"Were they from sunny Russia?" George asked.
"Never in your life. The Centre wouldn't do anything so crude. That was the STB, they panicked and called in the Al Capones to try and sort out the defection before Moscow ever heard of it. Somebody really must love Professor John White Tyler – but then, I believe he loves quite a lot of people, one at a time."
George ignored that. "And have you found out who in your mob might be a traitor and comes to work on the Gatwick line every morning?"
Agnes took a couple of calming breaths. "Your dashboard clock isn't working."
"Dashboard clocks aren't supposed to work. Well?"
"George – how do you expect us to go about that?"
"Rather fast." He rubbed a clear patch on the misted windscreen. "You know – when the up-state vote comes in, we may find we're actually in the black. We did get a defector-"
"For about five minutes."
"Long enough to learn that Greyfriars has a steer on the Tyler letter, if it still exists. And a line into a bad apple in your barrel. They've also lost two trained cads-"
"Those come ten to the koruna."
"Never mind. Now everybody knows who sent them even if it can't be printed. So the STB comes out of it with a reputation not just for dirty work but incompetent dirty work. Moscow won't be mining any medals for that. And if Wing-Commander Neale gets tied in – and some bright reporter might do it – then Greyfriars have killed an MP on top of it. They might be ten a penny as well, but it does look bad on paper. With possibly a big show trial in six months."
"You surely don't want one?"
"Of course we don't. You never know what witnesses will say. But Greyfriars wants one even less. No, I see a distinct possibility of an increased dividend. Who do we talk to in the STB here?"
Agnes shook her head slowly. Whatever Moscow Centre and Prague were feeling, George obviously wasn't suffering, which meant that Number 10 wasn't. She'd expected a raging gloom about a scandal far worse than Jackaman having been avoided by – she believed – sheer luck.
"Josef Janza seems to be their open end right now," she said thoughtfully. "You could have met him at their National Day party. Fortyish, about five-ten, balding, very cheerful, gold teeth-"
"Yes, yes, I think I did. Right, then-" George turned suddenly brisk, snapping out orders as if he were still a Dragoons subaltern. "You meet this Janza and tell him more or less what I've said. Take a tough line. If his people even hint that anybody on our side is involved – and I mean anybody, not just Harry or Number 10 – then he can start building himself an ark and not to waste time waiting for the animals. Any questions?"
"Is this the Headmaster speaking?"
"No comment. None of this is avowable, of course. All your own work."
"I know." In the patch of windscreen George had wiped clear, snowflakes hardly bigger than dust swirled around as if too timid to risk a landing. Agnes shivered and reached for the door handle.
"And one other thing," George said. "See if you can chase up that STB file on Tyler. I believe your people had it to translate. It's more or less academic interest by now, but we'd like to know…"
"Will try. By the way, what's happened to our favourite fighting man?"
"We gave him a couple of days off to re-group."
"Ah yes. Well, at least you can't say this time that nobody's got killed."
"Not by Harry."
"And not for lack of trying. Give him time, give him time." She opened the door and skipped out. George glowered after her, then turned on the car radio. He'd wait a couple of minutes for her to get clear. Outside, the snowflakes suddenly thickened, gained confidence and started to settle.
Later that day, the second baboon suddenly died, leaving everybody else feeling much better, thank you. Now all the vote was in and could be counted. There would be no public trial with unpredictable witnesses, just a well-orchestrated inquest and – a rare treat – no relatives of the decreased around. Josef Janza quickly accepted Agnes's invitation to lunch at one of the old high-ceilinged railway hotels with wide-spaced tables. Only George, who mistrusted happy endings, seemed to have doubts.
He stayed late at Number 10, working on the draught of the PM's speech in the defence debate and worrying. Certainly the baboon had had every excuse for dying: one lung collapsed by a bullet and with pneumonia, diagnosed too late, in the other. And there was no chance that any cad or rotter could have reached his bedside, where Special Branch men and friends of Agnes far outnumbered the doctors and nurses. But quis custodiet ipsos custodes"! And how do you phrase such a delicate – or indelicate – question?
He was still wondering when Agnes rang to ask if the PM was home and if so, could she bring her Director-General over to see him. Urgent. George established that the PM was already on his way back from the House and told Agnes to come on round.
George shook hands with the D-G, a rather sombre, lean man in thick spectacles, and showed him straight into the Cabinet Room where the Prime Minister was waiting quite alone. Then he took Agnes next door, to the Principal Private Secretary's room, away from the young ears of the duty clerk.
She wore a sexless old sheepskin jacket and an oddly blank expression. George offered her a drink and she shook her head, "The Tyler file. I'm afraid it's gone."
"Gone? Gone where?"
"Home, I imagine." Her voice was blank, too; deliberately drained of expression. "It had been about half translated when Rex Masson – I don't know if you've met him, he's been deputy head of our vetting section the last couple of years – he asked to borrow it. He rang in later last night to say he thought he was going down with flu. Nobody got around to asking any questions until late today, then… he's gone, his wife's gone, the file's gone."
George walked a slow quiet circuit of the nearest desk. "Where did Massen live?"
"Just outside Reigate. He caught a Victoria train at Redhill every morning, so it sounds as if that girl was telling the truth. The Branch is pulling his house apart by now."
"This is what your D-G's telling the Headmaster?"
"Yes."
George walked another circuit. "The vetting section… that would be how they knew about Tylers appointment. He would have had his vetting topped up as soon as he was chosen… Did this Masson of yours have anything to do with the hounding of Jackaman?"
"I don't know." She wasn't even looking at him, just staring blindly at the wall.
"Well," George said, "at least now we know. You win one, you lose one. I can't say how the Headmaster'll take it, but I don't suppose that file would have told us very much. And they had to blow a prime asset to get it back. It must have been the only copy – funny, that."
"You know how they are about copying machines." Then she suddenly burst out: "What is it about Tyler? I know he's a great military theorist, but anybody would think he was the Pope…"
George looked mildly surprised but ignored the question. Agnes looked as if she might be going to cry; George couldn't have stood that. "It isn't your fault. These things just happen. All you can do is keep on carrying the banner with strange device through snow and ice… peculiarly apposite, on this evening." He had left one of the curtains open so that he could see the snowflakes spiralling down outside. It was a rare and restful sight.
"Oh bollocks." Agnes turned her back and blew her nose vigorously. "You just think that it's something that only happens to the Other Mob. Then when it's somebody in your own service… they'll be serving free champagne in Century House tonight." Agnes's view of the Intelligence Service was that the best of them were merely alcoholic transvestites. George had heard her on the subject often.