The Fog - James Herbert [22]
‘Hello, John.’ His colleague, a cheerful Scot with only a trace of accent, looked up and greeted him with a quizzical grin. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
‘It’s a long story, Mac, I’ll tell you over a drink when we get the chance.’
McLellan continued to stare at Holman, still grinning inanely. They had often shared the same assignment and knew they could depend on each other in a tricky situation. He was slightly older than Holman, but a little more idealistic. Although he pretended to envy Holman’s bachelor lifestyle, he secretly relished his own family life. Three kids – two boys, one girl – a fiery-tempered but good-natured red-headed wife, and a semi-detached in the better part of Wimbledon; not a lot, he had to admit, but enough to keep him content. His one release was his job. Although Holman handled the more risky assignments, occasionally he was sent on one requiring subterfuge, a little deviousness. But on the whole, his tasks were fairly routine, yet even these he rarely found boring. He often laughingly explained to Holman it was the fact that he, a little Jock from Glasgow, could help to bring the arrogant, money-conscious, filth-disposing capitalists into line. Or that he, a modestly paid, under-privileged civil servant could find a flaw in the land-destroying schemes of his own government, his own bosses. True, his information was not always acted upon, in fact, he would grudgingly admit, in fifty per cent of the cases it was not acted upon, but he got a great kick on the occasions he succeeded. Holman called him a Communist infiltrator, and he would laughingly admit it was true, although both knew it was far from the truth. When they worked together they enjoyed each other’s company immensely, McLellan because he had the chance to lead the bachelor life for a brief time, Holman because he liked the Scot’s dry sense of humour.
‘Spiers has been calling for you,’ Mac finally said, having satisfied himself that physically, at least, Holman seemed okay. ‘He rang down about half-nine wanting to know where the hell you were.’
Holman walked around his desk and sat down, quickly looking through the memos that had piled up during his absence.
‘Nothing changes, does it,’ he observed, sifting through a stack of grey report pages. ‘You’re away for a week and you think everything’s altered in that time; you come back feeling a stranger and within five minutes you’ve caught up with everything and you’re back in the old routine.’
‘Yes, well, if I were you, I’d get back into the old routine of seeing Spiers right away.’
‘Right. I’ll see you later, Mac, then I’m off for the rest of the week.’
‘Lucky bleeder,’ Mac grinned, and then his smile faded for an instant. ‘I’m glad you’re okay, John. Spiers didn’t say much about it, but I gather you went through a rough time. You take it easy.’
‘Sure, Mac. Thanks.’
Holman winked at Mrs Tribshaw as he strode through the outer office, raising his hand to still her fretful questions, and climbed the stairs to the ninth floor to Spiers’ office.
‘Is he in?’ he asked the secretary, who stopped typing and looked up startled.
‘John! Are you better?’ He felt slightly embarrassed at her obvious joy at seeing him.
‘I’m fine. Is he in?’
‘What? Oh, yes, you can go right in. What happened, John? We heard you were involved in that awful earthquake.’
‘Tell you later.’ He knocked on the door and entered the inner office.
Spiers looked up from his papers, peering at him through thick-lensed glasses. ‘Ah, John. Feeling okay? Good. Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment.’
Holman sat, studying the bald head his chief presented to him as he continued to read through his papers. Finally, Spiers shuffled them together and put them neatly to one side of his desk.
‘Well, John,’ he said, staring at Holman with eyes that penetrated yet seemed to see nothing. ‘I’ve had your films processed