The 92nd Tiger Read Free Page A

square, and he thought at first that it was a tax demand, but it wasn’t.
    The letter inside was from the Foreign Office, Whitehall, and dated that day.
    It invited Mr. Hugo Greest to call at the Foreign Office on the following afternoon, at two thirty, if convenient, and ask for a Mr. Taverner.

 
Chapter Two
     
Mr. Taverner of the Foreign Office
     
    There were three grey-haired ladies. They sat, like judges in the Court of Appeal, side by side at the broad counter which blocked one end of the spacious entrance hall. Behind them frosted-glass windows obscured what would otherwise have been a view of Downing Street. From the wall on their left a gentleman in full court dress looked down.
    (Fine film set, thought Hugo. A party of terrorists set out to kidnap the Foreign Secretary. Three of them leap the counter and overpower the secretaries. In the film they would be younger, of course, and much prettier—)
    ‘Can I help you?’ said the central lady sharply.
    ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Hugo. ‘I have an appointment with Mr. Taverner. The Arabian Department.’
    ‘Fill out this form, please.’
    Hugo studied the pink form. Some of it was easy. His name? He could do that. And the date. But what about ‘Nature of business’?
    ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that I’ve no idea what the nature of my business is.’
    The central lady looked at him with increased suspicion. She said, ‘You must have some idea.’
    ‘I’m afraid not. You see, I got a letter asking me to call. Mr. Taverner didn’t say what it was about.’
    ‘That’s very unusual,’ said the right-hand lady.
    ‘Perhaps you could ring him up, and ask him what he wants to see me about. Then I could put it on the form.’
    ‘We can’t do that,’ said the left-hand lady. ‘If you weren’t told what you were here for, it’s probably confidential, you see.’
    It was deadlock.
    The right-hand lady, who seemed to be the most helpful of the three, had an idea. She said, ‘Why don’t you put “business”?’
    This seemed a neat solution. The Bench considered it and concurred.
    In the space opposite the word ‘Business’, Hugo wrote down ‘business’. The form was then passed back over the counter, approved by the Court of Appeal, and handed to a veteran of the Crimean War who had hobbled up.
    ‘Follow me, sir,’ said the veteran.
    Hugo followed him. Into a lift, out of the lift, along a short passage, into a much longer passage. The veteran was in no hurry. After a hundred years of combat he had come to rest, in this dim but comfortable mansion, full of enormous faded portraits, lined with cupboards full of documents which were once secret, topped by bookshelves of unreadable and unread reports. The ghosts of an imperial past moved softly ahead of them, prowling down the corridors, lurking in the galleries, whispering in the shadows.
    A long time later they came to a door. The veteran knocked at it, and a polite voice bade them enter. The veteran entered, laid the pink form on the edge of the desk, saluted and withdrew, closing the door softly behind him.
    ‘So glad you could come, Mr. Greest,’ said Taverner. He was tall, and thin, and appeared to be dressed for a funeral. ‘Let me take your coat.’ He took Hugo’s raincoat and suspended it from an apparatus like a small gallows which stood behind the door. Whilst he was doing so, Hugo took stock of the room.
    It was a narrow room; so narrow that in its original design it might have been a passage. A strip of Turkish carpet covered some of the floor. The rest was brown linoleum. A tiny coal fire smouldered in the old-fashioned grate. The furniture was waiting-room mahogany. It was not at all his idea of an appropriate room for the head of the Arabian Department. A television producer, even on a minimum budget, would have rejected it out of hand.
    ‘You must have been surprised to get my note,’ said Mr. Taverner.’
    ‘Well, I was a bit.’
    ‘It’s not a very usual situation.