The other members of the committee were checked out. All were experienced, none came from the security services themselves. Stevens could imagine that MIs 5 and 6 would dearly love to know what was being decided behind the heavy and ornately carved doors of the committee room. The room itself was ultra-safe, swept each and every day for naughty little devices. This much the newspaper’s parliamentary correspondent, an alcoholic but hardworking pro of forty years’ standing, was able to substantiate.
On the assassination side, things were slower, almost to the point of dead stop. Janine had done her bit, but the Israelis were cagey operators (with good reason) at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. Stevens’s mysterious telephone caller had rung him at home twice and seemed pleased at the direction the investigation was taking.
‘Yeah, well, we’d be going a whole lot faster, mate, if you’d pull the finger out of your posterior and come across with some facts — hard facts.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the connection between S. and a certain murder, a garrotting I believe, in London recently.’
The voice had exhaled noisily.
‘You’re progressing, Mr. Stevens, believe me,’ it had said before ringing off.
The next time, Stevens was planning to threaten that he would pull the plug on the whole thing if he were not given some help. He had worked hard on cases before, of course, but this one was like drawing teeth. It was an apposite image: his back tooth had given up the ghost.
He prodded his mouth now. He had wormed some names out of Tim Hickey, too. Cryptonyms, most of them, but there was one which Stevens felt confident about. When someone had been screwed around, they were usually ripe for the confessional. This man must be ripe.
And there couldn’t be too many Miles Flints around. Even if he were ex-directory, there would be rates to pay, bank accounts, taxes. Stevens would find this guy Flint and he would speak with him. It seemed they might have quite a lot in common.
‘As you are aware, of course, Harvest was always merely part of a much larger operation, which has been sustained for over a year now.’
‘A sort of seedling, eh?’ said Richard Mowbray, smiling at his superior, while Miles sat in injured silence, his mouth straight as a glinting needle. He was still shaking from his run-in with the police, though they had been polite and sympathetic after checking his credentials.
Partridge did not smile either. He sat behind his desk, hands on the flat surface in front of him, as though talking to a television camera, perhaps to advise his countrymen that they were now at war.
‘The director would have been here himself to tell you this, but he has a prior and more important engagement.’ Partridge paused, making it sound as though their boss had been summoned to Buck House, but Miles was in no doubt that King’s Cross was a more likely bet. Here was proof of the gradual handing on of responsibility. Partridge looked and acted every inch a director. It was his calling and his destiny. ‘From other segments of the operation — overall code name Circe — several sources of potential irritation have been pinpointed.’
Cough it up, man, thought Miles.
Partridge, however, was enjoying the sound of his words, and relished having this particular audience captive before him. Perhaps there had been just a touch of melodrama about his wish to see them together. Well, the melodrama was not about to stop there. He had something to say that might just cause them to shift a bit in their seats. He hoped that they would sweat.
‘One of these is about to be dealt with. Special Branch has been controlling things up till now, and it will be Special Branch, along with the RUC, who makes the arrest.’
‘RUC?’ This from Mowbray, his eyebrows raised a little.
‘It stands for Royal Ulster Constabulary,’ said Partridge with exaggerated patience.
‘I know what it means,’ snapped Mowbray, ‘sir.’
Partridge nodded, pausing, taking his time. There was plenty of time.
‘I don’t have to spell it out, do I? An arrest is going to be made in Northern Ireland. Very soon.’
‘And?’ said Miles, suddenly interested.
‘And,’ said Partridge, ‘we need an observer there, just to register our presence, our interest. I thought’ — his eyes sweeping the two men — ‘that one of you would be best suited to the job, having worked on Harvest at this end.’
‘Having worked up a dead end,’ corrected Mowbray.
Partridge just smiled.
‘Circe is a much bigger operation than Harvest. We are here this evening, gentlemen, to decide which one of you should have the honor of representing the firm in the sun-drenched paradise of Belfast. Now, who’s it to be?’
Partridge made them coffee at his own little machine in a corner of the room, which was suddenly filled with the aroma of South America, of wide spaces, sunny plantations, a harvest of beans. The room itself, though, was small and stuffy, and Partridge had opened the window a little to let in some of the chilled evening air and a few droplets of rain from the burgeoning shower.
Miles gulped down the coffee, listening to a siren outside and being reminded of the horror of that gun appearing at his window. His soul had prepared itself for death, and it was still pondering the experience.
Partridge had gone over the details of the mission with them, insisting with a mercenary grin that it was really a sightseeing tour, nothing more. The real work would be done by the RUC’s Mobile Support Unit and the officers of Special Branch.
Special Branch, thought Miles, God bless them.
‘Call it lateral promotion,’ said Partridge, but Miles knew that it was more a case of the last-chance saloon. Both Mowbray and he were thorns in the firm’s side; neither would be lost with regret.
‘It’s just our presence that’s required,’ Partridge continued, talking into the vacuum created by the silence across the table. ‘Otherwise it looks as though we don’t care, looks as though we just sit around in oak-paneled rooms drinking coffee while the others get on with the real laboring. Do you see?’
Miles saw. He saw exactly what Partridge and the old boy were after. They were seeking the resignation of whoever got the job, and they presumed that that man would be Miles Flint. Miles had more ground to make up than did Richard Mowbray. Partridge was guessing now that Miles would feel forced to accept the mission, and then would resign rather than go through with it.
‘How many days?’ he asked.
‘Two or three, certainly no more than three.’
‘Overseeing an arrest?’
‘Nothing more.’
Miles had seen that look on the face of every quiz-show host.
‘This is all bullshit!’ spat Mowbray. ‘We know your game, Partridge. We know you’re after the top job, and you’ll sacrifice any number of us to get it.’
Partridge shrugged his shoulders. He was still smiling at Miles, as if to say, your opponent’s out of the contest, it’s just you now, all it needs is your answer to the golden question.
Two minutes later, and with no applause, no cheering, the prize belonged to Miles.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe it!’
And she couldn’t, couldn’t believe that he was going, that there was so little time, that he was leaving her again right now when everything was balanced so finely on the wire of their marriage.