Maxim said: "Oh."
Chapter 25
Jim Caswell was running the garage by himself when Maxim got there. Blagg sat in the tiny office listening to the radio and guarding the telephone; he grinned and made a joky salute through the window to Maxim.
"Did you find me some wheels?" Maxim asked.
"Yep: a Renault 16TX."
Maxim looked dubious. "Ouch. It's complicated…"
"It's in good nick. I've got it up on the lift now." He ushered Maxim through to the rear half of the garage, a gloomy and grimy workshop shut off by big sliding doors. A ragbag collection of cars sat around awaiting buyers or, for some, a generous scrap dealer.
Caswell caught Maxim's look. "Yes, the old man isn't going to get any Rolls-Royce dealership, he's let this end of the business go. But that one's all right."
The Renault up on the lift was dark green and several years old – indeed, the model had been out of production for several years-but looked reasonably clean and undented. Not that Maxim knew all that much about cars: he just thought Renaults were too complicated for most British garages to understand.
"I've checked it all over," Caswell went on, "your brakes, lights, exhaust, cooling, tyres. It's allright. They don't have all that much acceleration, but it cruises like a bird and you said you wanted to go a distance. And it's a family car, a thing like this: big boot, bags of comfort. It's not a tearaway's car; the law doesn't get suspicious about these things. I suppose you are going to break the law with it?"
Maxim nodded. "Oh yes. I'm going to break the law, all right."
"D'you want to tell me?"
"Yes, I want to tell you."
When Maxim had finished, Blagg was staring open-mouthed. Caswell ground out his cigarette, nodded to himself, and said: "I knew they had some real fruitcakes in The Firm, but they must've gone right to the back of the oven for that lot. "
"They can't always be choosey; they have to take the people with the experience and the contacts, and they're competing with all the other intelligence services – the CIA, France, Israel. You can't run it like a security service, handpicking your people and training them up yourself." Perversely, Maxim found himself defending Six, though the words were George's.
"It was those buggers that shot me?" Blagg wanted to be certain.
"Yes, but you didn't do too badly yourself."
"All right if I come along?"
"Are you fit?"
"Let them worry about that. "
Caswell said: "He's a bloody sight better than you'd expect. I suppose you're offering me a job, too?"
"Yes." Maxim forced himself to look Caswell in the eyes. "I've got no bullshit to spread on it. It's a good job to say No to. You're a married man."
"I've been a married man as long as you've known me. It didn't stop you trying to get me killed before. "
Maxim smiled. "I'd still settle for the wheels and whatever you've got in your bottom drawer. "
Blagg looked puzzled; Caswell moved very slowly to light a fresh cigarette, one-handed, and said with wide-eyed innocence: "I wouldn't know what you're talking about, Major."
"I don't either, but I'd still like to borrow it. I've heard you often enough about what the world's coming to and how when you left the service you were going to be damn sure you had something to defend your home and family with. "
After a pause, Caswell said: "There's an automatic shotgun."
"Automaitc?"
"I know, I know." Soldiers despise the automatic shotgun, which is strictly speaking only semi-automatic, reloading itself after each shot, as being too complex and likely to go wrong. The SASpreferred a pump-action type for blowing away locked doors and sometimes softer targets. "But you try using a pump-action with a stiff elbow; take you a week. It's the usual Browning; holds five."
Blagg asked: "Aren't theylegal?" That idea seemed to shock him as much as the automaticness.
"Oh yes," Caswell said, "if you've got a licence. I have."
"I'll take it," Maxim said, "if the shot's the right size."
"Special SG." That was a form of buckshot, quite big enough to kill a man at twenty metres. "But why are you scratching around for stuff like this?"
"Jim, you just don't know how unofficial we are. All I've got so far is two thirty-eights, mine and the one Ron was using."
Blagg's knobbly face cracked into a happy smile, showing very white but irregular teeth. "You hung onto it, then. I was beginning to like that one." What he meant, Maxim reflected, was that he'd killed two people with that pistol – though that was no bad reason to like a gun. "Mind," Blagg added, "I'd as soon use the Browning, if you don't want it, sir?"
"That's mine, lad," Caswell said. "You can use the grenades."
Maxim stared. "Whatgrenades?"
"I was going to tell you about them."
Maxim took his own car down to the village to stock up on food and put together a first-aid kit from a chemist that stayed open late. When he got back the garage hadclosed signs out and Blagg was checking the tyre pressures of the Renault on the forecourt. Caswell waved Maxim through the sliding door to the harbour of lost cars; both he and Blagg had changed into baggy trousers, drab shirts and jackets with lots of pockets. Agnes must have rung.
"We're all loaded up," Caswell reported crisply. "The young lady from Five rang to say they're as sure as they can be about the place. She didn't say where, just to meet her outsidethe old John Barnes building at Finchley Road station; she said you'd know it. I told her we'd be there at 2100. " Half an hour ago, he'd have said nine o'clock.
Maxim parked his car among the drop-outs, a little saddened to see how well it fitted in, and carried the bag of first aid and his holdall out to the Renault. They helped him. The hatchback was open before he got there – the Browning and grenades had to be in there somewhere, but nicely and casually concealed – and they stowed his stuff for him, smiling cheerfully the while. Then Caswell held out the keys so that he could drive the first stretch, to get to know the car, the way a commander should.
God damn it!-this isn't an exercise. It isn't even The Real Thing, a Widow's Pension or Glory. It's just an amateur-night effort to save something from somebody else's cock-up. And yet they're grinning like chimpanzees at their first tea-party, even Jim with those years of service, and they don't even know…
They know, he thought, oh theyknow. It might be a lot easier for me if they didn't know.
He took the keys. "All right, gents: we're off to war in the usual way and for the usual reasons."
Getting to Finchley Road station meant a diagonal grind right across south-east and central London, and Maxim hoped to hell there was some point in it and that they weren't going to have to turn back to Tilbury or out to Harwich. But it was certainly a chance to get to know the car, both on the brief snatches of motorway and in traffic. It was much as Caswell had said: a high-revving hot-running engine giving a very comfortable fast cruise but not much jump-off from traffic lights.
Every now and then Maxim caught himself feeling guilty about not watching the mirrors enough, or taking too direct a route. But this was one time he knew nobody was following. Sims was busy and nobody else wanted to know.
Agnes was waiting for them, wearing brown slacks and a worn but expensive suede jacket and carrying an airline bag.
Maximlooked at her suspiciously. "Now hold on, you're not joining the People's Private Army. "
"I'm liaising, duckie. You get information out of my service only through me. Aren't you going to introduce me?"
Maxim did. Agnes smiled at Blagg and nodded. "Ah yes, we've heard quite a lot about you of late. How are you, now?"