Tinker, Tailor, Schoolmum, Spy

by Faye Brann

From the beginning of their relationship, she and Anatoli had a chemistry which had tempted her to go beyond the usual conventions of asset recruitment. They’d become lovers and friends; even at the time, she knew she was treading on dangerous ground. When she revealed who she really was, he’d been so angry: he couldn’t get over the idea that she’d used him to get what she wanted, put him in harm’s way, and, worst of all, that she’d suckered him into a relationship that was, in his eyes, nothing more than a huge lie. Anatoli left London and left her; upset, she neglected to pick up on intel that would have alerted her to a leak, and their JOPS undercover operative, Adam, had been killed in Moscow shortly after. The operation folded, the department was in disgrace and Vicky even more so. She’d been put on desk duty immediately and threatened with an internal investigation. The whole thing had been one huge, embarrassing mess.

  Vicky closed up the report. Jonathan been right all along, of course. Russians very rarely betrayed their own, despite what you see in the movies. She’d been so naïve, so overconfident in her own abilities. If she could do it all again, things would be very different. She traced her fingers over Anatoli’s photo one more time. Where did he end up? Was he married, with children, or still a bachelor with a penchant for English art appraisers? Or was he dead, another body to add to the list? Maybe he was still making a tidy living working for Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes, and they wanted to try and recruit him again. Surely Jonathan wouldn’t pick her for the job though? He’d be in for a shock if he thought a forty-six-year-old in double Spanx and a granny bra would seduce an asset when the twenty-something version hadn’t been able to.

  She stuffed the photo and reports back into the envelope. She couldn’t do all this again. She would call Jonathan on Monday and tell him that, whatever it was, they needed to find someone else. She’d get rid of the paperwork over the weekend, and that would be that.

  At pick-up time, she was waiting with James for Evie to appear when there was a tap on her shoulder.

  ‘And how were we feeling this morning?’ Kate’s grin told her she had already anticipated the answer.

  Vicky made a face.

  ‘Same here. Oh my god, though, you should have seen the state of you trying to leave the bar. It’s a miracle you made it home.’

  ‘Barely, to be honest. I threw up, then fell asleep on the sofa.’

  Kate laughed; a great big belly laugh that caught the attention of the mums all around before the other women went back to their various conversations.

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad we got you drunk enough to say yes to the PTA. Good news – we got another new recruit today as well,’ Kate said, glancing back at the crowd of gossiping mums and waving at someone. ‘A rather unexpected one …’

  Matisse sashayed over.

  ‘Hi, Matisse. I was just telling Vicky you’re joining us on the PTA.’

  ‘Oui, yes, I am,’ she replied, giving them both a stiff smile. ‘I decided that now we are settled and the house refurbishment is finished, I want to do something more with my time.’

  ‘Well, I know Becky is really pleased to have you on board,’ Kate said. ‘All these new recruits! It’s like buses, isn’t it, Vicky?’

  Matisse looked confused. ‘Buses?’

  ‘Yes, you know, they all come at once …’

  ‘I never took a bus before.’

  ‘How could you live in London and never get on a bus?’ Vicky was incredulous.

  ‘It is not so difficult. Sacha has his driver for the days I do not want to drive.’

  Of course he did. Vicky exchanged glances with Kate. No one knew what Sacha did for a living and though Vicky had a couple of ideas, none of them were good.

  The school doors opened and Dmitri bounded towards them, saving everyone from any further stilted conversation. Matisse reached out to him and gave him an enormous hug. It was the first time Vicky had ever noticed her smiling.

  ‘Bonjour!’ she said to him, bending down to hold his face. ‘My golden boy! How was your day?’

  ‘Is Papa home? Do you have a snack?’ Dmitri rummaged in Matisse’s Hermès bag, looking for treats.

  Matisse switched to Russian. ‘Papa is making a deal in his office today, and he says it is very important to stay quiet when we get home, or he will be angry.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Dmitri’s face fell. Vicky’s mind drifted absently to the photo of Anatoli, and to the file she’d pushed under the passenger seat of the car earlier. It was a long time since she’d heard Russian spoken out loud.

  Matisse switched back to English to address Vicky and Kate. ‘Well, we have to go. Have a nice weekend.’ She waved farewell and, as her shirt sleeve rode up, Vicky noticed the faint impression of a series of finger-shaped bruises around her upper arm. When his wife didn’t do as she was told, how angry did Sacha get, exactly?

  It was none of her business. And yet, the Kozlovsky family obviously had secrets they didn’t want anyone knowing about. She would keep an eye on Matisse from now on. Vicky felt adrenaline kick in at the idea and found herself thinking about Anatoli again. What had he done – or what was he about to do? Her heart sped up and her head filled with possibilities.

  ‘Erm, hello, Mum?’ Evie was standing in front of her, waiting for some sort of sign of acknowledgement.

  ‘Sorry, darling, hi, I didn’t even see you.’ Vicky waved at the teacher standing by the door and grabbed Evie’s bulging rucksack from her. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘It was great, I got a golden scroll in assembly today for my writing. And me and Isobel are going to be playing in the netball team next week as well, Miss Burnwood told us today in P.E.’

  ‘Wow, that’s great, Evie,’ Vicky said. ‘Well done. When’s the match?’

  ‘It’s next Wednesday after school. We’re getting a bus there and back, but Miss Burnwood said you can come and watch too, if you like. Where’s James?’

  ‘Well I’d love to come if that’s okay. I’ll have to bring James too, of course.’ She registered Evie’s question. ‘Where is James?’

  ‘I just said that,’ Evie said, looking around.

  Vicky’s eyes darted towards the open gate where parents were leaving hand in hand with their kids. No sign. She felt herself panic. They’d been in the house. They’d found her at the supermarket. What if they’d been trying to warn her of something … what if James had been—

  ‘Mum, look, he’s playing in the playground; I can see him just over there.’ Evie pointed, and Vicky saw with some relief that her little boy was giggling and running about on the padded green area by the climbing frame. She exhaled and waved at him.

  ‘Can I see if Isobel’s mum is coming too?’ Evie said.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To the netball match, Mum. God you’re so embarrassing when you’re being dumb.’

  ‘Watch your manners, Evie. I don’t appreciate your tone.’

  Evie refused to offer an apology, folded her arms, and stalked across the playground towards James, leaving Vicky to trail after her.

  ‘Evie!’ James’s chubby face lit up at the sight of his sister and he ran over to them both. To his delight, Evie picked him up and swung him around.

  Vicky couldn’t help herself; she loved them even when they were being revolting. She loved them more than anything. ‘James, sweetie, don’t run off to play in future without telling Mummy where you’re going.’ She gave his hair a ruffle. It still had that lovely baby-soft feel to it. ‘And Evie?’ Evie gave her a sideways glance as Vicky moved to make peace. ‘I’m really proud of you, making the netball team, and for your golden scroll.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ Dispute over, they all walked hand in hand to the car. She unlocked the doors and lifted James into his seat before going around the other side and risking a kiss on her daughter’s cheek. As Vicky started the engine, Evie spoke again from the back.

  ‘What did you do today, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, the usual groceries and stuff,’ she said. She didn’t mention the bit about being recal
led to the Secret Service while she was on the toilet.

  ‘Katie says her mum’s going back to work after Christmas,’ Evie said.

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘I heard you talking about going back to work, with Dad. Why don’t you go back to your old job, that you did before we were born?’

  ‘Because there’s three of you to think about, and my job before I had you was pretty full-on.’

  ‘Can’t you just do it for three days a week or, like, just work when we’re at school? Or work from home? Loads of other mums do stuff like that.’

  Vicky briefly imagined trying to negotiate a Secret Service job-share. ‘I don’t know, Evie. It’s not as easy as it sounds, to do the kind of job I used to do with you three kids to look after as well.’ She signalled and pulled out of the parking space. ‘But in the meantime, I’m doing the PTA.’

  ‘Isobel’s mum doesn’t like the PTA; she says it’s for people with nothing better to do.’

  ‘Well, Isobel’s mum doesn’t know everything,’ Vicky said, slamming on the indicator with so much force she thought the lever would fly off.

  ‘I know, Mum. Calm down.’

  Vicky paused and tried to think of another way to explain things to her daughter.

  ‘The PTA is an important part of the school life, and the people that do it give up their time because they are good people who want to help,’ she said.

  ‘I get it, Mum.’ There was a pause before Evie spoke again, in a hesitant voice. ‘If you’re doing the PTA, does that mean you’re going to be in school more?’

  Vicky sighed. ‘You won’t even know I’m there, Evie. I promise.’

  In the ten minutes or so it took to get home through the swathes of after-school traffic, she thought about her conversations with Evie, with Chris, and the girls last night, and all the feelings she’d had since last Thursday when she’d first got the message.

  Whatever she chose to tell herself, there was no doubt she was tempted by the idea, intrigued to know why JOPS wanted her, and flattered they’d asked. The PTA seemed a poor substitute for the Secret Service, as far as doing something meaningful with her time was concerned. But the problem remained; that her job was never – could never be – part time. It was the most full-on, full-time job you could get. It would mean years of her life wiped clean and reinvented. Lying to everyone she loved about who she was and what she did. Being constantly vigilant in case someone was out to get her or her family … the thought niggled her, that maybe someone was out to get her family. Maybe not Anatoli himself, but someone associated with him, who’d found out about her somehow and was close by. She couldn’t bear the thought of putting Chris and the children in danger. The art world was full of crooks of all shapes and sizes – drug smuggling and money laundering were the usual points of entry – but she’d gained information that led to arrests for far greater, more gruesome crimes committed by all sorts of terrible people. Anatoli’s refusal to help and the disappearance of the Russian crime ring she’d been targeting … she’d been lucky, he’d obviously never breathed a word to the wrong people about who she really was – but it occurred to her for the first time, that she might not always be so fortunate. Crooks had long memories. But surely Jonathan would have been explicit about a threat? In which case, it might be that he really did want her for an operation.

  She could be kicking ass again. She nearly laughed out loud. It was more likely she’d get her arse kicked. How could she go back to being a spook? She’d be a laughing stock at best and, at worst, dead. Her daughter wasn’t even ten and found her embarrassing. Anyone her age should be getting their kicks from school assemblies and too much sangria on a school night, not chasing terrorists and arms dealers. And, yet, JOPS had sought her out. They’d contacted her.

  By the time she pulled up at the house, curiosity and ego had got the better of her. She grabbed the envelope from under the front seat.

  ‘Evie, can you get James a drink of water and get yourself a snack? I just need to use the bathroom,’ she called on her way up the stairs. She shut the bathroom door and went to the ancient medicine cabinet that hung over the sink. She pressed the two light switches under the cabinet simultaneously and a thin A4-sized panel shot out to the side of the cabinet. Amazed it still worked after all these years, Vicky blew the false back of the cabinet free of dust, dead insects and who knew what else. She placed the envelope inside and slid the panel back, flushed the toilet and went downstairs.

  ‘Who wants pizza for tea?’ she asked and put the oven on. Her daughter might not want her around anymore. But JOPS did. It wouldn’t do any harm to hear what her boss had to say. She got a flutter of excitement at the idea of being undercover again. Ironic, really, after fifteen years away, that she’d be better at it now than ever. After all, what’s more invisible than a middle-aged housewife going about her daily routine?

  Chapter Four

  Very few people outside of the security services knew the Joint Operations Intelligence Services even existed. According to all official sources, MI5 worked to protect domestic interests and MI6 took out threats from abroad. They were two different entities with two very different approaches who did their very best to stay out of each other’s way. No one mentioned the small but extremely effective department that sat between the two. This could be mainly attributed to sour grapes; despite JOPS being considered as a uniting force for good by the few senior government officials who created the department in the first place, MI5 and MI6 were both bitter about the best of their operatives being ripped away from them and did their level best to ignore its very existence.

  JOPS was certainly the more successful department of the three as far as retaining anonymity was concerned, by a long way. Saddled with the worst acronym ever, it lacked the street cred that Five and Six enjoyed; as a result, it was never the subject of any TV shows or movies, and the general public had mostly never heard of it. The closest it came to a big reveal was in April 1996 when the Queen Mother unveiled a memorial in Westminster Abbey honouring a bunch of fallen operatives who hadn’t actually fallen at all, but were, in fact, a list of JOPS officers working so deep undercover they were presumed dead by the rest of the world. The plaque gave everyone cause for concern until it could be removed and melted down, but by some miracle (or other, darker powers at work), it never caught the imagination of the media or enemy states. Indeed, JOPS was, by design, a forgettable entity, sitting in the forgettable depths of the Watford countryside, far away from the more visible wings of the Secret Services. And from there, it operated out of sight, out of mind, taking assignments and working across borders and boundaries, with surprisingly little interference from anyone.

  Jonathan Cornelieu waited in his office in the underground bunker below Gilbert House, watching Victoria on the security cameras as she made her way through the hotel car park towards the formal gardens and wooden area beyond. The building itself was a stately Victorian manor that had originally been home to a famous poet and playwright. Following the death of his son in the late 1960s, it was sold off and did a stint as a rehab centre before becoming a Best Western Hotel that served a very decent afternoon tea. Since 1947 it had also housed various branches of one intelligence agency or another in a secret underground complex on the edge of the estate, disguised as an electricity substation. On its formation, JOPS had assumed occupancy, and was still there thirty years later.

  The inhabitants and employees of the house had always been very good about it; those that weren’t in the employ of military intelligence to begin with were carefully vetted and happy to sign the Official Secrets Act, and often came from Thames House or Vauxhall Cross to take a break from city life and serve scones in a country house while the JOPS ops went about their day far beneath them.

  The cameras continued to catch Victoria as she strode onwards down the tree-lined path, past the pond, towards the metal gate that sat within the perimeter of barbed-wire fencing surrounding the station. Jonathan watched as she stopped outsi
de the gate marked DANGER. LIVE ELECTRICITY. DO NOT ENTER. It swung open as she was buzzed in and after one final check behind her, she walked through the deceptively decrepit door of the old brick substation.

  Jonathan’s office was down a long flight of stairs and at the end of the corridor, in the same place it had been since he’d taken the job two decades previously. Not the most luxurious of offices; his peers in the city had views of the river while he was stuck in a concrete bunker at the arse end of nowhere. But it was home to him.

  The clutter of fax machines and oversized desktop computers Victoria would remember had been replaced some years back with the minimalistic trappings of twenty-first century life: slimline monitors and three phones graced his desk, and an obligatory Nespresso machine sat on the sideboard where the daily papers used to be. The shelves that used to creak with reports and reviews were now stocked with photos of Jonathan’s prolific family – a family which seemed to expand with each passing year. Much like Jonathan. He was rather more thick set than the last time he had seen Victoria, with puffy jowls and creases around his eyes. His wife had bought him a dog a few years ago to get him out of his chair once in a while, but he wasn’t convinced it had made much difference.

  Victoria appeared at the door, and Jonathan took off his glasses and stood in greeting. They said hello and shook hands, and then sat, each assessing the other in a million tiny ways. He may have changed physically over the years, but now she was facing him and not a figure on a security camera or trussed up in combat trousers and a paintball gun vest, he could see Victoria was most definitely not the same person who walked into his office two decades ago either. She was nervous, vulnerable, and unpolished; her hair was brushed but not freshly washed, her shoes were on the scruffy side. She was still wearing that bloody red raincoat too, even though it didn’t do up anymore.

  Jonathan had always thought of her as a chameleon, someone who could blend into any situation. As a young woman she’d been pretty, but not too attractive; sexy, but not overtly so; clever, but not bookish. And she was funny: he’d always liked that about her. She’d been their top operative in her day, taking on high-risk undercover work to take her targets down any which way she was able. Orphaned in her early twenties, Victoria was the original tough cookie, throwing herself into any situation, determined to succeed, and less prone to caring about herself than the average person with parents at home to worry after them. Despite being a woman, or maybe because of it, she was unusually talented at finding her way into an operation, reaching her objective, and extracting herself unscathed. Most of the time the terrorists, arms dealers, and other garden-variety hostile threats she took on never knew what hit them.