Legacy

by Alan Judd

  The lecture was obviously for Charles’s benefit. He had heard the same analogy on his course.

  ‘And just as we would not normally ask you to approach Koslov in London, so we would not normally expect the officer who is to approach the target also to approach the access agent, the prostitute. Again, things are different in this case. M15 itself, our own London stations and the joint sections we operate with M15 are short of operational officers and currently have their hands full’ – his eyes shifted briefly to Hugo – ‘and have no spare capacity. Also, if it were to be successful, we would wish knowledge of it to be kept extremely tight and would not wish to involve in the earlier stages more people than was absolutely necessary. You therefore have two tasks, if you accept them. Firstly, to talk to the prostitute, discover whatever she can tell us about her client and establish whether she is prepared to help us talk to him. Secondly, to re-introduce yourself to Koslov, find a non-threatening way of letting him know that we know what he is up to and establish whether his behaviour means that he is prepared to be aberrant in other ways.’

  Hookey sat back and took a pipe and tobacco from his desk drawer. ‘So much for strategy and background. Now, are you prepared to do it or does the fact that you knew him – or any other aspect – trouble you? I should add that you’ll have to do it in your own time because you can’t duck out of your course. Indeed, we don’t want them to know anything about it. So it could put paid to your private life for a while.’

  It had not occurred to Charles that his knowing Viktor could be problematic, morally or in any other way, but Hookey’s question made him wonder if it should be. Perhaps he lacked moral imagination. He tried to recall his impressions of the quiet Russian, listening within himself for echoes of awkwardness or unease about exploiting the relationship, such as it was. Exploitation was what secret service involved, as the man with arm-bands had been keen to stress at his first interview. The prospect of a real case excited him. As for his own private life, he had joined expecting Jesuitical devotion and had been mildly disappointed when Gerry told them that most people in Head Office clocked off at six.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

  He returned with Hugo March to his office on the sixth floor. ‘Hookey’s a great man,’ Hugo said in the lift, ‘but he seems to do most of his work out of office hours. Never goes home himself and doesn’t expect anyone else to.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Yes, his wife’s a – er – can’t remember. She does something. Doctor, or something like it. Not that there is much like it, apart from vets, I s’pose, and she’s not a vet. I don’t think.’ He laughed in Charles’s face, standing very close.

  Hugo’s office, smaller than Hookey’s, also had a view of Waterloo Station, and he cast a surreptitious glance at the crawling trains. He had a wood and leather desk to which only officers of grade 4 and above were entitled, and the usual grey, combination-locked security cabinet. Three plastic desk trays, also grey, marked ‘in’, ‘out’ and ‘pending’, were piled high with papers, files and telegrams. Other papers, such as pink Head Office notices and lists, were scattered beside them. There were two black telephones, an open copy of the PAX book, the red, spring-clipped Head Office directory marked Top Secret, a photograph of Anna and the two girls and, on the blotter, a fat, expensive Mont Blanc pen. On the coat-stand by the door was a military-style British Warm overcoat. Charles had one in the loft of his mother’s Buckinghamshire house where, in immediate post-army reaction against his own military past, he had dumped everything.

  Hugo put the wooden clipboard on the desk. ‘Just as well no notes needed,’ he said. ‘Forgot my pen. Wouldn’t look good, eh? Hang on a mo’ while I ring home, say I’m running late. Won’t be popular. Dinner party.’ He picked up the phone, frowned, put it down, then riffled through one of his trays until he found a clutch of papers held together by a bulldog clip, which he removed before passing them to Charles. ‘There’s your lady. Not bad, I thought. Excuse my removing the clip. There’s an office-wide shortage, endless pink notices about not hoarding them and sending spare ones back to stores so they can send them out again. I keep any I find in a drawer. Very handy.’ He picked up the phone again and dialled.

  The black and white photograph showed a neat, dark-haired woman wearing a belted light raincoat and carrying a patent leather handbag. She was turning towards a door and had just taken a key from the open bag. The photograph was probably taken with the sort of briefcase camera used to such good effect on himself that day. The accompanying papers, mostly MI5, described her as Claire Camber, born thirty-seven years ago in Orpington, Kent, operating now as a ‘masseuse’ under the name Chantal Jeanneau.

  Hugo’s conversation with Anna was brief. ‘Darling, I’m late. No, I won’t. In a few minutes. I’m with a chap who says he knows you. Charles. He didn’t say. What? Okay. ’Bye, darling.’ He put down the phone. ‘She says if you’re the Charles from this afternoon you did very well and she’s sorry she had to rush off. I don’t know what that’s all about. Sounds like a message from the lady you’re reading about there.’ He laughed.

  Charles began to explain his exercise meeting with Anna.

  ‘I see, I see,’ said Hugo. ‘Forgotten she was doing it. Good exercise, that one. Chap called Whippett – known as the Whippett, of course – splendid operator, hopelessly out of control, charming alcoholic – got into frightful trouble for chatting up the policewoman who was playing his agent and taking her to bed in the hotel for the afternoon. They both missed the wash-up. Frightful stink. The Chief had to lunch the Chief Constable. General sense of humour failure all round, except for the Whippett and the rest of the course, and Training Department, and most of HO, come to that.’ He laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘Nothing like that happened in the Savoy this afternoon.’

  ‘Then Personnel posted the Whippett to Bangkok, of all places. Went completely off the rails. Went native in about six minutes. Started turning up at embassy functions with bar girls. Moved one in with him. Or two. Got up the ambassador’s nose and had to resign in the end. Now running his own bar, apparently. Pity. Very talented operator. Goes to show.’ He nodded several times. ‘Forgotten Anna was doing it today, to be honest. Bit much with six coming to dinner and the children to get to bed. Just as well I couldn’t get home early. Wait till you’re married.’

  They returned to what Hugo called the matter in hand. He would be desk officer for the operation and, since it was on their patch, would have to keep MI5 informed. Hookey would be in overall control. Charles would start by recruiting Mme Jeanneau. She had had a French husband and spoke reasonable French, retaining a French accent when speaking English in her professional life. No doubt for business reasons. Charles would have to approach her under alias and not let on that he knew Lover Boy. They would cross that bridge when they came to it. The tricky bit would be letting Lover Boy – Hugo clearly relished the name – know that Charles knew her, and therefore about him and her, without her knowing. If Lover Boy were ever to be recruited, it would be best that she didn’t know about it.

  Hugo began clearing his desk while speaking, locking all papers and the PAX book in his safe, checking for loose papers on shelves and window sills, beneath the phones, beneath the desk, in his litter bin and finally locking away his brown confidential waste bag. Then he put on his coat and stood before a mirror, smoothing his thinning hair. ‘You could be on to a good thing with little Chantal,’ he said. ‘Not bad, is she? Not sure the office would pay all your expenses, though.’

  It was only as he watched Hugo’s reflection that Charles noticed something he had been vestigially aware of, and obscurely unsettled by, for some time: Hugo had a slight, intermittent facial twitch, a rapid wink that was gone before it was properly seen.

  ‘Hookey’s a great man to work for,’ Hugo continued when they were in the lift. ‘Good experience so early in your career. But he’s ferocious on security. He’s run some of our biggest cases and was one of the
chaps who unmasked Blake or Philby, whichever one it was. Understandable to be concerned about security, I s’pose, but it can go over the top a bit sometimes. I came under him, of course, when I was in Prague. Wouldn’t let me sneeze without telling me when and how to do it. Maybe it was me he didn’t trust.’

  They went out through the revolving doors into the windswept litter of Lambeth. Head Office’s creation of its own wind and micro-climate was a frequent joke. Hugo referred to it. ‘Oh, and Anna,’ he added, before turning up towards Waterloo. ‘Anna says you must come to dinner some time.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d like that,’ said Charles, trying to ignore Hugo’s wink.

  2

  ‘Remember, this is your second line of defence,’ said Big Tom, the wiry, diminutive former paratrooper and SAS sergeant who taught unarmed combat. He was so-called to distinguish him from Little Tom, his towering ex-Royal Marine SBS colleague who did guns and bombs. ‘The first line, and the best unarmed combat manoeuvre of all, is the hundred-yard dash. Don’t get into a fight in the first place. Fights are dangerous and nearly always unnecessary. You might get hurt. It’s sensible to avoid them, not dishonourable. But if he grabs you and you can’t get away, or if you’ve got to protect someone else, this is your next line of defence.’

  The course disposed themselves on the grass in the bottom of the dry moat at the Castle, the south coast training establishment. It was sunny with a light breeze and a few seagulls wheeled above. Beyond the rim of the moat was the Solent, glittering in the morning sun and busy with shipping. Beyond that was the Isle of Wight, where it was just possible to make out a red tractor crawling up a steep ploughed field. Everyone in the moat looked on with anticipatory relish as Desmond Kimmeridge was chosen by Big Tom as his guinea-pig. Desmond, tall and self-deprecating, took languid hold of Big Tom’s shin.

  Big Tom smiled with exaggerated pity. ‘Listen, Debonair,’ he said, his Welsh accent heightened for effect, ‘you’re supposed to be trying to head-butt me, not seduce me. A little more aggression, if you please.’

  After a couple more attempts and some scoffing, Desmond was persuaded into a satisfactory simulacrum of aggression, sufficient for Big Tom to demonstrate how to break the attacker’s grip. He first shrank and sagged as in terror – a tactic which, he explained, invoked an unconscious weakening of the attacker’s grip – then exploded into action with a loud shout and a swift upward and outward thrust of both arms, breaking Desmond’s grip.

  ‘And if he doesn’t run away after that, you do,’ he concluded. ‘Right, choose a partner.’

  ‘Mind my shirt,’ said Christopher Westfield as he and Charles paired off. ‘It’s the only clean one I’ve got left till I get home.’

  They were interrupted by Rebecca calling from the top of the moat. ‘Head Office wants Charles. Can you come and ring a.s.a.p.’ Castle dress was casual until evening, and she wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt. The sea breeze lifted her dark hair. Her suntan, acquired on a recent overseas posting, seemed to have deepened since they’d been at the Castle.

  ‘Tell her Christopher wants Rebecca,’ murmured Christopher.

  ‘Sorry to spoil your fun,’ she said when Charles joined her. ‘You seem to be much in demand by HO. It was A1 who rang. What’s it about?’

  ‘Need to know.’ The phrase was used at them a dozen times a day. He smiled. ‘It’s really my address book they want.’

  She left him alone in her office. Hugo was crisp. ‘You’re on for tonight. Your lady is seeing our friend this afternoon but in the course of arranging it she mentioned she was free this evening. You can see her as a new client. We’ve booked a hotel room in a suitable name and company. Your next train leaves in an hour and five. Come to my office.’

  Charles joined Rebecca outside on the battlements. She was leaning against the stone wall, smoking and watching the aircraft carrier, HMS Hermes, proceed magisterially out of Portsmouth Harbour. A distant sailor waved. She waved back.

  ‘Friend aboard?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Need to know.’

  ‘Where’s Gerry?’

  ‘Probably in the mess.’ She gazed at the carrier. Her features were regular, her dark eyes widely spaced, she was always friendly and had a ready smile, but there was also a reserve, a sense of something held back. Her seeming preoccupation at that moment with something unknown, possibly something suggested by the carrier, made being with her restful rather than, as might have been expected, disconcerting. The battlements were wide and deep and Charles leant against the wall beside her, gazing at three nineteenth-century forts far out in the Solent. He was excited by what he was going to do but, for the moment, preferred not to think of it. There was no hurry. Rebecca pulled on the last of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the sea. ‘D’you need to see him?’

  ‘They want me to go up to town for the night. I assume I’d better clear it with him.’

  ‘They’ve already spoken to him in general terms, saying you might be called upon, but not for what. I’ll tell him while you pack your toothbrush.’

  ‘No need. I’ve got two.’

  ‘What a clever intelligence officer you’re going to be, Charles.’

  Late that afternoon he sat on the edge of the king-size bed in his room in the Park Lane Hilton, his hand still resting on the phone, his eyes on the yellow autumn leaves of the plane trees in Hyde Park. It had been easy, yet – as he was coming to expect – his heart thumped as if he had done something difficult or dangerous. He had rung and introduced himself as Peter Lovejoy of Gordon and Partners, an off-the-shelf alias and company name. Chantal had been recommended to him as a masseuse and he wondered whether she was free to join him for dinner at the Park Lane Hilton that evening. As anticipated, mention of an expensive hotel produced a willing response; she agreed in convincingly French-accented English, sounding like a courteous and efficient receptionist and stating, without his asking, her fee for dinner and what she called ‘private massage’ afterwards. It was substantial. If the treatment extended beyond midnight, a further fee would have to be negotiated. They agreed to meet in the Roof Restaurant on the 28th floor. It was just as well he had taken the full cash float offered by Hugo’s secretary.

  By seven thirty the restaurant was beginning to fill. Unlike the Savoy, there was nothing faded about the Hilton’s opulence. The burgundy seats were plush, the tables had a black satinwood veneer and the lighting was unobtrusive. The West End was laid out below and almost all around, as if solely for the benefit of diners. As when leaning against the battlement with Rebecca that afternoon, Charles was content to watch without participating, prolonging the state of suspension. His eye was soon caught, however, by the dark-haired woman, quite heavily made up, pausing by the maître d’ as he checked his list before ushering her over. She was younger and taller than he’d thought, with her hair let down to shoulder length, a tight black skirt, white blouse and a short red jacket. He stood and they shook hands.

  ‘Sorry I’m a few minutes late,’ she said in unaccented English. ‘A client overran.’

  ‘A professional hazard, I imagine.’

  ‘Not just overrunning. You can factor that in to your timetable. But it’s everything else as well. They want you to be mother confessor and Lord knows what else. I could write a book on clients and their problems. Perhaps one day I shall.’

  He made to pour her some water but the bottle was taken from him by the wine waiter. While they agreed aperitifs – she chose champagne and he, with an inward twinge over his expenses claim, followed suit – he puzzled over her dropping her French accent and talking to him, a supposed client, about clients. Was it possible that this was in fact another exercise into which he had been tricked? There were rumours of that sort of thing on the course. Was the solitary man some tables distant, with a clear line of sight, filming them?

  ‘Of course, in my field the law makes it worse,’ she said. ‘Interpretation is all. Your legal and client problems must be of a different order?’

 
‘Probably, though I daresay there’s some overlap.’ What, he wondered, could she know of his profession when he hadn’t told her anything? Was she confusing him with someone else? ‘D’you see many of your clients here?’ he asked, taking his cue for directness from her. Hugo had recommended the Hilton because she had a regular arrangement there with a visiting American chief executive.

  She shrugged. ‘One or two of the bigger ones, though generally I try to get them to come to me. Makes for a quicker turnover.’

  Such frankness made the whole thing easier. He could leapfrog several stages. ‘My own firm has an interest in one of your regulars.’ Her raised eyebrows were encouraging. ‘In your – his – pillow-talk, to be precise.’

  ‘Pillow-talk? What do you mean?’

  Protection of her clients was presumably a natural reaction. ‘We’ll pay for it, of course,’ he added.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  At that moment the maître d’ hurried over, leaving another woman by his desk. His brow was furrowed. ‘Mr Lovejoy?’

  ‘Yes?’ Charles tried to sound unconcerned.

  ‘Mr Kilroy, surely?’ queried the woman, sharply.

  The maître d’ theatrically smote his forehead. ‘Ah, my mistake, my stupid mistake. I am so sorry. Very, very sorry.’

  Mr Kilroy was the only other solitary man in the restaurant, and it was he whom she had come to meet. She left with one curious, offended glance at Charles and was ushered to the other table by the maître d’, his apologies showering like a meteor’s tail behind her. He then hurried back to his desk and brought over a second woman, still in a welter of self-abasement. The wine waiter appeared as she and Charles shook hands. ‘Champagne?’ Charles asked, dismissing from now on any consideration of his expense account.