The Crocus List

18

"All very competent," George said, "though I don't find any significance in the intervals between the shots-but what does it all prove?"

"That they wanted to kill Barling. Himself. Not just smear the KGB by making them seem callously careless in their shooting. The pause after the first shot, making sure they'd killed him, which isn't easy to do with a heart shot, but they couldn't go for the head because the sight line wouldn't fit with shooting at the President's head-"

"Harry, please." George put his head in his hands. "Anything you say, except just don't say it this early in the day."

"Why Barling?" Maxim asked bluntly.

George waved a hand vaguely. "He was an expert on Russian affairs-as much of an expert as MPs get to be on anything-and they made him a junior minister to add credibility to their soft-line policy. He couldn't speak against that policy once he'd accepted a government post. "

"Where did he stand on Berlin?"

"Why Berlin?" George asked suspiciously.

"Miss Tuckey told us to look for a narrow objective within a broader attack. Berlin seems the most immediate. Are we going to demilitarise our Zone there?"

"This is not your concern, Harry."

"The government can give one of two answers to the Russians: we'll talk about Berlin, or we won't talk. After two months we haven't said we won't talk. What the hell sort of secret d'you think you're keeping? The time and place of the talks, I'd say."

"I don't know about that," George grumped.

"Then I hope these people don't know, either, although they seem to know a lot. They smeared Ettington, they drugged Westerman, they killed Barling: I call that escalation. I think they're getting desperate, and Berlin seemsthe likeliest cause. We can't defend on a broad front, George, not just two of us. We have to find the next point of attack and be there first."

"I do hate this remorseless military logic, particularly when-as usual-it is based on an incomplete knowledge of the facts."

"Any general would like to postpone his battles for forty years until the historians can tell him what to do. But he's usually short of time as well as information, same as us. What difference could Barling's death make to Berlin?"

George sighed. "1 may just be able to tell you after his funeral."

"Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God…"

"Romans 8," Sprague whispered. "I believe Barling was quite a devout man. By Parliamentary standards."

"Quite," George said, as the coffin wobbled past his ear. "And we haven't had anything tactless about the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, since your Committee hasn't apportioned the blame yet. Book of Job, I believe."

"One, possibly verse twenty-one," Sprague topped him easily.

The coffin reached the catafalque as the minister finished his intonation: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions."

"And doctrinally at least," Sprague murmured as they sat down, "the Church of England has a seat by the fire in every one."

The crematorium chapel was a large, modern redbrick structure with pews varnished to a garish yellow. It was crowded, despite its size, for Mrs Barling had made no effort to keep it private, and there were TV crews on the driveway outside. A lady, George thought sombrely, with a fine appreciation of the politicalrimescale: comethe inevitable memorial service in three weeks' time, people would already be asking 'Barling? Who was he? Oh yes, him.'

"I held my tongue, and spake nothing: I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me," the minister droned, his voice thin in the unfamiliar acoustics. "My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled: and at the last I spake with my tongue…"

"I do believe that the widow Barling," Sprague whispered, "is trying to tell us something. She must have chosen this psalm. Why not the dear old 23rd?-at least a decent bit of poetry. But of course he never did speak with his tongue, nor ever would have done if he wanted to hang on to his job. They almost never do… is this the moment, George, to tell you something of uttermost Top Secrecy?"

"… and verily every man living is altogether vanity," the minister went on.

"Something the Committee has not yetquite decided," Sprague murmured, thumbing through his hymn book, "but I believe will come to accept shortly. If our dear departed werenot going to speak out against the Berlin talks, as seemed altogether likely, suppose-I must say suppose-that some deranged mind decided to eliminatehim, under the guise of a Muscovite attempt on the dear President? Consider that for a moment, George." He raised a satisfied, bright-eyed smile towards the pulpit.

"Good Lord," George said, bowing his head.

Sprague's smile got even brighter. "If one thinks about it, the President makes an ideal stalking horse. Nobody else could possibly be the target. But, viewed in tranquillity, that is pure theory, so another theory is equally tenable. Think on it, George."

"Why Barling, though?"

"It frees his followers in the House. He would have voted with the government, they would have voted with him. Now we have twenty-five Members, it could be more, floating free and liable to vote their consciences. A frightening thought, for a coalition government. However, there are no signs of a foreign policy debate being forced at the moment, and one rather doubts there will be unless something dramatic happens, so one might say the assassin failed…"

"You still believe it was just one man?"

"What other evidence? That mythical policeman whom your Major saw for just one second, as he admitted? Amen," he added, in perfect time with the congregation. "No, the lone psychopath, all quite within the compass of one warped brain."

"And now a right-wing brain, which must sit nicely with our Masters."

"You know me better than that, George," Sprague reproved from the corner of his mouth. "And what conspirators were you favouring? Charlie's Indians? I won't denythat might find favour with our Masters." Sprague rose, bright-eyed and smiling pleasantly, to sing the hymn.

"Of course," he said, sitting down again, "it would have been so much easier if we had the assassin alive and on trial. But your Major, alas…"

"… while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal…"

"So like our dear friends from the secret services," Sprague observed. "Concerning which, one hears a whisper that the Secret Service, the White House Protective Detail, is holding a little affair called an After Action Study. Presumably to find out what went wrong in the Abbey."

"Standard procedure," George suggested.

"Doubtless. And far better than any Congressional inquiry or suchlike; I gather it's a totally private proceeding. But since it didn't happen on their home ground, they will be requesting witnesses from where it did happen. You do follow me?" Said reprovingly, because George looked as if he might have been following the lesson.

"Yes… they'll want some of our people. You aren't thinking of refusing?"

"Of course not. Once the request becomes official, we shall send somebody from the veryhighest level of my Office, nothing less."

"But not anybody who actually knows what happened."

"But who does really know? Surely this is where the Committee comes into its own. When we have resolved the matter, we shall be in a position to give them all the reassurance they can ask. And reassurance is what it comesdown to: security remains a national responsibility. They can't ask for more than that we have reviewed and reformed our procedures."

"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ," the minister warned them; "that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

"Reassurance," George agreed glumly.

"The President was not, after all, harmed. Nor were a dozen other heads of state who are not, I think, going to request witnesses for an After Action Study." Sprague turned the last word into a throat-clearing noise, because the minister had finished just ahead of him.

With a jerk, the coffin began trundling on its conveyor belt towards the curtains and the waiting flame. It was, as always, a moment of terrible sorrow and, because of the creaking conveyor, cringing banality.

"… the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to be consumed by fire," the minister gabbled, trying to keep pace with the vanishing coffin; "ashes to ashes, dust to dust…"

In the moment of silence before the organ started and the congregation began to move, somebody sobbed loudly. It was a lonely world-wide, world-deep sound.

"So where," Sprague asked, "might it not all end?"

So far, the autumn had brought gales, soft bright days left over from summer, misty still days, windy showery ones and now a fine drizzle. Even the weather's become a bloody coalition, George grumbled to himself as he watched the politicians edging in front of the TV cameras and the civil servants edging away.

Sprague summed up: "So, we can be united in this as all things? Everything to be handled through the Committee? Bless you, George, for being, as ever, so understanding…" He drifted away towards his Minister's car. Sprague never drove himself, but was never short of a lift.

Walking towards his own car, George passed James Ferrebee, gulping at a cigarette behind a pillar. "Back to the pit-head?" he suggested.

Ferrebee jumped at the offer. "My Master offered myseat to Mrs Barling. Quite right and proper, but I didn't fancy trying to scrounge a lift from a back-bencher." Ferrebee's status was not that of Sprague.

As they drove out, the next funeral cortege was coming up the drive. "Production line business," Ferrebee commented. "But, given a place like that, I thought it went well. Barling himself would have approved."

"He was a devout man, I gather."

"I believe so."

"Only he wasn't going to resign on our Russian policy -like Berlin?"

"He talked about it, but… when you finally reach a position where you might get something done, you usually tell yourself that you can do more by staying, trying to soften the effects of a policy than walking out and being replaced by somebody who gobbles up the policy flavour-of-the-month. Civil servants as well as politicians."

"Power tends to castrate, absolute power makes you forget you ever had them, as with our current ministers." Feeling Ferrebee's cool glance, George hurried on: "I hear the Americans are going to invite witnesses over for a post-mortem on the Abbey. Have you heard that?"

"No." Ferrebee stared suspiciously. "Was that Norman Sprague? I saw you two had your heads bowed and I was pretty sure it wasn't religious devotion. That man's a private transatlantic cable."

"Many would subscribe towards sinking him to the ocean bed. But I assume he was telling me that they'll ask for Harry Maxim, and the Committee would rather he didn't go."

"Sprague can't tell the Army what to do."

"No, but there are policy matters, I shall probably be consulted…"

"Do you want him to go?"

"The Americans aren't going to be impressed by somebody from Sprague's Committee who wasn't within miles of the Abbey telling them Not to worry old boy, the Redcoats have muddled through again, can't recall the details but just take my word for it… If they want Harry, I want him to go. We've got some fences to mend in Washington."

"I gather he was suggesting a conspiracy theory to the Steering Committee. If that doesn't fit with the Committee's findings-and we must be letting Washington have those eventually-will that really patch things up?"

George noted that Sprague-it would only be Sprague -had been leaking a version of Maxim's performance at the Committee. "I think Harry learnt a lesson there, and I could teach him a few more before he goes… I wonder, now: Sprague may have been a bit too clever in tipping me off. Suppose, when the White House Detail asks for Harry, it isn't to giveevidence, but advice? Everybody's flattered to give advice; be churlish to refuse. Suppose I gave Clay Culliman a tinkle on a secure line and suggested that?"

Ferrebee lit another cigarette. "If you think you can out-deviate Sprague, then I doubt my Office will raise any objections. Only-don't let himshoot anybody over there, will you? It could be counter-productive."

"I'll search him myself at the security check." George was already phrasing his call to Culliman; perhaps the request should be for Maxim to 'make himself available' to the Study group, a suggestion of staying several days, give the chap a chance to see Washington in the fall… and make a quick trip to St Louis and back.

"But I don't get to fly Concorde?" Maxim asked.

"Correct. You do not get to fly Concorde." The Deputy Director of Crisis Relocation peered sternly over his spectacles. "You go on the regular RAF VC-10 from Brize Norton. They run a perfectly good… well, they probably can't miss something the size of America. You've never been there before? You should enjoy Washington. See if you can get our people to introduce you to a few American officers; broaden your mind. Only don't come home with the idea that the solution to every military problem is thehelicopter."

"No, sir. It's artillery."

The DDCR, who had begun his career in the Artillery, became even more suspicious. "Correct again. Why don't you tell that to the RAF and see where they make you sit?"