A SONG IN THE MORNING (12 page)

Sandham saw the muscles tighten under the pug dog chin of the Director General.

"I'll call him Carew because that's the only name that the South Africans have for him. Carew was convicted of driving the getaway car used by African National Congress guerrillas in their escape from the Supreme Court bombing in Johannesburg fourteen months ago. At the time that Carew drove the vehicle he was a full-time operative of the Secret Intelligence Service . . . "

He saw the eyebrows of the P.U.S. flicker upwards, he saw him begin to write.

"A situation has arisen where a man working for his country is going to hang because the British Government has not chosen to exercise its influence, first to secure clemency and second to win Mr Carew's release . . ."

There was a cloud of surprise on the Foreign Secretary's face. Sandham wondered what had surprised him.

The allegation, or the fact that a Grade 2 man knew the history.

"If you'll forgive me, sir, I think it's unacceptable that a man doing his job should be abandoned . . . "

The P.U.S. closed his notepad, pocketed his gold pencil.

"What's your source?" The Director General beaded Sandham with his eyes.

"I saw a file that I was not entitled by rank to see, sir."

"Have you passed on this allegation to any other person?"

The Foreign Secretary spoke through closed teetth

"No, sir." It was Sandham's second instinctive lie. With it clear of his tongue he thought of the earnest, sincere, concerned face of young Jack Curwen.

"And that's all that you wanted to tell the Foreign Secretary?" The P.U.S. seemed to make a trifle of Sandham's statement.

"Yes, sir."

The P.U.S. shone Sandham an affectionate smile. "We're very grateful to you for drawing this matter to our attention.

If it's not inconvenient for you, would you mind waiting a few minutes in my office?"

The Foreign Secretary had twisted in his chair to look down from his window and into the park. The Director General stared at the tapestry screen that masked the open fireplace. The P.U.S. ushered Sandham towards the door.

They wanted him out. They wanted to thrash it round. It had been bloody good entertainment. He would have liked to dance a bit, and shout.

"No problem, sir," Sandham said easily.

"I'll get someone to take you down to my room. You won't be kept long."

They watched him leave. They waited for the door to close behind him.

The Foreign Secretary spoke with a squeaking, nervous voice. "You knew about this, Director General."

'I did not."

"Your department, your man."

"I'll be making it my business to find out, Foreign Secretary."

"If this Sandham is to be believed . . . "

The P.U.S. swirled his hand above his knee, cut the Foreign Secretary short. "He's to be believed. Our Mr Sandham is always to be believed. More important, he's a difficult man, that's his history."

"What's to be done with him?"

The Director General looked up. "He should go home, Foreign Secretary, that's best. He should be at home where he can commit no damage. I'll have a man take him home."

"If this allegation were to become public property . . . "

"It won't," the Director General said quietly.

"You can guarantee that?"

"Foreign Secretary, leave it in my hands. You give me that authority?"

"Whatever authority you want."

"Thank you, Foreign Secretary, just the authority to isolate him."

• * *

They had the hard hats on, and they were crouched one hundred and fifty yards from the nearest stump, and they were sheltered by the van. George always crouched, didn't matter what protection he had. They'd done the checks together.

Jack had watched each step. He reckoned he could have gone through all the procedures himself.

"Well, don't hang about all day, lad."

Jack thought he'd die old waiting for a bit of politeness from George.

"What's so bloody funny?"

"Nothing's funny, Mr Hawkins."

"Get on with it."

Jack rested the palm of his hand over the bar of the plunger.

"Don't stab it, ease it."

He closed his fist on the bar. He looked at George, warts and wrinkles and thinned out hair protruding from under the garish orange rim of his helmet. George winked. Jack pressed the charger bar slowly, steadily down.

There was the clap thunder of the detonations. There was the rich loam soil spurting up, the shuddering climb of the tree stumps, the thumping patter of earth and roots landing, the furious croaking of rooks.

Jack gazed fascinated at what they had achieved. Away beyond the line of uprooted stumps the bullocks were in flight.

George studied the scene. His face was closed. Jack looked into George's face. One thing to know a man and work with him, another thing to trust him. He thought he could trust George Hawkins, but what he thought didn't really matter because he had to trust the man.

"Get on with it, Jack," George said tersely.

"Was it that obvious?"

"Say what you've got to say."

He told George that his father had disappeared from his life when he was two years old, before he could remember.

He told him that he had been brought up to believe that his father was cruelty incarnate. He told him that there was not even a photograph of his father that had been kept by his mother when she had cleared out her husband's possessions.

He told George of the letter, how the missing James Curwen had been resurrected as James Carew, under sentence of death. He told him that his father had been working for the government, an agent in place, that his life was not going to be pleaded for.

"That's the history, Mr Hawkins."

George's was a low gravel voice. "You could have spoken to your M.P., a journalist, one of those lads on television.

Why didn't you cry on their shoulders? Why do you talk to me, a blaster?"

"Had to be you."

" You didn't have to come today and watch me lift a few Moody tree stumps."

"Right."

"You want some know-how?"

jack nodded.

George said softly, "Where are the targets?"

"Not here, waste of time in London. I know where the target is, I don't know what it'll take."

"Explosives?"

"Has to be."

George was striding fast to his van.

"Hope you're not asking me for explosives. Every last cartridge of mine has to be accounted for. You're going to South Africa? Even if you could get them here you can't just put them in your bloody suitcase and fly out of London.

Don't think the x-rays and the sniffers would miss it. You wouldn't get as far as the 'plane."

"I'll get the explosives there."

"You got the right friends?"

"I'm finding them." There was the obstinate thrust to Jack's chin.

God, he was racing ahead. He hadn't the targets, he hadn't the explosives, he hadn't the friends. So bloody innocent, and talking as though he could just snap his fingers and achieve them.

George cuffed him. "Come back to me when you've some answers."

* * *

Major Swart resented having any more of his time taken up with the Carew affair. The file was hardly worth the effort of couriering it from Pretoria on the overnight 747 of South African Airways. Carew was a home desk problem, and following up stray ends was unrewarding work for a major of security police. The woman had seen him off. He'd have thought she'd have spilled her heart out given the chance to save a man from the rope. A week earlier he thought he had placed her in the game. All by leg work and tracking back in the files of Somerset House. Before her divorce Mrs Hilda Perry had been Mrs Hilda Curwen. She had been married to a James Curwen. James Curwen was his man, until he had driven down to the Hampshire village which was listed as the woman's address at the time of her marriage. He'd had a photograph from Pretoria, taken in the gaol but especially so as not to look like a police shot. He had found three men who remembered James Curwen in a pub by the cress beds. A retired postman, the man who kept the village grocery store, and the vicar. He had said he was the London representative of a South African based legal firm. He had said he was trying to trace this James Curwen because there was money left to him. He showed them all the photograph, and he had seen each one of them shake his head and heard each one of them say the photograph was not that of James Curwen. Wrong face, wrong physique.

So, he hadn't linked Hilda Perry to James Carew, and it didn't have a high priority from Pretoria, and there was a limit on his time.

A higher priority was the man who had come in from Lusaka.

If there was a matter that could make Major Swart emotionally ill, it was that the United Kingdom, on top of all its cant about the suppression of terrorism, could allow African National Congress murderers free rein to visit their chummies in the London office.

He thought he might get to see the bastard from Lusaka that evening, not certain, but a good chance.

* • *

In the late afternoon Jack came into the office.

Janice was making up her face over the typewriter, her mirror propped against the ribbon. She waved to indicate the paper she had left on his desk, too busy to speak.

Nicholas Villiers had gone home, so had Lucille.

He recognised most of the names and numbers that he was to call back. The people with the chimney in Streatham, a good one for George and he'd get his photo in the local rag. The brewery who were pulling down the Bunch of Grapes in Addington, a ball and chain job. The clearance of a small council house development at Earlsfield where the precast concrete units were disintegrating and it was cheaper for the local authority to demolish than to repair . . .Duggie Arkwright and a number were half way down the list, and again at the bottom of the list.

It was Duggie's girl who picked up the phone, Anthea.

She sounded high. She dropped the telephone, and he heard Duggie Arkwright curse her. Jack introduced himself.

"You meant what you said?"

"Yes, I want to . . ."

"Open phone, priggy."

Jack swallowed hard. And this was London. He felt juvenile, naked.

"Same place as we had a drink, same time - we'll go on."

Jack wanted to ask who they would meet, where they would be going, but the line was dead.

He rang his mother. He wouldn't be in for supper. He'd be back late. The habit was catching, no explanations.

Next he called Sandham's number at the Foreign Office.

He wanted to hear about Sandham's meeting, what the new information was.

He was told Mr Sandham had gone home.

There was no reply at the home number.

"I'm dying for a drink," Janice told him. "They're open now."

lack said, "It's the nice thing about pubs these days, that a girl can go in and have a drink on her own."

He settled back to his list, the people with the spare chimney and the brewery and the local authority. The chimney people had gone home, so had the local authority, but he had a good talk with the brewery.

• • •

The Prime Minister was obsessive about "banana skins", and over the years the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service had had more than their share of disasters.

It had been only too often the Prime Minister's misfortune to get to the despatch box in a gloating House of Commons and wriggle in the mess. With this Director General the Prime Minister felt secure. The confidence was reciprocated with an all-consuming loyalty.

The Director General was "clean" in the matter of James Carew. He had been transferred from a diplomatic career the previous year. He had come in after Carew's arrest and trial.

The file on Carew revealed ample evidence of an approach to intelligence gathering that was provenly dangerous.

The man's career was a joke, a pathetic confidence trick.

Colonel Fordham should have been put up against a wall and shot for what he had done for Carew. At the very least Carew should have been wound in the morning after Fordham's retirement. The file was horrifying reading.

Colonel Fordham had transferred from the regular army to the Service. He had recruited his batman for leg work, a man without higher education. In due course a small operation had been run into Albania. Albania was the most irrelevant corner of mountains on the European continent.

Colonel Fordham had sent this devoted but second-rate individual into Albania on a mission based on rotten information. The Soviet Union scowling at Yugoslavia
might
do a Hungary or a Czechoslovakia, and then N.A.T.O.
might
deploy troops and armour in North West Greece, and if N.A.T.O. were up on the Greek Albanian border then they just
might
need to know what was on the far side of this most closed and guarded frontier. Colonel Fordham had sent this man into Albania for a bit of map reading and reconnaissance, and to see which bridges would carry 55-ton tanks.

As if he had never heard of satellite photography.

In the file were the minutes of the meeting where the mission was agreed. It wouldn't have happened in the Director General's day. There was a brief paper on the aims of the mission. There was a telex, decoded, from the mission's forward headquarters in Corfu reporting that radio contact had been lost. And the poor bugger sat in prison there for ten years.

No record of a minute to Downing Street. Alec Douglas Home, Wilson, Heath, none of them ever heard a whisper of it. And of course the Albanians had never known who they had, right to the end, because Curwen had never confessed anything in ten years. It had ended shabbily with the payment of £100,000 from the service contingency fund, into a Venezuelan bank account.

Colonel Basil had brought his man home, and about bloody time.

The Director General came to four sheets of lined paper that might have been extracted from the centre of a school exercise book. The writing was close, joined up, in ball point. At the top, in capitals and underlined, was SPAC

LABOUR CAMP 303. In the ruled margin, written with a different pen but in the same handwriting, he read "Col Fordham, I thought this might be important to you in case anyone else of our team ends up in the place, Respectfully, Jeez".