Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  ‘Don’t be silly. Anyone would realise that intelligence agencies need to meet regularly – especially these days. You can trust me, and besides, who would I tell? Karl at the office?’ he added sarcastically.

  ‘I know,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘It’s just that I’m finding it hard to get used to the fact so many things are confidential where I’m working now.’

  ‘I can imagine. You’re used to openness. You used to believe in it so strongly.’

  ‘I still do. And C’s speech is going to be about the need for greater openness with the public. That’s why he wants me there. I’m having sessions with the press, both about my own role and about the speech.’

  ‘Have you seen it yet?’

  ‘I’ve seen a version. I don’t think it’s the final text. ‘

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Yes, actually it is. I helped draft part of it but he’s made a lot of amendments and additions. He writes very clearly.’ Like most of his staff, she thought. She had learned very quickly to respect the acuity of her new colleagues at MI6. Contrary to her preconceptions, there were no duds among them as far as she could tell. She said now, ‘He says he wants me to help him with all his speeches in future.’

  ‘That’s great. You know, I used to write speeches,’ Laurenz said.

  ‘When was that?’ asked Jasminder, impressed by the addition of yet another string to his bow.

  ‘A few years ago. I did it for the president of the bank when he had to address outside organisations. I’m not sure I was very good at it; I bet you’re much better than I ever was.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She was struck as always by his modesty. Laurenz was clearly good at almost everything he turned his hand to, but you would never know it from his diffident manner. She said, ‘I’ve given a lot of talks in my time, but to be honest, I usually just take a fistful of notes I’ve scribbled and wing it. But C’s speech is a proper text. The intention is to release it after the event.’

  ‘I’d love to see it, and your suggestions too. May I?’

  At first, Jasminder was taken aback. She actually had the speech in her briefcase, along with her comments and several offered by senior officers whom C had asked to read his early draft. Geoffrey Fane had made clear his own disagreement with its call for greater openness and pointedly corrected a few minor grammatical errors; Wheatcroft, another old hand, had tried to tone down its frank account of the Service’s past penchant for secrecy.

  The text of the speech she had in her bag was ‘Confidential’, which was practically the lowest level of document classification, and that was only because C didn’t want it to become public until after he had given it. It was hard to see what harm there could possibly be in letting Laurenz have an advance look. There was nothing secret about it, really; part of the purpose of giving it was to have it covered in the media.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. They were waiting for the lift in Laurenz’s building. ‘I’d be interested in what you think. Just don’t tell anyone you’ve seen it.’

  She said this lightly but with a touch of concern Laurenz must have picked up. He put an arm around her and said soothingly, ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

  30

  In Berlin, C’s speech went down well with the conference audience comprised of senior members of European intelligence services and some European politicians. While he was speaking, a text of the speech was released to invited members of the media and afterwards Jasminder conducted a Q&A session with them.

  That had proved very challenging: many of the reporters seemed sceptical about the new ideas for greater openness just outlined. BBC’s Newsnight wanted to know why the press had been excluded from the event. In fact, how did they even know that the text they had been given was what he’d actually said?

  Jasminder replied that many of the intelligence officers attending did not wish their identities to be known publicly, for obvious reasons. And she could assure the Newsnight team that they had the actual text. Next a reporter from the Guardian pressed Jasminder on what he described as her volte face on civil liberties.

  Was she not colluding with a secretive intelligence service in helping it to pretend that it was being more open? Would they now tell us, for example, what actual harm had been done to Western countries by whistle-blowers revealing the massive intrusion into the privacy of innocent people?

  Not without jeopardising the safety of employees and sources and thus compounding the damage that had been done, was how she’d fielded this.

  Yes, but damage to the intelligence services was one thing; what damage had been done to ordinary Western citizens?

  Well, most people felt the intelligence services were working on behalf of the public, not to oppress them but to try and keep them safe, so damage to the former meant damage to the latter.

  Didn’t this contradict Jasminder’s own concerns, expressed often enough in the past, about the need to oversee security activities, to make sure ordinary people’s rights were not abused?

  On the contrary, the new openness was intended to address just that issue. And so it went on.

  Jasminder was used to being the interrogator on such matters and it had been an extraordinary feeling to be the target of these questions, but afterwards a reporter from the New York Times had come up and told her she’d been a breath of fresh air in the clandestine world of intelligence. Better still, C had said he’d heard she’d done very well, and even Geoffrey Fane, who no doubt had a source in the press conference, gave a clipped ‘Alpha work, my dear, alpha work’ as he passed her in a corridor on her return.

  She’d gone home on a high, and for a change Laurenz came over to her place. He brought with him a bottle of champagne with a bright red ribbon tied around its neck. He seemed almost as excited as she was, which was very flattering. ‘I want to hear all about it,’ he said.

  ‘Read tomorrow’s Guardian, and then you can decide how I did in the Q&A. As for C’s speech, you’ve already read it!’

  ‘I know, but what about the sessions – were they good?’

  ‘I wasn’t at any of them. They were discussing high-level intelligence. That’s not my area.’

  ‘Really? Do you see the papers for them?’

  ‘I saw the agendas, so I know what areas they were discussing, but not the papers – they’re Top Secret.’

  ‘Still, what you do see must be fascinating. I’d love to see the agendas.’

  She nodded vaguely, feeling uneasy. When Laurenz added, ‘Could I?’ she wished she hadn’t said there was anything at all she was allowed to see – other than C’s speech.

  ‘Laurenz, I’m really not supposed to show you anything. I’m not even meant to talk about my work.’

  He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Bah! Everybody talks about their work with their partners. Do you really think your C doesn’t tell his wife why he’s had a bad day at the office? Or when something’s gone terribly wrong and he’s worried sick?’

  Actually, from what she’d seen of C, Jasminder was pretty confident he didn’t. Throughout MI6, there seemed to be very little casual chat about work of the kind you’d find in any other workplace. People at Vauxhall seemed, without making any kind of an issue of it, to operate under a code of ‘need to know’ that everyone understood. It was an ethos that made life simpler, Jasminder had come to realise, because it avoided your having to decide all the time who you could talk to about what. When in doubt, you simply didn’t open your mouth.

  Sensing she couldn’t adequately explain this to Laurenz, she said simply, ‘I know what I say to you will never be repeated. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘Well, what is the point then? What’s the problem?’ His voice was distinctly less gentle. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘It’s not as if I’m asking you to reveal your nation’s secrets, is it? It’s just an agenda for meetings that have already happened. For God’s sake, lots of people must know the agenda
now and it’s all over anyway. Don’t you understand – it could assist me a great deal. If I know the “hot spots” for intelligence services, then it will help me know where I have to protect my clients. They won’t know why; no one will.’

  ‘But I’m not supposed to—’

  ‘Can’t you help me with this little thing? If you had a memory stick, it won’t take much more than a nanosecond to download the agenda, and maybe some of the papers too. No one would know.’

  ‘On the contrary. If I did that, I happen to know that a signal would flash across half the screens in the IT security room, saying an unauthorised download was taking place. Memory sticks are forbidden. Even having one in your bag or your pocket can get you suspended.’

  ‘All right,’ Laurenz said, but he wasn’t through yet. ‘What about a photocopy? The agenda must have been photocopied for the meetings and it can’t be more than a page or two.’

  ‘That would be just as bad,’ said Jasminder, wishing he would understand.

  ‘But it wouldn’t trigger an alarm if you brought one home. And I can’t imagine they look through your bag every time you leave. You had C’s speech at home after all.’

  She didn’t reply to this and waited a second before she said, ‘Anyway, should we go out to eat tonight? I haven’t got much in the house.’

  Laurenz was standing by the window, his back to her. He gave a deep sigh. ‘I think it might be best if I just went home.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked in surprise.

  He turned to face her, a gloomy expression on his face. ‘I can’t live with distrust again. I had that with my wife all the time – where are you going? Where have you been?’

  ‘But I’m not like that,’ Jasminder protested. It seemed terribly unfair, comparing her reluctance to violate state security with his wife’s jealousy and possessiveness.

  ‘It amounts to the same thing. No one in the world would know you’d helped me except us. And, believe me, it would help me a lot. My business is always competitive, but lately it’s got even worse.’ Laurenz added dolefully, ‘I hate to admit it but I think I’m falling a bit behind. Last week one of my major clients threatened to leave me. He said he wasn’t sure I was “cutting edge” enough.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to trouble you with my worries – you have enough on your plate. And,’ he said, then hesitated, ‘I was worried you might think less of me.’

  ‘But you know I respect you. Everybody has setbacks sometimes; you must never think I don’t understand that.’ She felt it was critical to reassure him; there was something so awful about his apparent distress. She couldn’t bear the thought of his walking out now. ‘Listen, I will get you the agenda. But you must promise me that even if it helps you with your clients, no one will ever know.’

  He came over to her with arms extended. ‘No one will know,’ he whispered into her ear, and as he enveloped her in a reassuring hug Jasminder hoped he wouldn’t ask her to do anything like this again.

  31

  Liz had no difficulty in recognising her tour group at Stansted airport. The fluorescent orange baggage tags bearing a logo and the words ‘Uni Tours’ could clearly be seen even across the crowded concourse. The group looked much as she expected – mainly middle-aged, middle-class, more women than men. She was the youngest by far, except for the leader, Professor Anthony Curtis, who was standing in the centre of the group, holding a clipboard.

  ‘Ah, Miss Ryder,’ he said when Liz introduced herself under her cover name. ‘Welcome.’ He ticked the list on his clipboard. ‘You’re our last member so we can all check in now.’ He herded the group towards the desk for the Easy Jet flight to Tallinn.

  Professor Curtis, who held the Chair of Baltic History and Politics at Cambridge, looked to be not much older than Liz – in his early forties perhaps. He was a short man with cropped blond hair and a small pointed goatee beard. His teeth gleamed white in his tanned face and when he smiled he looked startlingly like the smaller, younger brother of Richard Branson.

  He shepherded his flock through checkin, and assisted a couple of elderly Scottish ladies, the Misses Finlaison, to lift their hand baggage onto the X-ray machine. One of them had put her sponge bag in her hand baggage and was unwilling to abandon some of the larger items. It wasn’t until Liz, who was next to her in the queue, promised to go with her to the chemist’s in the departure lounge to replace them that she could be persuaded to move on, by which time a queue of grumbling passengers had built up behind them.

  As the only single traveller, Liz found herself sitting next to Curtis on the plane. ‘Thanks for your help with Miss Finlaison,’ he said, with a flash of his gleaming teeth. ‘I thought we were in for trouble there.’

  ‘Happy to help. They’re both very sweet,’ said Liz.

  ‘I noticed you only booked to come last week. Was it a sudden impulse?’

  ‘Well, yes. It was really,’ replied Liz, moving into cover mode. ‘My mother died three weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ murmured Curtis.

  ‘It wasn’t unexpected. In fact it was something of a relief. She’d been ill for over a year. I’ve been looking after her and, when it finally happened, I felt utterly exhausted. The doctor said that after everything was sorted, I should take a holiday. But I don’t like sitting on the beach, so I looked for something more interesting and I came across this tour. It still had a vacancy and I decided to come. I’ve never been to any of the Baltic states before and I thought Tallinn looked lovely. And obviously it has a fascinating history too.’ She paused, waiting to see how this went down with the Professor.

  ‘I’m so glad you were able to join us. It is nice to have someone more my own age,’ he replied with a grin. ‘These tours can tend towards the geriatric. I have to be careful not to overdo the walking, but there will be time for wandering around. I don’t pack too much in or people start to flag.’

  That’s good, thought Liz. I should be able to get away without being noticed.

  They chatted on and off for the rest of the flight. Liz found out that his father, now dead, had been a banker in Gothenburg, and his mother was from Sweden. He’d spent a lot of his childhood there. When his father retired the family had moved to Cambridge and he now lived with his mother in the old family home. He was unmarried.

  In return for all this information, she fed in a bit more of her cover story: she had been a primary school teacher in Norfolk until her mother had fallen ill, and had given up work to look after her mother at home in Wiltshire. Norfolk turned out to be a bit of a cover mistake as Curtis knew the county well and wanted to know where she had lived and which school she had taught at.

  ‘I lived in Swaffham,’ she said, mentally thanking Peggy for her thorough brief, ‘and I taught at a school in a nearby village, but it’s closed now.’ Thankfully he turned out not to know Swaffham, so she was spared deploying her detailed knowledge of the Market Place and surrounding pubs.

  By the time they’d arrived in Tallinn and checked into the hotel, it was five in the afternoon local time. Nothing was in the programme until a pre-dinner orientation talk by the Professor at seven, so Liz took the opportunity to go off by herself and reconnoitre the town – and locate where she was due to meet Mischa in two days’ time.

  The hotel was in the centre of the old town in what had formerly been a merchant’s house. Liz stood in the street outside for a moment, looking at it and thinking how charming it was with its white-painted walls, gables and steeply sloping red-tiled roofs. Like an illustration in a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, she thought.

  The town was busy, full of tourists of various nationalities. As she strolled around she was alert for surveillance but could discern no sign of anyone taking a particular interest in her. She returned to the hotel in time for the talk, confident that her real purpose for being there remained undetected – or as confident, she thought, as you could be in an ex-Soviet republic.

  She l
istened with interest to what Anthony Curtis had to say about the troubled recent history of Estonia – how it had been often overrun, first by the Danes and the Swedes and, more recently, in turn by the Russians, the Germans, and the Russians again. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Soviet troops, Estonia had flourished commercially. It had become known for its entrepreneurial ventures in IT, with dozens of start-up companies forming a Baltic version of Silicon Valley. But it was a precarious prosperity. The ethnic mix of the country made it vulnerable to the sort of destabilisation that had taken place in Ukraine.

  Liz thought of Mischa who, if the Americans were right, was there to assess what weapons would be needed if the Russians did decide to act; she thought too of the covert CIA Station that Andy Bokus was so anxious to protect. It was clear to her that meddling was already going on here in a big way.

  By dinnertime the whole party seemed to know that Liz Ryder had just lost her mother, and everyone was being so sympathetic that she began to feel rather guilty about killing off her remaining parent. The Misses Finlaison showed signs of wanting to mother her themselves, enquiring solicitously where she was going to live and what she would do next. She managed to avoid sitting next to them at dinner and chose a seat next to Major Sanderson, whose wife had temporarily deserted him to join a group of ladies. Anthony Curtis sat on Liz’s other side.

  She soon discovered why the Major’s wife had chosen to sit somewhere else. Like most of his generation of middle-class Englishmen, the Major had superficially good manners but a penchant for talking exclusively about himself. Liz relaxed and let her mind wander as, for the better part of two courses, the Major described in detail his long career, which stretched from Aden to Antrim. It was only as he paused to spear his last piece of pork, cooked with potatoes in a briny sour cream sauce, that Anthony Curtis was able to weigh in from Liz’s other side.