Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

They never got his name, he was just Our Man, stocky, old enough to be retired, wearing a cloth cap, blazer and a silk scarf against the evening chill. He spoke in a clipped telegraphic voice that suggested a service background – presumably Navy.

"She's in the Ocean Lock now. Things running a bit late. Be berthing in the Aldam Dock. West side – there." He held a street map of Goole out under the Renault's inside light, a single sheet where the complicated dock area was no more than a few inches square. But Blagg seemed interested, tracing a stubby finger around and saying: "Seems to be all corners."

Our Man grunted agreement. "A boatman's harbour, is Goole. If you're any tonnage at all, you need boatmen to haul you round all those right angles. Ship you're looking for is the Seesperling,fo'c'sleand poop job, grey hull, blue and white funnel, 650 ton. " Seeing Maxim's blank look, he added: "That means small, about 180 feet end to end."

"Fine, but I hope we can stay away from the ship. How would somebody get up to where you said, with a van? How'd they get into the yard?"

"In Goole, if you want to walk in, walk in a thousand different places. To take a van, to that berth, you'd go in the gate by the church."

"Is it open?"

"Never closed as far as I know."

"So if we cover that gate, we'd catch anybody going in for the ship?"

"Should do. Mind, they could be there already. Some people are." They looked at him. "Dockers, somebody from the harbourmaster's office, pilot vans, Customs went on board at the lock most likely, somebody from the owners. Rush hour in Piccadilly every time a ship comes in."

"They won't try and push an old lady on board through that, not yet," Caswell said.

Blagg coughed politely and asked: "What about the dock police, sir?"

"Prowl around from time to time. Want to know who you are if you're off the beaten track. Nothing much to pinch except Renault cars and you've got one of those already." He gave an elderly cackle. "They deliver 'em here, a compound over beside the Ocean Lock. They say they've got guard dogs loose in there, but some kids got in the other night and scratched up a whole lot of cars and I never heard of anybody getting bitten."

There was a moment of silence, then Our Man said to Agnes: "Is that it, then? Where d'you want me?"

"Back by the phone. Just -" she said something quickly and quietly to him; Maxim realised there must be some fallback plan, to try and muffle any scandal he might stir up. Our Man grunted a good-night and drove away.

"All right, " Maxim said. "Time to hand over all identifiable possessions."

Agnes watched, wondering, as Blagg and Caswell started turning out their pockets, putting wallets, keyholders, Cas-well's cheque book and Blagg's necklet ID disc into the holdall. Maxim put in his own share; they all kept some money.

"You're sure your clothes aren't marked?" he asked, handing out packets of field dressings. "Not even laundry marks?"

They stood confidently silent, and with a shudder in her stomach Agnes realised they were trying to make their corpses unidentifiable. Maxim gave her the holdall and she said: "I'm glad you didn't ask me. I'd bestarkersbefore I was sure I wasn't wearing anything marked."

They grinned with a wolfish politeness, then started distributing and loading weapons. The grenades, ten of them, were American M26A1's,probably smuggled in by Caswell from Germany stowed somewhere in a military vehicle. The Customs would be looking for booze and drugs, not weaponry. They screwed the fuses into six of them, and were as ready as they could be.

Maxim said: "You mentioned a flask of Scotch… Anybody in the market?"

Blagg wasn't interested, but Caswell said casually: "I'll take a dram," and Agnes poured him a stiff one. Maxim took a taste, more to keep Caswell company than anything. Perhaps Jim had become more adjusted to civilian life than he cared to believe. They got back into the Renault, Maxim driving.

Goole was built entirely on one side of the river; there wasn't even a bridge in the town itself. The dock area beganjust south of the centre, where the streets suddenly became rows of boarded-up broken-roofed houses and shops, an abrupt reminder in space of how fast the British ports had collapsed in time. The Army could have moved in tomorrow to use those streets for training and hardly disturbed a private citizen.

At least it meant there was no-one to see the creeping Renault as Maxim fixed the pattern of the area in their minds. The docks themselves were surprisingly bright, given an almost carnival air by tall street lamps throwing patches of blue-white, orange and yellowish light. The occasional ships – the berths were far from full – were also well lit, with floodlights boasting their funnel markings and harsh work-lights glaring down from the masts. Each ship hummed to itself, living off its generators, so that when they stopped the car the dock was a basket of purring metal creatures, and very far from the stark silence and darkness Maxim had expected. He had been through ports at night before, but only as a passenger smugly assuming the place was staying alive for himself alone.

There was some distant shouting from the lock gates, and from where they had parked on a disused railway line sunk into the road, they could see a small bunch of figures on the far side of the dock waiting for the Seesperling. The ship itself came gliding in with the dignity that even the smallest vesselhas when moving slowly through dead calm water, also bright and purring. The Goole boatmen were out of luck that night, since she was taking the simplest route in the harbour, with nothing more than a thirty degree turn out of the lock. Their turn would come when she had to back out again.

Maxim drove slowly back to the huge nineteenth-century church that stood right up against the low dock wall – or perhaps it was the churchyard wall; in any event it was no more than four feet high – and the ever-open gate down past the warehouses to the Aldam Dock.

"I don't know where we're going to set up here," Caswell said, and Maxim didn't know either. The lowness of the wall and the fact that the gate was on a corner of two streets, each quite wide, made it near impossible for an ambush.

"Somebody had better go in for a shufti," Maxim decided. "You, Jim. With a radio. "

It had to be that way: if you split your force, you had to split your commanders. Caswell took Blagg's pistol; they set the radios at channel 3 and agreed to change to 5, 7, 9 and11in that order if they had to shift. Caswell walked quickly through the gate and was lost behind a stack of forklift truck pallets. He had about three hundred yards to go to the Seesperling's berth.

On the other side of the church, the town centre side, therewas a small car park. Maxim backed the Renault in there, behind a truck loaded with what looked like sections of oil pipeline, and they waited. The walkie-talkie was jammed inthe driver's window so that its telescopic aerial stuck upoutside, and it murmured to itself. Agnes doubled herself over to light a cigarette near the floor of the car, trying to hide theflare of her lighter. They went on waiting. There was no wayto call Caswell: his own radio would be turned off, that close to theenemy.

He came in surprisingly strongly. "Jim. "

"Go."

"Pilot van's just leaving. White job."

"Roj."

They got just a glimpse of the van beyond the church, thirty seconds later. They waited. "Jim."

"Go."

"Customs just leaving. Blue Allegro. And two men on bikes."

They saw that, too, again just about on thirty seconds later. The bikes – probably dockers – came up Church Road past them, much more dangerous than a car driver surrounded by his own noise and light. Maxim snapped off the radio until they were gone.