and inconspicuous. Maxim had noticed how she had adopted certain American phrases and mannerisms as well, not because she was trying to pass as an American, but just to blend into the background. That was something an infantryman could understand.

"The Russian visit," he said. "What do you make of this leak?"

"Have you thought how many departments would know anyway? Number 10, the FO, my mob, Defence probably, and the Met. It doesn't have to be your Abbey activists."

"Somebody might have let slip something, they wouldn't have let loose every detail."

"True… Were you thinking that broadcasting it was another piece of the pattern?"

"Could be. And it does show these people are well connected. Security for the Russians had better be good."

"D'you think it'll be you again?"

"I don't think I'm our favourite guard detail commander, right now."

"But you'd do it."

"I'd do what I was told."

"And maybe a little bit more… I wonder if those idiots realise just how much they frighten you and me… people who support a system because, in the end, the answers have to come through the system. Throw out the rule of law and you throw out the string that'll lead you back out of the maze. Live or dead, the Minotaur's won. D'you know what I'm talking about?"

"Greek legend, among other things."

"And all on two glasses of Diplomatic white wine. You must have an intoxicating presence, Harry. And while we're on the subject of law and order, were you planning to go West under your own name?"

"I was going to ask: if I make a return trip in one day, no hotel, I could buy an airline ticket for cash and give any name I like-couldn't I?"

"They might ask for some identification: in this country, the man who carries cash is guilty until proven innocent. However, I can do you one unused Canadian passport and a Saskatchewan driving licence, not even one previous little-old-lady owner. Canadians don't need a US visa."

"I see," Maxim said thoughtfully. "And how does that fit into the UKUSA agreement?"

"Imperfectly. But very occasionally we used to get somebody who wanted to talk to us and had good reason not to talk to the Feds or Charlie, and the simplest thing was to slip him into Canada and cite the Old-Commonwealth-Pals Act. However, our current D-G's stopped all that, so you might as well use it before the date-stamp runs out."

The bar/restaurant near Union Station was dolled up to look like an English pub and doing it better than most London pubs did, to Maxim's traditionalist eye. In his view, London pubs were trying to be either video game arcades or sets for Oscar Wilde plays.

"They sometimes have jazz here in the evenings," Agnes chattered, "although I don't know if it's up to your standards. Oscar Peterson was in town the other week, I read-you like him, don't you? Pity you weren't here, I could have rustled up a ticket or two and you could have explained the finer nuances. Does jazz have finer nuances?"

Maxim thought briefly about a pun on Ray Nance, then just smiled into his beer: in a pub he felt duty bound to drink beer, although it certainly wasn't English ("With all those lovely vitamins floating around in it, damn it, you cansee them," as a fellow officer newly back from the USA had put it).

"So you met our dear D-G at the Steering Committee," she went on. "Isn't he loveable? Just what. we've always wanted, an academic international lawyer running Security. Can't think why we've stuck so long with people who knew something about the job."

She stabbed out her cigarette and lit another. She had plunked her pack with the lighter on top of the bar, as if she were planning to smoke the lot before she moved on. It was another American gesture, though far fewer Americans do it in these cancer-conscious days.

"There is a 1952 directive that's never been superseded," she said deliberately. "The Service should, and I quote: 'be kept absolutely free from any political bias or influence', unquote. A pretty thought, and what it really means is Try, brothers, Try. You can't draw a hard line between international and national politics, not these days. Political influence is what the Other Side wants, as much as anything, and you've got to meet it in that arena. But we did try, damn it. We knew what lay down any other road: a political scandal that made it worthwhile for Parliament to get involved in Security. That's what happened with Charlie's Indians. They'll never get away from Capitol Hill now, and they'll have to keep playing politics just to protect themselves.

"So we tried-and we got a political appointment anyway. Now we're part of government policy, which happens to be hear no evil, see no evil… one bloody monkey's enough if he's in the top job." She snapped her cigarette in her fingers and burnt her knuckle. "I'm getting all bitter and twisted: you'd better feed me. I just don't have many people I can say these things to."

"You didn't say it around the Service?"

"Why d'you think I'm in Washington? It's a nice place, but my job's in London. Oh well: it could have been Gibraltar."

The eating at least was American, at a tiny corner table lit by a single candle in a jar. Agnes chose quiche, Maxim hadn't been in Washington long enough to tire of seafood, so he took crab. On a small stage at the far end, a man with a neat beard began tuning a Spanish guitar to the piano.