shook hands.
'I'm George Harbinger, we spoke on the phone. Sit down, sit down…'
Maxim sat on an elegant but hard dining chair, presumably chosen to discourage long-term visits. It was surprisingly warm: somebody had just spent some time there.
'This is the Private Secretaries' room,' George went on. 'It's usually a good deal busier than this, but the House isn't back from the hols yet and the Headmaster's up subduing the Picts and Scots…' He rambled on while he watched Maxim and Maxim looked around. It was a tall, well-proportioned room with delicate mouldings, all recently repainted in golden yellow and white. Two deep sash windows looked out onto the handsome backside of the Cabinet Office and the gloomy 'morning beyond. The four desks gave it the look of a drawing-room which had unfortunately, but only temporarily, been turned into a place where work had to be done.
In the corner by the far window, the duty clerk was staring openly at him. Maxim smiled back. He had a thin, slightly concave face with lines beside the nose that made him look older than thirty-five, and a quick reflexive smile which sometimes got there ahead of the punch line of a joke, which was disconcerting.
George wound up. 'We've found you a little nook a couple of floors up. Not so grand, but a lot quieter. Are you all ready to move in?'
'Yes, sir.'
'No, no. Don't call anybody 'sir' around here. Except backbench MPs, it makes them feel loved and wanted, but we don't usually let them into Number 10 until after dark. You call the Headmaster 'Prime Minister', that shouldn't be too difficult to remember, and you call ministers 'Ministers', I'm George, you're Harold, is it, or Harry?'
'Harry, usually.'
'Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George, with particular attention to poor George.' He tried to rub the hot feeling out of his eyes and stood up at his normal speed. 'I'll lead the way.'
From the corner, the duty clerk said softly: 'Don't let him lead too far. He's a bad man. He drinks at lunch- time.'
'Lies, all lies,' George said calmly. 'I just happen to lunch at drinks-time.' He took Maxim back into the corridor, past a modernistic agency tape machine and up the main staircase, tapping a fingernail on the silvery silk wallpaper. 'The taxpayer's done a good job, don't you think?'
Sir Anthony Sladen sat at the Principal Private Secretary's desk – he was away with the PM in Scotland – and read carefully through Sir Bruce's letter about Maxim.
'Malaya, Borneo, Oman,' he counted. 'Germany of course, Northern Ireland of course, the Gulf again… at least he's got his knees brown.'
At the second desk – the room was rather smaller than the one next door – Michael Gale looked up from his paperwork. 'Who are you talking about?'
'Major Harold Maxim. Your new club member.'
'Oh, the soldier.' Gale went back to work. He dealt with foreign affairs, which didn't include defence since George had been brought in.
Maxim, Sladen saw, had even managed to get himself wounded – quite badly, though recovery was supposed to be complete. But it had been an expensive wound, losing him six months at a vital stage in his career. For a man who hadn't come in through Sandhurst, it might be decisive. He had made it to major but not to staff college, and that was when you found the up staircase bricked off. Maxim could stay a major for the next twenty years, until the Army had fulfilled its bargain of giving him a career until age fifty-five.
And a very old fifty-five he would be by then, Sladen thought. It was an odd choice for Number 10, where the best was supposed to be barely good enough. Then he said: 'Good God.'
Gale sighed without looking up. 'What do we have now?'
'He's got a boy, a son.'
'They're usually much the same thing.'
'But George said he was trying to get himself killed, after his wife died…'
Still without looking up, Gale slapped down his pen. 'Are we to understand that, on top of all else, he has a personal problem? That is approximately all that we need. I shall never understand why we did this. Security is Five's job.'
'Well, as George was saying, after that Jackaman business-'
'Exactly. After that, we'd got them so agitated that they'd have promised us anything. For once, we'd got security under control. Now they'll just sulk and start plots…' He sighed again and picked up his pen. 'Has he got here yet?'
'George is meshing him into the machine now.'
It might once have been a box-room or a servant's bedroom. 'Not so wide as a well nor so deep as a church door.' George commented, 'and about as friendly as Death Row, but 'twill serve. Or if it doesn't, there's nothing we can do about it, though if you scream loud enough the Housekeeper's Office might change the furniture.'
At the moment, the furniture was a roll-top desk straight out of Pickwick, a mahogany desk chair, a second and completely plain chair, a hatstand, a small bookcase and a standard Government issue filing cabinet with a lock that Maxim could bypass in five seconds. It all filled the room quite thoroughly.
He hung his raincoat on the stand – a flag-raising ceremony, perhaps – and sat in the desk chair. It creaked wearily.
George picked up the phone and told the switchboard: 'Major Harry Maxim is operational at this extension as of now. All right, me lovely? Splendid.' He put down the phone. 'They say we've got the best switchboard in the country, they can find you anybody anywhere. But always let them know where you are, will you? It's slightly vital.'
He lowered himself carefully onto the second chair. He was wearing a well-cut suit in a light check, a Dragoon Guards tie and well-polished but well-worn brown brogues. George, Maxim came to learn, always dressed as if he were just about to leave for Goodwood. Maxim opened his briefcase and took out what looked like a bundle of leather and elastic straps. 'Do you think I could get a small safe up here?'
'A safe? If you're handling any classified material you give it in to the Confidential Registry at night. I suppose you could always bring the family heirlooms in-Oh I see.' He had suddenly realised that the bundle was a shoulder holster, complete with revolver.
'Have you been carrying that all over…? Well, of course. They wouldn't search your case, you being family now. Was this Sir Bruce's idea?'
'He thought I might need to get at a weapon sometime without having to run round to the Horse Guards and fill in a lot of forms,' Maxim said evenly. 'I don't imagine it's the only one in the building.'
'It certainly isn't, though in Whitehall the paperwork is generally regarded as being mightier than the pistol. ' George chuckled. 'It does seem a bit silly to bring in a soldier and tell him to leave his gun behind. May I?' He lifted the pistol from the spring clip holster. It was an unfamiliar American make, in the usual.38 Special calibre, but surprisingly light, despite having a reasonable three-inch barrel. 'Is this what the SAS sports, these days?'
'You get quite a choice.'
George put the gun back carefully and waited, fascinated to see what else Maxim had in the briefcase. A sawn-off pump-action shotgun such as the SAS were rumoured to favour? A framed portrait of the dead wife? Like most good managers, George had the curiosity of a village gossip. But all Maxim brought out was Whitaker's Almanac, the Statesman's Yearbook and a pad of paper.
He's been swotting, George thought. 'You're all fixed up with a place to live? – yes, you told me on the phone. And you're a Londoner anyway, am I right?'
'Mill Hill.'
'That'll help. And about your little boy, he's what age now?'
'Christopher, he's ten. He's down with my parents in Littlehampton. They retired there a couple of years ago, and they've found him a school locally.' His voice was quite calm.
'Good. I suppose you'll be down there most weekends. You'll always let the switchboard know where… no, I said that already, didn't I?'
I need a drink, George thought.
'What am I going to be doing here?' Maxim asked.
'Yes. Well. Roughly speaking… at the Headmaster's discretion, you get first crack at any security problem we think is likely to, or might… cause embarrassment in the area of defence, as you might say…'
