Maxim came to Number 10 in the second week of January.

The Prime Minister had five private secretaries, but only two were in the house that Monday morning and only one of them had a hangover. It had to be George Harbinger. He was sitting at his desk and trying to remember what he had said to – or about – his brother-in-law that had caused Annette to drive him back to London in total silence for the whole hour and a half.

He had no intention of regretting whatever he had said. He just wished he could remember it.

In the corner, the duty clerk shuffled the morning post as quietly as he could and answered the telephone quickly, in a hoarse whisper. With luck, it should be an easy day. Everybody knew the PM was in Scotland, getting photographed with some aspect of North Sea oil, so the flow of calls and callers should be reasonably light. There was just the paperwork. The paperwork always ye have with you. George took a sip of coffee, which had got cool and very nasty.

Now that's odd, he thought. You can drink hot coffee and cold coffee but never cool coffee. Yet you can drink hot tea and cool tea but never cold tea – except for tea without milk, which is a whole new ball game, as our Big Brothers would say. A fairly philosophical thought for the way I feel now, he decided, and began to feel better. Then Sir Anthony Sladen came in.

"George," he said, with exaggerated politeness, "you are looking particularly terrible this morning." He went over and laid the key to the Cabinet Office door on the duty clerk's desk, as security demanded. It was a pompous affair and Sir Anthony deliberately made it more so.

"Do you think," he asked the clerk, "that you could rustle me up a cup of the same? Our girls seem to have hit on a cheap offer of charred sawdust. What time's the PM due back?"

"About six," George said.

"I must say – " Sladen sat down: "that Aberdeen is becoming the political spa of our time. Our masters go there to take the oil as they might once have gone to Baden-Baden to take the waters."

George forced a smile. The jokes had a well-polished sound, particularly in Sladen's high Church of England voice. Perhaps ten years older than George, he was a tall thin man with a tall thin face and slightly curly dark hair going grey in just the right places. He was one of two deputy secretaries to the Secretary of the Cabinet and very nearly a very powerful man. From here, his career could go on up to the topmost bananas, or just out along the branch to drift off with the dead leaves, though in neither case would he die poor.

Sometimes, George thought, he could smell fear in Sir Anthony Sladen.

A messenger brought in Sladen's coffee and they chatted meaninglessly for a while. Then Sladen said: "Am I right in thinking that we are about to have a new face in our midst? And that he's a military gentleman?"

"He's an officer so I assume he's a gentleman."

"I don't quite understand why military."

"Why not? Maybe the Headmaster's looking for the old virtues – clean in thought, word and deed."

"It's all rather a long time ago, but aren't you mixing him up with the Boy Scouts?"

George shrugged. "Maybe the Headmaster is, too. Our chap's done two tours in the Special Air Service and you know how prime ministers are about that."

"I do indeed," Sladen said gloomily. His own views of the SAS was that it simply trained up, expensively, soldiers who promptly went off and became over-paid mercenaries in African troubles. But for politicians, the Regiment's semi-secret image – you couldn't tell from the Army List just who was serving in it at any one time – had all the thrill of election night, victory-snatched-from-the-jaws-of-defeat. Send in the SAS and all will be well. Politicians loved Secret Weapons.

"I would have thought," he said, "that somebody with – say a security background might be more… well…"

"If you mean somebody from Box 500, then you can disabuse yourself- not that I imagine you abuse yourself, either. After the Jackaman business, I spent half the night talking the Headmaster out of setting up a select committee on security. They deserve it, but we can't stand that sort of thing, with the security service splattered all over the front pages."

"Indeed, no." Sladen – in fact the whole Cabinet Office – hadn't known how close the PM had come to an open row with MI5. That titbit alone justified his visit. "But if not that, then why not someone fairly harmless, like a retired policeman. With a Special Branch background, of course."

"This is not a job creation scheme," George said testily, speaking through the jungle drums of his headache. "It's… just call it an experiment. We can unattach an Army man at any time. If we got some retired copper, we'd be stuck with him until he dropped dead."

"Yes, I do see that. But what is your… Major Maxim, is it? – what is he actually going to do? "

"Yes. Well. There you may have hit on the one weakness in the whole affairs. I don't know what he's going to do. I'll try and find him something, but he's never worked in Whitehall before… If he just keeps the Headmaster happy, then let's just be thankful for large mercies. The one thing he won't do is hound deputy under secretaries into committing suicide."

"I'm sure he won't."

George looked into his own coffee and decided not. "If we can only get through the next two months or so, if the bloody French would only set a date…"

Sladen frowned politely and leant his head towards the young duty clerk, who wasn't supposed to hear Certain Things.

George grunted. "Oh yes, and did you hear that Box 500's appointed Agnes Algar as liaison with us? You must know her?"

The phone rang. George listened, then said clearly: "Ah, you've got Major Maxim, have you? Hold him for just three minutes and then shunt him along."

Sladen knew he'd been meant to hear that three. Dealing with George could be tricky at times. Everybody knew – or said they, knew – that he would inherit a large piece of Gloucestershire the moment his father died, which couldn't be long now, as everybody had been saying for a long time. Trying to lean on a man who may have no long-term ambitions in the service is like leaning on a ghost. Of course, that might be why the PM had snatched George away from Defence to become a private secretary.

"Have you met this galloping major?" he asked.

"Not yet. Sir Bruce gave us a choice of three – on paper. You know the Army: tell them who to appoint where and they scream like a trade union. We just have to take what's the special offer of the week."

"Ah yes," Sladen said sympathetically. "I assume he's properly house-trained and so on… Do you want us to find him a little niche?"

If George hadn't had such a hangover, he would have seen this coming: Sladen was head-hunting. The Cabinet Office, very much bigger than Number 10, could always find room for a new face, or even a whole unit, particularly if it might mean increased influence. But the Cabinet Office was a ministry without a minister, a citadel of pure civil service power, with not a voter in sight. The locking of the door between the two buildings had a ritual significance beyond mere security.

"That's very kind," George said, "but we've already got him a little cubby-hole up on the second floor, near the Political Office. We did think of putting him downstairs, but the Garden Room girls would eat him alive, him being unwed as you might say…"

"D'you mean he isn't married!"

"Oh, don't worry, Anthony, our Major is not One Of Those. His wife got killed in an air crash – 1 think somebody put a bomb on board; this was out in the Gulf when he was attached to one of the local armies – anyway, I think they must have been rather much in love still. He apparently did his best to get himself killed, along with whoever he could find on the other side. Well, it's a pity to waste that sort of attitude on the desert air, isn't it? There's far too many people here who spend their time looking over their shoulders at the future – don't you think?"