The Human Factor (10 page)

‘Why should they want me to know?'

‘To scare you perhaps. Who can tell?'

‘Anyway, why tap
me
?'

‘A question of security. They don't trust anyone. Especially people in our position. We are the most dangerous. We are supposed to know those damned Top Secrets.'

‘I don't feel dangerous.'

‘Put on the gramophone,' Castle said.

Davis had a collection of pop music which was kept more carefully than anything else in the apartment. It was catalogued as meticulously as the British Museum library, and the top of the pops for any given year came as readily to Davis's memory as a Derby winner. He said, ‘You like something really old-fashioned and classical, don't you?' and put on
A Hard Day's Night
.

‘Turn it louder.'

‘It shouldn't be louder.'

‘Turn it up all the same.'

‘It's awful this way.'

‘I feel more private,' Castle said.

‘You think they bug us too?'

‘I wouldn't be surprised.'

‘You certainly have caught the disease,' Davis said.

‘Percival's conversation with you – it worries me – I simply can't believe it . . . it smells to heaven. I think they are on to a leak and are trying to check up.'

‘OK by me. It's their duty, isn't it? But it doesn't seem very clever if one can spot the dodge so easily.'

‘Yes – but Percival's story might be true just the same. True and already blown. An agent, whatever he suspected, would feel bound to pass it on in case . . .'

‘And
you
think
they
think we are the leaks?'

‘Yes. One of us or perhaps both.'

‘But as we aren't who cares?' Davis said. ‘It's long past bedtime, Castle. If there's a mike under the pillow, they'll only hear my snores.' He turned the music off. ‘We aren't the stuff of double agents, you and me.'

Castle undressed and put out the light. It was stuffy in the small disordered room. He tried to raise the window, but the sash cord was broken. He stared down into the early morning street. No one went by: not even a policeman. Only a single taxi remained on a rank a little way down Davies Street in the direction of Claridge's. A burglar alarm sent up a futile ringing from somewhere in the Bond Street area, and a light rain had begun to fall. It gave a black glitter to the pavement like a policeman's raincoat. He drew the curtains close and got into bed, but he didn't sleep. A question mark kept him awake for a long while: had there always been a taxi rank so close to Davis's flat? Surely once he had to walk to the other side of Claridge's to find one? Before he fell asleep another question troubled him. Could they possibly, he wondered, be using Davis to watch him? Or were they using an innocent Davis to pass him on a marked bank note? He had small belief in Doctor Percival's story of Porton, and yet, as he had told Davis, it might be true.

CHAPTER IV

1

C
ASTLE
had begun to be really worried about Davis. True, Davis made a joke of his own melancholy, but all the same the melancholy was deeply there, and it seemed a bad sign to Castle that Davis no longer chaffed Cynthia. His spoken thoughts too were becoming increasingly irrelevant to any work they had in hand. Once when Castle asked him, ‘69300/4, who's that?' Davis said, ‘A double room at the Polana looking out to sea.' All the same there could be nothing seriously wrong with his health – he had been given his check-up recently by Doctor Percival.

‘As usual we are waiting for a cable from Zaire,' Davis said. ‘59800 never thinks of us, as he sits there on a hot evening swilling his sundowners without a care in the world.'

‘We'd better send him a reminder,' Castle said. He wrote out on a slip of paper ‘Our 185 no repeat no answer received,' and put it in a tray for Cynthia to fetch.

Davis today had a regatta air. A new scarlet silk handkerchief with yellow dice dangled from his pocket like a flag on a still day, and his tie was bottle-green with a scarlet pattern. Even the handkerchief he kept for use which protruded from his sleeve looked new – a peacock blue. He had certainly dressed ship.

‘Had a good week-end?' Castle asked.

‘Yes, oh yes. In a way. Very quiet. The pollution boys were away smelling factory smoke in Gloucester. A gum factory.'

A girl called Patricia (who had always refused to be known as Pat) came in from the secretaries' pool and collected their one cable. Like Cynthia she was army offspring, the niece of Brigadier Tomlinson: to employ close relations of men already in the department was considered good for security, and perhaps it eased the work of tracing, since many contacts would naturally be duplicated.

‘Is this
all
?' the girl asked as though she were accustomed to work for more important sections than 6A.

‘I'm afraid that's all we can manage, Pat,' Castle told her, and she slammed the door behind her.

‘You shouldn't have angered her,' Davis said. ‘She may speak to Watson and we'll all be kept in after school writing telegrams.'

‘Where's Cynthia?'

‘It's her day off.'

Davis cleared his throat explosively – like a signal for the regatta to begin – and ran up a Red Ensign all over his face.

‘I was going to ask you . . . would you mind if I slipped away at eleven? I'll be back at one, I promise, and there's nothing doing. If anyone wants me just say that I've gone to the dentist.'

‘You ought to be wearing black,' Castle said, ‘to convince Daintry. Those glad rags of yours don't go with dentists.'

‘Of course I'm not really going to the dentist. The fact of the matter is Cynthia said she'd meet me at the Zoo to see the giant pandas. Do you think she's beginning to weaken?'

‘You really are in love, aren't you, Davis?'

‘All I want, Castle, is a serious adventure. An adventure indefinite in length. A month, a year, a decade. I'm tired of one-night stands. Home from the King's Road after a party at four with a bloody hangover. Next morning – I think oh, that was fine, the girl was wonderful, I wish I'd done better though, if only I hadn't mixed the drinks . . . and then I think how it would have been with Cynthia in Lourenço Marques. I could really
talk
to Cynthia. It helps John Thomas when you can talk a bit about your work. Those Chelsea birds, directly the fun's over, they want to find out things. What do I do? Where's my office? I used to pretend I was still at Aldermaston, but everyone now knows the bloody place is closed down. What am I to say?'

‘Something in the City?'

‘No glamour in that and these birds compare notes.' He began arranging his things. He shut and locked his file of cards. There were two typed pages on his desk and he put them in his pocket.

‘Taking things out of the office?' Castle said. ‘Be careful of Daintry. He's found you out once.'

‘He's finished with our section. 7 are catching it now. Anyway this is only the usual bit of nonsense: For your information only. Destroy after reading. Meaning damn all. I'll “commit it to memory” while I'm waiting for Cynthia. She's certain to be late.'

‘Remember Dreyfus. Don't leave it in a rubbish bin for the cleaner to find.'

‘I'll burn it as an offering in front of Cynthia.' He went out and then came quickly back. ‘I wish you'd wish me luck, Castle.'

‘Of course. With all my heart.'

The hackneyed phrase came warm and unintended to Castle's tongue. It surprised him, as though, in penetrating a familiar cave, on some holiday at the sea, he had observed on a familiar rock the primeval painting of a human face which he had always mistaken before for a chance pattern of fungi.

Half an hour later the telephone rang. A girl's voice said, ‘J.W. wants to speak to A.D.'

‘Too bad,' Castle said. ‘A.D. can't speak to J.W.'

‘Who's that?' the voice asked with suspicion.

‘Someone called M.C.'

‘Hold on a moment, please.' A kind of high yapping came back to him over the phone. Then Watson's voice emerged unmistakably from the canine background, ‘I say, is that Castle?'

‘Yes.'

‘I must speak to Davis.'

‘He's not here.'

‘Where is he?'

‘He'll be back at one.'

‘That's too late. Where is he now?'

‘At his dentist,' Castle said with reluctance. He didn't like being involved in other men's lies: they complicated things.

‘We'd better scramble,' Watson said. There was the usual confusion: one of them pressing the right button too soon and then going back to normal transmission just when the other scrambled. When their voices were at last sorted out, Watson said, ‘Can you fetch him back? He's wanted at a conference.'

‘I can't very well drag him out of a dentist's chair. Anyway I don't know who his dentist is. It's not on the files.'

‘No?' Watson said with disapproval. ‘Then he ought to have left a note with the address.'

Watson had tried once to be a barrister and failed. His obvious integrity perhaps offended judges; a moral tone, most judges seemed to feel, should be reserved for the Bench and not employed by junior counsel. But in ‘a department of the Foreign Office' he had risen quickly by the very quality which had served him so ill at the Bar. He easily outdistanced men like Castle of an older generation.

‘He ought to have let me know he was going out,' Watson said.

‘Perhaps it was a very sudden toothache.'

‘C specially wanted him to be present. There's some report he wanted to discuss with him afterwards. He received it all right, I suppose?'

‘He did mention a report. He seemed to think it was the usual average nonsense.'

‘Nonsense? It was Top Secret. What did he do with it?'

‘I suppose he left it in the safe.'

‘Would you mind checking up?'

‘I'll ask his secretary – oh, I'm sorry, I can't, she's off today. Is it all that important?'

‘C must think so. I suppose you'd better come to the conference if Davis isn't there, but it was Davis's pigeon. Room 121 at twelve sharp.'

2

The conference did not seem of pressing importance. A member of MI5 whom Castle had never seen before was present because the main point on the agenda was to distinguish more clearly than in the past between the responsibilities of MI5 and MI6. Before the last war MI6 had never operated on British territory and security there was left to MI5. The system broke down in Africa with the fall of France and the necessity of running agents from British territory into the Vichy colonies. With the return of peace the old system had never been quite re-established. Tanzania and Zanzibar were united officially as one state, a member of the Commonwealth, but it was difficult to regard the island of Zanzibar as British territory with its Chinese training camps. Confusion had arisen because MI5 and MI6 both had representatives in Dar es Salaam, and relations between them had not always been close or friendly.

‘Rivalry,' C said, as he opened the conference, ‘is a healthy thing up to a point. But sometimes there has been a lack of trust. We have not always exchanged traces of agents. Sometimes we've been playing the same man, for espionage and counter-espionage.' He sat back to let the MI5 man have his say.

There were very few there whom Castle knew except Watson. A lean grey man with a prominent Adam's apple was said to be the oldest man in the firm. His name was Chilton. He dated back to before Hitler's war and surprisingly he had made no enemies. Now he dealt principally with Ethiopia. He was also the greatest living authority on tradesmen's tokens in the eighteenth century and was often called in for consultation by Sotheby's. Laker was an ex-guardsman with ginger hair and a ginger moustache who looked after the Arab republics in North Africa.

The MI5 man stopped talking about the crossed lines. C said, ‘Well, that's that. The treaty of Room 121. I'm sure we all understand our positions better now. It was very kind of you to look in, Puller.'

‘Pullen.'

‘Sorry. Pullen. Now, if you won't think us inhospitable, we have a few little domestic things to discuss . . .' When Pullen had closed the door he said, ‘I'm never quite happy with those MI5 types. Somehow they always seem to carry with them a kind of police atmosphere. It's natural, of course, dealing as they do with counter-espionage. To me espionage is more of a gentleman's job, but of course I'm old-fashioned.'

Percival spoke up from a distant corner. Castle hadn't even noticed that he was there. ‘I've always rather fancied MI9 myself.'

‘What does MI9 do?' Laker asked, brushing up his moustache. He was aware of being one of the few genuine military men among all the MI numerals.

‘I've long forgotten,' Percival said, ‘but they always seem more friendly.' Chilton barked briefly – it was the way he always laughed.

Watson said, ‘Didn't they deal with escape methods in the war, or was that 11? I didn't know they were still around.'

‘Oh well, it's true I haven't seen them in a long time,' Percival said with his kindly encouraging doctor's air. He might have been describing the symptoms of flu. ‘Perhaps they've packed up.'

‘By the way,' C asked, ‘is Davis here? There was a report I wanted to discuss with him. I don't seem to have met him in my pilgrimage around Section 6.'

‘He's at the dentist's,' Castle said.

‘He never told me, sir,' Watson complained.