Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

"They aren't simple soldiers out there. One tries to adapt. But whatever it is, can you just stop the Archbishop flying out of Tegel?"

"That shouldn't be a problem: Jim Ferrebee's out there with him. I can get him to… but, Harry, wait a minute: you're saying these Crocus clowns must have smuggled amissile into East Germany? They pull out yourtoenaüsfor trying to take in a copyof Playboy."

"They must have it disguised as something else."

"And how? The thing must be… how big?"

"With the launcher and sight, four and a half feet andsomething over forty pounds. It would have to be in a vehicle. Maybe built into it." He was recalling the odd bits of car-body metal in the garage, the power tools in the Land-Rover… "I'd like to know what the police find at the Oxendown House garage."

George instinctively glanced at the telephone. "Yes… we've got a little explaining to do… But if you're right, suppose these clowns get caught in East Germany? Even at the checkpoint? Think how that would look. Brits with a British missile…"

"Somebody had better catch them first. If the police have any ideas about the vehicle, we need to know them. "

"I could try going through Security." George sighed."Try."

"You've got to make them accept Agnes's report."

George sighed again.

"Or do nothing and just see what happens next," Maxim offered, smiling as politely as ever.

Glowering, George picked up the telephone. "Find me the Deputy D-G at Security, will you? No, the Deputy, I don't want the D-G himself on any account… He's Old Guard," he explained to Maxim. "Srill has some belief in the Sovbloc threat, though I fear thoughts of his pension loom largest of all… Alfred? So sorry to interrupt your dins, but you recall a little morsel that came in from Washington in the early hours?… Yes, I do know about it… And yes, I know this isn't a secure line, so I thought that if you and I could get together in, say, half an hour?… Oh, I'm sorry you don't think so, because I'd like some advice about what to say to the East Sussex police about a little happening down near Eastbourne today… Of course I know about that, I was, you might say, involved… Yes, I expect he was very dead, although that wasn't my direct doing, but one feels one has a duty to explain things to the constabulary, unless you felt otherwise… Ah, good. Half an hour, then?… I'll be there."

He put down the phone. "Would the wheels of government turn so smoothly without a regular greasing of blackmail?"

Maxim smiled again. "You might emphasise that the Bravoes are in on this."

"That'll be a little more difficult. Nobody's likely to have identified that burned-out bastard in Illinois…"

"You can prove they've bugged your rooms at Albany."

George stared. "I'd like to know how."

"No problem."

George put the little microphone, looking like a metallic spider with its stiffly bent wire legs, on the table. "Major Maxim took this out of my telephone in Albany just this evening."

Perhaps he felt a little weight lift, a tiny erasure of guilt, for Miss Tuckey's death, now her microphone was at last in the right hands. The hands, small and thick-veined, belonged to the Deputy Director-General of Security, whom George hadn't seen for some months. He was saddened to see how aged and shaky the man had become since being passed over for the top job. He had opened the meeting by taking two different-coloured pills and George suspected he was checking his pulse when he put his hands in his lap.

"Aye, it's one of Theirs," the Deputy said in a voice softened by tiredness as well as a faint Scots accent. "But he shouldna have taken it out."

George waved that aside. "I asked for my rooms to be swept a week ago. We haven't got time now for fancy work: do you accept the gist of Miss Algar's report-and now the likelihood of an attempt on the Archbishop?"

"I would accept it as a possibility. I think I can promise we will endorse any warning you send to this man-Ferrebee?-in Berlin. For the rest…" He glanced through thick pebble lenses at the Assistant-Commissioner from the Met, the sleek heavy whom Maxim had met in Committee. He had picked up the microphone and was twiddling with it.

"Your part in the Eastbourne matter, Mr Harbinger-" he began.

"I was kidnapped at gunpoint."

"Well, then Major Maxim's involvement… he seems avery active gentleman. I would like to know who authorised his use of a firearm."

"Yes, yes, we can worry about that later. What did the local Branch find down there?"

The AC picked up a sheaf of telex messages. "After the body had been recovered from the Land-Roverand found to have gunshot wounds, there was a search done on the house. Yes, there was some evidence that it had been used for terrorist purposes… the cellar had been used as a shooting gallery, they picked some Russian bullets out of the walls, but far too soon to say if they match the rifle from the Abbey. Bloodstains on the lawn, 9-mil cartridge cases on the terrace-was that the work of Major Maxim?"

"I was handcuffed to a pipe in the cellar."

"Ah yes… and evidence of them converting and respraying a vehicle-"

"That's what we want."

"-most likely a Volkswagen camper, from the bits and pieces left around. They resprayed it dark green and probably cut a big roof hatch and a smaller hole, round, about five inches across."

George blinked, then guessed: "For a stove pipe?" With its short fat body and long tube behind, a Blowpipe launcher could well be disguised as a stove and pipe -then pulled loose and fired through a wide roof hatch. It was a lot more likely than standing on an East German road and blasting the thingoff.

The AC just smiled his meaningless gorilla smile. He didn't need to guess at things that were beyond his reach.

"So now do we believe these people areserious?" George demanded.

"Aye," the Deputy D-G said wearily. "But I also believe they are out of our territory. If the vehicle is to be in East Germany tomorrow afternoon, it is quite likely there already. Certainly on the Continent, would you not agree?"

"Probably, but what about what's still on your territory? Which could include Arnold Tatham if he's still alive and still directing it, which seems to be an increasing possibility. Have you tracked down the phone numbers Agnes sent you?"

"George,"the Deputy D-G said, keeping his hands in his lap, "I think you can take it that they will now be looked into."

"Now? After you've had the bloody things for eighteen hours?"

"You just don't appreciate how things have been, these months since…" He shook his head slowly.

If George had not appreciated, the clenched painful smile on the old man's face-yet he wasn't ten years older than George-would have told him almost everything that had happened (and not happened) in Security during the last half-year.

"All right… but for fifteen years these people have been training, biding their time-and tomorrow looks like being their big day. I want it not to be, and I don't want them to have any more days after that."

"You draft the warning to Berlin, George. The Assistant Commissioner and I will add our endorsements."

"I would need to talk to my superiors before committing us to that," the AC said.

The Deputy D-G didn't look at him. "Take all the time you need-up to, say, fifteen minutes. If the Archbishop does get shot down in flames, it might be advisable to have your Department's name on the telegram predicting this. Whether or not we can do anything about it, I believe it would be advisable."

Thoughtfully, the AC went to find a telephone.

George was late back at Albany, but Annette hadn't been lonely. A team of Security Service sweepers was already at work, fanning their gadgetry at the panelling and dissecting the telephones. Annette was in the small bright kitchen, drinking coffee with the DDCR.