A Very British Coup Read Free Page A

life free from extremism. Every civil servant, every army officer, every MP, every BBC executive whose background betrayed the merest possibility of disloyalty had been quietly blocked from promotion. Now, overnight, all these years of hard work were threatened. Within days the establishment would be crawling with extremists. In Downing Street, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, people who until now, thanks to DI5’s good work, would not have qualified as doorkeepers in a government department would now be Cabinet ministers. And all because the British public was composed of ignorant clodheads who didn’t know what was good for them. Sir Peregrine had never had much time for democracy, but this was the final straw.
    By Green Park tube station Sir Peregrine crossed the road and turned right into Bolton Street. Those who did not know better might have assumed that this well-dressed, solitary gentleman was on his way to Shepherd Market where expensive ladies have long been known to provide a wide range ofunmentionable services for the upper classes at all times of the day and night. In fact Sir Peregrine was on his way to the DI5 Registry: a seven-storey, fortress-like building of Second World War vintage in Curzon Street, called simply Curzon Street House. Apart from the heavy lace curtains which are features of most secret service décor, there is nothing to indicate what goes on behind the solid walls of Curzon Street House. Those who get as far as the reception will notice only that the internal telephone directory is stamped ‘Secret’. In the street directory the building is listed simply as ‘central government offices’.
    Sir Peregrine entered by the glass doors at the front of the building. Behind these was a steel portcullis with a small door and beyond a reception desk manned by a security officer. Briskly acknowledging the man’s attempt at pleasantry, Sir Peregrine went straight to the lift. He emerged on the second floor, turned right and walked a few paces down a carpeted corridor to an unmarked door. Taking his wallet from an inside pocket, he withdrew what appeared to be a plastic banker’s card and fed it into a slot in the wall. There was a muffled click as the machine checked the pass code and then, from the door, came the sound of a lock automatically disengaging. Sir Peregrine returned the pass to his wallet, turned the doorhandle and entered.
    His office was a large and comfortable room. Wine-red velvet curtains were matched by thick Tibetan rugs. The walls were hung with Vietnamese watercolours and on a table by a lampshade stood a Burmese Buddha: reminders that Sir Peregrine had seen service in the East in his Foreign Office days.
    The desk was a large Queen Anne affair, empty save for a tea mug full of felt-tip pens, a teak letter-opener and a framed picture of his wife and daughter. To one side, within easy reach of his swivel chair, stood a visual display unit, still encased in the blue plastic cover in which it had arrived five years ago. Sir Peregrine had only to tap the requisite code into the keyboard of the VDU in order to summon instantly to the screen the most intimate secrets of any one of the two millionor so people said to be on the Curzon Street computer. He had only to tap another button and a print-out would slide silently from the belly of the machine.
    Gone were the days when clerks and secretaries commuted between the principal floor and the basement of Curzon Street House. Gone were the days of filling in requisition forms, frantic telephone calls to the Registry demanding reasons for delay. Today, on the application of a few simple codes, the secrets of the Curzon Street computer were instantly available.
    Not that Sir Peregrine had much time for technology. He was one of the old school, trained in the days of triplicate memoranda and beige files. He had never made any serious attempt to master the VDU and so it stood