Gavin Lyall: The Crocus List

The pack had almost dispersed, leaving the lone Foreign Office Rover in the early comer and Ferrebee's bagman already holding the door open. He walked across the courtyard that became a lone prairie (or the deck of an aircraft carrier?) under his feet, pausing to light a cigarette halfway. George turned slowly to see why he had the impression that somebody was waiting in the shadowed doorway behind him.

The tall American pounced, grabbing his hand and forearm in a politically experienced handshake. "George! How're you doing? You look great-and I mean that dimensionally. " He tapped George's waistcoat and laughed freely.

"Well, Clay. I thought in there that you'd forgotten your old classmates. "

"In there? I was just trying to stay awake and look like I understood what those Secret Service guys were going on about. I only^ot off the plane three hours back." The conference had been dominated by the demands of the White House Protective Detail which would bodyguard the President; George and Clay Culliman had barely acknowledged each other although they had been intermittent friends for twenty years and more. "Look, would you expect me to let on I knew any Limeyspersonally? There's a little thing called job security at the White House, or maybe I mean there isn't."

George's gloom began to melt in memories. They had met during his year at Princeton, when Culliman was a graduate law student, frankly, as frankly as only ambitiousyoung Americans can be, torn between an odyssey in politics and the oak-panelled security of the law. But America had solved that one already, allowing the campaign trail to wind also through oak-panelled territory, although Culliman had found there were more rides offered to loyalists than candidates. Now his wagon had climbed the ultimate hill, albeit only from the inside, which meant there would be no crowd to catch him if he fell. Merely a big Chicago law firm patiently waiting to list an ex-White House aide among its partners.

George had always liked Clay,- and had never tried to disentangle that from the thought that he would one day prove useful. He was content to assume that Culliman felt the same about him, particularly if this was the day.

"Hey, if you're walking back to Defence, may I stroll along?"

"Be my guest." Today might indeed be the day; Culliman, he now noticed, had sent on his briefcase with someone more junior.

"I like London in the fall," Culliman prattled on. "Not so many Americans." When he grinned, his mouth opened mostly upwards, showing big front teeth. "I just don't think of London as a tourist city, though I guess there'll be plenty coming to watch the big parade. Are you going to the service?"

"Me? Not a chance, with the whole touring company of European Royals looking for a free lunch at the Palace. The old boy was related to half of them by his first marriage. Didn't the President know him, in the war?"

"I don't think you could say he knew him, exactly. They were on one of the planning committees together before the D-Day landings. When the President was in the Army Air Forces. Be kind of tacky to make too much of that."

"To say nothing of what it would do to the Chicago vote."

"Right." Culliman grinned again and, as George instinctively turned left in St James's Park, gently steered him straight ahead towards the lake and the long way round. They fell easily into the strolling park gait, not in step because Culliman was six inches the taller. With hisslight academic stoop, short dark hair and long wrists dangling from the oyster-white raincoat, he looked as if he had never left the campus. But the coarsened skin speckled with tiny ruptured veins and the jetlagged wary eyes were from the campaign trail; they must reach Washington very tired men, George thought.

"I guess this must be where you shoot all those spy movies. You know?-when your people have gotten a secret to discuss they put on their black derbies and swing their umbrellas…"

"Very appropriate," George hinted.

But Culliman went on squinting up into the tall plane trees whose leaves were just beginning to crisp in the autumn chill. "You'd think the Soviets would've seen those movies and planted directional mikes in all those trees… but maybe all they'd pick up would be showbiz gossip… Am I right, you handle security at the Department?"

"In broad terms, on the policy side. And intelligence, whenever one can find it. Supposed to be strictly military, but…"

"I'd say this had to be a military affair, I don't know that your Scotland Yard could really handle it… What concerns me is the strategic aspect of the President's visit." Seeing George's blank frown, he added: "Nuclear decapitation."

"Ah. Ah yes." Put that way, it was something that had already crossed George's mind, and desk. The President's decision to accept a routine invitation to the memorial service had taken them all by surprise, and spurred a number of other heads of state suddenly to find a blank space in their diaries. With only a few days to adjust their thinking, the London authorities would now have most of the free world's political leaders (and military, of course, with the old Duke's background; there'd be brass hats twinkling under every seat in the house) gathered in a space where a single missile… Nuclear decapitation was an outlandish idea, but it was there in the lexicon of Dire Contingencies, and for every Contingency there had to be a Plan.

"What sort of thing did you have in mind?" he asked carefully.

"Well now, we're aware of your crisis relocation scheme. We'd be hoping that the potential evacuation of the President could be kind of grafted on to that. But the final decision to, ah, go, would have to rest with our own people, relying on our own assessment of the indications."

"At affairs of this nature the Lists are reshuffled-as far as they can be-to cope with visiting Persons of Special Importance. And the degree of preparedness would naturally be enhanced." George slipped naturally into the jargon that gift-wraps non-commitment. "However, the US position has never been precisely clarified…"

"Sure." Culliman smiled. "I know something about that, too." The American embassy was the biggest in Britain; moreover, there were big Naval and Air Staffs based in or near London. And the USA not only preferred its own view of the 'indications' but also had the helicopters to act on that view: at Woodbridge in Suffolk, just half an hour away at the top speed of an HH- 53C, was the USAP's 67th Aerospace and Rescue Squadron. But the plan for using it in a Playpen situation seemed to change, if not seasonally, then at least with Washington's opinion of its London embassy-which was seasonal enough. By now the Ministry's view was that the embassy could run whatever airlift it liked from the residence in Regent's Park, away from Playpen airspace, while anybody who turned up at Famish could queue for a place.

"How I see it now," Culliman went on smoothly, "is that since we've gotten the go-ahead to land the President's helicopter on the Horse Guards Parade, it's only the distance between there and the Abbey that we have to worry about."

"Less than half a mile."

"Right. So he comes down to the Abbey in the usuallimo. It's there we assume will be the critical time: everybody in one place for just over an hour, the timings all fixed and everyone knowing about them. So it's just that half-mile, less, back to the helicopter if the indications say Go. That's where the President would be grateful for your assistance. "

"Any help I can give-but it's an Army job. I'll have tosell it to the sixth floor somehow. Still, I think they'd be prepared to go a fair distance if there's a chance of your President talking some backbone into the Cabinet over Berlin."

"The President's meeting with the Prime Minister will be only a courtesy call," Culliman said diplomatically.