He tapped his pipe against the table leg.
‘It sounds strange, I know, but this is a pretty irregular business, old man. It’s not like a nine to five job. Not that I’d offer it to anyone else, like the …’
‘Russians?’ I said.
His face had become more and more static over the last few minutes, but now it froze stiff like a Notre-Dame gargoyle, his mouth set to gush rainwater. ‘I was going to say “Navy”, but since you’ve chosen to be so bloody impertinent … Your friend Dalby wouldn’t have been so “boy-scoutish” about an offer like this; perhaps I’ll have a word with him.’
He’d chosen his words well; he made me feel like a cad for mentioning the Russians; brought Dalby into the conversation, gently reminding me that I was only acting in his stead anyway, and finally calling me ‘boy-scoutish’ which he knew would hit me where it hurt. Me, the slick modern intelligence agent. Six months with the CIA and two button-down shirts to prove it.
‘Look Ross,’ I said. ‘Let’s clear it up. You need some money urgently for some reason I can only guess at. You’re prepared to sell information. But you won’t sell it to anyone who really wants it, like the Russians or the Chinese, ’cos that would be unsporting, like pinching knives and forks from the mess. So you look around for someone on your side but without your genteel education, without your feeling for social niceties about who it’s nice to sell information to. You look for someone like me, an outsider whom you’ve never liked anyway, and give my heart-strings a tug and then my purse-strings. You don’t care what I do with the dossier. For all you care I could get a knighthood on the strength of it, or chuck it over the back wall of the Russian Embassy. You’ve got the nerve to sell something that doesn’t belong to you to someone you don’t like. Well, you’re right. That is the sort of business we’re in, and it’s the sort of business that a lot of people that got those reports for you wish they were still in. But they’re not, they’re good and dead in some dirty back alley somewhere, and they aren’t going to be around for your share-out. We’ve got 600 open files in my office, that’s no secret, and my only interest at the moment is making it five hundred and ninety-nine even if I don’t get the Minister’s certificate of Good Housekeeping doing it.’ I gulped down my Tio Pepe and almost choked on it – it would have spoiled the effect. I chucked a pound note into the spilt drink and left without looking back. Lee Konitz moved into ‘Autumn in New York’, and as I went downstairs I heard Ross blowing into his briar pipe.
1 The first Russian Hydrogen bomb. Summer 1949. See Appendix
[ Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Entertainment of various kinds will help to enliven routines of family and business .]
Outside in Bury Street, the dirty old London air smelt clean. People like Ross just always gave me a bad time. If I was pally with them I hated myself; when I rowed with them I felt guilty for enjoying it.
In Trafalgar Square the sun was nourishing a mixed collection of tourists, with bags of pigeon food and cameras. I avoided a couple of down-at-heel street photographers and caught a bus outside the National Gallery to Goodge Street.
When I got into the office Alice was guarding the portals. ‘Keightley has been ringing,’ she said. If she’d just do something about her hair and put on some make-up Alice could be quite attractive. She followed me into Dalby’s room. ‘And I said you’d be at the War Office cinema at five. There’s something special on there.’
I said OK, and that Ross’s memoranda sheet would be over later, and would she deal with it. She said that her clearance wasn’t high enough but when I didn’t reply, she said she’d check it and add our stuff. Alice couldn’t hold a conversation with me without constantly arranging the pens, pencils, trays and notebooks on my desk. She lined them up, sighted down them and took away each pencil and sharpened it.
‘One of these days I’ll come in and find my desk set white-washed.’
Alice looked up with one of those pained expressions with which she always greeted sarcasm. It beat me why she didn’t ever tell me that it was the lowest form of wit. I could see the words forming a couple of times.
‘Look, Alice, surely with your vast knowledge of the screened personnel available to us you must be able to locate a sexy little dark number to do these things of everyday for me. Unless you’re getting a crush on me. Alice, is that it?’
She gave me the ‘turn-to-stone’ look.
‘No kidding, Alice, rank has its privileges. I don’t ask for much out of this life but I need someone to précis the intelligence memoranda, watch my calorie count, and sew up tears in my trousers.’
Just to show I wasn’t kidding I typed out a requisition of the sort for ‘Goods to the value of £700 or over,’ and wrote, ‘Additional Personnel. One female assistant to temp. OC as discussed. Earliest.’ I gave it to Alice, who read it without her expression changing. She picked up a couple of files from my ‘Out’ tray and marched to the door. She turned to face me and said, ‘Don’t use military nomenclature on civilian stationery, and don’t leave your trays unlocked.’
‘Your seams are crooked, Alice,’ I said. She went out.
As you go into the basement at the War Office the décor of drab light-green and cream paint is enlivened by the big square sectioned air-conditioning plant, painted a wild bolshie red. I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs to find a dour Scots sergeant of military police standing outside the cinema. Talking in the corner were Carswell, Murray and Ross. With them was a heavily built civilian with long black hair combed straight back. He wore a Guards Armoured Div tie, and a white handkerchief folded as a rectangle in his top pocket. His complexion was ruddy, almost unnaturally so, and given the slightest opportunity, he threw back his head to reveal his very even, perfect, white teeth. Nearer to the handkerchief-sized screen was Chico, his bright eyes anxiously darting about to detect a joke coming so he could laugh, and thereby prove he had a sense of humour. He was conversing with a slim elderly major who had half a dozen strands of hair artistically arranged across his head. If they had to have a major here to project the film it might be worth watching.
Ross seemed to be running the show, and when I arrived nodded as though I hadn’t seen him for weeks. He addressed the nine of us (two of Ross’s people had just arrived):
‘There’s no more information on this one, chaps, but any recognition, of location even, would be much appreciated.’ He leaned through the door. ‘That’s the lot, sergeant. No one else now.’
‘Sir!’ I heard the sergeant growl.
‘Oh,’ said Ross, turning back to his audience, ‘and I’m sorry, chaps, no smoking as of last week.’
The lights dimmed down and we had a few hundred feet of unedited 16mm silent cine-film.
Some of the shots were out of focus and some were under-exposed. They mostly showed men indoors. The ages ran from about thirty to fifty. The men were well-dressed and in the main clean shaven. It was hard to be quite sure if they were filmed with or without the subjects knowing. The lights came on. We all looked at each other blankly. I called to Ross, ‘Where did it come from? I mean, what’s it about?’
‘To be frank,’ said Ross – I waited for the lie – ‘we are not quite sure for the time being. It’s possible there is more to come.’ The thickset character nodded satisfaction. Anyone who found that explanation satisfactory was easy to please. I felt sure he belonged to Ross and I hoped Carswell and Murray hadn’t been indiscreet. I didn’t want to join in with Ross’s idiot game of cloak and dagger stuff between departments, but in view of Ross’s most recent move the less he was told the better.
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