'I thought there wasn't one.'
'The Secretary of State has already spoken to their Ambassador; I am told they have agreed full compensation.'
'Then there's nothing to worry about, is there? We can get on with our weekend. All go back to bed.'
They had reached the top of the steps. The founder of India, one foot casually upon a plateau of vanquished bronze, stared contentedly past them in to the glades of the Park. 'They've kept the doors open.' Lambert's voice was tender with reverence. 'They're on the weekday schedule.
My, they are going it. Well,' he remarked, receiving no admiring echo, 'you go your way, I go mine. Mind you,' he added shrewdly, 'it could do us a lot of good. Unite the rest of Europe behind us against the Nazi menace. Nothing like the stamp of jackboots to stiffen the old alliances.' With a final nod of undeterred goodwill he was assumed in to the imperial darkness of the main entrance. For a moment, Turner stared after him, measuring his slight body against the Tuscan pillars of the great portico, and there was even something wistful in his expression, as if actually he would quite like to be a Lambert, small and neat and adept and unbothered. Rousing himself at last, he continued towards a smaller door at the side of the building. It was a scruffy door with brown hardboard nailed to the inside of the glass and a notice denying entrance to unauthorised persons. He had some difficulty getting through.
'Mister Lumley's looking for you,' said the porter. 'When you can spare a minute, I'm sure.'
He was a young, effeminate man and preferred the other side of the building. 'He was enquiring most particularly, as a matter of fact. All packed for Germany, I see.'
His transistor radio was going all the time; someone was reporting direct from Hanover and there was a roar in the background like the roar of the sea.
'Well, you'll get a nice reception by the sound of it. They've already done the library, and now they're having a go at the Consulate.'
'They'd done the library by lunchtime. It was on the one o'clock. The police have cordoned off the Consulate. Three deep. There's not a hope in hell of them getting anywhere near.'
'It's got worse since then,' the porter called after him. 'They'reburning books in the market place; you wait!'
'I will. That's just what I bloody well will do.' His voice was awfully quiet but it carried a long way; a Yorkshire voice, and common as a mongrel.
'He's booked your passage to Germany. You ask Travel Section! Overland route and Second Class! Mr Shawn goes First!' Shoving open the door of his room he found Shawn lounging at the desk, his Brigade of Guards jacket draped over the back of Turner's chair. The eight buttons glinted in the stray sunbeams which, bolder than the rest, had penetrated the coloured glass. He was talking on the telephone. 'They're to put everything in one room,' he said in that soothing tone of voice which reduces the calmest of men to hysteria. He had said it several times before, apparently, but was repeating it for the benefit of simpler minds.
'With the incendiaries and the shredder. That's point one. Point two, all locally employed staff are to go home and lie low; we can't pay compensation to German citizens who get hurt on our behalf. Tell them that first, then call me back. Christ Almighty!' he screamed to Turner
as he rang off, 'have you ever tried to deal with that man?'
'What man?'
'That bald-headed clown in E and 0. The one in charge of nuts and bolts.'
'His name is Crosse.' He flung his bag in to the corner. 'And he's not a clown.'
'He's mental,' Shawn muttered, losing courage, 'I swear he is.'
'Then keep quiet about it or they'll post him to Security.'
'Lumley's looking for you.'
'I'm not going,' Turner said. 'I'm bloody well not wasting my time. Hanover's a D post. They've no codes, no cyphers, nothing. What am I supposed to do out there? Rescue the bloody Crown Jewels?'
'Then why did you bring your bag?'
He picked up a sheaf of telegrams from the desk.
'They've known about that rally for months. Everyone has, from Western Department down to us. Chancery reported it in March. For once, we saw the telegram. Why didn't they evacuate staff? Why didn't they send the kids home? No money, I suppose. No third-class seats available. Well, sod them!'
'Lumley said immediately.'
'Sod Lumley too,' said Turner, and sat down. 'I'm not seeing him till I've read the papers.'
'It's policy not to send them home,' Shawn continued, taking up Turner's point. Shawn thought of himself as attached rather than posted to Security Department; as resting, as it were, between appointments, and he missed no opportunity to demonstrate his familiarity with the larger political world. 'Business as usual, that's the cry. We can't allow ourselves to be stampeded by mob rule. After all, the Movement is a minority. The British lion,' he added, making an unconfident joke, 'can't allow itself to be upset by the pinpricks of a few hooligans.'
'Oh it can not; my God it can't.'
Turner put aside one telegram and began another. He read fast and without effort, with the confidence of an academic, arranging the papers in to separate piles according to some undisclosed criterion.
'So what's going on? What have they got to lose apart from their honour?' he demanded, still reading. 'Why the hell call us in? Compensation's Western Department's baby, right? Evacuation's E and O's baby, right? If they're worried about the lease, they can go and cry at the Ministry of Works. So why the hell can't they leave us in peace?'
'Because it's Germany,' Shawn suggested weakly.
'Oh roll on.'
'Sorry if it spoilt something,' Shawn said with an unpleasant sneer, for he suspected Turner of a more colourful sex life than his own.
The first relevant telegram was from Bradfield. It was marked Flash; it had been despatched at eleven forty and submitted to the Resident Clerk at two twenty-eight. Skardon, Consul General in Hanover, had summoned all British staff and families to the Residence, and was making urgent representations to the police. The second telegram consisted of a Reuter newsflash timed at eleven fifty-three: demonstrators had broken in to the British Library; police were unequal to the situation; the fate of Fräulein Eick [sic] the librarian was unknown.
Hard upon this came a second rush telegram from Bonn: 'Norddeutscher Rundfunk reports Eick repeat Eick killed by mob.' But this was in turn immediately contradicted, for Bradfield, through the good offices of Herr Siebkron of the Ministry of the Interior ('with whom I have a close relationship'), had by then succeeded in obtaining direct contact with the Hanover police. According to their latest assessment, the British Library had been sacked and its books burned before a large crowd. Printed posters had appeared with anti- British slogans such as 'TheFarmers won't Pay for your Empire!' and 'Work for your own bread, don't steal ours!'
Fräulein Gerda Eich [sic] aged fifty-one of 4 Hohenzollernweg, Hanover, had been dragged down two flights of stone steps, kicked and punched in the face and made to throw her own books in to the fire. Police with horses and anti-riot equipment were being brought in from neighbouring towns.
A marginal annotation by Shawn stated that Tracing Section had turned up a record of the unfortunate Fräulein Eich. She was a retired school teacher, some time in British Occupational employment, some time secretary of the Hanover Branch of the Anglo- German Society, who in 1962 had been awarded a British decoration for services to international understanding.
'Another anglophile bites the dust,' Turner muttered.
There followed a long if hastily compiled summary of broadcasts and bulletins. This, too, Turner studied with close application. No one, it seemed, and least of all those who had been present, was able to say precisely what had triggered off the riot, nor what had attracted the crowd towards the library in the first place. Though demonstrations were now a commonplace of the German scene, a riot on this scale was not; Federal authorities had confessed themselves 'deeply concerned'. Herr Ludwig Siebkron of the Ministry of the Interior had broken his habitual silence to remark to a Press Conference that there was 'cause for very real anxiety'. An immediate decision had been taken to provide additional protection for all official and quasi-official British buildings and residences throughout the Federal Republic. The British Ambassador, after some initial hesitation, had agreed to impose a voluntary curfew on his staff.
Accounts of the incident by police, press and even delegates themselves were hopelessly confused. Some declared it was spontaneous; a collective gesture aggravated by the word 'British'which happened to be exhibited on the side of the library building. It was natural, they said, that as the day of decision in Brussels drew rapidly closer, the Movement's policy of opposition to the Common Market should assume a specifically anti- British form. Others swore they had seen a sign, a white handkerchief that fluttered from a window; one witness even claimed that a rocket had risen behind the town hall and emitted stars of red and gold. For some the crowd had surged with a positive impulse, for others it had 'flowed'; for others again it had trembled. 'It was led from the centre,' one senior police officer reported. 'The periphery was motionless until the centre moved.' 'Those at the centre,' Western Radio maintained, 'kepttheir composure. The outrage was perpetrated by a few hooligans at the front. The others were then obliged to follow.' On one point only they seemed to agree: the incident had taken place when the music was loudest. It was even suggested by a woman witness that the music itself had been the sign which started the crowd running.