The Human Factor Part 19

He thought, I can still have Sat.u.r.day free if I'm reasonably hospitable tonight. He said, 'It's less than two hours drive if you'd care to come to dinner.'

'Of course. It's very kind of you, Sir John. I wouldn't have disturbed you if I hadn't thought it important. I...'

'We may not be able to rustle up more than an omelette, Muller. Pot luck,' he added.

He put down the receiver, remembering the apocryphal story he knew they told about him and the cannibals. He went to the window and looked out. Africa receded. The lights were the lights of the motorway leading to London and the office. He felt the approaching suicide of Melmotte-there was no other solution. He went to the drawing-room: Mary was pouring out a cup of Earl Grey from the silver teapot which she had bought at a Christie sale. He said, 'I'm sorry, Mary. We've got a guest for dinner.'

'I was afraid of that. When he insisted on speaking to you... Who is it?'

'The man BOSS has sent over from Pretoria.'

'Couldn't he wait till Monday?'

'He said it was too urgent.'

'I don't like those apartheid b.u.g.g.e.rs.' Common English obscenities always sounded strange in her American accent.

'Nor do I, but we have to work with them. I suppose we can rustle up something to eat.'

'There's some cold beef.'

'That's better than the omelette I promised him.'

It was a stiff meal because no business could be talked, though Lady Hargreaves did her best, with the help of the Beaujolais, to find a possible subject. She confessed herself completely ignorant of Afrikaaner art and literature, but it was an ignorance which Muller appeared to share. He admitted there were some poets and novelists around and he mentioned the Hertzog Prize, but he added that he had read none of them. 'They are unreliable,' he said, 'most of them.'

'Unreliable?'

'They get mixed up in politics. There's a poet in prison now for helping terrorists.' Hargreaves tried to change the subject, but he could think of nothing in connection with South Africa but gold and diamonds they were mixed up with politics too, just as much as the writers. The word diamonds suggested Namibia and he remembered that Oppenheimer, the millionaire, supported the progressive party. His Africa had been the impoverished Africa of the bush, but politics lay like the detritus of a mine over the south. He was glad when they could be alone with a bottle of whisky and two easy chairs it was easier to talk of hard things in an easy chair-it was difficult, he had always found, to get angry in an easy chair.

'You must forgive me,' Hargreaves said, 'for not having been in London to greet you. I had to go to Washington. One of those routine visits that one can't avoid. I hope my people have been looking after you properly.'

'I had to go off too,' Muller said, 'to Bonn.'

'But not exactly a routine visit there, I imagine? The Concorde has brought London so d.a.m.nably close to Washington they almost expect you to drop over for lunch. I hope all went satisfactorily in Bonn-within reason, of course But I suppose you've been discussing all that with our friend Castle.'

'Your friend, I think, more than mine.'

'Yes, yes. I know there was a little trouble between you years ago. But that's ancient history surely.'

'Is there such a thing, sir, as ancient history? The Irish don't think so, and what you call the Boer War is still very much our war, but we call it the war of independence. I'm worried about Castle. That's why I'm bothering you tonight. I've been indiscreet. I let him have some notes I made about the Bonn visit. Nothing very secret, of course, but all the same someone reading between the lines...'

'My dear fellow, you can trust Castle. I wouldn't have asked him to brief you if he wasn't the best man...'

'I went to have dinner with him at his home. I was surprised to find he was married to a black girl, the one who was the cause of what you call a little trouble. He even seems to have a child by her.'

'We have no colour bar here, Muller, and she was very thoroughly vetted, I can a.s.sure you.'

'All the same, it was the Communists who organised her escape. Castle was a great friend of Carson. I suppose you know that.'

'We know all about Carson-and the escape. It was Castle's job to have Communist contacts. Is Carson still a trouble to you?'

'No. Carson died in prison-from pneumonia. I could see how upset Castle was when I told him.'

'Why not? If they were friends.' Hargreaves looked with regret at his Trollope where it lay beyond the bottle of Cutty Sark. Muller got abruptly to his feet and walked across the room. He halted before the photograph of a black man wearing a soft black hat of the kind missionaries used to wear. One side of his face was disfigured by lupus and he smiled at whoever held the camera with one side of his mouth only.

'Poor fellow,' Hargreaves said, 'he was dying when I took that photograph. He knew it. He was a brave man like all the Krus. I wanted something to remember him by.'

Muller said, 'I haven't made a full confession, sir. I gave Castle the wrong notes by accident. I'd made one lot to show him and one to draw on for my reports and I confused them. It's true there's nothing very secret-I wouldn't have put anything very secret on paper over here-but there were some indiscreet phrases...'

'Really, you don't have to worry, Muller.'

'I can't help worrying, sir. In this country you live in such a different atmosphere. You have so little to fear compared with us. That black in the photograph-you liked him?'

'He was a friend-a friend I loved.'

'I can't say that of a single black,' Muller replied. He turned. On the opposite side of the room, on the wall, hung an African mask.

'I don't trust Castle.' He said, 'I can't prove anything, but I have an intuition... I wish you had appointed someone else to brief me.'

'There were only two men dealing with your material. Davis and Castle.'

'Davis is the one who died?'

'Yes.'

'You take things so lightly over here. I sometimes envy you. Things like a black child. You know, sir, in our experience there is no one more vulnerable than an officer in secret intelligence. We had a leak a few years back from BOSS-in the section which deals with the Communists. One of our most intelligent men. He too cultivated friendships and the friendships took over. Carson was concerned in that case too. And there was another case-one of our officers was a brilliant chess player. Intelligence became to him just another game of chess. He was interested only when he was pitted against a really first-cla.s.s player. In the end he grew dissatisfied. The games were too easy so he took on his own side. I think he was very happy as long as the game lasted.'

'What happened to him?'

'He's dead now.'

Hargreaves thought again of Melmotte. People talked of courage as a primary virtue. What of the courage of a known swindler and bankrupt taking his place in the dining-room of the House of Commons? Is courage a justification? Is courage in whatever cause a virtue? He said, 'We are satisfied that Davis was the leak we had to close.'

'A fortunate death?'

'Cirrhosis of the liver.'

'I told you Carson died of pneumonia.'

'Castle, I happen to know, doesn't play chess.'

'There are other motives too.

'Love of money.'

'That certainly doesn't apply to Castle.'

'He loves his wife,' Muller said, 'and his child.'

'What of that?'

'They are both black,' Muller replied with simplicity, looking across the room at the photograph of the Kru chief upon the wall as though, thought Hargreaves, even I am not beyond his suspicion, which, like some searchlight on the Cape, swept the unfriendly seas beyond in search of enemy vessels.

Muller said, 'I hope to G.o.d you are right and the leak really was Davis. I don't believe it was.'

Hargreaves watched Muller drive away through the park in his black Mercedes. The lights slowed down and became stationary; he must have reached the lodge, where since the Irish bombings began, a man from the Special Branch had been stationed. The park seemed no longer to be an extension of the African bush-it was a small parcel of the Home Counties which had never been home to Hargreaves. It was nearly midnight. He went upstairs to his dressing-room, but he didn't take off his clothes further than his shirt. He wrapped a towel round his neck and began to shave. He had shaved before dinner and it wasn't a necessary act, but he could always think more clearly when he shaved. He tried to recall exactly the reasons Muller had given for suspecting Castle-his relations with Carson-those meant nothing. A black wife and child Hargreaves remembered with sadness and a sense of loss the black mistress whom he had known many years ago before his marriage. She had died of blackwater fever and when she died he had felt as though a great part of his love for Africa had gone to the grave with her. Muller had spoken of intuition 'I can't prove anything, but I have an intuition...' Hargreaves was the last man to laugh at intuition. In Africa he had lived with intuition, he was accustomed to choose his boys by intuition not by the dirty notebooks they carried with illegible references. Once his life had been saved by an intuition.

He dried his face, and he thought: I'll ring up Emmanuel. Doctor Percival was the only real friend he had in the whole firm. He opened the bedroom door and looked in. The room was in darkness and he thought his wife was asleep until she spoke. 'What's keeping you, dear?'

'I won't be long. I just want to ring up Emmanuel.'

'Has that man Muller gone?'

'Yes.'

'I don't like him.'

'Nor do I.'

Chapter III.

I.

Castle woke and looked at his watch, though he believed that he carried time in his head-he knew it would be a few minutes to eight, giving him just long enough to go to his study and turn on the news without waking Sarah. He was surprised to see that his watch marked eight five-the inner clock had never failed him before, and he doubted his watch, but by the time he reached his room the important news was over there were only the little sc.r.a.ps of parochial interest which the reader used to fill the slot: a bad accident on the M4, a brief interview with Mrs Whitehouse welcoming some new campaign against p.o.r.nographic books, and perhaps as an ill.u.s.tration of her talk, a trivial fact, that an obscure bookseller called Holliday-I'm sorry, Halliday-had appeared before a magistrate in Newington b.u.t.ts for selling a p.o.r.nographic film to a boy of fourteen. He had been remanded for trial at the Central Criminal Court, and his bail had been set at two hundred pounds.

So he was at liberty, Castle thought, with the copy of Muller's notes in his pocket, presumably watched by the police. He might be afraid to pa.s.s them on at whatever drop they had given him, he might be afraid even to destroy them; what seemed his most likely choice was to keep them as a bargaining a.s.set with the police. 'I'm a more important man than you think: if this little affair can be arranged, I can show you things... let me talk to someone from the Special Branch.' Castle could well imagine the kind of conversation which might he going on at that moment: the sceptical local police, Halliday exposing the first page of Muller's notes as an inducement.

Castle opened the door of the bedroom: Sarah was still asleep. He told himself that now the moment had arrived which he had always expected, when he must think clearly and act decisively. Hope was out of place just as much as despair. They were emotions which would confuse thought. He must a.s.sume Boris had gone, that the line was cut, and that he must act on his own.

He went down to the sitting-room where Sarah wouldn't hear him dial and rang a second time the number he had been given to use only for a final emergency. He had no idea in what room it was ringing the exchange was somewhere in Kensington: he dialled three times with an interval of ten seconds between and he had the impression that his SOS was ringing out to an empty room, but he couldn't tell... There was no other appeal for help which he could make, nothing left for him to do but clear the home ground. He sat by the telephone and made his plans, or rather went over them and confirmed them, for he had made them long ago. There was nothing important left to he destroyed, he was almost sure of that, no books he had once used for coding... he was convinced there were no papers waiting to be burned... he could leave the house safely, locked and empty... you couldn't, of course, burn a dog... what was he to do with Buller? How absurd at this moment to be bothered by a dog, a dog he had never even liked, but his mother would never allow Sarah to introduce Buller into the Suss.e.x house as a permanent lodger. He could leave him, he supposed, at a kennels, but he had no idea where... This was the one problem he had never worked out. He told himself that it was not an important one, as he went upstairs to wake Sarah. Why this morning was she so deeply asleep? He remembered, as he looked at her, with the tenderness one can feel even for an enemy who sleeps, how after making love he had fallen into the deepest nullity he had known for months, simply because they had talked frankly, because they had ceased to have secrets. He kissed her and she opened her eyes and he could tell she knew at once there was no time to be lost; she couldn't, in her usual fashion, wake slowly, and stretch her arms and say, 'I was dreaming' He told her, 'You must ring my mother now. It will seem more natural for you to do it if we've had a quarrel. Ask if you can stay a few days with Sam. You can lie a little. All the better if she thinks you are lying. It will make it easier, when you are there, to let the story out slowly. You can say that I've done something unforgivable... We talked about it all last night.'

'But you said we had time...'

'I was wrong.'

'Something's happened?'

'Yes. You've got to get away with Sam right away.'

'And you are staying here?'

'Either they'll help me to get out or the police will come for me. You mustn't be here if that happens.'

'Then it's the end for us?'

'Of course it's not the end. As long as we are alive we'll come together again. Somehow. Somewhere.'

They hardly spoke to each other, dressing rapidly, like strangers on a journey who have been forced to share the same wagon lit. Only as she turned at the door on her way to wake up Sam she asked, ' What about the school? I don't suppose anyone will bother...'

'Don't worry now. Telephone on Monday and say he's ill. I want you both out of the house as quickly as possible. In case the police come.'

She returned five minutes later and said, 'I spoke to your mother. She wasn't exactly welcoming. She has someone for lunch. 'What about Buller?'

'I'll think of something.'

At ten to nine she was ready to leave with Sam. A taxi was at the door. Castle felt a terrible sense of unreality. He said, 'If nothing happens you can come back. We shall have made up our quarrel.' Sam at least was happy. Castle watched him as he laughed with the driver.

'If... You came to the Polana.'

'Yes, but you said once things never happened twice the same way.'

At the taxi they even forgot to kiss and then they clumsily remembered-a kiss which was meaningless, empty of everything except the sense that this going away couldn't be true it was something they were dreaming. They had always exchanged dreams-those private codes more unbreakable than Enigma.

'Can I telephone?'

'Better not. if all's well, I'll telephone you in a few days from a call box.'

When the taxi drove away, he couldn't even see the last of her because of the tinted gla.s.s in the rear window. He went indoors and began to pack a small bag, suitable for a prison or an escape. Pyjamas, washing things, a small towel-after hesitation he added his pa.s.sport. Then he sat down and began to wait. He heard one neighbour drive away and then the silence of Sat.u.r.day descended. He felt as though he were the only person left alive in King's Road, except for the police at the corner. The door was pushed open and Buller came waddling in. He settled on his haunches and fixed Castle with bulging and hypnotic eyes. 'Buller,' Castle whispered, 'Buller, what a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance you've always been, Buller.' Buller went on staring-it was the way to get a walk.

Buller was still watching him a quarter of an hour later when the telephone rang. Castle let it ring. It rang over and over, like a child crying. This could not be the signal he hoped for-no control would have remained on the line so long-it was probably some friend of Sarah's, Castle thought. It would not, in any case, be for him. He had no friends.

2.

Doctor Percival sat waiting in the hall of the Reform, near the great wide staircase, which looked as though it had been built to stand the heavy weight of old Liberal statesmen, those bearded or whiskered men of perpetual integrity. Only one other member was visible when Hargreaves came in and he was small and insignificant and short-sighted he was having difficulty in reading the ticker tape. Hargreaves said, 'I know it's my turn, Emmanuel, but the Travellers is closed. I hope you don't mind my asking Daintry to join us here.'

'Well, he's not the gayest of companions,' Doctor Percival said. 'Security trouble?'

'Yes.'

'I hoped you would have a little peace after Washington.' 'One doesn't expect peace for long in this job. I don't suppose I'd enjoy it anyway, or why is it that I don't retire?'

'Don't talk of retirement, John. G.o.d knows what Foreign Office type they might foist on us. What's troubling you?'

'Let me have a drink first.' They moved up the staircase and took their seats at a table on the landing outside the restaurant. Hargreaves drank his Cutty Sark neat. He said, 'Suppose you killed the wrong man, Emmanuel?'

Doctor Percival's eyes showed no surprise. He examined carefully the colour of his dry martini, smelt it, removed with a nail the nick of lemon peel as though he were making up his own prescription.