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cheaper to hang a man than to keep him for twenty years at the taxpayers’ expense. His department would have welcomed a tenth of the subsidy spent on locking up bombers and child murderers in top security jails. This time he decided to see the Home Secretary himself because there had been a sudden stream of irritating notes from the Foreign Office about Russian protests at Britain’s failure to find Sasanov, or a body, since it was asserted he must have killed himself. Nobody was serious, of course;
    the KGB knew perfectly well that Sasanov was under his protection. They were just trying to be awkward, and stir up trouble for White. The Home Secretary was not sympathetic to White’s clandestine operations. He objected to laws being broken in the name of security, and he carried his obsession about personal freedom so far that White had to mount some of his less savoury operations very carefully. There was a lot the Home Secretary didn’t know, but there was no way White could have concealed Sasanov. The defection of someone so important was of interest to the Prime Minister, who asked the Home Secretary for information on what was happening, so that he in turn asked White. Now that the Foreign Office was meddling, because of the Russians, White felt that positive action was needed. Unfortunately he couldn’t implement it without the Home Secretary’s agreement. He drove along Whitehall in his blue Flat, with a Special Branch man at the wheel; he used different cars during the day, and never travelled to his office or his home by a regular route. He was a prime target for terrorists. Although he took precautions, he wasn’t frightened. He had never been afraid of anything in his life, and didn’t understand or sympathize with anyone who was. He hastened into the Home Office, and sped up in the lift to the first floor and the Home Secretary’s office. He was shown into the room, which was empty. He strolled over to the windows and looked out onto Horse Guards Parade, flanked by the elegance of the old Palace of Whitehall. As a serving officer, James White had trooped the colour of his regiment on the sovereign’s official birthday. It was an occasion that moved and thrilled him, with its pageantry, colour and superb precision. All the more dramatic now, since the monarch was a queen. He was a man for whom his country meant the traditions implicit in his regiment, the Cold-stream Guards, regarded as the oldest-established regiment of the Line and founded by General Monck who had helped bring Charles the Second back to his murdered father’s throne. James White had been a dedicated soldier, who retired early because his skills were needed in the Intelligence Service, at that time demoralized by lack of funds, the shattering scandal of Philby’s treachery, and the prevailing political climate that considered spies and the Secret Service as outmoded and rather immoral. White had changed the image. He didn’t try to court the politicians, but he kept on the best of terms with the Treasury. The Foreign Office had been hypersensitive to investigation on even the most harmless level after Burgess and MacLean. He had proceeded with tact outside his department, and with total ruthlessness inside it. He knew how to get the best out of people by being courteous and unruffled, and pitiless if they failed. White had known Davina Graham’s father because they were members of the same club, and their family backgrounds had merged at one point through cousins marrying. He had employed Davina as his secretary because he knew that there was no question of a security risk there. And he had seen her true potential. She was far too clever to waste her time being a good secretary. Taking Sasanov to Marchwood for the weekend showed imagination and courage. He admired her for the idea, but he hoped for her sake that it didn’t go wrong. He heard a distant flushing sound, and smiled. Home Secretaries went to the lavatory like lesser men;