Inside Enemy

by Alan Judd

  ‘Do.’

  Simon also left the room. The meeting was beginning to resemble an Agatha Christie novel, thought Charles. The body would be next. Those remaining looked chastened. It was not going as he had intended. He would not backtrack but neither did he want to bully. ‘An intelligence service that can’t issue reports may as well not exist,’ he said. ‘If we go for too long without reporting, the government will cease to miss it and conclude it doesn’t need us anyway. We must get those reports out this week even if it means taking them round ourselves.’

  That was what happened. When the two directors returned with their figures Charles asked them to organise a daily delivery system of paper copies, which had been the norm before Whitehall went over to electronic systems. Granted, there had been more drivers and cars then and MI6 was just over the river in Lambeth, not Croydon; granted, too, there were rules about the numbers of people required for carrying top-secret material in public places and the kinds of security container required. These would all have to be complied with.

  ‘It will be cumbersome, costly and inconvenient and if not enough bodies can be found then we – I mean us, the board – will set an example by taking them ourselves. I was in the Cabinet Office this morning and will have to go to the Foreign Office tomorrow afternoon so if there are any urgent reports overnight, Clive, I could take them with me. Not on the train, of course. I’ll need a car and driver.’

  ‘There may be health and safety implications,’ said Michelle Blakeney, HR director.

  Charles stared. She didn’t seem to be joking. ‘Let me know if you find any. Meanwhile, we start this afternoon.’

  He was about to ask whether there was any other business when a mobile phone rang. ‘Sorry,’ said Melissa Carron, director of security. She scrabbled in her handbag and silenced the phone, then stared for some seconds at the screen.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Charles. ‘Mobiles. I noticed one or two people had them on their desks this morning. I thought we weren’t supposed to bring them into the building? That we had to lock them in those special cages downstairs?’

  ‘The ones you saw would have been HMG people – higher management group,’ said Melissa. ‘They’re issued with office mobiles, like us. All senior managers in the SIA had them.’

  Charles had been hoping to end the meeting on a conciliatory note. ‘Why don’t junior staff have them?’

  Melissa looked at him through her heavy-framed glasses, irritation and puzzlement contending in her enlarged eyes. ‘Because of the security threat. Because of how they can be turned into microphones, cameras, tracking devices, quite apart from normal call interception. You must remember from your previous service what we can do with them – identify all the members of a group from one number, travel patterns, contacts, everything. And phones have got more sophisticated since you left the old MI6, and the more sophisticated they are, the more we can do with them. And if we can do it, others can.’

  She spoke carefully as if explaining to someone of limited understanding.

  ‘I myself am fully satisfied that there’s a strong security case for not allowing mobiles into the office, apart from the HMG,’ she continued. ‘It’s what we did in the SIA, it’s what MI5 do, it’s what we should do. I don’t think anyone around this table would disagree with that.’ She looked at the others.

  Charles waited to see if anyone wanted to make the obvious point. No-one did. He too spoke slowly, trying not to sound confrontational. ‘So why are we allowed them? Is a phone any less of a threat because someone in HMG or on the board has it? More, surely.’

  He wondered whether he was on the verge of provoking a bureaucratic insurrection and becoming the shortest-serving C on record. He wondered too whether Angela Wilson and George Greene would back him up. They wouldn’t want a fuss, especially if it became public.

  Michelle Blakeney leaned forward, her fingers resting on the closed laptop before her. It was the first time Charles had noticed it. No-one else had one. Laptops, too, he thought. But that could wait.

  ‘Of course, there’s no denying that mobiles are a threat,’ she said, sounding as if it were an effort to remain polite. ‘But in themselves they’re neutral. It’s the user who determines whether or not they are actually threatening. As with firearms. If we trust the people who have them – and I hope we can trust ourselves and the HMG in general, otherwise we shouldn’t be here – then they shouldn’t be a threat. In fact, for many people in the outside world, as I well know – people we have to influence and communicate with – it would look very odd indeed if we didn’t have them. It would be hard to explain and would make us look corporately quaint and out of touch.’

  ‘Also, from an operational point of view, case officers need them for agent contacts,’ said Simon Aldington. ‘Especially if they’re under natural cover as business people or whatever. It would be frankly incredible – unworkable – for them not to have them.’

  ‘And people do have family responsibilities,’ said Melissa. ‘Arrangements with children and childminders and so on. Some of us, anyway.’

  Charles looked at Clive Thatcham and Stephen Avery. They may as well all have their say now. ‘Any other views?’

  ‘Michelle makes a good point,’ said Clive. ‘If we want to be taken seriously within Whitehall and beyond we have to be like the people we work for. Ministers carry mobiles, everybody does. We can’t afford to look like some furry little creature that hides in the undergrowth and has to be dragged blinking into the sunlight of the modern world.’

  Stephen was doodling, eyes downcast. ‘Everything that’s been said so far is true. True – but.’ When he looked up his eyes took in everyone. ‘More than one but. The first is that the phone itself is the danger. It’s not like a gun. Its user may be entirely trustworthy and innocent but the phone itself may have been tampered with or accessed remotely without the user knowing. If it is like a gun it’s one that someone else can aim and fire without your having any control over it, or even knowing they’ve done it.’ He put down his pen and clasped his hands. ‘The second but is that where I come from, GCHQ, this would not be tolerated for a moment. If it were, the Americans – the NSA – would suspend sharing stuff with us. We know only too well the potential for any electronic device to be turned into something apart from what it’s meant for. We know it because we do it. I was frankly astonished when I first went to the old SIA head office and found people with mobiles on their desks. And then here. The third but – last one, I promise – is, where do they come from? Who, physically, supplied these mobiles?’

  All except Melissa shrugged or shook their heads. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said, as if she had been unreasonably accused. ‘Presumably the supplier who supplies our operational phones. They’ve always been perfectly reliable.’

  ‘Perhaps you could enquire,’ said Charles.

  ‘Meanwhile, I’m afraid I have to agree with Charles on this,’ said Stephen, who had picked up his pen and was doodling again. ‘Mobiles are bad news.’

  ‘I think we’ll have to do something about it,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll return to the subject.’

  They broke up with a shuffling of chairs and no lightening of the atmosphere. Charles had been conscious throughout of how much he was keeping back from them: the fact that they were penetrated, that GCHQ were secretly monitoring their systems, that he was going to recontact Viktor, the very existence of Viktor, all the concerns of COFE. He had thought he could tell them about Peter Tew, warning that anyone who had known him should report contact, but decided to turn it into a fence-mending exercise by offering it to Melissa to announce to the Office as a whole, to make the issue hers. However, she left the room first, closing her bag with a snap, followed by Michelle with her laptop. He would have to ring her later. Elaine, still finishing her notes at the end of the table, was the last to stand. ‘Come and chat about the minutes before you do them,’ Charles told her.

  His office was occupied by workmen.

 
‘They’re just connecting some trunking,’ said Elaine. ‘They said they’ll only be another ten minutes.’

  ‘Let’s go to the canteen.’

  ‘There’s quite a list of things we need to discuss.’

  ‘Bring it.’

  They were early and there were not many people. They took curries and salads to a table in the far corner. ‘I suppose this will have to close when they get round to refurbishing it,’ said Charles.

  ‘It’s been done. Finished two weeks ago.’

  She laughed, which he was glad to see. She had with her a list of impending visits from Dutch, American, French, Danish, South African, Indian and Singaporean heads of liaison services, with a longer list of calls he had to make in Whitehall and of cases into which he had to be indoctrinated. There were also issues arising from his previous service, adjustments to his MI6 pension, and a photograph swipe-card pass to be arranged. Elaine had had to escort him in that morning on a visitor’s pass. There were also alias identities, including passports, to be set up for when he visited liaisons overseas. He queried this. ‘I was blown decades ago, I’ve been global Red for years. Anyone who Googles me can see what I was and now that what I am is being publicly announced what’s the point in hiding it?’

  ‘Security department ruling.’ One of many, I’m afraid. Because of the public announcement, you’re an obvious terrorist target if you appear on any flight manifest in your own name.’

  He thought he’d left all that behind him when he ceased operational work. ‘What if I’m prepared to accept the risk?’

  ‘You’d be accepting it for everyone else on the flight, too.’

  He held up his hands. ‘Okay, just make sure my new names are easily said and spelt. No Cholmondelys.’

  ‘Believe it or not, the first one they’ve come up with is Goodenough.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  She laughed again. But he still felt she was watchful, as if he might explode. He knew from having been one that you had to have complete trust in your private secretary, even if she were reporting back – ad hoc and informally, of course – to Angela Wilson. ‘That was a surprise, that meeting this morning,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t expected it to turn out like that.’

  ‘I don’t think they did, either.’

  ‘Was I unreasonable in making them go and get those figures?’

  She hesitated. ‘You were quite firm. Particular. They were a bit complacent. Now they know not to be.’

  If things became difficult she could be a useful intermediary between him and the board. ‘When you write up the minutes, just say that the directors produced the relevant figures. Don’t say they were asked and didn’t know them. On mobile phones, just say that a more restrictive policy is under consideration and that DS – director of security – will announce and implement any changes in due course.’

  She looked relieved. ‘I think they were all a bit taken aback by that.’

  ‘Not as much as I was to see people with phones all over the place. And laptops – Michelle had hers on the desk and referred to it. Though I suppose that’s different if they’re just locked into our own system.’

  A mobile rang. After a moment’s puzzlement he groped in his jacket pocket, switched it off and pushed it across the table. ‘Life. One damn thing after another. Don’t give it back until I leave the building’.

  5

  Sarah was awoken early on the Saturday morning by the bleep of a text but couldn’t remember where she had left her mobile. She stared at the ceiling while the components of the present reassembled themselves. She had dreamt a kaleidoscope of the Brussels apartment she had shared with Nigel, inhabited in her dream by Miss Sage, the red-faced, white-haired headmistress of her primary school. Miss Sage had lost her wire-haired fox terrier and they were searching a green Morris Minor belonging to the Foreign Secretary, who was about to return and drive away.

  The present cohered into the fact of Charles sleeping beside her, her husband after all these years, as strange as any dream. They were in their new house in Westminster, possibly with horrors hidden beneath the new paintwork but nothing that pressingly needed doing. They were properly in now and just needed to make it a home. Books were the problem, boxes and boxes of them stacked in every room. There just wasn’t the wall space, no matter how ingenious they were with new shelving. They would have to get someone in for that; it was already apparent that it would be no good relying on Charles.

  And it was Saturday, so no work, though she would have to go in for an hour or two on Sunday. Today they were to drive to Sussex to pick up the keys and formally take over the rented cottage. Some of the books would go there, of course. She looked forward to that, but then remembered that there was no silver lining without a cloud. They were to have dinner with the landlord, Jeremy Wheeler. She recalled him from when he worked with Nigel as a big, fat and boastful man with a surprisingly attractive – perhaps necessarily quiet – wife. What was her name? She’d have to ask Charles.

  The invitation had come via Katya Chester. Sarah had demurred at first, pleading that the cottage was unfurnished and that they wouldn’t want a late-night drive back to London after dinner. But they’d then been invited to stay the night, which would be even worse. The last thing either of them wanted at the moment was to spend the weekend as the guests of virtual strangers, tiptoeing around.

  ‘We can’t,’ Charles said when she told him. ‘No question. He’s just wrangled his way onto the parliamentary Intelligence Services Committee. It’ll be bad enough appearing before them with him preening himself as former colleague and now our landlord, without having spent cosy weekends with him. Wouldn’t look good.’

  ‘Could we not go at all, then? It would be much nicer not to but it’s a bit awkward to say no when he knows we’re down there and have the time.’

  ‘We could say yes to dinner and spend the night at the cottage.’

  ‘On what? The floor? It’s completely unfurnished.’ Charles’s lack of domestic awareness could still surprise her. Already he seemed to treat the packing cases as permanent, sitting or putting things on them without any apparent thought of unpacking.

  ‘I’ll book a hotel, then.’

  ‘That will look rather pointed.’

  ‘It is, with reason. I’ll explain to him.’

  ‘And is it still up to me to get back to his Snow Queen secretary?’

  ‘You do that and I’ll do the hotel.’

  Rather to her surprise, he did it without a reminder while she, gratifyingly, was able to leave a message for Katya without having to speak to her and be told once again that Mr Mayakovsky was a very wealthy man and keen to meet her.

  Sarah got up and found her phone on a packing case beneath a pile of Charles’s pullovers. The text was from Katya Chester, confirming the arrangements and contact details for Jeremy and Wendy Wheeler. Wendy, of course, Wendy Wheeler. She must have been in love.

  They drove down to Battle later that morning, a journey made leisurely by the A21. The polite young man in the letting agent’s had the keys and remaining paperwork ready. ‘Your landlord’s almost next door. In the memorial hall, holding his monthly surgery. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you dropped in. He seems anxious to meet you.’

  ‘We’ll be seeing him tonight,’ said Sarah. ‘He’s invited us to dinner, which is very nice. We have his address but don’t know where it is. It must be very near here, isn’t it?’

  ‘The Old Court House. Five minutes’ walk. Up the high street and first right. A big house about a hundred and fifty yards on the left.’ He grinned. ‘Nicest property in the town. It must be – we sold it to him.’

  The cottage was in Brightling, a hamlet high in the Weald about five or six miles out of town. It was a pretty stone cottage, about three hundred years old, with a tiled roof in need of attention.

  ‘It’s prettier than I remembered,’ she said, as they stood inside the gate. ‘But this garden is going to take some work.’

  ‘Not quite t
he Cotswold stone you’re used to.’

  ‘No but it’s stone, which is good enough. And you can see the sea from that end bedroom.’

  ‘Smaller than I remembered,’ he said, pacing the tiled floor. ‘Not much room for guests, which is good. Probably catches the wind in the winter, too, which is also good.’

  ‘You can have it to yourself if you’re going to be such a misery.’

  Upstairs was cheerful and light. ‘I think I could love it,’ she said. ‘So long as you keep it warm. I suppose that great open hearth downstairs is hideously inefficient?’

  ‘Cosy on a winter’s eve with the wind rattling the windows and the draughts whistling round your chilblained feet.’

  ‘Any sign of chilblains and I’m back to London.’

  They unpacked cleaning things, kitchen things and toiletries from her car then drove to the nearest pub for lunch. ‘Remind me why you have to see this man,’ she said.

  Charles had exercised his prerogative as Chief to tell her about Viktor, who lived a few miles away.

  ‘If he can help stop these wretched power cuts that would be a really good start for you, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Not that there’ve been any today, so far as we know. You must be having an effect already.’

  ‘It goes wider than that. Whoever’s doing it is getting into government systems.’

  ‘Do I have to come? Is he expecting me?’

  ‘Haven’t been able to get hold of him. No answer from his phone. I’ve left messages. If he’s not there I’ll leave a note. But if he is, I’m sure he’d like to meet you. He likes attractive women.’

  ‘Better not disappoint him, then. I’d sooner get on and clean the cottage.’

  Promising he wouldn’t be long, would either leave a note or stay just for tea, Charles set off for Bodiam in her car.

  It was an easy drive, using her satnav. He didn’t really approve of them, feeling he should always know where he was on ground and on map, but it meant he could think on the way. He began well enough, recalling his first meetings with Viktor in London, then the fallow period when Viktor was back in Moscow, then his re-emergence in Africa and confirmation that he was serious about spying for MI6. Finally, their last meeting in a palatial room in the Hotel Sacher, Vienna, while Charles was notionally attending one of those forgettable disarmament conferences. They had met earlier that day, and Charles was about to check out when Viktor triggered the signal for an emergency second meeting.