The Night Manager

TWENTY-SEVEN

The crisis meeting of the full Joint Steering Committee was set for ten-thirty next day, but Goodhew arrived early to make sure everything in the basement conference room was as it should be, and set out agenda sheets and the minutes of the previous meeting. Life had taught him that you delegated these things at your peril.

Like a general before the decisive battle of his life, Goodhew had slept lightly, and the dawn had found him clear-minded in his purpose. His soldiers were many, he was convinced.

He had counted them, he had lobbied them, and to sharpen their allegiance he had presented each of them with a copy of his original paper to the Steering Committee, entitled "A New Era," in which he had so famously demonstrated how the United Kingdom was more secretively governed, had more laws for the suppression of information and more unaccountable methods of concealing the nation's business from its citizens than any other Western democracy. He had warned them, in a covering note to Burr's report, that the committee faced a classic testing of its powers.

The first person to arrive in the conference room after Goodhew himself was his mawkish school friend, Padstow. the one who had made a point of dancing with the plainest girls in order to give them confidence.

"I say, Rex, you remember that personal top-secret and I whatnot letter you sent me, to cover my rear end while your man Burr was staging his frolics in the West Country? For my very own file?" As usual, Padstow's lines could have been written by P. G. Wodehouse on a bad day.

"Of course I do, Stanley."

"Well, you don't have a copy, by any chance, do you? Only I can't quite lay the old hands on it. I could have absolutely sworn I put it in my safe."

"As I remember, the letter was handwritten," Goodhew replied.

"But you didn't sort of bung it under a copier before you sent it round?"

Their conversation was curtailed by the arrival of two assistant secretaries from the Cabinet Office. One gave Goodhew an assuring smile; the other, Loaming, was too busy dusting his hair with his handkerchief. Loaming's one of them, Palfrey had said. He's got some theory about the need for a world underclass. People think he's joking. They were followed by the heads of the Armed Services Intelligence branches, then by two barons from Signals and Defence, respectively. After them again came Merridew of the Foreign Office Northern Department. His sidekick was a grave woman called Dawn. Word of Goodhew's new appointment had been thoroughly leaked. Some arrivals shook his hand. Others mumbled awkward encouragement. Merridew, who had played wing forward for Cambridge to Goodhew's fly half for Oxford, went so far as to pit his upper arm ― at which Goodhew, in an exaggerated piece of histrionics, affected frightful pain and cried, "Oh, oh, I think you've broken it, Tony!"

But the forced laughter was cut dead by the arrival of Geoffrey Darker and his reassuring deputy, Neal Marjoram.

They steal, Rex, Palfrey had said. They lie... they conspire... England's too small for them... Europe's a Balkan Babel... Washington's their only Rome...

The meeting begins.

* * *

Operation Limpet, Minister," Goodhew declares as dully as ice blown snow. Goodhew, as usual, is secretary; his master is ex officio chairman. "Several quite pressing issues to be resolved, I'm afraid. Action this day. The situation is set out in Burr's summary; nothing has changed that we know of, as of an hour ago. There is also the competence of interested departments to be settled."

His master appears to have lapsed into a mood of sullen resentment.

"Where the hell is Enforcement?" he grumbles. "Pretty odd, isn't it, an Enforcement case, no one from Enforcement here?"

"Enforcement is still a co-opted agency, I regret to say Minister, although some of us have been struggling to have it upgraded. Only chartered bodies and heads of department are represented at full Steering sessions."

"Well, I think we should have your man Burr here. Damn silly, if he's been running the show, knows it inside out and we haven't got him here to talk about it. Isn't it? Well, isn't it?" - looking round.

Goodhew has not expected such a golden opportunity. Burr, he knows, is sitting only five hundred yards away. "If that is your view, Minister, will you allow me to summon Leonard Burr to this meeting, and will you allow me to record that a precedent has now been established whereby co-opted agencies engaged in matters central to your committee's deliberations may be regarded as chartered, pending their elevation to chartered status?"

"Objection," Darker snaps. "Enforcement's the thin end of the wedge. If we let Burr in, we'll end up with every Mickey Mouse agency in Whitehall. Everybody knows these small outfits are up for grabs. They start trouble, then they haven't got the clout to end it. We've all seen Burr's background paper. Most of us know the case from other angles. The agenda says we're going to be talking command and control. The last thing we need is the subject of our discussions sitting here, listening in."

"But, Geoffrey," says Goodhew lightly, "you are the constant subject of our discussions."

The minister mutters something like "Oh, all right, leave things as they are for the moment," and the first round is a draw, with both protagonists slightly bloodied.

* * *

A few minutes of English chamber music while the heads of Air and Naval Intelligence describe their respective successes in tracking the Horatio Enriques. When they have completed their reports they proudly circulate full-plate photographs.

"Looks like a perfectly ordinary tanker to me," says the minister.

Merridew, who detests espiocrats, agrees. "Probably is," he says.

Somebody coughs. A chair creaks. Goodhew hears a kind of regal bray from higher up the scale than he is ready for, and recognizes it as the familiar sound of a senior British politician defacing a point of argument.

"Why is this one ours, anyway, Rex?" the minister wishes to know. "Bound for Poland. Panamanian ship, Curaçaoan company. Not our baby at all, far as I can see. You're asking me to push it upstairs to Number 10. I'm asking why we're sitting here talking about it at all."

"Ironbrand's a British company, Minister."

"No, it's not. It's Bahamian. Isn't it Bahamian?" Business, while the minister, with the mannerisms of a much older man, makes a show of rummaging through Burr's three-thousand word summary. "Yes. It's Bahamian. Says so here."

"Its directors are British, the men committing the crime are British, the evidence against them was gathered by a British agency under the aegis of your ministry."

"Then give our evidence to the Poles, and we can all go home," says the minister, very pleased with himself. "Splendid idea, if you ask me."

Darker smiles in icy admiration of the minister's wit, but prefers to take the unprecedented step of correcting Goodhew's English. "Can we say testimony, please, Rex? Rather than evidence? Before we all get carried away."

"I am not carried away, Geoffrey, nor shall I be, unless it is feet first," Goodhew retorts too loudly, to the discomfort of his supporters. "As to passing our evidence to the Poles, Enforcement will do that at its discretion, and not before a decision has been agreed on how to proceed against Roper and his accomplices. Responsibility for seizing the shipment of arms has been ceded to the Americans. I do not propose to cede the rest of our responsibility to the Poles unless those are my instructions from the minister. We are talking of a rich and well-organised crime syndicate in a very poor country. The perpetrators chose Gdansk because they think they can control it. If they're right, it will make no difference what we tell the Polish government; the cargo will be landed anyway, and we shall blow Burr's source for nothing except the pleasure of warning Onslow Roper that we are on his trail."

"Perhaps Burr's source is blown already," Darker suggests.

"Always a possibility, Geoffrey. Enforcement has many enemies, some across the river."

For the first time, Jonathan's ghostly shadow has fallen across their table. Goodhew has no personal knowledge of Jonathan, but he has shared enough of Burr's travail to share it again now. And perhaps this awareness fuels his sense of outrage, for once more he undergoes a startling change of colour as he resumes his argument, his voice a little above its customary level.

Under the agreed rules of Joint Steering, he says, every agency however small is sovereign in its sphere.

And every agency however large is obliged to provide support in aid of every other agency, while respecting its rights and freedoms.

In the Limpet case, he continues, this principle has come under repeated fire from the River House, who are demanding control of the operation on the grounds that such control is demanded by its counterpart in the United States ―

Darker has interrupted. It is Darker's strength to possess no middle gears. He has smouldering silence. He has, in extremis, the capacity to reverse his position when a battle looks irretrievably lost. And he has attack, which is what he uses now.

"What do you mean, demanded by its counterpart in the United States?" he cuts in scathingly. "Control of Limpet has been granted to the Cousins. The Cousins own the operation. The River House doesn't. Why not? It's like to like, Rex. Your own pedantic rule. You drafted it. Now you've got to live with it. If the Cousins are running Limpet over there, so should the River House be over here."

Having struck, he sits back, waiting for a chance to strike again. Marjoram waits with him. And although Goodhew behaves as if he has not heard, Darker's onslaught has stung him. He moistens his lips. He glances at Merridew, an old accomplice, hoping he will say something. Merridew is silent. Goodhew returns to the charge but makes a fatal error. That is to say, he departs from the march route he has mapped for himself and speaks extempore.

"But when we invite Pure Intelligence," Goodhew resumes, with too much ironic emphasis, "to explain to us just why the Limpet case needs to be taken out of Enforcement's hands" ― he looks angrily round him and sees his master affecting boredom, staring at the white brick wall ― "we are asked to share in a mystery. It is called Flagship, an operation so secret, and so wide-flung, apparently, that it permits of almost any act of vandalism in the civil service calendar. It is called geopolitics. It is called..." He seems to wish he could escape the rhythms of his rhetoric, but he is launched and unable to pull back. How dare Darker stare at him like this? That smirking Marjoram! Those crooks! "It is called normalisation. It is called chain reactions too intricate to describe. Interests that cannot be divulged." He hears his voice shaking but cannot stop it. He remembers urging Burr not to go this very path. But he can't help himself. "We are told of some larger picture that we cannot see because we are too lowly. In other words, Pure Intelligence must swallow up Limpet and be damned!"

There is water in Goodhew's ears, and water in front of his eyes, and he has to wait a moment before his breathing settles down.

"Okay, Rex," says his master. "Nice to hear you in form. Now let's talk turkey. Geoffrey, you sent me a minute. You say this whole Limpet thing as perceived by Enforcement is a load of baloney. Why?"

Goodhew unwisely leaps in: "Why did I not see a copy of this minute?"

"Flagship," Marjoram replies in the dead silence. "You're not Flagship cleared, Rex."

Darker offers a more detailed explanation, not to ease Goodhew's pain but to increase it: " 'Flagship' is the code name for the American end of this, Rex. They gave us a very tight need-to-know as a condition of cutting us in. Sorry about that."

* * *

Darker has the floor. Marjoram hands him a file. Darker opens it and licks a prim finger and turns a page. Darker has timing too. He knows when eyes are on him. He could have been a bad Evangelist. He has the gloss, the stance, the curiously Prominent rump. "Mind if I ask you a few questions, Rex?"

"I believe it is a maxim of your service that only the answers are dangerous, Geoffrey," Goodhew counters. But levity is not his ally. He sounds ill-tempered and silly.

"Did the same source who told Burr about the dope tell him about the arms shipment to Buenaventura?"

"Yes."

"Did the same source get this whole thing going in the first place? Ironbrand ― drugs for arms ― a deal's being cooked up?"

"That source is dead."

"Really?" Darker sounds interested rather than concerned. "So that all came from Apostoll, did it? The dope lawyer who was playing all ends against the middle so that he could buy himself out of prison?"

"I am not prepared to discuss sources by name in this manner!"

"Oh, I think it's all right when they're dead. Or bogus. Or both."

Another stage pause while Darker considers Marjoram's file. The two men have a peculiar affinity with each other.

"Is Burr's source the one that's been putting out all the hair-raising stuff about the alleged involvement of certain British finance houses in this whole deal, then?" Darker enquires.

"A single source provided that information and has provided much else besides. I do not think it appropriate that we should discuss Burr's sources any further," says Goodhew.

"Sources or single source?"

"I refuse to be drawn."

"Is the single source live?"

"No comment. Live, yes. That's all I'm saying."

"He or she?"

"Pass. Minister, I must object."

"So you're saying that one live source ― he or she ― fingered the deal to Burr, fingered the dope to Burr, fingered the weapons to Burr, the ships, the money laundering and the participation of British finance. Yes?"

"You are missing the point ― I suspect deliberately ― that a great number of technical sources have supplied collateral at almost every turn, and all of it has substantiated the intelligence provided by Burr's live source. Unfortunately, much of the technical product has recently been denied to us. I intend to raise that matter formally in a moment."

"Us meaning Enforcement?"

"In this case, yes."

"Always a problem, you see, when one's handing hot material to these little agencies you're so fond of, to know whether they're secure."

"I would have thought their smallness made them more secure than much larger agencies with questionable connections!"

Marjoram takes over, but it could easily have been Darker speaking still, for Darker's eyes remain fixed on Goodhew's, and Marjoram's voice, though silkier, has the same accusatory tone.

"Nevertheless, there have been times when there has been no collateral," Marjoram suggests, with a tremendously sympathetic smile round the table. "Times when the source has, as you might say, spoken alone. Has given you things that were in effect not checkable. 'Here you are,' as it were. 'Take it or leave it.' And Burr has taken it. And so have you. Yes?"

"Since you deny us so much of the recent collateral, we have learned to make do without it. Minister, is it not in the nature of any source who produces original material that his product will not be provable in every particular?"

"Bit academic, all this, actually," the minister complains. "Can we get on to the gritty, Geoffrey? If I'm shoving this upstairs, I'll have to collar the Cabinet Secretary before Question Time."

Marjoram smiles in assent but does not change his tactic by a whit. "Quite a source, I must say, Rex. And quite a lot of mischief if he's leading you by the nose. Or she is; sorry. Not sure I'd like to take a flier on him if I was advising the PM, all the same. Not without knowing a bit more about him or her. Boundless faith in one's agent's all very fine in the field. Burr had a bit too much of it sometimes, back in the days when he worked for the River House. We had to keep him on a tight rein."

"The little I know of the source convinces me entirely," Goodhew retorts, digging himself deeper into the mire. "The source is loyal and has made immense personal sacrifices for the sake of his or her country. I urge that the source be listened to and believed, and his intelligence acted upon today."

Darker takes back the controls. He looks first at Goodhew's face, then at his hands where they rest on the table. And Goodhew in his increasingly fraught state has the disgusting notion that Darker is thinking it would be amusing to pull out his fingernails.

"Well, that's impartial enough for anyone," Darker says with a glance at the minister to make sure he has heard the witness condemning himself out of his own mouth. "Haven't heard such a resounding declaration of blind love since..." He turns to Marjoram. "What's the man's name again ― the escaped criminal? He's got so many names now I can't remember which is the right one."

"Pine," says Marjoram. "Jonathan Pine. Don't think he's got a middle name. There's been an international warrant out for him for months."

Darker again: "You're not telling me Burr's been listening to this man Pine, are you, Rex? You can't be. No one falls for him. Might as well believe the wino on your street corner when he tells you he's short of the fare home."

For the first time, both Marjoram and Darker are smiling together, a little incredulously, at the thought that somebody as bright as dear old Rex Goodhew could have made such a monumental blunder.

* * *

Goodhew has the sensation of being alone in a great empty hall, awaiting some kind of prolonged public execution. From far away he hears Darker trying to be helpful to him by explaining that it is pretty standard, in a case where action is to be contemplated at the highest level, for intelligence services to come clean about their sources.

"I mean, look at it their way, Rex. Wouldn't you want to know whether Burr has bought the crown jewels or a fabricator's load of old bones? Not as if Goodhew was exactly flush with sources, is it? Probably paid the bloke his whole annual budget in one shot." He turns to the minister. "Among his other skills, this man Pine forges passports. He came to us about eighteen months ago with some story about a shipment of high-tech weaponry for the Iraqis. We checked it out, didn't like it and showed him the door. We thought he might be a bit loco, to be frank. A few months ago he cropped up as some kind of factotum to Dicky Roper's household out in Nassau. Part-time tutor to their difficult son. Tried to peddle anti-Roper stories round the intelligence bazaars in his spare time."

He glances at the open file in order to make sure he is being as fair as possible.

"Got quite a record. Murder, multiple theft, dope-running and illegal possession of various passports. I hope to God he's not going to get into the witness box and say he did it all for British Intelligence."

Marjoram's index finger helpfully points out an entry lower down the page. Darker spots it and gives a nod to show that he is grateful to be reminded.

"Yes, that's an odd little story about him too. While Pine was in Cairo, it seems he ran up against a man called Freddie Hamid, one of the Hamid brothers of evil fame. Pine worked in his hotel. Probably pushed his dope for him as well. Our man Ogilvey out there tells us there are quite strong pointers to suggest that Pine killed Hamid's mistress. Beat her to death, apparently. Took her to Luxor for a weekend, then killed her in a jealous rage." Darker shrugged and closed the file. "We are talking of somebody who is seriously unstable, Minister. I don't think the PM should be asked to authorise drastic action based on Pine's fabrications. I don't think you should either."

Everyone looks at Goodhew, but most look away again in order not to embarrass him. Marjoram particularly seems to feel for him. The minister is talking, but Goodhew is tired. Perhaps that's what evil does to you, he thinks: it tires you.

"Rex, you have to fight your corner on this one," the minister is complaining. "Has Burr done a deal with this man or not? I hope he hasn't had anything to do with his crimes? What have you promised him? Rex, I insist you remain. There have been far too many cases recently of British Intelligence employing criminals on terms. Don't you dare bring him back to this country, that's all. Did Burr tell him who he was working for? Probably gave him my phone number while he was about it. Rex, come back." The door seems an awfully long way off. "Geoffrey says he's been some kind of special soldier. Ireland. About all we need. The Irish will be really grateful. For Christ's sake, Rex, we've hardly started on the agenda. Major decisions to take. Rex, this is very untidy. Not your scene at all. I'm nobody's man, Rex. Goodbye."

* * *

The air in the outside stairwell is blessedly cool. Goodhew leans against the wall. Probably he is smiling.

"I expect you'll be looking forward to your weekend, sir. won't you?" the janitor says respectfully.

Touched by the man's good face, Goodhew hunts for a kindly answer.

* * *

Burr was working. His body clock was stuck in mid-Atlantic, his soul was with Jonathan in whatever hell he was enduring. But his intellect, his will and his inventiveness were concentrated upon the work before him.

"Your man blew it," Merridew commented, when Burr called him to hear how the Steering Committee meeting had gone. "Geoffrey walked all over him in hobnail boots."

"That's because Geoffrey Darker tells bloody lies," Burr explained carefully, in case Merridew needed educating. Then he went back to work.

He was in River House mode.

He was a spy again, unprincipled and uncontrite. The truth was what he could get away with.

He sent his secretary on a Whitehall forage, and at two o'clock she returned, calm but slightly breathless, bearing the stationery samples he had instructed her to scrounge.

"Let's go," he said, and she fetched her shorthand pad.

Mostly, the letters he dictated were addressed to himself. A few were addressed to Goodhew, a couple to Goodhew's master. His styles were various: Dear Burr, My dear Leonard, To the Director of Enforcement, Dear Minister. In the more elevated correspondence, he wrote "Dear So-and-so" by hand at the top, and scribbled whatever kiss-off occurred to him at the bottom. Yours, Ever, Yours aye, My best to you.

His handwriting also varied, in both its slope and its characteristics. So did the inks and writing instruments he awarded to the various correspondents.

So did the quality of the official stationery, which became stiffer the higher he moved up the Whitehall ladder of beings. For ministerial letters he favoured pale blue, with the official crest die-stamped at the head.

"How many typewriters have we got?" he asked his secretary.

"Five."

"Use one for each correspondent, one for us," he ordered. "Keep it consistent."

She had already made a note to do so.

Alone again, he telephoned Harry Palfrey at the River House. His tone was cryptic.

"But I must have a reason," Palfrey protested.

"You can have it when you show up," Burr retorted. Then he rang Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw in Newbury.

"Fuck should I take orders from you, Christ's sake?" Bradshaw demanded haughtily, in a quaint echo of Roper-speak. "No executive powers, lot of wankers on the touch line."

"Just be there," Burr advised.

Hester Goodhew telephoned him from Kentish Town to say that her husband would be staying home for a few days: winter was never his best time, she said. After her, Goodhew himself came on the line, sounding like a hostage who has been rehearsed in his lines. "You've still got your budget till the end Of the year, Leonard. Nobody can take that away from you." Then, rather horribly, his voice cracked. "That poor boy. What will they do to him? I think of him all the time."

So did Burr, but he had work to do.

* * *

The interviewing room at the Ministry of Defence is white and sparse and prison lit and prison scrubbed. It is a brick-lined box with a blacked-out window and an electric radiator that stinks of burned dust whenever it is switched on. The absence of graffiti is alarming. Waiting, you wonder whether the last messages are painted out after the occupant is executed. Burr arrived late by design. When he entered, Palfrey attempted to look at him disdainfully over the top of his trembling newspaper, and smirked.

"Well, I did come" he said truculently. And stood. And made a show of folding up his paper.

Burr closed and carefully locked the door behind him, set down his briefcase, hung his coat on the hook and slapped Palfrey very hard across the side of the face. But dispassionately, reluctantly almost. As he might have hit an epileptic to ward off a fit, or his own child to calm him in a crisis.

Palfrey sat down again with a plop, on the same bench where he had been sitting earlier. He held his hand to the offended cheek.

"Animal," he whispered.

To a point, Palfrey was right, except that Burr's wildness was under iron control. Burr had the real black mood on him, and not his closest friends, not his wife, had seen him with the real black mood. Burr himself had seen it seldom. He didn't sit, but crouched fat-arsed and chapel-style at Palfrey's side, so that their heads could stay nice and close together. And to help Palfrey listen, he grabbed the poor fellow's drink-stained tie at the knot in both hands while he spoke, and it made a rather fearful noose.

"I've been very, very kind to you, Harry Palfrey, up till now," he began, in a mainstream speech that benefited from not having been prepared. "I've not queered your pitch. I've not peached. I've looked on indulgently while you gumshoed back and forth across the river, into bed with Goodhew, selling him out to Darker, playing all the ends against the middle, just the way you always did. Still promising divorce to every girl you meet, are you? Of course you are! Then hurrying home to renew your marriage vows to your wife? Of course you are! Harry Palfrey and his Saturday night conscience!" Burr tightened the hangman's knot of Palfrey's tie against the poor man's Adam's apple. " 'Oh, the things I have to do for England, Mildred!' " he protested, playing Palfrey's part. " 'The cost to my integrity, Mildred! If you but knew the tenth of it, you'd not sleep for the rest of your life ― except with me, of course. I need you, Mildred. I need your warmth, your consolation. Mildred, I love you!... Just don't tell my wife; she wouldn't understand.' " A painful lunge of the knot. "You still peddling that crap, Harry? Back and forth across the border, six times a bloody day? Ratting, re-ratting, re-re-ratting, till your furry little head's sticking out of your puzzled little arse? Of course you are!"

But it was not easy for Palfrey to give a rational response to these questions, because of Burr's unyielding, double handed, closing grip on his silk tie. It was a grey tie, silvery, which made the stains more prominent. Perhaps it had served Palfrey for one of his many marriages. It seemed incapable of breaking.

Burr's voice became a mite regretful. "Ratting days are over, Harry. The ship's sunk. Just one more rat, and that's your lot." Without at all relaxing his grip on Palfrey's necktie, he put his mouth close to Palfrey's ear. "You know what this is, Harry?" He lifted the thick end of the tie. "It's Dr. Paul Apostoll's tongue, pulled through his throat, Colombian style, thanks to Harry Palfrey's ratting. You sold Apostoll to Darker. Remember? Ergo, you sold my agent Jonathan Pine to Darker also." He was tightening his grip on Palfrey's throat with every sold. "You sold Geoffrey Darker to Goodhew ― except you didn't really, did you? You pretended to, then you doubled on yourself and sold Goodhew to Darker instead. What are you getting out of it, Harry? Survival? I wouldn't bet on it. In my book you're due about one hundred and twenty pieces of silver out of the reptile fund, and after that it's the Judas tree. Because, knowing what I know and you don't, but what you are about to know, you are finally, terminally ratted out." He relinquished his grip and rose abruptly to his feet. "Can you still read? Your eyes are looking poppy. Is that terror or penitence?" He swung to the door and grasped the black briefcase. It was Goodhew's. It had scuff lines where it had ridden on the carrier of Goodhew's bicycle for a quarter of a century, and the remnants of the official crest, worn off. "Or is it alcoholic myopia affecting our vision these days? Sit there! No, here! The light's better."

And on the there and here Burr flung Palfrey like a rag doll, using his armpits to lift him and sitting him down very heavily each time. "I'm feeling rough today, Harry," he explained apologetically. "You'll just have to bear with me. I think it's the thought of young Pine sitting there being burned alive by flicky Roper's beauties. I must be getting too old for the job." He slapped a file on the table. It was stamped FLAGSHIP in red. "The purport of these papers that I wish you to peruse is, Harry: you are singly and collectively fucked. Rex Goodhew is not the buffoon you took him for. More under his flat hat than we ever knew. Now read on."

Palfrey read on, but it cannot have been an easy read, which was what Burr had intended when he went to such lengths to rob him of his repose. And before Palfrey had quite finished reading he started weeping, so copiously that some of his tears blotted the signatures and Dear Ministers and Yours evers that topped and tailed the faked correspondence.

While Palfrey was still weeping, Burr produced a Home Office warrant, which so far bore nobody's signature at all. It was not a plenary warrant. It was merely a warrant of interference, authorising the listeners to impose a technical fault on three telephone numbers, two in London and one in Suffolk. This simulated fault would have the effect of misrouting all calls made to the three numbers to yet a fourth number, of which the coordinates were given in the appropriate space. Palfrey stared at the warrant; Palfrey shook his head and tried to make noises of refusal through his clogged mouth.

"Those are Darker's numbers," he objected. "Country, town, office. I can't sign that. He'd kill me."

"But if you don't sign, Harry, I'II kill you. Because if you go through channels and take this warrant to the appropriate minister, the said minister will go running to his Uncle Geoffrey. So we're not doing that, Harry. You personally are going to sign the warrant on your own authority, which is what you're empowered to do in exceptional circumstances. And I personally am going to send the warrant to the listeners by very safe messenger. And you personally are going to spend a quiet social evening with my friend Rob Rooke in his office, so that you personally don't run the temptation of ratting in the meantime out of habit. And if you do make any fuss, my good friend Rob will most likely chain you to a radiator until you repent yourself of your many sins, because he's a hulk. Here. Use my pen. That's the way. In triplicate, please. You know what these civil servants are. Who do you talk to over at the listeners, these days?"

"No one. Maisie Watts."

"Who's Maisie, Harry? I'm not in touch these days."

"Queen bee. Maisie makes it happen."

"And if Maisie's out to lunch with her Uncle Geoffrey?"

"Gates. Pearly, we call him." A weak grin. "Pearly's a bit of a boy."

Burr picked Palfrey up again and dropped him heavily before a green telephone.

"Call Maisie. Is that what you'd do in an emergency?"

Palfrey whistled a kind of yes.

"Say there's a very hot authorization on its way by special courier. She's to handle it herself. Or Gates is. No secretaries, no lower decks, no answering back, no raised eyebrows. You want slavish, mute obedience. Say it's signed by you, and the highest ministerial confirmation in the land will follow soonest. Why are you shaking your head at me?" He slapped him. "I don't like you shaking your head at me. Don't do it."

Palfrey managed a tearful smile while he held a hand to his lip. "I'd be jokier, Leonard, that's all. Specially if it's as big as this. Maisie likes a laugh. So does Pearly. 'Hey Maisie! Wait till you get a load of this one! It'll blow your socks off!' Clever gal, you see. Gets bored. Hates us all. Only interested in who's next up the guillotine steps."

"Then that's how you play it, isn't it?" said Burr, putting a friendly hand on Palfrey's shoulder. "Just don't fox with me, Harry, or the next one up the steps is you."

All eagerness to oblige, Palfrey lifted the receiver of the green Whitehall internal telephone and, under Burr's gaze, dialled the five digits that every River rat learns at his mother's knee.