My Name Is Nobody

by Matthew Richardson

  Buckland was Whitehall’s secret library, a classified version of the National Archives at Kew. It was the resting place for hundreds of thousands of secret files dating back to the early fifties. It covered everything from the Ministry of Defence, MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Joint Intelligence Committee, spanning the entire length of the Cold War and beyond to the present day.

  The collection was housed across a sprawling campus. The central nervous system was a circular-shaped room packed with banks of computers and some of the starrier effects on display: contingency plans signed off by Number 10 on what should happen in the event of nuclear war; old plans for emergency evacuation of the Royals should Buckingham Palace come under attack. Vine made his way through the room, trying to acclimatize. He had often heard of this place but never been. Looking at the rows of yellowing pages and files, he could imagine Cosmo Newton losing himself here for days. It was a paradise of paper, full of the heady smell of thumbed pages.

  He tried to put himself in Newton’s place now. Where would Newton have gone? What was he trying to find here? MIDAS. Hermes. Caesar. The first word was the only one capitalized, traditionally denoting the name of an operation. Newton was pedantic about these sorts of things. He wouldn’t have made a mistake on such basic matters of orthography.

  Vine took a seat at a computer station and used the mouse to summon the screen to life. He knew there was a chance that what he was about to do would cause alerts to be flagged across Whitehall. Armed police could be waiting for him when he tried to leave the building. But he had no other option. He had to find out what Cosmo Newton had been searching for just before he died, some clue that connected with the information about the Nobody mole and shed new light on Gabriel Wilde’s disappearance. He decided to eliminate the most obvious answer first, typing in MIDAS and waiting for any results to come up. Three did. He inched forwards in his chair, wary at such easy results. He scrolled down to the first one. As he looked at the date, he felt his spirits sink: MIDAS – 4 April 1947. He clicked on the link, and a photo of a mildewing document filled the screen. The type was scratchy and poor, but Vine made the effort to try and decipher it, scanning through a preliminary report on navy manoeuvres.

  He clicked off and scrolled down to the next two. Both were from 1951. Vine clicked on both and read them through. But there was nothing usable there. Newton had always been sceptical of the military. Spying was his life.

  The problem with trying to pick out a pattern was the overwhelming volume of data. He needed to narrow the field to have any hope of success. He reduced the search criteria to exclude MoD archives, and then began searching through for any synonym he could think of that Newton might have used: GOLD, TREASURE, BOUNTY. But still nothing came up.

  Next he tried a different approach. Though military operation names were now generated by computer, many spooks still indulged in picking their own. They were the signatures of a successful case officer. Whoever ran a department would brand their operations with a recognizable sequence – the names of famous battles in the Civil War, say, or the names of characters from Greek mythology. Vine narrowed down the search criteria further to just the MI5 and MI6 files and began trying out various other names: OLYMPUS, ATHENA, ZEUS …

  The first two produced an empty screen. But the last pulsed with a single hit. Vine clicked on it and saw the strapline at the top, subtly different from the others. CX/LANGLEY/GROSVENOR SQUARE. He clicked on the file, but a box came up: TOP SECRET/STRAP 4. He noted down the reference number and then consulted the nearest site map.

  Archive 311AB was in the basement, a foul-smelling place noisy with the sound of drains gurgling overhead. The light was poor, one of the bulbs long since extinguished. The entire area was bathed in a coppery fuzz. Vine began working his way along the shelves until he found the reference number for ZEUS, teasing out the box and taking it across to one of the viewing tables nearby. He checked to see if there was anyone else around, but he was alone. He opened the file, scanned the first page and then began flicking hurriedly through the rest.

  The entire file was heavy with redactions, the majority of the text blanked out. One of the only identifying marks on the paper was a date at the top of the first page: 9 August 2009.

  But that gave him the gossamer-thin thread he needed. He had a vague timeframe. From that he could begin to gather enough evidence to form some sort of pattern. He began working back through the other boxes on the shelf, discarding any that didn’t share a classical name as a reference point. Soon he began amassing different names: POSEIDON, APOLLO, HECTOR … All of them were dated between 2009 and 2011. All of them originated from MI6 but had been copied into Langley and the US embassy in London. All of them, more importantly, had been redacted to within an inch of their lives.

  It was nearing the two-hour mark when he finally saw the confirmation he needed. The page was a wall of scrubbed-out text, a deliberate dead end. He didn’t yet know where it led, or what the implications were. But he finally had evidence, removed from the computer database but still – whether through accident or intent – buried here in print form. He read the date and the word again.

  2 September 2011.

  MIDAS.

  22

  Parliament Square was alive with noise, a tangle of vehicles expiring with frustration. There was the silent flash of camera-phones and the rustle of umbrellas outside Westminster Abbey. Civil servants streamed from the faceless glass of the government buildings on Victoria Street. Behind them all, Big Ben chimed seven o’ clock.

  Vine continued on until he reached the Westminster Arms. The post-work rush had thinned, with just a desultory few drinkers milling around the ground floor. He navigated his way down to the basement and ordered a pint of Spitfire. Huddled in one of the booths was a small gathering nursing a variety of drinks. The rest of the space yawned empty.

  Vine found a secluded spot at the opposite end and tried to focus his mind. He could feel sadness threaten him now. The rush of adrenaline at finding Newton’s document and the file had begun to fracture. He was left instead with the ache of knowing that Cosmo Newton was truly gone. It was the plight of orphans to accumulate substitute parents and Newton had always been his. Vine could still hear every echo from that room in Trinity where Newton had propelled him into this world. It was Newton who had educated him in the laws of the Whitehall jungle and taught him how to survive in the field.

  MIDAS, Hermes, Caesar.

  Ignorance scratched at him, the pieces still refusing to cohere into any sort of order. Ahmed Yousef had told Alexander Cecil that there was a mole within British intelligence codenamed Nobody. That much he knew for sure. Somehow that connected with an operation – or perhaps a series of operations – called MIDAS, conducted with CIA involvement in 2011. All the evidence suggested that connecting those two empirical details had led Cosmo Newton to a breakthrough on the night he died. The urgency in his words had been clear: I think I may have found something … If I’m right, this changes everything. Newton had left a fallback in the safe deposit box to allow Vine to carry on his investigation if he was unable to.

  But, so far, the trail ended there. Everyone allowed into Buckland was graded STRAP 3 or above, which meant most files could be read without redactions. The fact that the MIDAS file was scraped clean of detail was noteworthy. It could mean many things: Langley could have insisted upon it, either at the time or retrospectively to protect a live asset; it dealt with an internal counter-espionage issue; or it involved some sort of black ops work, the remit of JSOC, the SAS and the SBS.

  Vine looked at the words in Newton’s file again. Nobody was the name of the mole; MIDAS was the name of the 2011 operation conducted with the CIA. But what about the remaining two words – Hermes, Caesar? MIDAS was in capitals to denote the name of an operation. There was a space, and then Hermes and Caesar were grouped together in the middle of the page. The surrounding data suggested they were therefore related. But how? If they weren’t the names of operations, what other fu
nction did they perform?

  Vine sipped distractedly at his drink, trying to shake off the sadness now and retreat into pattern-solving. There had to be some reason that Newton had left those two words close together. The gap suggested they weren’t directly related to Operation MIDAS, but logic dictated that there would be some connection to both MIDAS and the Nobody mole. The two names could be for assets, but codenaming an asset with such an obvious classical echo – MIDAS, Hermes, Caesar – would be clumsy tradecraft. Even the showiest case officer would insist on something unrelated to try and insulate the various parts of a single operation against detection.

  Vine rolled the words around his tongue again – Hermes, Caesar. He wondered if there was something more literal he could read into them. Hermes was the messenger god and a staple of Greek myth; Caesar was the aspiring autocrat who secured his place in the history of Western literature with a mere three words.

  Vine slowed his breathing and allowed his unconscious to work. The pattern would be in there somewhere, a logical inference that would allow him to build his way up to the correct answer. What was Newton alluding to? What buried reference was he urging Vine to see? Newton was steeped in the double-speak of the intelligence world, a meta-language swirling with threads of connection that only those fluent in the dialect could spot.

  Vine was about to take another gulp of his pint when he had an idea. He drew out his phone, another burner. One connecting thread began to suggest itself. Hermes was the messenger god. That meant communication and the delivery of messages. Caesar’s name had been put to other uses in the intelligence world, most famously with the Caesar Cipher – one of the oldest methods for confidential communications ever known. The final clue was personal. Great tradecraft rested on subverting expectation. Newton had always been an avowedly analogue spook. Vine wondered now if that was his final cover, curating the legend to serve another purpose altogether. It was a long shot, but the only logical path he could yet deduce.

  The Gmail login screen loaded. Vine typed in hermes@ for the email handle and then Caesar for the password. He pressed the sign-in button and waited for the screen to stutter with incomprehension.

  Instead, the buffering gave way to the familiar sight of a Gmail account. But it had one major difference.

  There were no emails in sight.

  23

  2013

  The invitation is inevitable. Despite Vine’s best attempts not to divulge his newfound happiness, Wilde has been nibbling at the edges of knowledge, teasing out a confession about a woman, then a description, finally a name. Once the details are known, Wilde has talked of little else. ‘Catch of the century, Sol,’ he proclaims. ‘And here’s us all thinking you were secretly scoring centuries for the other side.’

  Rose has to work late on Friday, so Vine picks her up from her flat in Vauxhall at a dreadful hour of Saturday morning. Everyone else is still warm in their beds as they hum their way through the deserted roads.

  ‘So seriously, Solomon’ – he marvels again, the only person who insists on giving his name its full due – ‘give me some tips. What’s he like?’

  Vine stares ahead at the road, the tuneless procession of grey. He tries to distil the essence of Gabriel Wilde. ‘He’s the last romantic,’ he says, ‘no practical sense at all. And people always mention the charm.’

  ‘Anyone on the go at the moment?’ she asks.

  Vine glances across at her. ‘Last I heard it was an actress of some kind, I think. Before that, it was one of the secretaries at the office. Before that, the daughter of a political grandee.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Not sure. Something to do with the environment.’

  ‘So I should lock my door tonight.’

  Vine smiles. ‘Might be an idea.’

  As they leave the motorway and begin shuddering along side roads, Vine feels the intimidating might of the country close in on him. The feeling doesn’t leave as they reach the sign for Broadway Manor, bumping across from the road on to the long stretch of gravel path that wends its way towards the house. The house has a cream-grey front with rows of mullioned windows, the entrance bordered on either side by fluted pillars. Today there is the residue of a recent event, a scatter of used coffee cups and paper plates, a marquee nearby flapping loudly in the breeze.

  Standing on the gravel driveway is Wilde himself. The swoop of black hair is cinematically rustled, the air of disordered charm in full flow with the weather-beaten Barbour jacket, claret-red cords and scuffed sandy brogues. Vine parks the car, turns off the ignition and feels himself relax as Rose gently rests a hand on his knee.

  Wilde is making his way across the gravel to meet them. He wraps Vine in his usual instinctive hug, like a politician smothering a crowd.

  ‘On time as ever, Sol. And this must be the divine Rose? The man barely speaks of anything else. He’s becoming quite a bore on the subject.’ He breaks away to peck at Rose’s cheeks. ‘Though now I can’t say I altogether blame him.’

  ‘That’s Gabriel for hello,’ says Vine, remaining watchful, all too familiar with Wilde’s guileless intimacy. ‘Did I hear mention of breakfast?’

  Wilde looks up at the sky and rubs his hands. ‘In good time. We haven’t worked up our appetites yet. Not quite the weather for a walk, I know, but we might catch a few minutes before those clouds do their worst.’

  After a forced march through fields and across lawns, they retire to the library for breakfast. The old library is a magnificent football-pitch of a room with bookcases lining the walls. Wilde scoops up a box of matches and lights the fire, the flames elbowing their way upwards.

  Vine stares at the frosted wedding-cake ceiling, the rich blue of the walls and the oaky depth of the bookcases. He walks over to an eye-level shelf nearby and fingers an edition towards him. He looks at the spine: A Mathematician’s Apology by G. H. Hardy. He has read this book more than a dozen times and has three brownish and thumbed copies, treasured since Cambridge. He remembers a phrase that has followed him through the years since: A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.

  The door eases shut. Wilde thuds down a large teak tray. Steam spirals up from three cups of tea. A serving dish in the middle overflows with sausages, pieces of bacon and brown toast clumsy with butter.

  Wilde sits down. He sees Vine’s book on the table and embarks on a long-running joke. ‘Ah … let me guess. Hardy. One of the novels or the poetry?’

  ‘Mathematics.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Puts us all to shame.’

  ‘Some of us more than others,’ says Vine.

  Wilde laughs and looks at Rose. ‘I don’t suppose Sol has ever happened to mention that he was a Senior Wrangler at Cambridge?’

  ‘Gabriel.’

  ‘Cricket blue, as well. Double century and a five-wicket haul against Oxford. Had his shirt framed, I think.’

  ‘Shut up …’

  ‘And an Apostle. All sorts of dubious male friends, which it’s probably better we don’t go into now.’

  ‘Control yourself, Wilde.’

  ‘Touchy bugger too, come to think of it …’ Wilde grabs a piece of toast, then lies back on the sofa with his feet outstretched. ‘Now, Rose. I’ve picked up most of it from Solomon, here, but I could do with a recap. The best legal brain of a generation, so he says. Harvard, a spell doing your bit for the world in Pakistan, legal training and then whisked away as intelligence counsel for the Attorney General’s Office. Now a sister-in-arms across the river.’

  Which, Vine recalls, is how they segue into the facts that haunt his professional life – the chaotic aftermath of the Arab Spring.

  ‘Makes you think, eh, Sol,’ says Wilde, slurping at the remains of his tea. ‘Rose here snaffling homegrown baddies, while we go on helping the Americans radicalize them abroad.’

  ‘Solomon is very pious on talking shop,’ says Rose, smiling at Wilde. ‘He never tells me anything.’

  ‘Sounds like Sol,’ says Wilde. ‘Always
has something to hide.’

  As they carry on talking, Vine feels the first ripple of unease. He tries to shrug it off. It is ridiculous. And yet it has skirted his thoughts ever since this trip has been planned. The tales of Gabriel Wilde’s conquests are legion. There have been rumours of a recent scandal involving the wife of an ambassador, while the ghosts of girlfriends past haunt the corridors of Vauxhall Cross. As he watches Wilde and Rose talk now, Vine feels a familiar nausea in his stomach.

  He is snapped out of it when Wilde leaps up suddenly from the chair and begins pacing the floor of the library.

  ‘You know, I’ve always wondered what it must be like to be in the middle of a revolution. Fighting for freedom, democracy … storming the barricades.’ Wilde wanders over to the mantelpiece by the fire. Above it is a small portrait of a woman, the detail of the painting drowned out by the lavish frame.

  Vine laughs. ‘Not planning for a run at Parliament, now, are we? Sir Gabriel Wilde, ninth baronet. Saviour of the nation.’

  Wilde remains where he is, eyes still taking in the portrait. ‘Stranger things have happened, Sol. The three of us against global terror. Sounds about a fair fight.’

  ‘Not sure I’ve got the ancestry for it.’

  ‘No, I’ve always had my doubts. Your semi-criminal youth.’

  ‘Of course you have.’

  Wilde turns to Rose. ‘You’ve heard about Sol’s life on the streets, have you, Rose? Told you where all the bodies are buried?’

  Rose smiles. ‘Why do you think I agreed to marry him?’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  Later, as Rose and Wilde go to begin the washing-up, Vine retraces his steps. He looks at the portrait more closely. It is one he has never seen before. The woman in the painting looks Middle Eastern and impossibly exotic, yet jarringly familiar at the same time. He is about to move closer when Wilde is suddenly drawing up next to him.