We Have Our Suspicions.
It was a late January morning in Whitehall and the Home Secretary, George St James was smiling the smile he reserved for particularly tiresome people.
He remembered back to the time of the formation of the present government. Via reliable sources at his Club, he had been informed of how the Permanent Undersecretary at the Home Office, Sir Charles Cunningham had phoned the then Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans to tell him that the new Home Secretary would be himself, but that the PM proposed to transfer responsibility for security to Albert Riggs as Paymaster General, (in effect minister without portfolio). Evans and Cunningham had apparently both seen "substantial objections to, (in other words, were appalled by) the PMs plan”, which would have thrown the whole Home Office Warrant system on which the Security Service depended, into disarray.
The decision in the face of opposition, regards this specific responsibility had been subsequently reversed; but Riggs, a former colonel in the Colonial Service Education Corps in its palmy days, had still maintained his position as an unofficial emissary of the PM, keeping him up to date with plotting within, and sometimes outside the party, as well as with sexual and other irregularities on the benches which might erupt into public scandals.
Rigg's passion was secrets and he was at his happiest in the twilight world of spies and counter-spies, and viewed his fellow MPs with the same ferocious suspicion as he would have lavished on an accredited agent of the KGB. He thrived in an over-imaginative world of malevolent spymasters, intricate trade craft and cold-eyed betrayal.
Today was one of those days when Riggs paid an occasional Home Office visit, during which it was his practice to deliver cryptic messages.
To the Home Secretary, the half-comic, half-sinister Albert Riggs, though nominally Paymaster-General, was in fact a licensed scavenger in Whitehall dustbins and an interferer in security matters. To St James, based on the experience of previous visits, the cryptic messages of Riggs increasingly came to refer back to ones raised before, which at the time had passed over his head, and thus the crypticism had become compounded.
He felt however that it was prudent to roll with whatever was said, particularly as nothing ever seemed to follow from it. But he could not but refrain from disapproval, that the PM could ever sustain a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of this individual’s gossip.
Riggs entered, was greeted and sat opposite St James.
"You know the matter I talked to you about last time," Riggs began.
"It hasn't moved much, but I'll keep watching it."
The Home Secretary nodded sagely, not having a clue regards the subject under discussion. He hoped that by appearing to concur, his visitor would go away satisfied and leave him in peace.
However Riggs, in presenting a fine range of conjecture and pathetic hopefulness, was not finished.
"Have you Home Secretary, read the novel "Ralph" by John Stonehouse?"
"No, I must confess that I am not acquainted with it," replied St James.
"Why?"
"Well," commenced Riggs, "As you are no doubt aware, the only British politician, (so far as is known) to have acted as a foreign agent while holding ministerial office was John Stonehouse, who served in the Wilson governments of 1964-70, without cabinet rank I might add. He was recruited by the “StB” after falling victim to a honey trap during a visit to Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s. He subsequently wrote what was presumably an autobiographic novel called "Ralph." I've taken the liberty of bringing you a copy, but would caution that it be kept away from female eyes."
"Thank you so much Paymaster General, I'm much obliged for your kindness and will ensure it is locked away in my top drawer."
Riggs looked pleased.
"It's about a Senior British civil servant in the European Commission who is entrapped by a seductive “Lotte” of East German intelligence.”
“Apparently, I'm reliably informed that she was one of their best operators, but what she did was strictly in the line of duty. Let me read you an extract that I've highlighted for you."
The Home Secretary groaned inwardly but was powerless to intervene.
Riggs leaned forward, the book opened on his knee, pursed his lips and began;
"I enjoyed my last evening with “Lotte”, in which, after initial foreplay she sent sensations of joy to every crevice of my brain. It was only after one last "magnificent thrust", that I noticed our reflections on a suspiciously positioned oval mirror on the ceiling".
"What do you think so far Home Secretary?"
"Fascinating," he replied, perhaps too glibly.
"I think it has an exhilarating flavour and I trust that by incorporating its scope into your enquiries, you convert it into a complete and finished work of art that we can all learn lessons from.”
Riggs purred.
But St James could not however help but speculate mentally, that the book would likely involve the constant "hitching up" of lower garments which, however popular in transpontine dramas, could not but be considered an extremely awkward habit, especially during the summer months.
It would also, going on what he had heard so far, be a strong contender for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award.
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Originally Posted by MANICHAEAN
