Unaccountably Desmond shivered, although the air was at a comfortable temperature.
Already present in the room were four people; two stood closer, two further away from the newcomers. In the foreground were a man and a woman, both middle-aged, both well dressed, each of whom bore a thick file with a bright red diagonal band across the front and the legend TOP SECRET. The man’s face looked vaguely familiar, but Desmond could not place him.
And, behind, there were another man and another woman, much younger: the man tousle-haired, in shirt sleeves; the woman plump, not pretty, wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses. They looked as though they were about to drop from fatigue.
There was something in the expressions—not quite hostile, not quite suspicious—with which the four of them gazed at the Acey-Acey team that made Desmond think suddenly of a favourite phrase of Dr Molesey, the team leader: professional paranoia. He had used it this morning when he brought Desmond two copies of the Official Secrets Act to sign, one to keep, one for the files at . . . where? Special Branch, Scotland Yard, presumably.
Tucking his file under his arm, the older man advanced, extending his hand.
“Ah, Dr Molesey! It’s some time since we met, isn’t it? I think last at the Telecommunications Conference in—hm—October? Dr Finbow!” He turned to his woman companion. “This is Edgar Molesey, who was deputy head of the design group for the X Ten Thousand range and is now . . . What’s the exact term?”
Desmond rather liked Molesey; he was a dry lean man of about fifty with a sense of humour that in Scotland would have been called “pawky.” He exhibited it now by saying, “I’m content to be called the senior bug-catcher, provided you don’t omit the ‘senior.’ Let me present my colleagues.”
He turned. “Sir Andrew Morton, as I’m sure you know, is head of administration at the Post Office Telecommunications Centre, and Dr Finbow is—”
She cut him short. “No need for all the details! Just say I’m attached to the Foreign Office.”
Molesey nodded. “And this is Dr Crabtree—Dr Vizard— and Mr Williams, one of our latest acquisitions, who’s been working for the past few months on this particular model and already helped to eliminate a couple of design flaws which will make the next generation of the family even better.”
Desmond felt his cheeks grow warm. Spotting an oversight in work that other people had been responsible for had never seemed to him an especially creditable achievement.
And the younger pair turned out to be Mr Hogben and Miss Prinkett; they acknowledged mention of their names while yawning uncontrollably.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” Sir Andrew said briskly. “To be absolutely frank, we’re in a devil of a mess. We—”
Dr Finbow spoke up in a brittle voice.
“Excuse me. One point should be clarified before you say any more. Dr Molesey, I know you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. Have all your colleagues done so?”
“Of course,” Molesey said shortly. “And they’ve been cleared by Special Branch.”
Have I?
That was news to Desmond. And not very pleasant news, either. He was by temperament a private person, and the idea of having his life scrutinised under an official microscope was disquieting. However, presumably it was a prerequisite of being allowed to come to this ultra-secret establishment. . . which by the look, sound and even smell of it, must surely be one of the regional headquarters designed to maintain law, order and continuity of government if Britain were ever to suffer a nuclear attack. Visiting such places was a privilege reserved to the few; he ought, he decided, to count himself fortunate.
Stifling his misgivings, he listened as Sir Andrew launched into an exposition which more than once made Dr Finbow wince visibly. However, she contrived to hold her tongue.
Desmond guessed that it must hurt her to have secret information shared with employees of a mere commercial company, no matter how loyal they were alleged to be.
“Dr Molesey may already know some of what I’m about to tell you,” Sir Andrew began. “I’m quite certain, though, he won’t have divulged it to anybody else”—giving Molesey a quick insincere smile—“so I’ll go about this as though you were all in total ignorance.
“I imagine you’ve all realised what sort of place you’re in, though I counsel you not even to wonder about where it’s located on the map, ha-ha! Obviously an establishment of this kind can’t simply be left to gather dust until needed. Apart from other considerations that would be uneconomic.
“There’s no call for you to know the full extent of the functions handled by this equipment. However, to appreciate how urgent and indeed parlous is our predicament, I shall have to sketch in quite a lot of background.”
Desmond started to wonder whether some at least of Dr Finbow’s wincing might be due to a different cause: Sir Andrew’s manner of speaking, as though he were on the platform at a public meeting.
“You would not, I suspect, be surprised to learn that the government maintains constant contact with our embassies around the world, and that a great deal of the signals traffic has to be encyphered?”
Desmond fancied he caught a whispered “no” from Molesey, who stood next to him, but all three of his companions maintained, as did he, expressions of great interest. Claude Vizard— a garrulous man in his mid-thirties who found long silences difficult—put a question.
“Are you talking about military intelligence traffic, sir?”
Sir Andrew gave him a frosty look. “As a matter of fact, this does not happen to be the centre through which such data are transmitted. However, a moment’s reflection will indicate that there are many other types of information, particularly commercial and financial, which it’s in the country’s interests to
