Gavin Lyall - The Secret Servant

She drove fast for a quarter of a mile, then relaxed as they blurred into the complication of Cambridge's one-way and no-go systems.

"George," Tyler said, "can you tell me what this is all about?"

"Where have you been all the night? No, you needn't answer that. But we've been ringing you since six this morning, and I'm sure Fleet Street began soon after midnight. Haven't you read any papers today?"

"I haven't had the time, yet."

"Well, Luxembourg's leaked. Leaked? – the dam's broken. Moscow must have put out its own release. It came out in the first edition of the Morning Star: Britain's leading advocate of nuclear warfare going to a secret meeting in Luxembourg with equivalents from France and Western Germany, are they planning a secret nuclear strike force? Provocative behaviour by the old imperialist powers just at a time when America seems to be seeing the light, de-da-de-da-de-da. The real papers had to pick it up, just to cover themselves. Communist sources claim that a secret meeting in Luxembourg… and so on. So the cat's in the fire, the bat's in the belfry and the Headmaster would like you to go incommunicado until Luxembourg itself. Can you get a bag packed? We can collect more of your stuff later."

"Where are we going?"

"The FO's lending us one of their hospitality places near Maidenhead. Can we turn right here?"

"No. Take the second left…" Tyler leaned forward and gave crisp directions to Agnes. Maxim had never been driven by her before; she was very good, handling what was probably a strange car – it certainly wasn't hers – with a flowing, farsighted confidence.

"There isn't any question of cancelling Luxembourg?" Tyler asked.

George sighed. "No-o. In fact, it rather means it has to go ahead, unless one of the others drops out, but that's their affair. Moscow's deliberately challenged us to back down. If we do that, our little Froggie friends aren't going to listen to anything we say for a long time."

"It might even have a unifying effect," Tyler said, mostly to himself.

What nobody said was what they had been discussing on the way down: that this proved Moscow hadn't got the letter and now didn't expect to. "If they're going public in this way," Agnes had pointed out, "it shows they haven't anything more subtle up their balalaikas."

Maxim checked out Tyler's rooms for him, then the three of them paced the court while he packed a bag and ignored the telephone. The snow had melted, but the invading east wind still sprang out of every archway.

"Of course," George said, suddenly moved to look on the gloomy side, "if they're challenging us not to go to Luxembourg, they probably know they're making sure we do go. Perhaps that's what they want."

"We were going anyway," Agnes said.

"That wasn't by any means certain, not after we knew what was in the letter…"

"But Moscow didn't know we were having doubts," Agnes said, rather exasperated.

"True, true," George said reluctantly. "At least, I suppose it is."

"You need a drink."

"It is not yet eleven in the morning," George said with dignity.

At that time, in that weather, the big court was almost empty. A porter walked briskly along the far side, a stray out-of-season tourist was peering into the dead fountain, and the lodge cat was showing off its privilege by squatting on the forbidden, and very damp, grass by the gateway. It was the first time Maxim had been inside a Cambridge college. It lacked grandeur, but the uncaring mixture of styles, from the Tudor gateway to the Victorian library, had a comfortable homely look of a dotty professor in odd socks who has never thought about anything as small as grandeur in his life.

He felt a slight twinge of envy at the sort of life that could be lived behind those calm walls, and wondered if Chris would ever get a chance at it.

"What do you think might happen in Luxembourg – now?" he asked.

George glanced the question on to Agnes.

"I don't expect the Centre to do anything sudden," she said. "Now they've taken the initiative in publicising the talks as western warmongering, they'll get the blame if somebody bumps him off. They don't want that; they want a live fascist beast to point at."

"There'll be more of this morning's little rumpusculation." George said.

"I expect so. But Luxembourg's handled top-security meetings before."

"Yes." George paced silently for a while, then said abruptly: "Harry, you'll go too."

"Why Harry?" Agnes asked.

"I want somebody of ours there – just in case – and he'd better know what was in the letter. Either we tell somebody new, or…"

Agnes nodded.

"Have you ever been to Luxembourg?" George asked Maxim.

"No."

"Odd-looking place. It gives me vertigo. And be careful not to say the British won the war. They've got General George S. Patton buried there and they're still trying to work out why he didn't rise again on the third day."

In the next three days the weather changed completely and they flew out of Northolt on a hazy blue spring morning, the little twin-jet Dominie rocking and humming in the new west wind. It was too early to be the real spring, but it was a hint, perhaps a promise.

Tyler spent the flight sipping RAF coffee poured from a vacuum flask and letting papers stack up in his lap. He would take one, glance at it, then his gaze would drift back to the little window and the misty patchwork of Belgium, 25, 000 feet below.

"That's where it happened," he said in his deep slow voice, "where it's always happened. The Sambre, Ramillies, Mons, Ypres, Liиge, the Ardennes… Belgium's dark and bloody ground. From Caesar to General Patton in about five minutes flying time…"

He turned and caught Maxim's eye and smiled across the narrow aisle between the fat VIP seats. He had been talking mostly to himself, but Maxim was the one who would understand.

Tyler added: "I was with Monty's TAC HQ back near St. Trond then. It was quite an interesting Christmas."

"It must have been." That was when Patton had disengaged three divisions from action – tricky enough in itself – then swung them and his whole army with its hundred thousand vehicles through ninety degrees and rammed them north across seventy-five miles of icebound roads straight into the new Battle of the Bulge. All in four short-lit December days. That was what professional soldiers remembered about Patton, not the circus trappings of the two pistols and the bragging.

The Dominie's engine note wound down and they began a gentle slide down the hill of air. Mrs West, the solid quiet-eyed secretary borrowed from Defence, handed Tyler another paper and watched impassively as he let it join the stack in his lap. He was wearing, Maxim noticed, the scarlet thread of the Lйgion d'honneur in the lapel of his usual hairy dark suit.

The RAF steward came back, stooping in the low cabin, and asked cheerfully: "Would anybody like another cup of coffee? We'll be landing in Luxembourg in approximately fifteen minutes."

They all shook their heads, No Thanks, and the man from the Foreign Office said to Maxim: "Anybody would think the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had never heard of coffee for itself. Anyway, at four in the afternoon…"

He was about Maxim's own age, and his name was Stephen Quinton. He had a round, freshly-washed face, very fine blond hair, and was along, Maxim guessed, to see that an amateur like Tyler didn't make a fool of himself in what were indisputedly Foreign Parts, never mind any Lйgion d'honneur or nonsense like that.

"Have you ever been in Luxembourg?" Quinton asked.

"No, never."

"It's an odd place, really…"

"Does it give you vertigo?"

"No. No, I wouldn't say that;" Quinton had a permanently puzzled expression, as if he were always about to ask somebody to say that again but more slowly. "Why do you ask?"