*
Instructing everyone to get on with their work as normal, a forlorn hope, I step back into the street, turn down a side alley and walk hard for ten minutes before settling in a café and ordering myself a double espresso. Breathe slowly. Get your priorities sorted. I try Florence’s mobile once more on the off-chance. Dead as a dodo. Her Hampstead phone number has a new message. It is delivered by a young, contemptuous, upper-class male: ‘If you’re calling for Florence, she’s no longer at this number, so get lost.’ I call Dom and get Viv:
‘Unfortunately Dom has back-to-back meetings all day, Nat. Can I be of any help at all?’
Oh, I don’t think so, thanks, Viv, no. Are his back-to-backs on home ground, would you say, or are they out and about town?
Is she wavering? Yes, she is:
‘Dom is not taking calls, Nat,’ she says, and rings off.
*
‘Nat, my dear fellow,’ Dom says in a tone of high surprise, indulging his new habit of using my name as a weapon. ‘Always welcome. Do we have an appointment? Would tomorrow suit? I’m a bit snowed under, to be frank.’
And he has the papers strewn across his desk to prove it, which only tells me that he’s been expecting me all morning. Dom doesn’t do confrontation, which is something we both know. His life is a sideways advance between things he can’t face. I drop the latch on his door and sit myself down in a prestige chair. Dom remains at his desk, deep in paperwork.
‘You’re staying, are you?’ he enquires after a while.
‘If that’s all right with you, Dom.’
He picks another file from his in-tray, opens it, absorbs himself intently in its contents.
‘Sad about Rosebud,’ I suggest after a suitable silence.
He can’t hear me. He’s too absorbed.
‘Sad about Florence, too,’ I reflect. ‘One of the best Russian officers the Service ever lost. Can I see the report? Maybe you’ve got it there?’
The head still down. ‘Report? What are you blathering about?’
‘The Treasury sub-committee’s report. The one about the disproportionate risk. Can I see it please?’
The head up a bit, but not too far. The open file in front of him still matters more.
‘Nat, I have to inform you that, as a provisional employee of London General, you are not cleared to anything like the appropriate level. Do we have any further questions?’
‘Yes, Dom. We do. Why did Florence resign? Why did you pack me off to Northwood on a fool’s errand? Were you planning to make a pass at her?’
On the last, the head comes up with a jolt.
‘I’d have thought that possibility rather more in your line than mine.’
‘So why?’
Lean back. Let the fingertips find each other and form their wedding arch. They do. The prepared speech may now begin.
‘Nat, as you may suppose, I did receive, on a strictly one-to-one confidential basis, advance warning of the sub-committee’s decision.’
‘When?’
‘That is neither here nor there as far as you are concerned. May I go on?’
‘Please do.’
‘Florence, we both know, is not what you and I might call a mature person. That is the core reason why she was held back. Talented, nobody contests that, least of all myself. However, it was apparent to me from her presentation of Operation Rosebud that she was emotionally – I dare say too emotionally – engaged in its outcome for her own good and ours. I had hoped that by giving her an informal heads-up ahead of the official announcement of the sub-committee’s decision I might mitigate her disappointment.’
‘So you sent me to Northwood while you dabbed her brow. Very considerate.’
But Dom doesn’t do irony, least of all when he is the butt of it.
‘However, on the larger issue of her abrupt departure from the Office, we should congratulate ourselves,’ he continues. ‘Her response to the sub-committee’s decision to disallow Rosebud for reasons of national interest was disproportionate and hysterical. The Service may count itself well rid of her. Now tell me about Pitchfork yesterday. A virtuoso performance by the Nat of old, if I may say so. How do you construe his instructions from Moscow?’
Dom’s habit of hopping from one subject to another as a means of avoiding unfriendly fire is also familiar to me. However, on this occasion he has done me a favour. I don’t think of myself as sly in a general way but Dom raises my game. The only person who is ever going to tell me what took place between him and Florence is Florence, but she’s unavailable. So go for goal.
‘How do I construe his instructions? Better to ask how Russia department would construe them,’ I reply, with a loftiness to match his.
‘Which is how?’
Lofty, but also firm. I am an old Russia hand pouring cold water on an inexperienced brother officer’s ardour.
‘Pitchfork is a sleeper agent, Dom. You seem to forget that. He’s here for the long haul. He’s been sleeping for precisely a year. Time for Moscow Centre to wake him up, blow the dust off him, give him a dummy run and make sure he’s still there for them. Once he’s proved that he is, it’s back to sleep in York.’
He appears about to argue, thinks better of it.
‘So our tactic, on the assumption that your premise is correct, which I don’t necessarily accept, is what exactly?’ he demands truculently.
‘Watch and wait.’
‘And do we, while watching and waiting, alert Russia department that we are so doing?’
‘If you want them to take over the case and airbrush London General out of it, now’s as good a time as any,’ I retort.
He pouts, looks away from me as if to consult a higher authority.
‘Very well, Nat’ – humouring me – ‘we watch and wait as you suggest. I expect you to keep me fully informed of all future developments, however trivial, the moment they occur. And thank you for calling by,’ he adds, returning to the papers on his desk.
‘However,’ I say, not moving from my chair.
‘However what?’
‘There is a subtext to Pitchfork’s instructions that suggests to me that we could be looking at rather more than just a standard dummy run to keep a sleeper on his toes.’
‘You just said the precise opposite.’
‘That’s because there’s an element to Pitchfork’s story for which you are in no way cleared.’
‘Nonsense. What element?’
‘And this is no time to be trying to add your name to the indoctrination list, or Russia department will need to know the reason why. Which I assume you wouldn’t want any more than I would.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Because if my hunch is right, what we could be looking at – subject to confirmation – is a golden opportunity for the Haven and London General to mount an operation with our two names attached to it and no Treasury sub-committee to spike it. Do I have your ear or shall I come back when it’s more convenient?’
He sighs and pushes aside his papers.
‘Maybe you’re broadly familiar with the case of my former agent Woodpecker? Or are you too young?’ I enquire.
‘Of course I’m familiar with the Woodpecker case. I’ve read it up. Who hasn’t? Trieste. Their rezident, former KGB, an old hand, consular cover. You recruited him over badminton, as I recall. He later reverted to type and rejoined the opposition, if he ever left it in the first place. Hardly a feather in your cap, I’d have thought. Why are we talking about Woodpecker suddenly?’
For a latecomer, Dom has done his homework pretty thoroughly.
‘Woodpecker was a reliable and valued source until his last year of working for us,’ I inform him.
‘If you say so. Others might take a different view. May we come to the point, please?’
‘I’d like to discuss Moscow Centre’s instructions to Pitchfork with him.’
‘With whom?’
‘With Woodpecker. Get his take on them. An insider’s view.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Stark staring off-your-head mad. Woodpecker is officially graded toxic. That means nobody from this Service goes there without the written personal consent of the head of Russia department, who happens to be in purdah in Washington DC. Woodpecker is untrustworthy, totally two-faced and an embedded Russian criminal.’
‘Is that a no?’
‘It’s an over-my-dead-body no. As of here and now. I shall put it in writing instantly, copy to the disciplinary committee.’
‘Meantime, with your permission I’d like to take a week’s golfing leave.’
‘You don’t play fucking golf.’
‘And in the event that Woodpecker agrees to see me, and it turns out that he has an interesting take on Pitchfork’s instructions from Moscow Centre, you may just decide that you ordered me to pay a call on him after all. And meanwhile I suggest you think twice before you write that rude letter to the disciplinary committee.’
I am at the door when he calls me back. I turn my head but stay at the door.
‘Nat?’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think you’re going to get out of him, anyway?’
‘With luck, nothing I don’t already know.’
‘Then why go?’
‘Because nobody calls out Operations Directorate on the strength of a hunch, Dom. Ops Directorate like actionable intelligence, cooked two ways and preferably three. It’s called evidence-based in case the term is new to you. Which means they are not overly impressed by the self-serving ramblings of a grounded field man stuck in the boondocks of Camden, or his somewhat untested head of London General.’
‘You’re mad,’ Dom says again, as he retreats behind his files.
*
I am back at the Haven. Turning the key on the long faces of my team, I go to work drafting a letter to my former agent Woodpecker, alias Arkady. I write in my notional capacity as Secretary of a badminton club in Brighton. I invite him to bring a team of mixed players to our beautiful seaside town. I propose dates and times of play and offer free accommodation. The uses of open word-code are older than the Bible and rest on mutual understandings between writer and recipient. The understanding between Arkady and myself owed nothing to any codebook and everything to the concept that every premise contains its opposite. Thus I was not inviting him, but seeking an invitation from him. The dates on which the notional club was prepared to welcome its guests were the dates on which I hoped to be received by Arkady. My offers of hospitality were a deferential enquiry about whether he would receive me, and where we might meet. The times of play indicated that any time was fine by me.
In a paragraph that came as near to reality as cover allowed, I reminded him of the amicable relations that had long existed between our two clubs in defiance of ever-changing tensions in the larger world, and signed myself Nicola Halliday (Mrs) because Arkady over the five years of our collaboration had known me as Nick, despite the fact that my real name was blazoned on Trieste’s official list of consular representatives. Mrs Halliday did not provide her home address. Arkady knew plenty of places to write to if he chose to do so.
Then I sat back and resigned myself to the long wait, because Arkady never took his big decisions in haste.
*
If I was apprehensive about what I had let myself in for with Arkady, my badminton battles with Ed and our political tours d’horizon at the Stammtisch were becoming ever more precious to me – and this despite the fact that Ed, to my grudging admiration, was beating me hands down.
It seemed to happen overnight. Suddenly he was playing a faster, freer, happier game, and the age gap between us was yawning at me. It took a session or two before I was able to relish his improvement objectively, and as best I could congratulate myself for my part in it. In other circumstances I might have cast round for a younger player to take him on, but when I proposed this to him he was so offended that I backed off.
The larger issues of my life were less easily resolved. Each morning I checked the Office’s cover addresses for Arkady’s response. Nothing. And if Arkady wasn’t my problem, Florence was. She had been friendly with Ilya and Denise but, press them as I might, they knew no more of her whereabouts or doings than any other member of the team. If Moira knew where to get hold of her, I was the last person she was telling. Every time I tried to imagine how Florence, of all people, could have walked out on her beloved agents, I failed. Every time I attempted to reconstruct her seminal encounter with Dom Trench, I failed again.
After much soul searching, I tried my luck with Ed. It was a long shot and I knew it. My makeshift cover story allowed Florence and myself to know nothing of each other beyond the one notional encounter in my notional friend’s office and one badminton session with Laura. All I had going for me otherwise was a growing hunch that the two had been mutually attracted on sight, but since I was now aware of Florence’s state of mind by the time she showed up at the Athleticus, it was hard to imagine she was in a mood to be attracted to anyone.
We’re sitting at the Stammtisch. We’ve finished our first pints and Ed has fetched us a second. He has just trounced me four–one to his understandable satisfaction if not to mine.
‘So how was the Chinese?’ I ask him, picking my moment.
‘Chinese who?’ – Ed as usual absorbed elsewhere.
‘The Golden Moon restaurant up the road, for God’s sake. Where we were all going to have dinner together until I had to rush off to rescue a business deal, remember?’
‘Oh yeah, right. Great. She loved the duck. Laura did. Her best thing ever. Waiters spoiled her rotten.’
‘And the girl? Whatever her name was? Florence? Was she good value?’
‘Oh yeah, well. Florence. She was great too.’
Is he clamming up on me or just being his usual churlish self? I keep trying anyway:
‘You don’t happen to have a number for her, by any chance? My chum called me up, the one she was temping for. Said she’d been terrific and he had a mind to offer her a full-time job but the agency’s not playing ball.’
Ed ponders this for a while. Frowns about it. Searches his mind or makes a show of doing so.
‘No, well, they wouldn’t, would they?’ he agrees. ‘Those agency sods would keep her on a string for the rest of her life if they could. Yeah. Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. No’ – followed by a diatribe against our reigning foreign secretary, ‘that fucking Etonian narcissistic elitist without a decent conviction in his body bar his own advancement’ et cetera.
*
If there is any consolation to be had from this interminable waiting period, apart from our Monday-evening badminton sessions, it is Sergei, aka Pitchfork. Overnight he has become the Haven’s prize agent. From the day his university term ended, Markus Schweizer, Swiss freelance journalist, has taken up residence in the first of his three North London districts. His aim, readily approved by Moscow, is to sample each district in turn and report on it. With no Florence to offer him, I have appointed Denise, state-educated, obsessed from childhood by all things Russian, as his keeper. Sergei has taken to her as if she were his lost sister. To lighten her load, I approve the support of other members of the Haven team. Their cover is not a problem. They can call themselves aspiring reporters, out-of-work actors or nothing at all. If Moscow’s London rezidentura were to turn out its entire counter-surveillance cavalry, it would come away empty-handed. Moscow’s incessant demands for locational details would tax the most diligent sleeper agent, but Sergei is equal to them, and Denise and Ilya are on hand to lend their assistance. The required photographs are taken with Sergei’s mobile phone only. No topographical detail is too slight for Anette aka Anastasia. Whenever a fresh set of requirements comes in from Moscow Centre, Sergei drafts his replies in English and I approve them. He translates them into Russian, and covertly I approve the Russian before it is encoded by Sergei using a one-time pad from his collection. By this means Sergei is made notionally answerable
for his own errors, and the tetchy correspondence with Centre that follows has the ring of authenticity. Forgery department has made a fine job of the invitation from Harvard University’s physics faculty. Sergei’s friend Barry is suitably awed. Thanks to Bryn Jordan’s ministrations in Washington, a Harvard physics professor will field any stray questions that come in from Barry or anywhere else. I send Bryn a personal note thanking him for his efforts and receive no reply.
Then the waiting again.
Waiting for Moscow Centre to stop dithering and settle for a single location in North London. Waiting for Florence to lift her head above the parapet and tell me what made her walk out on her agents and her career. Waiting for Arkady to come off the fence. Or not.
Then, as things will, everything started happening at once. Arkady has replied; not what you might call enthusiastically but a reply nonetheless. And not to London but to his preferred cover address in Bern: one plain envelope addressed to N. Halliday, Czech stamp, electronic type, and inside it one picture postcard of the Czech spa resort of Karlovy Vary and a brochure in Russian for a hotel ten kilometres outside the same town. And folded inside the hotel brochure a booking form with boxes to tick: dates required, accommodation, estimated time of arrival, allergies. Typed crosses in the boxes inform me that I am expected to check in at ten o’clock this coming Monday night. Given the warmth of our former relationship, it would be hard to imagine a more grudging response, but at least it says ‘come’.
Agent Running in the Field Page 11