"I guess we saw it that way: I did, for sure. That's why I came back when they called. But I'd say a crusade was something you came home from, for Arnieit was a way of life. He was a believer. Not a preacher, just a quiet believer. You know one of the things he believed in? He believed in England-well, Episcopalian is your Church of England, and I think his grandfather was an immigrant back around the end of the century.
"Now when I say he believed in England, I don't mean your thatched cottages and warm beer, he didn't think the place wascute, not just his grandfather's birthplace. I wonder if Arnieeven bothered to go there. No, he thought of England as Magna Cartaand Shakespeare and Churchilland Milton and the rule of law-a lot of great ideas and ideals that maybe you were going to just crumple and throw away." He had been pacing the room with slow, majestic energy, ending by peering down through the Venetian blind at Madison below. "That's what made him a natural for Crocus."
"Crocus?"
After a moment, Magill said: "Yes. We called it that, so if it leaked out it would get mixed up with the old Winter Garden names." He sounded annoyed at himself for letting that slip, and Agnes wondered how much was genuine: the codename, the slip, the annoyance. You had to think like that with Magill. Tatham might have been a natural, but Magill had been the achiever in the secret world.
He went on flatly: "So I fixed things for him-he was posted to Germany; we didn't want him in London having to ride the cocktail circuit." That was standard practice: where possible, you ran a group in one country from a nearby one. Most Soviet espionage in the USA was directed from Canada and Mexico. "But he came through London when… when he needed to."
"And you never saw the Crocus List?"
"Like I say."
"But somebody at Langley saw it. If the time came, they'd be directing operations from there and they'd want to know just who they were directing, where they were placed in British society-everything. And somebody must have taken over when Tatham resigned."
Magill shook his head slowly. "No… I didn't tell you how he left, yet. It was just after Nixon fired Dick Helms and was dumping all over the Company to get us to take the rap for Watergate, and Congress was hearing words like assassination and setting up committees and… like everybody was pissing into our bathtub and hoping to stir up a U-boat. At one time it looked like everything we'd done in twenty years was going to be spread out on the table-and that included setting up a group to destabilise our closest ally, if it got needed. Now, do you think anybody who wasn't already tied in to that wanted to get tied in, at that time?"
Shaking his big head slowly, he lowered himself on to the chaise-longue and sat back carefully. "I said, I said it to Arnie, we had two choices: that file on the committee table, or Crocus had never happened and surely wasn't happening now. If we tried to keep it alive, we had an open flank: some guy trying to save his own ass by telling them: 'Jeez, if you think I did bad things, just look at what Maguíand Tatham were doing in London.'Arniewas ready to take that risk, but I wasn't: I'd been the one at London station. I told him, either that file went up the Hill, maybe with the list he'd recruited, or it all went in the shredder."
"Not much of a choice," Agnes said.
"No, I had him by the balls. It wasn't the only operation that went into the shredder at that time-you could figure that for yourself. So, Arniewent to London and closed it off, wiped our prints off everything, and I shut down the Langley end. And from then on, it had never happened. Only, he never spoke to me again. He'd been all set to save England and I'd stopped him. He put in his resignation, took out his pension contributions and walked."
"But with the Crocus List in his head."
Magill turned the heavy glass in his hand, studying the reflections on his drink. "I'd assume he couldn't forget it if he wanted to. It would only be ten names, maybe. Arniedidn't think that big was beautiful, he believed small was secure-and Crocus had to be secure; the blowback potential was massive. Natch, if the operation had gotten the go-code, that List would only have been part of it. The big push would be diplomatic propaganda, screwing the pound sterling on the money markets… mugging the Mother of Parliaments would've been quite a job." He smiled lopsidedly.
"Only now, your Crocus List is trying it all on its ownsome."
"Not mine, sweetie, nor the Company's neither. I told you: it never happened."
"Why did you leave the Company, Mo?"
The big man sighed heavily. "Maybe I'd stopped believing, started wondering if things couldn't have been just a bit different. Maybe I'm just saying I wish we hadn't donethe things that went wrong-old men think like that, kid themselves along. You can't regret everything. So… I hung in there another year, shredding a few more files, saying maybe it was time I went back to the law, and when I got this offer… I took my medal and they all cried. And I cried for Arnie, because he'd trusted me." He sighed again. "Sweetie, you are looking at an old moose who just can't figure out where he took the wrong trail, and he'll never get back up that hill again. Maybe I should just've stayed here and untangled Mrs Wertenheimer's fight with her landlord. That, I could'vegot right."
Despite herself, Agnes smiled with real warmth at the old crocodile -Maguíwas never a moose-shedding genuine crocodile tears. She believed in most of what he'd been saying; she had no idea of how much he believed himself.
Magill put on a brave, wry smile. "And how's about you? Is there still a crusade out there someplace?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps I'm on one now… I like to think so."
He reached and took her hand. "That's what I like about you. You belong to the good times… there were some, had to be. Tell me we can still win more than we lose."
"You and me together, Mo? Strictly under the UKUSA agreement?"
He threw his head back with laughter, then hauled her to her feet and hugged her to him. "I should've thought of invoking that long since. Yes, you and me. "
Her body had stiffened for a moment, but she made herself relax and huddle against him. This was why she was there; this, and something more… "Why, Mister Magill," she reacted with over-prim innocence.
"You and me," he repeated, smiling reassuringly. "The ones who understand crusades. D'you want…?" He nodded at a door that must be the bathroom.
"Won't be a minute." She took her big shapeless handbag with her. She was unsurprised to find a long silk bathrobe, neither masculine nor feminine, hanging on the back of the door. When she had undressed and put it on, without catching her own eye in the mirror, she went back to the other room and dumped the handbag on top of thedressing-table. As an afterthought, she routed in it to find her cigarettes and lighter, leaving it sloppily open.
Afterwards, she sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette, still in the bathrobe; Magill seemed to like his women never quite naked. He stayed stretched on the chaise-longue.
"Fix yourself another drink, sweetie."
"No thanks. It's either too early or too late."
"Never too late… didn't we just prove that?" He chuckled contentedly. "We should have got together a long time ago, when I wasn't an old man."
"You aren't old, Mo," she reassured him.
"Not with you, maybe…"
There had to be something left on the sideboard for her: she had earned it. But she was going to have to ask for it.
"Mo-where did the Crocus List get its training?"
"Germany. We had so many military establishments over there, the Company had its own place, Camp King close off Frankfurt, I guess most of it would have been there. Good practice for them getting there: fly to Paris, make contact with somebody who gives them a new passport, find your own way to Frankfurt."