That’s the problem. I find I’m constantly looking behind me these days, whether I’m in the bus queue or waiting for a sandwich at lunch. I’ve started to vary my route to and from work, and before even leaving the house, I check the front windows time and again for any suspicious loiterers. I’m almost sure that I’ve seen a pale-eyed man twice, both times near the park, but I can’t be certain, and even if it was the same man, he probably lives near here too. I know I’m being over-jumpy.
But no, I can’t brush under the carpet the strong likelihood that I’m being followed, and have been for some time, maybe even years? He knew what I ate for breakfast. If I don’t go along with this, would I put others into jeopardy? Helena? Up to now, they’ve made no threats, only promises. I’ve exactly twenty-four hours in which to decide what to do next.
Thursday, 21st June
Today I almost made a copy of the Berlin master plan. I could have done it easily – that’s what is so frightening. Even if I had been overseen making the copy, no one would have thought anything of it. Miss Moneypenny, M’s dependable personal secretary. There’s no document that I cannot access, no signal that I don’t have a right to read. My bag is never searched, my confidence never questioned. And I know much of consequence – as well as plenty that is not – that goes on within the walls of that building, in some cases more so even than Bill, who has no direct line into the Powder Vine. I would never be suspected. And this one thing they are asking for: it’s information that, although top secret, is held in half a dozen different ministries and departments. You could make a good stab at it through a close reading of the PM’s speeches and answers in the Commons. Would it be so very bad to divulge this one, non-specific piece of information? As Zach said, it would not jeopardise lives – it could even save some. And to me, to Helena, the reward would be priceless.
Friday, 22nd June
In half an hour’s time, I am due to place this envelope behind the pillar in the Brompton Oratory. I made the copy at lunchtime. It was a way to postpone the decision that I must make in the next ten minutes. My options are still open. I’ve not yet burnt any of the proverbial bridges.
I think my rubbish is being searched. Rafi dropped his ball between the railings this evening, and when we went down to retrieve it, I could swear that someone had gone through the dustbins. I always put my rubbish in a bag tied up with string, then place it in the dustbin tie-first, yet there it was in the dustbin with the tie facing upwards. It’s not that there’s anything there to interest anyone, but still, the feeling that my intimate discards are being examined is discomforting in the extreme. I always knew that the possibility of surveillance came with the job, but this is a step beyond what we were warned to expect, and I don’t like it one bit.
One minute until I should leave. I should be putting my coat on now – I could still get there in time if I ran.
Saturday, 23rd June
Loelia’s wedding. A wonderful, happy day. Never had I seen so many of us secret people gathered together in such open conviviality. The entire surviving oo section, past and present, over whom Lil had clucked and tutted, were there, oozing suave ruthlessness and a certain regret. Only 006 was missing, which I know was a source of great disappointment both to him and to Lil. She has loved every man she worked for, cared for them as if they were a son, brother, lover (though, to the best of my knowledge, she never succumbed to any of their obvious charms).
She looked radiant, a decade younger than she did on the day she left the Office. It’s as if the responsibility she carried every day for her men had been lifted from her slender shoulders, leaving her carefree and buoyant about what the future might hold. I’ve never seen her more beautiful – her dress was made of heavy satin, with a low, swan’s neckline and a narrow waist, flowing out gently into a long, down-trimmed train. She wore a diamond tiara, which matched the enormous, jewel-encrusted ring that had once belonged to Gerald’s grandmother, and she carried a bouquet of rosebuds, just a faint blush off white.
There were eight tiny bridesmaids with wide blue satin sashes tied around their waists, and two page boys in miniature soldier uniforms. Gerald looked proud and handsome in his morning-suit. The whole tableau was perhaps only let down by the maid of honour, me, who felt ridiculous in her cream raw silk Jackie suit and pillbox hat – and who wept throughout the vows. I have seldom felt less in control of my emotions, and I’m not entirely sure why. I was so pleased for her, and yes, perhaps a little sad for myself, and relieved and worried all bundled up together.
M made a wonderful speech, praising Loelia’s good humour and resourcefulness in a gruff manner that to me, anyway, was no mask for his inner emotion. He managed to recount a number of endearing anecdotes about her Office life without in any way revealing what it was that she had done for all those years. After all, there was a whole side of the church who believed that she had been a secretary in the Foreign Office. We must never let down our guard. In the absence of 006, Mary, who knows better than anyone what Lil’s daily life consisted of, danced the afternoon away with 009, before performing a less than graceful dive to catch the bride’s bouquet.
I danced with 007. Unsurprisingly, he is a wonderful dancer and managed to make me forget everything, even the suit, as he twirled me around the dance floor. I felt like a princess, if only for a few short minutes. At one point, he murmured into my ear, ‘Penny, why do I bother with all these women when the most desirable one in the world is here under my nose the whole time? Come home with me now, Penny, please.’ I looked up into those blue-grey eyes, but he was gazing over my shoulder with a faraway expression and I knew it wasn’t really me that he wanted. ‘Now, James, I wish I could, but I don’t think it would do either of us any good.’ He looked down at me then, with a tenderness I’d really seen in his face. ‘You’re probably right. It wouldn’t be fair on you, dearest Pen. You know, I’ve been going to see all these quacks around Harley Street, a hypnotist, some blasted man who stuck needles into my toes, even a head doctor, but none of them have helped. The hypnotist told me I needed a woman, but for the first time I don’t really want one. I thought, perhaps, if it was a friend … I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ I took his arm. ‘Come on, let’s get you a drink and forget we had this conversation.’ I led him back into the throng, where he was soon joking with Mary.
Despite what he thinks he is feeling, he’s looking a lot better than he did at the beginning of the year and his spirits appear to be lifting. The mission to Casablanca must have done him some good. ‘I think I’d better stick around here a bit longer,’ he whispered to me with a meaningful glance at 009 when I went to say goodbye. ‘Someone’s got to keep an eye on Goodnight, otherwise when 006 gets back all hell is going to break loose.’
It’s rare that we get to see the wives, I reflected as I went to get my coat, though of course so many are familiar to me from their days in the Office. Few, like Loelia, find their partner outside the Firm, and when they do they inevitably leave to marry them. None of the women officers are married – except, of course, to the Firm. I wonder how many of them watched Loelia look into Gerald’s eyes, as they exchanged vows, without even a touch of what might have been.
But today was mainly about joy, laughter, too much champagne and the giddy feeling of being on the outside, for a time, at least. For me, it was also about relief.
So I went to the Brompton Oratory last night. I ran all the way, I found the right altar and deposited an envelope behind the right pillar. But it was not what they’d been expecting. I couldn’t do it. If this was a test, I failed – or perhaps I passed, depending on who set the questions. Instead of containing a Top Secret, For Your Eyes Only analysis of the British position regarding the Berlin crisis, whoever it was who went to retrieve the envelope from the dead drop found only a note from me. It was polite and respectful, and said only that, while I was grateful for the help that I’d been offered in tracing my father, I found that I was not in a position to fulfil my side of
the bargain. With respect, I asked not to be approached again – I would, in any case, be filing a full report to my superiors.
Now I just have to hope they’ll leave me alone.
July
I found my aunt’s description of her friend’s wedding particularly moving. She was an extraordinarily generous person, and I don’t believe that envy was an emotion that she would have recognised. Yet she never married and she had no children, although she often said that she regarded me as her child, as much as my mother’s. Indeed, in many ways I am more similar to her. As I have learned from her diaries, she had relationships – a few of them significant, but none so much as with her work, and with the man whose office door she guarded: M.
She first met him at the cocktail party held on the last night of her training course at the same terrace house in Victoria where she had gone for her initial interview. M – then deputy chief of the SIS and not yet known by his single initial – had been persuaded by the redoubtable head of personnel, Miss Stega, to preside over the mini-graduation ceremony. Jane Moneypenny had come top of her class, and in her diary she describes M’s firm handshake and cold grey eyes. ‘He was an intimidating presence,’ she wrote. ‘He looked as if he didn’t know what the hell he was doing shaking the hands of all these young girls, and he duly disappeared the second the ceremony was over. I doubt our paths will cross again.’
The next morning she was called into Miss Stega’s office to talk about positions. She expressed an interest in Signals. She was duly assigned to the Communications division, and only after that was she given the address of the large grey building overlooking St James’s Park that she would come to know as intimately as she had the old farm in Maguga.
Her work was at first fairly routine. As a junior clerk, she was not privy to the cipher keys. She would arrive at the large double front doors at nine – an hour before the official starting time – and after announcing her name and the two-word code for the week (her first was ‘yellow retriever’) she would press the button for the lift. Comms, as it was known, shared the top floor with the chief’s suite. The current incumbent – known, like his predecessors, as ‘C’— was an elderly, slim man, a career spook who had moved across from MI5 to inherit the top mantle shortly after a successful war masterminding, among other things, the Double-Cross System (a highly effective system of strategic deception, in which false information was fed back to the enemy through German intelligence agents who had been turned by MI5 and MI6 officers).
Miss Moneypenny’s path really crossed C’s – only once did she find herself using the lift at the same time, and then she kept her eyes firmly trained on her shoes. She enjoyed her work, and was constantly stimulated by the buzz and air of quiet urgency that infused every corner of the building. She earned a reputation for quick thinking, accuracy and good sense. Within months, she was being trusted to send and translate signals. Before the end of her first year she had risen to the position of signals operator.
It was one night in early November 1956, during the Suez Crisis, with the Comms room in a state of heightened activity, that she found herself working for fourteen straight hours with the Deputy Chief, in place of his personal assistant, who was ill. As she recorded in her journal, she was impressed by his apparent total recall and by his ability to make instant decisions with confidence and to dictate word-perfect signals to agents scattered across the world. He gave no indication that he regarded her as anything more than a machine for fulfilling his orders.
However, two weeks later, when the immediate crisis had abated, she was called to his office. She was ushered into a large room, dominated by a leather-topped desk. The Deputy Chief was half obscured behind a shaft of light, smoking a pipe. His eyes showed no sign of recognition. He looked up from his files. ‘Miss Moneypenny? Yes, you’ve worked here for three years now. Too short theoretically, but I should be able to see to that.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.
‘Like it here?’
‘Very much.’
He questioned her minutely about aspects of her work, and her previous life. As she recorded that evening, ‘I had a strong feeling that he knew more about me than he revealed.’ Then he started testing her, setting up hoops for her to jump through. What would she do in this or that situation? If an agent sent through a Red Foxtrot when the top brass was away, how would she react? He gave no clue as to whether her answers pleased him, just shifted his gaze periodically from a painting of an orchid, which was hanging over the chimney piece, to stare piercingly at her.
‘Any languages?’ he asked.
‘I speak Swahili,’ she replied, ‘but I’m a bit rusty. And schoolgirl French. No more, I’m afraid.’
‘Excellent. Don’t trust linguists. Report to this office at 08.45 hours on Monday. I don’t like high heels, too much make-up or jewellery.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you,’ she replied, aware she had acquired a new position, though unsure as to how.
‘And you may call me Sir, but never when off duty.’
She had no choice in the matter. Nor did she know, until a few weeks later, that her new boss was to ascend to the chief’s chair in a matter of months. The current C had been rumoured to be close to retirement, and the débâcle of Suez persuaded him to go earlier than he had planned. As his deputy – and the personal choice of the recently retired Winston Churchill – Admiral Sir Miles Messervy stepped unopposed into the top spot, bringing with him a new initial, M, and his new personal secretary, my aunt, Miss Jane Moneypenny.
Friday, 6th July
007 leaves for the Caribbean today. M returned from lunch on Monday at the American Ambassador’s residence, called for Bill and issued a flurry of commands. ‘Send up the recent signals file from Station A [America], please, Miss Moneypenny … Get Head of Section C [Caribbean] up here … Arrange a meeting with the armourer first thing tomorrow … And summon 007 immediately.’
This time, he was there to answer his phone when I called.
He was in with M for an hour and came back through the baize door looking almost excited. ‘It seems I’m off to see a man about a snake. Got to go home to pack my swimmers, Penny. Wish I could fit you and your bikini in my suitcase,’ he said, with a ghost of his old humour. But he failed to invite me for a post-mission dinner. The one that never seems to happen.
It was apparent, after the Cuba Group meeting on Tuesday, that the situation over there had become more complex. Reading over the minutes, I had a feeling we would get involved somehow. Scott had reported that two CIA agents on the inside had died last week, apparently in a car accident, though the details are vague. They were the Cousins’ main assets in place – on whose assessment of the situation they placed much of the weight of their current strategy. The agents, in turn, were running a Cuban double agent, code-named Caballo.
As Bill explained that evening, ‘The Cousins are convinced this Caballo is the real thing, but M is not too sure. We believe they’re putting too much faith in him. It’s a risky business. They don’t even know his real identity, hut he’s definitely close to the head man. At first he sent over some cracking stuff, but there have been a couple of strange incidents recently, culminating in this fishy car accident. The Cousins are still insisting Caballo is rock solid, but that could be because he’s all they’ve got left, and they can’t bear to admit it. Now the Attorney-General’s1 turned to us for independent help. He wants us to check out Caballo. Is he still with us, or was he a plant all along? It’s a stiff task, but M’s decided 007 is up to it. I hope to God he’s right. Book him a ticket to Jamaica on Saturday, please.’
News of his mission had already hit the Powder Vine. I ran into Mary as I was leaving, who said he’d ordered the Operation Mongoose files up from Records and booked a session of unarmed combat, as well as target practice following his meeting with the armourer.
Now he’s got his long-range sniper’s rifle in the spine of his suitcase, along with the portable Triple X and full scuba gear that Ross at
Station J signalled for him to bring. Mary’s given him the Benzedrine and sleeping draughts he asked for and he’s been fully briefed by a man who flew over from Washington specially. But I’ve never seen him appear so unexcited by an assignment like this.
Monday, 9th July
I’m sure I saw the pale-eyed man again, this time on the bus home from work. I don’t know where he got on, but he was sitting several rows behind me when we reached my stop. He was reading a paper and I wouldn’t have noticed him had the bus not given a sudden lurch, which threw me sideways, practically on to his paper. He appeared to give a start when he saw me, but it might have been shock at the sudden invasion of his seat. It could be a coincidence, but after all that has happened, I can’t help but be suspicious. There’s something about his face that makes me uneasy. I checked that no one was following me as I reached the house, and double-locked my door. I still feel as if I’m being watched as I retrieve this journal from the safe.
Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel Page 12