London Match

  ‘Switch the light off. I’ll be all right now. I’ll go back to sleep.’

  I tried to sleep, but it was no use. Gloria was awake too, and after more time had passed she said, ‘Is it about Bret? Are you worrying about Bret?’

  ‘Why should I worry about him?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ It was dark. I wanted a cigarette very badly, but I was determined not to start smoking again. Anyway there were no cigarettes in the house.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ I replied.

  ‘Because I might be the mole?’

  I laughed. ‘No, not because you might be the mole,’ I said. ‘You’ve only been in the Department five minutes. You’re very recently vetted. And with a Hungarian father you’d get a specially careful scrutiny. You’re not the mole.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘The Cabinet memo that ended up in Moscow was about the security of certain very sensitive British establishments in West Germany. The Prime Minister had asked how secure they were, and some bright spark got the idea of asking us to attempt penetrations of them. So that’s what we eventually did. We assigned reliable people in West Germany to target those establishments. Operation Vitamin they called it. Then there was a report compiled so that security could be improved.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It was a looney idea, but they say the PM liked the report. It was written up like an adventure story. It was simple. So simple that even the politicians could understand it. No one over here liked it, of course. The D-G was against it all along. He said we were creating a dangerous precedent. He was frightened that we’d be continually asked to waste our resources checking out the security of our overseas installations.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘MI5 were furious. Even though it was all done overseas, they felt we were treading on their toes. The Defence Ministry made a fuss too. They said they had enough problems keeping the Communists and protesters out without us making trouble for them too. And they said that the existence of that report constituted a security risk. It was a blueprint for Moscow, an instruction manual telling anyone how to breach our most secret installations.’

  ‘And Bret signed the Vitamin report?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ There were cigarettes in the house; there was an unopened packet of twenty Benson & Hedges that someone had left on the hall table. I’d put them in the drawer there.

  ‘You didn’t have to say it.’

  ‘See why it’s important? My wife saw the memo probably, but the report was done after she’d gone. Moscow had the memo; but has Moscow seen the full report? We really must know.’

  She switched the light on and got out of bed. She was wearing a blue nightdress with a lacy top and lots of tiny silk bows. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? It wouldn’t take a minute.’ The dim glow from the bedside lamp made a golden rim around her. She was very desirable.

  ‘It might wake up the children and Nanny.’ Maybe one cigarette wouldn’t start me off again.

  ‘Even if the report did get to Moscow, it might not have been Bret Rensselaer’s fault.’

  ‘His fault or not his fault, if that report got to Moscow the blame will be placed on Bret.’

  ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘Yes it is. Not fair, you mean? Maybe not, but he masterminded our end of the Vitamin operation. Any breach in its security will be his, and this one could be the end of Bret’s career in the Department.’ Damn. Now I remembered giving the cigarettes to the plumber who fixed the immersion heater. I’d had no money for a tip for him.

  She said, ‘I’ll make tea; I’d like a cup myself.’ She was very close to me, standing in front of the mirror. She glanced at her reflection as she straightened her hair and smoothed her rumpled nightdress. It was thin, almost transparent, and the light was shining through it.

  ‘Come here, duchess,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like tea just yet.’

  12

  My Department has been called a ‘ministry without a minister’. That description is never used by our own staff. It’s a description applied to us by envious civil servants suffering at the hands of their own political masters. In any case, it isn’t true. Such a condition would equate the D-G with the career permanent secretaries who head up other departments, and permanent secretaries leave when aged sixty. One glance at the D-G and you’d know he was far, far over that hill, and there was still no sign of him departing.

  Though in the sense that we didn’t have a political boss, that fanciful description was true. But we had something worse; we had the Cabinet Office, and that was not a place I cared to tread uninvited. So I gladly accepted Gloria’s suggestion that her friend in the government chief whip’s office would answer all my questions about the distribution of Cabinet paperwork.

  Downing Street is, of course, not a street of houses. It’s all one house – that is to say it’s all part of one big block of government offices, so that you can walk right through it to the Horse Guards, or maybe even to the Admiralty if you know your way upstairs and downstairs and through the maze of corridors.

  Number Twelve, where the Whip’s Office was situated, was quiet. In the old days, when the socialists were running things, you could always count on meeting someone entertaining over there. Obscure party officials from distant provincial constituencies, trade-union leaders swapping funny stories between mouthfuls of beer or whisky and ham sandwiches, the air full of smoke and slander.

  It was more sedate nowadays. The PM didn’t like smoking, and Gloria’s friend, Mrs Hogarth, had only weak tea and ginger biscuits to offer. She was about forty, an attractive red-haired woman with Christian Dior spectacles and a hand-knitted cardigan with a frayed elbow.

  She took me into one of the rather grand panelled offices at the back, explaining that her own office in the basement was cramped. She normally used this one when the politicians were on holiday, and that meant for much of the year. She gave me tea and a comfortable chair and took her place behind the desk.

  ‘Any of the lobby correspondents could tell you that,’ she said, in answer to my question about who saw Cabinet memos. ‘It’s not a secret.’

  ‘I don’t know any lobby correspondents,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you?’ she said, examining me with real interest for the first time. ‘I would have thought you’d have known a lot of them.’

  I smiled awkwardly. It was not a compliment. I had a feeling she’d smelled the whisky on my breath. Through the window behind her there was a fine view of the Prime Minister’s garden and beyond its wall the parade ground of the Horse Guards, where certain very privileged officials had parked their cars.

  ‘I haven’t got a lot of time for chatting,’ she said. ‘People think we’ve got nothing to do over here when the House isn’t sitting, but I’m awfully busy. I always am.’ She smiled as if confessing to some shameful failing.

  ‘It’s good of you to help me, Mrs Hogarth,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all part of my job,’ she said. She measured one spoon of sugar into her tea, stirred very gently so it didn’t spill, and then drank some unhurriedly. ‘Cabinet memos.’ She looked at the photocopy I’d given her and read some of it. ‘There were eight copies of this one. I remember it, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Could you tell me who got them?’ I said. I dipped my biscuit into my tea before eating it. I wanted to see how she’d take it.

  She saw me, but looked away hurriedly and became engrossed in her notepad. ‘One for the Prime Minister, of course; one for the Foreign Secretary; one for the Home Secretary; one for Defence; one for the leader of the Commons; one for the government chief whip; one for the Lords; one for the Cabinet secretary.’

  ‘Eight?’ Two men had come into the garden carrying roses still wrapped in the nursery packing in a large box. One of them kneeled down and prodded the soil with a trowel. Then he put some of the soil into his hand and touched it to see ho
w wet it was.

  Mrs Hogarth swung round to see what I was looking at. ‘It’s a wonderful view in the summer,’ she said. ‘All roses. The PM’s very fond of them.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to be planting roses,’ I said.

  ‘It’s been too wet,’ she said. She turned to watch the men. ‘I planted some in November, but they’re not doing well at all. Mind you, I live in Cheam – there’s a lot of clay in the soil where I live.’ The gardeners decided that the soil was right for planting roses. One of them started to dig a line of holes to put them in, while the second man produced bamboo canes to support the rosebushes that were already established.

  Mrs Hogarth coughed to get my attention again. ‘This memo was drafted by the Defence Ministry. I don’t know who did it, but junior ministers will have seen it in the early stages. Perhaps it was drafted many times. That could add up.’

  ‘I’m interested in who saw the document or a copy of it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let’s look at what might have happened to those eight copies of the memo,’ she said briskly. ‘In each minister’s private office there is his principal private secretary plus one or two bright young men. Additionally, there will be an executive officer and a couple of clerical officers.’

  ‘Would all those people normally see a memo like this?’

  ‘Certainly the PPS would read it. And one of the clerical staff, or perhaps an executive officer, will file it. It depends how keen and efficient the others are. I think you should assume that all of the people in each minister’s private office would have a good idea of the content, just in case the minister started shouting for it and they had to find it.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot of people,’ I said. The gardeners were lining up the newly planted roses, using a piece of white string.

  ‘We’re not finished yet. The Cabinet Office, the Home Office and the Foreign Office would all have executive responsibilities arising from this document.’

  ‘Not the Home Office,’ I corrected her gently.

  ‘That’s not the way they’d see it,’ she said. Obviously, she too had had dealings with the Home Office, who assumed executive responsibility over everyone and everything.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘So in those departments the memo would go to the permanent secretary, and to his private office, and then to the appropriate branch to be dealt with.’

  ‘Two more administrative officials and at least one executive or clerical officer,’ I said.

  ‘In the Cabinet Office add one private secretary and one executive or clerical officer. From there to the Defence Secretariat, which would mean three administrators and one executive or clerical officer.’

  ‘It’s quite a crowd,’ I said.

  ‘It adds up.’ She drank some tea.

  A man came in through the door. ‘I didn’t know you were in here, Mabel. I was just going to use the phone.’ Then he caught sight of me. ‘Oh, hello, Samson,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Pete,’ I said. He was a baby-faced thirty-year-old, with light-brown wavy hair and a pale complexion upon which his cheeks seemed artificially reddened. For all his Whitehall attire – pinstripe trousers and black jacket – Pete Barrett was a very ambitious career policeman who’d taken a law degree at night school. He’d adapted to local costume in just the way I would have expected when I’d first met him about five years earlier. Barrett was a Special Branch man who’d been desperate to get into the Department. He’d failed to do so and despite this soft job he’d found, he was bitter about it.

  ‘Is that man bothering you, Mrs Hogarth?’ he enquired with his ponderous humour. He was cautious about baiting me, but it was a diffidence laced with contempt. He went round to the window, looked out at the garden as if he might be checking on the gardeners, and then looked at the papers on the desk. She closed the spiral notebook in which she’d been doing her figuring. It had a double red stripe on the cover; such notebooks are for classified information with all the pages numbered.

  She kept her hand on the closed notebook. ‘A routine enquiry,’ she answered, in a studied attempt to discourage his interest.

  But he was not to be deterred. ‘A routine enquiry?’ He gave a forced chuckle. ‘That sounds like Scotland Yard, Mabel. That sounds like what I’m supposed to say.’ He leaned forward to read the document on the desk in front of her. He held his tie against his chest so that it wouldn’t fall against her. This stiff posture, hand flat on chest, his wavy hair and red cheeks made him look more than ever like a puppet.

  ‘If you’re after tea, you’re unlucky. My girl is off sick, I made it myself this afternoon. And my ginger biscuits are all finished.’

  Barrett didn’t respond to this at all. In other circumstances I would have told him to go away in no uncertain terms, but this was his territory and I had no authority to be asking questions here. And I could think of no convincing reason for having this copy of the memo. Furthermore I had the feeling that Barrett had known I was in the room before coming in.

  ‘A Cabinet memo no less,’ he said. He looked at me and said, ‘What exactly is the problem, Bernie?’

  ‘Just passing the time,’ I said.

  He stood upright, a puppet on parade now, chin tucked in and shoulders held well back. He looked at me. ‘You’re on my patch now,’ he said with mock severity. Outside, the two gardeners had dug the line of holes for the roses, but one of them was looking up at the sky as if he’d felt a spot of rain.

  ‘It’s nothing you’d be interested in,’ I said.

  ‘My office received no notice that you were coming,’ he said.

  Mrs Hogarth was watching me. She was biting her lip, but I don’t know whether this was in anger or anxiety.

  ‘You know the drill, Bernie,’ he persisted. ‘A Cabinet memo…that’s a serious line of enquiry.’

  Mrs Hogarth stopped biting her lip and said, ‘I wish you’d stop reading the papers on my desk, Mr Barrett.’ She put the photocopy memo I’d given her into the tray with other papers. ‘That particular paper was nothing to do with my visitor and I find your reading it aloud a most embarrassing breach of security.’

  Barrett went red. ‘Oh…’ he said. ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

  ‘Use the phone next door. There’s no one in there. I really must get on now. Perhaps you’re not busy, but I am.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Barrett. ‘I’ll see you around, Bernie.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘And please shut the door,’ Mrs Hogarth called after him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said as he came back to close it.

  ‘Now where were we,’ she said. ‘Ah, yes: Number Ten. Here in Number Ten such a memo would be handled by two private secretaries. And one executive or clerical officer must have seen it. And I think you should consider the possibility that the press office and policy unit were interested enough to read it. That would be quite normal.’

  ‘I’m losing track.’

  ‘I have a note of it. I haven’t added the Defence Ministry people…’ She paused for a moment to write something on her pad, murmuring as she wrote, ‘…private office, let’s say two; permanent secretary’s office, another two…and policy branch, plus clerical. Let’s say eleven at the Defence Ministry.’

  ‘Eleven at the Defence Ministry? But they had no executive action.’

  ‘Don’t you think they would want to notify their units in an effort to keep these SIS intruders out?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they might. But they shouldn’t have done it. That wasn’t the idea at all. The plan was intended to test the security.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. This is Whitehall. This is politics. This is power. The Defence Ministry is not going to stand there and wait patiently and do nothing while you cut their balls off.’ She saw the surprise in my face. She smiled. She was a surprising lady. ‘And if you’re going to do a thorough investigation, you must take into account that some ministers have private secretaries who would handle all papers that cross their
ministers’ desks. And the way that papers are filed in a registry sometimes means that the registry clerks handle them too.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a lot of people,’ I said. ‘So even the most secret secrets are not very secret.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t have to mention that papers like this are left on desks and are sometimes seen by visitors to the various offices as well as by the staff. And I haven’t included your own staff who handled this particular one.’ She tapped the photocopy lightly with her fingertips.

  ‘That particular one? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, this is a photocopy of the Cabinet secretary’s copy. You knew that, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. The number and date have been blanked out. How can you tell?’

  She took a biscuit and nibbled it to gain time. ‘I’m not sure if I’m permitted to tell you that,’ she said.

  ‘It’s an investigation, Mrs Hogarth.’

  ‘I suppose it’s all right, but I can’t give you the details. I can only tell you that when sensitive material like this is circulated, the word processor is used so that the actual wording of its text is changed. Just the syntax, you understand; the meaning is not affected. It’s a precaution…’

  ‘So that if a newspaper prints a quote from it, the actual copy can be identified.’

  ‘That’s the idea. They don’t talk about that very much, of course.’

  ‘Of course. And this is the one that went to the Cabinet Office?’

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t have wasted your time with all that detail if I’d known that’s all you wanted. I naturally thought you’d photocopied your own copy and were trying to trace one that had been stolen.’ She passed the photocopy to me.

  ‘It’s natural that you’d think that,’ I said as I put it back into my pocket. ‘It was stupid of me not to make it all clear.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s made from your Department’s copy,’ said Mrs Hogarth.

  She got to her feet, but for a moment I sat there, slowly coming to terms with the idea that the document Bret Rensselaer had been given for action was the one copied for Moscow’s KGB archives. I’d gone on hoping that her answer would be different, but now I would have to look the facts straight in the eye.