The Secret Servant hm-1

by Gavin Lyall

  Sometimes, George thought, he could smell fear in Sir Anthony Sladen.

  A messenger brought in Sladen's coffee and they chatted meaninglessly for a while. Then Sladen said: "Am I right in thinking that we are about to have a new face in our midst? And that he's a military gentleman?"

  "He's an officer so I assume he's a gentleman."

  "I don't quite understand why military."

  "Why not? Maybe the Headmaster's looking for the old virtues – clean in thought, word and deed."

  "It's all rather a long time ago, but aren't you mixing him up with the Boy Scouts?"

  George shrugged. "Maybe the Headmaster is, too. Our chap's done two tours in the Special Air Service and you know how prime ministers are about that."

  "I do indeed," Sladen said gloomily. His own views of the SAS was that it simply trained up, expensively, soldiers who promptly went off and became over-paid mercenaries in African troubles. But for politicians, the Regiment's semi-secret image – you couldn't tell from the Army List just who was serving in it at any one time – had all the thrill of election night, victory-snatched-from-the-jaws-of-defeat. Send in the SAS and all will be well. Politicians loved Secret Weapons.

  "I would have thought," he said, "that somebody with – say a security background might be more… well…"

  "If you mean somebody from Box 500, then you can disabuse yourself- not that I imagine you abuse yourself, either. After the Jackaman business, I spent half the night talking the Headmaster out of setting up a select committee on security. They deserve it, but we can't stand that sort of thing, with the security service splattered all over the front pages."

  "Indeed, no." Sladen – in fact the whole Cabinet Office – hadn't known how close the PM had come to an open row with MI5. That titbit alone justified his visit. "But if not that, then why not someone fairly harmless, like a retired policeman. With a Special Branch background, of course."

  "This is not a job creation scheme," George said testily, speaking through the jungle drums of his headache. "It's… just call it an experiment. We can unattach an Army man at any time. If we got some retired copper, we'd be stuck with him until he dropped dead."

  "Yes, I do see that. But what is your… Major Maxim, is it? – what is he actually going to do? "

  "Yes. Well. There you may have hit on the one weakness in the whole affairs. I don't know what he's going to do. I'll try and find him something, but he's never worked in Whitehall before… If he just keeps the Headmaster happy, then let's just be thankful for large mercies. The one thing he won't do is hound deputy under secretaries into committing suicide."

  "I'm sure he won't."

  George looked into his own coffee and decided not. "If we can only get through the next two months or so, if the bloody French would only set a date…"

  Sladen frowned politely and leant his head towards the young duty clerk, who wasn't supposed to hear Certain Things.

  George grunted. "Oh yes, and did you hear that Box 500's appointed Agnes Algar as liaison with us? You must know her?"

  The phone rang. George listened, then said clearly: "Ah, you've got Major Maxim, have you? Hold him for just three minutes and then shunt him along."

  Sladen knew he'd been meant to hear that three. Dealing with George could be tricky at times. Everybody knew – or said they, knew – that he would inherit a large piece of Gloucestershire the moment his father died, which couldn't be long now, as everybody had been saying for a long time. Trying to lean on a man who may have no long-term ambitions in the service is like leaning on a ghost. Of course, that might be why the PM had snatched George away from Defence to become a private secretary.

  "Have you met this galloping major?" he asked.

  "Not yet. Sir Bruce gave us a choice of three – on paper. You know the Army: tell them who to appoint where and they scream like a trade union. We just have to take what's the special offer of the week."

  "Ah yes," Sladen said sympathetically. "I assume he's properly house-trained and so on… Do you want us to find him a little niche?"

  If George hadn't had such a hangover, he would have seen this coming: Sladen was head-hunting. The Cabinet Office, very much bigger than Number 10, could always find room for a new face, or even a whole unit, particularly if it might mean increased influence. But the Cabinet Office was a ministry without a minister, a citadel of pure civil service power, with not a voter in sight. The locking of the door between the two buildings had a ritual significance beyond mere security.

  "That's very kind," George said, "but we've already got him a little cubby-hole up on the second floor, near the Political Office. We did think of putting him downstairs, but the Garden Room girls would eat him alive, him being unwed as you might say…"

  "D'you mean he isn't married!"

  "Oh, don't worry, Anthony, our Major is not One Of Those. His wife got killed in an air crash – 1 think somebody put a bomb on board; this was out in the Gulf when he was attached to one of the local armies – anyway, I think they must have been rather much in love still. He apparently did his best to get himself killed, along with whoever he could find on the other side. Well, it's a pity to waste that sort of attitude on the desert air, isn't it? There's far too many people here who spend their time looking over their shoulders at the future – don't you think?"

  "Oh quite," Sladen said, suspecting that remark was aimed at himself. "D'you think that's why the PM chose him?"

  "It could be, could be. I tell you what…" George lifted a buff folder with a red SECRET sticker on it; "This is a run-down on him that Sir Bruce sent us. Why don't you pop next door and bother Michael while you read it?"

  As consolation prizes go, it was the only one going. Sladen took the folder and stood up. "To whom will he be working?"

  "The Private Office. Normally that'll mean me." George was still polite but quite firm. Sladen stood up and went through the tall door into the Principal Private Secretary's room just as a. messenger knocked on the passageway door.

  At first glance, Maxim looked like any Whitehall civil servant. He was trying to. He wore a new blue suit, finely striped shirt, innocuous tie, carried a car-coat length raincoat over his arm and – the only individual touch – a worn soft-leather briefcase bought in a Beirut souk. He was just under six feet, and his mousey-blonde hair was of properly average length.

  But as he came forward from the door, George saw something else: the relaxed movement of a man who is totally at home in his own body, something you find in the best ball players, in fighting men. Being overweight and not wanting even to find out how much by, George felt a pang of jealousy, then got up as fast as he could and they shook hands.

  "I'm George Harbinger, we spoke on the phone. Sit down, sit down…"

  Maxim sat on an elegant but hard dining chair, presumably chosen to discourage long-term visits. It was surprisingly warm: somebody had just spent some time there.

  "This is the Private Secretaries' room," George went on. "It's usually a good deal busier than this, but the House isn't back from the hols yet and the Headmaster's up subduing the Picts and Scots…" He rambled on while he watched Maxim and Maxim looked around. It was a tall, well-proportioned room with delicate mouldings, all recently repainted in golden yellow and white. Two deep sash windows looked out onto the handsome backside of the Cabinet Office and the gloomy 'morning beyond. The four desks gave it the look of a drawing-room which had unfortunately, but only temporarily, been turned into a place where work had to be done.

  In the corner by the far window, the duty clerk was staring openly at him. Maxim smiled back. He had a thin, slightly concave face with lines beside the nose that made him look older than thirty-five, and a quick reflexive smile which sometimes got there ahead of the punch line of a joke, which was disconcerting.

  George wound up. "We've found you a little nook a couple of floors up. Not so grand, but a lot quieter. Are you all ready to move in?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "No, no. Don't call anybo
dy 'sir' around here. Except backbench MPs, it makes them feel loved and wanted, but we don't usually let them into Number 10 until after dark. You call the Headmaster 'Prime Minister', that shouldn't be too difficult to remember, and you call ministers 'Ministers', I'm George, you're Harold, is it, or Harry?"

  "Harry, usually."

  "Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George, with particular attention to poor George." He tried to rub the hot feeling out of his eyes and stood up at his normal speed. "I'll lead the way."

  From the corner, the duty clerk said softly: "Don't let him lead too far. He's a bad man. He drinks at lunch-time."

  "Lies, all lies," George said calmly. "I just happen to lunch at drinks-time." He took Maxim back into the corridor, past a modernistic agency tape machine and up the main staircase, tapping a fingernail on the silvery silk wallpaper. "The taxpayer's done a good job, don't you think?"

  Sir Anthony Sladen sat at the Principal Private Secretary's desk – he was away with the PM in Scotland – and read carefully through Sir Bruce's letter about Maxim.

  "Malaya, Borneo, Oman," he counted. "Germany of course, Northern Ireland of course, the Gulf again… at least he's got his knees brown."

  At the second desk – the room was rather smaller than the one next door – Michael Gale looked up from his paperwork. "Who are you talking about?"

  "Major Harold Maxim. Your new club member."

  "Oh, the soldier." Gale went back to work. He dealt with foreign affairs, which didn't include defence since George had been brought in.

  Maxim, Sladen saw, had even managed to get himself wounded – quite badly, though recovery was supposed to be complete. But it had been an expensive wound, losing him six months at a vital stage in his career. For a man who hadn't come in through Sandhurst, it might be decisive. He had made it to major but not to staff college, and that was when you found the up staircase bricked off. Maxim could stay a major for the next twenty years, until the Army had fulfilled its bargain of giving him a career until age fifty-five.

  And a very old fifty-five he would be by then, Sladen thought. It was an odd choice for Number 10, where the best was supposed to be barely good enough. Then he said: "Good God."

  Gale sighed without looking up. "What do we have now?"

  "He's got a boy, a son."

  "They're usually much the same thing."

  "But George said he was trying to get himself killed, after his wife died…"

  Still without looking up, Gale slapped down his pen. "Are we to understand that, on top of all else, he has a personal problem? That is approximately all that we need. I shall never understand why we did this. Security is Five's job."

  "Well, as George was saying, after that Jackaman business-"

  "Exactly. After that, we'd got them so agitated that they'd have promised us anything. For once, we'd got security under control. Now they'll just sulk and start plots…" He sighed again and picked up his pen. "Has he got here yet?"

  "George is meshing him into the machine now."

  It might once have been a box-room or a servant's bedroom. "Not so wide as a well nor so deep as a church door." George commented, "and about as friendly as Death Row, but 'twill serve. Or if it doesn't, there's nothing we can do about it, though if you scream loud enough the Housekeeper's Office might change the furniture."

  At the moment, the furniture was a roll-top desk straight out of Pickwick, a mahogany desk chair, a second and completely plain chair, a hatstand, a small bookcase and a standard Government issue filing cabinet with a lock that Maxim could bypass in five seconds. It all filled the room quite thoroughly.

  He hung his raincoat on the stand – a flag-raising ceremony, perhaps – and sat in the desk chair. It creaked wearily.

  George picked up the phone and told the switchboard: "Major Harry Maxim is operational at this extension as of now. All right, me lovely? Splendid." He put down the phone. "They say we've got the best switchboard in the country, they can find you anybody anywhere. But always let them know where you are, will you? It's slightly vital."

  He lowered himself carefully onto the second chair. He was wearing a well-cut suit in a light check, a Dragoon Guards tie and well-polished but well-worn brown brogues. George, Maxim came to learn, always dressed as if he were just about to leave for Goodwood. Maxim opened his briefcase and took out what looked like a bundle of leather and elastic straps. "Do you think I could get a small safe up here?"

  "A safe? If you're handling any classified material you give it in to the Confidential Registry at night. I suppose you could always bring the family heirlooms in-Oh I see." He had suddenly realised that the bundle was a shoulder holster, complete with revolver.

  "Have you been carrying that all over…? Well, of course. They wouldn't search your case, you being family now. Was this Sir Bruce's idea?"

  "He thought I might need to get at a weapon sometime without having to run round to the Horse Guards and fill in a lot of forms," Maxim said evenly. "I don't imagine it's the only one in the building."

  "It certainly isn't, though in Whitehall the paperwork is generally regarded as being mightier than the pistol. " George chuckled. "It does seem a bit silly to bring in a soldier and tell him to leave his gun behind. May I?" He lifted the pistol from the spring clip holster. It was an unfamiliar American make, in the usual.38 Special calibre, but surprisingly light, despite having a reasonable three-inch barrel. "Is this what the SAS sports, these days?"

  "You get quite a choice."

  George put the gun back carefully and waited, fascinated to see what else Maxim had in the briefcase. A sawn-off pump-action shotgun such as the SAS were rumoured to favour? A framed portrait of the dead wife? Like most good managers, George had the curiosity of a village gossip. But all Maxim brought out was Whitaker's Almanac, the Statesman's Yearbook and a pad of paper.

  He's been swotting, George thought. "You're all fixed up with a place to live? – yes, you told me on the phone. And you're a Londoner anyway, am I right?"

  "Mill Hill."

  "That'll help. And about your little boy, he's what age now?"

  "Christopher, he's ten. He's down with my parents in Littlehampton. They retired there a couple of years ago, and they've found him a school locally." His voice was quite calm.

  "Good. I suppose you'll be down there most weekends. You'll always let the switchboard know where… no, I said that already, didn't I?"

  I need a drink, George thought.

  "What am I going to be doing here?" Maxim asked.

  "Yes. Well. Roughly speaking… at the Headmaster's discretion, you get first crack at any security problem we think is likely to, or might… cause embarrassment in the area of defence, as you might say…"

  Sir Bruce had told Maxim: "I can't find out what the hell they want you for, but they've had a bad case of wet knickers since before Christmas so maybe they want somebody to piss on when the pot's full. You've been in the Army quite long enough to be used to that."

  When George had finished, Maxim said: "I'm not a detective."

  "No, we don't expect that. But you've done the Ashford course, haven't you? You can organise a surveillance and so on?"

  "I've got more theory than practice."

  "Well then… I tell you what-" George looked at his watch; "-why don't you and I slide over to Boodle's and continue the briefing there?" He looked at Maxim hopefully. Thirstily.

  Maxim gave a quick smile, but wondered if this was going to become a regular invitation. George picked up the phone and told the switchboard where they'd be. At least nobody could accuse George of being a secret drinker.

  "And one thing you won't be doing," George added, "is hounding deputy under secretaries… damn it, I'm sounding like a bloody Quaker. Whenever you ask them what they believe in, they start listing the things they don't believe in, beginning with the Scarlet Woman. But now I suppose it'll turn out you're a Quaker… no, I suppose not, in your job."

  "My sister married a Friend. I know what you mean.
" And maybe, Maxim thought, I'm as close to Quakerism as to anything. Jenny would have had something to say about that, but we never got around to it. Oh, Jenny, the things we never got around to.

  George led the way out.

  3

  Maxim had run a company office in a wrecked armoured personnel carrier and the broom cupboard of a Belfast school, so a whole box-room to himself was pure luxury, and like an alley cat he stretched out and enjoyed this temporary treat. He also learned that 'room' was the right word. In Number 10 an 'office' was the Private Office, the Political Office, Press Office, and so on, sometimes whole suites of rooms.

  But for all that, it went on being a house. There was an air of quiet busyness, a polite official scurrying behind every wainscot, yet in its decor, the pictures on the walls (nothing so crude as maps or charts of organisation), the whole style, it was still the town house of a duke who had occasionally to pop up to town to govern the nation instead of the partridges. The Housekeeper's Office, afraid that Maxim might forget he was a soldier, offered him a selection of solely military pictures for his own room. He chose a lively watercolour of the Mahratta Army at Seringapatam and put up maps of London and Europe on the other walls. The Housekeeper's Office expressed Unvoiced Disapproval.

  "Lunch," George had warned him, "is not one of the great thrills of Whitehall. Just thank your choice of career that you aren't entitled to eat in most of the civil service canteens. All fried fish and spotted dick, just as nanny used to make. But I suppose if you've spent twenty years eating in the nursery, prep school, public school and some Oxbridge hall, your taste buds must look like the Dutch elm disease."

  Whitehall was, Maxim soon saw, two Whitehalls, living in the frigid intimacy of an unconsummated marriage. In between the ponderous ministry buildings, the Abbey, the Palace of Westminster itself, there had developed an undergrowth of worn-out pubs, greasy hamburger bars and small shops selling overpriced models of London buses and Big Ben.