The 'Secret Service' in America began, and continues, as a branch of the Treasury hunting down counterfeiters, largely by undercover means. Since it was the only nationwide law enforcement agency when Mc Kinleygot killed in 1901-making three presidential assassinations in forty years-it was the only group that could easily take on the job of body guarding future presidents. So it was not to the White House but the Treasury Building next door that the embassy car delivered Maxim at three o'clock that afternoon.
He remembered a big, elegant room-whose, he never learnt-with wide-spaced deep leather chairs that created a literally laid-back atmosphere, rather than one hunched over a table. Only the agent from Dean's Yard, the one person Maxim recognised, was leaning forward and looking eager among his seniors. A middle-aged woman silently traced his movements on a large-scale map board; there were photographs of the Yard and the Cloisters pinned up there, as well.
The questioning was polite and leisured, but thorough. Then one of them asked: "Can you tell us what the Rules of Engagement were for your task, Major?"
"Generally, that I had to be convinced any person posed a risk-and to give a warning before I fired."
"Did you give a warning, then?"
"I think I shouted something."
There was a momentary pause. An older, more senior, questioner asked: "Did your superiors accept that?"
"I suppose so."
The first one came back: "Did the police inspector you talked to confirm that?"
Maxim took a deep breath. He had offered George theidea of trying to leave Person Yout altogether, but George had been firm: the Secret Service would spot any gaps.
"I think I'd better say that the Steering Committee didn't seem to believe I saw an inspector. The police say they can't identify him. It was all happening rather quickly, and by now I'm getting a little unsure myself." That was strictly his own idea, to try and cover any hesitations while he hid the trail that led to Miss Tuckey and the picture on her wall.
He sensed a mixed reaction of sympathy and severity. "Sure," the first interrogator went on, "but you are a career soldier, trained to be at your best when things are popping-right? And trained to identify uniforms and rank insignia straight off?"
"I wish I'd made that point to the Committee."
They smiled politely. "I guess it was just your British modesty. But if we can assume the police inspector really existed-you did hear him speak? Was his voice straight-up English?"
"He only said a few words," Maxim said slowly, trying to remember. "All I can say is, he didn't sound odd for a London police inspector."
"Could he have been American?"
That startled Maxim. "He didn't sound American." What the hell were they getting at? But there was an American connection, in St Louis 1968. He fought the idea down; they were recording him-quite openly-and would presumably analyse the tape for changes in his voice pattern afterwards. He clung to bafflement.
The older man explained softly: "The President has more enemies in the United States than he does in England. That's what we assume, anyhow."
Maxim nodded, hoping his relief didn't show-or record. A ripple of glances round the room and the older man said: "I guess that about wraps it up, then." He stood up. "Thank you kindly for coming over to help us out. We do appreciate it. We didn't get around to any of that 'advice' you were going to give us, but…" and they all laughed.
"Are you doing anything else while you're over here, Major?" the other one asked.
It was the oldest trick in the book: lighten the atmosphere, stir in a few laughs-and throw the fast ball.
"Looking around Washington," Maxim said evenly. "And I might run up to New York for the day."
They were all over him with friendly, jokey advice. "If you get talking to any New Yorkers, they'll tell what a lousy dirty city it is, all full of crime and weirdos and garbage. I'm telling you, Major, the one thing you don't do is agree with them. Or they'll push you under a subway train or force-feed you kiwi fruit, whatever the new thing is this week. Take care, now."
But have I taken enough care already? Maxim wondered.
Agnes's office in the Rotunda, the wartime annex built beside the embassy, was a rather different place. Maxim would have known it for a British government office no matter where in the world he met it: small, neon-lit, with a hodge-podge of cheap furniture and painted to look scruffy even when it was surgically clean. A room that British civil servants moan about but defend the way New Yorkers do New York, because it shows how unique they are in coping so splendidly in such surroundings. If that doesn't make you feel humble, you must naturally be so humble that the hell with you anyway.
"Sit down, Harry," Agnes waved at him. "Any wires sticking out of the chair are strictly HMG's parsimony, nothing to do with your heartbeat or perspiration rate. You can tell us all the lies you like. You've met Colonel Lomax, I think? He's sitting in on behalf of Mo D, the Army and because he'll have to walk the dog if he gets home early."
"My daughter from dancing class, actually," Lomax said with a tight smile. He was a small, neat man with curly grey hair who had met Maxim at the airport.
"We agreed it would be simplest if you only had to say your party piece once-once more, I mean," Agnes went on briskly. "We'd like to hear everything, but particularly what questions the lads in the Gucci shoulder holsters asked."
It was like eating the same meal at every mealtime.
The restaurant changed, as did themaîtred', but he still watched like a hawk and swooped with a pained query if you didn't savour every mouthful or tried to hide a tough end of meat under your lettuce. And never a cigar at the end because there never was, quite, an end.
When Maxim hoped he had finished, Lomax glanced at Agnes, then said: "They brought up the Rules of Engagement business, then? I don't see how it concerns them."
Agnes answered before Maxim could think of anything. "Question of our Harry's vulnerability. Is he looking to clear himself? I fancy that's what bothers them about a possible American end: whether Harry's going to do any investigation of his own ideas over here."
"Why should he? What ideas?"
Agnes smiled. "Why and what indeed? If there was somebody dolled up as a copper at the Abbey, you've got a conspiracy, and it's only if there was a conspiracy that the Secret Service is really interested, because that means there's at least one bod floating loose who presumably still wants to kill the President. If we believe Harry, then therewas a conspiracy. But since the alternative is that he's just a banana-brain who makes things up, he's got a natural bias towards proving a conspiracy-hasn't he? What should we conclude, Jerry?"
The question turned off Lomax's interest like a tap that realises it had flooded itself into deep water. "Good Lord, we're just required to report what he told them, no question of…" But there was doubt in his voice. He looked quickly at his watch. "It looks as if I'll make that damned dancing class after all. Harry, if you're still around, we must…"
When he had gone, Agnes lit a cigarette, slumped in her chair and grinned broadly at Maxim. "Well, are we a little banana-brain after all?"
"Thanks for bringing it up."
"It's what the Steering Committee's trying to prove, isn't it? And knowing you, I doubt very much you're standing still for it. So let's hear what jolly japes you and George have been up to since then."
Maxim considered. "What are you going to tell your Service?"
"I can't make any promises."
"Okay. Let's see, now. I spent that Sunday at Little-Hampton; on the Monday I dined at one of George's clubs-"
"Bugger you, Harry Maxim. I want to know what you've done."
He nodded placidly. Anger didn't suit her friendly snub face, making her seem out of place in that aloofly cut suit -and he realised he was mentally taking it off her. He nodded once more and tried to remember that this was, dammit, the British embassy.
"I told the D-G of your Service what I thought, once. At the Steering Committee."
"That old fart."
"May I quote you?"
A snap glance of fury, then a tired little laugh. "Yes, it has come to that, I suppose. So you're out on a limb. And I bet you're further out than anybody realises. I know you, chum. And George, too. But what do I tell my Service?" She took time to think about that, then lifted the telephone. "Algar. I'm off now, going downtown. I'll check in-okay?" She looked back at Maxim. "You heard me. Off-duty. Let's have that drink."
"No," Maxim persisted. "You either tell your Service or you don't."
She stood up, reaching for the desk lamp. "You like your orders cut and dried. Well, I don't blame you, after… All right: from here on you're totally off the record. Do you believe me?"
"Yes."
"Or one day… I wouldn't want you for an enemy, Harry. You take loyalty seriously. God help me, I hope I still do"-she clicked off the light-"where I can still find it. I'm beginning to need that drink."
They sat in thick wickerwork chairs on an open balcony atop one of the older hotels, close to the floodlit shaft of the Washington Monument. Beyond it, the mild night sky was busy with lights arrowing down into National airport and jinking up away from it, following the curls of the river so that if one fell, it would fall into that. Agnes had brought him there for the view, but it was impossible not to watch just the aircraft lights, perhaps macabrely hoping one would lose its grip. They reminded him of what the city was really about, more so than the near-deserted streets below, dominated by monuments and government buildings that themselves became monuments after dark.
Agnes listened carefully and without interruption except to clarify a name or time. They were halfway through their second round of drinks when he finished; she leaned away so that-sitting beside him-she could peer back at him through the dimness. "Golly, you do live, don't you? Those you run into may not, but you soldier on. Literally."
"Do you believe all this?"
She gave that only a moment's thought. "A lot of it's still guesswork by you and George, but the rest, yes. If something like that were going to happen, now would be the time. And you say my Service doesn't believe it?"
"George didn't want to put the business at the cottage to them, you can see why, and it's pretty clear they don't want to believe in a conspiracy anyway, even when they knew about the Reznichenko Memorandum. "
"That smelled bad even from here, but now you say they had proof it was phoney and didn't tell the Home Sec? That means they didn't even tell the D-G. My God, it's come to that pitch already. This is the sortofthingmy mob is supposed to be ironing out and they daren't admit they've even been involved-except by whispering to people like Sprague. Sprague. "
"You know him?"
"Met him." She snatched a gulp of her drink and banged the glass on her teeth. "And the Bravoes seem to believe it… They shouldn'thave a team like that in Britain, acting so openly. It shows how safe they feel; six months ago they wouldn't have dared… And I believe you when you say you killed one of them. I might not have believed it if you'd said you hadn't."
"The world is full of people I haven't killed."
"So far. And you had George along with you on that? Poor man. His blood pressure must be stratospheric. But the Bravoes aren't going to like that, you know. There'sno rules in our business, but there's more or less a convention that we don't kill each other. Once that gets started, you don't know where it could end."
"They must have been planning to kill Miss Tuckey."
"Oh yes, they've killed people in Britain before. Usually their own defectors and so on… but outsiders, not professionals. I know it sounds crazy to you, but that's the convention. At the moment. Now you've broken it… well, let's hope they count Miss Tuckey as a pro and call it quits. If not, you could be a target."
"Just me?"
"Just you. You're thinking of your boy? No. That's more or less another convention-and they don't want to send you berserk, doing God-knows-what more damage. It'll be you personally, but nothing personal, if you see what I mean. Just getting across the message that 'Oi, there's a convention about these things, remember? Now we've squared it up, we can start again from scratch.' I should keep your back to the wall."
"I'll try and remember."
Looking at his face, calm in the faint glow of the awning lights, Agnes felt a flush of exasperation at failing to get her message across. In fact, Maxim had listened and believed: she knew far more of that world than he did. But his own world had stretched to the hinterland of the Gulf states, where a mixture of religion, politics and blood feuds made death a beginning rather than an end. There were families and organisations out there which had sworn to kill him far less cleanly than the KGB would, and he had learned to live with that. Not exactly with courage, which is a wasting asset, but with a soldier's fatalism that if it happens, it will be tomorrow and not today.
"All right," Agnes said resignedly, "so what it boils down to is that, despite your assurances to the White House Protective Detail, you're sneaking off to do a little sleuthing on your own?"
"If we can identify this Person Y… it seems the only thing to do."
"Sure. But you'd better do it carefully. Grow a long-lost cousin in Missouri, or something. Have you booked anything? Then don't until I've done a little looking up.
I'm supposed to be just liaison, and the climate isn't good for that. But a list like that can't be anything secret… Did George suggest you got me mixed up in all this?"
Maxim smiled and shrugged. "He suggested I contact you. But I would have done anyway."
"However, not just for my big blue eyes and tiny morals? And what's he going to be doing meanwhile?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary, I hope."