October Men (15 page)

Lady Deacon said: “And did he have his astrologer with him, Mr. Howard?”

“Not with him, ma’am. His astrologer was in Moscow.”

“Moscow?” exclaimed Richardson.”

“That is what he said, Mr. Richardson.”

“Those were his exact words?”

“Exact words?” Freisler nodded at him knowingly. “Now that is precisely what David wished to be told. Only it was the words of this Signor Narva he desired—“

“Why surely—he said a little bird whispered in his ear. A little bird from East Berlin who had it on the highest authority in Moscow.”

Deacon said: “Well … that’s uncommonly interesting. But it’s just as David says—there’s always an unromantic reason somewhere.”

Lady Deacon said: “What do you mean, dear?”

Deacon said: “The Russians simply had one or two of their own men on the Phillips and the Xenophon rigs, that’s all. It’s not in the least surprising. Three-quarters of the men they have over here are more concerned with industrial espionage than political and military spying … and North Sea oil would overlap both of those spheres anyway. But full marks to Narva for listening in on them—that was rather bright of him.”

Ian Howard said: “It was more than bright. It was a goddam miracle!”

David said: “How was it a miracle, Ian?”

“Well, maybe the Russians had their chaps on those rigs, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because I was on the job long before they were. I was on it weeks before they struck at Cod—before the Freya rig even cleared harbour. And if you can tell me how Narva’s little bird in Moscow smelt oil before the guys on the spot in the North Sea did—man, I’ll sign the cheques for you and you can fill the figures in yourself—“

“
I DON
’
T SUPPOSE—
“
Sir Frederick Clinton regarded Richardson with a faintly jaundiced eye “—you are acquainted with William Pitt’s Guildhall speech after Trafalgar.”

Richardson shook his head. The temperature was perhaps slightly less arctic now he had said his piece, but that was no sure sign that a second and more uncomfortable ice age was not about to set in. He had feared the worst from the moment he had been passed straight along the line, like some carrier of a loathsome disease whom no one else dared to handle; this was certainly not the moment to attempt to cap the
bon mot
which was assuredly coming.

“I was almost resolved to cast you back into the Irish darkness.” Sir Frederick lifted a hand towards the intercom. “You arrive late here, after having contrived to offend everyone in sight, including Brigadier Stocker, who has the patience of Job… Mrs. Harlin, would you be so good as to ask Neville Macready to come up here at once. And will you have the dossiers on Eugenio Narva and Richard von Hotzendorff—Hotzendorff—sent up to me,
quam celerrime
. Thank you… And I rather think, Peter, that you have done all this out of a certain intuitive regard—I won’t say loyalty—for David Audley. Who would be the first, incidentally, to warn you against such instincts.”

Almost resolved! Richardson sighed inwardly with relief at the benison contained in that “almost”; he was in the clear.

“You have committed us to covering up a clear case of homicide, however justifiable. You have leaked heaven only knows what information to an outsider—a foreigner at that
quam celerrime
however trustworthy.”

“I didn’t tell Prof. Freisler anything he didn’t already know, sir,” said Richardson.

“Except now he knows that he knows it. Did it not occur to you that Sir Laurie Deacon might be a more discreet contact from a security point of view?”

“I understood he was in Paris, lobbying the Frogs on behalf of the pro-Market boys, sir,” lied Richardson hopefully. “In any case, David once told me Freisler has a memory like an elephant. And I rather gathered he’d helped us before.”

“Not us—just David. And under the present circumstances that is something I’d prefer not to remember. One David is enough for any organisation… Indeed, the view has been canvassed that even one David is too great an extravagance.”

“I —“

“Nevertheless, Peter, like William Pitt’s England you appear to have saved yourself by your exertions. I only hope you can save David by your example.”

“He is in the clear, sir. I’m certain of that.”

“He is in not in the clear. He is never in the clear. He has not defected, if that’s what you mean,” Sir Frederick indicated a long white envelope on his desk. “I received a letter from him by the midday delivery—a somewhat delayed letter—explaining that he intended to take a few days of his leave in Rome.”

Richardson risked a quick glance at the envelope. It had been sent by second-class post and the postmark was no more than a tired blur across the stamp. It was more than likely, though unprovable, that David had the aged postmistress at the Steeple Horley village shop trained to his needs in such matters.

“Ah! So that accounts for it!” he murmured wisely.

Sir Frederick stared at him silently for a moment which lasted just too long for comfort. Belatedly Richardson reminded himself that the man had known David far longer than he himself had.

“You do well not to smile, Peter. Because amusing as David Audley’s little stratagems may seem to you, I think this may not turn out to be a smiling matter—either for him or us.”

“I wasn’t smiling.”

“Good. Because it looks as though David has raised the devil again. But this time he’s done it off his own bat, for reasons best known to himself. And what is worse he may very well not be aware of what he’s stirred up.”

“You mean he doesn’t know about—last night?”

“He doesn’t.” Sir Frederick frowned. “The moment you obtained his address Brigadier Stocker alerted our Rome people, but by the time they got there the place was already under surveillance. And not just by the police, young Cable thinks—so he thought it advisable not to rush in. It’ll be no use phoning, either, because it’ll be bugged for certain.”

“Christ!”

It didn’t need to be spelt out, thought Richardson, watching the frown: David was oozing with brains and inside information, and decisive with it, sometimes to the point of arrogance. But he was strictly a headquarters man by training, and despite his massive physique and rugger-playing youth he probably wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow if the opposition turned ugly.

“What complicates it is that he has his wife with him too. Which means he’s not expecting trouble.”

Richardson nodded. Faith’s presence in Rome was conclusive proof that David was convinced what he was doing was safe; during his last assignment in the north of England he had angrily refused to allow her to visit him, even with the department’s blessing.

“It couldn’t be that this really is just a holiday?” he said tentatively.

“Do you think it possible?”

Excited as a boy with a new bicycle.

“No,” said Richardson.

“Neither do I. In fact, after what you’ve told me—which knowing David I find all too plausible—I’m absolutely sure it isn’t.” Sir Frederick glanced down at the intercom unit and then reached forward again towards it. “Yes, Mrs. Harlin?”

“Mr. Macready is on his way, Sir Frederick.”

“Very good. And the dossiers?”

“I have the Narva dossier, Sir Frederick. The documents relating to Hotzendorff are in the Dead Filing Section, and there seems to be some hold-up there just at the moment.”

“I see. Then give Macready the one you’ve obtained and please hurry the other one up. Otherwise I don’t want to be disturbed on any account.”

“Yes, sir—“

The voice was guillotined by the slender finger. Sir Frederick’s eyes lifted to Richardson’s. “You know Macready?”

“He briefed me before I went to Dublin.”

“On the Belgian-Czech arms deal—of course!” The eyes flickered. “But you know his regular field?”

“Industrial intelligence.”

“Correct. And he knows his stuff, so the Narva file is probably superfluous—it’s more than likely that he wrote it himself.”

“And the Kraut? Hotzen-what’s-it?”

“Little Bird? Maybe that too… We’ll have to see.”

Neville Macready was still wearing the preoccupied look he had affected whenever he wasn’t talking himself during the Irish briefing, so presumably it was a habit rather than an affectation.

Another screwball
, thought Richardson, with half-amused resignation. But then nearly all of Sir Frederick’s Permanent Advisers were mad as hatters in at least one quadrant of their behaviour, like the recruits of some intellectual Foreign Legion. Even David Audley, the nearest thing to a human being among them, was decidedly odd—which of course was why this whole thing had blown up.

But at least the screwball was no respecter of persons, like David and unlike Fatso Latimer; his knock and entrance were simultaneous, and his demeanour was that of someone accustomed to losing his way and finding himself in the wrong room, if not the wrong building, and no longer disconcerted by it.

“Neville!” Sir Frederick said affably, as though equally accustomed to such behaviour.

Macready’s gaze passed over Richardson with a slight frown and cleared as it settled on Sir Frederick.

“Ah, Fred—Mrs.—Thing—said you wanted a word with me about —she didn’t seem to know what it was about.”

“Yes, I do. … You’ve met Peter Richardson, I believe?”

“Richardson?” Macready repeated the name vaguely to himself, and then swung round suddenly towards its owner.

“You were going to Dublin.” He turned back to Sir Frederick before Richardson could say a word. “Something gone wrong there?”

“Not as far as I know. This is about something quite different, Neville. North Sea oil.”

“Huh!” Macready snorted derisively.

“Why ‘huh’?”

“We’ve made a dog’s breakfast of that all right.”

“Neville—“

“This bloody crew of nitwits—that’s half the reason why I got to hell out of the Board. God knows I’m not a socialist, but if Norway and Holland can get their taxpayers a fair cut and still attract capital it oughtn’t to be beyond the bounds of reason for us to do it too—“

“Neville—“

“Even Spain,
even Spain
, knows enough to get their exploitation on the right lines. Whereas all we do is piss around trying to make quick profits while the foreigners are making the real money. It isn’t even as though our own major companies are going to fork out —they pay damn little over here because of what they have screwed out of them overseas. And I told them—“

“Neville, it isn’t a rundown on Government policy I want.”

“Well, it should be. Auctioning blocks indeed! With the access to the geological information we’ve got now we can pick and choose the best bits just like that. But will we?” Macready waved a podgy finger. “Will we hell! We’ll sell the hottest national asset since the coal mines in the nineteenth century for a mess of pottage. And the Lord have mercy on our souls!”

Richardson listened fascinated. If half the reason for Macready’s flight from the Board—the Board of Trade?—had been the nitwits in Government, the other fifty per cent had been the marvellous intemperance of his opinions. As David had once observed, most of the best Civil Servants were unsuitable for their jobs, but Neville Macready was beyond anything he had yet encountered.

Yet Sir Frederick was equanimity itself; if anything he seemed pleased with the tirade, as though it reassured him that no one else would be tempted to steal Macready’s formidable brains from him.

“Eugenio Narva, Neville,” he said equably.

“What?”

“Tell us about Eugenio Narva.”

Macready rubbed the end of his nose, frowning. Then he abruptly dumped a file he had been carrying tucked under his arm on Sir Frederick’s desk.

“There’s the Narva file. Mrs.—what’s-it—Harlin had it, so I took it. It’s all in there. And he’s a case in point, too.”

“A case in point?”

“Yes. I don’t mind him being part of the Italian economic miracle, but I’m damned if I see why he should also be part of the British one.”

“Indeed?”

“Not that he’s the worst of ‘em. Narva’s an honest man as well as a smart one, which is rare—apart from his Norwegian interests he’s got himself well spread in British firms now, so we’ll get some of his gravy.”

“What firms?”

“Well, he’s got a rig of his own now, but he’s also on the board of Singer and Bailey. And he provided the capital for the Enfield Alloys expansion. Last time I read the reports he was dickering with the French consortium ETPM, which has a connection with Laing in Britain, and I shouldn’t be surprised to see him turn up on Wimpey’s one of these days. He’s built a platform yard of his own at Hartlepool, and of course he’s got a big chunk of Xenophon now— he bought in low and now it must be worth a packet. But that’s in the oil business itself. Most of his money’s in equipment and subcontracting. But he’ll be in the bidding when the next allocation of licences comes up in March, mark my words.” Macready nodded wisely. “But I suppose you know all that by now.”

“Why should I know it?”

“Well, I’ve already told all this to David Audley. I thought he—“

Macready stopped with embarrassing suddenness and began to rub his nose again.

“I haven’t been able to see David yet,” said Sir Frederick smoothly. “He’s on leave and I don’t want to disturb him. Just tell me what you told him. For a start.”

Macready stared around him vaguely, quickly looking away when he met Richardson’s eyes.

“This was a day or two ago, you spoke to David, wasn’t it?” Sir Frederick prodded gently. “On the phone?”

“No. I mean yes, it was two or three days ago,” said Macready guardedly. “I was down in the Reading Room—they’d just got in the American Economic Quarterly. David was down there.”

The Reading Room was next to the Dead Files Section, Richardson remembered. In fact you had to go through the Reading Room to get to the section, a claustrophobic, windowless box, with a table and chair which nobody used, partly because those in the Reading Room were much more comfortable and partly because the weight of the decaying past contained in the surrounding metal cabinets was oppressive. It would be easy to check up on whether David had used it, however, because although the dead files had a low classification they still rated as secret and could only be consulted after signing for the Archivist’s key.