‘Don’t know.’
‘Really not?’
‘Really not.’
‘Guy Brammel has come up with a grudgefuck theory,’ he runs on, delighting in the term like a naughty boy. ‘Ever heard that one before? Grudgefuck?’
‘I’m afraid not. Cluster only recently, and never grudge. I’ve been abroad too long.’
‘Me neither. Thought I’d heard everything. But Guy’s got his teeth into it. A man on a grudgefuck mission is saying to the person he’s hopped into bed with – in this case Mother Russia – the only reason I’m here screwing you is because I hate my wife even more than I hate you. So it’s a grudgefuck. Might that play for your boy? What’s your personal take on it?’
‘Bryn, my personal take is: I took a hell of a beating last night, first from Shannon, then from my beloved friends and colleagues, so I’m rather wondering why I’m here.’
‘Yes, well, they did over-egg it a bit, it’s true,’ he agrees, open as ever to all points of view. ‘But then, nobody knows who they are just now, do they? Whole fucking country in disarray. Maybe that’s the clue to him. Britain in pieces on the floor, secret monk in search of an absolute, even if it involves absolute betrayal. But instead of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, he sneaks off to the Russians. Possible?’
I say anything is possible. A prolonged squeezing of the eyes and a beguiling smile warn me that he is about to venture into more perilous territory.
‘So tell me, Nat. For my ear alone. How did you personally respond, you as Shannon’s mentor, confessor, proxy daddy, what you will, when you spotted your young protégé, without a word of warning, cosying up to the overweening Gamma?’ – topping up my Scotch. ‘What went through your private and professional heads as you sat there on your tod, watching and listening in frank amazement? Don’t think too hard. Spout.’
In other times, sitting captive and alone with Bryn, I might indeed have unbared my innermost feelings to him. I might even have told him that, as I sat listening transfixed to Valentina’s voice, I imagined that I detected between her Georgian and Russian cadences the presence of an intruder that was neither: a copy, yes, but not the original. And that, at some point during a day of waiting, an answer of sorts had come to me. Not as a blinding revelation, but on tiptoe, like a latecomer to the theatre, edging his way down the row in the half-dark. Somewhere in the most distant rooms of my memory, I was hearing my mother’s voice raised to me in anger as she reproached me for some perceived dereliction in a language unknown to her current lover, before as quickly disowning it. But Valentina–Gamma had not disowned the German in her voice. Not to my ear. She was affecting it. She was imposing German cadences on her spoken English in order to cleanse it of its Russian–Georgian stain.
But even as this wild thought comes to me, more fancy than fact, something inside me tells me that it cannot on any account be shared with Bryn. Is this then the germinating moment of a scheme that is forming in my head, but I am not yet cleared for? I have often thought so.
‘What I suppose I felt, Bryn,’ I reply, taking up his question about my two heads, ‘was that Shannon must be suffering some sort of mental breakdown in place. Schizophrenia, big-time bipolarity, whatever the shrinks come up with. In which case, we amateurs are wasting our time trying to ascribe rational motives to him. And then of course there was the trigger, the final straw’ – why am I overreaching? – ‘his epiphany, for Christ’s sake. The one he denied having. The thing that actually made Sammy run, as we used to say.’
Bryn is still smiling but the smile is rock-hard, daring me to venture further.
‘Shall we cut to the chase?’ he enquires blandly, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘As of early this morning, Moscow Centre has requested a second meeting with Shannon one week hence and Shannon has consented to it. Centre’s haste may seem indecent, but to me it spells sound professional judgement. They fear for their source in the long term – who wouldn’t? – which means of course that we must be equally fast on our feet.’
A wave of spontaneous resentment comes to my aid.
‘You keep saying we as if it was a done thing, Bryn,’ I complain with our usual determined joviality. ‘What I find a bit hard to swallow is that all this stuff is happening over my head. I’m the author of Stardust, in case you’ve forgotten, so why am I not being kept informed of the progress of my own operation?’
‘You are being kept informed, dear boy. By me. To the rest of the Service you are history, and rightly so. If I’d had my way you’d never have got the Haven. Times are a-changing. You’re at the dangerous age. You always were, but it’s showing. Prue well?’
Sends her best, thank you, Bryn.
‘Is she conscious? To the Shannon thing?’
No, Bryn.
‘Keep it that way.’
Yes, Bryn.
Keep it that way? Meaning keep Prue in the dark about Ed? Prue, who only this morning pledged her unconditional loyalty, even if I should feel moved to tell the Office to shove it up their arses? Prue, as good a soldier-spouse as the Office could wish for, who never once by word or whisper betrayed the trust that the Office had invested in her? And now Bryn, of all people, is telling me she is not to be trusted? Fuck him.
‘Our sister Service is of course baying loudly for Shannon’s blood, which won’t come as any surprise to you,’ Bryn is saying. ‘Arrest him, shake him out, make an example of him, everybody gets a medal. Result: a national scandal that achieves bugger all and makes us look bloody fools bang in the middle of Brexit. So we take that option straight off the table, as far as I’m concerned.’
The ‘we’ again. He offers me the plate of cashews. I take a handful to satisfy him.
‘Olives?’
No thanks, Bryn.
‘You used to love them. Kalamata.’
Really not, thanks, Bryn.
‘Next option. We haul him into Head Office and make the classic pass at him. Okay, Shannon, you’re a fully identified agent of Moscow Centre and henceforth you’re under our control or you’re for the high jump. Think it would play? You know him. We don’t. Neither does his department. They think he’s got a girl but they’re not even sure about that. Could be a fellow. Could be his interior decorator. He’s fixing his flat, they say. Taken out a mortgage on his salary and bought the one upstairs. Did he tell you that?’
No, Bryn. He didn’t.
‘Did he tell you he’s got a girl?’
No, Bryn.
‘Then maybe he hasn’t. Some chaps can manage without, don’t ask me how. Maybe he’s one of the few.’
Maybe he is, Bryn.
‘So what’s your best guess if we make the classic pass at him?’
I give the question the consideration it deserves.
‘My best guess is, Bryn, that Shannon would tell you to go fuck yourselves.’
‘Why so?’
‘Try playing badminton with him. He’d rather go down with all guns blazing.’
‘We are not playing badminton, however.’
‘Ed doesn’t bend, Bryn. He’s not up for flattery or compromise or saving his own skin if he thinks the cause is greater than he is.’
‘Then he’s out for martyrdom,’ Bryn observes with satisfaction, as if recognizing a well-trodden path. ‘Meanwhile, we are of course engaged in the usual tug-of-war about who owns his body. We found him, ergo, for as long as we play him he’s ours. Once we’ve no more use for him, it’s game over and our sister Service has its wicked way. Now let me ask you this. Do you still love him? Not carnally. Love him for real?’
And that’s Bryn Jordan for you, the river you only cross once. Charms you, listens to your gripes and suggestions, never raises his voice, never judgemental, always above the fray, walks you round the garden until he owns the air you breathe, then skewers you.
*
‘I’m fond of him, Bryn. Or I was, until this blew up,’ I say lightly, after a long pull of whisky.
‘As he is of you, dear boy. Can you imagine him talking to an
yone else the way he talks to you? We can use that.’
‘But how, Bryn?’ I insist, with an earnest smile, playing the good disciple despite the chorus of conflicted voices resounding in what Bryn was pleased to call my private head. ‘I keep asking you, but somehow you don’t quite answer. Who’s we in this equation?’
The Father Christmas eyebrows rise to their extremity as he awards me the broadest of smiles.
‘Oh my dear boy. You and I together, who else?’
‘Doing what, if I may ask?’
‘What you’ve always done best! You befriend your man all ways up. You’re halfway there already. Judge your moment and go the other half. Tell him who you are, show him the error of his ways, calmly, undramatically, and turn him. The moment he says “yes I will, Nat,” put a halter round his neck and lead him gently into the paddock.’
‘And when I’ve led him gently in?’
‘We play him back. Keep him beavering away at his day job, feed him carefully concocted disinformation which he passes up the pipeline to Moscow. We run him for as long as he lasts, and once we’ve done with him we let our sister Service wrap up the Gamma network to the sound of trumpets. You get a commendation from the Chief, we cheer you on your way and you’ve done the best you can for your young pal. Bravo. Any less would be disloyal, more would be culpable. And now hear this,’ he goes on vigorously, before I have a chance to object.
*
Bryn has no need of notes. He never did have. He isn’t reeling off facts and figures at me from his Office mobile. He’s not pausing, frowning, searching his mind for that irritating detail he has mislaid. This is the man who learned fluent Russian in one year flat at the School of Soviet Studies in Rome and added Mandarin to his portfolio in his spare time.
‘Over the last nine months, your friend Shannon has formally declared to his employers five visits in toto to European diplomatic missions based here in London. Two to the French Embassy for cultural events solely. Three to the German Embassy, one for their Day of German Unity, one to an award ceremony for British teachers of the German language. And one for social purposes undefined. You said something’ – abruptly.
‘Just listening, Bryn. Just listening.’
If I had said something, it was only in my head.
‘All such visits were approved by his employing department, whether in advance or retrospectively we may not know, but the dates are logged and you have them here’ – conjuring a zip-up folder from beside him. ‘And one unexplained phone call from a public call box in Hoxton to the German Embassy. He asks for a Frau Brandt from their travel department and is correctly told they haven’t got a Frau Brandt.’
He pauses, but only to make sure I am attending. He needn’t bother. I’m transfixed.
‘We also learn, as the street cameras open their hearts to us, that in the course of his cycle ride to Ground Beta yesterday evening, Shannon parked his bike and sat in a church for twenty minutes’ – an indulgent smile.
‘What sort of church?’
‘Low. The only sort that leaves its doors open these days. No silver, no sacred paintings, no raiment worth a damn.’
‘Who did he talk to?’
‘Nobody. There were a couple of rough sleepers, both bona fide, and an old nelly in black across the aisle. And a verger. Shannon didn’t kneel, according to the verger. Sat. Then walked out and cycled off again. So’ – with revived relish – ‘what was he up to? Was he committing his soul to his Maker? Pretty bloody odd moment to choose in my judgement, but every man to his own. Or was he making sure his back was clear? I favour the second. What do you reckon he was up to on his visits to the French and German embassies?’
He tops up our glasses yet again, sits impatiently back and waits for my answer – much as I do, but none immediately occurs to me.
‘Well, Bryn. Maybe you go first, for a change,’ I suggest, playing his own game at him, which he enjoys.
‘For my money, he was embassy trawling,’ he replies with satisfaction. ‘Sniffing out extra morsels of intelligence to feed his Russian addiction. He may have played the ingénu with Gamma but in my view he’s in for the long haul, if he doesn’t make a horse’s arse of himself in the meantime. Back to you. As many questions as you like.’
There is only one question I want to ask, but instinct tells me to kick off with a soft one. I select Dom Trench.
‘Dom!’ he exclaims. ‘Oh my dear Lord! Dom! Outer darkness. Indefinite gardening leave without the option.’
‘Why? What’s his sin?’
‘Being recruited by us in the first place. That’s our sin. Sometimes our dear Office loves larceny too well. Marrying above his weight is his sin. And being caught with his pants down by a bunch of muckrakers on the dark web. They got a couple of details wrong, but too many right. Are you bonking that girl who walked out on us by the way? Florence?’ – with the most diffident of smiles.
‘I’m not bonking Florence, Bryn.’
‘Never did?’
‘Never did.’
‘Then why call her from a public phone box and take her out to dinner?’
‘She walked out on the Haven and left her agents in the lurch. She’s a mixed-up girl and I felt I should stay in touch with her.’ Too many excuses, but never mind.
‘Well, be bloody careful from now on. She’s out of bounds and so are you. Any more questions? Take your time.’
I take my time. And more time.
‘Bryn.’
‘Dear boy?’
‘What the hell’s Operation Jericho?’ I ask.
*
To non-believers the sanctity of codeword material is hard to convey. The codewords themselves, regularly altered in midstream to confuse the enemy, are treated with the same secrecy as their content. For a member of the indoctrinated few to utter a codeword within the hearing of those outside the tent would qualify in Bryn’s lexicon as mortal sin. Yet here am I, of all people, demanding of the iconic head of Russia department: what the hell’s Jericho?
‘I mean, Christ, Bryn,’ I insist, undaunted by his rigid smile, ‘Shannon took one glance at the stuff as it went through the copier and that was it. Whatever he saw, or thinks he saw, that did it. What do I say if he calls me on it? Tell him I’ve no idea what he’s talking about? That’s not showing him the error of his ways. That’s not putting a halter round his neck and leading him gently in.’ And more forcefully: ‘Shannon knows what Jericho is all about—’
‘Thinks he does.’
‘—and Moscow knows. Gamma is apparently so excited by Jericho that she takes on the job herself, with Moscow providing a full supporting cast.’
The smile widens in seeming assent but the lips remain tight shut as if resolved that no word shall pass them.
‘A dialogue,’ he says at last. ‘A dialogue between adults.’
‘Which adults?’
He ignores the question.
‘We are a divided nation, Nat, as you will have noticed. The divisions between us across the country are neatly reflected in the divisions between our masters. No two ministers think the same way on the same day. It would not therefore be surprising if the intelligence requirements they hand down to us fluctuate with the moment, even to the point of contradicting each other. After all, part of our remit is to think the unthinkable. How many times have we old Russian hands done just that, sitting here in this very room, thinking the unthinkable?’
He is reaching for an aphorism. As usual, he finds one: ‘Signposts don’t walk in the direction they point, Nat. It is we humble mortals who must choose which way to go. The signpost is not responsible for our decision. Well, is it?’
No, Bryn, it isn’t. Or it is. Either way, you’re pulling a lot of wool across my eyes.
‘But I am allowed to assume that you are KIM/1?’ I suggest. ‘As head of our mission to Washington. Or is that an assumption too far?’
‘My dear boy. Assume what you will.’
‘But that’s all you’re proposing to tell me?�
�
‘What more can you possibly need to know? Here’s a snippet for you, and it’s all you get. The top-secret dialogue in question is taking place between our American cousins and ourselves. Its purpose is exploratory, a feeling-out. It is being conducted at the highest level. The Service is the intermediary, everything under discussion is theoretical, nothing is written in stone. Shannon by his own testimony saw one piddling section of a fifty-four-page document, memorized it, probably inaccurately, and drew his own misguided conclusions, which he then conveyed to Moscow. We have no idea which piddling section. He has been caught in flagrante – thanks, one may add, to your endeavours, even if that was not your aim. You have no need to engage him in any sort of dialectic. You show him the whip. You tell him you won’t use it unless you have to.’
‘And that’s all I can know?’
‘And more than you need. For a moment I allowed sentiment to get the better of me. Take this. It’s one-to-one only. I’m shuttling back and forth to DC, so you won’t get me while I’m airborne.’
The abrupt ‘take this’ is accompanied by the clatter of a metallic object tossed on to the drinks table between us. It is a silver-grey smartphone, the self-same model I used to give my agents. I look at it, then at Bryn, then again at the smartphone. With a show of reluctance I pick it up and, with Bryn’s eyes still upon me, consign it to my jacket pocket. His face softens and his voice resumes its geniality.
‘You’ll be Shannon’s saviour, Nat,’ he tells me for my consolation. ‘Nobody else is going to be half as gentle with him as you are. If you find yourself havering, think of the alternatives. Want me to hand him over to Guy Brammel?’
I think of the alternatives, if not quite the ones he has in mind. He stands, I stand with him. He takes my arm. He often did. He prides himself on being touchy-feely. We embark on the long march back along the railway carriage, past portraits of ancestral Jordans in lace.
‘Family all well otherwise?’
I tell him that Steff is engaged to be married.
‘My goodness, Nat, she’s only about nine!’
Mutual chuckles.
‘And Ah Chan has taken up painting in a big way,’ he informs me. ‘Mega exhibition coming up in Cork Street, no less. No more bloody pastel. No more bloody watercolour. No more bloody gouache. It’s oils or bust. Your Prue used to be quite complimentary about her work, as I remember.’
Agent Running in the Field Page 21