To learn of this would have surprised Leonard. He had guaranteed in writing that, as soon as his job was done, the picture would be returned to its owners, and this, he would have thought, was enough. Now, drawing himself up, he snapped a salute to the blue-eyed major and left the room.
"Ah, here's our spy-catcher. What are you drinking, Brian? Spot of pink gin?"
"Dry sherry, please, sir," said Leonard.
"Of course, should have remembered, never touch the hard stuff, do you? Quite right for a man in your position. Can't have you getting tight and blabbing secrets all round the place. What about you, Willie? More of the same, or are you going to take a leaf out of Brian's book?"
"Not this time," said Ayscue. "I'll have another whisky, if I may."
"Let it be so. Anybody else? Oh, come on."
Colonel White had been selected as Commanding Officer of the unit on several grounds. His standing as a reliable, orthodox professional soldier fitted him for a post where above all, it had been felt, nothing fancy was needed. It had been further felt that he would guard the secrets put in his charge as closely as, by purely military means, they could be guarded, nor would he be concerned to know himself just what these secrets were. Service psychologists had recommended a personality of his outgoing, socially oriented type to preside at a Mess where various tensions could be expected to emerge. And a man in the Ministry who had been with him in North Africa had thought that old Chalky White, whom a German mine had deprived of half his left foot and thereby of most of his chances of promotion, could do with a full colonelcy and its extra pay.
At the moment, the Colonel was displaying his psychological qualifications for his post. Leonard's isolation from most of the other members of the Mess had not escaped him, and he lost no opportunity of throwing conversational bridges across this gap, of inviting the majority to see that even a Security man was a man and his job a job. White now took up the job half of this task.
"Well, Brian," he said, when the Mess waiter had brought the drinks and retired, "how does the great work?"
"Oh, not too-"
"I must say I wouldn't care to be up to what you're up to, would you, Willie?"
"It must be rather like my line of country, only more taxing."
"Not being able to relax for a moment. On duty twenty-four hours a day. Your head the one that rolls if the opposition get on to anything. Tell me, Brian, are you any nearer your man yet?"
"Yes, I think so. One works by elimination, of course. I was able to rule out the S1 people more or less from the start."
Leonard referred to those in Security Grade 1, the six British, four Indian and two Pakistani officers undergoing training for Operation Apollo and their two Instructors, both British. Nobody else in the unit, apart from Leonard himself, was permitted full knowledge of the nature of the Operation. Grade 2, or S2, consisted only of the Briefing Group, two British officers and one Indian-Naidu-whose duties were to provide certain ancillary information. S3 comprised the Colonel, the Adjutant, the Medical Officer, Hunter and Ayscue.
The Colonel laughed, knuckling his mustache. "That brings us pretty near home, Brian. Leaves you with what? Half a dozen people?"
"Eight, as regards officers. I've been working on them pretty hard over the last ten days. They're down to four now."
"Is it," asked the Colonel, "is it in order for me to inquire whether I am one of the possibly guilty four or one of the innocent four?"
"Oh yes, sir. You're clear. So are Hunter and the MO and Captain Naidu."
"Then I'm not clear," said Ayscue.
"Now you're not to take this sort of thing in the wrong way, Willie," said the Colonel; "Brian's simply doing his job. And one of the ways we can help him is by forcing ourselves to put up with things we might think it was wrong to put up with in other circumstances. You're not accusing anybody, are you, Brian?"
Ayscue nodded. "Oh, fair enough. But what interests me isn't so much the fact that tomorrow morning I may find myself arrested for passing secrets to the enemy-though it's an interesting enough fact in its way. Just for the moment I'm looking at it from Brian's point of view and wondering how he manages to stay alive at all without any human relationships. Not many people could stand being driven back inside their own mind the whole time."
"You're diving a bit deep for me there, Willie," said the Colonel.
"No, I see what he means, sir-he's quite right. You start living in a sort of dream world. You get worse at judging evidence, not better. When I started in this game I wondered why they gave us such long leaves. Well, it's only the last half of the time that's really like leave. You spend the first half gradually pushing yourself out of your shell."
The Colonel was not certain what Ayscue's mild stare at Leonard meant. He said briskly, "But of course one couldn't afford to rule out people outside the Mess, or even outside the unit, am I right, Brian? I must admit I've got a bit of a soft spot for the idea of a beautiful spy setting up shop in the village and trying to lure innocent young officers into her web, you know, the old Mata Hari touch. It'd brighten life up like anything."
"That's unlikely, sir," said Leonard carefully. "Possible, but unlikely. The one bit of luck we've had does point pretty well unmistakably to the fellow we're after being somewhere in this camp. He could be-well, one of the sergeants, say, or even a guard, but that's rather unlikely too. I can't see any of the S1 officers giving things away in that sort of direction. And the precautions you've taken, sir, have made it quite impossible for anyone to get at the secret stuff physically. No, I'm going to stick to my four candidates until I'm proved wrong."
"I wish you'd tell us what this bit of luck of yours was," said the Colonel. "Why you think your man's someone inside this unit. How you can be so certain we're up against a spy at all, come to that. Can't do any harm to let it out, can it?"
Leonard made a decision. It would be useful to see whether, or how soon and in what form, this information would come back to him via Deering. "The other week our people made an arrest in London. One of the things they picked up was a message reporting progress on penetrating Operation Apollo-nil, I'm glad to say. Well, there was something about that message, not its actual text, which established that it came from somebody serving in the Forces."
"Kind of paper or something," muttered the Colonel.
"And we learned something else, too. A man who leaves his tracks uncovered in that kind of way isn't a regular spy. He's what we call in the profession a neo-ideologue-an amateur, if you prefer it. That's a two-edged thing from our point of view. On the one hand it makes him more likely to give himself away through inexperience; on the other, he'll have had no previous contacts or history of any kind and there won't be a file on him. In that sense he might be anybody."
What Leonard had been saying was full of interest for the Colonel, but it was time to draw Ayscue back into the conversation. "Well, I'm sure we all hope you find him soon and we can breathe more easily. Are you a literary man, Brian?"
"I don't seem to get much time for reading."
"No, I suppose not. Pity. I'm at it all the time myself. Of course, it's easy for me-I got my little machine in motion within twenty-four hours of arriving here, set up the guards and so forth, and now it's just a question of the odd time-table check. The rest of the time, when I'm not down here making sure you all get enough to eat and drink I'm ploughing through these French existentialist fellows. Bit arid, they strike me, but never mind. Anyway, I was just going to say that Willie here is thinking of starting some sort of magazine. I didn't give you a chance to tell me much about it, did I, Willie? What kind of thing have you in mind? Will you get enough contributions?"
"Well," said Ayscue, rather unwillingly, "there are twenty-three officers and a hundred and sixty-three other ranks inside this fence. Half the lads spend half their time hanging about waiting to go on guard duty in one form or another, and day passes are restricted to ten per cent of them. Quite a few of the others haven't a lot to do-the drivers and
DRs, for instance. I've asked around a bit, and my impression is that some of them might be fairly keen. I'll probably have to write a good deal of the thing myself, but then, I'm afraid I haven't much to do here either."
"Sounds a good idea," said Leonard. "Very good idea."
"Oh, then there'd be no objection from the security angle?"
"None at all. Quite the contrary. Excuse me."
Leonard moved away down the room. This looked very much like the farmhouse sitting-room it had been forty years earlier, so much so that a mind inquisitive in other directions than Leonard's might have suspected a conscious attempt to preserve it. From 1946 until three months ago the house had sheltered successive groups of officers on Intelligence courses, and it would have been some of these, or the President of their Mess, who had had the floor relaid without its ancient dips and slopes being corrected, the wide fireplace re-bricked with the asymmetry of its flanking buttresses and low stub walls left as it was. Oak furniture predominated, including a rocking-chair with a vertical see-saw effect that nobody tried twice. Militarism appeared only in the dozen or so framed photographs, imported perhaps in a jeering spirit, showing officer-cadet classes now long since dead or pensioned off, groups of World War I generals and staff with mustaches and plumes, and a victory parade of the same era. The sole recent object was a large television set. Beside it, though not as if he were about to switch it on, stood the figure of the Chief Instructor.
From a distance this man evidently had no neck. Closer approach showed that there was a neck there after all, and a substantial one; its very thickness disguised it by blending it with the head. This was squat and heavy, with greying hair cut very short and a florid but small-featured face. The Chief Instructor was about fifty and getting fat, which his posture did nothing to hide. He was and looked a civilian in uniform. The uniform in this case, and on this occasion, was the Mess dress of the Army Information Corps, a dark-grey jacket and olive-green trousers. The olive-green revers of the jacket were covered with ash from the cigar its wearer was smoking. The Chief Instructor was called Major Venables. Nobody in the unit knew his Christian name.
"Good evening, Leonard," he said in his tight, groaning voice.
"Hullo, Major. I was-"
"Not Major. I have told you before. I am no more a major than you are a captain. Venables is my name."
"Sorry… Do you mind a bit of shop?"
"I welcome it, even your sort of shop. It is considerably more appealing than what passes for conversation among these fusiliers and dragoons. Well?"
Leonard dropped his voice. "The revised schedule."
Venables maintained his. "I told you there would be no difficulty and there has not been. The persons who control our destinies were aware of their ignorance for once and allotted an over-generous period for the completion of training. Terminating the course two weeks sooner than originally planned will entail nothing more than some intensified homework on the part of my pupils. I cannot speak for the so-called Briefing Group. From what I see of them in this social slum I would judge that they would find it difficult to pass on accurately the words of ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen' within any fixed period of time."
Leonard looked nervously about. "Ssshh," he said.
Venables laughed. It was like his voice talking without words. "If a remark of that sort gives you cause for concern, you must find your duties very onerous. You should learn to take things more lightly."
"Yes. I'm glad you feel you can manage all right in the shorter period. You've reported to that effect, of course."
There was a pause. Venables's mouth gathered round his cigar, which was of square cross-section. A cube of ash fell onto his jacket. "Are you not invading my province and exceeding your authority? Provided my contacts with my superiors are secure they are no concern of yours. And if these trinkets they gave us to wear on our clothing mean anything you are debarred from giving me orders. And allow me to say that I very much resent first learning of this change of date through you rather than in due form from my superiors."
"I'm sorry… Venables. I wasn't trying to order you about, honestly. It's just that my people seem to think I ought to know everything all the time. It gets difficult not to pry. As regards me getting the news first, that's just, well, inter-departmental rivalry. Showing how quick off the mark they are."
"Yes. Why inform you by dispatch-rider instead of the equally secure and, as it proved, less unreliable method of scrambler telephone?"
Leonard shrugged. "Well, there was a lot of detail. And I suppose it made somebody feel more important, sending for a DR. You know what they're like."
"I am beginning to."
"There's just one more point."
"Oh dear. Yes?"
"Small but important." Leonard reminded himself whose uniform he was wearing and faced Venables more squarely. "You remember that you were not to divulge the bringing forward of the Operation until midnight tomorrow at the earliest."
"Yes, yes."
"This has now been amended. You are not to divulge it until what is in your opinion the last possible moment, and you are to give in writing forty-eight hours' notice of that moment. And that's an order. You see, you weren't quite accurate just now when you said I wasn't to give you orders. In all Security matters you do as I tell you."
Venables threw his cigar-butt into the fireplace. "Mm. Shall I not be informed of this by my own superiors? The matter of the giving of notice and so on?"
"No doubt. I was told to pass you your instructions as soon as possible."
"Very well. I bow to your authority."
The look Venables gave with this was unfamiliar. Perhaps he was respecting Leonard for having stood up to him, in the way that tyrants, martinets and so on were always supposed to. In Leonard's experience, this sort of respect was never hard to conceal behind a mask of increased tyranny or redoubled martinet-type behavior, but Venables might be different. He was a man full of differences from other people. Leonard tried to imagine him in the act of giving some of the instruction he had been sent here to give, and soon stopped. At this point the Mess Sergeant announced dinner, removing Venables from Leonard's thoughts as well as from his side.
Colonel White led the way across the cobbled hall and into the dining-room. The floor here was of marble, in squares of black and white. This was not an original installation, but one voted in key with the rest of the house when, a dozen years earlier, a program of reconstruction at the county mental hospital had led to various furnishings and fittings there being advertised for sale. The then Mess Secretary had taken a truck over to collect the tiles and had been entertained to tea by Dr. Best's predecessor.
On this distinctive foundation stood a pair of refectory tables, their surfaces polished to a high gloss by generations of batmen and defaulters, and on the bare wood was disposed a great deal of Victorian plate and silver and glass. All this, together with a large selection of wines, Hunter had bought off the previous owners at a price that had made them slightly angry.
As always, the Colonel sat down at the farther table, choosing a random point along the side facing the window. This policy ruled out any traditionally undemocratic nonsense of a regular place or chair for the CO while giving him the outdoor view he enjoyed. The main buildings of the camp were out of sight from here, but he could see the drill square and transport sheds, the clothing store, the concrete bungalow that housed the telephone exchange and the emergency wireless station, a couple of sleeping-huts. It was all quite deserted, apart from four or five men in khaki slowly making their way up the main track. They had the lethargic air of underworked troops drifting along to the canteen and its television room or poker schools. But down at the gate stood the two necessary figures with steel helmets, respirators in the alert position and machine-pistols slung across their shoulders. Then the grandfather clock behind the Colonel struck the hour of eight and within seconds, as he watched, three more men emerged from a nearby hut and marched formally towards the gate: the
Sergeant of the Guard and the two relieving sentries. The exchange was carried out with exemplary smartness. The Colonel felt relieved. What really counted was being done.
He picked up the menu. The meal was to open with a choice of avocado pear and eggs Benedict, followed by cold salmon, roast duckling with cherry sauce and fresh peas, and ice-cream pudding with hot chocolate sauce (one of Corporal Beavis's specialities). A Kreuznacher St. Martin 1959 and a Clos de Vougeot 1957 were offered.
The Colonel asked for avocado pear and it was immediately brought. Although of good color, it resisted his spoon in parts. He mentioned the fact to the fattish, mournful-looking young officer sitting on his left. This was his Adjutant, Captain Ross-Donaldson.
"Should have been held back another day or two," said the Colo-nel. "You have to keep these fellows up to the mark all the time. Good thing for us all when Max Hunter gets back from his rest cure. When's that going to be, Alastair, by the way?"
"Excuse me a moment, sir." Ross-Donaldson turned to his other neighbor and repeated the question. "Churchill thinks tomorrow, sir."
"Not a moment too soon. Oh, I was just speaking about Max…"
When the Colonel had shifted his attention to the Medical Officer, who was on his right, Ross-Donaldson went on with what he had been saying to Churchill earlier.
"This whole concept of denial is losing its meaning," he said. "And of course I don't just mean that ground is three-dimensional. In fact, to insist on that has become rather immature, now that delivery can be made along virtually any parabola one chooses. No, the moment one abandons the front philosophy one's logically forced to part with direction except purely locally, and when that's gone, denial's whole raison de se battre is in peril, though no doubt it'll continue to color unfriendly thought, vestigially at any rate. In my mind there's no question but that prenodalization must be the working principle."
The Anti-Death League Page 5