The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin - Страница 44

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Halfway through, her voice had become an echo, disorientating Maxim until his memory came to rest in a stone-walled lecture room with the Scottish wind rattling the windows. "Did somebody tell you that, once?"

"A Miss Dorothy Tuckey, on my first training course. A long time ago."

"I didn't know you'd met her."

"She taught me how to react and not to react. The least I could do when you told me… An unknown grave, I suppose. She might have thought that was appropriate."

After a time, Maxim asked: "Did you ever live that sort of life?-for any length of time?"

Agnes took her own time deciding to answer. The glow of her cigarette briefly outlined her snub-nosed profile against the dark wall. "Yes… right at the beginning, before my face got known. I got myself a job as typist and general dogsbody on a small magazine we thought was being financed from Moscow. We didn't care about the magazine, we just wanted to trace back the gold chain, see who handled it. After a time they used me as a courier: everybody else on the staff thought they were being watched. They were quite right, too, by then."

"How long did it last?"

"Eighteen months, about. Living and working with those people, eating and drinking with them, and the only taste I learnt to like wasthey don't know." The taste, relearnt that afternoon in New York, was still in her mouth.

"What happened in the end?"

"Nothing special. It just got too obvious that nobody bought the magazine so Moscow hauled in the chain. Orperhaps I made a mistake: you can see which I'd rather believe. The magazine folded and we all got drunk on Bulgarian wine and I made a speech about going out to penetrate the government and cut the arteries of the police state right at its heart-you need Bulgarian wine to say things like that, it makes me faint to think of it now. And the next day-well, nearly-the Service put me on the list as an Administration Trainee.

"I suppose we got a few more names on a few more files, learnt a bit about Moscow's accountancy procedures. And I learnt a lot-mostly about myself… about giving everything but keeping something back because you'll have to start giving again tomorrow. Is there some secret You inside that rather activist exterior?"

"I don't know… I don't think there was; you live a very open life in the Army, the secrets aren't personal ones… I suppose I used to think the worst that could happen was that I got killed. Just Lights Out and somebody else's problem from then on. Now… it's getting a lot more complicated. The Army can teach you to handle anything-except loneliness."

She breathed the last gasp of smoke towards the ceiling and stubbed out her cigarette. "Do you want to come into my bed, Harry?"

"Yes."

"Promise me one thing: don't say you love me."

From then on, everything went dreadfully and completely wrong. Perhaps it was too small a bed, because it had to hold the ghosts of Mo Magill and Jenny, Maxim's dead wife, as well. And perhaps they were hoping for an innocence that was long past both of them… It went wrong.

Sitting weeping in the bathroom, Agnes demanded of herself how she could have been so responsive to every whim of Magill's mood, and so dull but demanding and clumsy with Maxim… When she went back he was asleep, or pretending to be, in his own bed.

In the dawn, grey with sea mist, she drove him to the airport.

Meanwhile, back at the Ministry of Defence, George was not back at the Ministry. Something sudden had come up concerning the family fortunes, and he had to consult his solicitors: it was the one excuse that his seniors, being closer to retirement and thus deeply concerned with land values and capital transfer taxes, accepted with sympathy.

George actually did spend the morning with solicitors, although not his own. Taplin, Green and Keeley-or their ghosts, since none of those names now survived in the list of partners-had offices on the south side of New Square, a corridor with an uneven floor under the carpeting and doorways that had subsided to odd angles. Mr Nightingale's room was the third along to the right.

"I rather think," Mr Nightingale said, "that I was at school with your uncle, C. A. Harbinger. Would that be right?"

"Really? Uncle Charles? Yes, indeed." George had chosen to ask for Mr Nightingale because he had already established that connection.

"First-class cricketer. I'm sorry he missed his Blue, but Oxford was very strong in those years… How's he keeping?" When last heard of, Uncle Charles had been keeping a Malaysian girl less than half his age in a Vancouver penthouse, but George managed to recall some less interesting small-talk, and like winged seeds the conversation spiralled delicately down to business.

"We don't actually act for you, do we?" Mr Nightingale asked politely.

"I'm sorry to say you don't, one feels bound by tradition… This is quite unofficial, but"-hoping that would be interpreted as 'almost official'-"it does concern my work at the Ministry, security and intelligence on thepolside…" Mr Nightingale had been a wartime soldier in a fairly respectable regiment (George's opinion, as an ex-cavalryman) and while he had filled out to a pink-and-white chubbiness, he still wore a small military moustache that had stayed loyally ginger as a reminder of the Desert campaign.

George continued with deliberate diffidence: "It's all rather confidential, I know of course you'll respect that; the problem is rather whether you feel you can disclose anything from your side without an official request from Security, and I'm sure you'll understand why we'd rather avoid that at this stage…"

"If it concerns one of my clients, you must appreciate my position is quite clear."

"I really don't know whether it does or not… May I simply go ahead and ask?"

"By all means."

"I believe you were once a director of a small company called Anglam Gateway Ltd?"

"Oh yes, that… we wound that up ten years ago, at least."

"Can you tell me anything about it?"

Mr Nightingale considered. "There was nothing confidential about it: it was a bright idea some Americans had for setting up training courses-that sort of thing-for their businessmen and other people coming over to Britain for the first time. You spent a week in the countryside being lectured on British business practices, company law, how to address a Duke… all sorts of things like that. It did quite well, for a time."

"What happened eventually?"

"I think the American end decided to, ah, quit while they were ahead. There was a trend for the multi-national corporations to set up their own courses, on a European rather than purely British basis… We were totally dependent on the American end to send us the, ah, trainees. It was essential to recruit them over there, before they arrived; if they found it was getting too expensive to advertise and recruit, well, that was that."

"And you were a nominee shareholder and director."

"Yees, I think you could certainly assume that. Theproblems of American citizens being directors of British companies…"

So Anglam had been, effectively, entirely in American hands: they sent the trainees, probably nominated the lecturers, and when the time came could quietly pull out, pleading changes in the American scene which the British directors couldn't challenge. George veered away from the obvious next question, which he was sure Mr Nightingale wouldn't answer.

"Did the company itself own any property?"

"Oh yes. It rented an office in Knightsbridge for a while, and actually bought a house in Tunbridge Wells. We sold that when we picked up another house down near Eastbourne. A more secluded place, very pleasant. I actually gave a few lectures there myself, on company law. Always had a most pleasant time."

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