by Gavin Lyall
Once inside Maxim's parents' house, they worked as a team. Maxim hauled his father and mother away from the TV to introduce George, whilst Chris started linking the keyboard, transformer, interface, joystick and cassette recorder to the TV screen in a tangle of wires and plugs recruited from all over the house.
With puzzled joviality, Mr Maxim said: "So you've hired Chris, now, have you?"
"It's the age of theenfant savant," George said, looking at the mess. "But is my drawing-room going to look like a Tac HQ?"
"Can I offer you a cup of tea, or a drink…?"
"A drink would be absolutely splendid. I've had a rather trying day."
"Make it a big one, Dad," Maxim suggested, not trying to catch George's eye. Perhaps there is a time to reform, and a time not to reform. But he watched surreptitiouslyas George took his first huge swallow and stood there, letting it flow through him, a transfusion of new life. How many years since George had his first drink of the day after sundown? he wondered.
Chris said: "I'm ready, Daddy." The screen was lit but blank except for a small heading: takeoff west r.
Maxim ushered his father into the kitchen. "I'm sorry, Dad, but some of this could be rather secret. We can't help Chris seeing it, but… I hope I can tell you one day."
With the three of them alone, Maxim said: "Run it, please."
An irregular line of battlements appeared at the bottom of the screen: perhaps a symbolic city skyline. Low over them, a small aeroplane shape rose, coming towards them but slanting slightly to the left. The screen went blank for a moment; when it cleared, there was a small red dot in the middle of it. The aeroplane carried on steadily and vanished at the top left-hand corner. The screen went blank again, except fortakeoff west l. It was a mirror image of the other, with the aeroplane rising towards the right.
Chris said: "I think I can make that red spot move…"
"Try it."
The screen saidtakeoff east r. The aeroplane rose, slanting left, then began a positive turn even further left-a right turn for the aeroplane. As Chris experimented, the red dot jumped, wavered, crawled towards the aeroplane and had just reached it as the plane finished a half-circle and the screen blanked. The same thing happened withtakeoff east l, except that the aeroplane slanted to the right, then did the same turn back across the screen. This time, Chris had the red dot over it much earlier.
"It's just one of those games," he said sadly. "You know, where you shoot down aeroplanes."
Maxim ignored George's stare. "Just one of those games," he said. "Sorry, Chris."
With Chris also banished to the kitchen, they sat at one end of the little dining-table, the telephone between them and George's hand creeping towards it, then drawing back as his thoughts blurred again. Beyond the green plushcurtains, doors slammed on -home-coming cars, a metal garage door creaked open, a child rumbled past on a skateboard.
"We're dealing with a Blowpipe missile," Maxim said, trying to find a point of certainty. "It's the only man-portable one that you can control on to the target. The rest are infra-red, fire-and-forget stuff. Control makes simulation training vital: I met a Gunner who said they did seventeen hundred simulations before they even got near a practice round. And we know a Blowpipe's missing from an export order: they couldn't pinch a simulator as well, so they made up their own."
Perhaps that plastic case in the back of the Land-Roverhad been a similar home computer.
"I take your word for all that," George acknowledged. "But it doesn't tell us what aeroplane, nor where. Unless you're having the same horrible thoughts that I am."
"The Russian delegation. They're here, are they? When do they fly out?"
"It's open-ended. When we know when it'll end we'lltry and keep it secret, but they'll have people popping back and forth to Moscow all the time. "
"If it's all vague and ad hoc, it'll be that for the Crocus List, too."
"They don't have to be gunning for a particular Russian group or aircraft. If they hitany one it might be enough. It'd certainly be enough for me and most of Western civilisation."
"Let's think about the airport: it must be a specific one, with two parallel runways heading east-west. They're planning to be on a line between the two, firing slightly left or right. But on an east take-off the aeroplane turns 180 degrees to its right… Look, there must be some pilots' handbook that gives all this sortofthing. Get on to your office before they all go home."
In the relief of having something to do, George barely noticed that Maxim was giving the orders. He passed them on crisply: "-and never bloody mind what/or, justhave it there, on my desk." He put the phone down. "And let us hope we are still dealing in prediction and not history."
38
An Aerad Guide-in fact, several fat loose-leaf volumes of it-was on George's desk. Also waiting was a grey-haired man in a very military suit whom George's assistant introduced as Group-Captain Coulson from NATS. ("National Air Traffic Service," the assistant whispered. "He thinks you may need help.")
George frowned at the idea, smiled at the Groupie, and pushed the guide to Maxim. "See what you can make of it, Harry."
One look told Maxim why they needed Coulson: each airport-formally called an 'aerodrome'-took up at least six pages, some printed on both sides, showing the general layout, ramp areas, SIDs and STARs (whatever they were), ILS, NDB/DME… He quietly pushed the volume back, open.
George took a glance. "Good God, it's written in Linear B. I shall never fly again."
"Easy when you know how," Coulson assured him. "Now, what do you want to know?"
Maxim said: "We're looking for an airport with two parallel runways running roughly east-west and you make a 180-degree right turn soon after take-off if you're going east. Sir," he remembered.
Coulson frowned thoughtfully. "You don't usually make a one-eighty so close… but sooner or later you've got to turn to get to where you want to go. Wheredo you want to go?"
Maxim looked at George, who shrugged and said: "It could be Russia. "
Coulson raised his eyebrows. "Russia's to the east of most places, so you wouldn't need to turn west. Are you sure your airport isn't in China?"
Georgeglowered. "Unlikely. How about the two runways?"
"Heathrow, in this country. Charlesde Gaulle. Schiphol. Frankfurt. Hannover. Tegel."
"Where?"
"Berlin." The silence was very sudden. Coulson went on: "It's run by the French, their sector, but it's the one commercial flights use. Ours is Gatow, but that's strictly military."
Maxim asked: "If you were taking off east, would you make a 180-degree turn?"
Coulson found the right pages. "Yes, if you wanted to get onto Centre Route 2, but that's the way back to West Germany and London. Right 180-degrees at three thousand feet and not less than three miles from the beacon. If you wanted to go to Russia, you'd go straight ahead over East Berlin, but I don't think anybody ever does that."
George said carefully: "Thank you very much, Group-Captain… would you care for a drink? Derek will get you one. I'm most grateful, and I wonder if you could treat this as being rather secret?"
The Groupie gave one last look at Maxim's mixture of combat and civilian dress and went out.
George slumped in his desk chair. "Berlin again. But why? What can they shoot down there?"
"They must want to make it look as if the Russians shot it down."
"They can't be going to blast some airliner. That doesn't sound like their style."
"They're going to blast somebody. You don't shoot to wound with a missile. "
George shook his head slowly, then got up and found a copy of the Standard on a side table. It was All Saints' Day and the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon in Berlin was briefly quoted on page 2. Sure enough, he had denounced any unilateral talks on Berlin as "an abdication of care for a brave and beleaguered people… Are we to say of Berlin 'I know him not?' " Strong stuff, with a hint in the last paragraph that the Foreign Secretary would have liked to call the Archbish
op an Interfering old-, only daren't.
"Thesebuggers,"Georgesaid, "are planning to shoot down the Archbishop of Canterbury." He sat down. "No, they can't be. It's just not on."
"He'll be flying out of Tegel," Maxim said. "And it fits: Moscow's been trying to smear him, and they shot down that Iranian airliner-they've set themselves up for this. It doesn't have to be perfect, just so long as a lot of people believe it. And if the missile comes from East Germany or East Berlin-"
"ABritish missile."
"There'll be damn little left to prove anything-and that'll get called a Russian fake. Who's going to believe the British shot down the head of their own Church?"
"Exactly: why should these Crocus List people do it?"
Maxim took care with his answer. "I think the whole pattern is sacrifice, not assassination-when they use violence at all. A couple of them have committed suicide; you could say they sacrificed Barling-he was a churchgoer, wasn't he?-when he wasn't going to resign over Berlin, and that freed his group to vote their own way. But they didn't try to kill me at the Abbey or you at the house today. What bigger sacrifice can they make than their own Archbishop?"
"And the pilot of the aeroplane, and Jim Ferrebee, and a few others probably."
"They're on a crusade. And I think they're right at the walls of Jerusalem. At that point, a few civilian casualties might be acceptable sacrifices as well."
George looked at him and growled: "Just a simple soldier."
"They aren't simple soldiers out there. One tries to adapt. But whatever it is, can you just stop the Archbishop flying out of Tegel?"
"That shouldn't be a problem: Jim Ferrebee's out there with him. I can get him to… but, Harry, wait a minute: you're saying these Crocus clowns must have smuggled amissile into East Germany? They pull out yourtoenaüsfor trying to take in a copyof Playboy."
"They must have it disguised as something else."
"And how? The thing must be… how big?"
"With the launcher and sight, four and a half feet andsomething over forty pounds. It would have to be in a vehicle. Maybe built into it." He was recalling the odd bits of car-body metal in the garage, the power tools in the Land-Rover… "I'd like to know what the police find at the Oxendown House garage."
George instinctively glanced at the telephone. "Yes… we've got a little explaining to do… But if you're right, suppose these clowns get caught in East Germany? Even at the checkpoint? Think how that would look. Brits with a British missile…"
"Somebody had better catch them first. If the police have any ideas about the vehicle, we need to know them. "
"I could try going through Security." George sighed."Try."
"You've got to make them accept Agnes's report."
George sighed again.
"Or do nothing and just see what happens next," Maxim offered, smiling as politely as ever.
Glowering, George picked up the telephone. "Find me the Deputy D-G at Security, will you? No, the Deputy, I don't want the D-G himself on any account… He's Old Guard," he explained to Maxim. "Srill has some belief in the Sovbloc threat, though I fear thoughts of his pension loom largest of all… Alfred? So sorry to interrupt your dins, but you recall a little morsel that came in from Washington in the early hours?… Yes, I do know about it… And yes, I know this isn't a secure line, so I thought that if you and I could get together in, say, half an hour?… Oh, I'm sorry you don't think so, because I'd like some advice about what to say to the East Sussex police about a little happening down near Eastbourne today… Of course I know about that, I was, you might say, involved… Yes, I expect he was very dead, although that wasn't my direct doing, but one feels one has a duty to explain things to the constabulary, unless you felt otherwise… Ah, good. Half an hour, then?… I'll be there."
He put down the phone. "Would the wheels of government turn so smoothly without a regular greasing of blackmail?"
Maxim smiled again. "You might emphasise that the Bravoes are in on this."
"That'll be a little more difficult. Nobody's likely to have identified that burned-out bastard in Illinois…"
"You can prove they've bugged your rooms at Albany."
George stared. "I'd like to know how."
"No problem."
39
George put the little microphone, looking like a metallic spider with its stiffly bent wire legs, on the table. "Major Maxim took this out of my telephone in Albany just this evening."
Perhaps he felt a little weight lift, a tiny erasure of guilt, for Miss Tuckey's death, now her microphone was at last in the right hands. The hands, small and thick-veined, belonged to the Deputy Director-General of Security, whom George hadn't seen for some months. He was saddened to see how aged and shaky the man had become since being passed over for the top job. He had opened the meeting by taking two different-coloured pills and George suspected he was checking his pulse when he put his hands in his lap.
"Aye, it's one of Theirs," the Deputy said in a voice softened by tiredness as well as a faint Scots accent. "But he shouldna have taken it out."
George waved that aside. "I asked for my rooms to be swept a week ago. We haven't got time now for fancy work: do you accept the gist of Miss Algar's report-and now the likelihood of an attempt on the Archbishop?"
"I would accept it as a possibility. I think I can promise we will endorse any warning you send to this man-Ferrebee?-in Berlin. For the rest…" He glanced through thick pebble lenses at the Assistant-Commissioner from the Met, the sleek heavy whom Maxim had met in Committee. He had picked up the microphone and was twiddling with it.
"Your part in the Eastbourne matter, Mr Harbinger-" he began.
"I was kidnapped at gunpoint."
"Well, then Major Maxim's involvement… he seems avery active gentleman. I would like to know who authorised his use of a firearm."
"Yes, yes, we can worry about that later. What did the local Branch find down there?"
The AC picked up a sheaf of telex messages. "After the body had been recovered from the Land-Roverand found to have gunshot wounds, there was a search done on the house. Yes, there was some evidence that it had been used for terrorist purposes… the cellar had been used as a shooting gallery, they picked some Russian bullets out of the walls, but far too soon to say if they match the rifle from the Abbey. Bloodstains on the lawn, 9-mil cartridge cases on the terrace-was that the work of Major Maxim?"
"I was handcuffed to a pipe in the cellar."
"Ah yes… and evidence of them converting and respraying a vehicle-"
"That's what we want."
"-most likely a Volkswagen camper, from the bits and pieces left around. They resprayed it dark green and probably cut a big roof hatch and a smaller hole, round, about five inches across."
George blinked, then guessed: "For a stove pipe?" With its short fat body and long tube behind, a Blowpipe launcher could well be disguised as a stove and pipe -then pulled loose and fired through a wide roof hatch. It was a lot more likely than standing on an East German road and blasting the thingoff.
The AC just smiled his meaningless gorilla smile. He didn't need to guess at things that were beyond his reach.
"So now do we believe these people areserious?" George demanded.
"Aye," the Deputy D-G said wearily. "But I also believe they are out of our territory. If the vehicle is to be in East Germany tomorrow afternoon, it is quite likely there already. Certainly on the Continent, would you not agree?"
"Probably, but what about what's still on your territory? Which could include Arnold Tatham if he's still alive and still directing it, which seems to be an increasing possibility. Have you tracked down the phone numbers Agnes sent you?"
"George,"the Deputy D-G said, keeping his hands in his lap, "I think you can take it that they will now be looked into."
"Now? After you've had the bloody things for eighteen hours?"
"You just don't appreciate how things have been, these months since…" He shook his head slowly.
If George had not appreciated, the clenched painful smile on the old man's face-yet he wasn't ten years older than George-would have told him almost everything that had happened (and not happened) in Security during the last half-year.
"All right… but for fifteen years these people have been training, biding their time-and tomorrow looks like being their big day. I want it not to be, and I don't want them to have any more days after that."
"You draft the warning to Berlin, George. The Assistant Commissioner and I will add our endorsements."
"I would need to talk to my superiors before committing us to that," the AC said.
The Deputy D-G didn't look at him. "Take all the time you need-up to, say, fifteen minutes. If the Archbishop does get shot down in flames, it might be advisable to have your Department's name on the telegram predicting this. Whether or not we can do anything about it, I believe it would be advisable."
Thoughtfully, the AC went to find a telephone.
George was late back at Albany, but Annette hadn't been lonely. A team of Security Service sweepers was already at work, fanning their gadgetry at the panelling and dissecting the telephones. Annette was in the small bright kitchen, drinking coffee with the DDCR.
She jumped up and hugged George. "Are you all right? Really all right? Can you tell me…? Never mind, but we cantalk again, they say, in here, anyway. Bugger the KGB!" she shouted cheerfully.
"Did they find anything?"
The DDCR said: "A couple of devices. So far." George felt guiltily pleased that he hadn't been misleading the Security Service after all, and sat down at the table.
"Coffee?" Annette asked, then caught the look on his face. "All right, I'll get it." She went out.
"How did it go?" the DDCR asked.
"We gotoffatelegram to Ferrebee in Berlin…" And, after some pleading by George, the Deputy D-G was trying to persuade the Prime Minister's office to persuade the Intelligence Service's switchboard to persuade their Director-General to fly back from Edinburgh… "God knows what he's doing there, but now we can't meet until morning."