by Alan Judd
‘Merci, monsieur.’ She was shorter and older than her predecessor, presentably dressed in a mauve suit, though her gold necklace and ear-rings were large and gaudy. She laughed at his doctored explanation of what had happened. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I should not have been so late. I was – what is the expression? – overrun?’
Charles smiled, as he had a few minutes before, remarking that it was hard to regulate business when you were self-employed. Always too much or too little.
‘You work for a big corporation?’ she began.
He described the multifarious international activities of Gordon and Partners, impressing himself with their range and variety. She was attentive and flattering, her dark eyes fixed on his and a smile in perpetual readiness. Her sustained determination to please was effective despite its brittleness. Had he been what she thought, her ready sympathy and her questions – none seriously probing but all seeking answers which it might please him to give or which she could use to praise him – would have made for an easy, undemanding, self-indulgent evening.
It was less easy to get her to talk about herself. She seemed unused to it; presumably most of her clients preferred to talk about themselves. After the champagne and a couple of glasses of wine, she said as much herself, after asking how old he was. ‘Most of my clients are middle-aged and married. They want to talk about their marriages and their jobs as much as they want anything else.’
‘Their wives don’t understand them?’
‘No, really, sometimes they don’t, I think. They want to relax, these men. They have pressure in their jobs, pressure from their children, pressure from their wives who are always wanting something.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘Women are always wanting.’ She was divorced, she told him, and maintained two children at boarding school. ‘It makes work in the holidays a little difficult.’ Her French accent fluctuated slightly.
He glanced at the woman who had first joined him, now talking happily to the older man. Lawyers, perhaps; maybe she was being head-hunted. ‘Perhaps she was after all a colleague of yours,’ he said, insincerely.
She gave a cool assessing glance. ‘I don’t think so. But I think he would like it if she were.’
He felt they were now sufficiently relaxed for him to be frank, or at least as frank as he was permitted. Pitch her in the restaurant, in public, Hugo had advised – provided there was decent table separation – rather than in his room afterwards because then if the whole thing went pear-shaped she couldn’t claim there’d been any monkey-business. Hugo barked and twitched at the thought.
Charles leant forward across the table. ‘Claire, there’s something else I want to tell you.’ His use of her real name was calculated. She looked at him without expression. ‘I don’t work for the company I was telling you about. In fact, I work for the Secret Service. I’d like to talk to you about one of your clients. Just talk, that’s all. We’ll pay the same fee as for a massage.’
This time it was real, his first recruitment pitch, subject of many lectures and much speculation. The frankness was liberating; the effect, to judge by her open-mouthed stare, striking.
‘Is everything all right, sir – madam?’ The maître d’ stooped over Charles’s shoulder, hands clasped in supplication.
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘I am so sorry for the confusion earlier.’
‘It’s quite all right. Don’t worry.’
‘I was confusing Lovejoy and Kilroy.’
‘Of course, yes. Mistakes happen.’
The maître d’ looked across to the other table, rubbing his hands. ‘The lady, she is happy now, also.’
‘Good, I’m very glad.’
Claire stood. ‘Excuse me.’ She picked up her handbag.
‘This way, madam,’ said the maître d’, ushering her towards the Ladies’. He was followed by Charles’s silent curses. He debated with himself how long he should wait if she didn’t reappear and imagined the politeness with which his humiliating failure would be received in Head Office. Everyone would eventually get to hear about it. Putative agents who fled from him at first contact would become part of office mythology, like the Whippett and the policewoman.
‘Bet you thought I’d done a bunk, didn’t you?’ She reappeared from behind, speaking now in the unmistakable accent of outer London. ‘I nearly did. Thought you might be the police but then I reckoned this isn’t the way they go about it and I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch, ’specially in a nice place like this.’ She sat and looked at him, then smiled and touched his hand with her fingers. ‘Listen, love, if you die with a look like that on your face, they won’t wash your body.’
He grinned. ‘I look miserable when I’m happy. My features relax and make me look more serious than I feel.’
‘Tragic, I call it. Anyway, so long as you don’t want me to kill no one I’ll do anything you like with them. All the usual services. What about another bottle?’
They took coffee in the lounge, where he told her that he wanted to talk about a client of hers, a Russian official called Viktor Koslov.
She raised her eyebrows and resumed her French accent. ‘Peter, you are not wanting me to seduce someone? How disappointing.’
‘Another time.’
‘Maybe tonight, monsieur. You had better be careful.’ She dropped the accent. ‘No, but who did you say? I can’t think of any client called that.’
Charles described him. She insisted she had no Russian clients and for a while he thought it possible that the office had misinterpreted Koslov’s relations with her; that it was indeed an intelligence relationship, but one in which she was his client rather than he hers. If that were so, she was bound to go on denying it. They were getting nowhere. Eventually he had to tell her that he believed she had seen Koslov that afternoon.
She looked puzzled. ‘You don’t mean Erik? He’s from Finland.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘He’s Finnish. He’s in timber. He’s rich. He showed me photos of his huge house in Helsinki and of reindeer. He’s a nice man, Erik. He’s fond of me. He’s one of my sugar-children, the ones I’m trying to grow into sugar-daddies to look after me in my old age or if I have to give up work. Every girl needs one. More than one. But you’re not having me on – he’s not called Erik and he’s not Finnish?’
‘Absolutely not.’ This assertion was an act of faith. It had happened that surveillance had got the wrong man. ‘He’s a Soviet diplomat and he’s not rich.’
‘Cunning little sod.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘So you’ve been following me around, have you, to see who I see?’
‘We were following him.’
‘Serve him right. What about another packet of Stuyvesant? It’s got me going, this has.’
Either Viktor’s deception, or his relative poverty, irritated her and she became happy to talk. She described him as polite, educated, intelligent, typical of real Scandinavians she had met. She greatly valued politeness and consideration in her clients, rating Germans the best and Iranians and Japanese the worst. Erik treated her as a mistress and had at first been embarrassed by paying her – not reluctant, but embarrassed as if for her sake. She had got him over that and now they made a bit of a joke of it, with her allowing him to please and surprise her by giving her more. He was generous in that way, especially given that he wasn’t really rich after all. He had no odd habits, special requests or perversions. In fact, he was a good lover, keen, considerate, controlled yet straightforwardly expressive. ‘Like when you see a really good tennis player on the telly,’ she said. ‘Nice style, everything as it should be.’
They had met through her occasional early morning walks with her poodle in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. She did it more often later in the day, for business reasons. ‘A dog is a help. It attracts attention and people think you’re not in a hurry, so they stop to pat it.’
‘Gives you a reason for being there,’ said Charles.
‘Yes, and it’s easy to ge
t into conversation. I’ve had some good clients that way.’ She didn’t normally expect business on her early morning walks, which were for her own and the dog’s sake, but she saw this same man once or twice and they were soon on smiling and nodding terms. One day he stopped and patted her dog and asked its name, which was Lucy. After that, they talked a little whenever they met. This had happened over some months. It was during this period that he told her he was a Finnish businessman.
‘What did you say you were?’ asked Charles.
‘Masseuse. No point in beating about the bush.’
‘Did he realise what you meant?’
‘Not at first, no. Later, when he did, he was a bit cast down. I didn’t see him for a fortnight. Then when I did he said he’d been at home on holiday with his wife. P’raps he was.’
‘Where did he say he lived?’
‘Other side of the park. I never asked where or his phone number or anything like that. Not professional. It frightens them. He used to ask me a lot about which hotels I went to, how much they cost and so on, but when I told him he could come to my flat if he liked, he didn’t, not for weeks. And when he did he was very nervous, too nervous, you know. He just had tea and went.’
‘Did he say anything about it?’
‘He kept saying he couldn’t tell me what a big step that was for him. Kept saying it. I s’pose he couldn’t.’
An unauthorised visit by a Soviet official to the home of a westerner, especially that of someone who had picked him up in the park and who would be assumed to work for the British security organs, was more than a decisive step. It was disaffection and rule-breaking of a sort that could have ended his career, at least. Unless, of course, Koslov had other motives. ‘And after that you became lovers, or he your client, or however he saw it?’
‘Not straight away. I didn’t see him for a while. And then all in a rush.’
‘Did he pay you from the start?’ Russian officials were lowly paid and meeting Claire’s rates must have been a struggle.
‘Not at first. I wanted to encourage him, you see. That’s the sugar-child bit. I thought he was nice. I still do, cunning sod though he is.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘You’re not in league with the income tax, are you?’
‘No.’
‘And the KGB aren’t going to duff me up or anything if they find you’re on to it?’
‘No. Has he ever mentioned the KGB or anything to do with intelligence?’ She shook her head. ‘Or has he ever asked you to do anything unusual?’
‘I told you, he’s very straightforward like that. Not like some of them, wanting you in plastic wrappers and whatever.’
‘I mean, has he ever asked you to find out anything for him, or get anything, or get to know anyone?’
‘Can’t think of anything. He doesn’t ask questions much. Nor does he like being asked a lot, either. But I do sometimes, just to tease him.’ She smiled.
Others joined them in the lounge and he ended the evening counting out her money in Park Lane. She agreed, as if it were a mere matter of course, to report on Koslov. He tried to hand over the wad of notes surreptitiously, without the doorman seeing.
‘Taxi home?’ she asked, once the notes were in her bag.
He took out his wallet again and handed her a pound note. ‘Keep the change.’
She grinned and waved the note at the nearest cab.
Avoiding the doorman’s eye, he went straight to his room where he made his own contact notes on Hilton paper. There was no need now to stay the night but the room was paid for and the large wide bed looked greatly preferable to his mattress on the floor in Queensgate.
‘I hope you are not lonely in there tonight, monsieur,’ she had said with a smile as she got into her taxi, resuming her Chantal persona and theatrically holding out her hand to be kissed.
3
Colin Newick, formerly a novitiate monk, touched his glasses before speaking. ‘No, but it was an unequivocal set-up by Gerry. Heartless. “Pick up a stranger in a bar,” he said. “That’s all you’ve got to do. Get his identifying details without his realising you’re doing it and without him getting yours. It’s a bit ritzy, the bar in question, so look smart.”’
As he touched his glasses again he caught Charles’s smile. His habit had been mercilessly highlighted when he was interviewed on film by a former ambassador during an exercise. ‘Don’t you start,’ he continued. ‘You haven’t even got specs. What makes it worse is that everyone who has has started doing it back to me and then I can’t help doing it even more. It’s contagious, like walking alongside someone with a limp. Wait till you need glasses.’
Charles ordered two more beers from Harry, the Castle barman. They were in the mess before dinner on a Thursday, normally a good evening because Friday was effectively a half day and the forthcoming weekend was free, with no exercise.
Colin described how, in a velvet jacket borrowed from Desmond Kimmeridge, he was directed to the roughest and least ritzy of dockland pubs. There he was rebuffed and all but set upon by men he tried to speak to until he feigned toothache, got the publican to recommend a dentist and spent the rest of the evening hearing the tale of woe that constituted the publican’s life history. ‘Got all his details, though,’ he said, ‘in spades. More than I wanted. But it was rough, that place. I’ll get Gerry back somehow. Make him think I’m having a raging affair with French Kisser.’
French Kisser was Gerry’s nickname for a girlfriend acquired during his recent posting in Paris. Revealing neither her real name nor her nationality, and vague on other details, he chronicled with morbid pleasure the decline of their cross-Channel relationship. His ambiguous jocularity made it impossible to know whether he was putting a brave face on something he couldn’t stop himself talking about, or simply found it an entertaining conversational football.
‘You’re lucky you missed that exercise,’ said Colin. ‘They’re bound to clobber you with something later. Ian Clyde got the wrong pub, of course, missed the minibus back and lost his notes. This world should be grateful he gave up medical practice. The next should notice a drop in arrivals.’
They were joined at the bar by Rebecca. All the men were in suits and that night she was the only woman. She wore a pleated tartan skirt and her hair was newly washed and untied. Charles and Colin briefly competed to sign her drinks chit. Charles won.
‘On condition you let me buy a bottle of wine with dinner,’ she said. ‘It’s awful here otherwise. No one ever lets me buy a drink.’
‘Maurice Lydd might,’ said Charles. Lydd, a smooth and genially plump former journalist from Glasgow, was already known for his practised sharpness in the matter of expenses.
‘Actually, he did.’
‘Apparently he keeps a bottle of whisky in his room so that he can come down with a glass already in hand and avoid the danger of having to buy a round if he goes to the bar,’ said Colin. ‘Of course, Rebecca’s problem would fade away if we had women on the course. Gallantry would become too expensive. Why don’t we recruit female intelligence officers?’
‘We do,’ said Rebecca, ‘in theory. Apparently, we used to quite a bit after the war and SOE and all that, then they had a run of disasters and stopped. Arabs wouldn’t speak to them, couple of nervous breakdowns, one ran off with a target, usual sorts of thing. So they decided to recruit only from within. Which is why we have a sprinkling of senior women and a shortage of younger ones coming up. But they’ve decided to start recruiting again, according to Personnel.’
Colin looked about. ‘Where are they, then? Can’t find any, I s’pose. Don’t know where to look, or something pathetic.’
‘Why don’t you apply for the intelligence branch? You’re a graduate, aren’t you?’ Charles asked. ‘Unless you’re put off by us.’
‘When I can be a secretary and do a job like this, looking after all you babies and reading your files and knowing all about you and no other woman in sight? I wouldn’t have anything like this access to you if I were one of you. I�
��d have to be much better behaved.’
‘You’ve been disappointingly well behaved up to now, so far as I can see,’ said Colin.
‘Change your optician, Colin.’ She smiled. ‘No, I’ve sort of half thought about bridging but I’m waiting to see how the course pans out, to see if I like it. I might hate it. Meanwhile, I think I can put up with being the only woman around. I’m not about to burn my bra over it.’
‘What’s this about bras?’ Christopher Westfield joined them, slipping his arm around Rebecca’s waist. ‘G&T, while you’re about it, Charles. Ice and lemon.’ He turned to Rebecca. ‘We’ll have to call you Need-To-Know. It’s all you ever tell us about anything. But will you tell us when we really do need to know?’
‘Depends, Chris. What d’you think you need to know?’
‘I need to know if you’ll be my exercise wife in a little plan I’m hatching for Danish Blue. I need a wife to support my cover.’
Danish Blue was a travelling exercise for which they were having to prepare their own legends, routes and itineraries. There was intense suspicion that unpleasant surprises were to be sprung on them.
‘You’d better ask your non-exercise wife about that.’
‘Can’t. She doesn’t need to know. If you don’t agree I thought I’d ask Gerry if I could borrow French Kisser for a few days.’
‘You’re welcome to French Kisser.’
‘What’s she like? Have you met her?’
‘No, but I’ve heard enough about her.’
Harry rang the ship’s bell for dinner. Despite the Castle’s military origins, a preponderance of ex-naval staff made some of its traditions nautical. Thus, although the mess was not a wardroom, its bedrooms were cabins; the parade ground was not a deck but leaving the Castle was sometimes described as going ashore. The ship’s bell, taken from a Second World War destroyer, had been donated by an early post-war course.
Charles and Colin sat either side of Rebecca. Gerry, who was late, took the last empty place opposite. ‘All done?’ he asked her. She nodded. ‘Great stuff. You missed a good exercise yesterday,’ he told Charles.