‘One of your other reporting officers commented that you lacked patience and didn’t suffer fools gladly, Mr Richter. I hope your present attitude is not an indication of the way you might conduct yourself if we did offer you employment.’
‘That rather depends,’ Richter said, ‘on the fools I would be working for.’
Baldwin looked up sharply. ‘I’m not sure I like the tone of that remark,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to suggest that I’m a fool?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richter replied evenly. ‘I don’t know you well enough yet.’
Baldwin stared at Richter for a few moments, then made another note on the minute sheet, and underlined it twice. Richter was beginning to feel like a schoolboy in front of the headmaster.
Unfortunately, the only halfway interesting offer of possible employment Richter had received, since departing from the service of the Queen, had been a slip of paper bearing Baldwin’s signature, which had fallen out of a buff envelope on the previous Thursday morning. What he really couldn’t afford to do was annoy this man too much.
‘Look,’ Richter said, ‘I’ve travelled halfway across England to get here — a very long, irritating and uncomfortable journey thanks to our new cattle-class service — and I face the prospect of doing the same trip in reverse, as soon as I get out of here. The only difference, going back, is that I’ll probably have to stand up for most of the way.’ He paused. ‘As you’ve already said, I do need a job, but I don’t have any readily saleable skills unless, for some bizarre reason, you’re looking for a Harrier pilot. If you think you can employ me, I’d very much like to hear about it, but I really would appreciate it if you’d get to the point.’
Baldwin nodded slowly. ‘What sort of a job do you think we have on offer?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’ Richter replied. ‘Your letter inviting me to an interview only mentioned — and I quote — “possible employment as a retired officer in a post offering challenging and wide-ranging duties”. It also hinted at travel, foreign travel, but it didn’t say anything about the nature of the work, nor about the salary. Both of those topics happen to be of considerable interest to me.’
Baldwin appeared to come to a decision. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let’s look at specifics. First, the salary. This job is based on the normal retired officer scaling, and attracts an initial salary of twenty-eight thousand pounds a year, plus expenses.’
‘That amount might attract some people,’ Richter said, ‘but it certainly doesn’t attract me. Why is it so low?’
‘I take it you’re unfamiliar with the retired officer system,’ Baldwin replied. ‘All retired officer posts are subject to abated salaries because they take into account the pension that each appointee has already earned from his previous service career.’
Richter looked at him. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t surprise me. I suppose that’s another rule dreamed up by some civil servant at the Treasury.’ Baldwin nodded. ‘And I suppose,’ Richter continued, ‘that it was another Treasury civil servant who decreed that most officers should be forced to leave the services between January and the end of March, so as to ensure that they are denied the higher pensions and gratuities they would be entitled to if they continued serving after the first day of April?’
‘Probably, yes.’ Baldwin looked as if another smile was dangerously close.
‘While at the same time,’ Richter concluded, ‘ensuring that their own substantial and fully index-linked salaries, and eventual index-linked pensions, are completely protected?’
The smile finally appeared. ‘Who’s pontificating now, Mr Richter? You’re perfectly correct, though. But, as they say, there’s no point in having power if you can’t abuse it.’
Baldwin selected another slim file from the desktop and opened it. ‘You’re a bachelor, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Richter replied.
‘Would you have any objection to being positively vetted?’
Positive vetting, and an even more rigorous process known as enhanced positive vetting, are the most stringent security checks that are normally applied to anyone working for the British government.
‘Two things,’ Richter said. ‘First, just because I’m thirty-nine years old and not married doesn’t necessarily mean that I spend all my spare time interfering with small boys or cruising gay bars.’
‘I never implied that—’
‘Yes, you did,’ Richter snapped. ‘Secondly, I’ve already been PV’d for the last staff job I did in London, at Military Air Traffic Operations Headquarters. That should be somewhere in my file.’
Baldwin looked somewhat embarrassed; not, Richter suspected, about making a veiled implication of his sexual orientation, but more because he himself had missed the PV clearance.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said quickly. He flicked on through the file until he found the relevant papers and studied them. Then he closed the file again. ‘Now, the job itself,’ he continued. ‘In simple terms, you’d be a courier.’
‘Do you mean a Queen’s Messenger?’
‘Certainly not.’ Baldwin looked slightly shocked. ‘Queen’s Messengers are very carefully chosen, normally from among senior ex-Army officers.’
‘And insubordinate ex-naval officers don’t fit the bill, is that it?’
‘You said it, Mr Richter, not me.’
Richter nodded. ‘So what sort of a courier, then?’ He added, ‘I hope you’re not proposing I join those ranks of pensioners who plod about the Ministry of Defence, pushing trolleys loaded with files.’
Baldwin shook his head in slight irritation. ‘Of course I’m not. We’d hardly be headhunting someone for a job like that.’
Now, that was an illuminating remark, Richter thought. He had assumed that the invitation to swell the ranks of retired officers, doing jobs that regular service officers wouldn’t usually touch with a ten-foot bargepole, was simply a normal Ministry of Defence ruse to save on the cost of advertising. If Baldwin was right, it looked as if — despite his service record — someone, for some reason, had actually decided they wanted him to work for them.
Baldwin looked down yet again at the file. ‘We have,’ he said, ‘a need for classified documents and other materials to be transported by hand from place to place, nationally and internationally. That is the job for which we believe you are well suited.’
Baldwin’s pedantic speech was beginning to get on Richter’s nerves. ‘Why and why?’ he asked.
‘Why and why what?’
‘Why don’t you send these documents and other bits and pieces by secure mail or by Queen’s Messenger, if they’re that important? And why do you think I would be any good at acting as a postman?’
‘First,’ Baldwin said, ‘some of these materials are far too sensitive to entrust to the Post Office, under any circumstances. Second, the Queen’s Messengers normally travel by regular routes, and their schedule is generally so busy that they cannot be pulled out to do special trips for us.’
‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘So why me?’
Baldwin opened the file again. ‘The one thing that all your reporting officers have consistently said about you,’ he began, ‘with the sole exception of that officer you abused in the Yeovilton Wardroom bar, is that you are totally loyal. Most have also commented on your competence, resourcefulness and stubborn attitude. The man we are looking for will need all those qualities.’
Richter thought about that for a few moments. ‘You mentioned a starting salary of twenty-eight thousand pounds a year,’ he said. ‘What about the annual increments?’
Baldwin smiled slightly. According to the pre-release Resettlement Briefings that Richter had attended, in most recruitment interviews the moment the interviewee starts asking about money, he or she is already mentally committed to taking the job. Richter wasn’t actually committed yet, but he was certainly interested.