The Falklands Intercept Read Online Free PDF Page B

brothel or in the arms of a young girlfriend. Such circumstances were difficult to manage in the modern world. It should be possible to establish what exactly happened away from the public eye – less stressful for Verney’s family and friends and much less stressful for the secret parts of the British state.
    The military policeman was hovering. ‘But what if I may ask is a gentleman like you doing down here and why the flap? He was in his late fifties – it’s a peak time for middle-aged men.’
    Jacot smiled. ‘We shall see.’ He turned away and walked north across the court to the rooms he would be staying in. He had acquired all the information he needed, for now. The body had been positively identified. The military police were unsuspicious. Nevertheless, it was clear from Lady Nevinson’s briefing that she suspected foul play. She hadn’t spelled it out but he had not been sent down here as a “Sherpa” to assist and gently oversee a routine investigation. She expected him to find out what exactly had been going on. He would spend the morning ferreting around. If he needed to brief her he could get a late train back to London.
    He had better get on with interviewing the various people involved. The American officials had been allowed to go back to London and Washington. They were apparently above suspicion. But, if necessary, Jacot could easily get access to them later – and hewould. He was unpopular with certain parts of the embassy. He invariably called it the American High Commission and enjoyed making some of the more militant and neo-con members of the CIA station feel uncomfortable. But others at Grosvenor Square respected him for his judgement, sense of humour and obvious patriotism. Inside the DNA of every American was a verse or two of The Star-Spangled Banner and the most educated and civilised understood that others too loved their own countries just as much as they did theirs. But they were getting fewer on the ground.
    There was another sickness abroad in the intelligence machine on both sides of the Atlantic which Jacot and many others were trying to stand against with limited success. Intelligence was meant to be an honest effort to find out what was going on in the world, an intellectual quest to understand and make sense of an increasingly complex world without fear or favour. The process was like trying to put together a complex jigsaw puzzle. But, crucially, in the style of the purist 1930s jigsaw enthusiasts who tried to solve the puzzle without the benefit of a picture on the front of the box. Jacot did not mind so much what those in charge of his or any other country chose to do about the various pressing and alarming issues that sometimes intelligence helped to illuminate. That was a decision for those set above him in the machine. But he did mind very much about the process of intelligence analysis. It could never be free of the usual human frailties of ignorance, pride or sheer wrong-headedness but it was becoming on both sides of the Atlantic more and more a vehicle for ambition or political partiality. Verney had had many qualities but the one he was particularly known for was his uncritical almost unconditional admiration of Uncle Sam. Not that there were any dissenting voices. To get ahead in the British army these days you had to have a high opinion of Uncle Sam or at least fake one. In a way the US armed forces were like a dealer to our own. They supplied the conflicts which the military junkies craved but which we were too small to undertake off our own bat.

IV
Set C 5, Pilgrims’ Court,
St James’ College Cambridge
    Jacot climbed the wooden staircase to a set of rooms fifty yards or so away from the scene of Verney’s death. He entered a small hall with a tiny kitchen running off it with a small mullioned window looking out onto the roof at the back. To the left was a bedroom of the usual Cambridge Spartan appearance with a