Her car was utterly undistinguished, a distinction that would not please its makers, but suited Agnes's instinct to choose the average and inconspicuous. Maxim had noticed how she had adopted certain American phrases and mannerisms as well, not because she was trying to pass as an American, but just to blend into the background. That was something an infantryman could understand.
"The Russian visit," he said. "What do you make of this leak?"
"Have you thought how many departments would know anyway? Number 10, the FO, my mob, Defence probably, and the Met. It doesn't have to be your Abbey activists."
"Somebody might have let slip something, they wouldn't have let loose every detail."
"True… Were you thinking that broadcasting it was another piece of the pattern?"
"Could be. And it does show these people are well connected. Security for the Russians had better be good."
"D'you think it'll be you again?"
"I don't think I'm our favourite guard detail commander, right now."
"But you'd do it."
"I'd do what I was told."
"And maybe a little bit more… I wonder if those idiots realise just how much they frighten you and me… people who support a system because, in the end, the answers have to come through the system. Throw out the rule of law and you throw out the string that'll lead you back out of the maze. Live or dead, the Minotaur's won. D'you know what I'm talking about?"
"Greek legend, among other things."
"And all on two glasses of Diplomatic white wine. You must have an intoxicating presence, Harry. And while we're on the subject of law and order, were you planning to go West under your own name?"
"I was going to ask: if I make a return trip in one day, no hotel, I could buy an airline ticket for cash and give any name I like-couldn't I?"
"They might ask for some identification: in this country, the man who carries cash is guilty until proven innocent. However, I can do you one unused Canadian passport and a Saskatchewan driving licence, not even one previous little-old-lady owner. Canadians don't need a US visa."
"I see," Maxim said thoughtfully. "And how does that fit into the UKUSA agreement?"
"Imperfectly. But very occasionally we used to get somebody who wanted to talk to us and had good reason not to talk to the Feds or Charlie, and the simplest thing was to slip him into Canada and cite the Old-Commonwealth-Pals Act. However, our current D-G's stopped all that, so you might as well use it before the date-stamp runs out."
23
The bar/restaurant near Union Station was dolled up to look like an English pub and doing it better than most London pubs did, to Maxim's traditionalist eye. In his view, London pubs were trying to be either video game arcades or sets for Oscar Wilde plays.
"They sometimes have jazz here in the evenings," Agnes chattered, "although I don't know if it's up to your standards. Oscar Peterson was in town the other week, I read-you like him, don't you? Pity you weren't here, I could have rustled up a ticket or two and you could have explained the finer nuances. Does jazz have finer nuances?"
Maxim thought briefly about a pun on Ray Nance, then just smiled into his beer: in a pub he felt duty bound to drink beer, although it certainly wasn't English ("With all those lovely vitamins floating around in it, damn it, you cansee them," as a fellow officer newly back from the USA had put it).
"So you met our dear D-G at the Steering Committee," she went on. "Isn't he loveable? Just what. we've always wanted, an academic international lawyer running Security. Can't think why we've stuck so long with people who knew something about the job."
She stabbed out her cigarette and lit another. She had plunked her pack with the lighter on top of the bar, as if she were planning to smoke the lot before she moved on. It was another American gesture, though far fewer Americans do it in these cancer-conscious days.
"There is a 1952 directive that's never been superseded," she said deliberately. "The Service should, and I quote: 'be kept absolutely free from any political bias or influence', unquote. A pretty thought, and what it really means is Try, brothers, Try. You can't draw a hard line between international and national politics, not these days. Political influence is what the Other Side wants, as much as anything, and you've got to meet it in that arena. But we did try, damn it. We knew what lay down any other road: a political scandal that made it worthwhile for Parliament to get involved in Security. That's what happened with Charlie's Indians. They'll never get away from Capitol Hill now, and they'll have to keep playing politics just to protect themselves.
"So we tried-and we got a political appointment anyway. Now we're part of government policy, which happens to be hear no evil, see no evil… one bloody monkey's enough if he's in the top job." She snapped her cigarette in her fingers and burnt her knuckle. "I'm getting all bitter and twisted: you'd better feed me. I just don't have many people I can say these things to."
"You didn't say it around the Service?"
"Why d'you think I'm in Washington? It's a nice place, but my job's in London. Oh welclass="underline" it could have been Gibraltar."
The eating at least was American, at a tiny corner table lit by a single candle in a jar. Agnes chose quiche, Maxim hadn't been in Washington long enough to tire of seafood, so he took crab. On a small stage at the far end, a man with a neat beard began tuning a Spanish guitar to the piano.
After a while, Maxim asked: "Why should this chap Magill tell us anything tomorrow?"
"I don't know that he wilclass="underline" but he was in High Places at the right times, so it's worth trying the Good Old Times routine…" But just why am I doing this? she wondered. Yes, I believe those people exist and they frighten me and I want them destroyed. But I'm sticking my neck out: one squeak from the FBI that I'm breaching the UKUSA agreement and my own Service will swing the big axe… Pity about Agnes Algar, could have gone a long way in the Service, but went charging off on some unauthorised stunt in America, typically female in the end, trying to save the career of some soldier who'd got himself…
Isthat why I'm doing this? For Harry?
She glanced cautiously at him, munching his crab in the candlelight. He had a calm lean face, never to be called handsome, and if he looked up he would put on his quick protective smile, to say Don't ask about me, I'm all right, talk about somebody else…
You're not all right, chum. I know that much about you. But in this one you'reright, and that makes me right, too, without having to decide just why I'm doing this, and perhaps doing more than I'll ever get around to telling you.
"Why did Magill leave the CIA?" Maxim asked. "Was it just retirement?"
Good old Harry: let's get back to facts. "No, he left early. I don't know quite when, some time in the Seventies. It was a bad time for Charlie's Indians: the White House cavalry was charging through the reservation every second day. First Nixon purged them to get the spotlight off himself, then Ford had a go and Carter ran his ownmassacrée. At one point they dropped seven hundred men -seven hundred-think what that does for morale. Think what it could do to security. I think Mo left in the middle of all that. I imagine he just saw the writing on the wall and didn't like their spelling."
Maxim had finished his crab and was pushing bits of salad around his plate, trying to identify them in the dimness, and listening with half-turned head to a tenor saxophonist who had joined the guitar to swap phrases of the Beale Street Blues.
Agnes watched with amusement as his interest quickened or faded with each phrase. When the number ended, he clapped in a careful way, unconsciously trying to say exactly what he felt about it. The other diners, who mostly hadn't been listening, just clapped.