The Deceiver

produce the “new set of rules,” the “guidance” that would enable the troubled Chief to say, truthfully but with a heavy heart, “I have no alternative.”

It was not until early June that the “guidance”—or in reality the edict—came down from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and enabled Sir Mark to summon his two Deputies to his office.

“That’s a bit bloody stiff,” said Basil Gray. “Can’t you fight it?”

“Not this time,” said the Chief. “Inglis has got the bit between his teeth, and as you see, he has the other four Wise Men with him.”

The paper he had given his two Deputies to study was a model of clarity and impeccable logic. It pointed out that by October 3, East Germany—once the toughest and most effec­tive of Eastern European Communist states —would literally have ceased to exist. There would be no embassy in East Berlin, the Wall was already a farce, the formidable secret police, the SSD, or Stasi, were in full retreat, and the Soviet forces were pulling out. An area that had once demanded a large operation by the SIS in London would become a side­ show, if any show at all.

Moreover, the paper went on, that nice Mr. Vaclav Havel was taking over in Czechoslovakia, and theirspy service, the StB, would soon be teaching Sunday school. Add to that the collapse of Communist rule in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, its coming disintegration in Bulgaria, and one could grasp the approximate shape of the future.

“Well,” sighed Timothy Edwards, “one has to concede we won’t have the operations we used to have in Eastern Europe, or need the manpower there. They have a point.”

“How kind of you to say so,” smiled the Chief.

Basil Gray he had promoted himself, his first act on being appointed Chief in January. Timothy Edwards he had inher­ited. He knew Edwards was hungry to succeed him in three years’ time; knew also that he had not the slightest intention of recommending him. Not that Edwards was stupid. Far from it; he was brilliant, but ...

“They don’t mention the other hazards,” grumbled Gray. “Not a word about international terrorism, the rise of the drug cartels, the private armies—and not a word about prolif­eration.”

In his own paper, “SIS in the Nineties,” which Sir Robert Inglis had read and apparently approved, Sir Mark had laid stress on the shifting rather than the diminishing of the global threats. At the top of these had been proliferation—the steady acquisition by dictators, some of them wildly unstable, of vast arsenals of weapons; not war-surplus pieces such as in the old days, but high-tech modern equipment, rocketry, chemical and bacteriological warheads, even nuclear access. But the paper before him now had treacherously skimmed over these matters.

“So what happens now?” asked Timothy Edwards.

“What happens,” said the Chief mildly, “is that we envis­age a shift of population—our population. Back from Eastern Europe to the home base.”

He meant that the old Cold War warriors, the veterans who had run their operations, their active measures, their networks of local agents out of the embassies east of the Iron Curtain, would come home—to no jobs. They would be replaced, of course, but by younger men whose true profession would not be known and who would blend into the embassy staffs unperceived, so as not to give offense to the emergent democ­racies beyond the Berlin Wall. Recruitment would go on, of course—the Chief had a Service to run. But that left the problem of the veterans. Where to put them? There was only one answer—out to pasture.

“We will have to set a precedent,” said Sir Mark. “One precedent that will clear the way for the smooth passage into early retirement for the rest.”

“Anyone in mind?” asked Gray.

“Sir Robert Inglis does. Sam McCready.”

Basil Gray stared across with his mouth open. “Chief, you can’t fire Sam.”

“No one’s firing Sam,” said Sir Mark. He echoed Robert Inglis’s words. “Early retirement with generous compensa­tion is hardly victimization.”

He wondered how heavy those thirty pieces of silver had felt when the Romans handed them over.

“It’s sad, of course, because we all like Sam,” said Ed­wards predictably. “But the Chief does have a Service to run.”

“Precisely. Thank you,” said Sir Mark.

As he sat there he realized for the first time exactly why he would not be recommending Timothy Edwards to succeed him one day. He, the Chief, would do what had to be done because it had to be done, and he would hate it. Edwards would do it because it would advance his career.

“We’ll have to offer him three alternative employments,” Gray pointed out. “Perhaps he’ll take one.” Privately, he sincerely hoped so.

“Possibly,” Sir Mark grunted.

“What have you in mind, Chief?” asked Edwards.

Sir Mark opened a folder, its contents the result of a conference with the Director of Personnel.

“Those available are the Commandant of the Training School, the Head of Administration/Accounts, and the Head of Central Registry.”

Edwards smiled thinly. That should do the trick, he thought.

Two weeks later the subject of all these conferences prowled around his office while his deputy, Denis Gaunt, stared gloom­ily at the sheet in front of him.

“It’s not all that bad, Sam,” he said. “They want you to stay on. It’s just the question of the job.”

“Someone wants me out,” said McCready flatly.

London flagged under a heat wave that summer. The office window was open, and both men had removed their jackets. Gaunt was in a smart pale-blue shirt from Turnbull and Asser; McCready had a confection from Viyella that had turned woolly from much washing. Moreover, the buttons had not been inserted into the right buttonholes so that it rode up on one side. By the lunch hour, Gaunt suspected, some secretary would have spotted the error and put it right with much tut-tutting. The women around Century House always seemed to want to do something for Sam McCready.

It baffled Gaunt, the matter of McCready and the ladies. It baffled everyone, for that matter. He, Denis Gaunt, at six feet, topped his boss by two inches. He was blond, good-looking, and as a bachelor no shrinking violet when it came to the ladies.

His desk chief was of medium height, medium build with thinning brown hair, usually awry, and clothes that always looked as if he had slept in them. He knew McCready had been widowed for some years, but he had never remarried, preferring apparently to live alone in his little flat in Kensing­ton.

There must be somebody, Gaunt mused, to clean his flat, wash up, and do the laundry. A charlady, perhaps. But no one ever asked, and no one was ever told.

“Surely you could take one of the jobs,” said Gaunt. “Itwould cut the ground right out from under their feet.”

“Denis,” replied McCready gently, “I am not a school­teacher, I am not an accountant, and I am not a bloody librarian. I’m going to make the bastards give me a hearing.”

“That might swing it,” agreed Gaunt. “The board won’t necessarily want to go along with this.”

The hearing inside Century House began as always on a Monday morning, and it was held in the conference room one floor down from the Chief’s office.

In the chair was the Deputy Chief, Timothy Edwards, immaculate as ever in a dark Blades suit and college tie, the man the Chief had picked to ensure the required verdict. He was flanked by the Controller of Domestic Operations and the Controller for Western Hemisphere. To one side of the room sat the Director of Personnel, next to a young clerk from Records who had a large pile of folders in front of him.

Sam McCready entered last and sat in the chair facing the table. At fifty-one, he was still lean and looked fit. Otherwise, he was the sort of man who could pass unnoticed. That was what had made him in his day so good, so damned good. That, and what he had in his head.

They all knew the rules. Turn down three “unattractive employments,” and they had the right to require you to take premature retirement. But he had the right to a hearing, to argue for a variation.