"The Secret Servant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lyall Gavin)

4

The ladies' annex of that particular club was being redecorated, so for a few weeks women were allowed into what was called the Library, although there was no sign that anybody ever dared touch the leather-bound books lining the walls.

George introduced them. "Major Harry Maxim – you probably know more about him than I do anyway. Miss Agnes Algar from Box 500, Five, whatever you care to call it."

"It's nice to meet a real professional," Maxim said tactfully.

"Thank you, kind sir." Agnes was about Maxim's own age, with an oval face that could be called 'friendly' and looked as if it should have freckles. She had blue eyes, a snub nose and light ginger hair cut straight but in no definable style. She wore a skirt, blouse and jacket in light brown and oatmeal shades, which most women were wearing that season. Being friendly and unmemorable was an important part of her work.

They sat on huge studded leather chairs in a corner of the room, which was long and tall enough for them to speak normally without being overheard. Agnes kept a hopeful smile on her face as she studied the man whom the intelligence community was already calling the Unknown Soldier. She had foolishly believed that, after fourteen years of security work, she knew every stupidity that Downing Street could get up to in that field. She had been wrong. They had brought in a soldier, an infantryman, no matter what he might have learned in the SAS and the Ashford course. Presumably he was a crack shot and a born leader who could crawl invisibly across a thousand miles of desert, if that was any help in Whitehall traffic, but probably he knew as much about real security work as she did about the mating habits of the giant squid.

But he will pass, all things pass, particularly soldiers when their brief postings are up. Until then, she could live with it. Agnes had that most valuable of all talents in the intelligence world, something the MI5 headhunter at Oxford had hoped for but could only guess at all those years ago: loyalty that lasted beyond disillusionment.

"Does this meeting mean that we have found favour again in the eyes of the All Highest?" she asked. She had a gentle, controlled voice, more Oxford than shire.

"You have most certainly not. There are standing orders to set the dogs on any of your calling who sets foot within a quarter mile of Number 10."

Agnes could live with that, too. Prime Ministers also passed, even if each new one was just as paranoid about the security service as the last.

"All we want-" then George caught the eye of an elderly steward. "What will you drink?"

"Ow, a small tonic wiv a large gin, pleeze, duckie." Around George, Agnes often slumped into a stage cockney accent, originally intended to embarrass him, now just a habit. Maxim and George both asked for whisky and water. The steward crumbled away towards the service door.

"All we want," George went on, "is for your mob to dig up everything they can about this Farthing person without triggering off any nuclear disasters or Questions in the House."

Agnes kept her friendly smile and fumbled in a shoulder bag shaped like a pony express pouch until she found a notebook. "I looked up his file at the Registry."

"Was he positively vetted?"

"No, just the standard procedures when he got into armaments, and topped up from time to time. He never got above junior management and he wasn't in anything really sensitive. He was… born in York. No university, just Sheffield Polytechnic. Engineering, he did quite well. National Service in the Royal Tank Regiment-" George, ex-cavalry, gave a small grunt, just as Maxim had expected. Agnes ploughed on; "-became a corporal, then he was a management trainee at BSA, he got married in…" It was a drab, dull list of facts that got fewer and less important as Farthing grew older, until, with a cutback in defence spending, his last employer dumped him on the street.

"It sounds," George said, "as if today was the high point in his life."

"How far have we got?" Maxim asked.

"Four years ago. There's nothing after he left the arms business. Despite what some people think, we don't keep files on everybody in the country."

George asked: "What about Canada? If he was there long enough to buy a suit he must have had a job. They wouldn't let him stay, otherwise."

"He wasn't working in any defence industry. The Mounties would have vetted him and asked us what we knew."

"Unless your people lost the letter."

"Unless our people lost the letter," Agnes agreed calmly.

George made a noise that could have been apologetic. "And no connection with Professor Tyler?"

"There's no hint of it. Farthing seems to have spent his working life in the north, and Tyler's always lived in the south, hasn't he? Cambridge and London?"

"Yes. Where the bloody hell are our drinks?" George leant round sharply and almost butted the steward in the stomach. With dreadful precision, the old man put down the glasses in the wrong places, flooded George's whisky with too much water and went away.

"Just ain't yer night, is it, me ole china?" Agnes said. "Cheers."

George took a vast mouthful of his drink. "I want those four years filled in."

"There's two ends to the business," Agnes said.

"I know. Harry's taking the other one."

Maxim looked up. "Am I?"

"He mentioned the anti-tank mortar trials, didn't you say?"

"Yes, he said that-"

"I know. They aren't secret, but they aren't news either. There hasn't been anything in the papers."

"He'd still have friends in the arms business."

"That's probably it. Tyler's going to watch a demonstration by the development unit at Warminster on Monday. You'd better go, too. Get onto Sir Bruce and have yourself fixed up as Tyler's temporary ADC. And when you're with him, listen."

"That's all?"

"I don't know." George looked uneasy. "And guard his back. Where there's a drill grenade there might be a real one…"