The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  The path was well lit and as straight as the wall. Blagg gave Mrs Howard fifty yards, then followed on the grass, keeping the row of lime trees between himself and the fat man. It couldn't have worked if the Burger of seventy years before hadn't planted with eyes like rulers; as it was, he could make each tree overlap the next to give himself a reasonable amount of cover. And any second man could be no closer.

  They moved like that for nearly a quarter of a mile, passing nobody andm silenceenough for him to hear the clicking of Mrs Howard's high heels. The cold moist air drifted out of the wall at him, an unnatural feeling on that gentle evening.

  Then, leaning in for a snatched glance at the fat man, he saw it and wished to hell he'd seen it on their drive around the park Halfway along the wall a tunnel led through it from side to side, framed by a heavy wooden arch. If anybody was waiting, it had to be there.

  He dropped the last oozy remains of the ice cream and hurried forward, abandoning caution (a running man is always suspicious). He had gained only fifteen yards when he heard Mrs Howard's footsteps hesitate and knew the fat man had turned into the tunnel. But then she walked calmly on. He moved cautiously again – the man was probably looking back from the archway – and took out the gun. She stopped again, he heard a mutter of voices, and then her steps faded in the archway.

  He had made only a few more yards when a small pistol wentsmack, echoing out of the tunnel He ran. Another gun fired, then the small one again, and Mrs Howard staggered back out of the archway and sat down heavily, losing her newspaper but keeping the gun. The fat man wobbled out after her and both shot each other from a few feet apart Blagg snapped his wrist against a tree-trunk for steadiness and started shooting from thirty yards range. The third shothit the fat man's head and pieces burst off it, like flower petals. The body flopped and tumbled into the trough of water that drained from the wall. Mrs Howard wriggled and moaned a little and lay still.

  Suddenly it was all very different from the two eveningsm Armagh, and Blagg began to feel very lonely.

  "I didn't know she'd got a gun," he finished. "I mean – that was why I was there. She should have letme decide." He sounded professionally affronted.

  "You're sure they were both dead?" Maxim asked.

  "Yes. I know."

  "Why didn't you go to your own platoon commander?"

  Blagg gave him a brief and almost sneering look, then shrugged. "He wouldn't have understood, like. He's a nice boy, but…"

  "Your company commander, then7"

  "Yes, but. I mean, I haven't been back there long and none of them was ever in Sass…"

  Certainly some things the SASdid routinely would surprise a normal regimental officer. Or, as the regimental officer might put it, nothing the SASdid wouldever surprise him. Caswell had finished the rifles and half leant, half sat on the bench, a new cigarette smouldering in his fist. He watched Blagg and nodded occasionally.

  "Did you jump off right away?" Maxim asked.

  "Well, I sort of… First I just took the car. Got the keys out of her bag. I mean, nobody would know about the car. "

  "You didn't have to stop and fill it up?"

  "No, sir But there was a five-litre can in the boot; I put that in, just for safety, like. I just drove around, thinking. In the morning I got on a train at Dortmund for Ostend and got on a ferry."

  "What were you using for money?"

  "Well, I had a bit, of course…" Blagg looked at the floor.

  It was perfectly clear what he'd used for money. In a way, Maxim was pleased that he'd been cool-headed enough to think of it. Still…

  "How much was there?"

  Blagg cleared his throat "3,750Deutschmarks I don't know why it was that, seems a funny sort of amount, really…"

  Maxim guessed it was the result of bargaining: the German had wanted 5,000, Mrs Howard had offered half…

  Caswell had been doing a little currency conversionmhis head and was looking slightly shocked. He obviously hadn't heard any figure mentioned before.

  "Well, don't chuck it around," Maxim said. "A lot more people'll believe you if you handm abig wad of ready cash And what happened to the gun?"

  "In the river."

  "And her luggage?"

  "Same place. I went through it – it was only a bag – and she didn't have anything special, like passports or things. Just ordinary."

  "You've been back here over a week…

  "It took me a bit of time to find out where Sergeant Caswell was, sir. I mean, I couldn'tjust ring up and ask, could I'"

  "Did you try and get hold of Captain Fairbrother or anybody else in the Army?"

  "No, just Jim here, sir."

  "Does anybody else in this country know you're back7"

  Blagg frowned at his fingernails.

  "Come along, lad." Caswell's voice was sharp but quiet. "Major Maxim may be able to do something, but God Himself won't be able to help you if you don't tell the whole story The theologyofthatwasn't too sound, Maxim thought, but it seemed to work. Blagg muttered: "Couple've people I know, Rotherhithe way. You want to know what they'd tell the pig-feet if they come asking around'"

  "You needn't bother "

  "All I want, sir, really – is if you can get Captain Fair-brother to say I really was working for The Firm Or them themselves. If they'd just tell Battalion that, it would be all right." Blagg sounded fnghteningly earnest, as if life – and death-was just that simple.

  "I'll do what I can " Maxim glanced at Caswell: any furtherquestions? Caswell gave the smallest shake of his head, ground out the cigarette in a tin-lid and began picking up the rifles.

  Blagg reached. "Here, Sarge, let me -"

  "I'm not a bleeding cripple!"

  Blagg snapped into a fighting crouch and immediately Caswell was ready for him, a rifle held across his chest like a quarter-staff. The oil-dusty air shimmered with pent-up violence.

  "It's a great day for the Army," Maxim said pleasantly, "when the sergeants insist on doing all the work."

  The tension died like a match flame. Caswell straightened up, nodding angrily at his own obtuseness. Blagg wasn't offering to help because of any stiff arm; the lad wasn't that sensitive. It was just that although he'd run away from the Army, he wanted to prove he was still a soldier, even by something as simple as putting rifles in racks.

  Caswell stroked his moustache with an oily forefinger. "Behind the door there. Don't drop more than half of them."

  Blagg picked up four of the gutted weapons. "You're sure they aren't loaded, Sarge?"

  The rack looked as if it had been built for the long Lee-Metfords of the South African War. Blagg fitted the rifles in, ran a chain through the trigger guards and padlocked it. The bolt actions went in a small safe bricked into the outside wall. They were ridiculous precautions for guns that couldn't any longer fire live ammunition, but airliners have been hijacked with toy pistols. Terrorism didn't take sunny Saturday afternoons off.

  "You left the car in Dortmund," Maxim said. "Do you remember the number?"

  Even better, Blagg seemed to have written it down. Maxim sighed. "Anything else that might interest the police if they pick you up?"

  Silently, Blagg showed him the paper. The car number was worked somehow – Maxim couldn't see how – into an innocent-looking sum of minor expenses. Almost the first thing taught in the SASis to memorise map references, so that no piece of paper will betray your base or objective.

  "Sorry," Maxim said. "How about the phone number she gave you in Soltau?"

  That wasn't part of the sum; Blagg looked annoyed with himself.

  "Never mind, you weren't to know. How do I get hold of you?

  Blagg glanced at Caswell, who said: "I'll know how." Maxim was about to say No, and then didn't. He didn't want Jim Caswell to get involved any deeper, but he couldn't really help it. Blagg on his own around London was a babe in the woods, even if he thought of himself as a two-gun tiger, as he probably did. Under Jim's eye in the country he was as well hidden as they coul
d hope for.

  He still didn't like the risk to Caswell, and took it out on Blagg. "Corporal, don't let anybody, including yourself, tell you you've been anything but a bloody twallop. You might still come out luckier than you deserve-provided you do what Jim and I tell you. But if you do anything clever and landjim in it, then I'll go straight to the MPs and tell them everything you've told me. Have you got that?"

  "Sir," Blag said stiffly. "But you will talk to…?"

  "I'll do what I can. But you've been dealing with some funny people. Jim – ring me if you need to. Just as a precaution, call yourself… say, Galloway – and leave a message. I'll ring you back. "

  "I'll do that. Don't worry about this end." The atmosphere had become formal, more like a company office at a time of serious decisions. It was a good mood to leave with them.

  Caswell ceremonially escorted Maxim to his car and, still in uniform, saluted as he drove away. When he got back to the armoury, Blagg had found a broom and was poking at the pitted, oil-stained concrete. Caswell nodded approval and lit another cigarette.

  After a while, Blagg said: "He was the one that lost his wife, didn't he? Out in the Gulf, was it?"

  "That's right. Some wily oriental gentleman put a bomb on board her plane. I was with him. He saw it. "

  "Jesus," Blaggsaid thoughtfully. "Something like that happened to me, I'd sort of want to kill somebody."

  Caswell put his clenched fist to his mouth, as if politely masking a yawn, and drew hard on his cigarette. "He did, lad," he said in a slow smoke cloud. "He did."

  Chapter 4

  Monday morning was another perfect day and George Harbinger arrived at Number 10 Downing Street alreadym afoul temper. He perched on the edge of the desk of the Principal Private Secretary and growled: "The Broad-Rumped Nikon-Tufted Tourist seems to have bred particularly freely this year. There is a positiveinfestation of them outside. I even saw one without a camera."

  "Really? I wonder that he got past Immigration at Heathrow. Coming in without a camera seems proof positive that he intends to settle here illegally. "Jeremy was tall, with a natural elegance that would never decay into dandyism and always scrupulously polite, having been to that school which believes that it is manners, rather than God, that maketh man, though a spot of money also helps.

  George grunted On Monday mornings no remarks were funny but his own, and he usually regretted even those by the end of the day. He was one of the six private secretaries who -Jeremy included – formed the Prime Minister's Private Office. His own special responsibility was defence and security, although they all sugared each other's tea in busy times. Today looked like being one: on Saturday afternoon the Prime Minister had cancelled a speech he was to have made at an agricultural show in his Scottish constituency and taken to his bed there. He hadn't got up yet.

  "How is the Headmaster?" George asked "Coughing hard but fairly cheerful in the circumstances." Jeremy had flown up and back on the Sunday.

  "What are we telling the press7" After the revelations by Churchill's doctor that he had suppressed news of several strokes, and seeing other prime ministers leave the job byambulance, Fleet Street had become over-sensitive to any hint of illness in Number 10 "One of these persistent summer colds that they're trying to stop going to his chest. I assume it's bronchitis but Sir Frank won't commit himself. I've suggested they get in a reference to his old war wound."

  In May 1940 the Prime Minister, then a young lance-corporal defending a section of the Magmot Line, had taken a mortar burst that peppered his chest with fragments of metal and concrete. The wound might even have saved his life, since he was back in an English hospital when the remains of his battalion surrenderedmthe wreckage of St Valery-en-Caux a month afterwards. But over forty years later, most of them spent smoking heavily while the cameras weren't looking, his scarred lung could still turn a simple cold into something that needed to be talked down, and bits of metal were still wandering around his body and occasionally needing to be picked out. I wonder, George thought irrelevantly, ifhe pings as he goes through an airport metal-detector gateway? But as PM he never has to go through such gateways – George had flown with him many times – so probably I'll never know. Bother "Have they done an X-ray?"

  "At the local cottage hospital. It apparently didn't show anything alarming."

  "But he's not likely to be back this week. 'Is Tired Tim taking over'"

  Jeremy smiled painfully at the Deputy Prime Minister's nickname, took off his reading glasses and looked up to consult some Wykehamist deity that apparently floated a few feet above George's head. It was a gesture that annoyed George intensely "He will be taking Questions tomorrow, yes. Most likely he'll be chairing Cabinet on Thursday And he'll be dropping in later today to see if there are any flies in the soup. I'm sure you'll try and limit their number."

  "Have no fear." George was going to offer Tired Tim as few decisions as possible.

  "And perhaps," Jeremy put on his glasses again, "those ofus too old to relish change might direct our prayers northwards."

  "You mean that if the Headmaster goes I'd be hove out on me ear before his taxi had turned the corner?" It was a thought that hadn't really occurred to George before. His father owned a large piece of Gloucestershire, and the Whitehall whisper was that once Harbinger senior was six foot under and somebody had been contracted to haul away the empty brandy bottles, George's wife Annette would have him out of London and into a country squire's gumboots before he could catch his breath. It could be any day now, the whisper added, and there was enough truth in it for George not to have thought of leaving Number 10except of his own choice (or Annette's, of course).

  Jeremy bent to his paperwork, murmuring: "As ever, George, you go straight to the heart of things."

  "I'm not sure I'd want to stay." George wandered away through the almost-always-open door to the room he shared with three other private secretaries and the duty clerk. It was tall and elegant, with big windows looking out over the garden, and their desks seemed something of a crude anachronism; George looked at it all with sudden appreciation- and regret, because it could end so soon.

  Only the clerk and the young man who kept the PM's engagements book were in, the latter busily telephoning round to cancel or reschedule the appointments; he gave George a despairing grin, and the clerk brought across a bunch of messages, including one from Major Maxim.

  "The Major called down before you came in. He said it wasonly fatrly urgent."

  "And merely slightly sensitive," George read. "A very proper sense of values, has our Harry. Well, I'll go up slightly soon and fairly quickly. What else is new?" Suddenly in top gear, he charged into the paperwork, returning the more important phone calls at the same time as he scribbled comments on letters and redirected files to other desks in the house. After an hour, the high tide of Monday morning trouble had been pushed back to the normal waterlme and he called Maxim to say he was on his way up.

  By the time he had climbed the two flights of stairs to Maxim's room, George was breathing hard but only through his nose, which didn't count. In his middle forties – oldish for a PM's private secretary – he looked somewhat like a prince who had only just begun to turn into a frog when the wicked witch lost the recipe. He had a squat face with prominent eyes and a wide mouth, not much hair, a chubby body and thin limbs. But the clothes were still princely, if princes still spent their days at small yet exclusive country race-meetings: a beautifully cut lightweight grey check suit, hand-made brown brogues, a Cavalry Club tie. George usually dressed like that, not particularly because he wanted to, but because that was how his wife told his tailor to dress him. George's only stipulations were that he shouldn't look like a banker (his brother-in-law banked) or a civil servant (which he was). It didn't really belong in Number 10, but many people thought that George didn't either, which was one of his strengths.

  He pushed open the door to what had once been a small boxroom, said: "And the top of the morning, or at least this bloody house, to you, "
and slumped into a chair. He made the room look crowded.

  Maxim swung carefully round on a creaking desk chair. He was already in shirt-sleeves, although the single window faced north. "Morning, George. You look quite fit, for a Monday."

  "I swear to you my father-in-law waters his whisky. Next time I'm going to take a hydrometer and expose the old-Good God, have we got you cutting out paper dolls already?"

  Maxim had been clipping stories on defence from newspapers and magazines. He flashed his quick, protective smile and pushed the papers aside. "Can I do you a cup of tea? Instant soup? Nothing? How is the Prime Minister?"

  "Everybody I meet today is going to ask me that. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… We just don'tknow yet. We hope -" he looked quickly at Maxim and then remembered that this was one man at Number 10who didn't gossip; who didn't, as far as*he knew, have anybody to gossip to " – we just hope it's nothing worse than bronchitis, though when you're well past sixty… Anyway, what's this'fairly urgent and slightly sensitive' weekend you've been spending?"

  "A sergeant I had in the SAS," Maxim began carefully. "He got a disability discharge. He gave me a call. He's got a chap, a corporal, who's gone AWOL from Rhine Army. I met thischap -"

  "A deserter?" George wriggled himself upright. "You met a deserter and didn't report him?"

  "I'm reporting him to you. "

  "Go on, Harry," George said thinly. "And try and make it good." He slid down in his chair again and started listening seriously.

  He was a good listener. When Maxim had finished, George just murmured: "Harry, whathave you got yourself into?" but without anger or even expecting an answer. Then he just sat, shuffling the story in his mind like an incomplete pack of cards.

  The internal phone rang; Maxim answered and handed it to George, who listened for a moment and said: "Can't you try Jeremy or Michael? I'll be down in a minute." He gave the phone back. "You'll never know, I trust, what it is to be both beautiful and indispensable. What have you done about this so far?"