‘Believe me, Megs, that should have been “it” five minutes ago. Look, a field trip such as you propose would have to go before the finance people, maybe a board member, for sanction. I have neither the time nor the inclination. Go away.’
‘Sod you.’ Was that offensive? Would a bloody great argument help her cause?
He was smiling at her, had the look of a man who longed to get his teeth into forbidden fruit, but wouldn’t grope. ‘I’m sure you’ve been told often enough that you’re prettiest when you’re angry and it’s true. We love you-’
‘It’s “no”?’
‘Bullseye. No money for an airfare and no subsistence. You’ve failed to explain to me what Harvey Gillot is going to do in some village west of Vukovar, how his visit, and your presence there, will enrich our work. Christ, he didn’t sell. We vilify arms brokers for selling. Are we saying, Megs, and getting ourselves into an acrobat’s contortions, that we condemn Harvey Gillot because he did not flog weapons to a Croat community when to have done so was in defiance of an enforceable Security Council embargo? Megs, it’s late, I’m tired, I have a bloody mountain to climb before I’m due at the Palace of Fun, Truth and Hope. Go home.’
‘And if I said I was resigning?’ It would have sounded like a big card played, but she was grinning.
Maybe he didn’t notice the grin, or was too tired to care. ‘These are difficult times and we’re crunched to the bone, looking at every possible economy measure. You don’t give us easy options.’
‘I won’t be in tomorrow.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘Probably refuelling at Astana or Anchorage, and likely sitting on the wing at take-off. I’m using days in lieu.’
‘Goodnight, Megs, and close the door after you.’
She went out. The end of the world? Well, there was an account. She had promised herself she wouldn’t chip into her aunt’s bequest. It seemed important enough to break rules to be there, but she couldn’t explain why. She just had to go. She had to see how it played out. In part, she was responsible for the chaos now sitting in Harvey Gillot’s lap. Didn’t mean she was sorry for what she’d done, but perhaps she had a stake in it, like she wanted to see a horse run when she’d cleared her purse to back it. Sympathy? Of course not.
She closed the door, went to her cubicle and started to surf for flights and deals.
‘You’ll need something for your head. It’ll be up in the nineties there.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘The linen or the straw?’
‘I think the straw is more suitable.’
It was a ritual played out between Benjie and Deirdre Arbuthnot. She always supervised his laying out of clothing and necessary items before they were packed into his scarred leather travelling bag. The bag had history, had been beside him in circumstances of luxury and extreme hardship. He couldn’t have imagined being away without its reassuring presence at the foot of a bed or beside a sleeping-bag. The label, hanging by a frayed strap to the handle, named him as ‘Benjamin C. Arbuthnot, Consultant Engineer’. There had probably been a team working for a week on the Service pay-roll specifically to discover what employment cover gave the greatest protection in the field. He had never met a suspicious official, when working in covert mode, who had thought it necessary to quiz him on dam building or bridge construction. The straw hat went on the bed in the spare room beside his washbag and pyjamas, the socks and underwear.
‘You’ll want some good shoes.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘The pair you had in Spain.’
‘I think they’ll be suitable, yes.’
He had worn them last year in Spain, walking a little and watching for eagles, oxpeckers and vultures in the Parque Nacional de Donana, but had broken them in, new, in the Hindu Kush foothills when the mujahideen had been supplied with the wretched Blowpipes. Each time he wore them and brought them home, he’d clean and polish them, then insert the shoe trees; they had kept their shape since the days he had spent with the perspiring Solly Lieberman and the young Harvey Gillot. He felt linked to the past.
‘It’s all about policy. You can’t have strategy if you don’t have a policy aim,’ he said, almost wistfully.
‘Of course, Benjie… I’m concerned about the mosquito repellent. Four years beyond the sell-by date.’
‘Worked in that park, will work again. Men such as Lieberman, and little men such as Gillot, only survive because of policy requirements.’
‘You have to decide which jacket to take. The cotton is probably best.’
‘Right, the cream one. That sort of person isn’t going to exist, let alone prosper, unless it suits the policy aims of those at the top table. Pretty much every deal that’s done has an assumed advantage to us, or Solly and little Gillot would have been stamped on at birth. People at Revenue and Customs don’t understand the requirements of policy.’
‘Will four shirts be enough? It’s only two or three days, isn’t it? Four shirts, two slacks…’
She ticked off items, collected the clothing from drawers and wardrobes and spread it beside the bag. He could reflect that, under a ferocious exterior, she cared for his safety. She could have echoed what he’d said about policy. He needed – in his mind and, perhaps, his soul – to justify the events that had taken place many years before on the quayside at Rijeka. Advice given, only advice. His own business done, he had driven hard for Ljubljana through torrential rain that his wipers had barely coped with. He had managed a late flight out. And Gillot in recent years? Had heard along the extended communication lines so prized by the Service that other officers had been able to use him to advantage before he had slipped under the radar. Didn’t mean that afterwards little Gillot had been a loose cannon, a rogue, whatever, but that he didn’t fill a useful slot in the policy requirements of the day.
She folded the items briskly and packed. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to take your library book – you’ve gone quiet, Benjie. Not an attack of the dreaded ethics, I hope?’
‘I was reflecting on the creed of “deniability”.’
She laughed, a little growled chuckle, and touched his arm briefly. ‘I think that we’ve thought of about everything.’
‘Thank you. “Deniability” was always the key, agreed? Hardly worth doing if we’d had to own up and be in the public’s glare. It suited us so much better to have those damn missiles on Jordanian soil than shoved up-country in Croatia to some battlefield where the result was already determined. It was the equivalent of throwing good money after bad… but it was grand to get the stuff to Aqaba and no one the wiser on our involvement. Ethics? I’ll admit to short spasms of feeling responsible for what Denys called a Blowback, but more important will be the theatre. You with me, dear?’
‘Are you taking your pen?’
‘Of course… I fancy it will be spectacular.’
He closed the bag, buckled it and carried it, with the straw hat, out of the room. He took them downstairs and put them on an old chair close to the front door, covenient for carrying to the Land Rover in the morning and her driving him to the train station.
She called from the landing. ‘A whisky, I think, Benjie. You’ll be a voyeur, won’t you? Not going to clash with any scant sense of morality?’
He laughed with her. ‘Bugger the morals. I’m banking on a fine show.’
‘And, of course, you’ll play the universal idiot, and do it well.’
‘They’re the clothes I’m comfortable in.’
At the Gold Group meeting there was little enthusiasm for extending the session further into the late evening.
‘Bizarre circumstances, agreed, but not entirely unwelcome.’ From SCD10, Surveillance: ‘I would have to say, Ma’am, that we were not happy with declining an invitation to mount the sort of job that was required. Just don’t have the people. If we were to have put in a covert rural observation point, we would have had to pull a very expert team off secondment to Box 500 or to one of the narcotics scenes, important, down on the south coast. We’re singing and dancing if the Tango’s done a runner.’
From CO19, Firearms: ‘We, too, have Box 500 commitments, but the whole VIP scene is a killer in resources. We have an obligation to the target to protect him, however obstinate and daft he wants to be. Him going gives us a chance to reassess – and hope he keeps moving and doesn’t turn round.’
