But then there was a knock on the door, the messenger unlocked it and stuck his head in, asking: "Is it all right for coffee now, sir?"
Sladen nodded, maybe a little relieved. "Since it would be now or never, yes, it's all right now." The meeting collapsed into muttering groups. The coffee lady, in a green nylon uniform, pushed in her trolley and began handing out ready-filled cups. Agnes got hers with the pale coffee already slopped over into the two sugar lumps and two hard little biscuits in the saucer. Luckily, she took neither sugar nor biscuits.
"May I have mineblack, please?" Sladen called. Sims wanted his black, too. The coffee lady sighed loudly.
Sir Bruce sipped, made a face, and whispered to Agnes: "And, I thought we suffered at Mo D. Have you any idea of what we're talking about?"
"Not a thing. We've heard nothing about this."
He grunted. "Dothey often set up surveillance operations in this country?"
"I didn't think so. My own service was under the impression that it had thehuntin'and shootin' rights in this country. It didn't seem too much to expect, whenthey have all the rest of the world." She was wearing a brave but sad little smile. Outnumbered three to one – if you counted swinging S-S as One Of Them-she might need all the allies available.
Sir Bruce made another Highland noise. "I never could get on with those people; they appear entirely obsessed with sex. They will not get it into their heads that what the military wants ismilitary information, not the phone number of some general's girlfriend. I don't believe there's a one of them could tell the difference between a T-J2 and a kiddie's tricycle. "
Agnes nodded sympathetically. As the coffee lady trundled out, the messenger poked his head in. "Shall I lock up now, sir, or wait until she's collected the cups?"
"Oh Good God!" Sladen almost lost his temper. "It doesn'tmatter about the cups. She can get them when we've finished, if we ever have the chance. Just leave usalone."
Husband whacked out his pipe in a big glass ashtray, making a sound like a gong, then walked around the Assistant Secretary to mutter into Sladen's ear. Agnes flashed a smile at Sims and leant across after it.
"Look – the next time you want to set up a surveillance in London, do remember that we're here tohelp. We have an awful lot of experience in these things, and we can do you quite a big show at very short notice. "
Sims smiled back. His teeth were very even and, of course, very clean. "Thank you, but I think we can do all right." He had a faint German accent.
"I'm talking about a dozen sets of wheels, thirty or forty bods. Not just two old men in a van."
Sims stayed impeccably grateful. "You are very kind, but I do assure you we can manage."
"You really are getting that section organised," Agnes said admiringly.
Scott-Scobie suddenly woke up from behind his Financial Times and asked: "What was that? What did you say?"
Agnes smiled at him. "Just a little liaising at the lower levels."
S-S stared suspiciously at Sims, who lit another cigarette.
Husband came back, also distributing suspicious looks, and sat down. Sladen tapped his papers together into a squared-off pile, spread them out again, and said: "Miss Algar, gentlemen, can we get back down the mineshaft? I believe Mr Husband was going to…?"
Agnes interrupted. "Could I sort out one little problem first? I gather that the Rotherhithe operation was a full-scale affair, lots of wheels, thirty or forty personnel. Can I assume that it was cleared through the Cabinet Office? Obviously one can check, but…"
Sladen's eyes searched for comfort. A few doors down from his own room sat a Co-ordinator of Intelligence whose task it was to try and keep MI6, 5 and the true military organisations from duplicating each other's efforts and spitting in each other's beer. His main control was money, since he turned the taps of the Secret Funds, but that was rather long-term. When relations grew particularly bad he became the child go-between in a household of warring parents: "Ask your father if it would break his heart to change channels so I can watch the news." By the unwritten laws of an unadmitted game, Sixshould never have sent a war-party into Five's tribal land without at least telling the Co-ordinator.
"Or perhaps," Agnes added, "they went through the Yard?"
Everybody knew they hadn't. Nobody told Scotland Yard anything they would mind seeing as next day's headlines.
Husband wriggled himself comfortable and reached for his pipe. "Dieter?" he said to Sims.
"I arranged for the surveillance," Sims said evenly. "It was done from my section and I am afraid I did not ask for sufficient permission. I am sorry."
The can is carried here, Agnes thought.
"I think Dieter's been a bit naughty, " Husband puffed, "but it was a direct follow-up to an incident abroad, so you might say it came under the doctrine of'hot pursuit'."
"But if my Director-General asks what happened to the agreement that no operation of anything approaching this scale was to be mounted in this country without our knowledge…?"
"You don'tknow what scale it was, but you can tell him Dieter says he's sorry. " Husband waved his pipe, making brief smoke trails.
George muttered: "Drop it. Leave it lay. "
Agnes stared at him, amazed. This was just the sort of thing – a secret service playing God – that usually had George registering 9 on the Richter Scale. But then it came to her just how much of George's power flowed from the Prime Minister in person. Now that the PM was on his Scottish sickbed, George was a near-flat battery, hoarding his last sparks for really crucial issues. Scott-Scobie's strength was that of the Foreign Office, faceless but continuous while PM's came and went like lantern slides.
"I'm sorry for the interruption, Chairman," she said bleakly.
"You can also say," Husband added, "that the surveillance has been discontinued – hasn't it, Dieter?"
"Oh yes."
Sladen said: "Now we've got that settled, perhaps Mr Husband, you'd like to…"
"It's Dieter's section that's been handling this, so I'll let him fill in the background. "
Sims ground out his cigarette and began. "You will all be aware of the changes in the Politbureau in the GDR since the railway strike. Especially one of the new members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Gustav Eismark."
Sir Bruce wasn't sure he'd read that issue of The Economist.
"He is widely regarded in the West as the token liberal," Sims explained. "Just as there must be a token Jew and a woman. We believe he could be more than this. His background is with shipping, first in the yards at Rostock, then with the national shipping line. He stopped the seamen and dock workers joining the strike, but he did not take too hard a line. We prefer to see him as we think he sees himself: a pragmatist."
"The great thing to be in East Germany right now," Scott-Scobie announced. "It marks you as one of the technocrats – what a ghastly word – and they're the class that counts. The politicians may say Blah but the computers go on saying onoioo or whatever it is, and it's the people who can make senseof that who'll be in the top bunk when the dam breaks. Also Eismark's only sixty-odd and that's a mere youth in the GDR. Ulbricht died in office when he was gone eighty, didn't he?"
"That is so," Sims said, smiling – apparently grateful for S-S's help. 'Filling in the background', Agnes saw, didn't include delivering the punch lines. "We believe he may be, in the long term, a very important man. And we also know of his early life something more than the official biography, since, thirty years ago, his sister defected to here. She was a pianist, and used her mother's name, Linnarz. Wilhelmina Linnarz."
"I remember her, " Sladen pounced, thankful for something he recognised at last. "She used to play a lot of Schumann. I didn't always agree with her Chopin, and her Liszt was a disaster area, but I'd listen to her for a long time if it's Schumann. What happened to her? – is she dead?"
"We do not know. She left this country twenty years ago, and we have no trace. "