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IDENTITY
MALE
ENGLAND
The lines flicked out as Nellie came back with:
NAME?
I typed in:
ASHTON, GEORGE
It didn’t seem to make much difference to Nellie how you put a name in. I’d experimented a bit and whether you put in Percy Bysshe Shelley – Shelley, Percy Bysshe – or even Percy Shelley, Bysshe – didn’t seem to matter. Nellie still came up with the right answer, always assuming that Bysshe Shelley, Percy was under our eagle eye. But I always put the surname first because I thought it would be easier on Nellie’s overworked little brain.
This time she came up with:
ASHTON, GEORGE – 3 KNOWN
PRESENT ADDRESS – IF KNOWN?
There could have been two hundred George Ashtons in the country or maybe two thousand. It’s a common name and not surprising that three should be known to the department. As I typed in the address I reflected that I was being a bit silly about this. I tapped the execute key and Nellie hesitated uncharacteristically. Then I had a shock because the cursor scrolled out:
THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE GREEN TRY CODE YELLOW
I looked pensively at the screen and tapped out:
HOLD QUERY
Dancing electronically in the guts of a computer was a whole lot of information about one George Ashton, my future father-in-law. And it was secret information because it was in Code Yellow. I had picked up Larry Godwin on a joke and it had backfired on me; I hadn’t expected Nellie to find him at all – there was no reason to suppose the department was interested in him. But if he had been found I would have expected him to be listed under Code Green, a not particularly secretive batch of information. Practically anything listed under Code Green could have been picked up by an assiduous reading of the world press. Code Yellow was definitely different.
I dug into the recesses of my mind for the coding of yellow, then addressed myself to Nellie. ‘Right, you bitch; try again!’ I loaded in the coding which took four minutes, then I typed out:
RELEASE HOLD
Nellie’s screen flickered a bit and the cursor spelled out:
THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE YELLOW TRY CODE RED
I took a deep breath, told Nellie to hold the query, then sat back to think about it. I was cleared for Code Red and I knew the information there was pretty much the same as the code colour – redhot! Who the hell was Ashton, and what was I getting into? I stood up and said to Larry, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t interfere with Nellie.’
I took a lift which went down deep into the guts of the building where there lived a race of troglodytes, the guardians of the vaults. I presented my card at a tungsten-steel grille, and said, ‘I’d like to check the computer coding for red. I’ve forgotten the incantation.’
The hard-faced man behind the grille didn’t smile. He merely took the card and dropped it into a slot. A machine chewed on it for a moment, tasted it electronically, and liked the flavour but, even so, spat it out. I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t liked the flavour; probably I’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Strange how the real world is catching up with James Bond.
The guard glanced at a small screen. ‘Yes, you’re cleared for red, Mr Jaggard,’ he said, agreeing with the machine. The grille swung open and I passed through, hearing it slam and lock behind me. ‘The coding will be brought to you in Room Three.’
Half an hour later I walked into my office, hoping I could remember it all. I found Larry peering at Nellie. ‘Do you have red clearance?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Yellow is my top.’
‘Then hop it. Go to the library and study Playboy or something elevating like that. I’ll give you a ring when I’m finished.’
He didn’t argue; he merely nodded and walked out. I sat at the console and loaded Code Red into Nellie and it took nearly ten minutes of doing the right things in the right order. I wasn’t entirely joking when I called it an incantation. When faced with Nellie I was always reminded of the medieval sorcerers who sought to conjure up spirits; everything had to be done in the right order and all the right words spoken or the spirit wouldn’t appear. We haven’t made much progress since then, or not too much. But at least our incantations seem to work and we do get answers from the vasty deep, but whether they’re worth anything or not I don’t know.
Nellie accepted Code Red or, at least, she didn’t hiccough over it.
I keyed in:
RELEASE HOLD
and waited with great interest to see what would come out. The screen flickered again, and Nellie said:
THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE RED TRY CODE PURPLE
Purple! The colour of royalty and, possibly, of my face at that moment. This was where I was stopped – I was not cleared for Code Purple. I was aware it existed but that’s about all. And beyond purple there could have been a whole rainbow of colours visible and invisible, from infrared to ultra-violet. As I said, we worked on the ‘need to know’ principle.
I picked up the telephone and rang Larry. ‘You can come back now; the secret bit is over.’ Then I wiped Nellie’s screen clean and sat down to think of what to do next.
FIVE (#ulink_2b81664a-1734-57e3-a583-c5e25d8a0300)
A couple of hours later I was having a mild ding-dong with Larry. He wasn’t a bad chap but his ideals tended to get in the way of his job. His view of the world didn’t exactly coincide with things as they are, which can be a bit hampering because a man can make mistakes that way. A spell of field work would have straightened him out but he’d never been given the chance.
My telephone rang and I picked it up. ‘Jaggard here.’
It was Harrison. His voice entered my ear like a blast of polar air. ‘I want you in my office immediately.’
I put down the phone. ‘Joe’s in one of his more frigid moods. I wonder how he gets on with his wife.’ I went to see what he wanted.
Harrison was a bit more than frigid – he could have been used to liquefy helium. He said chillily, ‘What the devil have you been doing with the computer?’
‘Nothing much. Has it blown a fuse?’
‘What’s all this about a man called Ashton?’
I was startled. ‘Oh, Christ!’ I said. ‘Nellie is a tattle-tale, isn’t she? Too bloody gossipy by half.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Just talking to myself.’
‘Well, now you can talk to Ogilvie. He wants to see us both.’
I think I gaped a bit. I’d been with the department for six years and I’d seen Ogilvie precisely that number of times; that’s to talk with seriously. I sometimes bumped into him in the lift and he’d exchange pleasantries courteously enough and always asked to be remembered to my father. My monkeying with Nellie must have touched a nerve so sore that the whole firm was going into a spasm.
‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ snapped Harrison. ‘He’s waiting.’
Waiting with Ogilvie was a short, chubby man who had twinkling eyes, rosy cheeks and a sunny smile. Ogilvie didn’t introduce him. He waved Harrison and me into chairs and plunged in medias res. ‘Now, Malcolm; what’s your interest in Ashton?’
I said, ‘I’m going to marry his daughter.’
If I’d said I was going to cohabit with the Prince of Wales I couldn’t have had a more rewarding reaction. The clouds came over Mr Nameless; his smile disappeared and his eyes looked like gimlets. Ogilvie goggled for a moment, then barked, ‘What’s that?’
‘I’m going to marry his daughter,’ I repeated. ‘What’s the matter? Is it illegal?’
‘No, it’s not illegal,’ said Ogilvie in a strangled voice. He glanced at Mr Nameless as though uncertain of what to do next. Mr Nameless said, ‘What reason did you have for thinking there’d be a file on Ashton?’
‘No reason. It was suggested jokingly that I try asking Nellie, so I did. No one was more surprised than I when Ashton popped up.’
I swear Ogilvie thought I was going round the twist. ‘Nellie!’ he said faintly.
‘Sorry, the computer.’
‘Was this enquiry in the course of your work?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was personal and private. I’m sorry about that and I apologize for it. But some odd things have been going on around Ashton over the weekend and I wanted to check him out.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Someone threw acid into his daughter’s face and …’
Mr Nameless cut in. ‘The girl you intend to marry?’
‘No – the younger girl, Gillian. Later on Ashton behaved a bit strangely.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ogilvie. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Last night.’ I paused. ‘I had to disclose myself to a copper, so it came through on the weekend telephone log. Joe and I discussed it this morning.’
Ogilvie switched to Harrison. ‘You knew about this?’
‘Only about the acid. Ashton wasn’t mentioned.’
‘You didn’t ask me,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t know Ashton was so bloody important until Nellie told me afterwards.’
Ogilvie said, ‘Now let me get this quite right.’ He stared at Harrison. ‘A member of your staff in this department reported to you that he’d been involved in police enquiries into an acid-throwing attack, and you didn’t even ask who was attacked. Is that it?’
Harrison twitched nervously. Mr Nameless paused in the act of lighting a cigarette and said smoothly. ‘I think this is irrelevant. Let us get on with it.’
Ogilvie stabbed Harrison with a glance which told him that he’d hear more later. ‘Of course. Do you think this is serious?’
‘It could be very serious,’ said Mr Nameless. ‘But I think we’re very lucky. We already have an inside man.’ He pointed the cigarette at me just as Leonard Bernstein points his baton at the second violins to tell them to get scraping.
I said, ‘Now, hold on a minute. I don’t know what this is about, but Ashton is going to be my father-in-law. That’s bringing things very close to home. You can’t be seriously asking me to …’
‘You’re not being asked,’ said Mr Nameless coolly. ‘You’re being told.’
‘The hell with that,’ I said roundly.
Momentarily he looked startled, and if ever I thought those eyes had twinkled it was then I changed my mind. He glanced at Ogilvie, and said, ‘I know this man has a good record, but right now I fail to see how he achieved it.’
‘I’ve said it once this morning, but I’ll say it again,’ I said. ‘Stuff my record.’
‘Be quiet, Malcolm,’ said Ogilvie irritably. He turned to Harrison. ‘I don’t think we need you any more, Joe.’
Harrison’s expression managed to mirror simultaneously shock, outrage, curiosity and regret at having to leave. As the door closed behind him Ogilvie said, ‘I think a valid point has been made. It’s not good for an agent to be emotionally involved. Malcolm, what do you think of Ashton?’
‘I like him – what I know of him. He’s not an easy man to get to know, but then I haven’t had much chance yet; just a couple of weekends’ acquaintanceship.’
‘A point has been made,’ conceded Mr Nameless. He twinkled at me as though we were suddenly bosom friends. ‘And in rather unparliamentary language. But the fact remains that Mr Jaggard, here, is on the inside. We can’t just toss away that advantage.’
Ogilvie said smoothly, ‘I think that Malcolm will investigate the circumstances around Ashton as soon as it is properly explained to him why he should.’
‘As to that,’ said Mr Nameless, ‘you mustn’t overstep the limits. You know the problem.’
‘I think it can be coped with.’
Mr Nameless stood up. ‘Then that’s what I’ll report.’
When he had gone Ogilvie looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘Malcolm, you really can’t go about telling high-ranking civil servants to get stuffed.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said reasonably. ‘I told him to stuff my record. I didn’t even tell him where to stuff it.’
‘The trouble with people like you who have private incomes is that it makes you altogether too bloody independent-minded. Now that, while being an asset to the department, as I told his lordship before you came in, can make things difficult for your colleagues.’
His lordship! I didn’t know if Ogilvie was being facetious or not.
He said, ‘Will you take things a bit easier in future?’
That wasn’t asking too much, so I said, ‘Of course.’
‘Good. How’s your father these days?’
‘I think he’s a bit lonely now that Mother’s dead, but he bears up well. He sends you his regards.’
He nodded and checked his watch. ‘Now you’ll lunch with me and tell me everything you know about Ashton.’
SIX (#ulink_2da65554-7b7a-548d-a1fe-05830c8ae9a9)
We lunched in a private room above a restaurant at which Ogilvie seemed to be well known. He made me begin right from the beginning, from the time I met Penny, and I ended my tale with the abortive checking out of Ashton and my confrontation with Nellie. It took a long time to tell.
When I had finished we were over the coffee cups. Ogilvie lit a cigar and said, ‘All right; you’re supposed to be a trained man. Can you put your finger on anything unusual?’
I thought a bit before answering. ‘Ashton has a man called Benson. I think there’s something peculiar there.’
‘Sexually, you mean?’
‘Not necessarily. Ashton certainly doesn’t strike me as being double-gaited. I mean it’s not the normal master-and-servant relationship. When they came back from the hospital last night they were closeted in Ashton’s study for an hour and a half, and between them they sank half a bottle of whisky.’
