"The Conduct of Major Maxim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lyall Gavin)

Chapter 4

Monday morning was another perfect day and George Harbinger arrived at Number 10 Downing Street alreadym afoul temper. He perched on the edge of the desk of the Principal Private Secretary and growled: "The Broad-Rumped Nikon-Tufted Tourist seems to have bred particularly freely this year. There is a positiveinfestation of them outside. I even saw one without a camera."

"Really? I wonder that he got past Immigration at Heathrow. Coming in without a camera seems proof positive that he intends to settle here illegally. "Jeremy was tall, with a natural elegance that would never decay into dandyism and always scrupulously polite, having been to that school which believes that it is manners, rather than God, that maketh man, though a spot of money also helps.

George grunted On Monday mornings no remarks were funny but his own, and he usually regretted even those by the end of the day. He was one of the six private secretaries who -Jeremy included – formed the Prime Minister's Private Office. His own special responsibility was defence and security, although they all sugared each other's tea in busy times. Today looked like being one: on Saturday afternoon the Prime Minister had cancelled a speech he was to have made at an agricultural show in his Scottish constituency and taken to his bed there. He hadn't got up yet.

"How is the Headmaster?" George asked "Coughing hard but fairly cheerful in the circumstances." Jeremy had flown up and back on the Sunday.

"What are we telling the press7" After the revelations by Churchill's doctor that he had suppressed news of several strokes, and seeing other prime ministers leave the job byambulance, Fleet Street had become over-sensitive to any hint of illness in Number 10 "One of these persistent summer colds that they're trying to stop going to his chest. I assume it's bronchitis but Sir Frank won't commit himself. I've suggested they get in a reference to his old war wound."

In May 1940 the Prime Minister, then a young lance-corporal defending a section of the Magmot Line, had taken a mortar burst that peppered his chest with fragments of metal and concrete. The wound might even have saved his life, since he was back in an English hospital when the remains of his battalion surrenderedmthe wreckage of St Valery-en-Caux a month afterwards. But over forty years later, most of them spent smoking heavily while the cameras weren't looking, his scarred lung could still turn a simple cold into something that needed to be talked down, and bits of metal were still wandering around his body and occasionally needing to be picked out. I wonder, George thought irrelevantly, ifhe pings as he goes through an airport metal-detector gateway? But as PM he never has to go through such gateways – George had flown with him many times – so probably I'll never know. Bother "Have they done an X-ray?"

"At the local cottage hospital. It apparently didn't show anything alarming."

"But he's not likely to be back this week. 'Is Tired Tim taking over'"

Jeremy smiled painfully at the Deputy Prime Minister's nickname, took off his reading glasses and looked up to consult some Wykehamist deity that apparently floated a few feet above George's head. It was a gesture that annoyed George intensely "He will be taking Questions tomorrow, yes. Most likely he'll be chairing Cabinet on Thursday And he'll be dropping in later today to see if there are any flies in the soup. I'm sure you'll try and limit their number."

"Have no fear." George was going to offer Tired Tim as few decisions as possible.

"And perhaps," Jeremy put on his glasses again, "those ofus too old to relish change might direct our prayers northwards."

"You mean that if the Headmaster goes I'd be hove out on me ear before his taxi had turned the corner?" It was a thought that hadn't really occurred to George before. His father owned a large piece of Gloucestershire, and the Whitehall whisper was that once Harbinger senior was six foot under and somebody had been contracted to haul away the empty brandy bottles, George's wife Annette would have him out of London and into a country squire's gumboots before he could catch his breath. It could be any day now, the whisper added, and there was enough truth in it for George not to have thought of leaving Number 10except of his own choice (or Annette's, of course).

Jeremy bent to his paperwork, murmuring: "As ever, George, you go straight to the heart of things."

"I'm not sure I'd want to stay." George wandered away through the almost-always-open door to the room he shared with three other private secretaries and the duty clerk. It was tall and elegant, with big windows looking out over the garden, and their desks seemed something of a crude anachronism; George looked at it all with sudden appreciation- and regret, because it could end so soon.

Only the clerk and the young man who kept the PM's engagements book were in, the latter busily telephoning round to cancel or reschedule the appointments; he gave George a despairing grin, and the clerk brought across a bunch of messages, including one from Major Maxim.

"The Major called down before you came in. He said it wasonly fatrly urgent."

"And merely slightly sensitive," George read. "A very proper sense of values, has our Harry. Well, I'll go up slightly soon and fairly quickly. What else is new?" Suddenly in top gear, he charged into the paperwork, returning the more important phone calls at the same time as he scribbled comments on letters and redirected files to other desks in the house. After an hour, the high tide of Monday morning trouble had been pushed back to the normal waterlme and he called Maxim to say he was on his way up.

By the time he had climbed the two flights of stairs to Maxim's room, George was breathing hard but only through his nose, which didn't count. In his middle forties – oldish for a PM's private secretary – he looked somewhat like a prince who had only just begun to turn into a frog when the wicked witch lost the recipe. He had a squat face with prominent eyes and a wide mouth, not much hair, a chubby body and thin limbs. But the clothes were still princely, if princes still spent their days at small yet exclusive country race-meetings: a beautifully cut lightweight grey check suit, hand-made brown brogues, a Cavalry Club tie. George usually dressed like that, not particularly because he wanted to, but because that was how his wife told his tailor to dress him. George's only stipulations were that he shouldn't look like a banker (his brother-in-law banked) or a civil servant (which he was). It didn't really belong in Number 10, but many people thought that George didn't either, which was one of his strengths.

He pushed open the door to what had once been a small boxroom, said: "And the top of the morning, or at least this bloody house, to you, " and slumped into a chair. He made the room look crowded.

Maxim swung carefully round on a creaking desk chair. He was already in shirt-sleeves, although the single window faced north. "Morning, George. You look quite fit, for a Monday."

"I swear to you my father-in-law waters his whisky. Next time I'm going to take a hydrometer and expose the old-Good God, have we got you cutting out paper dolls already?"

Maxim had been clipping stories on defence from newspapers and magazines. He flashed his quick, protective smile and pushed the papers aside. "Can I do you a cup of tea? Instant soup? Nothing? How is the Prime Minister?"

"Everybody I meet today is going to ask me that. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… We just don'tknow yet. We hope -" he looked quickly at Maxim and then remembered that this was one man at Number 10who didn't gossip; who didn't, as far as*he knew, have anybody to gossip to " – we just hope it's nothing worse than bronchitis, though when you're well past sixty… Anyway, what's this'fairly urgent and slightly sensitive' weekend you've been spending?"

"A sergeant I had in the SAS," Maxim began carefully. "He got a disability discharge. He gave me a call. He's got a chap, a corporal, who's gone AWOL from Rhine Army. I met thischap -"

"A deserter?" George wriggled himself upright. "You met a deserter and didn't report him?"

"I'm reporting him to you. "

"Go on, Harry," George said thinly. "And try and make it good." He slid down in his chair again and started listening seriously.

He was a good listener. When Maxim had finished, George just murmured: "Harry, whathave you got yourself into?" but without anger or even expecting an answer. Then he just sat, shuffling the story in his mind like an incomplete pack of cards.

The internal phone rang; Maxim answered and handed it to George, who listened for a moment and said: "Can't you try Jeremy or Michael? I'll be down in a minute." He gave the phone back. "You'll never know, I trust, what it is to be both beautiful and indispensable. What have you done about this so far?"

"Nothing."

"That's always a good start. "

"I thought you might approve. Anything I could think of would just show I knew something that I shouldn't: call his battalion in Soltau, ask about a murder at Bad Schwarzendorn, snoop around his regimental depot, check with the Military Police that they're really looking for him… Even look up his records."

George nodded. "The amount youhaven't done in a mere thirty-six hours must stir green depths of envy even in Whitehall. Nonetheless, I'm not sure you mightn't have managed a little less. When you agreed to meet comrade Blagg you didn't know anything about the business in Bad Schwarzendorn or the involvement of Six – if that's true. You only knew he was AWOL but must be a good chap really because he'donce been with your Hereford Hell's Angels. You could have asked me first."

"You'd have said No."

George made a throaty rumbling noise. "Well, spilt milk… For the moment we'll assume it's all true; the worst usually is -"

"I can check with the German papers…"

"You've got the time?"

Maxim smiled sardonically and gestured at the meaningless clutter on his desk. For the past three weeks he had been doing little but attend lectures and short conferences – dogsbody jobs, he suspected, invented by George to keep him looking busy.

"Yes, " George said, "our lords and mastersdo seem to have been behaving themselves of late; there must besome scandal lurking just around the corner… Right, you read German, don't you? Their embassy keeps Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungand the Suddeutsche-no, they wouldn't bother with it."

The extraordinary details George kept in his head. One phone call Maxim had allowed himself that morning had been to establish which, if any, newspapers the Germany embassy did file.

"Of course, " George went on, "if they've had ten days and not found any link with a British soldier – and we'd certainly know if they had – then it may never happen. Just blow over."

"Blagg would still be a deserter," Maxim pointed out.

"He'd given himself a rather limited choice of futures. I imagine he wouldn't rather be a murderer."

"I got the idea," Maxim persisted gently, "that he feels much worse about the desertion than the shooting. "

George went frog-eyed. "Harry, hekilled somebody. "

Maxim nodded. "Yes. Soldiers do."

George opened his mouth to say something, then remembered he was talking to a soldier who had most certainly killed people, one of them since he had come to work at Number 10. Quite likely Blagg had killed before, too.

Maxim went on: "Blagg was chaperoning somebody heknew worked for The Firm. Working for his country. When that German started shooting, he became The Enemy. Now Blagg expects his country to back him up."

"Was there any hint of blackmail?" George asked, suddenly sharp.

"No, I don't think so. He's not a bloody fool, of course -well yes, he is, in a way – but he knows it could be a big scandal that could hurt Britain, and particularly the Army. In a way, that's why he went over the hill: to protect the Army. "

"That is romantic twaddle."

"Soldiersare romantic," Maxim said evenly. "They watch war movies and like dressing up in funny clothes and calling themselves funny names like Dragoon Guards."

A quarter of a century before, George had done his two years' National Service in a Dragoon Guards regiment. They had been the happiest years of his life – or at least they increasingly seemed so, in retrospect – butromantic? He looked at Maxim suspiciously. "Well… what did he expect you to do?"

"Wash him clean and send him back to square one."

"Does he know what he's asking?"

"I doubt it. He doesn't know how an atom bomb works, either. He just knows that it does and assumes we do, too."

"Where do such mad ideas originate? All right: you pop round to the embassy and see what you can turn up. Do nothing else. We'll have to play this hand ourselves – I can't tell the Headmaster and I'm certainly not bringing Tired Tim into this." He paused with his hand on the doorknob."Romantic?"

When George had gone, Maxim rang the German embassy and made an appointment to visit the press office files. Then he filled in time by filing his cuttings and tidying the desk generally. It was a new desk: the Housekeeper's Office hadjust got around to replacing the old rolltop that had been there when he first joined Number 10nearly six months ago. He had spent most of those months complaining about it, with its drawers that were the wrong size for standard files and usually jammed anyway, but now he missed it. Now he had anindestructible grey metal box, just like a quarter of a million civil servants, and it was trying to digest him, to turn him into a civil soldier.

That was a childish (or romantic?) thought, but he was feeling the itch of a problem he wasn't supposed to scratch. Abruptly, he picked up the phone and asked for the Bradbury Lines at Hereford, and then for the adjutant of 22SAS.They knew each other well, and the talk was cheerful, rambling, casual. But when he rang off, Maxim had learned that Captain Fairbrother had finished his SAS tourand rejoined the Brigade five months ago. For the last six weeks he had been in Alberta liaising with the Canadian Army about the live-ammunition exercises to be held there later in the summer.

"Bugger it," Maxim said aloud. Somebody had been lying. Probably everybody had been lying to some extent – that was only to be expected – but bugger it nonetheless. He sat frowning down at the desk and it crouched there, square and smug, knowing there were already more desks than soldiers and that all it had to do was wait.