Albatross by Evelyn Anthony Page A

state secrets. And there’s nothing secret about my retirement.’
    â€˜You haven’t the slightest intention of retiring,’ his wife said firmly, ‘so don’t talk nonsense.’
    â€˜Perhaps, perhaps not.’ He smiled at the fire and stretched again. ‘But I hadn’t realized until the other day how much John Kidson wants my job! Good Lord, it’s past eleven – time for bed.’
    â€˜He’d need it,’ Mary White said, getting up and tidying the paper and collecting their coffee cups. ‘Charlie must be a pretty expensive wife to keep!’
    â€˜I don’t think that’s the reason,’ her husband said. ‘I think it’s just naked ambition. And he’s kept it hidden all these years. I’ll put the lights out and lock up.’ Methodically he locked the doors and checked that the locks were down on the windows.
    It had taken some manoeuvring to arrange a meeting with Tony Walden. They had a mutual friend, a senior partner in one of the City’s prestigious broking firms. James hinted and his friend set up a dinner party in London which was arranged round the Waldens. Mary was very good about that sort of thing, he thought affectionately. She loathed going to London and the kind of superficial, overmoneyed company round their host’s table would be a genuine bore to her. He hoped she chose a really nice dinner dress. The remark about expenses had been a joke, but it was time she had something new.
    They switched out their bedroom lights, but James White didn’t sleep for a long time. He was not a person who indulged in memories unless they had a bearing on the present. He was the most unsentimental man alive, and he said it as a boast. His enemies, and some of his friends, insisted that he was also the most heartless and unscrupulous head of British Intelligence since its Elizabethan founder, Walsingham.
    That night, lying awake in the darkness, Mary curled up peacefully beside him, James White deliberately looked back. A distinguished Army career had ended prematurely when he was at the Ministry of Defence and the approach was made to him to head SIS. He had taken over a demoralized mess, with a man suspected of Soviet sympathies slinking into retirement. White smiled a little, thinking of the morning he took over the office in the house in Queen Anne’s Gate.
    He could have risen to the rank of full general if he had stayed in the Army. The salary at SIS did not compare, nor did the pension. And he wasn’t a rich man by any means. The speed of his acceptance surprised the people who had offered him the job. The Mandarins, as they were known, moved at a stately pace themselves; the Army relinquished him with regret, and a new life of secrecy and intrigue began for him at the age of forty-seven. He was well fitted for it, he said to himself; he had a natural bent for political trends and a knowledge far beyond that of the average Army officer of his rank. He spoke three languages fluently, and had passed out of staff college with the highest marks seen in twenty years. He was a very clever man with a peculiar twist to his personality; nobody, not even his wife, who was very dear to him, understood what the twist was. He had always found it difficult to understand it in himself, and he had tried to over the years. It had shaped his life.
    He loved to deceive. He loved to baffle and bemuse and mislead his fellow human beings. He loved the world of lies as the alcoholic loves drink and the gambler needs to lose to be satisfied. He couldn’t help himself. He had sometimes said that inside every man or woman there was a mainspring that kept them alive and directed their lives. Once that was broken, they soon died. His mainspring was a passion for deception. And when he retired, his mainspring would be broken. Or need it be? Until the moment of decision came, he could manipulate and mould the future through the weakness and