The Looking Glass War (10 page)

‘Of course.’

‘He’s been a lot of help with my DBS problems.’

‘Your what?’

‘Distressed British Subjects. We get one a day in Summer. They’re a disgrace. Did your brother drink a lot, incidentally? There’s some suggestion he was—’

‘It’s possible,’ Avery said. ‘I hardly knew him in the last few years.’ They entered the building.

Leclerc himself was walking carefully up the broad steps of the Ministry. It lay between Whitehall Gardens and the river; the doorway was large and new, surrounded with that kind of Fascist statuary which is admired by local authorities. Partly modernised, the building was guarded by sergeants in red sashes and contained two escalators; the one which descended was full, for it was half past five.

‘Under Secretary,’ Leclerc began diffidently. ‘I shall have to ask the Minister for another overflight.’

‘You’ll be wasting your time,’ he replied with satisfaction. ‘He was most apprehensive about the last one. He’s made a policy decision; there’ll be no more.’

‘Even with a target like this?’

‘Particularly with a target like this.’

The Under Secretary lightly touched the corners of his in-tray as a bank manager might touch a statement. ‘You’ll have to think of something else,’ he said. ‘Some other way. Is there no
painless
method?’

‘None. I suppose we could try to stimulate a defection from the area. That’s a lengthy business. Leaflets, propaganda broadcasts, financial inducements. It worked well in the war. We would have to approach a lot of people.’

‘It sounds a most improbable notion.’

‘Yes. Things are different now.’

‘What other ways are there, then?’ he insisted.

Leclerc smiled again, as if he would like to help a friend, but could not work miracles. ‘An agent. A short-term operation. In and out: a week altogether perhaps.’

The Under Secretary said, ‘But who could you find for a job like that? These days?’

‘Who indeed? It’s a very long shot.’

The Under Secretary’s room was large but dark, with rows of bound books. Modernisation had encroached as far as his Private Office, which was done in the contemporary style, but there the process had stopped. They could wait till he retired to do his room. A gas fire burnt in the marble fireplace. On the wall hung an oil painting of a battle at sea. They could hear the sound of barges in the fog. It was an oddly maritime atmosphere.

‘Kalkstadt’s pretty close to the border,’ Leclerc suggested. ‘We wouldn’t have to use a scheduled airline. We could do a training flight, lose our way. It’s been done before.’

‘Precisely,’ said the Under Secretary, then: ‘This man of yours who died.’

‘Taylor?’

‘I’m not concerned with names. He was murdered, was he?’

‘There’s no proof,’ Leclerc said.

‘But you assume it?’

Leclerc smiled patiently. ‘I think we both know, Under Secretary, that it is very dangerous to make broad assumptions when decisions of policy are involved. I’m still asking for another overflight.’

The Under Secretary coloured.

‘I told you it’s out of the question. No! Does that make it clear? We were talking of alternatives.’

‘There’s one alternative, I suppose, which would scarcely touch on my Department. It’s more a matter for yourselves and the Foreign Office.’

‘Oh?’

‘Drop a hint to the London newspapers. Stimulate publicity. Print the photographs.’

‘And?’

‘Watch them. Watch the East German and Soviet diplomacy, watch their communications. Throw a stone into the nest and see what comes out.’

‘I can tell you exactly what would come out. A protest from the Americans that would ring through these corridors for another twenty years.’

‘Of course. I was forgetting that.’

‘Then you’re very lucky. You suggested putting an agent in.’

‘Only tentatively. We’ve no one in mind.’

‘Look,’ said the Under Secretary, with the finality of a man much tried. ‘The Minister’s position is very simple. You have produced a report. If it is true, it alters our entire defence position. In fact it alters everything. I detest sensation, so does the Minister. Having put up the hare, the least you can do is have a shot at it.’

Leclerc said, ‘If I found a man there’s the problem of resources. Money, training and equipment. Extra staff perhaps. Transport. Whereas an overflight …’

‘Why do you raise so many difficulties? I understood you people existed for this kind of thing.’

‘We have the expertise, Under Secretary. But I cut down, you know. I have cut down a lot. Some of our functions have lapsed: one must be honest. I have never tried to put the clock back. This is, after all’ – a delicate smile – ‘a slightly
anachronistic
situation.’

The Under Secretary glanced out of the window at the lights along the river.

‘It seems pretty contemporary to me. Rockets and that kind of thing. I don’t think the Minister considers it anachronistic.’

‘I’m not referring to the target but the method of attack: it would have to be a crash operation at the border. That has scarcely been done since the war. Although it is a form of clandestine warfare with which my Department is traditionally at home. Or used to be.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘I’m only thinking aloud, Under Secretary. I wonder whether the Circus might not be better equipped to deal with this. Perhaps you should approach Control. I can promise him the support of my armaments people.’

‘You mean you don’t think you can handle it?’

‘Not with my existing organisation. Control can. As long, that is, as the Minister doesn’t mind bringing in another Department. Two, really. I didn’t realise you were so worried about publicity.’

‘Two?’

‘Control will feel bound to inform the Foreign Office. It’s his duty. Just as I inform you. And from then on, we must accept that it will be their headache.’

‘If
those
people know,’ the Under Secretary said with contempt, ‘it’ll be round every damned club by tomorrow.’

‘There is that danger,’ Leclerc conceded. ‘More particularly, I wonder whether the Circus has the
military
skills. A rocket site is a complicated affair: launch pads, blast shields, cable troughs; all these things require proper processing and evaluation. Control and I could combine forces, I suppose—’

‘That’s out of the question. You people make poor bedfellows. Even if you succeeded in cooperating, it would be against policy: no monolith.’

‘Ah yes. Of course.’

‘Assume you do it yourself, then; assume you find a man, what would that involve?’

‘A supplementary estimate. Immediate resources. Extra staff. A training establishment. Ministerial protection; special passes and authority.’ The knife again: ‘And
some
help from Control … we could obtain that under a pretext.’

A foghorn echoed mournfully across the water.

‘If it’s the only way …’

‘Perhaps you’d put it to the Minister,’ Leclerc suggested.

Silence. Leclerc continued, ‘In practical terms we need the best part of thirty thousand pounds.’

‘Accountable?’

‘Partially. I understood you wanted to be spared details.’

‘Except where the Treasury’s concerned. I suggest that you make a minute about costs.’

‘Very well. Just an outline.’

The silence returned.

‘That is hardly a large sum when set against the risk,’ the Under Secretary said, consoling himself.

‘The potential risk. We want to clarify. I don’t pretend to be convinced. Merely suspicious, heavily suspicious.’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘The Circus would ask twice as much. They’re very free with money.’

‘Thirty thousand pounds, then, and our protection?’

‘And a man. But I must find him for myself.’ A small laugh.

The Under Secretary said abruptly: ‘There are certain details the Minister will not want to know. You realise that?’

‘Of course. I imagine you will do most of the talking.’

‘I imagine the Minister will. You’ve succeeded in worrying him a good deal.’

Leclerc remarked with impish piety, ‘We should never do that to our master; our common master.’

The Under Secretary did not seem to feel they had one. They stood up.

‘Incidentally,’ Leclerc said, ‘Mrs Taylor’s pension. I’m making an application to the Treasury. They feel the Minister should sign it.’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’

‘It’s a question of whether he was killed in action.’

The Under Secretary froze. ‘That is most presumptuous. You’re asking for Ministerial confirmation that Taylor was murdered.’

‘I’m asking for a widow’s pension,’ Leclerc protested gravely. ‘He was one of my best men.’

‘Of course. They always are.’

The Minister did not look up as they came in.

But the Police Inspector rose from his chair, a short, plump man with a shaven neck. He wore plain clothes. Avery supposed him to be a detective. He shook their hands with an air of professional bereavement, sat them in modern chairs with teak arms and offered cigars out of a tin. They declined, so he lit one himself, and used it thereafter both as a prolongation of his short fingers when making gestures of emphasis, and as a drawing instrument to describe in the smoke-filled air objects of which he was speaking. He deferred frequently to Avery’s grief by thrusting his chin downwards into his collar and casting from the shadow of his lowered eyebrows confiding looks of sympathy. First he related the circumstances of the accident, praised in tiresome detail the efforts of the police to track down the car, referred frequently to the personal concern of the President of Police, whose anglophilia was a byword, and stated his own conviction that the guilty man would be found out, and punished with the full severity of Finnish law. He dwelt for some time on his own admiration of the British, his affection for the Queen and Sir Winston Churchill, the charms of Finnish neutrality and finally he came to the body.

The post-mortem, he was proud to say, was complete, and Mr Public Prosecutor (his own words) had declared that the circumstances of Mr Malherbe’s death gave no grounds for suspicion despite the presence of a considerable amount of alcohol in the blood. The barman at the airport accounted for five glasses of Steinhäger. He returned to Sutherland.

‘Does he want to see his brother?’ he inquired, thinking it apparently a delicacy to refer the question to a third party.

Sutherland was embarrassed. ‘That’s up to Mr Avery,’ he said, as if the matter were outside his competence. They both looked at Avery.

‘I don’t think so,’ Avery said.

‘There is one difficulty. About the identification,’ Peersen said.

‘Identification?’ Avery repeated. ‘Of my brother?’

‘You saw his passport,’ Sutherland put in, ‘before you sent it up to me. What’s the difficulty?’

The policeman nodded. ‘Yes, yes.’ Opening a drawer he took out a handful of letters, a wallet and some photographs.

‘His name was Malherbe,’ he said. He spoke fluent English with a heavy American accent which somehow suited the cigar. ‘His passport was Malherbe. It was a
good
passport, wasn’t it?’ Peersen glanced at Sutherland. For a second Avery thought he detected in Sutherland’s clouded face a certain honest hesitation.

‘Of course.’

Peersen began to sort through the letters, putting some in a file before him and returning others to the drawer. Every now and then, as he added to the pile, he muttered: ‘Ah, so,’ or ‘Yes, yes.’ Avery could feel the sweat running down his body; it drenched his clasped hands.

‘And your brother’s name was Malherbe?’ he asked again, when he had finished his sorting.

Avery nodded. ‘Of course.’

Peersen smiled. ‘Not of course,’ he said, pointing his cigar and nodding in a friendly way as if he were making a debating point. ‘All his possessions, his letters, his clothes, driving licence, all belong to a Mr Taylor. You know anything of Taylor?’

A dreadful block was forming in Avery’s mind. The envelope, what should he do with the envelope? Go to the lavatory, destroy it now before it was too late? He doubted whether it would work: the envelope was stiff and shiny. Even if he tore it, the pieces would float. He was aware of Peersen and Sutherland looking at him, waiting for him to speak and all he could think of was the envelope weighing so heavily in his inside pocket.

He managed to say, ‘No, I don’t. My brother and I …’ Step-brother or half-brother? ‘… my brother and I did not have much to do with one another. He was older. We didn’t really grow up together. He had a lot of different jobs, he could never quite settle down to anything. Perhaps this Taylor was a friend of his … who …’ Avery shrugged, bravely trying to imply that Malherbe had been something of a mystery to him also.

‘How old are you?’ Peersen asked. His respect for the bereaved seemed to be dwindling.

‘Thirty-two.’

‘And Malherbe?’ he threw out conversationally. ‘He was how many years older, please?’

Sutherland and Peersen had seen his passport and knew his age. One remembers the age of people who die. Only Avery, his brother, had no idea how old the dead man was.

‘Twelve,’ he hazarded. ‘My brother was forty-four.’ Why did he have to say so much?

Peersen raised his eyebrows. ‘Only forty-four? Then the passport is wrong as well.’

Peersen turned to Sutherland, poked his cigar towards the door at the far end of the room and said happily, as if he had ended an old argument between friends, ‘Now you are seeing why I have a problem about identification.’

Sutherland was looking very angry.

‘It would be nice if Mr Avery looked at the body,’ Peersen suggested, ‘then we can be sure.’

Sutherland said, ‘Inspector Peersen. The identity of Mr Malherbe has been established from his passport. The Foreign Office in London has ascertained that Mr Avery’s name was quoted by Mr Malherbe as his next of kin. You tell me there is nothing suspicious about the circumstances of his death. The customary procedure is now for you to release his effects to me for custody pending the completion of formalities in the United Kingdom. Mr Avery may presumably take charge of his brother’s body.’