Agent Running in the Field

by John le Carré

  I have for the last twenty-five years been a serving member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service – to its initiated, the Office.

  *

  Even today my recruitment to the secret flag appears preordained, for I don’t remember contemplating any other career or wishing for one, except possibly badminton or climbing in the Cairngorms. From the moment my university tutor asked me shyly over a glass of warm white wine whether I had ever considered doing something ‘a bit hush-hush for your country’ my heart lifted in recognition and my mind went back to a dark apartment in Saint-Germain that Madame Galina and I had frequented every Sunday until my father’s death. It was there that I had first thrilled to the buzz of anti-Bolshevik conspiracy as my half-cousins, step-uncles and wild-eyed great-aunts exchanged whispered messages from the homeland that few of them had ever set foot in – before, waking to my presence, requiring me to be sworn to secrecy whether or not I had understood the secret I should not have overheard. There also I acquired my fascination for the Bear whose blood I shared, for his diversity, immensity and unfathomable ways.

  A bland letter flutters through my letter box advising me to present myself at a porticoed building close to Buckingham Palace. From behind a desk as big as a gun turret a retired Royal Navy admiral asks me what games I play. I tell him badminton and he is visibly moved.

  ‘D’you know, I played badminton with your dear father in Singapore and he absolutely trounced me?’

  No, sir, I say, I didn’t know, and wonder whether I should apologize on my father’s behalf. We must have talked of other things but I have no memory of them.

  ‘And where’s he buried, your poor chap?’ he enquires, as I rise to leave.

  ‘In Paris, sir.’

  ‘Ah, well. Good luck to you.’

  I am ordered to present myself at Bodmin Parkway railway station carrying a copy of last week’s Spectator magazine. Having established that all unsold copies have been returned to the wholesaler, I steal one from a local library. A man in a green trilby asks me when the next train leaves for Camborne. I reply that I am unable to advise him since I am on my way to Didcot. I follow him at a distance to the car park where a white van is waiting. After three days of inscrutable questions and stilted dinners where my social attributes and head for alcohol are tested, I am summoned before the assembled board.

  ‘And so, Nat,’ says a grey-haired lady at the centre of the table. ‘Now that we’ve asked you all about yourself, is there something you’d like to ask us for a change?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact there is,’ I reply, having first given a show of earnest reflection. ‘You’ve asked me whether you can depend on my loyalty, but can I depend on yours?’

  She smiles, and soon everyone at the table is smiling with her: the same sad, clever, inward smile that is the closest the Service ever gets to a flag.

  Glib under pressure. Latent aggression good. Recommended.

  *

  In the same month that I completed my basic training course in the dark arts, I had the good fortune to meet Prudence, my future wife. Our first encounter was not auspicious. On my father’s death a regiment of skeletons had broken loose from the family cupboard. Half-brothers and half-sisters I had never heard of were laying claim to an estate that over the last fourteen years had been disputed, litigated and picked clean by its Scottish trustees. A friend recommended a City law firm. After five minutes of listening to my woes, the senior partner pressed a bell.

  ‘One of our very best young lawyers,’ he assured me.

  The door opened and a woman of my own age marched in. She was wearing a daunting black suit of the sort favoured by the legal profession, schoolmarm spectacles and heavy black military boots on very small feet. We shook hands. She gave me no second look. To the clunk of her boots she marched me to a cubicle with Ms P. Stoneway LLB on the frosted glass.

  We sit down opposite each other, she sternly tucks her chestnut hair behind her ears and produces a yellow legal pad from a drawer.

  ‘Your profession?’ she demands.

  ‘Member, HM Foreign Service,’ I reply, and for some unknown reason blush.

  After that I remember best her poker back and resolute chin and a stray shaft of sunlight playing on the little hairs of her cheek as I narrate one squalid detail after another of our family saga.

  ‘I may call you Nat?’ she asks at the end of our first session.

  She may.

  ‘People call me Prue,’ she says, and we set a date for two weeks hence, at which, in the same impassive voice, she gives me the benefit of her researches:

  ‘I have to inform you, Nat, that if all the disputed assets in your late father’s estate were placed into your hands tomorrow there would not be sufficient funds even to pay my firm’s fees, let alone settle the outstanding claims against you. However,’ she continues before I am able to protest that I will trouble her no further, ‘there is provision within the partnership for treating needy and deserving cases on a cost-free basis. And I am happy to inform you that your case has been deemed to fall within that category.’

  She needs another meeting in one week’s time, but I am obliged to postpone it. A Latvian agent must be infiltrated into a Red Army signals base in Belarus. On my return to British shores I call Prue and invite her to dinner, only to be curtly advised that it is her firm’s policy that client relations should remain on an impersonal footing. However, she is pleased to inform me that as a result of her firm’s representations all claims against me have been abandoned. I thank her profusely and ask her whether in that case the way is clear for her to have dinner with me. It is.

  We go to Bianchi’s. She wears a low-cut summer dress, her hair has come out from behind her ears and every man and woman in the room is staring at her. I quickly realize that my usual patter doesn’t play. We have barely reached the main course before I am being treated to a dissertation on the gap between law and justice. When the bill comes she takes possession of it, calculates her half to the last penny, adds ten per cent for service and pays me in cash from her handbag. I tell her in simulated outrage that I have never before encountered such barefaced integrity, and she nearly falls off her chair for laughter.

  Six months later, with the prior consent of my employers, I ask her whether she will consider marrying a spy. She will. Now it is the Service’s turn to take her to dinner. Two weeks later, she informs me that she has decided to put her legal career on hold and undergo the Office’s training course for spouses shortly to be posted to hostile environments. She needs me to know that she has taken the decision of her own free will and not for love of me. She was torn, but was persuaded by her sense of national duty.

  She completes the course with flying colours. A week later I am posted to the British Embassy in Moscow as Second Secretary (Commercial), accompanied by my wife Prudence. In the event, Moscow was the only posting that we shared. The reasons for this do Prue no dishonour. I shall come to them shortly.

  For more than two decades, first with Prue, and then without her, I have served my Queen under diplomatic or consular cover in Moscow, Prague, Bucharest, Budapest, Tbilisi, Trieste, Helsinki and most recently Tallinn, recruiting and running secret agents of every stripe. I have never been invited to the high tables of policy-making, and am glad of it. The natural-born agent-runner is his own man. He may take his orders from London, but in the field he is the master of his fate and the fate of his agents. And when his active years are done, there aren’t going to be many berths waiting for a journeyman spy in his late forties who detests deskwork and has the curriculum vitae of a middle-ranking diplomat who never made the grade.

  *

  Christmas is approaching. My day of reckoning has come. Deep in the catacombs of my Service’s headquarters beside the Thames, I am led to a small, airless interviewing room and received by a smiling, intelligent woman of indeterminate age. She is Moira of Human Resources. There has always been something a little alien about the Moiras of the Service. They kno
w more about you than you know yourself but they’re not telling you what it is, or whether they like it.

  ‘Now, your Prue,’ Moira asks keenly. ‘Has she survived her law firm’s recent merger? It was upsetting for her, I’m sure.’

  Thank you, Moira, it wasn’t upsetting at all, and congratulations on doing your homework. I would expect no less.

  ‘And she’s well, is she? You’re both well?’ – with a note of anxiety I choose to ignore. ‘Now that you’re safely home.’

  ‘Absolutely fine, Moira. Very happily reunited, thanks.’

  And now kindly read me my death warrant and let’s get this over with. But Moira has her methods. Next on her list comes my daughter Stephanie.

  ‘And no more of those growing pains, I trust, now that she’s safely at university?’

  ‘None whatever, Moira, thanks. Her tutors are over the moon,’ I reply.

  But all I’m really thinking is: now tell me that a Thursday evening has been set for my farewell knees-up because nobody likes Fridays, and would I care to take my cup of cold coffee three doors down the corridor to Resettlement section, who will offer me tantalizing openings in the arms industry, private contracting or other laying-out places for old spies such as the National Trust, the Automobile Association and private schools in search of assistant bursars. It therefore comes as a surprise to me when she announces brightly:

  ‘Well, we do have one slot for you actually, Nat, assuming you’re up for it.’

  Up for it? Moira, I am up for it like no one on earth. But only warily up for it, because I think I know what you’re about to offer me: a suspicion that turns to certainty when she launches on a child’s guide to the current Russian threat.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that Moscow Centre is running us absolutely ragged in London, as everywhere else, Nat.’

  No, Moira, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve been telling Head Office the same thing for years.

  ‘They’re nastier than they ever were, more brazen, more meddlesome and more numerous. Would you say that was fair comment?’

  I would, Moira, I would indeed. Read my end-of-tour report from sunny Estonia.

  ‘And ever since we kicked out their legal spies in bulk’ – meaning spies with diplomatic cover, so my sort – ‘they’ve been flooding our shores with illegals,’ she goes on indignantly, ‘who I think you’ll agree are the most troublesome of the species and the most difficult to smell out. You have a question.’

  Give it a try. Worth a shot. Nothing to lose.

  ‘Well, before you go any further, Moira.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It just occurred to me there might be a slot for me in Russia department. They’ve got a full complement of upmarket young desk officers, we all know that. But what about an experienced visiting fireman, a seasoned, native-grade Russian-speaker such as myself who can fly anywhere at the drop of a hat and take first bite of any potential Russian defector or agent who pops up at a station where nobody speaks a word of the language?’

  Moira is already shaking her head.

  ‘No dice, I’m afraid, Nat. I floated you with Bryn. He’s adamant.’

  There’s only one Bryn in the Office: Bryn Sykes-Jordan, to give him his full name, shortened to Bryn Jordan for common usage, ruler-for-life of Russia department and my one-time head of Station in Moscow.

  ‘So no dice why?’ I insist.

  ‘You know very well why. Because Russia department’s average age is thirty-three, even with Bryn’s added in. Most have DPhils, all have fresh minds, all have advanced computer skills. Perfect as you are in every respect, you don’t quite meet those criteria. Well, do you, Nat?’

  ‘And Bryn isn’t around by any chance?’ I ask, a last-ditch appeal.

  ‘Bryn Jordan, even as we speak, is embedded up to his neck in Washington DC, doing what only Bryn can do to salvage our embattled special relationship with President Trump’s intelligence community post-Brexit, and on no account to be disturbed, thank you, even by you, to whom he sends his affectionate regards and condolences. Clear?’

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘However,’ she continues, brightening, ‘there is one opening for which you are eminently qualified. Even over-qualified.’

  Here we go. The nightmare offer I’ve seen coming from the start.

  ‘Sorry, Moira,’ I cut in. ‘If it’s Training section, I’m hanging up my cloak. Very good of you, very thoughtful, all the above.’

  I appear to have offended her, so I say sorry again and no disrespect to the fine upstanding men and women of Training section, but it’s still thanks but no thanks, upon which her face breaks into an unexpectedly warm if somewhat pitying smile.

  ‘Not Training section, actually, Nat, although I’m sure you’d do very well there. Dom is keen to have a word with you. Or should I be telling him you’re hanging up your cloak?’

  ‘Dom?’

  ‘Dominic Trench, our recently appointed head of London General. Your one-time head of Station in Budapest. He says the two of you got on like a house on fire. I’m sure you will again. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Are you seriously telling me Dom Trench is head of London General?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d lie to you, Nat.’

  ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘A month ago. While you were asleep in Tallinn not reading our newsletters. Dom will see you at ten tomorrow morning prompt. Confirm with Viv first.’

  ‘Viv?’

  ‘His assistant.’

  ‘Of course.’

  3

  ‘Nat! How splendid you look! The sailor home from the sea indeed. Fit as a fiddle and half your age!’ cries Dominic Trench, bounding from his directorial desk and seizing my right hand in both of his. ‘All that hard work in the gym, no doubt. Prue well?’

  ‘Fighting fit, Dom, thank you. Rachel?’

  ‘Marvellous. I’m the luckiest man on earth. You must meet her, Nat. You and Prue. We’ll make a dinner, the four of us. You’ll love her.’

  Rachel. Peeress of the realm, power in the Tory Party, second wife, recent union.

  ‘And the kids?’ I ask gingerly. There had been two by his nice first wife.

  ‘Superb. Sarah’s doing marvellously at South Hampstead. Oxford squarely in her sights.’

  ‘And Sammy?’

  ‘Twilight time. He’ll be out of it soon and following in his sister’s footsteps.’

  ‘And Tabby, may one ask?’ Tabitha his first wife and, by the time they broke up, a neurotic wreck.

  ‘Doing nobly. No new man in sight so far as we know, but one lives in hope.’

  It’s my guess that there’s a Dom somewhere in everyone’s life: the man – it always seems to be a man – who takes you aside, appoints you his only friend in the world, regales you with details of his private life you’d rather not hear, begs your advice, you give him none, he swears to follow it and next morning cuts you dead. Five years ago in Budapest he was turning thirty, and he’s turning thirty now: the same croupier’s good looks, striped shirt, yellow braces more befitting a twenty-five-year-old, white cuffs, gold links and all-purpose smile; the same infuriating habit of placing his fingertips together in a wedding arch, leaning back and smiling judiciously at you over the top of them.

  *

  ‘Well, congratulations, Dom,’ I say, gesturing at the executive armchairs and Office ceramic coffee table for grade threes and above.

  ‘Thank you, Nat. You’re most kind. Took me by surprise, but when the call comes, we rally. Coffee at all? Tea?’

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  ‘Milk? Sugar? The milk’s soy, I should add.’

  ‘Just black, thank you, Dom. No soy.’

  Does he mean soya? Is soy the smart man’s version these days? He puts his head round the stippled-glass door, engages in stage banter with Viv, sits again.

  ‘And London General still has the same old remit?’ I enquire lightly, recalling that Bryn Jordan had once described it in my hearing a
s the Office’s home for lost dogs.

  ‘Indeed, Nat. Indeed. The same.’

  ‘So all London-based substations are nominally under your command.’

  ‘UK-wide. Not only London. The whole of Britain. Excluding Northern Ireland. And still totally autonomous, I’m pleased to say.’

  ‘Administratively autonomous? Or operationally too?’

  ‘In what sense, Nat?’ – frowning at me as if I’m out of court.

  ‘Can you, as head of London General, authorize your own operations?’

  ‘It’s a blurred line, Nat. As of now, any operation proposed by a substation must notionally be signed off by the regional department concerned. I’m fighting it, practically as we speak.’

  He smiles. I smile. Battle joined. In synchronized movements we taste our coffees with no soy and replace our cups on their saucers. Is he about to confide some unwanted intimacy about his new bride? Or explain to me why I’m here? Not yet, apparently. First we must have a jaw about old times: agents we shared, I as their handler, Dom as my useless supervisor. First on his list is Polonius, lately of the Shakespeare network. A few months back, having Office business in Lisbon, I had gone to see old Polonius in the Algarve in an echoing new-build beside an empty golf course that we had bought for him as part of his resettlement package.

  ‘Doing all right, Dom, thank you,’ I say heartily. ‘No problems with his new identity. Got over his wife’s death. He’s all right, really. Yes.’

  ‘I hear a but in your voice, Nat,’ he says reproachfully.

  ‘Well, we promised him a British passport, didn’t we, Dom, if you remember. Seems to have got lost in the wash after your return to London.’