"Could they have gone ahead and set it up anyway?"
"No. They could never have done anything wide-scale without us knowing-and a Resistance movement has to be wide-scale to be any use. You must have learnt something about this in recent months?" She said it with a sly smile; he hadn't mentioned any of his own stay-behind training.
"Would you remember who was involved from Charlie at the time?"
"Why?"
"George read me over a list of CIA personnel who were in London in the late Sixties-"
"A list? He's barmy. It must be like a telephone book: their London station's the biggest they've got, there would have been hundreds coming through…"
Maxim silently handed over his notes.
Agnes read them through, then said more calmly: "Well, he does seem to have got the top people… I met most of these… Bodey, but he's dead, now; Kilmartin was strictly an analyst, wouldn't have been involved… Ithink Foulqueresigned way back… Magill, yes, old Mighty Mo, I rememberhim. But he retired, too; they're just about all gone, the old team.
"Mo would know something about it," Agnes went on thoughtfully. "He was OSS, then in London at the time of Winter Garden, then he came back in the mid-Sixties. A real player, that man; could charm the pants right off a girl."
"Did he?" Maxim asked innocently.
"No… but it might be worth talking over old times with him. He's got a law office in New York; a lot of the old team were lawyers. He must be sixty-something now… yes, I think I'll give him a call. D'you feel like a shopping trip to New York? Everybody ought to get a bite of the Big Apple."
In a way, it was a waste of the cover story Maxim had been kiting for his trip to St Louis, but if it was a step forward…
October is the cocktail month in Washington; the British embassy can be throwing three parties a week, and with the Liaison Office's yen to keep Maxim busy, he inevitably found himself sipping deep-frozen Scotch with a wing-commander from the Office.
"How on earth," he wondered aloud, "does anybody stay sober in this city?"
"Iron willpower and a stainless-steel liver." The RAF man peered into his empty glass, trying to decide which to rely on. "And the last man on his feet gets the extra hundred mil in foreign aid. No"-he nodded at the babbling drawing-room behind them-"this is just froth. The real business gets done at working lunches and small dinner parties. When they start feeding you, you'll know you're somebody. Ah, I spy a presidential aide: that makes the evening A Success." A small crowd had knotted at the door where the Ambassador was greeting guests. "Clay Culliman, you've heard of him?"
"I met him," Maxim said, stupidly slipping in a bit of inter-service one-upmanship.
"Didyou, now?-Where?"
"The President's visit to London."
"Of course. Yes, you were the chap at the Abbey." His round pink face beamed. "That's something to tell my wife. We couldn't get a babysitter, so I was expecting a cold TV dinner thrown at my head when I rolled back. Now I can say I've been mixing with both the noble and the notorious. You won't mind being that, for the sake of a fellow warrior in the cold drinks war? I think I can risk one more, in that case. Nothing for you?" He ambled off towards the nearest tray.
Disgusted by his own conceit, Maxim drifted out to the steps down to the lawn-the night was still warm enough for the big windows to be open-flanked by two huge, discreetly floodlit magnolia trees. A few couples and small groups were there already, muttering and sipping in the half-shadows, but Maxim stayed clear, drowning his sorrow in darkness.
I wish I could bedoing something, moving, he thought, with an infantryman's loathing of being pinned down in a known position.
Beyond the silhouette of the trees, flat black against the glow of Georgetown, lay Dumbarton Oaks, site of the 1944 conference that had shaped the United Nations. Or maybe those treeswere Dumbarton Oaks, and he had a momentary vision of the free world's foreign ministers sitting like Robin Hood's gang around a flickering camp-fire, greasy lumps of venison in their fingers, arguing about who should be permanent members of the Security Council.
But no, Dumbarton Oaks must also be a mansion or conference centre, and the vision faded, leaving an ember of a smile as he turned to find another drink.
His way was blocked by the Ambassador and Culliman, talking politely about gardens as they came through the french windows. Culliman glanced at Maxim, did a double-take, and stretched out his hand. "It's Major… ah…"
"Maxim," before the Ambassador had to admit he couldn't remember, either.
"Sure, we met… yeh, just before things got exciting. Good to see you. You'll be over for the After Action Study. Kind of you to come."
"No trouble."
"George keeping fit?" Culliman chuckled at the idea; the Ambassador murmured something and backed into the room. "I guess you'll be getting back for the Soviet visit, now."
"The which?"
"You haven't caught up with tonight's news? Yeh, I know how it is when you're travelling. It'll be all in the Post tomorrow. Your government's invited a Soviet delegation to talk about Berlin next week. All the details, place of meeting, flight times, everything."
"Did we announce allí/iaí?"
"Doesn't make your job any easier, huh? No, it wasn't announced: it leaked. It's good to know ours isn't the only State Department with too many back doors." There was a hard edge on Culliman's tone.
"I doubt I'd be involved," Maxim said slowly, thinking fast. "The President's unit was a one-off thing…"
"Well, I guess once we hear it officially, I'll be drafting a note saying we don't think it's a frightfully spiffing idea." He grinned and shook Maxim's hand again. "Hope to be seeing you, Major."
Maxim trailed into the room behind him, vaguely looking for a fresh drink and finding Agnes instead, who had been more than vaguely looking for him. "Mixing in White House circles, are we, Harry? What changes in American policy can we hope for as a result of your high-level talks?"
"He was telling me about the Russian visit."
"Oh yes." Agnes's face became grim. "I just got that myself. Good old Britain: not only doing the wrong thing but unable to keep it secret. Great start to a party." Looking around, Maxim saw the Ambassador already making defensive gestures to a couple of guests. He also caught a number of covert glances at himself: was that what a few moment's conversation with a presidential aide did for you in this town?
"Let's get out of here," he said irritably.
"An old line, but welcome nonetheless. No, Jerry, you can't have him-" to Colonel Lomax, who was waiting to pounce. "Harry's carrying my books home from schooltoday. And he's taking me shopping in New York tomorrow. Christmas is coming and he thinks I ought to know about some little joints called Tiffany's and Bloomingdale's. Is that all right with your Office? He can't pawn his ticket home if he's flying Riff-RAF airlines…
"He had the look of somebody about to invite you home to cold chicken and salad with a mug of real warm English beer," she continued as they walked the long black-and-white-tiled corridor. "Don't bump into those pillars, they're fakes, they don't really support anything except an illusion of Empire… Yes, I spoke to Mo Magill, he'll see us tomorrow morning, we'll fly up on the shuttle, I don't know what we'll get, but… and I've got a line into St Louis: there's a thing called the Western Manuscripts collection at UMSL-ghastly word, but they use it themselves, it means University of Missouri-St Louis-that latches on to the papers of operations like CCOAC, and they've got them. Can you imitate an academic?-like not washing or changing your shirt for the next few days…?"