Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

"Whereis Husband?" George asked.

"In bed with the vapours." Scott-Scobie showed a certain relish. "He's having a little trouble adjusting to the new reality."

Mutineers get shot, Maxim reflected, but when that's all over, their commander is quietly posted to run a carrier-pigeon loft on Rockall. "Simscertainly felt the heat was on out in Germany. He came near to killing a man who was holding out on us." -"That you did not tell me," George said sternly.

"I didn't think it would improve your day. But if we're sure it'll be a ship, there can't be that many East German ships coming in: can't Agnes's mob and the local Special Branches watch them all?"

"Major," Scott-Scobie said, "if we arrest them we have to try them and have the whole thing come out in court. If I could be sure they'd keep quiet about it, I'd far rather they got clean away with it and we wrote Sims and Plainsong off to experience. But you know perfectly well they can't keep quiet. They'd have to make a big song and dance just to explain why they're accepting Sims back to the fold. Normally they'd just shoot him."

George sat heavily in the Foreign Secretary's chair andswivelled himself from side to side. "You're quite sure there isn't some gamy piece of blackmail we can pull to buy their silence? – in exchange for letting the whole boatload goover?"

"George, the cupboard is completely bare of British sporting spirit as far as East Germany's concerned. That was why we needed Sims and his blasted gang in the first place. And we've got no hold on them personally; one of them's left his wife here, but there's nothing we could do to her, not even illegally, with them pointing the spotlight from the Magdalenenstrasse. Anyway, you know what people like that are about wives. Of course, if Plainsong had actually comeoff." he waved a hand and strode the length of the conference table and back.

"Very well," George said. "I have to accept all that."

Agnes turned on the sofa to look at him suspiciously.

"Major-" Scott-Scobie jingled coins in his pocket "- so what do you think you can do for us?"

"You mean the SAS? I can tell you who you'll be talking to there, but you still -"

"No, I don't mean them. I mean you. You've displayed a certaininitiative ever since you got involved in this business, so perhaps you can keep it up by solving this little problem for us."

Agnes stood up slowly and faced Scott-Scobie. "You cannot do that," she said in a flat voice. "You cannot let Harry go out and take on Sims and his mates by himself and -"

"No nono. He can recruit whatever help he likes. It just mustn't be official, that's all. It isn't as if your own service is prepared to take it on. "

"A thing like this, you know perfectly well we can't act except through the police. But why can't The Firm mop up after its own puppies?"

"Agnes my dear, you know they just don't have these sort of people. Your own service has done as much as anybody -far more, indeed – tostop The Firm building up a rugger club of its own. The only musclemen they've got in this country turn out to be in Sims's unit and that was only because we gotthem sight unseen as a going concern." He looked back at Maxim. "So, Major?"

Maxim stood up, too. "I'm working to Number 10."

George cleared his throat. "I can't possibly give you orders on this one, Harry. I've told Scottie you could be asked and that the Number 10connection can be severed in good enough time. But you don't have to go."

Agnes stared at Maxim, willing him ferociously to smile and say No.

"Don't I?" Maxim said. "The Army's always the last resort. It's what we're for."

"This most definitely is not an Army matter," Scott-Scobie said.

"You call it what you like. I wouldn't be any use to you if I wasn't Army. How many people are we talking about?"

"Sims and two others is all we know about. What comes in with the boat we don't know at all."

"Except that one of them has to be Gustav Eismark inperson."

"Quite. If he's buying back his Shameful Secret he can't do that by proxy. And I wouldn't have thought he'd risk bringing much of an entourage, but / won't get hurt by being wrong. "

"Sims andco. arearmed, I assume?"

"Sure to be. We can ask our drop-out friend what they've got, if he knows."

"I'd like that done."

George took a folded paper from his inside pocket and passed it across the desk to Maxim. "Harry, if you wouldn't mind…?"

Maxim read it, smiled briefly, signed and passed it back. "How is the Prime Minister?"

Agnes demanded: "What was that?"

"My request to be relieved of my post at Number 10, dated two days ago."

"Youbastard," Agnes told George.

George ignored her. "He's resigning as soon as he can see a clear patch, so that he doesn't seem to be going under pressure…"

"Also very much Top Secret, Major," Scott-Scobie put in.

"He _knows_ that!" George spat, then controlled himself. "But I'm not asking because of him, it's more than…"

"That's all right. I wasn't looking for reasons." Maxim turned for the door, then back to Scott-Scobie. "One thing: the way I go about this, I don't see where any Top Secrecy comes in. A lot of people – certainly on their side – are going to know what's happened. "

"Oh yes, they'll _know_. But they just won't _know_ out loud."

Maxim said: "Oh."

Jim Caswell was running the garage by himself when Maxim got there. Blagg sat in the tiny office listening to the radio and guarding the telephone; he grinned and made a joky salute through the window to Maxim.

"Did you find me some wheels?" Maxim asked.

"Yep: a Renault 16TX."

Maxim looked dubious. "Ouch. It's complicated…"

"It's in good nick. I've got it up on the lift now." He ushered Maxim through to the rear half of the garage, a gloomy and grimy workshop shut off by big sliding doors. A ragbag collection of cars sat around awaiting buyers or, for some, a generous scrap dealer.

Caswell caught Maxim's look. "Yes, the old man isn't going to get any Rolls-Royce dealership, he's let this end of the business go. But that one's all right."

The Renault up on the lift was dark green and several years old – indeed, the model had been out of production for several years-but looked reasonably clean and undented. Not that Maxim knew all that much about cars: he just thought Renaults were too complicated for most British garages to understand.

"I've checked it all over," Caswell went on, "your brakes, lights, exhaust, cooling, tyres. It's allright. They don't have all that much acceleration, but it cruises like a bird and you said you wanted to go a distance. And it's a family car, a thing like this: big boot, bags of comfort. It's not a tearaway's car; the law doesn't get suspicious about these things. I suppose you are going to break the law with it?"

Maxim nodded. "Oh yes. I'm going to break the law, all right."

"D'you want to tell me?"

"Yes, I want to tell you."

When Maxim had finished, Blagg was staring open-mouthed. Caswell ground out his cigarette, nodded to himself, and said: "I knew they had some real fruitcakes in The Firm, but they must've gone right to the back of the oven for that lot. "

"They can't always be choosey; they have to take the people with the experience and the contacts, and they're competing with all the other intelligence services – the CIA, France, Israel. You can't run it like a security service, handpicking your people and training them up yourself." Perversely, Maxim found himself defending Six, though the words were George's.

"It was those buggers that shot me?" Blagg wanted to be certain.

"Yes, but you didn't do too badly yourself."

"All right if I come along?"

"Are you fit?"

"Let them worry about that. "