There was a moment while everybody thought about that, 84 probably for no good reason except that they didn't like to see twenty years go by without offering up a few seconds' respectful silence, then Sir Bruce asked: "So she didn't go back to the GDR?"
Husband said: "We're very inclined to doubt it. They'd have put her in the freak show, confessing how misled she was by capitalist gold. One defector that repenteth is better propaganda than nine-and-ninety loyal party workers, isn't that so, Dieter?"
But ofcourse, Agnes realised, Sims – or whoever he'd been born – must once have been on the far side of The Wall, too. She'd been slow to see that, and tried to make up for it by saying quickly: "Her jumping over can't have helped Eis-mark's career."
Sims nodded, thanking her. "That is so. But he was only young then, about thirty, and he did not have so far to fall. And also his background was very good. His father had been killed in the Rostock riots of 1931, and it seems that Gustavhimself had for certain been a Worker Youth. "
"In 1945," Husband said, "they were trading cigarettes -which were better than gold in those days – for Party cards and affidavits that they'd always been true Worker Youths -once they found themselves in the Russian Zone. There were – are still, I'm sure – plenty of overnight heroes of the Resistance with Hitler Youth uniforms buried in their cellars. "
"Yes, yes, yes," Scott-Scobie said with cheery impatience. "But we can accept that our Gustavwasn't one of those. Apart from anything else, he wasn't even in the Russian Zone to begin with. He actually went East soon after the war ended, if Guy's files mean anything. So his wicked sister's vanished and now he's big man on campus. Let's read on. "
"In the war," Sims said,"Gustavhad married. He had a son, that is now Manfred, who is a colonel in the SSD. But Gustav's wife was killed at the end of the war. His sister then helped to bring up the child while Gustav wasin Moscow for two years, at the university and taking the political indoctrination. He did not marry again until much later, when he was coming back to political life after the economic changes of 1962, which made the shipping more important. Politically, itis important to be married. It is normal, and the Democratic Republic is very modest."
"An absolute hotbed of puritanism, " Scott-Scobie cut in. "Rife with morality. When Frau Ulbricht was den mother she ran the Politbureau like a convent school. "
"So when Gustav Eismarkcame to the Secretariat," Sims went on, "naturally we looked in the files about him. There was not much; we do not have the money to research every politician in the Republic. But now, we said to our people, if anybody has something about Eismark that they had not the money to explore, now we can unlock the money."
"Standard operating procedure," Husband said, quickly smoothing over Sim's full-frontal use of the word 'money', even though there was nobody there from the Treasury to hear it.
"And one person said yes, she thought she had something. "
"Something interesting or something dirty?" Sir Bruce asked.
Scott-Scobie grinned at him. "Both, we hoped. It's the dirty bits that make the world go round, don't you find, General?"
"Please… " from Sladen.
"So we said to go on, to investigate. She reported that she was sure she would be able to prove something, but it needed just one operation, with more money. It was to be in a small town called Bad Schwärzendem."
"Do you know the place, George?" Scott-Scobie called.
"A spa witha Gradierwerkdown near Paderborn. I toddled through it when I was with Rhine Army. What happened then?"
Husband said: "It went wrong, badly wrong," then lit a match and Sims found he was holding the ball again.
"There was a shooting. Our agent was killed, so was the town registrar. If you read the German papers, it was in there. We lost the money, we did not get the proof. "
"Ohdear," Agnes said brightly.
Sim's smile stayed as bright and unchipped as his teeth. "But the identity of our agent was not discovered and the police seem to think it was a crime of passion without any third person involved. We do not expect any blowback."
"Ah, thatis lucky," Agnes helped. Husband glared at her.
Scott-Scobie also gave her a look, then past her at George. "I have to say that we in The Office put the highest, thevery highest priority on acquiring this proof- if it still exists."
George asked: "Knowledge of what? And in what form?"
"That," Husband said, "is what we would like your Major Maxim to toddle round and tell us. "
Chapter 10
The cricket ground was wide and shapeless, surrounded mostly by the back gardens of houses, but one stretch gave onto the main road, where the taxi from Littlehampton station dropped Agnes off. She walked up a gravel drive crowded with large cars, past an old-fashioned wooden pavilion and two clay tennis courts, ignored the adult game going on in front of her and started around the boundary to the second and much smaller game in the far corner.
Maxim was sitting on a wooden bench in the uncertain shade of a row of poplars and chatting to two small schoolboys in fresh whites. He stood up as she got near, taking off his sunglasses politely, and they shook hands. He wore a loose cottonblousonbuttoned at the waist over a blue tee-shirt and faded khaki slacks.
The bench was cluttered with cricket gear; Maxim asked the boys: "Could you find us a couple of chairs, do you think?" They rushed away with competitive enthusiasm.
"The word of command," -Agnes said admiringly. "An Army training has its uses after all."
"For finding a place to sit down, consult us first."
"Was one of those your boy?"
"No, he's batting now."
"Oh. Which one?" She put on her own sunglasses and looked out across the worn pitch. The umpires looked very big and the ten- and eleven-year-old schoolboys very small, like squat white fleas that stayed still or suddenly hopped about and often fell over.
"The bowler's end. Not taking strike."
The other two boys hurried back, each with a folding wooden chair that was probably less comfortable than thebench but certainly newer. Maxim had them set up a few yards away, thanked the boys gravely, and they sat down.
"It's a very nice rig," Maxim said, "but you didn't really need to get into your Number Ones. "
"Thank you, kind sir, but I didn't dress for you. I dressed for a meeting whose minutes will be classified Top Secret. "
"Ah. Sorry."
"You were one of the main items on the meeting paper. Afterwards, George asked me to come down and see if I could talk some sense into you. From what I learned at the meeting I can't see why he thinks I'm up to such a task, but maybela bête à ses raisons que la belle ne connaît pas. Doyou think you can have some sense talked into you?"
Maxim frowned out at the cricket. "You can always try. What did he say?"
"Do you want it with or without the four-letter words? Let me warn you that without them, it's very short. "
"I think I got most of those yesterday. Go on."
"Do you have any information – I imagine it would be in documentary form – concerning a certain East German politician?"
"What?" Maxim looked convincingly blank.
Agnes sighed. "I should have known it wouldn't be that simple. " She took off her pastel jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. "Aren't you rather hot in thatblouson?"
"I'm fine. " But he did look a little overheated, so why didn't he at least unbutton it? Because he had a shoulder holster on underneath, of course. Having the hounds from Six on his trail had made him wary – perhaps especially so around his only child. But, she realised, there was a pleasant incongruity about watchingcricket, of all things, next to a man with a concealed pistol.
"How much did your unwilling informant from Six tell you about Plainsong?"
"About which?"
'He didn't tell you much. Plainsong: that's their codename for the whole operation."