‘I saw you say that on television,’ said Walker.
‘And from the tone of your voice didn’t believe my denial!’
‘I don’t know enough to believe or disbelieve,’ avoided Walker.
‘It’s an attempt to discredit me.’
‘By whom?’ demanded Walker. ‘You’re respected and admired everywhere. A phenomenon, a politician and statesman universally liked.’
‘I don’t know who’s done it,’ said Dixon in empty argument. ‘There have already been resignation suggestions.’
‘Are you going to resign?’
‘Like hell!’ exclaimed Dixon. ‘I’ve done nothing to resign over. Isn’t that what your Director General thinks too, by sending you here?’
‘He wants me to investigate,’ said Walker, once more avoiding a direct answer. ‘I’ll need to approach the banks here and in Zurich. And guarantee police cooperation. I shall need your written authority, for access.’
‘Of course,’ agreed the Prime Minister at once.
Half an hour later Walker left the Prime Minister’s residence by its rear entrance, with the requested written authority. In total Robert Dixon had assigned his signature three times. With the unquestioned authority, Walker got from the police the original of the letter to the English bank in which Dixon asked them to negotiate the shares purchase through stockbrokers. By late afternoon Walker submitted the bank letter, together with one of his signed authority documents, to the Technical and Scientific Division of the Factory. He did not expect a reply to his inquiry that day but it came after just two hours. There was no doubt whatsoever among any of the handwriting experts. The signature on the letter seeking the share purchase and that on the authority document which Walker had personally seen Robert Dixon sign that day were undeniably written by the same man. They were prepared to swear it on oath.
There had been no leakages or mistakes for weeks, months even, to indicate a Soviet informant in the Factory, and the Director General ended each trouble-free day with a heartfelt sigh of relief. And usually with the first of several celebratory whiskies: sometimes, towards the hazy end of an evening, Bell half convinced himself that the department hadn’t been infiltrated by a traitor after all: that he’d misconstrued a series of coincidences into something far more sinister. The attempted reassurance rarely lasted long into the painful following morning. The respite from one problem allowed him to concentrate upon another. Ann Perkins had been right about his drinking. It was ridiculous: stupidly unnecessary. Not that he needed anything as extreme as to dry out at an alcoholic centre or help from Alcoholics Anonymous: just a rest. That’s what he’d do. Take a couple of weeks off and enter a clinic or a health farm somewhere. And stop drinking. Just rest. He was strong enough to do it by himself. Of course he was.
The manager was named Gerald Birchett and he was the sort of stone-faced, unsympathetic bank official who took personal pleasure lecturing customers on economy and refusing loans or overdrafts. Walker, who ran a large overdraft, disliked the man instinctively. Birchett studied the Prime Ministerial authority closely and then said with obvious reluctance: ‘It would seem I have to cooperate.’
‘Very much so,’ insisted Walker.
Birchett said there had been an intensive internal inquiry at the bank which had failed to find the person who’d passed on the photocopied shares letter to the newspaper. He provided a long list of people who could have had access to the letter at the bank, and agreed there might be more who overheard him discussing the application with bank officials who had to deal with it.
‘I don’t believe anyone at this bank supplied the letter to the newspaper!’ said Birchett indignantly.
‘Somebody did,’ reminded Walker. ‘How long has the Prime Minister banked here?’
‘More than ten years: before I was appointed manager.’
‘Where are his files kept? Where would the letter have been?’
‘Here in this office,’ said Birchett at once. ‘Everything is kept in my personal safe.’
‘I’d like to see it.’
‘I really don’t think …’ the manager started to protest, but Walker took Dixon’s authority from his pocket, offering it to Birchett a second time.
Clearly annoyed, the man operated the safe combination and took a bulky dossier from a specially set-aside drawer. Walker started to flick idly through the correspondence file, not sure what he was seeking, and then stopped. He looked up at the manager and said: ‘What’s this?’
Birchett looked over Walker’s shoulder. ‘My initials, G.S. for Gerald Birchett. It’s a personal record system I operate. As soon as I receive a letter, particularly from someone as important as the Prime Minister, I initial it to indicate I have read and responded to it.’
‘How soon would you have written your initials on the letter about the share application?’
‘Immediately it arrived,’ said Birchett.
Walker smiled. ‘I think we’re making progress,’ he said.
The financial journalist who had written both Sunday newspaper stories clearly thought he’d obtained the scoop of the year if not the decade, and was proud of it. His name was Terry Sergeant. He was balding and bespectacled, and immediately Walker entered his office the man said: ‘I checked each fact at least half a dozen times. I know the documentation is genuine. Dixon did it!’
‘How did you get the photostats?’ demanded Walker, unimpressed.
‘By mail, every time.’
‘There would have been a postmark on the envelope?’
‘Central London,’ confirmed Sergeant at once. ‘Like I said, I checked everything.’
‘The Swiss bank statement was posted in Central London!’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t that strike you as unusual?’
‘Not particularly. The warnings were always local calls.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There were always telephone calls, telling me I was going to receive something sensational.’
‘Did they say what it was to be?’
Sergeant shook his head. ‘Just that it was sensational: that was the word, on both occasions.’
‘Who was the caller? Male or female?’
‘Female.’
‘Did you tape record the conversations?’
Sergeant snorted a laugh. ‘I wasn’t expecting the first, was I? And I certainly didn’t imagine there’d be a second.’
‘Any accent?’
‘English. Well educated.’
‘Did you ask why she was doing it?’
‘On the second call. She said Dixon was a greedy crook and should be exposed.’
‘How did she get hold of the letter and the bank statement?’
‘She wouldn’t tell me. Then the time ran out on the call – that’s how I know it was made locally – and she refused to put any more money in.’
‘What about background noise, from wherever she was calling from?’ pressed Walker.
‘Traffic,’ said the journalist. ‘Once I thought I heard a hooter, the sort of thing that ships have, but I’m not sure.’
When Walker made the request for both photocopies he had received Sergeant said: ‘There were no fingerprints, apart from my own. The police checked.’
‘I just want copies of my own,’ said Walker.
When Sergeant handed them to him, Walker smiled. The journalist said: ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ refused Walker.
Samuel Bell found it far more difficult than he’d imagined, which worried him because it meant he was more dependent on booze than he’d thought himself to be, but he forced the willpower and went without a drink for four days at the health farm. On the fifth he found the craving lessening and knew he was winning the battle. He still felt terrible, physically sick, and the shake in his hands seemed to have worsened.
Only Ann knew where he was. The Director General guessed at once there was a crisis when she arrived at the health farm that afternoon. The attac
k upon the department courier carrying through Istanbul information identifying at least three of their agents in the Kazakhstan republic of the Soviet Union had been made to look like a street attack, a mugging, but it had obviously been KGB-inspired. All that had been taken from the man was the pouch containing the intelligence material. The courier was not expected to live. The decision to dispatch the man to Istanbul had only been taken on the morning of the attack, so the leak had to have come from London.
Not London, thought Bell: from the traitor within his own department. He said at once: ‘I’ll book out now. Come back to London with you.’
‘No!’ protested Ann desperately. She knew the reason for her lover being in the health farm and did not want him to abandon the self-imposed cure.
‘It’s all right,’ said Bell. ‘I’ve stopped. It’s not a problem any more. I can’t stay away from the office, not now this has happened.’
It was early evening before they got back to the Factory, where Bell at once launched an inquiry into the courier attack. Almost without thinking, as he worked, he poured himself a whisky from the bottle he kept in his desk.
It was snowing when Walker arrived in Zurich. Neither his suit nor his topcoat was sufficiently warm and Walker, who was a warm-weather man, began to shiver at once. The appointment had been arranged with authority from the Prime Minister’s office, to enforce the written authority Walker already carried to persuade the Swiss banking authorities to relax their usually unbreachable secrecy regulations. The bank director, Henri Dupont, was small and very thin and moved in quick, sharp movements, like a bird. All the transactions over the Dixon account had been conducted by letter: the man had never personally visited the Zurich office. It had been opened a year and a half before, and deposits arrived by London-postmarked mail every three months, always cash. A deposit had been expected the previous week but it had not arrived. The bank suspected it was because of the sensation that had been caused by the newspaper revelation of the account’s existence. Part of the bank’s strictly maintained security was limiting the number of people handling each account, which made it easy to investigate the possibility of a leak. Only three people dealt with Robert Dixon’s affairs: each had been thoroughly interrogated and the denials of each that they had leaked the bank statement had been accepted by the bank authorities. Walker was allowed to question all three, as well, and he concluded by believing them too.
‘How were the statements sent to Dixon in London?’ Walker asked the bank director.
‘They weren’t, not to London,’ corrected Dupont. ‘Our instructions were to send them to a post office box number, here in Zurich.’
‘Here!’ exclaimed Walker. ‘Is that usual?’
‘No,’ admitted Dupont. ‘But our clients sometimes insist upon extraordinary precautions to protect their anonymity. The envelope containing Dixon’s statement was not addressed to him personally, for instance.’
‘Let me understand this!’ demanded Walker. ‘You’re telling me that the bank statements of Dixon’s secret account were sent to a post office box number here in Zurich addressed to another name?’
‘Yes,’ said Dupont.
‘What name?’
‘Derek Penn,’ disclosed the director.
Walker was impatient to question the post office staff but had to wait until the following morning because it required another approach from the British Prime Minister’s office to the Swiss postal authorities to support the intelligence man’s written authority. The postal staff responsible for receiving and holding mail for personal collection was quite extensive and Walker located four, all men, who had handled letters addressed to Derek Penn. Walker showed each a photograph of the British Prime Minister. Each was quite adamant that the man who picked up the bank envelope was not Robert Dixon. When Walker asked about any discernible accent, two said the man was English and two thought he might have been American. Because the collection was always on the same day of the month – the fourth – it was easy for Walker to check past bookings from airline computer records. A Derek Penn had flown to Zurich on all the matching dates. Every flight had begun and ended in London.
Walker was granted a meeting with the Prime Minister immediately he returned to London. As soon as he was admitted the intelligence man said: ‘Do you know anyone called Derek Penn?’
‘Of course,’ said Dixon. ‘He’s my principal secretary.’
That week the investigatory pressure became intense upon Dixon. In Parliament the Conservative opposition initiated a debate of no confidence in the man, and his own party had a series of meetings to consider his remaining leader. Afterwards there was a lot of leaked information from which it was obvious that Dixon was to be pressed to resign. The police responded to demands for a statement by saying their inquiries were incomplete but that preliminary findings confirmed the signature on all the incriminating correspondence proved scientifically to be Robert Dixon’s. They anticipated having to take a formal statement from the Prime Minister.
Derek Penn was a fresh-faced, nervous man who’d been the Prime Minister’s principal secretary for two years. He denied emphatically making any regular visits to Zurich on the Prime Minister’s behalf or of knowing anything about the secret bank account until he read about it in the newspapers. He agreed eagerly to accompany Walker back to Switzerland. There, the following day, each of the four Zurich postal workers separately confronted the man. Each was quite definite that the secretary was not the man they knew as Derek Penn, who had collected the bank letters.
‘I’m more bewildered now than I was when it began,’ complained Samuel Bell on the morning that Walker returned to the Factory to give a progress report. Bell was trying hard to limit his drinking and was quite proud of his control so far: he only had the slightest of headaches.
‘He didn’t do it,’ insisted Walker, the man who always thought the worst about anybody. ‘All the evidence is too convincing.’
‘You must be the only person in England who doesn’t believe he’s guilty,’ said Bell. ‘I don’t think he’s got any alternative to resignation.’
‘I’m going to find one,’ said Walker determinedly. He took an underground train back to the Prime Minister’s official residence. As he emerged from Westminster station, directly in front of the Houses of Parliament, he was abruptly aware of the loud traffic sound. From the River Thames, to his left, came a warning blast from the hooter of a river tug, towing two barges upstream.
At Downing Street Derek Penn, relieved at being cleared of any complicity and anxious now to help, said: ‘What can I do?’
‘I want to see how things work around the Prime Minister,’ said Walker.
*
The pace was incredible. Incoming correspondence was opened and sorted before seven in the morning and Dixon began reading it just after. He studied a digest of newspapers at eight and by eight thirty began dictating responses to the mail he had already considered. Derek Penn’s secretarial role was that of organizer. Below him Penn had two senior secretaries, both women, who in turn controlled eight stenographers who worked for periods divided throughout the day. The system, which Walker followed in minute detail, enabled the majority of the dictated letters to be typed for Dixon’s signature just before he left for Parliament. There, apart from appearances in the debating chamber, there were meetings and committee conferences to attend and more correspondence and dictation to complete, with a fresh team of secretaries under the authority of the two senior women. Derek Penn accompanied the Prime Minister at all times. So, on alternate days, did one of the two senior female secretaries. One was named June Asher. The other was Patricia Hall.
Both were in their middle thirties and one – Patricia – more attractive than the other. Both were unmarried. And both were reserved and vaguely suspicious towards Walker, whose intelligence function was never explained to them. Walker was also conscious, too, of a reserve between the two women and Penn, which he thought unusual among people who had at all times to work so cl
osely together.
‘Has the Prime Minister always worked to this routine?’ Walker asked Patricia towards the end of the first week.
‘Yes,’ said the woman. She was blonde and petite, very well spoken. She did not appear to welcome the approach.
‘How long have you been with him?’
‘From the very beginning,’ she said proudly. ‘More than ten years. What’s happening is terrible.’
‘You believe him innocent then?’
‘Of course he’s innocent,’ said Patricia indignantly. ‘You wouldn’t ask a question like that if you knew him like I do!’
‘So how did it happen?’
‘That’s what the police are trying to find out,’ she said. ‘Are you a policeman?’
‘Not really,’ avoided Walker.
‘You’ve been given a lot of personal power by the Prime Minister.’
He supposed it was obvious she would know of the authority letters which Dixon had provided. He said: ‘I’m looking into certain aspects of what’s happened.’
‘He’s not a greedy crook,’ said Patricia.
Walker looked at her for several moments. Then he said: ‘No, I don’t believe he is.’
That evening Dixon summoned Walker to his private office in the Houses of Parliament. The man was grey-faced with worry, his movements jerky and uncertain. He said: ‘When are you going to find something! Do something! The police say they want to take a formal statement from me and advise that I have a solicitor present to protect my interests!’
Walker had been remaining around the man until he finally went home to Downing Street, to sleep. But that night Walker left the Houses of Parliament early. He did not go far, however. And was glad.
For the next few days Walker did not go anywhere near the Prime Minister or Parliament. Early on the first day he contacted the Technical Division at the Factory and just after nine teamed up with two expert photographers in their specially equipped surveillance car. They worked throughout the day but were not as successful as Walker had hoped they might be. They had better luck the next night. The following day Walker flew back for the third time to Switzerland and on this occasion all four postal workers at once identified as Derek Penn the man whose photograph Walker carried with him. Walker telephoned the Director General from Zurich, for a guarded conversation.
The Factory Page 9