the fellow something credible. I know he's from Arkansas but...'
'The truth perhaps?' murmured the Home Secretary. 'They say it always comes out in the end.'
'They can say what they bloody well please, but I haven't spent forty years in the foreign service to believe that one, and from what I can tell no one knows what the truth is.'
'I suppose we could always put the blame on the IRA,' said MI 5. 'It's as good a ruse as any and it won't do the Irish lobby in Washington any harm to get a kick in the teeth!'
'And what the hell do we do with Clyde-Browne? Call the little bastard O'Brien? I know this fellow from Arkansas thinks Bombay is part of a B52, but he's not going to fall for anything as dumb as an Irish dimension.'
It was the Police Commissioner who came up with the answer. 'I should have thought the obvious thing to do was put the lad in the SAS. He's obviously a born killer and it's the last place they're going to look.'
'The first, you mean,' said the Foreign Secretary, but the Police Commissioner held his ground.
'The last. If we had organized a hit-squad along these lunatic lines with vintage Bentleys and men with glass eyes nobody would think the SAS were involved. They're experts and professionals.'
'But this raving Major Fetherington's already admitted...'
'Which makes it certain no one seriously believes he is. The man's in his mid-fifties. In any case he has nothing to do with it. He was in the UK at the time of the murder.'
The Home Secretary backed him up. 'It's the same with Slymne. The Headmaster sent them both off.'
'Splendid,' said the Foreign Secretary, 'so how do I explain to this Arkansas beef baron that the bloody boy isn't in the SAS when he is?'
MI 5 smiled. 'I think you can safely leave that to me,' he said.
The Foreign Secretary had his doubts. He was thinking about Blake, Philby and Blunt. 'Safely?' he asked.
MI 5 nodded.
By the time the American Ambassador arrived a hooded figure was standing in the ante-room.
'Of course, we wouldn't disclose the identity of any of our men in the Special Air Services,' said the Foreign Secretary after asking politely about the health of the Ambassador's cattle and learning that he was actually into natural gas and came from Texas, 'in ordinary circumstances, that is. But we're prepared to make an exception in this case.'
He pressed a bell on his desk and the hooded figure entered. 'Sergeant Clyde-Browne, remove your balaclava,' he said.
'We're going to want more identification than than,' said the Ambassador, staring at the large individual with the walrus moustache.
'Fingerprints? I mean the French have got those of the assassin, haven't they?'
'I guess so.' He was still guessing when the man, having given his fingerprints, weight, size of shoes and height in centimetres (to confuse the issue still further) donned his balaclava helmet and left the room. 'Haven't I seen him some place else?' enquired the Ambassador.
'Possibly,' said the Foreign Secretary loftily. 'Between ourselves I understand him to be in charge of certain...er...unmentionable security operations at Buckingham Palace.'
'I guess that explains it then. Those goddam Frenchies seem to have screwed things up again. I'll have our security chief check the details but they don't fit the description I'd been given. The killer was shorter and twenty years younger.'
'And doubtless French,' said the Foreign Secretary, and saw him to the door.
'Who on earth was that grisly-looking blighter?' he asked MI 5 when the Ambassador's armour-plated limousine was safely out of the way. 'And what are those unmentionable duties at
