by Gil Hogg
I judged that by this time I had met everybody of consequence. I declined Marius’s invitation to rendezvous at a local bar and left the party quietly.
It was a cold but clear night, and I walked several blocks checking my watch before heading toward Grafton Way, the address of Childers Amory’s apartment. Here, I knew, I would be on tricky ground. I had to rely on the hope that even a man as powerful as Amory would not expect to get his heart’s desire in one night. And Amory might, in the intervening time, have gained some perception that his overture had been little more than the inopportune expression of a drunken urge. But having accepted his invitation, I had little choice but to take whatever risk was involved. Not to arrive at Grafton Way would be bad form; it would be remembered, and I was looking for a positive push in the selection process. As I walked, I also remembered a little of what I had read about Bolding. He was a controversial critic of the open society and an elitist.
Amory’s rooms were on the third floor of an old mansion block. The lights were on. I was cold and it was ten-thirty. I rang and went up. He opened the door, whisky in hand, wearing only socks on his feet, his trousers supported by wide red braces. His shirt was open on his plump, gray haired throat. “Come in, my boy, I’ve just been reading about you.”
I followed Amory into a small, hot, pink-walled and pink-carpeted lounge like a throat, where a computer screen shone on a side table. I was apparently the first guest to arrive.
“Your file wasn’t with the rest of the batch. Can’t think why. Had to call it up. I liked what I read, Roger.” He clasped my arm affectionately and sought my eyes, but propriety required him to break off and serve me a drink.
As Amory swayed over the drinks cabinet, slopping out a whisky and water, I guessed that while the liquor had undermined his coordination, his mind was still functioning adequately. “You could be the man we’re looking for, Roger, that balance of intellect and physical hardness, coupled with breeding. I’m an egalitarian myself, but I know the surest way is to choose men who come from a long line of traditional service, men with ingrained, inborn values. Pedigree counts, eh?”
“I hope to get the appointment, sir,” I said, taking the glass from his hand, and choosing a separate armchair, rather than the couch. My responses could be, at most, echoes to the great man’s aria.
“You don’t even know what the task is,” Amory said, standing over me for a moment.
I was looking upward into his wide, black nostrils. The power of knowledge, of so much secret knowledge, had produced a surge of adrenalin in him.
“I joined the service for exciting assignments, sir.”
Amory lurched back to the couch, dropping on it heavily. “Exciting? Yes, you’re that sort of man. And dangerous? Yes, you can handle that too. You could be the man, Roger.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“And loyal. Utterly loyal to me, to Bolding, to our service?”
“I’m certainly that,” I said in a very low key, while Amory nodded affirmatively.
“You met Professor Kauffer tonight, and Dr Reich?”
I remembered being introduced to the two Americans, and had wondered why they were present at an internal MI6 proceeding.
“We work closely with them, Roger. You’ll be working with them – if you’re appointed. What’s important here is the cultural affinity, the intellectual affinity between us. It’s a bond. We must protect it, and work together to save our society against…” Here, Amory faded away, his sight unfocused. He waved a liver-spotted hand feebly. “Against marauders with weapons of mass destruction, and liberals who don’t believe a threat until it’s become a reality.”
Amory threw the rest of his drink down his throat, stood up, and lunged across the space between us to sit on the arm of my chair. He let the tips of his fingers stray over my thighs. He giggled. “I like you a lot, Roger. I’m not sure I want to send you away to the US. I could use a man like you in my office here in London…”
I scented my ploy turning sour. “I’m very keen to get this job, sir. It means a lot to me, and…” I paused, sickened by my own grovelling. I was beginning to suspect that I was the lone guest.
“And I could see you in Washington, couldn’t I?” Amory mused.
He was interrupted by a loud and extended buzzing on the entry phone, which he reeled away to deal with. A few moments later Marius, waving a bottle of vodka, Bolding and one of the US professors, Kauffer, stumbled in, wanting to party. I stayed for a few minutes, but refused another drink, and announced my imminent departure. It was a prudent move. I was the only candidate present at that point – if any had been invited.
“I want to be fresh for the morning,” I said, which was taken as a riotous joke, as none of the others seemed to intend to stop drinking.
At ten the next morning I attended the Victoria Street office. There was a hiatus caused by the absence of my name from the candidates’ list. I assumed a hurt and incredulous silence, and the lacuna was remedied in ten minutes without comment. As Yarham had predicted, it was not a mistake, merely a computer glitch.
I embarked on a day of meeting interview panels. The style was similar to my interminable entry interviews in being vague and imprecise, and only differed from them in being good-humoured. I sparkle in these circumstances. It was often difficult to tell what the oblique questions were driving at, but where they were designed to test my political affiliations, I ensured I toed the Amory-Bolding line, heaping on the clichés, hinting that liberalism could be dangerous in leaving one unprepared, and democracy was a delicate flower that had to be protected by being pragmatic.
I was frequently invited to talk about myself and I burnished my faultless credentials carefully in front of the various panels.
At lunchtime I decided to take a walk along Victoria Street for some fresh air, and I met Marius Jacob as I was leaving the building. He took my arm and led me into a nearby pub. He hadn’t appeared on any panel that I had seen, but was obviously working in some capacity behind the scenes.
He was in good humour and anxious to impress me with just how much he was privy to the inner workings of the event. “Amory thinks you’re the man. What did you do last night, tickle his willy?” he asked with a suspicious laugh.
I denied this dismissively. “I suppose he makes a lunge for all the young men.”
“But you are the Adonis of the moment. And what’s more, the youth versus age argument apart, you’re as good as any and better than most candidates. It’s hit or miss anyway,” he said derisively. “Interviews are misleading and paper qualifications don’t always mean much. They know that. They like you, Roger. You’re beautiful. I’d say you’ve got it.”
Marius, raging with thirst after last night, sank the best part of a pint of lager in one pull, unabashed by his own indiscreet comments. I had a lime soda.
“What actually is the mission here, Marius?” I asked, matching his indiscretion. One of the absurdities of the service was that we were not allowed to know this with any precision at all. Working with the US intelligence services in a variety of fields was as specific as it got. But I banked on Marius’s anarchic tendency to tell all.
“Ah, ha, the task!” he chanted, pleased with the question. He wiped the froth from around his mouth and absently smeared it over his shiny black hair. He assumed a mock-serious voice. “You know we’re under threat don’t you? The future of the civilised western world, i.e. our kind of people, depends on the Anglo-American intelligence services, de-da, de-da, de-da. In sum, Roger, it depends on Amory and Bolding and Professor Fartface from Harvard et al.”
“I see. But the job I’m applying for, Marius. What’s it all about?”
He looked me straight in the eyes. “Suicide bomber.”
“No, seriously.”
“I am serious. You may have to remove the US President, kill him if you have to.”
I knew that once Marius was embarked on one of his fantasies he would not easily return to reality. “Oh, yeah? Why?�
�
“He’s a dangerous liberal, pandering to opposition forces, allowing dissension to fester. Under the scab of peace, the pus of threatening foreign armaments is swelling. Ha, ha, ha! Let’s have another!”
“Not me. So Amory, Bolding and Professor Fartface are taking political decisions now?”
“Political and military. And you could be our man at the party.”
I looked at my watch. “I better get back. I sure hope I get the job. It sounds interesting.”
I went back to an afternoon of interviews, heartened by Marius’s assessment of my chances, but discounting his tomfoolery about the assignment. I thought the ultimate irony would be that Marius was a double agent, working for an intelligence service outside the Anglo-American alliance, and hell-bent on creating as much chaos as he could.
In the light of the drunken bonhomie with which officialdom had greeted the candidates last night, I expected that the day would finish with a party for the chosen man, but I was wrong. The panels seemed to expire rather than conclude. I left the Victoria Street offices at the bidding of a man I’d never seen before, who put his head around the door of the empty room in which I had been sitting alone for an hour, and told me snappily that I could go. I left without seeing either panel members or fellow contenders, and went back to my hotel thinking that my ignominious dismissal indicated that I was not the man. My return flight to New York left at ten in the morning.
I found a message waiting for me at the hotel which was an MI6 contact. I called the number and was directed to report to the Mill. It was a moderately good omen. When I arrived at the Wimpole Street house it was quiet, seemingly almost empty. An absence of other candidates, I concluded. A secretary directed me to the party room upstairs. There, in the gathering gloom, on the rickety chaise longue, was Sir Carl Bolding, a file open before him on a coffee table. I immediately felt exposed and unsafe. The room still smelt vaguely of stale spirits and tobacco, and emerged, in the half-light, in its full seediness.
“Come, in, sit down, Conway,” Bolding said mildly. “We think you have the qualities we require, and we’ve decided to appoint you.”
He didn’t offer any congratulations. He simply stared at me. He was wearing a grey check suit that matched his eyes. In a way, he reminded me of Colonel Austen who kicked me out of the Sandhurst entry. Bolding was the same admirable kind of man. He and I, at least, dressed with panache and shone in this lacklustre environment.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, deciding to keep my appreciation as muted as his. “Is there anything more you can tell me?”
“Not specifically. Dr Reich, whom you met last night, will be your principal contact. You can and must trust him, Conway. In the last resort, he is the only person you can trust.”
“But the department…”
Bolding let his head droop to one side, his eyes still intent. “You will work within the framework of MI6, GCHQ, the National Security Agency and the CIA. You will be as compliant as is appropriate, but Dr Reich is the only person you can trust. Do you understand the importance of what I say?”
“I do, sir.”
This was the real universe of the spy that I had dreamed of inhabiting. It wasn’t all boring paper analysis; it was a world of shadowy creatures who could not be trusted, whose loyalties were in doubt.
“You will be formally attached to the Special Collection Service. You know it, I expect?”
“Yes, of course.” I had heard of the SCS with awe. I didn’t show the elation that I felt. The SCS was a covert joint CIA/NSA organisation that specialised in bugging, burglary and bribery in order to penetrate foreign communications systems. It appeared to me that in one jump I had realised my ambitions. I was going right to the top of the spy ladder.
“It will be an indefinite secondment.”
“In Washington DC?”
Bolding was still boring into me, trying to discern the impact of his news, and I believe a little impressed that I could be so impassive. “You’ll be in the Washington section, usually called C3, the lead section for the whole agency.”
That startled me. It was the late Nick Stavros’s department. Obviously I wouldn’t be doing the same job; mine was clearly much more senior if Bolding and Amory had to be involved in the selection. C3 was the department where the Disciples had apparently materialised to Nick, but my enthusiasm for the appointment at this moment overwhelmed any speculation about whether the influence of Bolding and the two US professors was actually evidence that the Disciples existed.
“We’re looking for an experienced assistant from MI6 to support you, somebody handy on the technical side of IT preferably, or possibly with cryptographic skills.”
“I can name a person, sir. Herbert Yarham in US Liaison, New York. A genius with the computer and a man with whom I can work.”
“That was quick.” Bolding’s flinty eyes drilled into me again and there was a silence. “A genius, eh? They’re always trouble.”
“I mean his skills are exceptional…”
“A friend?”
I saw this one coming. I wouldn’t be allowed a friend. “No. Just a colleague.” Certainly Yarham was a friend and a confidant. What MI6 most feared was a confidant.
“You realise you’ll have to work entirely as a solitary, except for Reich. Your assistant’s knowledge of the task to be limited to the minimum necessary in your judgement?”
“Absolutely.”
Bolding seemed to accept; he noted Yarham’s name, and conceded that this might be another problem solved.
“I don’t have to tell you how massive and uncoordinated our joint intelligence services are on both sides of the Atlantic, Conway. But there are a small group of us who are linked together by a common bond of intellect, who can see the way forward. We have decided that you have the qualities to join us, and help us.”
“Thank you, sir, for your confidence which I shall honour.” I wondered then whether I had just been recruited by the Disciples. I was glowing. It wasn’t until the silence had lengthened, and Bolding’s stare had become frigid, that I realised the meeting was over.
7
I flew back to New York to clear my desk, and in two days, Yarham’s appointment as my assistant was confirmed, something of a miracle of expedition for MI6. Yarham had initiated my promotion, and I had returned the compliment.
We were an ill-assorted pair on any visual inspection. Yarham’s baggy, blue, chalk-striped woollen suits, his dusty black shoes and his tightly knotted ties of no particular colour or design, denoted no more than a cursory interest in his appearance. His manner was gauche and he was impeturbably, almost stupidly, good-humoured. We were nevertheless complementary. His skills, I had found, did not end with files and computer work. He fell easily into the role of batman, sergeant-major and aide-de-camp under my leadership and I will concede, at times, adviser. I thought I had made a wise choice.
Yarham was more than happy with the promotion – “Always hoped you might tow me along, Captain” – and he set about moving his young wife, upon whom he doted, to Washington.
My departure from USL was not the subject of congratulations. Leyton and his cronies could hardly conceal their envy. Even Hornby, who made one or two tart remarks about the pleasure of soon having a successor to me, was awed and to a degree affronted by my rapid ascent. But I thought he would be restrained in his personal report on me, not wanting to show that he was entirely blind to talent.
I concentrated on celebrating with Laurie – who, as a courier, would see more of me in Washington – and my bar-room friends at the Oxbridge & Ivy. Excited, but with a considerable hangover from a party at the 21 Club, I boarded a plane at Kennedy Airport bound for Washington. I was going right to the heart of the secret intelligence services as I had hoped and planned.
When I arrived at the Sheraton in Washington I called my new official boss, Gerry Clark, head of C3. Dr Reich, whom Bolding had mentioned, was not named anywhere in my joining instructions. Clark’s reception was warm. “C
ome over and meet the guys, Roger.”
The agency’s offices were in a nineteenth century townhouse in Georgetown with flaky maroon paint on the outside, set back in a small, untidy garden. The image from the outside was dilapidated, suburban, when I had expected that we would be behind razor wire and security barriers in the heart of Crypto City. Inside, the premises were a contrast, modern glass and chrome.
Clark, Lieutenant-Colonel Clark of the US Army, to be precise, a fat man with a shorn head and rimless glasses, came to meet me. He extended a plump hand of welcome, ushering me into his office, which was tastefully furnished with grey leather couches and chairs, antique vases, and two abstract pastel prints to complete the spare style. Not a sign of the military, and Clark wore a civilian suit. He saw that I admired the room.
“We look after ourselves, Roger, even in these foreign outposts,” he said, pleased.
Clark explained that the offices were an out-station, and that all their intelligence material was kept in Crypto City. He promised to take me there soon. “Getting in and out of the City is a big deal security-wise, and since we move about Washington at different times of the day and night, and need somewhere to chill out, it’s convenient to have this place.”
We went to the top floor where he showed me the spacious room that was to accommodate Yarham and me. On the floor were three different computer screens and three telephones. “We’ll talk about the hardware later. We can redecorate according to your taste, but the most important thing, Roger, is where you’re going to rest.”
Clark insisted on driving me three blocks to the apartment the agency had taken for me. While we were driving I mentioned that I had known Nick Stavros.
Clark said, “We take the odd specially selected rookie from MI6 for training purposes. Nick didn’t fit in too well.”
