Quiet autumn rain is falling in the Whitehall streets as Rex Goodhew goes to war. Quietly. In the autumn of his career. In the mature certainty of his cause. Without drama or trumpets or large statements. A quiet outing of his fighting self. A personal but also an altruistic war against what he has come inevitably to refer to as the Forces of Darker.
A war to the death, he tells his wife, without alarms. My head or theirs. A Whitehall knife fight, let's stay close. If you're sure, darling, she says. I am. His every move carefully considered. Nothing hasty, nothing too young, too furtive. He is sending clear signals to his hidden enemies in Pure Intelligence. Let them hear me, let them see me, he says. Let them tremble. Goodhew plays with open cards. More or less.
It is not only Neal Marjoram's disgraceful proposition that has spurred Goodhew into action. A week ago, he was nearly crushed to death cycling to his office. Selecting his favourite scenic route ― first west across Hampstead Heath, respecting the permitted cycle paths, thence by way of Saint John's Wood and Regent's Park to Whitehall ― Goodhew found himself wedged between two high-sided vans, one a dirty white colour with flaking lettering he couldn't read, and the other green and blank. If he braked, they braked also. If he pedalled harder, they accelerated. His perplexity turned to anger. Why did the drivers eye him so coldly in their wing mirrors, then eye each other as they edged ever closer, boxing him in? What was this third van doing behind him, blocking his escape?
He shouted, "Look out! Move over!" but they ignored him. The van behind was riding tight against the rear bumpers of the other two. Its windscreen was grubby, obscuring the driver's face. The vans on either side had drawn so close that if he had turned the handlebar, it would have knocked against one or the other of them.
Rising in his saddle, Goodhew drove his gloved fist against the panel of the van to his left, then pushed himself away from it to recover his balance. The dead eyes in the wing mirror studied him without curiosity. He attacked the van to his right in the same way. It responded by inching nearer.
Only a red traffic light saved him from being crushed. The vans stopped, but Goodhew, for the first time in his life, rode over on red, narrowly escaping death as he skimmed in front of the polished nose of a Mercedes.
* * *
The same afternoon, Rex Goodhew rewrites his will. Next day, using his in-house wiles, he circumnavigates the laborious machinery of his own ministry ― and his master's private office ― and sequesters part of the top floor, a rambling set of attic rooms, already a museum piece, packed with electronic stay-behind equipment installed against the day, just around the corner, when Britain will be overrun by Bolshevism. The likelihood is now past, but the grey men of Goodhew's Administration Section have yet to be advised of this, and when Goodhew requests the floor for secret purposes, they could not be more helpful. Overnight, millions of pounds' worth of obsolete equipment is sent to rot in a lorry park in Aldershot.
Next day Burr's little team becomes the tenant of twelve musty attic rooms, two malfunctioning lavatories the size of tennis courts, a denuded signals room, a private staircase with a marble balustrade and holes in the linoleum treads, and a steel door by Chubb, with a turnkey's peephole. On the day after, Goodhew has the place electronically swept and removes all telephone lines susceptible to River House tampering.
In the matter of extracting public money from his ministry, Goodhew's quarter-century before the Whitehall mast is not in vain. He becomes a bureaucratic Robin Hood, fiddling the government's accounts in order to ensnare its wayward servants.
Burr needs three more staff and knows where he can find them? Hire them, Leonard, hire them.
An informant has a tale to tell but needs a couple of thousand up front? Pay him, Leonard, give him whatever he needs.
Rob Rooke would like to take a brace of watchers with him to Curaçao? Is a brace enough, Rob? Wouldn't a foursome be a safer bet?
