“Allof them?” he asked at last.
Whitcombe offered only a benevolent smile in reply. He had the mind of a professional criminal and the face of a country parson. It was a dangerous combination.
“The entire output of a single officer over a seven-year period? It’s unprecedented.”
“Look at the name of the officer.” Whitcombe tapped it with the tip of his forefinger in case Robinson, who was blind as a bat, hadn’t seen it.
seymour, arthur ...
“Yes, I saw it, but it can’t be done. Not without a countersignature from the Registry Head.”
“Chief’s prerogative. Chief’s birthright, too.”
“Then perhaps the chief should be the one making the request.”
This time, Whitcombe’s smile was not so benevolent. “Heisthe one, Robinson. Think of me as his personal emissary.”
Robinson was squinting at the name on the chit. “One of the greats, Arthur. A pro’s pro. I knew him, you know. Oh, we weren’t friends, mind you. I wasn’t in Arthur’s category. But we were acquainted.”
Whitcombe wasn’t surprised. The old fossil had probably known Philby, too. During the war, Central Registry had been at St. Albans, next door to Philby’s Section V. The chief registrar was a world-class boozer named William Woodfield. Philby used to fill him up with pink gin at the King Harry so he could get his files for free. At night he would copy the contents by hand at the kitchen table for delivery to his Soviet controller.
Philby...
Whitcombe felt his face flush with anger at the very thought of the traitorous bastard. Or maybe it was Robinson’s hair cream. The smell of it was making him light-headed.
Robinson looked up at the wall clock, which read 10:53. “It’s going to take a while.”
“How long?”
“Two days, maybe three.”
“Sorry, old boy, but I need them tonight.”
“You can’t be serious! They’re scattered all over the facility. I have to find the relevant cross-references. Otherwise, I’m liable to miss something.”
“Don’t do that,” cautioned Whitcombe. “The chief specifically requested all of his father’s files from that period. All meansall.”
“It would be helpful if you gave me the name of a specific operation or target.”
It would indeed, thought Whitcombe. In fact, all he had to do was addPhilby, H.A.R.to the chit, and Robinson would be able to locate the relevant files in a matter of minutes. But the chief wanted the search to be as broad and innocuous-sounding as possible, lest word of it reach the wrong pair of ears at Vauxhall Cross.
“Maybe I can be of help,” suggested Whitcombe.
“Don’t even think about it,” scolded Robinson. “There’s a staff room down the hall. You can wait there.”
With that, he shuffled, chit in hand, into the shadows of the vast warehouse. Watching him, Whitcombe’s spirits sank. The place reminded him of the IKEA in Wembley where he’d hastily furnished his flat. He went down the hall to the staff room and fixed himself a cup of Darjeeling. It was horrible. Worse than horrible, thought Whitcombe, as he settled in for a long night. It tasted like nothing.
Shift change at the annex was at six. The early-morning registrar was a battleax named Mrs. Applewhite who was impervious to Whitcombe’s charms, such as they were, and fearless in the face of his veiled threats. As a consequence, he was relieved when Robinson poked his head into the staff room at half past four and announced the order was complete.
The files were contained in eight boxes, each marked with the usual warning regarding disclosure and proper handling, which forbade their removal from the facility. Whitcombe immediately violated that particular regulation by loading the files into the back of a Ford hatchback. Robinson was predictably appalled and threatened to wake the Registry Head, but here again Whitcombe prevailed. The files in question, he argued, hadzeronational security value. Furthermore, they were for the chief’s private use. And the chief, he added with a lofty tone, could not be expected to read them in a drafty warehouse in Slough. Never mind that the chief was holed up in a cottage at the edge of Dartmoor. That was none of Robinson’s affair.
Whitcombe had a reputation, well deserved, of being a lead-footed driver. He was in Andover by five thirty and had crossed the chalk plateau of Cranborne Chase before the sun came up. He stopped for a coffee and a bacon sandwich at the Esso in Sparkford, survived a biblical cloudburst in Taunton, and was careening up the drive of Wormwood Cottage by eight. From his office window, Parish watched him unloading the boxes, assisted by none other than “C” himself and the infamous chief of the Israeli secret intelligence service, who seemed to be struggling with a nagging pain at the small of his back. The great undertaking had commenced. Of that, Parish was certain.
44
Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor
Taken together, the files were a secret tour of the Middle East from 1956 to 1963, a time when Britain was fading, America was rising, the Russians were encroaching, the youthful State of Israel was flexing its newfound muscle, and the Arabs were flirting with all the failedisms—Pan-Arabism, Arab Nationalism, Arab Socialism—that would eventually lead to the rise of Islamism and jihadism and the mess of the present.
