by Greenberg
She said, “Willie sent his thanks for the lunch invitation but asked to be excused. He’s gone away to forget his sorrows.”
“His sorrows?”
She smiled, almost giggled. “He’s very upset. This was the richest, funniest, most gorgeous caper he’s ever known. But Yoshida ruined it. He killed the gag. Wrecked the giggle.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“Neither do I, quite. But then I’m not English and not a Cockney, so I don’t always grasp the subtleties of Willie’s weird sense of humor. I can only quote him.” Her voice sank to a deeper pitch and became gravelly, in imitation of Willie. “Shooting a big-’eaded, bloody-minded little Jap bug-expert over the Wall, that’s one thing, princess. But Yoshida was just a Commie agent, and that takes all the bubbles out of it.” Her voice became normal. “He’s annoyed on my account. He takes the view that Yoshida ruined my punch-line.”
Tarrant reflected. “Yes, I do see his point. Vaguely, perhaps, but I see it. Poor Willie.”
She was looking at him with an inquiring smile, and he remembered the little bunch of violets he was carrying. “With my love,” he said, and presented them to her.
“Why, thank you. They’re beautiful.”
“I could think of nothing else,” Tarrant said. “The point is, they have a rarity value. They’re not really from me, they’ll be paid for out of the Special Fund. It’s difficult to get money out of the Special Fund at any time, because the PM has to approve, but getting twenty thousand pounds would be easier than getting two shillings, which is what I’ve put in for. Waverly wanted to give me two shillings out of his pocket, but I wouldn’t have it. I wish you could have seen his face.”
She laugleed, and put her lips briefly to Tarrant’s cheek. “They’re just what I’ve always wanted. I’ll ask for a vase when we get to Claridge’s. You hold them while I drive.” She started the Jensen and backed from the meter.
Tarrant said, “How is Willie forgetting his sorrows?”
“With Mavis. He’s flown to Jersey for a long weekend with her.”
“Mavis?”
“I haven’t met her, but according to Willie she’s a very tall showgirl with more and bigger curves than you’d think possible on any human being. Mentally as thick as two planks, but unfailingly cheerful and bursting with enthusiasm. He says it’s like going to bed with four girls and a cylinder of laughing-gas. I think she’s just the sort to take him out of himself.”
Tarrant sighed, baffled. “You’re a woman, and Willie is a part of you,” he said. “Why on earth aren’t you possessive about him?”
He saw humor touch her face. “I suppose it’s just the pattern,” she said patiently. With her eyes still on the road ahead she grinned suddenly. “But if Mavis ever starts shooting people over the Berlin Wall with him, I might feel like bouncing some of those curves off her.”
Tarrant laughed. He felt very happy. It had started to rain, but for him the sun was shining today. “I don’t suppose it will ever come to that,” he said.
MICHAEL GILBERT
The Spoilers
On Friday night Colonel Geoffrey Bax went down alone for a last visit to his weekend cottage in Sussex. It was a last visit, because the cottage had been put up for sale. He was alone because his wife was escorting her mother on her summer pilgrimage to Torquay.
On Saturday morning the farmer drove up with milk and eggs and discovered the colonel. He was seated in the chair at the head of the kitchen table, under the still-burning electric light. It was a hot June morning, and the flies were already gathering round the pool of blackening blood on the table top. The gun which had killed the colonel was in his right hand.
Mr. Behrens had known Colonel Bax. He read the news in his Sunday paper, and walked up the hill to discuss it with his old friend, Mr. Calder.
“It’s in my paper too,” said Mr. Calder. “But I didn’t really know Bax. Wasn’t he working for DI5?”
“Yes. He got a job with them when he retired from the Army. It wasn’t anything hush-hush, you know. He did a lot of their positive vetting.”
“I’d rather pick oakum,” said Mr. Calder.
(Positive vetting was a palliative devised by the government in 1952 after a series of Security scandals. It meant, in practice, that any government servant who attained a certain degree of seniority had to supply the name of a referee; and it then became the duty of the positive vetter to interview the referee and inquire of him whether the officer concerned was reliable. The answer was predictable.)
“Most of those jobs went to officers who had been axed,” said Mr. Behrens. “They got quite well paid for it. Add the salary to their service pensions and they could get by.”
Mr. Calder looked up sharply. He had known Mr. Behrens long enough to ignore the plain meaning of what he said and jump to the thought behind it.
“Do you think there was some sort of pressure on Bax?”
“It’s not impossible. The material was there. In his case it was a girl. Her parents were Poles. Geoffrey did them a good turn just after the war, and was godfather to their little daughter.”
“Daddy Longlegs,” said Mr. Calder, scratching the head of his deerhound Rasselas, who was stretched out under the breakfast table.
“It’s all very well for you to sneer,” said Mr. Behrens. “I’ve met the girl. She’s very beautiful.”
“Did Bax’s wife know about her?”
“If she had, she’d have started divorce proceedings at once. She was that sort of woman.”
“If she was that sort of woman, Bax would have been well rid of her.”
“He’d have lost his job.”
Mr. Calder, considering the matter, was inclined to agree. He knew that in certain branches of the Security Services sexual irregularity was considered a good deal worse than crime and nearly as bad as ideological deviation.
“He could have lived on his pension.”
“And paid alimony to his wife?”
“He wouldn’t have starved,” said Mr. Calder. “There was no need to blow his brains out. That didn’t help.”
“That cottage of his,” said Mr. Behrens. “He was very fond of it. He often talked about it. He was going to retire there.”
“So?”
“I wondered why he had to sell it.”
“You’re making my flesh creep,” said Mr. Calder. And from under the table Rasselas gave a rumbling snarl, just as if he had been following the whole conversation.
Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Education, Dermot Nicholson, read the news in his elegant flat on Campden Hill.
He said to his sister Norah – who had retired from the vice-principalship of an Oxford college to keep house and write his speeches for him – “Colonel Geoffrey Bax. Do we know a Geoffrey Bax? The name seems familiar.”
“Wasn’t that the name of the man who was round here a few weeks ago, asking you a lot of questions?”
“Oh, was that the chap? I thought I’d seen the name somewhere.”
“What did he want? Did you ever find out?”
“It was some sort of routine check.”
“We’re getting so Security-minded,” said Miss Nicholson, “that we might as well be living in a totalitarian state, under the control of the Gestapo.”
Miss Nicholson, who was an intellectual liberal, often said things like this in letters to the Press and at public meetings, possibly because she had never lived in a totalitarian state and had no experience of the Gestapo . . .
Professor Julius Gottlieb, a citizen of Czechoslovakia by birth, and of Great Britain by naturalization, read the news in his service flat in Northumberland Court. He took eight different Sunday papers and he found the story, with minor differences and embellishments, in all of them. It was clearly based on an official handout.
As he finished reading, the telephone rang. He hesitated for a long moment before answering it, but when he did so it was only his daughter Paula. She had gone down to Henley for the weekend.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “You ought to have come.”
“I wanted to,” said the professor. “But I had too much work.”
“You’d be better off bathing and lying in the sun, than worrying about that silly paper. Fritz is enjoying it like anything. He had a fight with another dog. And he fell into the river and was hissed at by a swan.”
“Good,” said the professor. “Good.” He spoke absently. When his daughter had rung off he seemed to be in no hurry to get on with the urgent work which was keeping him in London that fine June weekend. He sat in the window seat, watching the traffic swirl up Northumberland Avenue and turn down Whitehall Place. The telephone rang again . . .
On the Thursday afternoon a coroner’s jury came, without difficulty, to the conclusion that Colonel Geoffrey Bax had taken his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Sympathy was expressed for his widow.
On Sunday morning the Prime Minister took breakfast at Chequers with the prime ministers of five of the newly independent African States. He thought that they looked politely surprised at the modest bacon and eggs and toast and marmalade.
“What the devil did they expect me to eat,” he said to his private secretary when the last of his guests had gone, “boar’s head and ambrosia?”
“I imagine Nwambe’s idea of a suitable breakfast would be the head of the leader of the opposition, seethed in milk,” said the private secretary. “Your next appointment’s in five minutes. They’ve all arrived. I’ve put them in the small library.”
The Prime Minister switched his mind to a problem which was worrying him a lot more than the growing pains of the new African States. He said, “I want those papers. Particularly that rather odd letter that Gottlieb wrote me.”
He found four men waiting for him. Ian Maver, the head of DI5, Air Vice-Marshal Pulleyne, the acting head of DI6 – his boss was in America, engaged on one of their interminable wrangles with the CIA – and Commander Elfe, of the Special Branch. All of these the Prime Minister knew personally. The face of the fourth man was unfamiliar, and even when Maver introduced Mr. Fortescue it took him a moment to place him. Then he remembered that this sedate and respectable-looking man was ostensibly a bank manager, and in fact the controller and paymaster of a bunch of middle-aged cut-throats known as the “E” (or External) Branch of the Joint Services Standing Intelligence Committee. When the Prime Minister, on taking office, had shouldered, among other unwanted burdens, the supreme responsibility for all Security matters, his predecessor had explained to him, “If there’s a job which is so disreputable that none of the departments will handle it, we give it to the ‘E’ Branch.”
The Prime Minister looked a second time at Mr. Fortescue, who looked back at him kindly but firmly, as if preparing to refuse him an overdraft. An interesting face, thought the Prime Minister. Not unlike Arthur Balfour, in middle age.
“You’re busy men,” he said, “and I apologize for disrupting Sunday for all four of you. If I’d had a more accurate idea of what this trouble was, I could probably have let three of you off.” He smiled the boyish smile which had won the hearts of so many of his constituents in the old days and was now collecting high TAM ratings on television. “But the fact of the matter is that, although I’m worried, I’m not at all sure which of you gentlemen is going to have to shoulder my worries for me. I’ll put the problem to you in a nutshell. Certain key men in my government are being got at. You’ve got to find out who’s doing it. And you’ve got to stop it.”
Mr. Fortescue, who was himself an adept in the handling of conferences, found himself admiring the Prime Minister’s technique. First the gentle introduction. Then the sharp slap.
“Got at, Prime Minister?” said Maver.
“That was the word I used. I can’t be more specific, until you gentlemen find out more about it. They are being got at. Not by the opposition, which would be natural, or by the Press, which would be understandable, but by some private agency or group of persons who seem to be determined to get this government out of office.”
The Prime Minister saw the quick look which Maver shot Pulleyne but gave no sign of having done so. He chalked it up as one more item on the debit account of the head of DI5. He had liked Maver’s predecessor, a garrulous, drunken, inefficient Irishman, a great deal more than the cold, self-contained, unquestionably efficient Scot.
“I think,” the Prime Minister continued, “that when you hear the facts you will agree that I have some grounds for disquiet. A few months ago, Sir William Hamson, one of the most senior Revenue officials, and the man who did most of the work on last year’s budget, came to me and told me that he wished to retire. He had eight years to go before his normal retirement. It was extremely inconvenient though not, as it turned out, disastrous because he had a deputy who was capable of doing his job. But it might have upset the whole of our financial plans. Sir William gave me no reason, apart from saying that he was tired. I pointed out that he would lose a good slice of his pension. Since he had private means, that didn’t worry him. We had to let him go, of course. He’s now in the south of France, and seems to have recovered his health and spirits. By itself, such an incident meant nothing. Two months ago Dermot Nicholson who, as you know, is Minister of Education, and is therefore in charge of the most important measure of this session – a measure whose success might make the difference between defeat and victory – came to see me. I was at once reminded of Hamson. There was the same request – to be relieved of office. The same lack of any plausible reason. The same . . . I find it difficult to hit on the right word . . . it was something a great deal stronger than depression. There was an edge of fear to it. And a background of hopelessness.” The Prime Minister paused, and then added, “If his doctor had told him that morning that he was suffering from inoperable cancer, I should have expected much the same sort of reactions.”
The four men stirred uncomfortably in their chairs.
“I suppose,” said Elfe, “that he wasn’t – ”
“I happen to know that there is nothing wrong with Nicholson’s health at all. Let me finish. A fortnight ago I had to send for Professor Julius Gottlieb. You all know roughly what his job is, I expect? He is the leading town-planning expert in the world. Even the Americans admit it. Some months ago, at my request, he completed the first rough draft of a White Paper on Planning. It wasn’t perfect, but believe me, it was two decades in advance of anything this country has yet seen. The departments concerned – particularly the Treasury and the Ministry of Agriculture – picked a few holes in it but they couldn’t shoot it down. When all the criticisms had been collected, Gottlieb was to draw up the final version. He now says – ” the Prime Minister paused again, not for effect this time Mr. Fortescue thought, but because he was really worried and angry – “he now says that he doesn’t feel up to the job. He is thinking of retiring. He has a holiday chalet in Switzerland, in the Upper Vaud. I believe it’s famous for its wildflowers. He has decided to retire and make it his permanent home.”
Commander Elfe said, “It’s disturbing, Prime Minister. But is it necessarily political?”
“When Education and Planning are the two cornerstones of this Session? What are people going to say – more to the point, what is the press going to say – if we have to tell them that the chief architect of the new Education Bill has thrown in the sponge and the government’s principal adviser on planning has refused to finish his own White Paper, and is retiring to Switzerland to pick wildflowers?”
“It was six months ago,” said Pulleyne, in his precise voice, “when Hamson walked out. Two months ago when you first got worried about Nicholson. A fortnight ago when Gottlieb threatened to throw in his hand. Have no steps been taken?”
“Yes,” said Maver. “It looked like a Home Security matter, so it was handed to us. We put one of our most reliable men onto it. He talked to Nicholson and Gottlieb.”
“Did he come to any conclusion as a result of these talks?”
“We do
n’t know. He committed suicide a week ago”
“Then you’re talking about Colonel Bax?”
“Yes.”
“And has he himself been investigated?”
Maver flushed and said, “Of course. And there was a background story, which could have accounted for it. We haven’t got very far with it yet. But it’s quite possible that he was being blackmailed, and had been driven too far.”
“Well, that’s the position, gentlemen,” said the Prime Minister. “It could be organized pressure from an unscrupulous group in this country. I don’t mean the official opposition. But there are plenty of extremist groups who wouldn’t stop short of it. It could be foreign-inspired. I can think of four countries at this moment which would give a great deal to have the present government discredited. Or it may be simple blackmail. I leave you, gentlemen, to sort out the departmental priorities amongst yourselves. I just want it stopped.”
To his secretary when they had all gone away, he said, “Do you realize that all prime ministers have to live out the enthusiasms of their predecessors? Because of Lloyd George’s lower middle-class habits I have to entertain official guests to breakfast. Because of Winston’s boyish enthusiasm for cops and robbers I have to pretend to be personally responsible for Security. Do you remember that thing he wrote – ?”
The private secretary didn’t remember, but being a good private secretary he was able to put his hand on the reference his employer required. He fetched down a battered olive-green volume from the library shelf, found the place and read out: “‘. . . plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing-party, interwoven in a texture so intricate as to be incredible, yet true, the high officers of the Secret Service revelled in these subterranean labyrinths, and pursued their task with cold and silent passion.’”