by Alan Judd
Over the next few months he had occasional lunches with Sarah, hoping to get her to talk about her marriage but unable to ask directly in case she suspected more personal motives. She made oblique references to herself and Nigel, smilingly dismissive of husbands or marriage in general, and clearly preferred questioning Charles about his own life to discussing hers.
‘Don’t ever become one,’ she said once. ‘A husband, I mean. It wouldn’t suit you, you wouldn’t be you. And it would make it difficult for us to meet.’
‘No prospect at present.’
‘No-one at all? I don’t believe you. There must be someone.’
‘Well, I’m not a hermit, I do see one or two—’
She held up her hand and looked away. ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear.’
Whenever he learned from her that Nigel was to travel he told Matthew Abrahams, who checked with the Foreign Office. As before, Nigel’s official itinerary and that given to his wife did not tally.
Charles also called more frequently on Nigel himself, and they drank once or twice in Whitehall pubs. He made a point of referring to his lunches with Sarah, but Nigel seemed uninterested.
‘The to-ing and fro-ing must be tiring,’ Charles said. ‘Even if it is only Brussels.’
Nigel shook his head. The glistening of his dark eyes made it hard to read them. ‘Exhausting but exhilarating. We’re getting there, you see; we’re approaching a real agreement at last despite the damage that that Thatcher woman did.’
The way he said her name had lost none of its venom. Charles sometimes wondered whether it was partly a function of the word itself, particular movements of tongue and jaw being conducive to the energy of hate. In Nigel’s mouth it was as if a terrier had learned to say ‘rat’ and, like a terrier, once started he would not let go, conscripting everything into an anti-Thatcher tirade. Charles used it to bring him out.
‘But didn’t she start the Single Market project, all those years ago?’ he asked. ‘Or at least give it early support, as that Bank of England woman at your dinner said? It was one of her things, wasn’t it?’
‘She was persuaded by us to go along with it, but she had to be dragged kicking and screaming every inch of the way. Every centimetre, I should say. What she didn’t realise was that she was getting a lot more than she bargained for in some ways, and a lot less in others. She thinks it was all about business and trade; access for British insurance companies and all that. Typical. Shopkeeper’s daughter. What she didn’t see was how hugely integrationist it was, how it paved the way for Maastricht and Amsterdam. Major wan’t much better, mind you, and despite all their rhetoric New Labour are almost as bad as Thatcher was on Europe. That’s why it’s exhilarating that Amsterdam’s been ratified at last – no thanks to Tony Blair. We’ve finally got a conclusion that’s good for us and good for Europe, and I get a real kick out of playing a part in that. Contributing something, doing my bit for history, not just playing nineteenth-century nationalist games.’ He grinned. ‘Can’t expect you to agree, of course, but that’s the modern reality.’
Charles had long since learned the futility of arguing with enthusiasts, political or religious, preferring to regard their enthusiasm as cultural and psychological phenomena. But it was important now to keep Nigel in play. ‘Keep trying,’ he said. ‘Convert me. You never know.’
Later that same afternoon, Matthew summoned Charles again. It was after six, when most people went home, and Sonia was putting on her coat and checking combination locks. She had long auburn hair, long enough for her to sit on. Matthew sauntered from his office, hands in pockets, talked to her about papers for a meeting the next day, waited till she had gone then followed Charles into his inner office and closed the door.
‘You should get to know Sonia better,’ he said. ‘You will, though not in the way you might wish. She’s a find. Brilliant linguist: Persian, Russian, Arabic. She was a bored transcriber until I had the headphones plucked off her and offered her a change in career.’
‘As your secretary?’
‘Temporarily. A tactic to help her subsequent transition to intelligence officer. She’ll run operations, man desks, like you. She’ll be good. And it will help her on her promotion board if I can vouch for her having valid operational experience. As she soon will have, with your assistance.’ Matthew smiled. ‘We have action.’
He had wrung permission from the Chief to send a Z Organisation surveillance team to Paris and Brussels when Nigel next travelled, without Foreign Office clearance. ‘Normally we’d have to get clearance, of course, but we can’t let them know we’re looking at one of their own until we’ve got hard evidence of wrongdoing. Who knows, he may not be the only one involved. We can’t even use the Paris station because they’re all declared to French liaison, and if any were recognised within a mile of Nigel Measures the French would smell a rat. So.’ He held up one long forefinger, his smile broadening. ‘I persuaded the Chief through repetition, repetition, repetition, knowing he had a million other things waiting, that we can do it as an exercise. The Z team will be briefed that it is just that, an exercise, and will be given their quarry’s description without being told who he is. They’ll comprise some of the people Gladiator’s been training with, but he can’t take part because, of course, he’ll know who’s involved, and that it’s not an exercise. The Paris station will be told at the last minute that there’s a Z exercise on their patch – this is just in case they see you there – but that it needn’t concern them or the French. By the time they’ve finished arguing with Head Office about it the whole thing will be over. And we shall, I hope, have proof positive that your friend Measures is doing something clandestine.’
‘But what if they are spotted? What if the French have counter-surveillance cover on their meeting?’
Matthew nodded. ‘That’s where you come in. You’ll be there as the fall-guy, the team’s notional quarry. You’ll be in the vicinity, not close enough for Measures or any loitering French case officer to recognise you, but near enough to be the plausible exercise target if we’re caught out. There’ll be trouble if we are, of course. The ambassador and the Foreign Office will be upset, the French and the Paris station will be angry, the Chief will deny all knowledge and blame me for thoughtless freelancing, and you’ll have a get-out-of-gaol-free card.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, they may rough you up a bit on the way.’
‘You think the French will swallow that?’
‘So long as we – you especially – stick to it, they’ll have no choice. They’re bound to conclude we might be on to Measures and so run the case more tightly. But they won’t be sure and they won’t drop it. And that’s only if you’re caught, of course. Which you won’t be. Since you mustn’t meet the team in Paris, Sonia will keep you informed of what’s happening. She’ll act as go-between, coordinating the team and keeping you in the picture. Only you and she will know what’s really going on. I haven’t told her yet; but I’ll brief her tomorrow.’
‘I use my own name, then?’
‘Of course. You’re there as a trainer.’
Charles and the main part of the Z team deployed separately to Paris the following Saturday, the other part deploying to Brussels. Nigel’s delegation was already in Brussels and due to return on the Sunday, following a dinner on the Saturday night. Charles attended the Z team briefing before they left, so that they would know him if they had to follow him as their stand-in quarry. They were shown photographs of the un-named Nigel, described as their number one exercise target, walking along his Clap-ham street, emerging from Clapham North underground, walking through Parliament Square. The photos had been taken by Sonia, whom Matthew had sent on a crash course in clandestine photography. Charles was to stay in his hotel unless summoned to meet her.
‘If Colonel Sod strikes and you don’t hear from me and can’t get hold of me, ring the duty officer in London,’ she said. ‘We’ll communicate via him.’
Charles waited all Sunday in his hotel. He had come pre
pared. Years of loitering in various names in hotel rooms around the world had taught him patience and precaution. He had waited for agents who never showed, for politicians with entrepreneurial aspirations but mercurial temperaments, for scientists who couldn’t find the hotel, for officials seeking re-insurance with the other side, or for the coded call from the local MI6 station which meant get out, leave the country, now. Espionage, like war, was ninety per cent waiting.
This time he had come equipped with Proust, begun a year before in Bangkok and resumed intermittently during long hours over the Pacific and Atlantic, during airport delays in Copenhagen, Barbados and Delhi and interminable waits in Rio, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Dar-es-Salaam and Pretoria. If nothing happened – if Nigel didn’t appear or the team couldn’t find him – he would finish it this trip.
Sonia rang at ten past two to say that ‘all but one of the board’ had returned to London from Brussels that morning, without the marketing director. It wasn’t yet clear what his plans were. She rang again at seven to say that he seemed to be staying put. Charles finished Proust that night.
Sonia rang for the third time before nine the following morning. The Brussels team had seen him leave his hotel early but had lost him. Sonia had sent her Paris team to stake out the station and watch the early trains from Brussels. They were rewarded by the sight of the marketing director walking briskly to the taxi rank with suitcase and briefcase. Two were close enough to hear him ask for the top of the Champs Elysees, following which they had lost him because they were all on foot.
‘Too risky to jump in another cab and shout “Follow that cab!”’ she said, abandoning veiled speech. ‘You never know what they might think, us being foreign. They might just drive us to a police station. But two of the others have taken a cab to the Arc de Triomphe, to see if they can pick him up there.’
Charles, too, abandoned all attempt at concealment; veiled speech was usually a waste of time, anyway. ‘Send someone to the rue d’Astorg. It’s just off Place St Augustin. At the junction with the rue Roquepine there’s a café. Get someone in there with a camera and look out to see if he waits for a pick-up outside the tobacconist opposite.’
It would be careless of them to use the same place again, but convenience, routine, familiarity were ever the enemies of security. On their own ground, with no reason to suspect a threat, they might well be lazy.
Sonia’s next call, forty minutes later, was cryptic. ‘On my way to pick you up.’
‘Everything okay?’ He assumed she meant that something had gone wrong and that he had to get to the area in order to be followed.
‘All fine, it’s happened. Perfect. We got everything. They’ve left the scene. I’m ringing from the café. I’ll come now.’
‘Stay there, I’ll join you.’ As the French had just used the location and moved on, the corner café was probably the safest place in Paris.
She had chosen the very table he’d shared with Martin and was breaking her pain au chocolat into small pieces before eating them one at a time. He’d imagined her always calm and undemonstrative, but had noticed recently that she couldn’t help smiling when pleased.
‘The two in the first cab spotted him crossing the Champs Elysees as they paid off. Fortunately, he had to wait to cross, so they were able to follow him here and saw him go and stand outside the tobacconist over there, just as you said. The team came straight in here. He must’ve been early because he was there six minutes before anything happened, so they got good shots of him. Then a car drew up and he got in: a green Renault. They got shots of that too. Meanwhile, the other two whom I’d sent on had been dropped off at the junction of the rue d’Astorg with the rue de la Ville l’Eveque. They were just starting to walk back here when they saw the Renault with him in it turn the corner in front of them and stop behind another car, a blue Citroën. Someone got out of the Renault – not him, but a man carrying a briefcase the same as his – and got into the Citroën which drove off. Then the Renault drove off. We lost them both, of course, but they got shots of the whole transaction. Lots of brownie points, d’you think?’
‘Brownie points plus more chocolat.’ Documents, he thought. They were taking them off to copy. They ought to have had facilities wherever they debriefed him, unless they drove him round in the car and debriefed him on the move.
He and Sonia lingered and talked. She had a husband and two young children at home in Hertfordshire. Her mother was Iranian, her father a Briton who worked in the oil industry. She had been bought up largely in the Middle East and had had a partly Muslim education. ‘I was lucky to get through the vetting,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for Matthew. D’you know him well?’
‘Not as well as I should like. I don’t know whether anyone does. He’s quite private.’
‘I think he has various people throughout the office whom he nurtures. I’m one, you’re one. I don’t know how many others there are.’
‘I’d no idea he did that.’
She sat back, smoothing her hair with both hands. ‘I love my husband, I’m devoted to my children – nothing would come before them – but still I’d walk on burning coals for Matthew Abrahams. I think he’s just wonderful.’
Some days later Charles was shown the photographs in Matthew’s office. They showed the story clearly, from Nigel leaving the Brussels train with suitcase and briefcase, to his standing outside the tobacconist’s and getting in the Renault, then his briefcase being carried from the Renault to the Citroën by a man Charles had seen with Michel, his DST contact. The case was unarguable.
‘Not enough for a conviction,’ said Matthew. ‘Not here, anyway. It would be in France, of course. Enough, though, to nail him as far as his Foreign Office career is concerned. I hope to be there when he’s confronted with it. You can’t, I’m afraid.’
Charles was relieved by that. Slightly to his own surprise, he no longer shared Matthew’s relish for the kill. Hearing it said brought home the reality of disgrace and dismissal, the broken bones of ambition, the spilt blood of self-respect. He had never actively disliked Nigel; their pasts were so entwined that like or dislike was irrelevant, almost as if they were siblings. Despite still regarding him as a beast of the jungle, Charles felt no bloodlust, had no desire to watch him suffer. There was also the guilt that Nigel always evoked in him; Nigel had married her when he hadn’t. True, she hadn’t wanted to marry Charles, but why not? Because of something in himself, some lack, perhaps a lack of what he himself had called emotional incontinence. Emotional commitment, in other people’s language. He hadn’t wanted her enough, or hadn’t shown he did, whereas Nigel had been sympathetic when she needed someone. And he’d been there. Above all, he’d been there. Charles respected and resented him for that, and consciousness of resentment sharpened his guilt.
‘He must have taken a late Sunday or early Monday train back to Brussels,’ Matthew continued, ‘because he was on a Monday evening flight from there to Heathrow. He’d transferred his booking over the weekend, telling his returning colleagues that he was staying on because Sarah was joining him. Could you devise another pretext to see her? It would be useful to confirm that he told her he had to work on Monday.’
Charles had half a reason to see Sarah, about the renewal of the lease on his rooftop flat. He rang her. ‘Five minutes of your legal advice tomorrow. In return for lunch, dinner, anything.’
‘I’m cheaper than that, I’m afraid. I can do a quick breakfast, just. If it’s really quick.’
They met in Daly’s, where the Aldwych becomes Fleet Street. It did a steady trade in lawyers’ breakfasts and the plain wooden tables were mostly full. Arriving early and seduced by toast, coffee and bacon, Charles ordered for them both and took a Times from the rack. She and their breakfasts arrived simultaneously.
‘I can’t eat all that,’ she said.
‘I’ll eat what you don’t. I thought it would be quicker to order than wait till you got here.’
‘You’ll have to hel
p me.’
Her advice on his lease was much as he expected: he didn’t need a specialist lawyer and it sounded a fair offer so long as the terms of the new lease had not changed. ‘It will add more to the value of your flat than it will cost you, so long as you can afford it. You’re not about to lose your job or anything, are you?’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
‘Nigel might be about to lose his. Give it up, rather, when these negotiations come to an end. He’s got the political bit between his teeth again. More talk of standing as an MEP.’
‘Well, he’s in the right place to fix something. Is he over there now?’ It was going to be easy, no pushing or contriving. But the more trusting and confiding she was, the worse he felt.
‘He came back earlier this week. Monday, Tuesday – no, Monday – night. He works ever more ridiculous hours, right through till Monday evening. She must be some mistress.’
‘Couldn’t you go out and join him for a bit of a jolly?’
‘Wouldn’t be much jolly. He’s in negotiations from the time he gets off the plane until he gets back on it. Anyway, my waistline couldn’t cope with the Brussels cuisine. Nor with any more of this, I’m afraid.’ She pushed her plate away, rested her elbows on the table and cradled her coffee in both hands. ‘Sorry.’
Guilt, affection, the desire to protect, the urge to confess, welled up in him. He had no qualms about professional deceit, but practising it on her crossed a line. ‘There’s something I should tell you,’ he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
He couldn’t do it. This was a secret that wasn’t his, part of the public realm. There could yet be a prosecution: she could be implicated, more so if he told her. There was too much at stake.
She was still waiting. He had to speak but he couldn’t tell her that. Instead, he heard himself say something quite different, something unplanned but long anticipated: ‘I’ve discovered that Martin is our son.’
