malt whisky at his elbow on a leather-inset table, subdued lighting from the standard lamps and the wall-lighting falling yellowly on the material on his lap. The hands which sifted the reports and transcripts seemed little to do with him, operating robotically. The big room, richly carpeted, elegantly appointed — Walsingham had inherited the bulk of his mother's estate some years before, and purchased the lease of this flat and a country cottage — was close as a bandage around him. He felt a pressure round his temple like the onset of a migraine. He knew that unless he drank a great deal more of the Glenmorangie he would not sleep much.
McBride had worked first from the German end, turning up clues in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz — so said the rushed report of an SIS agent in West Germany, via a contact in the BfV. The head of the intelligence branch of the British security machine had agreed to carry out the investigation for Walsingham without question. He would expect the same co-operation from the DS, counter-intelligence. Unlike many former heads of the two branches of the service, Walsingham worked smoothly and closely with his opposite number.
Then McBride had come to England, to find that Gilliatt had died of a heart attack — no doubt about that, apparently, from the report of one of his own men who had interviewed the doctor who had signed the death certificate. Then to Ireland, and Drummond—
Walsingham shifted his body on the sofa in discomfoit. McBride was homing like an arrow. What had he been doing in East Berlin, whom had he met, what discovered? That report would take a lot longer to prepare, and might never be satisfactory, though SIS were attempting the task.
Drummond sent him back to England with the daughter, who once — falsely? — had some connection with known IRA men. Another Dugdale, they'd thought, but not so, Irish Special Branch had confirmed a couple of years before. Drummond had refused to amplify his telephone call, claiming when interviewed that morning by a Special Branch man from London that he merely wished Walsingham — who had been concerned in the
And McBride was now at Admiralty Records, Hackney; and had been reading the MILFORD HAVEN/DMS files. Close, but how close?
Walsingham went on sitting, sipping his whisky, and staring at the papers in front of him. He arrived at his decision close to midnight. He had not spoken to Guthrie as yet, reversing his decision of the previous day. He would again postpone that conversation. Instead, clumsy and obvious though it was, he would remove temptation from McBride.
He got up heavily and crossed to the telephone. He dialled the number of the duty operations room in Curzon Street House, and spoke to Clarke, the Surveillance Director.
'John — the McBride matter. I want the records removed from Hackney tonight, and McBride's notebooks must be recovered. And I want McBride watched from now on. All contacts, everything.' He paused while Clarke suggested the operatives he would deploy. 'Good. Oh, and the East Germans. I want to know whether there are
He stood by the telephone for some moments after ending the call, remembering his one trip on a submarine, to pick up McBride's father and Gilliatt off Brest. A nasty business. He was going to wipe all trace of
But, better that than what he might have to do to the son if he went on with it, turned up some of the real dirt. That he could hardly bear to consider, even though it was there at the back of his mind, waiting for a summons to the fore-brain. He had hated sending the father to Brest, dangerously underbriefed and underprotected, but the son—
Let him stop, he told himself almost in a prayer. Let Michael's son stop now.
CHAPTER TEN
Ministerial Responsibility
Professor Thomas Sean McBride of the University of Oregon in Portland walked through the communicating door between his hotel room and that of Claire Drummond, where they had spent the night, and created for himself the conceit that he was moving between the sensual and the intellectual life. His nakedness prevented him from sustaining or elaborating the image.
His notebooks were missing. He had tidied them the previous night, before making love and after returning from the restaurant — he had dwelt on them for a few moments of self-satisfaction, a vicarious and cerebral excitement deliberately indulged. Now, realization spread through his frame as slowly as that excitement had done. Passion was a sharp, shuddering, instantaneous reaction of skin and muscle to Claire's lightly brushing fingertips. This was different, but he began to shake with it, with anger and fear. Then he moved to the wardrobe, and found that the deposition of Campbell had been taken from his wallet. He tugged open his briefcase, and found it empty of the photocopying done in Berlin and Koblenz, the notes he had made of his interviews with Menschler and Kohl.
Furiously, hands almost out of his control, he switched on his cassette recorder. A hiss of empty tape. He played back, and again the hiss of a clean tape. His prognostications of the previous evening had been removed. Every particle of evidence concerning
Why?
He was still shaking, as if cold water poured from some shower-rose just above his head. He could not stop asking the question, again and again, and being frightened of the answer. He kept looking back at the communicating door as if Claire, still sleeping, might have an answer or might provide something to take away the subtly, insidiously growing sense of insecurity. Corridors, silent reading rooms, dusty files, unshaded cellar lights, small, insignificant librarians and clerks, shadows — all now possessed a patina of menace. He had been watched, followed, robbed—
Of something that had happened over forty years ago, and could have little significance for anyone except a popular historian with an eye on the
And then he was angry, very angry. They'd stolen a million dollars, maybe more. Hackney. The evidence still at Hackney — maybe more of it, waiting. He'd steal it this time.
Who? Why?
The questions now became tossed and overturned by his rising anger. Someone was trying to screw him. Some bastard. Hackney.
'I'm sorry, Professor, those files have been requisitioned for reclassification.' The naval officer with the damaged leg and the sour disposition seemed to take pleasure from McBride's shock and surprise.
'What in hell?'
'Sorry, Professor. Collected this morning by Admiralty messenger. They might end up at Kew, if you'd like to wait ten or twenty years.'
'They've been transferred somewhere else, right?'
'Sorry, Professor. Reclassified.' He leaned confidentially over his desk. 'You weren't working on anything
'Sensitive — no. Forty years old, dead as the dodo. Look, you're sure about this, uh?' McBride's anger was still there — he'd nursed it on the train like a secret passion for an unattainable woman — but he was winded now, confused and again the fear was bubbling under his heart, acid and sharp.
'Sorry, Professor. I know it's annoying for you, but they treat us here as nothing more than clerks.' His thin face twisted, it seemed, from hair to chin to adopt the bitter line of his lips. 'Stuff lies here for years, collecting dust — when it's being of use at last, or we're just about to get round to refiling and properly documenting, they come and remove it.' McBride saw that he presumed the sudden requisition to be a comment on the running of the
