Bomb Grade Read Free

with a beak-nosed face chiselled like the prow of an Arctic ice-breaker, bisected by heavy-framed spectacles. At the opposite end, seemingly more interested in the river traffic than in Charlie’s tentative entry, lounged a bow-tied, alopeciadomed man who compensated for his baldness by cultivating a droop-ending bush of a moustache. The man next to him was utterly nondescript, dark-haired and dark-suited and with the white, civil service regulated shirt, except for blood-pressured apple-red cheeks so bright he could have been wearing clown’s make-up.
    Rupert Dean sat in the middle of the group. His appointment had, more than any other, marked the change in the role of British intelligence. For the first time in over a decade a Director-General had not entered the service either through its ranks or along diplomatic or Foreign Office routes. Until three years earlier, he had been the Professor of Modern and Political History at Oxford’s Balliol College from which, through numerous newspaper and magazine articles and three internationally acclaimed books, he had become acknowledged as the foremost sociopolitical authority in Europe.
    Dean was a small man whose hair retreated in an upright wall from his forehead, as if in alarm. He, too, had glasses but he wasn’t wearing them. Instead, he was shifting the arms through his fingers, like prayer beads. At both seminars he’d appeared conservatively and unremarkably dressed – the same grey suit and unrecognized tie on both occasions – but now Charlie decided the man had been trying for an expected appearance, like Charlie would have tried if he’d had longer warning about this interview by getting the stain off his lapel and wearing an unmarked tie and fresh shirt.
    The only other Director-General Charlie had known uncaringly wear the sort of bagged and pockets-full sports jacket like the one Dean was wearing had been Sir Archibald Willoughby, Charlie’s first boss, protector and mentor, and Charlie’s immediate impression was that, given the chance, he could have found a lot of fondly remembered similarities between the two men. Without needing to see, Charlie knew the trousers hidden below the conference table would lack any proper crease except for the ridges of constant wear and would more than likely be stained as well. And the shoes would be comfortable old friends, although not as ancient or as wearer-friendly as the Hush Puppies he wore.
    â€˜Muffin, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ Charlie always had the greatest difficulty showing deference to people in authority – and certainly towards anyone whose professionalism or ability he doubted – yet he had felt not the slightest hesitation in instinctively according it to the new service head. The last controller who had automatically instilled such an attitude had again been Sir Archibald.
    â€˜Quite so, quite so. Come in, man. Sit down.’ Dean spoke quickly but with extraordinarily clear diction. There was a thick file in front of the man which Charlie guessed, nervously, to be his personal records. Dean shuffled through the topmost sheets but then abandoned whatever he was searching for, pushing the dossier away more disarranged than when he started. ‘Much to discuss,’ he announced, hurried-voiced, extending both arms sideways figuratively to embrace the men sitting on either side of him. Gerald Williams, expressionless once more, allowed no response to the introduction. The thin man immediately to Dean’s right managed a single head nod of his own at being identified as Peter Johnson, Dean’s deputy. A lot of the surprise at Dean’s appointment had been fuelled by the open secret even before the transfer from Westminster Bridge Road that Johnson, for ten years the department’s Foreign Office link, resented being passed over for the very top job in favour of a schoolmasterly outsider. The bald-headed man broke away at last from