“Thank you,” said Preston.
“So much so,” Harcourt-Smith went on, “that I’ve spent a good part of the festivities break right here in this office to reread and consider it.”
Preston thought it wiser to remain silent.
“It is, how shall I put it, pretty radical ... no holds barred, eh? The question is—and this is the question I have to ask myself before this department proposes any kind of policy based upon it—is it all absolutely true? Can it be verified? This is what I should be asked.”
“Look, Brian, I’ve spent two years on that investigation. My people went deep, very deep. The facts, where I’ve stated them as facts, are true.”
“Ah, John. I’d never dispute any facts presented by you. But the conclusions drawn from them—”
“Are based on logic, I think,” said Preston.
“A great discipline. I used to study it,” resumed Harcourt-Smith. “But not always supported by hard evidence, wouldn’t you agree? Let’s take this thing here—” He found the place in the report and his finger ran along one line. “The MBR. Pretty extreme, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, yes, Brian, it’s extreme. These are pretty extreme people.”
“No doubt about it. But wouldn’t it have been helpful to have a copy of the MBR attached to your report?”
“So far as I could discover, it hasn’t been written down. It’s a series of intentions—albeit very firm intentions—in the minds of certain people.”
Harcourt-Smith sucked regretfully at a tooth. “Intentions,” he said, as though the word intrigued him, “yes, intentions. But you see, John, there are a lot of intentions in the minds of a lot of people vis-à-vis this
country, not all of them friendly. But we can’t propose policy, measures, or countermeasures on the basis of these intentions.”
Preston was about to speak, but Harcourt-Smith swept on, rising to indicate that the interview was over.
“Look, John, leave this with me awhile longer. I’ll have to think on it and perhaps take a few soundings before I decide where I can best place it. By the by, how do you like F1(D)?”
“I like it fine,” said Preston, rising also.
“I may have something for you that you’ll like even more,” said Harcourt-Smith.
When Preston had gone, Harcourt-Smith stared at the door through which he had passed for several minutes. He seemed lost in thought.
Simply to shred the file, which he privately regarded as embarrassing and which might one day prove dangerous, was not possible. It had been formally presented by a section head. It had a file number. He thought long and hard. Then took his red-ink pen and wrote carefully on the cover of the Preston report. He pressed his buzzer for his secretary.
“Mabel,” he said when she entered, “take this down to Registry yourself, please. Right now.”
The girl glanced at the cover of the file. Across it were written the letters NFA and Brian Harcourt-Smith’s initials. In the service, NFA stands for “no further action.” The report was to be buried.
Chapter 2
It was not until Sunday, January 4, that the apartment owner at Fontenoy House was able to get an answer from the number he had been ringing every hour for three days. It was a brief conversation when it took place, but it resulted in his meeting with another man just before the hour of luncheon in a recessed alcove of one of the public rooms in a very discreet West End hotel.
The newcomer was about sixty, with iron-gray hair, soberly dressed, and with the air of a kind of civil servant, which in a way he was. He was the second to arrive, and seated himself with an immediate apology. “I’m terribly sorry I wasn’t available these past three days,” he said. “Being a single man, I was invited by some kind friends to spend the New Year period with them out of town. Now, what seems to be the problem?”
The apartment owner told him in short, clear sentences. He had had time to think exactly how he would convey the enormity of what had happened and he chose his phrases well. The other man considered the narrative with deepening gravity.
“You’re quite right, of course,” he said at length. “It could be very serious. When you returned on Thursday night, did you call the police? Or have you, at any time since?”
“No, I thought it better to talk to you first.”
“Ah, a pity in a way. It’s too late now, anyway. Their forensic people would establish the blowing of the safe as three or four days old. Hard to explain that. Unless—”
“Yes?” asked the apartment owner eagerly. “Unless you could maintain that the mirror was back in its place and everything in such apple-pie order that you could live there for three days and not know you had been burgled?”
“Hardly,” said the apartment owner. “The carpet had been taken up all around the edges. The bastard must have walked around the walls to avoid the pressure pads.”