Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (31 page)

“Yes.”

“Hard stuff?”

“I don’t think he’s got round to it. At the moment, he’s strictly on the amateur pot-line. It was because I recognised one of the carriers, a nasty little man called Jacko Sampson, that I was able to get onto him so quickly.”

“Bad,” said Mr. Behrens. “But not too bad yet. What are the authorities going to do about it?”

“It depends what line the Rector decides to take. Ponting, who has about as much courage as a small mouse, tried to buy himself out of the worst of the mess by identifying six students who had had stuff from him. My advice to the Rector was to let me throw a scare into Ponting which would shut him up for good, whilst he gives the students concerned the dressing down of their young lives.”

“Will he do it?”

“The snag is that most of them have been in the forefront of the trouble. And one of them is Pat Meaghan.”

“He’s a vindictive beast,” said Mr. Behrens. “He won’t pass a chance like this.”

“Yes, Miss Varney?” said the Rector, managing to combine in his tones hostility towards a known rebel and a degree of warmth appropriate to the daughter of a possible benefactor.

“It’s about Pat Meaghan and the others.”

“Which others?”

“The one’s who’ve been buying cannabis, silly young asses.”

“I should have used a stronger term myself,” said the Rector. “What they have done happens to be a criminal offence.”

“Only if you make it so,” said Alison. “I gather the police will only push it if you make them.”

“Might I ask exactly how you have—er—gathered any of this, Miss Varney? So far as I was aware the whole matter was, at the moment, entirely confidential between myself and the Home Office man who unearthed this scandalous state of affairs.”

“These things get about,” said Alison, evasively. “The point is, are you prepared to do a deal?”

“A deal?”

“If you’ll persuade the police to back-pedal on these charges, I’ll guarantee you’ll have no more trouble at the university. At least, as long as I’m here.”

The Rector had gone very red. He said, “Do you imagine for a moment that I could contemplate an outrageous bargain of that sort?”

“I don’t suppose you want a lot of trouble when the Minister comes down to open the library wing next week, do you? He might get the idea that you weren’t doing a very good job.”

“I fear you misjudge me,” said the Rector. His mouth was so tight that the words would hardly come out. “If I had been in any doubt before as to my proper course, this impudent attempt at blackmail and bribery would have made my mind up for me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great many things to do.”

“We’re on collision course,” said Mr. Behrens.

“She sounds a remarkable girl,” said Mr. Calder.

They were taking tea in the Palm Court of the hotel where Mr. Calder was staying. A string quartet was playing selections from
The Arcadians.

“Oh, she is. An arresting personality. Her father’s a millionaire. She’s a dedicated radical extremist. But with a lot more brains than that sort of person usually has. Make
her
Rector, and you’d have a university worth talking about.”

“It sounds to me as if you’ve fallen for her.”

“I have,” said Mr. Behrens. “Hook, line and sinker. Incidentally, she placed me without any difficulty.”

“The devil she did. What happened?”

“She offered to withdraw Ahmed from the leadership of the student protest group, on conditions.”

“Which were?”

“That I took his place. Even to achieve our main objective I didn’t feel able to agree to that.”

The Arcadians
was inducing a mood of nostalgia in Mr. Behrens. They were playing one of the catchy tunes from the second act.
“It’s nice and fine. I think that we shall have a lovely day – Eighty in the shade they say – Very, very warm for May.”
Mr. Behrens was humming the words to himself when he realised that Mr. Calder had said something.

“What’s that about Ahmed?”

“I said, you won’t have to bother about Ahmed. His father’s ordered him to come home.”

“Ordered him home?”

“Nothing to do with the university. The decision was taken on grounds of policy.”

“When did you hear?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Policy? What policy? Look here, something’s up. Why wasn’t I told?”

“I’ve been trying to make up my mind,” said Mr. Calder, calmly, “whether I’d tell you at all. Since it’s going to make you very angry, I thought I’d let you finish your tea before I did so.”

“First we lose Pat, and most of the out-and-outers with him.
They
daren’t move hand or foot until the court case is decided. And now Ahmed. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.”

It was the first time that Mr. Behrens had seen Alison near to tears. He said, “I think it’s time I gave you my well-known lecture on tactics. You made a mistake in offering the Rector terms. Never do that when your opponent thinks he’s winning. The time for offering terms is when you’re winning.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t see—”

“When you have suffered a series of setbacks, when your front is pushed in, your flanks are under fire and your rear is threatened, there’s only one thing to do. You attack. The body of students are behind you. They all realise that the Rector is behaving vindictively. He’s never been more unpopular than at this moment. The press will be here in force when the Minister comes down on Wednesday. You’ve got a golden opportunity to show the world what you think of him.”

“It’s all very well talking. Do you realise that almost every effective member of our organisation is out of action? You can’t build a new committee in forty-eight hours.”

Mr. Behrens seemed not to have heard her. He said, “The speeches will take place in the assembly hall. There is some sort of loft above the dais. The ceiling, I noticed, is wood or plaster board. A trap-door cut at the right point—”

“I could think up a lot of marvellous ideas,” said Alison, “if we had the people and the equipment. For one thing, do you realise that the assembly hall is locked at night?”

“I have a friend who happens to be staying in Wallingford,” said Mr. Behrens. “He has a way with locks. He could also get hold of any equipment, in reason, that you want.”

“Why should he help? Why should you, come to that?”

“We’re both
very
angry with the Rector,” said Mr. Behrens, gently. “When we’re angry, we like to do something about it.”

Mr. Fortescue looked over the top of his steel-rimmed glasses and said, in tones of cold disapproval, “Do I gather, Behrens, that you had some hand in this disgraceful episode?”

“I organised it,” said Mr. Behrens, “with a little help from Calder.”

“Suppose you are implicated?”

“Not a chance.”

“I’m glad you had that much sense.” Mr. Fortescue resumed his study of the report. “I see that the newspapers speak of an avalanche of soot descending on the Rector
and
on the Minister.”

“It was soot mixed with flour, actually. It gave them a very odd appearance.”

“Like the black and white minstrels,” said Mr. Calder.

“Suppose this girl – Alison Varney – is charged with complicity and gives you away?”

“Not a shred of evidence against her. She was seated in the third row of the audience, and could not possibly have had any hand in opening the trap.”

“She didn’t throw tomatoes either,” said Mr. Calder.

“Tomatoes?” said Mr. Fortescue. “There is no mention in the paper of tomatoes.”

“About twenty of the students threw them. Oddly enough, they were students who hadn’t been particularly militant before.”

Mr. Fortescue seemed to be visualising the scene. He said, “Soot, flour,
and
tomatoes. The Minister is a man who is rather conscious of his personal dignity. I can’t think he was pleased.”

“He was far from pleased,” said Mr. Behrens, “and spent, I believe, the best part of half an hour telling the Rector exactly what he thought of him, and his lack of control over his students. The betting is strongly in favour of a new Rector being appointed.”

“I have noticed,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that when you speak of the Rector, Behrens, you exhibit a most uncharacteristic spirit of personal vindictiveness.”

“You know
how
he got rid of Ahmed?”

“I wasn’t exactly clear about it,” said Mr. Fortescue. “I was so relieved that he had left without embarrassment to ourselves that I didn’t enquire too closely into the means.”

“The Rector had a message conveyed to Ahmed’s father,” said Mr. Calder, “that his son was in danger of being debauched by a girl of Jewish parentage.”

“My personal opinion,” said Mr. Behrens, “is that he was lucky to get off with soot and tomatoes. He deserved boiling lead.”

Mr. Fortescue rocked silently on his chair for some seconds. His eyes had a faraway look. Then he said, “The experiment was tried, in the early twenties, in a Rectorial election at Aberdeen University. It was not an unqualified success.”

A sharp, clear July morning had turned to a drizzle of rain, and Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens had retreated, with Rasselas, to the sitting room of Mr. Calder’s cottage. They had brought out the chess-board, but so little was Mr. Calder’s mind on the game that, within ten minutes of the start, he had allowed Mr. Behrens to manoeuvre himself into a position of impregnable advantage.

He said, “I am thinking of resigning.”

“You can’t think about resigning,” said Mr. Behrens. “Either you do resign, or you don’t.”

“I’m not talking about chess,” said Mr. Calder crossly. “I’m talking about our work.”

“Why?”

It was fifteen years since both men had left the regular Intelligence Service, almost on the same day. Since then they had been on a retainer. If a job seemed to be suitable for their particular talents they had been assigned to it.

“Enough is enough,” said Mr. Calder. “I’m getting old. My reactions are slowing down. Rasselas is as bad as I am.”

The great dog looked up.

“Yesterday, a rabbit ran rings round him.”

Rasselas seemed to understand this. His expression indicated that he thought the criticism unjust. Rabbits? Who cares about rabbits. He could have caught it quite easily if he had wanted to.

“It’s odd you should mention it,” said Mr. Behrens. “Because the same thought had occurred to me. I fired a refresher course on the police range at Croydon last month, and barely qualified. If you’ve made your mind up, we’d better get in touch with Fortescue.”

As he said that, the telephone rang.

“And that,” said Mr. Calder, “is probably more trouble.”

His telephone number was not only ex-directory. It was changed every six months. He went out into the passage where the telephone lived. Rasselas followed him.

Mr. Behrens fiddled with the chess pieces, trying one or two moves to see whether the attack he had mounted could be circumvented. He had decided that the position was irreversible when Mr. Calder came back.

“Your instinct was correct,” he said. “That was Fortescue.”

“And he has a job for us?”

“Yes, and no. That wasn’t the main point. He rang up to tell us that he was resigning his post at the Bank. Did you realise that he would be seventy next month?”

“I never thought about it. He could be any age.”

“That being so, he has decided that it’s time he gave up his other jobs too.”

“He’s the sort of man who’ll live to ninety. What is he going to do for the next twenty years?”

“He plans to grow roses.”

“He always was a stickler for tradition.”

The two men sat for a minute, staring out at the rain, which was drifting across the top of the North Downs in a filmy curtain. What they had heard had underlined their own decision. They had enjoyed working for Mr. Fortescue, a man of intransigent realism who could be ruthless to his subordinates, but allowed no-one else, from the Prime Minister downwards, to interfere with them.

“I suppose it will be Rowlandson who takes over.”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Calder. Since they were going themselves the matter was unimportant. “He’s all right. A bit Royal Navy.”

Mr. Behrens remembered something. “You said ‘Yes
and
No.’ Is there something in the offing?”

“There is a job. It sounds rather unusual. I said we’d go up tomorrow and discuss it.”

“With liberty to say no if we didn’t like the sound of it. I’d hate to get nailed at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour.”

“It didn’t sound like that sort of job,” said Mr. Calder. “In fact, it doesn’t sound like our normal sort of job at all.”

“For the last forty-eight hours,” said Mr. Fortescue, “the Department has had possession of Rudolf Sperrle’s testament. Nearly five hundred pages of typescript. In that folder there.”

He indicated a fat box-type folder on his desk.

Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens looked at each other in astonishment.

“Rudolf Sperrle?” said Mr. Calder. “Hitler’s personal aide- de-camp? I’d no idea he was still alive.”

“He isn’t,” said Mr. Fortescue. “He’s been living – in retirement in Bonn for the last thirty years. After the decision was made not to prosecute him – and, indeed, there was nothing to prosecute him for – he slipped into obscurity. I’ve no doubt he was only too glad to forget his war-time experiences, and glad that other people should forget them, too. But there was a drawback. Obscurity declined into poverty, and poverty to near starvation. He was too well-known for any of the new industrialists to risk giving him a job. He had a minimum state pension and made a little money by doing other people’s typing.”

“There must have been times when he regretted the high old days at Berchtesgarten,” said Mr. Behrens. “He was very close to the centre.”

“He was at the centre. True, he took no part in decision making, but he heard the decisions being made. He accompanied Hitler everywhere. No-one was jealous of him, because he exercised no influence. An admirable position for a Boswell.”