Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

George was sitting in front of it, the usual glass in his hand. "Morning, Harry. You haven't met Scottie, have you?"

Scott-Scobie was chubby but quick, striding across to shake hands and smile one-two-off like a fast salute. "Very kind of you to come in, Major. You know Agnes already."

She was sitting at one end of the long overstuffed sofa; she lifted a hand.

"A nice little place Milord's got here, don't you think?" Scott-Scobie went on. "George, do turn that blasted thing off. What would you care to drink?"

George leaned forward and switched off the TV. "If they'd got it, they'd be flaunting it. More Scotch, please."

"I didn't mean you. Major?"

"Nothing for me. "

"You can change your mind at any time. George, how much more background does the Major need?"

"My impression all along has been that he knew more of what was going on than any of the rest of us, but I may be wronging the honest fellow."

Scott-Scobie coughed and looked at Maxim. "Sit down, Major, sit down." Maxim sat carefully in a horseshoe back chair; Scott-Scobie paced abruptly away, turned and asked: "When you last saw Dieter Sims, in Germany, what conclusions had you come to about Plainsong?"

Maxim said carefully:"He reckoned that Gustav Eismarkhad killed his first wife. "

"Did you think so?"

"Yes, I think I think so."

"But he didn't have any proof?"

Maxim blinked at him.

"I'm sorry, Major, but the only really silly question is the one you don't ask."

"He had no proof that I knew of. He said he was going to get hold of the sister -Mina."

"He got hold of her, " Agnes said in a flat voice; Scott-Scobie shot her a look, ran a hand quickly through his dark curls then had to reach for his pocket to hoist up his trousers. His figure really needed braces but he liked taking off his jacket – as he had now – and showing one's braces was no part of British foreign policy under Lord Purslane.

"Do you think she would be able to supply proof?"

"I don't know. Gustavsaid he was going off to find his sister; we know he found her, but I couldn't guess whether he killed his wife in front of her or even told her he'd done it. "

"I'mnotjoking, Major!"

"What other sort of proof could she have?"

Scott-Scobie ignored that. "Can you think of any other proof that might exist?"

George said: "It's a serious question, Harry."

Maxim tried to think. "Germany must have been a mess at the time, but even then you'd takesome care about murdering somebody. And he was pretty cool about arranging the death certificate; that wasn't an impulse… I'm sorry: I suppose you could scratch around asking anybody and everybody if-"

"Which we donot wish to be caught doing," Scott-Scobie said.

"Yes… The only answer is that it was a hell of a long time ago."

Scott-Scobie looked across at George, who was holding out his glass hopefully in the direction of Miss Milward, and gave a brief sigh. "So it appears to be Mina Linnarzor nothing. At leastthey seem to accept that she might know something. "

"What's happened to her?" Maxim asked.

There was a sudden silence. Scott-Scobie walked a quick little circle and stopped. "Major – I want you to realise that this is above and beyond Top Secret. Do you appreciate that? I'm sure Agnes will back me on this. This is one where there's nothing on paper at all. "

Maxim didn't know enough about the Diplomatic Serviceto realise that Nothing On Paper was not just the ultimate in security but also the supreme sacrifice. Still, he got the general idea and tried to look impressed.

Agnes said: "Our Harry may have his little failings, but telling people what's going on isn't usually one of them. I thought your people would have told you that much." She was sitting with her legs primly together, the skirt of her pale greenish suit arching just across the middle of her knees. She smiled wanly at Maxim, who was looking at her legs.

"Very well." Scott-Scobie sat abruptly on the edge of the conference table. "What Sims and his brotherhood have done is to kidnap Wilhelmina Linnarz- or Eismark – and are preparing to hand her over to her brother Gustavfrom East Germany. How doesthat grab you?"

"Do you mean they haven't actually done it?" Maxim asked.

"No…"

"Then how do you know about this?"

"Agnes's service – no, Agnes herself, I understand – managed to locate her a couple of days ago. Until then nobody even knew she was alive. Then she suddenly vanished. Am I right?"

"They got the address," Agnes said grimly, "from a routine report I had put in tomy service's registry. All in the spirit of inter-service co-operation."

"You mustn't blame your own people," Scott-Scobie said, deliberately missing the point. "Sims was exceeding his authority – of which he appears to have been given far too much in any case – and your registry wasn't to know his allegiance had changed."

Agnes didn't even glance at him. "We weren't keeping a watch on her, just being aware. Yesterday morning the neighbours reported to the police that she'd gone missing, her bed not slept in, and she couldn't really get around by herself much. There was a story of a strange van late the night before…"

"Are the police involved, then?" Maxim asked.

"Not very much. They don't know who she really is, for a start, and there's no proof of abduction. She was a bit of a lonerin her village, so she wouldn't necessarily have told anybody if she was going away. They're not actuallydoing anything yet. "

"Then how are we sure that -?"

"Ah yes." Scott-Scobie took command again. "One of Sims's little friends had the… you can't call it patriotism…"

"A strong sense of pension," George suggested, taking a fresh Scotch from Miss Milward.

"Anyway, he got cold feet and Told All, which wasn't very much since he was still in London and supposed to be maintaininga façadeof Business As Usual. So he doesn't know where they're keeping her except that theydid have that 'strange van' and the handover point hadn't been fixed, only that it's tomorrow some time."

"We're pretty sure it has to be to an East German ship, " Agnes said. "I don't see how it can be any other way, not if Eismark's going to keep the whole deal in his own hands. He still must have a very big influence in Deutfracht, their freight line."

"That's the whole point." Scott-Scobie stood up, then hoisted his trousers after him. "Sims is bypassing all theapparat, giving Eismark a chance to buy back the only witness to his guilty secret. To that extent Plainsong's stillvirgo intacta, as one might say. "

"So she's still worth something in the market place." George cruised down behind the desk to stare out of a window at the lunchtime traffic and the trees of St James's Park beyond. "I've always thought this room was particularly splendid for forming British foreign policy: all the windows look firmly inland and you only see the sun when it's setting."

"George, will you please stop trying to drink us out of Arab's Ruin and concentrate on the fact that we are faced with a whole unit of the Intelligence Service trying to defect?"

"The kidnapped lady apart, how much of the family jewels did he actually get away with?"

"Just about nothing, thank God. Guy at least had the sense to keep the unit in quarantine, gave them their own house but had his own people to handle their communications and requests for filed info. But it isn't just what they're taking, noteven kidnapping a British citizen, it's a whole part of the service going over to the Other Side. It'll make us a laughing stock with the Big Friends, and ruin morale inside the rest of the service foryears. "

"Could they have been planning this all along?" Agnes asked.

Maxim found himself instinctively shaking his head, agreeing with Scott-Scobie before he even spoke. "No, no, snatching the sister like that was just an act of desperation. When Sims came back from Germany empty-handed and Guy confronted him with having sent armed men after your runaway Corporaland getting one of them killed, well, I gather they had a bit of a barney and I suppose Sims saw his whole unit being wound up. So he grabbed the petty cash and ran. Guy's handling of the whole thing seems to have been consistent right down the line. "