The Glory Boys

Helen also called the Israeli embassy, introduced herself as Home Office, left a number – the direct one to Jones's desk – and asked that the security attache should call back as soon as he had been located with a view to arranging an urgent meeting in mid-afternoon. Next she traced the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) to a golf club in North Hertfordshire. He arranged to see Jones in his office at Scotland Yard immediately after lunch. That would set in motion the sifting of scores of reports and observations made by undercover drug squad detectives who worked in the communes. The conversation with Jones was impressive enough for him to scratch from the four-ball game he had arranged, make his apologies to his partners, and drive home for a morning's work on the telephone before going to London.

Lastly she raised Jimmy, still waiting beside the receiver, but dressed now. His trousers were creased at the back of his knees, his jacket had great lines carved across the flap at the back, and the shirt was not quite clean. But he was dressed. Would he come in at four-thirty? 'Course he bloody well would. And after that? She didn't know.

Going at it like a lot of maniacs, she'd said, and rung off.

The Cabinet Minister who rejoiced in the title of 'Secretary of State for Home Affairs' liked to keep in touch with his constituents. On Saturday mornings he held a 'surgery', where the electors who had returned him to Westminster for the past eighteen years could come to him with their problems. His opponents claimed it was simply window-dressing, and that as he allowed each of his 'patients' a bare four minutes there was little that could effectively be talked about in that time. Clogged-up drains and the lateness of school buses was about all that could be managed. Anything as detailed as council house rents or the redundancies at the local car-body factory could not, to the relief of the Minister, be dealt with in the limited time of his schedule.

He had dealt with fifteen constituents in the straight hour that he set himself, and was preparing for the drive across country to the hall where he would eat a sandwich lunch with the faithful and make a short speech, when the Director General of the Security Services was put through on the telephone in his agent's office on the first floor of the constituency headquarters. On matters of state security the Director General had direct access to the Prime Minister, but there were occasions when that was not suitable.

Going too high up the ladder too fast, and then leaving no one senior to fall back if the initial contacts with Government went sour. The DG liked to leave his options open, but it was rare for him to seek an interview outside normal working routine with his Minister – rare enough for the Minister to be puzzled, and to be left confused after he had arranged that they should meet at the hall and talk while the tea and food were being consumed.

When the Director General arrived in mid-morning he was shown into a room behind the stage of the hall, and he waited there among the piled chairs and old scenery props for the Minister to come in.

'I'm sorry to trouble you,' he began.

'I'm sure you wouldn't have done so if you hadn't thought it important.' The Minister was wary of the other man. Security was fraught with whirlpools in the political ocean; when everything was going well you never heard from them; they only surfaced when the gales were blowing.

'I think we're running into some bother, something you ought to hear about.'

The Minister acquiesced. The Director General could see he was nervous, uncertain of what was to follow and fearful of its implications, and his voice was subdued as he explained the situation.

The Minister felt trapped. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked. it's not so much a case of doing anything, sir. It's a question of your knowing what's going on, what the situation is.'

'How important is this Israeli?' The question was barked, staccato.

'One of their backroom men, not a well known personality. Named David Sokarev. They regard him as critical to their nuclear programme. He doesn't work on the power station side, but on the civilian programmes. He's with the other crowd, the ones they don't talk about. Sensitive man, sensitive work.' is it an important meeting?'

'Not that we know of. We haven't seen a guest list yet – this has only been developing since yesterday evening.

We'll have that sort of thing by tonight. But there's nothing to suggest it's world-shattering…'

'Which it would be if the bastards get to him.' He lingered, concentrating his mind on the problem. Always security providing the problems, never any good news, always anguish and heart-searching. And now, with not one of his Civil Servants within fifty miles, with the Prime Minister touring Lanarkshire, a snap decision to be made.