The Harry Palmer Quartet

‘Yes, uncle of a fren,’ said Chico brightly, rather like he might have said, ‘Checkmate’ at the Moscow World Chess Championships.

Then Carswell began his story with a lot of officialese like he was compiling a report, but soon got into the swing of it. After the Burgess and Maclean affair his department had been given the job of doing a statistical analysis in conjunction with the registry of missing persons at the Yard. Carswell had asked permission to process the figures first then to look for patterns afterwards, instead of looking for anything in particular. He then started to do breakdowns just anyway it occurred to him. He gave a lot of credit to the sergeant clerk he worked with, but I think it was Carswell who found in the job a sort of musical freedom working in purely abstract terms. Anyway, whoever is to be credited, some very interesting patterns grew out of it. Finding some strange characteristics, they left the ‘missing persons figures’ in favour of any combinations among the top-grade security clearances. With no particular purpose they fired cards through sorting machines to look for any common feature.

He explained, ‘Although there were few resemblances in any one group from an occupational or geographical point of view, there were resemblances across those groups. For instance …’

It was a long explanation that Carswell gave us and he loved every tedious minute of it. It was a long time later that I understood how important was the work he was doing.

He produced his delicately drawn graphs and talked of S.1’s (Security Grade Ones) – important chemists, physicists, electronics engineers, political advisers, etc, people essential to the running of the country. Carswell had noticed that groups of these S.1’s were found together in certain parts of England which were neither holiday centres nor conference places.

The kidnapping of an S.1 (if he was valuable) was easy to understand. Raven was an important S.1 and Jay had kidnapped him and come within an ace of delivering him over the border before we had grabbed him back, with our pocket-sized commando attack. But, so far, there had been no more kidnappings, and these meetings in Britain were different; something none of us understood.

10 (#ulink_fa14a49d-6b37-5315-8372-13747807bce6)

[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Once again you will need tact and discretion, but persistence and hard work will bear fruit in the long run. An old friend will smooth out a difficulty.]

Dalby seconded Carswell to work with me. I got him a little private office just big enough for him and the sergeant – Murray – to work in, a promotion to temporary Major and a suit that fitted him. I took him round to my tailor and we decided that a dull grey-green soft tweed, with dark brown waistcoat, gave him the country squire look right for an unemployed officer. Sgt Murray went for a check jacket with grey flannels. They worked each day diligently from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., then returned to their wives in Fulham and Bromley. I had my own work to do but I dropped into Carswell now and again. By now he was concentrating on the S.1’s (S.2’s being too numerous and g-k’s (cabinet ministers, etc) being too few to get conclusive results from. Carswell was a statistician but even to him it was evident that unless other common factors could be found the concentrations were meaningless. Carswell and Murray turned up common factors like owning two cars, long holidays, visits to America, holidays in North Africa, etc, but then, of course, these things were bound to form patterns in a group where age-groups, income and education were markedly similar. Other behaviour patterns were less easy to explain. Among the groups concentrating at one place (which Carswell called the ‘concens’), among the ‘concens’ there was an above-average number who had been members of a political or quasi-political group, all but one having Right-wing aims. I asked Carswell to write a description of a concen and a description of an S.1 from the figures he had.

Quite a few had had a serious illness within the last five years, many being fevers, none of the concens were left-handed, they had a great number of bachelors, and a slightly greater number of decorations for valour. Public schools and divorced parents were absolutely at average level. I wrote all this down on a sheet of 10in by 8in writing paper and pinned it above my table. I was still looking at it when Dalby came in. He was affecting a silver-topped umbrella of late. He followed his usual debating tactics, waving a sheet of paper covered with my writing.

‘Look here – I’ll be damned if I’m passing this. Damned if I will.’ Dalby moved one half-eaten egg and anchovy sandwich, toasted. A speciality of Wally’s delicatessen downstairs in Charlotte Street. He then moved the SARS to SORC volume of the Britannica and Barnes’ History of the Regiments, a Leica 3 with the 13.5 cm and a bottle of Carbon Tetrachloride, and was able to sit down on the desk. He waved the sheet of paper under my nose, still cursing away. He read, ‘Eight poplin shirts, white, for Sgt Murray; two dozen Irish linen handkerchiefs for Major Carswell; four pairs of hand-stitched hide shoes, including cost of last.’

‘Cost of last,’ said Dalby again. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘Last,’ I said. ‘Last – what the cobbler threw at his wife, you know.’

Dalby continued reading from my expense account for the month. ‘Then this item: “To entertainment, drinks and dinner: Mirabelle Restaurant twenty-three pounds.” What is this, you, Chico, Carswell and Murray at the –’ he paused, and mouthed the words incredulously and slowly, ‘– Mirabelle Restaurant!! You’re supposed to spend £103 per month. This lot comes to £191 18s 6d. How’s that?’

It seemed he expected an answer. ‘I’m keeping a few items over till next month,’ I said.

That went down like a lead balloon. Dalby had stopped joking now, he began looking really annoyed, he scratched the side of his face nervously and kept waving my expense sheet so that it made crackling noises in the air.

‘Ross said you were an impertinent—. You’ll impertinent your way right out of here before long. You’ll see.’ His rage had gone suddenly, but it seemed a shame to leave it like that.

‘In all those expensive clothes,’ I asked plaintively, ‘do you expect us to eat in a Wimpy Bar?’ Dalby rolled with the punch, he didn’t even know what a Wimpy Bar was; he just couldn’t bear the thought of a sergeant brushing waiters with him at the Mirabelle. That’s why I continually did it, and why I itemized it in the most unequivocal way I knew. Dalby at this stage executed a famous military manoeuvre known as the ‘War Office two-step’, generally used for withdrawing intact when out-ranked. He started explaining that there was no need for Carswell and Murray to buy things off my expense sheet. Carswell can have his own. I didn’t particularly want Murray to have an expense sheet but I was interested to see whether I could angle Dalby into having to give him one.

‘Accounts will never in a million years let you give a sergeant with less than two years’ provisional service a sheet of money.’

I followed up, ‘You know that’s the sort of thing they are dead fussy about; – no, you might get away with giving him free use of Carswell’s petty cash, but what they says goes when it comes to money sheets.’

Dalby sat there with a sardonic look clamped across his head like a pair of earphones. ‘When you have quite finished, for reasons known only to yourself, getting Sergeant Murray an expense sheet, let me say that I have considered the matter carefully and both of them can have one.’ Dalby leaned back and put his suède ankle boots on the back of the only comfortable chair in the office. He picked up the two books that lay on the top of the old brief-case that I intended to lose and replace from expenses at the earliest possible moment. He read the spines aloud, ‘Experimental Induction of Psychoneuroses in Personality and Behaviour Disorders, Vol 1, by Liddell, and Shorvon’s Abreactions. I saw them on your desk this morning but I don’t think it will get us closer to Jay.

‘Now I know you are a little miffed at working with what you consider inadequate information, but we’ll settle all that.’ He paused for a long time, as though thinking carefully before committing himself by what he was about to say, as indeed I’m sure he was doing. ‘I’m letting you take over this whole department,’ he said at last. ‘Now don’t get all excited, it’s only going to be for about three months, in fact less if I’m lucky. You are a bit stupid, and you haven’t had the advantage of a classical education.’

Dalby was having a little genteel fun with me. ‘But I am sure you will be able to overcome your disadvantages.’

‘Why think so? You never overcame your advantages.’

It followed the usual pattern of our preliminaries. We got down to business. The handing-over ceremony consisted of Dalby and Alice showing me how to work the IBM. I had a feeling that a certain amount of the documentation had been removed, but perhaps that’s just me being paranoiac. He was moving out the next day and he wasn’t telling me what he was doing. I asked him in particular about Jay. Dalby said, ‘It’s all in the documents. Read it up.’

‘I’d rather hear it from you, get the hang of the way you’re thinking.’ Of course, I really wanted to avoid reading all that damn bumf.

Anyway, Dalby gave me an outline. ‘When Jay settled in London in ’50 he was working on small-time espionage for the Americans. We didn’t want him, in fact, doing just economic and industrial work, it wasn’t really our decision. He had an office in Praed Street and seemed to be doing OK apart from his homework for the Yanks. The first time we got interested in him was the Burgess and Maclean business. We had a memo in saying we mustn’t pull him for it. We didn’t have any idea of doing so, but it started us off thinking.’

I interrupted, ‘Who sent the memo?’

‘It wasn’t written or recorded. I wasn’t in charge then. If you ever find out let me know. It’s one of my big unsolved mysteries. But he has friends upstairs.’

There was only one level that Dalby called upstairs.

‘The Government?’ I said.

‘The Cabinet,’ said Dalby. ‘Mind you, don’t quote me, we have no evidence at all, not one thing that connects him with any illegal dealings since ’50. We checked Jay’s movements during the Burgess and Maclean business. They definitely correlate. When Maclean was Head of Chancery at the British Embassy Cairo, Jay was in Cairo twice. Although we have no trace of him visiting or phoning Tatsfield where Maclean lived, they did cross paths.

‘On the 25th May ’51, Maclean drove with Burgess in a hired car to Southampton. At twelve the Falaise cross-Channel packet left on a round trip to St Malo and the Channel Islands with Burgess and Maclean and Jay aboard. Of the three people, only Jay returned to England.

‘When, a lot later, two bank drafts arrived each for £1,000 and both for Mrs—

(#ulink_39e2b0c9-6dbf-5f41-82ec-b32d2220d22d) (Maclean’s mother-in-law) and drawn on Swiss Bank Corporation and Union Bank of Switzerland respectively, another bank draft followed, this time for £25,000. It was drawn on the Swiss Bank Corporation and paid into the London and S. Hellenic Bank to the account of Mr Aristo. I need hardly tell you that Mr Aristo is Jay, or there’s nothing illegal in receiving twenty-five thousand quid. I think Jay is in the import and export business as his cards say, but he finally found that the second most valuable commodity today is information.’

‘And?’

‘The most valuable?’

‘People with information,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, that’s what I think, but you’ll not get me to say so at this stage in the game.’

‘Was that fellow Raven we grabbed at Baalbek part of this scene?’

‘He was the chemical warfare biochemist from the Research place at Porton. But the number of people they take are very small. Naturally the Press Department (Security) keep any names out of the papers. We’re not having another Burgess and Maclean shindy, questions in the House and all that.’

‘You think the work Carswell is doing has Jay involved?’

‘No, I think that although the money Jay gets for a B & M operation is vast, he is smart enough to realize that to continue that is to live on borrowed time. I think he grabs an S.1 now and again when he needs some mad money but certainly not on the sort of scale that Carswell is talking of. He’d have to run coaches and advertise in the Observer. I’d leave Carswell right out of your calculations until he starts getting something a little more concrete. You’ll look an absolute clown talking to the Permanent Under-secretary about …’ He turned to the list I’d pinned up ‘… right-handed “concens” with fever.’ He eased his weight off my desk and bent his knees, quickly sweeping his hand under my desk top. He switched off the miniature tape recorder I had had going. He walked to the door, then came back. ‘Just one more small thing, you secret service man, you, try and have a haircut while I’m away and I’ll use my influence about your back pay!’

I heard him clumping down the back stairs shouting to Chico to prepare the film he wanted to see before leaving. I collected up my history books, cameras and my sugar, and moved into Dalby’s office.

It was easily the lightest room in the building, and if you didn’t move more than a couple of feet from the window you could see to read a newspaper.

There were plenty of newspapers. It all had that brown veneered respectable look; on the wall were a couple of well-framed military prints of soldiers in red coats and shakos, sitting on horses. Under the windows was Dalby’s latest toy – a low, grey IBM machine. Dalby was a young ambitious man, active and aggressive and one of the best bosses I ever had, but no one could suggest that he had ever had an original idea in his whole life and he’d never missed them. He recognized one when he saw one – he fought for it, utilized it, and what’s more, gave its originator all the credit.

This IBM machine was the key to WOOC(P)’s reputation, for it enabled us to have files of information around which no one could correlate except with the machine set the correct way. For instance, a list of three hundred names meant nothing, a list of three hundred house numbers meant nothing, a list of three hundred street names, cities, and a pile of photos meant nothing. On the machine and suddenly – each photo had an address. On the machine again and thirty cards were rejected, and only Dalby knew whether those thirty were left-handed pistol shots, Young Conservatives, or bricklayers fluent in Mandarin. Dalby liked it, it was quick, more efficient than humans, and it made Dalby one of the most powerful men in England.

Sunday I went along to the office about ten-thirty. I didn’t normally go in on Sunday but there was a book in the information room I wanted. I got there about ten-thirty and wandered into Dalby’s office. The Sunday papers were there in place on top of Saturday’s. The cover was off the IBM machine, and I could hear Alice fiddling about making coffee. I sat down behind Dalby’s magnificent oiled teak desk. Its smooth light-brown top had the sensual colour of the beach at Nice, when it is covered with girls, you understand. Inlaid with old English craftsmanship into the Danish teak desk top were four metal switches and coloured lights, BLUE, GREEN, RED and WHITE. The BLUE switch put any calls being made in the building to tap into the phone here. GREEN made a tape of what was being said. WHITE switched any calls made in Dalby’s absence into the tape so that he could play it back next morning. RED was to call every phone in this building simultaneously – no one can remember it being used except once when Dalby shouted for some ink over it.

I looked up. Alice was standing in the doorway, holding two willow-pattern cups. She wore a floral print dress of the sort favoured by Mrs Khrushchev, heavy nylons and strap shoes. Her hair was almost feminine today but that did nothing to offset the sourness of her white regular features.

‘Coffee,’ she said. I didn’t contradict her, but Alice’s fusion of milk, warm water and the coffee powder was like something flushed from a radiator.