The Human Factor (4 page)

‘Not many pheasants,' Daintry said, ‘but otherwise very fine.'

‘Harry,' she called over his shoulder, ‘Dicky' and then ‘Where's Dodo? Is he lost?' Nobody called Daintry by his first name because nobody knew it. With a sense of loneliness he watched the graceful elongated figure of his hostess limp down the stone steps to greet ‘Harry' with a kiss on both cheeks. Daintry went on alone into the dining-room where the drinks stood waiting on the buffet.

A little stout rosy man in tweeds whom he thought he had seen somewhere before was mixing himself a dry martini. He wore silver-rimmed spectacles which glinted in the sunlight. ‘Add one for me,' Daintry said, ‘if you are making them really dry.'

‘Ten to one,' the little man said. ‘A whiff of the cork, eh? Always use a scent spray myself. You are Daintry, aren't you? You've forgotten me. I'm Percival. I took your blood pressure once.'

‘Oh yes. Doctor Percival. We're in the same firm more or less, aren't we?'

‘That's right. C wanted us to get together quietly – no need for all that nonsense with scramblers here. I can never make mine work, can you? The trouble is, though, that I don't shoot. I only fish. This your first time here?'

‘Yes. When did you arrive?'

‘A bit early. Around midday. I'm a Jaguar fiend. Can't go at less than a hundred.'

Daintry looked at the table. A bottle of beer stood by every place. He didn't like beer, but for some reason beer seemed always to be regarded as suitable for a shoot. Perhaps it went with the boyishness of the occasion like ginger beer at Lord's. Daintry was not boyish. A shoot to him was an exercise of strict competitive skill – he had once been runner-up for the King's Cup. Now down the centre of the table stood small silver sweet bowls which he saw contained his Maltesers. He had been a little embarrassed the night before when he had presented almost a crate of them to Lady Hargreaves; she obviously hadn't an idea what they were or what to do with them. He felt that he had been deliberately fooled by that man Castle. He was glad to see they looked more sophisticated in silver bowls than they had done in plastic bags.

‘Do you like beer?' he asked Percival.

‘I like anything alcoholic,' Percival said, ‘except Fernet-Branca,' and then the boys burst boisterously in – Buffy and Dodo, Harry and Dicky and all; the silver and the glasses vibrated with joviality. Daintry was glad Percival was there, for nobody seemed to know Percival's first name either.

Unfortunately he was separated from him at table. Percival had quickly finished his first bottle of beer and begun on a second. Daintry felt betrayed, for Percival seemed to be getting on with his neighbours as easily as if they had been members of the old firm too. He had begun to tell a fishing story which had made the man called Dicky laugh. Daintry was sitting between the fellow he took to be Buffy and a lean elderly man with a lawyer's face. He had introduced himself, and his surname was familiar. He was either the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General, but Daintry couldn't remember which; his uncertainty inhibited conversation.

Buffy said suddenly, ‘My God, if those are not Maltesers!'

‘You know Maltesers?' Daintry asked.

‘Haven't tasted one for donkey's years. Always bought them at the movies when I was a kid. Taste wonderful. There's no movie house around here surely?'

‘As a matter of fact I brought them from London.'

‘You go to the movies? Haven't been to one in ten years. So they still sell Maltesers?'

‘You can buy them in shops too.'

‘I never knew that. Where did you find them?'

‘In an ABC.'

‘ABC?'

Daintry repeated dubiously what Castle had said, ‘Aerated Bread Company.'

‘Extraordinary! What's aerated bread?'

‘I don't know,' Daintry said.

‘The things they do invent nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised, would you, if their loaves were made by computers?' He leant forward and took a Malteser and crackled it at his ear like a cigar.

Lady Hargreaves called down the table, ‘Buffy! Not before the steak-and-kidney pie.'

‘Sorry, my dear, Couldn't resist. Haven't tasted one since I was a kid.' He said to Daintry, ‘Extraordinary things computers. I paid 'em a fiver once to find me a wife.'

‘You aren't married?' Daintry asked, looking at the gold ring Buffy wore.

‘No. Always keep that on for protection. Wasn't really serious, you know. Like to try out new gadgets. Filled up a form as long as your arm. Qualifications, interests, profession, what have you.' He took another Malteser. ‘Sweet tooth,' he said. ‘Always had it.'

‘And did you get any applicants?'

‘They sent me along a girl. Girl! Thirty-five if a day. I had to give her tea. Haven't had tea since my mum died. I said, “My dear, do you mind if we make it a whisky? I know the waiter here. He'll slip us one!” She said she didn't drink. Didn't drink!'

‘The computer had slipped up?'

‘She had a degree in Economics at London University. And big spectacles. Flat-chested. She said she was a good cook. I said I always took my meals at White's.'

‘Did you ever see her again?'

‘Not to speak to, but once she waved to me from a bus as I was coming down the club steps. Embarrassing! Because I was with Dicky at the time. That's what happened when they let buses go up St James's Street. No one was safe.'

After the steak-and-kidney pie came a treacle tart and a big Stilton cheese and Sir John Hargreaves circulated the port. There was a faint feeling of unrest at the table as though the holidays had been going on too long. People began to glance through the windows at the grey sky: in a few hours the light would fail. They drank their port rapidly as if with a sense of guilt – they were not really there for idle pleasure – except Percival who wasn't concerned. He was telling another fishing story and had four empty bottles of beer beside him.

The Solicitor-General – or was it the Attorney-General? – said heavily, ‘We ought to be moving. The sun's going down.' He certainly was not here for enjoyment, only for execution, and Daintry sympathized with his anxiety. Hargreaves really ought to make a move, but Hargreaves was almost asleep. After years in the Colonial Service – he had once been a young District Commissioner on what was then the Gold Coast – he had acquired the knack of snatching his siesta in the most unfavourable circumstances, even surrounded by quarrelling chiefs, who used to make more noise than Buffy.

‘John,' Lady Hargreaves called down the table, ‘wake up.'

He opened blue serene unshockable eyes and said, ‘A cat-nap.' It was said that as a young man somewhere in Ashanti he had inadvertently eaten human flesh, but his digestion had not been impaired. According to the story he had told the Governor, ‘I couldn't really complain, sir. They were doing me a great honour by inviting me to take pot luck.'

‘Well, Daintry,' he said, ‘I suppose it's time we got on with the massacre.'

He unrolled himself from the table and yawned. ‘Your steak-and-kidney pie, dear, is
too
good.'

Daintry watched him with envy. He envied him in the first place for his position. He was one of the very few men outside the services ever to have been appointed C. No one in the firm knew why he had been chosen – all kinds of recondite influences had been surmised, for his only experience of intelligence had been gained in Africa during the war. Daintry also envied him his wife; she was so rich, so decorative, so impeccably American. An American marriage, it seemed, could not be classified as a foreign marriage: to marry a foreigner special permission had to be obtained and it was often refused, but to marry an American was perhaps to confirm the special relationship. He wondered all the same whether Lady Hargreaves had been positively vetted by MI5 and been passed by the FBI.

‘Tonight,' Hargreaves said, ‘we'll have a chat, Daintry, won't we? You and I and Percival. When this crowd has gone home.'

2

Sir John Hargreaves limped round, handing out cigars, pouring out whiskies, poking the fire. ‘I don't enjoy shooting much myself,' he said. ‘Never used to shoot in Africa, except with a camera, but my wife likes all the old English customs. If you have land, she says, you must have birds. I'm afraid there weren't enough pheasants, Daintry.'

‘I had a very good day,' Daintry said, ‘all in all.'

‘I wish you ran to a trout stream,' Doctor Percival said.

‘Oh yes, fishing's your game, isn't it? Well, you might say we've got a bit of fishing on hand now.' He cracked a log with his poker. ‘Useless,' he said, ‘but I love to see the sparks fly. There seems to be a leak somewhere in Section 6.'

Percival said, ‘At home or in the field?'

‘I'm not sure, but I have a nasty feeling that it's here at home. In one of the African sections – 6A.'

‘I've just finished going through Section 6,' Daintry said. ‘Only a routine run through. So as to get to know people.'

‘Yes, so they told me. That's why I asked you to come here. Enjoyed having you for the shoot too, of course. Did anything strike you?'

‘Security's got a bit slack. But that's true of all other sections too. I made a rough check for example of what people take out in their briefcases at lunchtime. Nothing serious, but I was surprised at the number of briefcases . . . It's a warning, that's all, of course. But a warning might scare a nervous man. We can't very well ask them to strip.'

‘They do that in the diamond fields, but I agree that in the West End stripping would seem a bit unusual.'

‘Anyone really out of order?' Percival asked.

‘Not seriously. Davis in 6A was carrying a report – said he wanted to read it over lunch. I warned him, of course, and made him leave it behind with Brigadier Tomlinson. I've gone through all the traces too. Vetting has been done very efficiently since the Blake case broke, but we still have a few men who were with us in the bad old days. Some of them even go back as far as Burgess and Maclean. We
could
start tracing them all over again, but it's difficult to pick up a cold scent.'

‘It's possible, of course, just possible,' C said, ‘that the leak came from abroad and that the evidence has been planted here. They would like to disrupt us, damage morale and hurt us with the Americans. The knowledge that there was a leak, if it became public, could be more damaging than the leak itself.'

‘That's what I was thinking,' Percival said. ‘Questions in Parliament. All the old names thrown up – Vassall, the Portland affair, Philby. But if they're after publicity, there's little we can do.'

‘I suppose a Royal Commission would be appointed to shut the stable door,' Hargreaves said. ‘But let's assume for a moment that they are really after information and not scandal. Section 6 seems a most unlikely department for that. There are no atomic secrets in Africa: guerrillas, tribal wars, mercenaries, petty dictators, crop failures, building scandals, gold beds, nothing very secret there. That's why I wonder whether the motive may be simply scandal, to prove they have penetrated the British Secret Service yet again.'

‘Is it an important leak, C?' Percival asked.

‘Call it a very small drip, mainly economic, but the interesting thing is that apart from economics it concerns the Chinese. Isn't it possible – the Russians are such novices in Africa – that they want to make use of our service for information on the Chinese?'

‘There's precious little they can learn from us,' Percival said.

‘But you know what it's always like at everybody's Centre. One thing no one can ever stand there is a blank white card.'

‘Why don't we send them carbon copies, with our compliments, of what we send the Americans? There's supposed to be a
détente
, isn't there? Save everyone a lot of trouble.' Percival took a little tube from his pocket and sprayed his glasses, then wiped them with a clean white handkerchief.

‘Help yourself to the whisky,' C said. ‘I'm too stiff to move after that bloody shoot. Any ideas, Daintry?'

‘Most of the people in Section 6 are post-Blake. If their traces are unreliable then no one is safe.'

‘All the same, the source seems to be Section 6 – and probably 6A. Either at home or abroad.'

‘The head of Section 6, Watson, is a relative newcomer,' Daintry said. ‘He was very thoroughly vetted. Then there's Castle – he's been with us a very long time, we brought him back from Pretoria seven years ago because they needed him in 6A, and there were personal reasons too – trouble about the girl he wanted to marry. Of course, he belongs to the slack vetting days, but I'd say he was clear. Dullish man, first-class, of course, with files – it's generally the brilliant and ambitious who are dangerous. Castle is safely married, second time, his first wife's dead. There's one child, a house on mortgage in Metroland. Life insurance – payments up to date. No high living. He doesn't even run to a car. I believe he bicycles every day to the station. A third class in history at the House. Careful and scrupulous. Roger Castle in the Treasury is his cousin.'

‘You think he's quite clear then?'

‘He has his eccentricities, but I wouldn't say dangerous ones. For instance he suggested I bring those Maltesers to Lady Hargreaves.'

‘Maltesers?'

‘It's a long story. I won't bother you with it now. And then there's Davis. I don't know that I'm quite so happy about Davis, in spite of the positive vetting.'