by Alan Judd
‘Meanwhile, following Charles’s safe return we shall contact the Garda and start giving them the product from the case, suitably disguised. We shall not identify the source and will make it look as if there’s more than one. They may work it out, but I think their Special Branch is secure, at present. We’ll tell them we’re sharing it as an earnest of our intention to share all future product with them and not to run any future sources in the Republic without their cooperation.’ He paused again, looking at each in the continuing silence. ‘The PIRA can be contained, but they cannot be defeated without the full cooperation of the Irish government. A small step towards building that cooperation is to be open with the Irish authorities about what we’re doing and sharing what we know. Their cooperation is worth more than the gain from any independent operation south of the border, especially since it now looks as if Sinn Fein and the IRA are moving towards a lasting truce. You should know – but not repeat – that this is part of a wider political initiative launched by the prime minister, and that there’s a serious possibility of disarmament. Any questions?’
There were questions about the mechanics of disclosure but none about the principle. When the meeting ended, Matthew asked Charles to remain. He closed the door to his outer office and they moved to armchairs by the coffee table. ‘Are you happy with that?’
‘I think so.’
‘Only think?’
‘I’m surprised. I didn’t expect to be allowed to see him again. Are you sure the Garda won’t leak if they work out who he is from his reports?’
‘Sure enough for it to be worth the risk. We’ll give them a compendium, anyway, so they couldn’t work back from individual reports. But Gladiator won’t be in Dublin for much longer, will he? His mother’s moving back to Newcastle, according to one of your contact notes. And he’s not planning to stay on, so far as we know?’
‘We’ve never discussed his future in detail. I should’ve, I suppose. I know he intends to qualify as a lawyer, but whether here or there I don’t think he’s decided. I’ll find out.’
‘Do. We need to know. He hasn’t discussed it with Mrs Measures?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘You know her husband, of course.’
It was not a question. Charles nodded. There was a pause, which Matthew Abrahams seemed in no hurry to end. His grey-blue eyes, enlarged by his glasses, rested on Charles. ‘Would Gladiator be willing to go on working for us in another area, if it could be made to fit in with his plans?’
‘It would depend on what he was working against. He turned against the PIRA because he was revolted by their methods. I think he’d need to feel the same sort of commitment. He’s not a gun for hire. But he’s got the taste for espionage, he enjoys it. He also enjoys making fun of it.’
‘Do you like him?’
It was not an easy question. At first he had neither liked nor disliked Martin. You tried not to worry about whether you liked agents; your job was to recruit and run them securely and productively. If you liked them, so much the better; if not, you tried to make them think you did. Charles’s response, when it came, was unpremeditated; he surprised himself.
‘It’s hard to say. It’s got rather beyond that.’ Again he hesitated. He hardly knew Matthew but he trusted him. And, quite suddenly, he wanted to talk. ‘I’ve discovered he’s my son.’
Matthew’s expression did not change. ‘Go on.’
Charles told him all. It was a relief to talk, like being lifted off rocks by a great helpful wave. Matthew was reputedly ambitious and formidable, but there was something in his manner, in his calm listening detachment, that encouraged confidence, in both senses. He conveyed a strong impression of intellectual clarity and judgement. Although the clarity was somewhat forbidding, it was necessary to the judgement Charles sought. He did not want sympathy or offers of emotional support, but practical advice.
They were interrupted by Matthew’s secretary, Sonia, announcing that the Chief’s weekly board meeting was about to start. Charles got up to leave, but Matthew waved him down. ‘Send my apologies,’ he said. ‘Ask Ian to go in my place.’
Telling all meant, of course, that Charles had to tell all about himself, Sarah and Nigel. When he had finished, there was another pause.
‘I’ve met Nigel Measures,’ said Matthew. ‘I don’t get the impression he’s a natural ally of ours.’
‘I’m not sure he is of anyone’s. But he’s sincere. He’s an idealist, of sorts.’
‘They don’t always go together.’ Matthew stood. ‘Thank you for telling me. It was the right thing to do. We must consider what else – if anything – should be done. Will you join me for lunch? Not here, we’ll go to the Athenaeum. If you can put up with the food.’
During lunch Matthew asked Charles about himself, his background, his army service, his time in the office, his current job. It felt like an interview for something, and he couldn’t tell whether he was passing or failing. Over coffee in the library upstairs, Matthew summed up.
‘There are two issues: whether you tell Gladiator and whether you tell Mrs Measures. The office has a right to be informed in terms of the case, but not a determining interest. Gladiator may or may not continue as an agent, you may or may not continue as his case officer; there would be no pressure on you either way. But you must inform the office of what you intend before you do it. Which is to say, you should tell me and me only and it will be recorded in a secret annex to the Gladiator file accessible only to you, me, Sonia, the head of security and the Chief. No-one else in the section will know it exists and your personal file will contain only a cross-reference, which will reveal nothing.’
Charles nodded. The decision was being handed back to him, not taken away. Perhaps that was how it should be.
‘You are therefore free to decide what, if anything, to do. My only counsel is that it would be illusory to think you can tell either Gladiator or Mrs Measures without telling both, given that they know each other. You could not trust either not to tell and you need to weigh, so far as you can, the effect that that knowledge might have on them. Think of them rather than yourself, of how they might feel rather than how you feel.’ He smiled. ‘That may sound hard. But I’m saying it because it would almost certainly affect them more than you. It will affect you, of course, more than you may yet appreciate, but for them it could be seismic. Tread carefully, Charles, and keep me informed.’
Charles nodded. ‘Just stop me if I bore you too much.’
Matthew smiled again. ‘I shall, don’t worry.’
The Gladiator file, as Charles had seen during his recent reading, still gave no hint of a secret annex beyond the single cross-reference Matthew had promised. No-one – Gladiator’s later case-officers, the A desk, the security officer – would know it existed. Charles had delayed calling for it because he wanted to familiarise himself with the main file first, to see what had happened in the case since his day. When eventually he did send for the annex there was at first no response. He rang IC – Information Control, the section that had replaced Registry – and spoke to a helpful woman who became rapidly less helpful when she realised it was a paper annex he sought rather than an electronic one.
‘It takes ages to find them,’ she said.
‘Presumably they’re all filed by number? It should be straightforward.’
‘Yes, but only the computer can find them now, and the systems have changed, which means that the new system can’t do it very well. And it can’t be done by hand because they’re all stacked by bar code, not number.’
‘So if we have a complete systems failure we can’t find anything?’
‘No. I mean yes.’
Eventually she agreed to put in a request for it to be done over the weekend, when the computers would be less busy, but he had to email it because an oral request couldn’t be entered on her response target figures. When, after the weekend, he rang again she said she’d have to reply by email because that counted towards her delivery target.
‘Can’t you just tell me?’
‘I’m not supposed to do that.’
‘Couldn’t you tell me what your email will say?’
‘I’ll have to ask my line manager.’
‘Just the gist of it, so I know what to expect.’
She hesitated. ‘Well, it’s hard to give the gist of it because there’s not much to say. Your requested search object—’
‘My what?’
‘The file you want, that’s what we call it. It’s a very restricted annex available only to the CEO, what used to be called the chief, his deputy, what used to be called director of operations and his secretary and the head of security. And one other person called OPS/A/4. That’s all the email will say.’
‘But we know that. That’s what I told you in my email. I was OPS/A/4. That was my designation. I can prove it if you like.’
‘I think I’d better discuss this with my line manager.’
Charles tried to moderate his tone. ‘Discuss what?’
‘This. What you’re asking for. It’s an unusual procedure, you see. I’ve never had one like this before.’
‘You mean, a file request?’
‘This sort, yes.’ She paused. He could hear her keyboard clicking. ‘Actually – hang on – yes, there has been one other request for this file. I’ve got it now on my screen. Don’t know why it didn’t come up before. I didn’t deal with it, anyway. Nothing to do with me. CEO Dep asked for it.’
So Nigel Measures had got there first. He wouldn’t like what he found, thought Charles. ‘Does it say when it went to him? Last request, I promise.’
‘Well, I suppose, I don’t know whether—’
‘It would save us all a lot of time and trouble, you see, because if he’s had time to read it I can go and talk to him about it, and then there’d be no need for you to get it for me at all.’
She was relieved. ‘Oh yes, I see that, yes. If we’ve got a delivery date record. It’s not on the screen.’
They must have, he assured himself during the next two days. He remembered Matthew Abrahams saying that an intelligence organisation that didn’t know what it knew, or what it had done with what it knew, couldn’t function. But maybe it could if it didn’t even realise that it wasn’t functioning.
She rang back, sounding pleased. ‘Yes, like I said, it definitely went to CEO Dep, and it’s still with him.’
‘But when did it go to him?’
‘When? D’you mean what date did it go?’
Charles was careful with his tone again. ‘Yes, if you’ve got it. It would be helpful.’
‘I’ve got it, yes, I have got it. At least, I had. It was on the screen, I saw it.’ There was another pause. ‘I remember now, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? The date.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’ve been off, you see. I’m only part time. I do a job share.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do three days and the other girl does two. So that’s a full week between us.’
‘Ah, yes.’
Yes, here it is. At least, I think it is. Yes, this must be it, yes. The twenty-fourth.’
‘Twenty-fourth of what – last month?’
‘Suppose so. Must be, mustn’t it? Where are we now? Yes, last month.’
So Nigel had called for the annex three days after Charles had started work with the SIA. He would have known there had to be a record somewhere, and the Gladiator file was the obvious link. Charles didn’t need to know any more.
11
The main file recorded Charles’s flight to Belfast in a different name and his having to hire a car to get to Dublin because of a bomb on the railway line. Avoiding the airport car-hire desks because he was known to them under yet another name, he went to an off-site firm he had used on more recent Ulster trips. The firm was in a republican area and asked fewer questions than the larger companies, which was perhaps why it was also favoured by the PIRA.
He remembered the day as grey with a drifting soft rain, the sort people said was good for the complexions of Northern Irish girls. The queue at the car-hire firm was impatient and fretful, with no time for complexions. Except Charles. As always when under alias, he was patient and polite, the customer who never made a fuss, never complained, never drew attention to himself.
He queued for the girl he always used. She had a friendly smile and was familiar enough with him to abbreviate the formalities. Contact with any kind of officialdom was dangerous, and he always used a particular pen on operations: his late father’s ancient Conway Stewart. Unscrewing the cap compelled a pause long enough for a brief mental rehearsal of alias name, address, telephone number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and nature of business. Also, she had just the complexion everyone said the rain was good for.
This time, however, the file contained a sequel to the bare record of car hire and payment. Special Branch had passed on a warning from the Ulster police that an Englishman of the name Charles was using was going to be kidnapped the next time he visited that car-hire firm. Most of the staff were PIRA sympathisers, and they were suspicious that an English visitor should use a company in a republican area. A girl working on the front desk, who was secretly engaged to a policeman, had overheard them plotting and had told her fiancé. Someone from security minuted that Charles, under one name or another, seemed to be attracting rather too much attention. Charles still regretted that he was never able to thank her, even anonymously.
The drive to Dublin was wet and vexatious, the car-hire queue writ large. He was stopped by police on both sides of the border, and on the way into Dublin took a wrong turn that led into a maze of housing estates whose grim neglect and anarchy resembled those he had known in Belfast with the army years before. Eventually he found the Chesham, checked in, then drove over to Jury’s, where he had arranged to meet Martin in the bar. He checked in there, too, under another name. They would use his room for the meeting, but he would spend the night at the Chesham.
Arriving thirty-five minutes early, he sat at the side of the foyer with a copy of the Irish Times. This gave him a view of the approach outside, of the doors and of the entrance to the bar; he would watch Gladiator in to see whether he brought surveillance with him, leaving him in the bar for ten minutes before joining him. The foyer was loud with Americans who had just arrived for a conference. The appointed time came and went. It was unusual for Martin to be late.
‘You were supposed to meet in the bar. What are you doing here?’
It was Sarah, from behind his chair. He moved as if shot at, which made her laugh. ‘I might ask the same of you,’ he said.
‘I’ve come to meet you. You weren’t trying to spy on Martin coming in, were you? Playing spy games?’
He struggled to control the broadsheet Irish Times. ‘No, I was just – I thought I’d watch him in, make sure he was okay. Is he?’
She retrieved an errant page. ‘You’re really not a very good spy, Charles. You’re so obvious, I’m always telling you. Martin’s fine. But he wasn’t sure the Garda weren’t following him earlier today – sorry, too many negatives – and didn’t want to risk bringing them to you this evening. He went to a callbox and rang the number you gave him in London, but they said you were travelling and they couldn’t contact you. So he rang me and asked me to come instead and tell you.’
There were people nearby. He moved her away. ‘We were going to eat early,’ he said. ‘I’ll still need to get a message to him about another meeting – through you, if that’s all right. But the table’s booked, so shall we eat, you and I – assuming you can stay?’
‘I’ve got a better idea.’ She was smiling and looking straight at him. ‘I’ve booked a table at a place out of town called Charlie’s. I’ve never been there, but people say it’s really good. Appropriate name, I thought.’
Charles had planned the evening, seeking as always when on business to control the agenda. It was still a business evening, but his sense of control was draining
like water through his fingers. He stared back at her. She was confident and somehow different, wearing boots, an expensive-looking beige raincoat, a black skirt and a red jersey that suggested her figure without clinging to it. He felt the agenda was hers now.
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘No – I am, I am. I was just thinking. I’ve got a room here, you see, where Martin and I were going to talk. I’ll keep it on – it would look odd if I check out now – but I’ll have to slip upstairs to get my car keys.’
‘We’ll go in mine.’
‘You’ve got a car?’
‘Not mine. One I borrow from my landlady friend once in a blue moon. She’s only too pleased to have it used.’
Charles hesitated again. Mixing the professional and the personal troubled him, especially with Sarah, and especially with what he now knew. Porous borders threatened the compartmentalisation of his life.
‘We don’t have to,’ she said, more seriously now. ‘You look as if you don’t trust me, or something.’
His immediate reaction was to query her and Martin’s motives, to suspect some sort of alliance, to ask whether he was being set up. That was a professional reaction. He dismissed it as soon as he thought it, resenting it, but he couldn’t help thinking it. Martin – yes, he could just about imagine Martin betraying him because there was something unknown about Martin’s motivation, some part of him that remained invisible. But Sarah – that was inconceivable. If Sarah betrayed him, then anyone was capable of anything. Yet he did conceive of it, and for a moment hated himself for it.
He smiled. ‘It’s not that, I’m just working out the logistics with the hotels, this one and my other one. It’s okay, it’s not a problem. Even though the place is called Charlie’s.’
