Len Deighton - The Harry Palmer Quartet

‘Extraordinary,’ said Jean. ‘So out of character. The man from US Naval Intelligence was only trying to help, then?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ I said.

‘We must get back,’ said Jean, ‘or Alice will grumble.’

‘The devil with Alice,’ I said. ‘I’m the boss, aren’t I?’

‘Not when Alice gives the orders,’ Jean said.

‘You know, there’s something different about that office lately,’ I said, and we both returned to it, although I was still thinking about the ear-ring.

[ Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) By the week-end you will be free to follow new interests. Unexpected action brings happiness to all .]

Back at the office the cables were beginning to flood in from Washington and Calcutta and Hong Kong. Alice was coping very well, and only a few required a decision from me. Murray flew up to a little country town near Grantham and brought Chico back in an army helicopter. He looked very ill when I saw him at the Millbank Military Hospital. Ross put a couple of men on a twenty-four-hour watch at Chico’s bedside, but they got nothing from him, except that he’d seen a friend of his cousin in the piece of film he’d seen at the WO. Instead of telling Ross, he went to visit the man. Needless to say he was in the IPCRESS network, and Chico was at Millbank, and his friend in Ross’s bag.

Painter, the thin-faced tall fellow who’d been with us on the Lebanon job, turned out to be a psychiatrist of some standing who had brought our captive Raven, who was half-way ‘brainwashed’, back to something approaching normalcy. I gave him a room with Carswell on the top floor at Charlotte Street. If we couldn’t break Jay down everything would depend on those two.

By Thursday I was able to take a full night’s sleep. Until then I’d kept going mainly on coffee and cigarettes and an aspirin sandwich, but Thursday I took some sleeping pills Painter gave me and didn’t wake until midday. I swore off coffee for a couple of days and stepped into a cold shower. I put on Irish tweed with Veldtshoen, cotton shirt, and wool tie. At three o’clock I was summoned to the presence of an exalted military personage at the WO.

I was a minute or so late and Ross and Alice were both there before me. Ross was in a very stiff new uniform with crown and pip on the shoulder. His Sam Browne was as shiny as the doorman’s head and he had his bright red OBE with the Military Stripe and the India General Service and the George VI Coronation, to say nothing of a ’39–’43 Star and a Western Desert ribbon. I began to wish I’d worn the pullover with the Defence Medal sewn on it.

The EMP shook hands rather grandly and referred to me as ‘the hero of the hour’. I celebrated by helping myself to a cigar and pretended to have no matches in order to have the EMP light it for me. He thanked me and Ross and Alice, but I knew there was more to it than that. When he began the sales talk with, ‘Mr Ross is most anxious that you should hear this from me …’ I knew what it was. Ross had finally taken over Charlotte Street. What timing! No one could challenge Ross’s competence after this IPCRESS fiasco. I heard him going on about Ross going up to ‘half-colonel’ and ‘seniority’. On the walls were photos of the EMP standing with Churchill, seated with Eisenhower, receiving a medal, sitting on a horse, and reviewing an armoured brigade while standing in a jeep. There were no photos of him as an inexperienced subaltern with his foot jammed in a drainage pipe. Perhaps people like him are born as brigadiers.

But now the conversation was taking a different turn. Ross, it seemed, wasn’t taking over Charlotte Street. The purpose of my visit was an explanation to me!

As I sorted it out afterwards, it all began because Ross wanted to be quite sure that I wasn’t working for the Jay and Dalby set-up. So he asked if he could offer me the Al Gumhuria work. They calculated that if I was channelling stuff out through Jay I’d jump at it. I hadn’t. I had told Ross to keep it. From that moment ‘my future was assured’ as the old army saying has it. Now Ross wanted me to be quite clear about his hands being clean, so he had the top brass tell me in person.

The Exalted Military Personage was very keen to hear how I got out of the Wood Green house, and at one stage said, ‘Good show!’ again, and after that, something that I still consider rather foolish for a man of his experience. He said, ‘And now is there anything I can tell you ?’

I told him that I had overseas and detachment pay outstanding for nearly eighteen months. He was a little shattered, and Ross didn’t know where to put his face for embarrassment. But the EMP adopted an ‘all boys together’ attitude, and promised to action it for me if I let his ADC have details in writing. Ross had the door open, and Alice was about to go through it when I leaned across the vast highly polished desk and said, ‘When do you arrest Henry?’ Ross closed the door and came back to the desk. The EMP came around it. They both looked at me as though I wasn’t using Amplex.

At last the EMP spoke; his brown wrinkled face was close to mine. He said, ‘I should be furious with you. You’re implying a reluctance on my part to pursue the Queen’s enemies.’

I said, ‘I’m implying nothing, but I’m glad to hear that the suggestion would anger you.’

The EMP unlocked a tray on his desk and produced a slim green file; on the cover it said ‘HENRY’ in magic-marker lettering. It was about all we knew of the man who phoned Jay that night. Inside there was a note from the PM in his own handwriting, my report, and a long screed from Ross. The EMP said, ‘We are as anxious to clear it up as anyone, but we’ll have to have more facts than this.’

‘Then, with respect, sir, I suggest that you pass it on to the appropriate authority,’ I told him. ‘To be quite frank,’ Ross began, but I refused to be interrupted. I stared the EMP full in the eye. ‘This report of mine was submitted to the Cabinet. Neither you nor Colonel Ross has any right to open a file, handle a file, or comment in any way. The sphere of activities are clearly defined by the Cabinet. I’ll take this file with me, and I must ask you to treat its contents as top secret, pending the submission of my further reports to the Cabinet.’ It wasn’t that there were reasons for suspecting the EMP of attempting to cover up for the elusive Henry, but I didn’t want this file to be mislaid. At that moment I resolved that one day I would track down Jay’s highly placed friend. Something of this must have shown on my face in spite of my training.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the EMP. ‘Nothing was further from my mind than treating you in a cavalier fashion.’ I had won. I had won so soundly that the EMP produced his XO Brandy. I allowed myself to be mollified, but not too quickly. It’s great, that Hennessy XO Brandy.

Alice and I had a car waiting to take us back to Charlotte Street. We rode in silence almost all the way, but just before Goodge Street Alice said, ‘Not even Dalby would have attempted that.’ It was as near as Alice ever came to admiration. I gave her the green file and said airily, ‘Give this one of our file numbers, Alice.’ But my triumph was short-lived, for later that afternoon she brought in the two files I’d left in Waterman’s car. You could never beat Alice.

That evening Ross rang and said he had to see me, about Jay. And Carswell, Painter, Ross and I had a conference. The end was inevitable, and it came on Saturday. Jay was paid £160,000 to open a department working directly between Ross and myself. On this same day a Jensen 541S sports car went off the Maidstone by-pass while going at an absurd speed. There was one occupant, a Mr Dalby; death, they said, was instantaneous.