The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin - Страница 19

But Scott-Scobie had decided that the only way to be rid of his misery was to pass it on. "Evening, James. We were just discussing whether or not to let Persons Unknown bump off your visiting Russkies. Got them all flight-planned and booked into the best haunts of capitalism?"

Ferrebee glowered down at them. "We were rather hoping that the visit could be handled without help from the cocktail party circuit. And that Mo D won't be taking precautions against an American strike on London whilst they're here."

George hunched his shoulders and mumbled into his glass. '

"And the Primate's trip?" Scott-Scobie went on cheerily. "That's all lined up?"

"The what?" George asked.

"Don't you read your Church Times'?"

"Of course I don't."

"You should, George, you should. Your spiritual life must be sadly empty if you don't know who's just been appointed vicar of Sodbury-in-the-Wold. Nor, apparently, that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a long-standing commitment to preach in Berlin on All Saints' Day. He speaks good German, doesn't he, Jim?"

Ferrebee nodded. "He'll be addressing the Berlin Senate, too."

"Splendid. And knowing the old boy's views, I wouldn't be surprised if he slipped in a few words about sticking together on their fair city. A ray of hope yet."

"It'll doubtless be widely reported in the Church Times," George grumped.

"It'll get splashed in the Berlin papers," Ferrebee said tartly. "Ours will have to carry something."

"And in Pravda," Scott-Scobie added. "They take our church leaders seriously. They spread that nasty story about the Arch B and choirboys."

George looked from one to other of them. "Does your Minister approve of this?"

"Good Lord, no," Scott-Scobie grinned. "Our Master thinks it's a quite frightful idea. But we're doing what we can: James here is going over with him. Unofficially, of course-he's taking a few days' leave-but we can still hope that our Jim's well-known diplomatic talents will persuade the Arch B to tone down his remarks a little."

If Ferrebee had any outstanding talent for diplomacy, he had kept it hidden from George-and, to judge by his career, from the Foreign Office itself. But now even he was wearing a bleak smile to match Scott-Scobie's grin.

George shrugged. "Well, if your Minister really thinks that…"

"Who knows what our Minister thinks? More to the point, he hasn't been in the job long enough to know who half of us are, let alone whatwe might think. He's just happy that one of his loyal servants will be on hand. "

Ferrebee said: "I was going anyway. I have an old friend who's chief pilot for Brentwood Systems; they run a Jetstream and think it would be good public relations to fly the Archbishop over in something like comfort. With his arthritis he can't really take ordinary airline seating."

"Who can?" Scott-Scobie asked. "Those European flights have become positively conjugal. I must say I wouldn't mind you laying on a private plane for me one of these days, James."

"I think I might be well into retirement before you develop arthritis, let alone any religious convictions." Ferrebee's voice had become austere.

"Well, there you have it, George. Arch B denounces Berlinbetrayal, Foreign Sec Sees The Light, reconvenes the ODCommittee for prayer meeting and reversal of its decision. Hallelujah, brothers, hallelu/a/i."

Ferrebee was looking down at Scott-Scobie as if he were a blocked lavatory. "There was a time when a statement by the Primate of All England on the morality of a given foreign policy was, had to be, taken seriously."

"There was a time," Scott-Scobie said, suddenly morose, "when the word of an Englishman meant something. It meant that, no matter what he'd said, he'd act in his own best interests. It doesn't even mean that, now. Berlin today, Sodbury-in-the-Wold tomorrow. I think I'll become a drunk like George."

George couldn't even summon up the spirit to feel offended.

13

Old pilots, ones who first trained on slow propeller-engined aircraft, cannot watch the countryside flowing past a train or car window without subconsciously evaluating fields for an emergency landing: length, slope, obstructions on approach, surface… It is much the same for career soldiers: to Maxim, the low steep Cotswold hills with their clumps of woodland were close-combat country, difficult for tanks and air reconnaissance, needing tight control to attack. It reminded him of the north bank of the Marne, around Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood where the German advance of 1918 had been fought to a halt and the American Marines had left one of the most impressive cemeteries of the war. Battles in such countryside would always leave impressive cemeteries; you got too close to take prisoners.

Miss Dorothy Tuckey's 'cottage'-an honorary title in the Cotswolds just as 'Colonel' is in Texas-sat in a web of low walls like roots of the building spreading above ground. Just across one wall were the trimmed yews and squat tower of a church, so perhaps it had originally been built for the verger. Like the village beyond and everything they had passed for the last ten miles, it was made of local limestone, grey-yellow as if the bleak sky had seeped into the stone the moment it had been cut from the earth. Indeed, given the mossy sway-backed roof and baize-green lawns, the sky was the only thing that saved the cottage from looking as charming as a kitten in a basket; George had pronounced the gusty showers as "typical Cotswold weather" before they had cleared London.

The figure in the front garden was very different from the Miss Tuckey Maxim remembered at the Fort. Squatand booted, an old anorak rucked up above a wide trouser seat and the hood pulled lopsidedly over her tall curls, she was eyeing the flowerbeds with the grim resolve of a drill corporal meeting a recruit platoon.

"Mr Harbinger?" Spectacles and teeth glinted damply under the hood. "I won't try to shake hands. It's such a mess, I haven't even started on the bulbs… Hello, I've met you before." She beamed at Maxim. "You were on course at the Fort. Jabberwock, wasn't it?"

George introduced Maxim properly, then stood in the drizzle to enthuse over the roses while Maxim, who hadn't touched a garden since the age of six, shuffled his feet on the flagged path. It pleased Miss Tuckey, but he was glad when she took them inside and made tea.

"Now what brings the War House out here on a Saturday afternoon?"

George coughed and said gruffly, "I'd like you to be quite sure who I am"-he handed over his Mo D pass -"and I'm going to sound a bit pompous and mention the Official Secrets Acts-"

"Oh yes, I have to sign a declaration every time the Army takes me on for another job. I think I've got the gist of them by now. "

"Good. But I want to emphasise the need-to-know principle and ask you not to discuss this business with anybody except myself. Not even Harry here, if you can't get me. And if nothing morecornesof it, perhaps you'd just forget we were ever here… I'm sorry to sound melodramatic. "

Miss Tuckey laughed a blast of cigarette smoke. "I've spent most of my life getting mixed up in things that sound melodramatic from the outside. Carry on."

But it wasn't that easy for George. He took a thin sheaf of badly typed-by himself- papers from his briefcase and shuffled them as if reluctant to let them go. He had, although he would have snorted at the idea, a civil servant's fundamental fear of seeming ridiculous. It might have been his subconscious self, being more honest, who had insisted on Maxim giving up a day with his son to come and make sure he went through with this.

"I've gotresumesof… ah, happenings, spread over the last two months which I'd like you to look at. See if you can give an opinion on whether they're related."