•**
Major Swart read the telex.
They'd had to stop once at a service station on the way back to London. Heavy stuff, English beer. He read the telex, then went back to his private lavatory, and back again to the telex.
Shit, and he was half cut. He was never at his best after he had drunk at lunchtime.
He knew the name of Curwen. Checked it out, hadn't he, days before. Checked and found that Mrs Hilda Perry had been married to a James Curwen. Thought he'd cracked the connection between James Carew and Hilda Perry. Had it all sewn up until he had taken the photograph of James Carew to the village in Hampshire and been told four times that the photograph was not that of James Curwen. From Somerset House he knew there was a son of the marriage between Hilda Perry and James Curwen, he knew from those same records that the son had been christened Jack.
Johannesburg wanted information on a Jack Curwen.
They wanted background, and they wanted confirmation of a photo-fit likeness.
Major Swart could have sent off an answer straight away
… But he wanted to piss again… He reckoned he could have established the link between Jack Curwen and Hilda Perry and a letter written from Pretoria Central by James Carew.
With too much beer inside him, and a foul temper still from the encounter at the funeral, he chose a different course.
He would first stitch the matter, then he would send his message.
He would stitch it so tight that there were no call backs, no demands for follow up information.
He rang Erik. Yes, the bloody man had replaced his bloody television set. Yes, Erik would be at the embassy within forty-five minutes. He shouted down the corridor to Piet that if he had plans, life or death, for the late evening then he should bloody well forget them.
And then hastily back to his private lavatory, fumbling with his private key, to leak.
•**
He came heavily down the staircase. A beautiful staircase, oak, probably Jacobean, he thought.
The hostility swarmed from the short, slight woman. The hostility was in the wrinkle lines at her throat, and in the flash of her eyes, and the curl of a tired mouth.
'I hope you're satisfied. I hope you understand why he couldn't come to London to see you.'
Mrs Fordham had told the Director General over the telephone that the colonel was ill and could not take a train to London. He hadn't believed her.
They stood in the panelled hallway. He thought the house and its interior were magnificent. Perhaps she read him.
'It was all my money, my family's money. The colonel wasn't interested in material reward, all he cared about was the Service. The Service was his life. And how did the Service repay his dedication? There wasn't even a party for him. More than two decades of work and the Service simply discarded him. We've had just one visit from the Service since he was thrown out, and that was some grubby little man who came here to see that there weren't any classified documents in the house.'
The Director General was still shaken by the sight of the shell of the man he had just seen in the large bedroom.
Colonel Fordham, curled in a wheelchair near the window, unable to move and unable to speak, had kicked the fight from the Director General.
'It's a great shame, Mrs Fordham, that you didn't feel able to alert us…'
'I wouldn't have had your people in the house.'
They moved towards the front door. No way he was going to be offered a cup of tea. Of course they had retired the crass old fool, and years too late at that. A dinosaur, really, who believed the Service was still packing off agents to suborn the Bolshevik revolution or to run around the hillsides of Afghanistan.
'I came to ask for specific information.'
'Then you wasted your journey.'
'There was one man who was very close to your husband.'
'I'm not a part of the Service, and at this time of the afternoon I have to bath Basil.'
She dared him to stay. The Director General smiled. He fell back on his rarely used reservoir of charm. Outside his chauffeur and his bodyguard would be waiting for him, enjoying the thermos and a smoke. God, and he'd be glad to be back with them.
'The man who was close to your husband was called James Curwen. I understand he went by the nickname of
'Jeez'. I need your help, Mrs Fordham.'
He saw the same short slight woman, but hurt. He saw her fingers make a tight fist, loosen, grip again.
'That's what did it to him,' her voice quavered. 'It wasn't long after he'd been dismissed.'
'He read of the arrest in the papers?'
'He'd read The Times. He didn't finish his breakfast that morning. He walked out into the garden. It was about twenty minutes later that I went looking for him. He'd just collapsed, the dogs were with him. What you've just seen, he's been like that ever since.'
'You didn't tell us.'
'After what you'd done to him?'
'You knew Curwen?'
She shrugged. 'He lived here when he came back from Albania, before he went to South Africa. He was a sort of batman to Basil, and he did jobs in the house and he drove the car and did things outside.'
The Director General had to mask his disgust. The man had done ten years in an Albanian prison camp, and had come back to be patronised as a loyal serf. Lost his marriage and lost ten years of his life, but the kindly old colonel and his lady let him drive the car and change the fuses and make a rockery in the garden.
A desperation in her face. 'Why haven't you brought Jeez out?'
'I am afraid it may not be in our power to save him.'
'But you're trying?'
'Certainly we're trying,' the Director General said. 'Tell me about him.'
'He's a wonderful man. He came back here, after the awfulness of what he'd been through, and he just seemed to put it behind him. I'd known him before, when he was a well built, strong man, and when he came back he was a skeleton, unrecognisable. Never a complaint, not in any way bitter. His attitude seemed to be that since he'd been sent into Albania by the Service his mission must have been justified, that it was simply the rub of the green that he had been caught. He had a marvellous stoicism, I think that kept him going. Sometimes, not often, he would talk about the bad times in the camp, when men from his hut were taken out and shot, when his companions died of malnutrition, when the camp guards were particularly brutal, when it was cold and there was no heating. When he talked about it there was always his humour, very dry. He was honoured to be a part of the Service, just as Basil was. The Service was Jeez's life, just as it was Basil's. Is that what you want to hear?'
'How resolute would he be, in his present situation?'
'You'd want to know whether he'd betray you, to save his neck?'
'That's very bluntly put, Mrs Fordham.'
'It is insulting to Jeez that you even think of asking me the question. I just pray to God and thank Him that Basil cannot know what Jeez is going through now.'
'It must be a very painful time for you, Mrs Fordham.'
'His wife came here… God, I'm going back, more than twenty years ago. We were entertaining, a weekend lunch party. The poor woman came here to try and find out something about where Jeez was, what he'd done. He said afterwards to me that it was one of the worst days of his life, having to lie to her, telling her to put her husband out of her mind. Jeez understood. When he was down here Basil was very frank with him. He had to tell him that the marriage was just a casualty of life with the Service. He told Jeez that his wife had got a divorce and remarried, that it would be wrong of him to disturb her, that he should try not to make contact with his son, however hard that was going to be.
Jeez always did what Basil said. Just before he went to South Africa, Jeez went up to London and he must have gone out to where his wife and his son were living in their new home.
