Dombey blew out the match and stood up, exhaling a long streamer of smoke through his nose. “I can’t talk clearly unless I’m in front of a map,” he said. “Are you free now?” He must have seen the slow resentment in Methuen’s eyes, for he caught his arm and said: “Let’s go down to the ‘Awkward Shop’ together. I have everything arranged there.” Methuen stood up and sighed. “One condition,” he said. “I’m not leaving for anywhere before next Friday.” Dombey made a large accommodating gesture in the air with his two arms. “But of course. But of course,” he said almost plaintively.
The two men walked slowly out into the grey London dusk, arm in arm, like bondsmen, and crossed the Mall towards Charing Cross Road, talking in desultory fashion; darkness was falling as they reached the anonymous square where, in the shadow of the Seven Dials, Special Operations Unit lived and had its being. A duty clerk sat sorting letters on a green baize table-top. The darkness had closed in by now and Methuen, gazing up for a moment at the smoke-blue night sky caught a glimpse of the battered angels which ornamented the roof of the building, riding there in the darkness like twelve ancient figure-heads. The building had once housed a Victorian insurance company, and the incidental sculptures which decorated its massive and now dirty cornices were eloquent reminders of the artistic criteria of the ’90’s. It was a strange flavourless barrack of a place, full of cold corridors and cramped lifts.
“Okay, sir,” said the duty clerk, setting aside the wooden hurdle and admitting them to the darkened hall where they stood for a minute while he groped in his safe for the tagged keys to Dombey’s office. The lift was, as always, out of order. They walked down a long corridor, turning on the lights as they went, and thence climbed the two floors to Dombey’s office in silence. Vaguely from the dark depths below them, where the radio section lived, there came the tapping of static in a receiver, knocking on the darkness with monotonous iteration like a finger-nail on the surface of a drum. From behind a half-dosed door on the first landing leaked a smear of fluorescent light which turned from purple to green and went out. Dombey fumbled with the door and threw it open with a crash.
Together they walked into the warm carpeted darkness of the room, and Methuen paused in his tracks to give his chief time to find the switch to the desk-lamp. How well he knew this room; it had been the starting-place of so many adventures. Mentally he built it up in all its detail, which the bright green desk-lamp would confirm: bookcases, the little mahogany bar, the stacks of map-cases, the camp-bed and the dictaphone with its rolls of wax stacked like ammunition on the shelf behind the desk. Dombey snapped on the light and as he did so delivered himself of the pregnant word: “Yugoslavia.” Methuen groaned and fumbled for another cigarette before stretching himself out in an arm-chair. “I know,” said Dombey soothingly. “I know.”
He took off his coat and crossed the room to the wall where the thick stack of maps stood, each in its stout cellophane-covered frame, and each attached to the wall by a brass member so that the series could be turned like the pages of a book. With his large white fingers Dombey leafed his way through Austria, Istria, Slovenia, and worked his way south towards Serbia. “You know the political background, Methuen,” he said, “so I won’t try and describe the Communist dictatorship of Tito. You were at Bari, weren’t you, when the war ended?” Methuen nodded.
“Ever been back to the place since?”
“Not since fifty-three or thereabouts.”
“How is your Serbian?”
“It used to be very good once.” He had suddenly begun to watch Dombey’s right hand as he might have watched the hand of a hypnotist. A vague image was rising in the back of his mind of high flushed mountains, crested with firs, and resonant with the vibration of icy waters flowing southwards and westwards. Dombey’s finger had begun to quest among the mountains of southern Serbia, vaguely, irresolutely. It settled finally on a town in the old Turkish Sanjak of Novi Pazaar. Methuen smiled and sat up. It was as if a doctor had pressed upon an aching place. “Around here,” said Dombey, and Methuen felt the province throb in his memory like a sick member.
“Twenty years ago or more,” he said aloud, “I fished that whole range two years running.”
“Something is going on here, in these mountains,” Dombey paused impressively and lit himself a cigarette.
“What is the brief?”
“There isn’t anything as clear as a brief.”
“Where do I come in?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The noise of the London traffic murmured outside the window, imitating the ripple of trout streams in Methuen’s imagination. “Explain,” he said patiently, and Dombey began his explanation.
“We know the Royalists are working night and day to start a revolution against Tito. Their headquarters is in Paris and they are managing to infiltrate people into Yugoslavia. That’s easy to understand. But recently, Methuen, they’ve been sending in small groups of fairly heavily armed people. Of course they don’t stand a chance against Tito’s OZNA organization; they are being gathered in like rabbits. There have been a dozen spy-trials in the last few months, all fairly openly reported in the Tito press, and all concerned with bands of armed men who are alleged to be roving about these mountains with some pretty decent equipment.”
“War surplus bought in France?”
“Yes.”
“But this is very normal for the Balkans.”
“Nevertheless, why always in this area? It is easy to seal off this mountain chain. If you or I wanted to bother Tito there are a hundred likelier places to send agents to. Why get so many chaps captured and lose so much equipment in this place particularly? We don’t know.”
“What do the people on the spot think?”
“They are completely blanketed. Movements of foreign embassies are restricted to an area of twenty kilometres around Belgrade and Zagreb. Everyone is followed night and day. It is quite impossible for a foreigner to make an excursion into this area and see for himself.”
“Perhaps they want to blow up the railway.”
“Would there be any point in that?”
“None that I can see.”
Dombey picked up a bundle of pin-flags from the tray on his desk and began sticking them on to the map at various points. “Seven different points in the same area,” he said at last, standing back and putting his head on one side. “Now here’s another thing. There has been of course a great deal of police activity in this area, but no great military movements, so obviously the Communists don’t regard these incursions as any great threat to the stability of the régime. Nevertheless they themselves are as puzzled as we are.”
“How do we know that?”
“Two refugees who worked for OZNA have recently come over to Trieste.”
“Are you suggesting”, said Methuen, “that I go wandering into this area and get myself bumped off as an agent of King Peter?”
“No,” said Dombey. “I just want your advice.”
“Could I reach Belgrade? There may be some gossip to be picked up there which would explain it.”
“Would you like to?”
“If there were a chance of fishing those mountain streams I’d like to very much,” said Methuen candidly, “but to sit in Belgrade and embarrass the Embassy.…”
“Ah yes,” said Dombey sadly. “The Embassy.” In general SOq made a point of operating independently of Foreign Office establishments abroad, in order not to compromise their work. “This is an exception,” said Dombey sorrowfully. “I’m sorry about it. So by the way is Sir John. You should see his telegrams. He is dead against your going in. And frankly I’d prefer to operate independently. You could go in as a business man, but visas take an age to come through. I am anxious to push on with this show immediately. Particularly since this last accident. That has worried everyone.” He paused.