then I'd be tempted to wind the whole apparatus up, close it down. It's a thin sketch at best. You'll not disagree with that?'
'It contains the traditional elements.'
'Then the tradition isn't good enough.'
The Deputy-Under-Secretary was impassive, his eyes taken by a soup stain on the Prime Minister's tie. 'The tradition has not been found wanting in the past.'
'If that's true then I want to be in a position to make that judgement. I don't want to be merely told there are roses in the garden behind the high wall, I want to go into that garden and see them for myself.'
'If the JIC minutes are inadequate then I'm sure the Permanent-Under-Secretary will rectify that situation.'
'I'm not concerned with a carbon sheet of paper. I want a wider picture.'
'I doubt if you could spare the time for that, Prime Minister,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary remarked evenly.
'It boils down to the primacy of policy over the instruments of policy.
Policy is in the hands of government. SIS is merely one of the instruments at its disposal.'
'I think I read that book as well, Prime Minister. A clever turn of phrase I thought at the time.'
The Prime Minister clenched his fist, caught at his temper. 'The issuing of a D notice is not a small matter. We try to keep secrecy within tightly defined limits, and I'm the one who may have to justify the imposition of such measures. I don't expect to hear of sanctions against the media days after the event.'
'The Service has not called for a new D notice in recent weeks.' There was a sweetness in the Deputy- Under-Secretary's voice.
'This East German boy, the defector, there was a D notice put on that, after he ran away
'And requested by Security, Prime Minister, not the Service. You should ask Fenton and he'll corroborate.' The Deputy-Under Secretary gazed calmly back across the room at his adversary.
'I don't have the time to waste in examining inter-depart- mental responsibilities… SIS held a defector, that defector escaped from their care. SIS called in Security and the police to recover him. A D notice was applied. Right or wrong?'
A grudging acceptance. 'Pretty much right, Prime Minister.'
'Why wasn't I told when the defector first came to us? Why wasn't I told of his escape…'
'Fairly small beer. A young fellow, a junior interpreter in the Soviet' delegation to the Geneva disarmament conference. He doesn't rate very highly. If you want the detail, I can give it you, Prime Minister. Willi Guttmann aged 24, without access to secret and sensitive material inside the
Soviet delegation, meets an English secretary attached to the World Health Organisation. Their rendezvous is a bar called the Pickwick in central Geneva. She becomes pregnant, won't consider an abortion and persuades Guttmann to make his life with her. For that reason he defects
… Is this the material you feel cheated of, Prime Minister?… The girl's family is quite well placed, I believe. Name of Forsyth. Chambers in the Inner Temple, her father… Not a vastly edifying affair…'
'Don't sidetrack me with irrelevance,' snapped the Prime Minister. 'A D notice was activated. A D notice implies a matter of national security, an issue that if revealed to public gaze would harm the interests of this country. In your own words the boy is small beer, how then does he warrant such a response?'
The Deputy-Under-Secretary was not a man to be stampeded. 'Two reasons, Prime Minister. Guttmann's method of defection has led the Soviet authorities to believe that he drowned in a boating accident, they are not aware that he is in this country and helping us, were they to have that knowledge we believe his life would be endangered and his family in Moscow would be open to reprisal. I don't think we would want that.
Secondly, the boy has provided information on the new projected Soviet anti-tank missile system…'
'And that you call small beer?'
'Information that is interesting to us because of our own preparations for the mass production of the Main Battle Tank of the late nineteen eighties. There are several thousand jobs dependent on that programme.
Many of them, I believe, to be found in the constituency of the Secretary of State for the Social Services…'
'And shouldn't I have been told of this? With a visit approaching by a senior minister of the German Democratic Republic, shouldn't I have known that someone with connections in that country is currently aiding our intelligence effort?'
Tell the Prime Minister and you tell how many? Which aides see a memorandum, which personal secretaries? How many learn the contents of a file over cocktails and during weekends in the country? And not the occasion to speak of DIPPER, not the place, not the time.
'I will give instructions that in future you will be kept more fully in the picture. I trust you won't find our affairs tedious.' The Deputy-Under-Secretary was experienced in the tactical warfare of the civil service. It was unwise to join with a politician in head-on combat.
You deflected attack, you retired in good order, you lived for another day.
The Prime Minister was sweetened. 'Don't think that I'm not sympathetic to the work of the Service. I think I know the procedures, but I want more than I'm getting in the way of information.'
'You must do as you think fit, Prime Minister. The Service will be gratified at the interest shown in its efforts. That interest, I trust, will be reflected in Treasury grants?'
That scored, the Deputy-Under-Secretary observed, forced the predictable sidestep. 'I think it goes without saying that it would be extremely disadvantageous to us were the East Germans to know of the presence here of this defector. They sell to the United Kingdom almost twice the value of goods that they buy from us…'
'You can rest assured that there is no action contemplated by the Service that would jeopardise the improvement of our trade balance with the DDR.'
The Deputy-Under-Secretary smiled from an open face at the Prime Minister. He thought of the Dipper bird, remembered what Mawby had told him. A dark and camouflaged little creature, hard to see in the gloom of a river bank, and it walked covertly on the stream bed. He remembered what Mawby had said of a contract man who would go to Magdeburg. Not the place and not the time.
He rose from his chair. 'I'll set in hand a small working party to see how we can keep you more fully informed without swamping your desk.'
They had eaten well at an Italian restaurant close to Victoria station, taken pasta and veal and drunk a litre and a half of white wine. Carter had paid, playing the father figure, extracting a wad of five pound notes from his wallet, explaining that he'd raided petty cash at Holmbury. On the government, he'd said, and no offence to Mrs Ferguson but this was the best meal they'd had in weeks. Much of the wine had found its way to Willi's glass, as intended.
In a little group they walked past Buckingham Palace and the red tunicked sentries, along the wide Mall where Americans and Japanese jostled for camera angles, they paused in Trafalgar Square and George bought a bag of nuts for Willi to scatter for the pigeons. They came down Whitehall and showed the boy the narrow entrance to Downing Street and passed on towards the House of Commons. Willi lapped up the history and George, who was always near to him, was a sure guide, humorous and interesting. Near to him, but never beside, always the few feet away so that Carter's Instamatic camera as it clicked incessantly would not include George in the pictures of the boy admiring and wondering at the sounds and sights of a great city. Carter used two cassettes of film.
They moved in a regulated, planned formation. Carter leading. George alongside Willi. Johnny in the rear and sliding for the background each time the camera came to Carter's eye. No reason that he should have worried, the photographic section would have painted him out.
Johnny wondered what the boy thought. Wondered how sharply the experience of escape and return to the house had cut. Wondered why the boy had not mentioned the girl again from Geneva. Wondered how he would respond to Carter's appeal for friendship and help. Didn't know any of the answers, didn't fathom the mind of the boy, alien to Johnny.
But then Willi Guttmann was a prisoner and his feelings would be masked and closed, flies tightly zipped, protecting himself. Not the only prisoner, Johnny, was he? Not the only one who's trying to be a good kid because that's the way towards remission. Johnny and Willi, two of a kind. Both used, second-hand persons. And after the work was finished, what then for Johnny and Willi? Forget Willi, what then for Johnny? He didn't give a shit for the boy who walked in front of him. So what then for Johnny when the work was finished?… No way of finding the
