Motorbike Men

by Duncan James

  “I didn’t,” said Bill. “He invited himself before I had the chance. He says the number two at the Section is an excellent chap, who I know, but he wouldn’t say who it was.”

  ***

  It was very late in the evening when Bill got back from Akrotiri having seen PJ on his plane home. The phone rang. Bill took the call in the study.

  “This could be quite like old times,” said Bill with a grin when he returned. “You’ll never guess who that was.”

  “Tell me.”

  “None other than Commander Nick Marsden. Like us, he didn’t go to the ceremonies in Belfast, so he escaped as we did, thank God. He sends his love, by the way.”

  “I’m so glad he’s all right. Such a nice man, but what on earth did he want suddenly?” asked Catherine. “We haven’t been in touch for simply ages.”

  “As you say, a really nice chap, and professionally, we got on like a house on fire together,” Bill said. “In fact, I think he was probably one of the best deputies I’ve ever had.”

  “So why did he ring?” asked Catherine again.

  “He’s heard I’ve been offered a new job, and wants me to take it.”

  “Why, particularly?”

  “Because he’s Deputy Head of Section 11, that’s why.”

  ***

  After endless hours of discussion and debate between him and Catherine following PJ’s visit, it was eventually late on Wednesday afternoon before Bill got on the secure telephone line from his office to the Cabinet Office, and spoke to Sir Robin Algar. At the end of that conversation, the Cabinet Secretary got on to his opposite number in the Ministry of Defence.

  “Clayton has agreed to take on Section 11,” he announced to Sir Len Watkins. “We now need to move fast. He says he will need at least a week for a hand over in Cyprus, so I hope you can find a replacement and get him out there as soon as possible. Then, once I have a date, I shall have the unenviable job of telling Jarvis that he’s being moved back into his old Department. Meanwhile, your people will need to arrange for Clayton’s promotion, his retirement and his pension, and so on, all at once.”

  “Leave it to me,” replied Watkins. “Hopefully, I shall be able to let you have a date for the change-over later this afternoon.”

  “Excellent,” replied Algar.

  “Is Clayton prepared to move fast?”

  “So he says, although as I’ve mentioned already, he wants a week for a handover. We shall do all we can to make the transition as easy as possible for him, and his wife, and no doubt you will do the same.”

  “Of course,” said Watkins. “I shall make sure my people keep the red-tape and bullshit down to an absolute minimum. We’ll get him moved, and sweep up the paperwork later if necessary. I’ve already put the Army on notice to get cracking as soon as I say so, if the decision goes the way we wanted – which it has.”

  “How long do you reckon, then?”

  “With any luck, Clayton should be yours within a fortnight.”

  “Good. Keep in touch, and let’s tell colleagues at next week’s JIC meeting.”

  ***

  It was Thursday morning when Bill Clayton got the first of many phone calls from the Military Secretary’s office in London. Things had moved fast.

  “Congratulations on your promotion, Colonel,” said the official. “We’re sorry that, at the same time, you will be leaving the Army, but that’s the way the powers-that-be want it, so that’s the way it’s going to be. I rather gather that they want you in your new post in double-quick time.”

  “So I believe,” said Bill.

  “We’ve identified a replacement for you over there. I’m sure you know Major Julian Evans of the Royal Signals?”

  “Yes,” replied Bill. “I know him well. We were at Sandhurst together.”

  “That helps. He’s keen to come, and with a bit of shoving we should be able to get him to Cyprus by the weekend for a hand-over. He may need to take a bit of leave later to sort out things here, but I’m sure your number two can cope for a week while he’s away.”

  “No problem at all there,” replied Clayton.

  “You may need to do the same yourself,” said the man from MOD. “As they need you here and in post ASAP, any leave you need will have to come later. We’ll give you all the help we can with your domestic arrangements – packing, moving, shoving things into storage if necessary, moving in to your official flat in London and so on. Just let us know.”

  “Thanks,” said Bill.

  “Just get cracking, and start preparing your hand-over brief, while Catherine starts packing.”

  “We’ve already started both.”

  “I might have guessed!”

  ***

  Alan Jarvis hadn’t been best pleased to be summoned to the Cabinet Office at short notice. For the life of him, he couldn’t guess what this unexpected visit was about. So far as he was aware, things were going well within his command, as Head of Section 11. Perhaps it was a new task his outfit was to be given, which needed the personal attention of the Cabinet Secretary, as Head of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He’d been called to briefings like that before. Or perhaps he had at last been put forward for a CBE or something equally grand. He could only guess, not least because Sir Robin’s PA, who he had telephoned, had been totally unforthcoming about the purpose of his visit.

  He did not have long to wait after his arrival.

  “Come in, Alan,” Sir Robin greeted him. “Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea please.”

  The Cabinet Secretary nodded towards his secretary, who disappeared and closed the door behind her.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you to come and see me at such short notice,” began Algar.

  “As you’d expect,” replied Jarvis, “although I’d guess it is to brief me about a new task.”

  “Well, in a way it is, so I won’t beat about the bush. The fact is that I plan to move you back to your old department, within SIS.”

  Jarvis frowned. This was not at all what he had been expecting. He was shocked.

  “Why on earth?” he exclaimed.

  “Several reasons come together all at once,” replied Algar. “First of all, you’ve been heading up Section 11 for nearly six years now, so you’re about due for a change, and your old Department is keen to have you back.” Algar almost blushed, as he realised this was a bit of an exaggeration. “We also have an ideal candidate available as your replacement, who we will lose if we don’t move quickly.”

  “And who’s that, may I ask,” asked Jarvis frostily.

  “Colonel Bill Clayton.”

  “The name’s familiar. Remind me,” asked Jarvis.

  “Army Int., currently in Cyprus,” replied Algar.

  “Is he the chap who made a name for himself in Northern Ireland?”

  “The same.”

  “But he’s only a Major, surely. And in any case, Head of Section 11 is traditionally a civil service post, not one for the military.”

  “Clayton is retiring as a full Colonel, and will be taking over from you as a civil servant in the same rank as yourself.”

  “It sounds as if I have no choice in this,” complained Jarvis.

  “I’m afraid you don’t, Alan”

  “Do I get promotion as well?”

  “I’m afraid you don’t,” said Sir Robin again.

  “And when’s all this supposed to happen?”

  “I must ask you to clear your desk by the end of next week, ready to hand over to Clayton the following Monday.”

  “You suddenly seem to be in a great rush to get rid of me.” Jarvis was getting more and more angry.

  “That’s the way it is,” said Algar.

  “I had always thought I was doing a good job as Head of Section, and that everyone was pleased with the way things had been going. Now it seems you can’t get rid of me quick enough.”

  “Since you ask,” said Algar, leaning forward, “there has been some disquiet voiced of late about
your recent performance, and some colleagues have suggested that it is time you had a change.”

  “What brought that about in particular?” demanded Jarvis.

  “The German football affair, if you must know,” responded the Cabinet Secretary, equally crossly. “It was a bloody stupid thing to do, and the consequences of failure would have been little short of a disaster in terms of our relationships with the German government, not to mention the embarrassment this Government would have had to face in explaining the use of public funds on such an escapade.”

  “Nobody said anything at the time,” protested Jarvis.

  “Nobody knew much about it at the time. If we had, we’d have stopped it. As it is, colleagues now believe you are beginning to loose your grip on the job, and should be moved before you are responsible for any more serious mis-judgements of that sort.”

  “So that’s it, then.”

  “That’s it,” confirmed Algar, sitting back. “I shall expect you to conduct a thorough and professional hand-over to Clayton on Monday week. Colleagues from SIS will be in touch to arrange for your move back to your old desk.”

  Jarvis was so furious that he could not bring himself to wait to be asked to leave. He stormed out of the Cabinet Secretary’s office, knocking a tray of tea and chocolate biscuits out of the hands of an approaching secretary as he did so.

  ***

  Roger Barclay had worked in the same branch of the bank since he left school. Not much of a job, it had to be admitted, even by the standards of a local branch. His manager soon determined to keep him away from account holders, which suited Roger well as he wasn’t very keen on meeting new people. And what would he do anyway, up front behind the bullet-proof glass screen? He was not much good at Maths, so didn’t want to be involved in handing out cash to customers or counting it when local builders and other tradesmen brought in wads of dirty notes at the end of the week to be paid in. So he did mostly clerical work, behind the scenes, although occasionally he got involved in handling real money rather than just receipts and invoices and so on. Sometimes he supervised while others stacked notes into the cash machines, other times he would help securing cash into the safe or taking it out of the safe for the tills. Sometimes, he had to count out coins, too, which he didn’t much care for, but he supposed someone had to do it. Some bigger branches had a machine that did it for them, but not where he worked. Otherwise, it was clerical work. Filing, making the coffee, getting the manager’s sandwich for his lunch – that sort of thing. He did have his own desk, with a computer terminal and screen and everything, although he didn’t have complete access to the system; not all the passwords. Which was just as well, really, as he wasn’t very good at computing. But the job suited him well. No great pressure, no great hassle, and some nice people around – every now and then, he had a beer with a few of them on the way home. It had become a nice, cosy little rut, with enough of an income to pay for his meagre lodgings and general upkeep.

  So he was a bit unhappy when his section head called him over one day, and told him that they were going to have to make some changes around the place.

  “We have to make a few economies,” he was told, “and it’s just a bit difficult to justify any longer all the work you do here. We thought we could perhaps share it out among some of the others.”

  “So how would that save money?” asked Roger.

  “Well,” explained his supervisor, “we would then be in a position to let you go, to another branch perhaps, where they had greater need of your services and experience.”

  “But I don’t want to move. I like it here, and I’ve always worked here.”

  “Don’t think we hadn’t all noticed, and don’t think we don’t all appreciate everything you’ve done, but, to be quite honest, you seem to have got into a sort of a rut. And that’s not good for you in the long term,” said the man.

  “But I don’t mind my rut. I quite like being in a rut. You know where you are, in a rut.”

  “But the more you stay in a rut, the deeper the rut gets, and eventually it falls in on you and becomes your grave. We’re keen to help you avoid that,” said the supervisor, who was now struggling a bit. Getting rid of Roger Barclay wasn’t proving to be as easy as they thought it would be.

  “So you would like me to move, would you?” asked Roger.

  “Yes, please,” said his supervisor with a sigh. The message at last seemed to be getting across.

  “Where to?”

  “Well, as it happens and as luck would have it, there’s a post which is just up your street at our Branch in Sloane Square. Same pay, and everything, and a very posh part of London.”

  “But how would I get there, from here?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t looked at the map and worked out the buses and trains,” said the supervisor, now getting a bit irritated. “But we’d pay your immediate expenses, if that helps. Removal costs and so on.”

  “What happens if I decide I don’t want to move?”

  “In that case,” replied the supervisor, “if you should decide to reject our offer, then we shall have to let you go.”

  “Let me go?”

  “Free you from the shackles of this awful bank, so that you can find something better.”

  “I’m really quite happy here, you know.”

  “I’m sure you are, and I’m sorry it’s come to this, but times change, and we have to move with the times. But you don’t have to decide now. Tomorrow will do.”

  Roger Barclay was not a happy man when he left work that afternoon. He didn’t want to start looking for a new job, but Sloane Square was miles away. And he didn’t know anyone there. He was quite sure his luck had at last run out, when the phone rang. That, in itself, was an unusual event. Doubly unusual, as it turned out.

  It was his brother.

  ***

  Professor Jack Barclay was working at a frenzied pace. He and his small team seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough, and yet they simply could not quite jump the final hurdle in their efforts to develop the laser containment of plasma for nuclear fusion. Barclay was becoming increasingly concerned about their sudden lack of progress, particularly as no amount of retracing their steps would reveal any flaw in their earlier work that could explain why progress had suddenly stalled. They obviously had much to do, both at Culham and at the new Rutherford laboratory at Harwell. As leader of his group of physicists, he was responsible for directing their work, as well as making an input into, and monitoring, the continuing and equally important research into nuclear fusion that had been taking place at Culham for so long.

  In spite of the fact that requests were carefully vetted and many refused, he still had to contend with a seemingly never-ending stream of fellow scientists, many from overseas, who were keen to visit the facilities and enquire about his research. Even with those visitors who had been formally approved, he still had to take great care in how he briefed them and what he told them, because of the Top Secret nature of his work. As if that was not enough, he also had to prepare a major paper on the general subject of nuclear fusion, to be given at a forthcoming meeting of the Royal Society, the date of which approached with alarming speed.

  What with one thing and another Barclay was under considerable stress. He had little time to himself, was only able to snatch a bite to eat now and then, and was sleeping badly. Other members of his team, including his Director, were all becoming increasingly concerned about his well-being. Jack himself was conscious of the strain. He was getting headaches, and even noticed that sometimes he had a slight shake. He knew that he needed a break, but simply felt unable to get away from it all, even for a weekend. He now spent so little time at his flat in Battersea, that he was seriously considering selling the place. He had bought it so that he had somewhere to go, to get off the Culham treadmill and away from his digs, and he had initially been able to stay there quite often, visiting art galleries, museums and even taking in the odd concert while in London. It had done him good, but now
the flat was standing empty for long periods. He knew nobody in the area who could drop in to make sure things were OK, and that in itself was beginning to add to his worries. He thought he had emptied the fridge and switched it off before he left the last time, but he couldn’t really be sure. There was so much else occupying his mind at the time, as there was now. But there was no one to ask. Nobody to pop in to check for him, and to look at any mail there might be.

  There was no doubt about it – it had to go. Whenever he could find the time, he would get on to an agent and put it on the market. He decided that selling it would be the easiest thing. He didn’t want the extra worry of letting it, bothering about tenants, repairs and maintenance and all that.

  For some unexplained reason, he was also beginning to worry about how his brother was getting on. He really ought to ring to find out, although he never usually bothered. Perhaps it was just his state of mind. That was it. All the pressures of work were getting him down.

  But he would ring Roger, whenever he could find the time.

  ***

  CHAPTER FIVE - OLD FRIENDS, NEW ENEMIES

  As Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Robin Algar briefed the members at their next meeting, which, as usual, was attended by the Heads of the three Intelligence agencies.

  “I was, frankly, disappointed at Jarvis’s attitude,” admitted Algar. “I had not for a moment expected such a reaction.”

  “Sounds to me as if it’s a good thing he’s gone,” said Sir Wilfred Forsyth. “I just hope he doesn’t prove to be troublesome when he gets back into SIS.”

  “We could have a problem, you know,” said Watkins. “We now have the ex-Head of one of our most secret sections with an enormous chip on his shoulder.”

  “I agree,” said Algar. “We shall need to keep an eye on him and his behaviour.”

  “Hardly a job for Section 11, though,” joked Brian Hooper, from the Treasury.

  “I wonder?” pondered Watkins. “If he is now a bit – how shall I put this – mentally unstable, I wonder if perhaps we should consider down-grading his security clearance?”

  “If we did, he would have to be moved from the post we have in mind for him, and that would only make matters worse,” said Forsyth, from the Foreign Office. “I think we should leave things as they are for the time being, but I will try to arrange for a specially close watch to be kept on him.”