Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (13 page)

The career of Arnold Litman had been a good deal less exciting. A member of the merchant banking family, with offshoots on both sides of the Atlantic, he had entered politics in the late forties, had captured a marginal seat in the 1951 election, and had risen in his party’s counsels by a mixture of financial shrewdness and political tact. Why he should have been made Under-Secretary of State for War was far from clear. But once installed in office, he had delighted his master by abolishing several ancient and expensive regiments.

His only known indiscretion had been his marriage to Rebecca, a dreamy girl, with a weakness for picking up fads and a habit of discussing them with the press. In a private citizen this would not have mattered. In the wife of a public man it could, and did.

Sue Garnet read the article, first to herself, and then to her father, over the breakfast table. It was headed, “The Lion and the Virgin” and started: “In a special interview given to
Daily News
man Frank Carvel yesterday, Mrs. Litman, wife of recently appointed Under-Secretary for War, Arnold Litman, gave it as her view that all great wars were likely to break out between late July and early September. She pointed out that it was at this period that the two most exciting signs in the Zodiac come into conjunction. Leo and Virgo, the Lion and the Virgin. It could hardly be a coincidence, she said, that every major war in history had started at this time. The Under-Secretary refused to comment on this remarkable prediction.”

“Bloody fool,” said General Garnet.

“Which?”

“Both of them.”

“What could he have done except refuse to comment?”

“Not asked the brute into the house.”

“I expect his wife did the asking.”

“I don’t doubt it. She’s a stupid bitch.”

“Daddy!”

“He’s not stupid, though. I’m beginning to think he’s a crook.”

Sue Garnet was hardened to her father’s methods of discourse and argument. These, as she had warned Terence Russel when he became her father’s military secretary and her fiancé, resembled a machine gun firing on fixed lines interspersed with casual grenade-throwing. But even she was taken aback by this last comment.

She said, “You can’t really mean that.”

“Can’t I,” said the General, decapitating his second breakfast egg with the same zeal and expertise that he had once decapitated a Japanese officer with his own Samurai sword. “What about that fight we had last month with the Americans over the ground-to-air ballistic missile? Our prototype was years ahead of theirs and a bloody sight cheaper. So why did we have to give them the contract?”

“Well, why did we?”

“If you want my guess it’s because Litman, or his associates, have got a big holding in the American company.”

“If you can prove it,” said Sue, “you ought to do something about it. If you can’t you ought to be jolly careful about saying it. After all, he’s your boss.”

“My boss,” said the General, “is the Queen, and not a jumped-up jack-in-office who’ll probably be Deputy Postmaster General next time they re-shuffle the Cabinet. Dammit, where’s Terence. I want to see those papers before the meeting.”

“He’s your secretary. You ought to know where he is.”

“He’s your fiancé. You ought to keep him up to the mark, the idle young beggar. What are you laughing at?”

“I saw his last confidential report. You said that he was a keen and promising young officer.”

“Are you aware, Miss,” said the General, filling his mouth with toast, “that you can be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for disclosing the contents of a confidential document?”

“And did you know,” said Sue unrepentantly, “that you can be cashiered for leaving them lying about? You never lock anything up. Anyone could read them. Our char might be an agent of an enemy Secret Service.”

The idea so tickled the General that he roared with laughter whilst trying to swallow the last piece of toast. In the middle of this complicated situation, the telephone rang.

The General listened, spluttered, listened some more, and then said, “All right. I’ll be there.” And to Captain Terence Russel, who had hurried in carrying a briefcase, “The meeting’s postponed.”

“I heard,” said Russel. He was a large blond young man, who wore his service dress with the swagger expected of a cavalry officer. “The emergency meeting’s at the Foreign Office. You’re to go in quietly by the Charles Street entrance, not the Downing Street one. I’ve laid on a car.”

Mr. McAlister, the head cashier at the Westminster Branch of the London and Home Counties Bank, greeted Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens as old friends and explained that the manager, Mr. Fortescue, was engaged, but would be free soon.

“What’s happened to the stockmarket, Mac?” said Mr. Behrens.

“We’ve all been asking ourselves the same thing. Fifteen points down yesterday and twenty-five over the weekend. We haven’t seen anything like it since August 1939. Ah, there’s his light. He’s disposed of his visitor. Go straight in.”

Mr. Calder had sometimes wondered how Mr. Fortescue disposed of visitors whose identities he wished to conceal. One never saw them come out. He concluded that there was either a hidden door in the chocolate-coloured pottery panelling behind his desk, or an oubliette in the floor.

“I’ve not much time,” he said to them. “I have to be at the Foreign Office at eleven. If you have been reading your papers you must have seen what is happening.”

“You could hardly miss it, could you?” said Calder. “What are we supposed to do about it? Soothe the shattered nerves of Lombard Street.”

“The reactions of the City,” said Mr. Fortescue coldly, “are not a cause of alarm. They are a symptom of it. The real reason for their uneasiness is that Interstock has started selling heavily.”

“Interstock?”

“I’m not at all surprised that you haven’t heard of them, Calder. They take pains to avoid the limelight. They’re a group of people, based in Switzerland, who handle much of the floating money of the world. Their funds come mainly from Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the Argentine, Greece and South Africa. They are very large sums of money indeed, and Interstock’s job is to keep them in an optimum state of investment. This means reasonably high interest rates. But above all – absolute safety.”

“And they’re selling us short, are they?”

“They’re not selling us short. They’re selling us out.”

“Where’s the money going?”

“Most of it to Canada.”

“What on earth’s got into them?”

“That is exactly what we have to find out. The most probable explanation is that someone has deliberately started a scare. There could be financial as well as political reasons for it. There’s a lot of money to be made on a falling market, if you happen to know when it’s going to stop falling.”

Mr. Behrens said, “I have a war-time acquaintanceship with Grover Lambert. I understand he’s the London representative of Interstock. But it’s a fairly casual connection. Even if I could get in to see him, I can’t think I’d get much of an answer if I just said, ‘Why are you selling us out?’”

“I’ve often found a direct question gets a direct answer.”

“Only if backed by force. In some countries, no doubt, the authorities would string him up by his thumbs and prod him with a white-hot knitting needle until he volunteered the desired information. But we can’t do that here.”

“No,” said Mr. Fortescue. “No.” His listeners thought they detected a note of disappointment in his voice.

Arnold Litman said to his wife, “I don’t think you quite realise what you’ve done. I had to make a personal explanation to the Cabinet this morning. It was accepted. As far as they’re concerned, this particular episode is over. But people aren’t going to forget about it. In politics, it’s fatally easy to pick up labels. Look at Winston and Tonypandy. In a few months’ time no-one’s going to remember precisely what happened. But I shall be permanently labelled as an alarmist.”

Rebecca Litman said, “I’m terribly sorry, my darling. But was I really to blame?”

“What do you mean?”

“When I told that young man that I thought war was coming, was it
me
talking? I did wonder.”

“For God’s sake—”

“Do you think someone was using me as a mouth-piece? Speaking through me. These things do happen.”

“And who do you think was speaking through you?”

“It’s a wild idea. But it did occur to me that it might have been you. After all, if war was coming, you’d know about it, wouldn’t you?”

Litman had stopped pretending to smile, and his blue-grey eyes were as cold as the snow-fed lakes of his fatherland. He said, “I suppose you haven’t by any chance passed on
that
interesting idea to the papers, too?”

“Oh, Arnold. As if I would.”

Litman said, “No. I don’t think even you would be stupid enough to do a thing like that.”

Terence Russel and Sue Garnet were sitting on a bench in St. James’s Park, watching the ducks. They were discussing the crisis, too.

“Daddy’s been very funny lately,” said Sue. “You know he promised me a month in Florence. The thing was practically fixed. Now he’s back-pedalling. It’s almost as though he doesn’t want me out of his sight. In case anything starts.”

“Nothing’s going to start,” said Terence flatly.

“Well, that’s a comfort,” said Sue. “If anyone knows, you ought to.”

“I’m only a junior captain.”

“Said he modestly. You also happen to be a military secretary to someone who is notoriously the least security minded officer in the three services. Daddy doesn’t just leave confidential papers in taxis. He discusses their contents with the taxi-driver.”

Terence grinned, and said, “If you’re not going to go to Florence, why don’t we get married?”

“Right away?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Have we got enough money?”

“I’ve a feeling we shall manage all right.”

“Well,” said Sue, “it would be rather nice.”

Mr. Calder had not found General Garnet as hard to approach or as difficult to talk to as he had anticipated. The General had not pretended to remember him, but had greeted him as a former comrade in arms. He had also, clearly, seen his DMI file and was quite willing to talk.

“What we really want to know, sir,” said Mr. Calder, remembering Mr. Fortescue’s dictum about direct questions, “is whether there really is a chance of someone pressing the button, or whether the whole thing’s a manufactured scare.”

The General paused before answering. Then he said, “When I was a young soldier I was told that an ounce of demonstration was worth a pound of explanation. I was just about to make a visit of a routine nature. If you will come with me, I will try to convince you that, although a nuclear war could start at any moment it is extremely unlikely that it will do so.”

The staff car took them westward towards Holborn, and stopped in a quiet side street. The General unlocked a metal grille which led into a small concrete yard. On the other side of the yard was an insignificant looking concrete building, the size of a large tool-shed. Using a second key, the General unlocked the door of this, and Calder saw that it housed a lift. They stepped inside. The General pressed a button, and the lift started slowly to descend.

“How far does this go down?” said Mr. Calder.

“A hundred and fifty feet. The people who built them had to get through the London clay and into the rock.”

“There’s more than one, then?”

“There are six in the London area and eight in the home counties. Here we are. Good morning, Sergeant-Major! This is Mr. Calder. You have his clearance?”

“Just came through by telephone, sir. Shall I open up?”

“Please.”

The sergeant-major evidently released some switch under his hand, and a steel partition behind him slid up. He then rose to his feet, saluted the General punctiliously, and ushered him and Mr. Calder in, remaining outside.

Mr. Calder’s first reaction was disappointment. He saw that the General was smiling.

“Well,” he said, “what did you expect?”

“I don’t really know,” said Mr. Calder. “Masses of complicated machinery. Shining steel. Winking lights.”

“You’ve been reading too much science fiction. This is a communication centre. The machinery it controls is all over the place. The Norfolk coast, Dartmoor, the lochs of Scotland. This place is in contact with them all. Triple cable, buried in concrete. That set of telephones links with the Defence Ministry and the PM. The other lines are to service headquarters. And to Strike Force.”

“And the system is in operation?”

“Naturally. The exchanges at the other end are permanently manned.”

“And either of us could give the order for a nuclear attack right now?”

“I could. You couldn’t,” said General Garnet with a grin which emphasised rather than softened the fact that he was talking about the possible destruction of millions of human beings. “There’s a code-word which has to precede the order. It’s changed every day. There are ten people at any one time who know it.”

“Nine too many,” said Mr. Calder.

“Perhaps. It’s a question of immediacy. Suppose the enemy started a conventional air raid. Enough to block roads and cause confusion. If only two or three men knew the word for launching Counterstrike, they might none of them, temporarily, be in a position to do it. And ten minutes could make all the difference.”

Mr. Calder thought that it was one of the most disturbing conversations he had ever had. He was not a man who suffered much from nerves, but the smallness of the room, the enormous physical presence of the General and the hundred and fifty feet of earth on top of him were bringing on the symptoms of claustrophobia.

He said, “You talk about the enemy, General. Had you anyone in mind?”

“Naturally. I mean the Chinese.”

This forthright statement took Mr. Calder aback even further.

“Do you think they would?”

“I put the point to Litman at the meeting this morning. Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Their civilisation is two thousand years older than ours. Why would they want to destroy the world?’ The only answer I could think of was a rude word of one syllable beginning with ‘b’.” The General rocked with sudden laughter at the recollection, then said, more seriously, “Of course they’d do it. The moment they were convinced it would pay them. They’re logical. A damn sight more logical than we are in the West. They know that the only thing which counts in world politics is results. Legality and illegality don’t come into it. That’s a conception confined to a country with laws. It cuts no ice in the international sphere, because in that sphere, there are no laws. If the Chinese could blast the rest of us off the face of the earth
and get away with it,
they’d do it tomorrow. The rate they’re growing they’d repopulate the world quick enough on their own.”