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She smiled one of her special Mona Lisa smiles.  They ve agreed that
already, she said.
 They have?
 They re paying a full pension to me and a full pension to this American
woman who says she married Jim in Mexico.  They admitted Jim was still
working for the Department?
Now I was surprised.
 They admit nothing. It s one of those  in full and final settlement
contracts. Sign here and shut up.  That s unusual, I allowed.
 Unusual? she chortled.  Jesus! It s bloody unprecedented. It s not the way
the Department works, is it? They didn t hesitate, didn t confirm with anyone
or check anything I said, Okay, they said. just like that.
 Who authorized it?
A scornful little laugh.  No one knows. They said it was in the file.
 How could it be in the file? I said. There couldn t be anything in the file
about paying out two pensions to two wives of someone who d stopped working
for the Department years before.  Exactly, she said.  Someone is damned
scared.
 Scared, I said,  yes. She was right: it was me.
Thursday was not a good day. I had to go down into the  Yellow Submarine .
The Data Centre was just about the only part Of the Foreign Office where Cindy
Matthews would not be able to stroll past the security guard with some casual
chat about getting the tin of biscuits for the Minister s afternoon tea. They
were fussy here: uniformed guards with hats on. A photo identity check at the
ground floor entrance and more checks at the software library level and video
at the third and deepest level where the secrets were really kept under lock
and key. After my wife defected it was several weeks, nearly three months in
fact, before I was required to go down into the Submarine again. I had begun
to believe that my security clearance had been downgraded and that I d never
see the inside of the place again, but then one day Dicky stayed at home with
a head-cold and something was wanted urgently and I was the only one in the
office who knew how to work the consoles down there and they sent me. From
that time onwards everything was back to normal again as far as I could tell.
But with the Department you can never be sure. It s not like a Michelin guide:
they don t publish a book each spring so you can find out how the inspectors
feel about you. So I was happy enough to sit at the keyboard and tell the
machine my name, grade and department and wait for it to come up with the
request for my secret access number. It meant that I was still one of the
nation s trusted. Once the machine had okayed my number I spent a couple of
hours sitting there, rolling around on one of those uncomfortable little
typist chairs, calling up answers on the display screen and printing out yards
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of pale-green security bumf for Dicky. When I had finished everything he
wanted I sat there for a moment. I knew I should get up and go straight back
to the office. But I couldn t resist probing into the machinery just once.
just so I could go back to Cindy and tell her that I d tried. And also to
satisfy my own curiosity.
I keyed it in:  PRETTYMAN, JAMES.
The machine gurgled before providing a  Menu from which I selected BIOG.
More soft clattering came from deep inside the machine before Prettyman s
twenty-two-page-long service biography came up on the screen. I pushed the
control arrow buttons to get to the end of it and found it ended with a
summary of Prettyman s last report. This was the standard Civil Service file
in which one s immediate superior comments on  judgement, political sense,
power of analysis and foresight but it didn t say whether Prettyman had
retired from the Department or continued to work for it. When I pressed the
machine for supplementary material I got the word REVISE. So I pursued
PRETTYMAN J BIOG REVISE and got REFER FILE FO FX MI 123/456, which seemed an
unlikely number for a file. I tried to access that file and found ACCESS
DENIED ENTER ARCTIC NUMBER.
I couldn t tell the machine the  Arctic number it wanted because I didn t
even know what an Arctic number was. I looked at my watch. I still had plenty
of time to spare before my appointment with Dicky. Dicky had been in a very
good mood for the last few days. The Bizet crisis seemed to have faded. There
had been no hard news but he told the Department that the Stasi prosecution
office were about to release our men because of insufficient evidence and
managed to imply that it was all his doing. It was a total fabrication, but
when Dicky needed good news he never hesitated to invent some. Once, when I d
tackled him about it, he said it was the only way of getting the old man off
his back.
Today Dicky had gone to lunch with his old friend and onetime colleague Henry
Tiptree, who d left his cosy Foreign Office desk for a job with a small
merchant bank in the newly deregulated City. Morgan had gone to lunch with
them too.
Morgan used to be a hatchet man and general factotum for the Director-General
but since the D-G s appearances had become fewer and further between, Morgan
had nothing to do but pass queries to the Deputy D-G s office and blow smoke
at the ceilings of the City s private dining rooms. I suspected that Morgan
and Dicky were cautiously investigating their chances of getting one of the
six-figure City salaries that I kept reading about in The Economist. In any
case, Tiptree, Morgan and Dicky were not likely to finish judging the Havanas
and old tawny port until three at the earliest, which is why I d brought my
packet of sandwiches to the Submarine. So I tried again. I entered the company [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]