The Conduct of Major Maxim

Chapter 24

Although it was the middle of a normal working day, the corridors of the Foreign Office seemed almost deserted, and Miss Milward's high-heeled footsteps echoed between the cracked mosaic floors and the high arched ceilings. The walls were lined with central heating pipes, pneumatic message tubes, drooping power cables and clumps of odd-lot filing cabinets and cupboards secured, if that was the word, by an extraordinary variety of padlocks. Everything had a dusty look, although that was probably the faded colours and the lighting.

"You haven't been in here before, have you?" she asked. "First they plan to tart it all up and then they say No, we're having a whole new office built, so they scrap the paint job, and then they find there isn't any money for the new office anyway… and so it goes. They keep the one corner up to snuff to impress visiting Arabs… Scottie's using the Foreign See's room. He's up in Scotland consulting the PM… It's just up here…"

After two flights of stairs and a near-miss with an old lady pushing a trolley of file boxes, the fresh paint suddenly appeared and they were in Arab territory.

Nobody actually explained why Scott-Scobie was colonising Lord Purslane's room, since his own could hardly have been insecure, although it might have been too secret for a mere major. Looking back, Maxim decided it was probably a move to impress him, which the room did. High ceilinged, it was built on a corner overlooking both the Horse Guards and St James's Park, and furnished like the Committee Room of a well-off but moderately progressive London club. The walls were papered in dark green and gold, with a tall cabinet ofbound Hansards; the furniture was made of rich wood and red leather and – except for the leather-topped desk – not too antique; the quiet pinky-blue shade of the thick carpet could have been taken directly from the faces of the hunting aristocracy. In the evening, lit only in patches over the pictures on the walls and from the desk lamps in their green glass shades, it would have been a place for considered opinions and memorable phrases; at midday it was still impressive but dominated by the familiar babble of a television set by the empty fireplace.

George was sitting in front of it, the usual glass in his hand. "Morning, Harry. You haven't met Scottie, have you?"

Scott-Scobie was chubby but quick, striding across to shake hands and smile one-two-off like a fast salute. "Very kind of you to come in, Major. You know Agnes already."

She was sitting at one end of the long overstuffed sofa; she lifted a hand.

"A nice little place Milord's got here, don't you think?" Scott-Scobie went on. "George, do turn that blasted thing off. What would you care to drink?"

George leaned forward and switched off the TV. "If they'd got it, they'd be flaunting it. More Scotch, please."

"I didn't mean you. Major?"

"Nothing for me. "

"You can change your mind at any time. George, how much more background does the Major need?"

"My impression all along has been that he knew more of what was going on than any of the rest of us, but I may be wronging the honest fellow."

Scott-Scobie coughed and looked at Maxim. "Sit down, Major, sit down." Maxim sat carefully in a horseshoe back chair; Scott-Scobie paced abruptly away, turned and asked: "When you last saw Dieter Sims, in Germany, what conclusions had you come to about Plainsong?"

Maxim said carefully:"He reckoned that Gustav Eismarkhad killed his first wife. "

"Did you think so?"

"Yes, I think I think so."

"But he didn't have any proof?"

Maxim blinked at him.

"I'm sorry, Major, but the only really silly question is the one you don't ask."

"He had no proof that I knew of. He said he was going to get hold of the sister -Mina."

"He got hold of her, " Agnes said in a flat voice; Scott-Scobie shot her a look, ran a hand quickly through his dark curls then had to reach for his pocket to hoist up his trousers. His figure really needed braces but he liked taking off his jacket – as he had now – and showing one's braces was no part of British foreign policy under Lord Purslane.

"Do you think she would be able to supply proof?"

"I don't know. Gustavsaid he was going off to find his sister; we know he found her, but I couldn't guess whether he killed his wife in front of her or even told her he'd done it. "

"I'mnotjoking, Major!"

"What other sort of proof could she have?"

Scott-Scobie ignored that. "Can you think of any other proof that might exist?"

George said: "It's a serious question, Harry."

Maxim tried to think. "Germany must have been a mess at the time, but even then you'd takesome care about murdering somebody. And he was pretty cool about arranging the death certificate; that wasn't an impulse… I'm sorry: I suppose you could scratch around asking anybody and everybody if-"

"Which we donot wish to be caught doing," Scott-Scobie said.

"Yes… The only answer is that it was a hell of a long time ago."

Scott-Scobie looked across at George, who was holding out his glass hopefully in the direction of Miss Milward, and gave a brief sigh. "So it appears to be Mina Linnarzor nothing. At leastthey seem to accept that she might know something. "

"What's happened to her?" Maxim asked.

There was a sudden silence. Scott-Scobie walked a quick little circle and stopped. "Major – I want you to realise that this is above and beyond Top Secret. Do you appreciate that? I'm sure Agnes will back me on this. This is one where there's nothing on paper at all. "

Maxim didn't know enough about the Diplomatic Serviceto realise that Nothing On Paper was not just the ultimate in security but also the supreme sacrifice. Still, he got the general idea and tried to look impressed.

Agnes said: "Our Harry may have his little failings, but telling people what's going on isn't usually one of them. I thought your people would have told you that much." She was sitting with her legs primly together, the skirt of her pale greenish suit arching just across the middle of her knees. She smiled wanly at Maxim, who was looking at her legs.

"Very well." Scott-Scobie sat abruptly on the edge of the conference table. "What Sims and his brotherhood have done is to kidnap Wilhelmina Linnarz- or Eismark – and are preparing to hand her over to her brother Gustavfrom East Germany. How doesthat grab you?"

"Do you mean they haven't actually done it?" Maxim asked.

"No…"

"Then how do you know about this?"

"Agnes's service – no, Agnes herself, I understand – managed to locate her a couple of days ago. Until then nobody even knew she was alive. Then she suddenly vanished. Am I right?"

"They got the address," Agnes said grimly, "from a routine report I had put in tomy service's registry. All in the spirit of inter-service co-operation."

"You mustn't blame your own people," Scott-Scobie said, deliberately missing the point. "Sims was exceeding his authority – of which he appears to have been given far too much in any case – and your registry wasn't to know his allegiance had changed."

Agnes didn't even glance at him. "We weren't keeping a watch on her, just being aware. Yesterday morning the neighbours reported to the police that she'd gone missing, her bed not slept in, and she couldn't really get around by herself much. There was a story of a strange van late the night before…"

"Are the police involved, then?" Maxim asked.

"Not very much. They don't know who she really is, for a start, and there's no proof of abduction. She was a bit of a lonerin her village, so she wouldn't necessarily have told anybody if she was going away. They're not actuallydoing anything yet. "

"Then how are we sure that -?"

"Ah yes." Scott-Scobie took command again. "One of Sims's little friends had the… you can't call it patriotism…"

"A strong sense of pension," George suggested, taking a fresh Scotch from Miss Milward.

"Anyway, he got cold feet and Told All, which wasn't very much since he was still in London and supposed to be maintaininga façadeof Business As Usual. So he doesn't know where they're keeping her except that theydid have that 'strange van' and the handover point hadn't been fixed, only that it's tomorrow some time."

"We're pretty sure it has to be to an East German ship, " Agnes said. "I don't see how it can be any other way, not if Eismark's going to keep the whole deal in his own hands. He still must have a very big influence in Deutfracht, their freight line."

"That's the whole point." Scott-Scobie stood up, then hoisted his trousers after him. "Sims is bypassing all theapparat, giving Eismark a chance to buy back the only witness to his guilty secret. To that extent Plainsong's stillvirgo intacta, as one might say. "

"So she's still worth something in the market place." George cruised down behind the desk to stare out of a window at the lunchtime traffic and the trees of St James's Park beyond. "I've always thought this room was particularly splendid for forming British foreign policy: all the windows look firmly inland and you only see the sun when it's setting."

"George, will you please stop trying to drink us out of Arab's Ruin and concentrate on the fact that we are faced with a whole unit of the Intelligence Service trying to defect?"

"The kidnapped lady apart, how much of the family jewels did he actually get away with?"

"Just about nothing, thank God. Guy at least had the sense to keep the unit in quarantine, gave them their own house but had his own people to handle their communications and requests for filed info. But it isn't just what they're taking, noteven kidnapping a British citizen, it's a whole part of the service going over to the Other Side. It'll make us a laughing stock with the Big Friends, and ruin morale inside the rest of the service foryears. "

"Could they have been planning this all along?" Agnes asked.

Maxim found himself instinctively shaking his head, agreeing with Scott-Scobie before he even spoke. "No, no, snatching the sister like that was just an act of desperation. When Sims came back from Germany empty-handed and Guy confronted him with having sent armed men after your runaway Corporaland getting one of them killed, well, I gather they had a bit of a barney and I suppose Sims saw his whole unit being wound up. So he grabbed the petty cash and ran. Guy's handling of the whole thing seems to have been consistent right down the line. "

"Whereis Husband?" George asked.

"In bed with the vapours." Scott-Scobie showed a certain relish. "He's having a little trouble adjusting to the new reality."

Mutineers get shot, Maxim reflected, but when that's all over, their commander is quietly posted to run a carrier-pigeon loft on Rockall. "Simscertainly felt the heat was on out in Germany. He came near to killing a man who was holding out on us." -"That you did not tell me," George said sternly.

"I didn't think it would improve your day. But if we're sure it'll be a ship, there can't be that many East German ships coming in: can't Agnes's mob and the local Special Branches watch them all?"

"Major," Scott-Scobie said, "if we arrest them we have to try them and have the whole thing come out in court. If I could be sure they'd keep quiet about it, I'd far rather they got clean away with it and we wrote Sims and Plainsong off to experience. But you know perfectly well they can't keep quiet. They'd have to make a big song and dance just to explain why they're accepting Sims back to the fold. Normally they'd just shoot him."

George sat heavily in the Foreign Secretary's chair andswivelled himself from side to side. "You're quite sure there isn't some gamy piece of blackmail we can pull to buy their silence? – in exchange for letting the whole boatload goover?"

"George, the cupboard is completely bare of British sporting spirit as far as East Germany's concerned. That was why we needed Sims and his blasted gang in the first place. And we've got no hold on them personally; one of them's left his wife here, but there's nothing we could do to her, not even illegally, with them pointing the spotlight from the Magdalenenstrasse. Anyway, you know what people like that are about wives. Of course, if Plainsong had actually comeoff." he waved a hand and strode the length of the conference table and back.

"Very well," George said. "I have to accept all that."

Agnes turned on the sofa to look at him suspiciously.

"Major-" Scott-Scobie jingled coins in his pocket "- so what do you think you can do for us?"

"You mean the SAS? I can tell you who you'll be talking to there, but you still -"

"No, I don't mean them. I mean you. You've displayed a certaininitiative ever since you got involved in this business, so perhaps you can keep it up by solving this little problem for us."

Agnes stood up slowly and faced Scott-Scobie. "You cannot do that," she said in a flat voice. "You cannot let Harry go out and take on Sims and his mates by himself and -"

"No nono. He can recruit whatever help he likes. It just mustn't be official, that's all. It isn't as if your own service is prepared to take it on. "

"A thing like this, you know perfectly well we can't act except through the police. But why can't The Firm mop up after its own puppies?"

"Agnes my dear, you know they just don't have these sort of people. Your own service has done as much as anybody -far more, indeed – tostop The Firm building up a rugger club of its own. The only musclemen they've got in this country turn out to be in Sims's unit and that was only because we gotthem sight unseen as a going concern." He looked back at Maxim. "So, Major?"

Maxim stood up, too. "I'm working to Number 10."

George cleared his throat. "I can't possibly give you orders on this one, Harry. I've told Scottie you could be asked and that the Number 10connection can be severed in good enough time. But you don't have to go."

Agnes stared at Maxim, willing him ferociously to smile and say No.

"Don't I?" Maxim said. "The Army's always the last resort. It's what we're for."

"This most definitely is not an Army matter," Scott-Scobie said.

"You call it what you like. I wouldn't be any use to you if I wasn't Army. How many people are we talking about?"

"Sims and two others is all we know about. What comes in with the boat we don't know at all."

"Except that one of them has to be Gustav Eismark inperson."

"Quite. If he's buying back his Shameful Secret he can't do that by proxy. And I wouldn't have thought he'd risk bringing much of an entourage, but / won't get hurt by being wrong. "

"Sims andco. arearmed, I assume?"

"Sure to be. We can ask our drop-out friend what they've got, if he knows."

"I'd like that done."

George took a folded paper from his inside pocket and passed it across the desk to Maxim. "Harry, if you wouldn't mind…?"

Maxim read it, smiled briefly, signed and passed it back. "How is the Prime Minister?"

Agnes demanded: "What was that?"

"My request to be relieved of my post at Number 10, dated two days ago."

"Youbastard," Agnes told George.

George ignored her. "He's resigning as soon as he can see a clear patch, so that he doesn't seem to be going under pressure…"

"Also very much Top Secret, Major," Scott-Scobie put in.

"He _knows_ that!" George spat, then controlled himself. "But I'm not asking because of him, it's more than…"

"That's all right. I wasn't looking for reasons." Maxim turned for the door, then back to Scott-Scobie. "One thing: the way I go about this, I don't see where any Top Secrecy comes in. A lot of people – certainly on their side – are going to know what's happened. "

"Oh yes, they'll _know_. But they just won't _know_ out loud."

Maxim said: "Oh."