Legacy

by Alan Judd

  ‘You allowed it to happen. You permitted it. I shall now have to explain to MI5 and to the Chief, whose backing I had to secure, that what I assured everyone we would not do, we have done. Are you still intending to resign?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That will make it easier. Speak to Personnel and draft your resignation letter soon.’ There was silence. ‘More importantly,’ continued Hookey, ‘we have to consider whether your gratuitous mentioning of Legacy will have compromised our knowledge of the operation, and therefore also the existence of a very sensitive source. I appreciate that you think Koslov won’t report it because that might lead to his having to account for more than he wants in terms of his relations with you and the tart, but that’s only an assumption. His professional concern, or his patriotism, might get the better of his instinct for self-preservation. Or he might disguise the circumstances. Or they might have already become suspicious of him – there are some indications of this, Hugo tells me, from MI5 – and they might get it out of him. If any of those happens, it could be disastrous.’

  There was another silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Charles. ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Of course you shouldn’t. On the other hand.’ Hookey leaned forward, clasping his hands on his desk and turning his head sideways, once again as if reading something from the wall. ‘On the other hand, now that you have – and if he does not report or confess it – it is possible to derive some encouragement from his response.’ He grinned at Charles. ‘His acknowledgement of the existence of Legacy, implicit in his response to your nicely-tuned question, indicates to me that he is prepared to say more. Mention of secrets is like mention of sex between a man and woman: any mutual discussion of it is significant. If he is prepared to admit that he knows of this great secret, then I think he is prepared to say more. And his translating the word for you is a little like some floozie telling you she doesn’t lock her bedroom door. After all, it would have been very easy to feign ignorance and cut you off stone dead. That, combined with his insistence that you are failing in your professional duty by not pressing him as to what he’s up to – even though he says he wouldn’t tell you – suggests that this is a man who wants to tell us – or you – something, even if he doesn’t want to go the whole hog. He might even help us to monitor the progress of Legacy. Pity you’re leaving, eh?’

  He stared with eyebrows raised and the form of his grin still on his face. ‘Do you mean that if I didn’t resign we might be able to continue the case?’ asked Charles.

  ‘I don’t mean anything beyond what I’ve said. There’s no question of MI5 agreeing to further conversations with either Koslov or his tart. Not on. Even less so now that you’ve possibly compromised Legacy. So if you still feel you should resign, do so. No one’s forcing you, remember. Free for lunch? Good. Ask Maureen to book my club on your way out.’

  Charles felt he was being urged both to resign and not to resign. His instinct was to stay, his determination to go. Avoiding the lift, he trudged heavy-heartedly up to Personnel on the eighteenth floor.

  Beyond a notice in the corridor which facetiously promised that anything could be fixed, would be, he was received by Peter Sidley, the tall man of saturnine good looks and impeccable suits who chain-smoked small cigars and who had lectured the course on the case of the important Eastern European official. He was said to have an impeccable operational record and incalculable private income, having apparently never drawn expenses while head of station on his last post because he couldn’t be bothered with the claim forms.

  ‘Obviously, we wouldn’t want to give your real reason for leaving,’ he said, ‘and we don’t like the lie direct, so what if we say “family reasons”? That covers almost anything you want to suggest and is the sort of thing people feel inhibited from being too nosy about. At the same time it needn’t be your fault.’

  Charles accepted one of the small cigars. ‘Sounds fine, except for my own family.’

  ‘Ultimately, that depends on whether MI5 will want to interview your mother but meanwhile I suppose you could consider disillusionment, dislike of the sound of embassy life overseas, need for more money, girlfriend who won’t leave her job and whom you don’t want to leave behind or whatever. Of course, there’s no problem if you decide you do want to transfer to the Foreign Office and they like you enough to have you. There’s a trickle each way and we’ve taken a couple of theirs recently so they owe us one. There’d be no need to say anything to people outside the office while inside we simply say you’d rather be a diplomat than a spy. The question remains as to whether what your father did – is alleged to have done – would affect your own vetting status. A department of the Home Civil Service might be easier from that point of view.’

  This businesslike acceptance of his resignation was disconcerting. ‘Wouldn’t it have affected my vetting here, if I hadn’t decided to go?’

  ‘If you weren’t in already you might not have got in, if this were known about. But since you are you wouldn’t lose your PV certificate over it unless’ – Peter smiled – ‘we wanted to get rid of you because of your appalling drink problem, monstrous incompetence or you were found to be a shirt-lifter. Then it could become an issue. But we don’t, so it won’t. You really don’t have to go. Think carefully about it.’

  Others said the same. Martha, whom he ran into in the corridor outside Hugo’s office and who made no secret of knowing about it already, stared at him through her enormous glasses. ‘Premature,’ she said, as if recalling a code-name. ‘You are acting prematurely. A perennial failing in this service. Shooting from the hip. Better wait until all the facts are known.’

  ‘But the important ones are.’

  ‘Not in my book, they’re not.’ The trolley bell rang and the corridor filled with hurrying people parting around her. ‘You don’t know why.’

  ‘Well, we think we do. It seems pretty clear –’

  ‘Because we think we know we stop looking. That’s another service perennial. You’ll be back, I daresay, before you’re properly gone. Seen it before, dear.’ She moved through the trolley queue like a liner through harbour craft.

  Hugo was searching for something in his overflowing in-tray. ‘Bit of a flap on. But speak.’ He barely looked up at Charles’s account of his conversations. ‘Not surprised, to be frank. Do the same in your position. Family disgrace and all that. Nothing to do with you but you feel responsible. Quite rightly. Anna will be pleased.’

  ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Takes a maternal interest in your career. Thinks you’re not cut out for the service. Probably thinks nobody is. But she has a soft spot for people who harm themselves on principle. Likes that sort of thing. Did I see you coming away from Hookey’s office earlier?’

  ‘Yes, I was telling him.’

  ‘Not discussing the case? Because I should be included in all casework discussions.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Drop in again before you go. Ah. Found it.’

  Gerry and Rebecca were in their Rasen, Falcon & Co. office. ‘Pity,’ said Gerry. ‘I had a feeling something was up. Good luck with the family, whatever the problem is. Your merry men are doing well on the ex., on the whole. One or two bog-ups, but that’s what it’s for.’ He took off his glasses. ‘No, but I mean it, Charles. It’s a pity. You’d have done all right. Have a good life.’

  Rebecca came out into the corridor with him. The place was scruffier than Head Office, older and more cluttered. A partially dismantled cipher machine was being pushed along on a trolley by two men in brown coats, heading for an unmarked door at the end of the corridor, beyond which none of the students had ever been. Charles and Rebecca had to squeeze against the wall to let it pass.

  ‘It’s very sad to lose you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s sad to go. I like the people, I believe in what we’re doing, but I feel compromised, as if I compromise it – you.’ The words came in a rush and he checked himself. ‘But we can keep in touch.’

  ‘Have y
ou told Anna March?’

  ‘In outline. Hugo will fill her in, no doubt.’ He smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Another time. We’ll miss you, Charles. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘We might have dinner.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘I’ll ring.’

  Lunch with Hookey meant delaying viewing the flat he was supposedly buying, but Mary had said that the woman with the key would be there during the middle of the day, which he interpreted as until mid-afternoon. He wasn’t greatly bothered.

  There were people in Hookey’s outer office when he arrived before lunch, including two anxious-looking A officers. ‘Bit of a flap on,’ said Maureen.

  ‘There is on the sixth floor, too, according to Hugo. The office seems one big flap this morning.’

  ‘It’s catching. I’ve noticed before. One floor gets a flap on and gradually it spreads to other floors, although the reasons for the flaps are quite unrelated. Maybe it’s competitive, sort of demand for attention. Hugo’s not in on this one, though I’m sure he’d love to be. Hookey won’t be long. Believes that nothing in life should get in the way of lunch. I’d booked you into the Travellers but he said there were too many office and Foreign Office people there. The office’s other canteen, he calls it. So you’re going to Brooks’s, one of his other clubs.’

  ‘How many does he have?’

  ‘He admits to three, these two and Pratts, but I suspect more.’

  ‘Does he ever take you?’

  She smiled. ‘Funnily enough, it does occur to him now and again, yes. Usually when someone’s cancelled, but still. Or if he thinks it’s my birthday, which he invariably gets wrong although I’ve put it in his diary in red ink and capitals.’ She was summoned by an irascible shout from within. ‘Here we go again. I’ll tell him you’re here.’

  As a controller, Hookey merited a car to take him to lunch. ‘Thing about office flaps,’ he said as they waited at the Parliament Square traffic lights, ‘is that everyone enjoys them, really. People love cock-ups. Ideally other people’s, of course, but even their own provided responsibility is shared. It’s the excitement.’

  He walked quickly past the bar in Brooks’s. ‘We’ll go straight in, if you don’t mind. Danger of bores in the bar and I’d have to explain you. I had the misfortune to be in the army with the editor of The Times, who’s there now, and because he still doesn’t know what I do he thinks I’m a failed would-be ambassador and commiserates infuriatingly.’ He laughed and coughed. ‘One of the problems of an office career. Either they don’t realise and think you’re a Foreign Office failure or they do and think you’re far more influential than you are and keep pestering you with things they think you want to know. Not a problem you’ll have, of course, if you do as you say.’

  As soon as they were at their table a pink gin was put at his elbow. He took four or five seconds over the menu, ordering lobster bisque, roast beef and the club claret. Charles, not minding what he ate, chose the same. Like Viktor, he thought.

  ‘What’ll you do when you’ve left?’ Hookey continued. ‘Have to do something. Young chap like you can’t do nothing, even if you can afford it. Can you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Foreign Office the obvious thing, of course. More postings, more high status jobs, more self-importance, gratifying illusion of being responsible for international relations, lots of important boring stuff like negotiating numbers of potatoes with this wretched Common Market. Wish to God that referendum had gone the other way. I seem to be in a minority of one in Whitehall on that. But if real diplomatic work is what you want you shouldn’t be with us anyway. Postings apart, I’d have thought the Home Civil Service might offer more real jobs, interesting jobs. That’s if you want government service at all. Perhaps you’d rather go to the City and make some money.’

  ‘I might if I understood what it is they do to get it.’

  ‘I agree. Baffles me. My brother’s in it. Makes fortunes. Every Christmas I ask him what exactly he does when he gets in in the morning and every Christmas he tells me and at the time I think I understand but by New Year I’m still none the wiser. Dreadful old boy network, of course. Not that that’s necessarily dreadful. Way the world is, works on connections. Like the office. Journalism’s no different. Maybe you should go for that. Maybe I should’ve introduced you to The Times man.’

  They took their coffee upstairs, sitting in the windows overlooking St James’s. ‘Best view in London,’ said Hookey. ‘Everything you need to know about life can be surmised from the human traffic below us. Wonderful perspective, best justification for privilege there is. Perhaps the only one. Pity about the portraits, eh?’ Charles began looking about him but Hookey allowed no more time for that than for menus. ‘Thing about our profession,’ he continued, ‘is that, apart from the enduring fascination with the foibles of human nature and the interaction between the individual and bureaucracy, the individual and ideology, the individual and power, and the occasional bit of excitement, there’s the feeling that at the end of it you might, if you are lucky, have done the state some service. Peculiarly gratifying. Lot of people long to feel they’ve made a contribution in life. We’re lucky. Not easy to find that combination in a single job. Port, brandy?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do?’

  ‘In that case brandy, please.’

  ‘Sensible fellow. Lunchtime drinking is a positive virtue. People treat each other better, helps the world go round more smoothly. It’s like dancing, does people good. You don’t dance, I s’pose? So few do now.’

  ‘Hugo does, apparently.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘His wife, Anna, told me.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, anyway.’ Hookey seemed lost in thought for a while. Charles knew he should be on his way to the flat.

  ‘I understand why you feel you can’t remain,’ Hookey resumed. ‘It reflects well on your – your – what do we call it? – your sense of honour?’ He stared at Charles with raised eyebrows. ‘That is, I sympathise with your reasons although I don’t agree with the action. Whatever you might feel, and whatever I said this morning, it is not necessary for you to leave. You don’t know the full story and you may very well be no better placed to discover it from without, as it were. It would be sensible to wait, eh?’

  In his heart, Charles agreed, but he was reluctant to go back on his decision so easily. It was beginning to feel like an issue over which he had to prove himself. ‘It’s not only a question of honour, or how I feel about it. Given the restrictions on what I can do if I stay in, I don’t see how anything can emerge which would alter the fundamentals. And it is important to me to know exactly what, and why.’

  ‘Have you sent your letter of resignation to Personnel?’

  ‘It’s written but not sent. I’ve got it with me.’

  ‘May I see?’

  Charles handed the brief letter over. Hookey put on his glasses and scanned it in a second or two. ‘I’m seeing Personnel after lunch. I’ll drop it in for you.’

  It was a statement, not an offer. Hookey slipped it into his inside pocket. Charles had not yet sent it because doing so would feel like the point of no return for which he had not quite prepared himself. Its disappearance into Hookey’s pocket was brutally final.

  ‘Now,’ said Hookey briskly, leaning forward in his armchair. ‘I have something here for you.’ He waited while the waiter delivered a brandy and a white port, then took from his other inside pocket a bulky plain brown envelope. ‘This is part of a document written by your father many years ago. I shall lend it to you to take away and read. Don’t read it here. I’m doing it because it may help you to come to terms with what has happened. It comes from a source of very great delicacy which I am not about to reveal to you and I want you to assure me that if anyone else sees it, if you show it to anyone – as you may feel you want to – you must convince them that you found it among old papers and diaries left in the
loft by your father. It must not, under any circumstances, have come from or have been seen by us. Do I have your word on this? Cross your heart and hope to die, eh?’

  Charles nodded.

  Hookey sat back. ‘Good. Now, one other thing. If you do make contact as a private individual with Lover Boy – and you’ll have to be quick about it because indications are he’ll be going back in the next week or two – I beg you to remember Legacy. You may think it odd that I feel it necessary to remind you of it but Lover Boy’s words to you about not neglecting your professional and patriotic duty strike a deep note for me, a resonant note. Not only do I think these are the words of a man who wants to talk, despite what he says about not talking, and that it would be worth pursuing him – were we permitted – for those reasons alone. Beyond that, what he says points to a truth about your generation and, if I may say so, perhaps a danger for yourself.’

  He paused, his hands clasped across his chest, his unlit pipe on the coffee table between them and his gaze on the sunshine and traffic of St James’s Street. ‘That is, the romantic elevation of the individual above all else, the cult of sincerity, the idea that if I really feel it, it really matters, the assumption of happiness and self-fulfilment as not only the natural state of mankind, but a right. I don’t just mean all the E. M. Forster crap about betraying his country rather than his friend – which means betraying his friend’s friends – but the insistence on validation by the personal, with the personal always coming first.’ He took up his port. ‘Now, of course, I’m an old buffer and I have to remind myself that I must seem to you like old buffers of the previous generation seemed to me when I was your age. But with this difference – they had been through the mill, the first war, as we had ours, whereas your generation has been blest with unbroken peace and unprecedented plenty. Good for you. We – which includes your father, it’s worth remembering – knew ourselves lucky to be alive, fed, housed and in one piece, give or take a few loose screws. We were less inclined to rate the importance of anything we were involved in in terms of our own feelings for it. It’s not that we were morally any better – you would have been us and we you if the generations were reversed – but the struggle for survival compelled us to look first to what your friend might call the objective realities of a situation rather than at the emotional consequences for ourselves, which come somewhat lower down the survival scale. This, essentially, is what Viktor was getting at when he was berating you for your alleged lack of professional concern. That’s not because he’s a good communist – believe me, there are very few real communists where he comes from – but because he was brought up in a country that stresses your duties to the state far more than what the state is supposed to do for you. He knows the importance of things like Legacy, he knows that the Cold War is not phoney. It has casualties even while it’s cold – look at the Cubans and South Africans in Angola or at what’s happening in South Vietnam now that the Americans have pulled the plug on their allies and left them with an army of occupation which gets all the support it wants from Russia and China. I won’t go on about that. Makes me too angry. The whole thing was wrongly understood and wrongly handled from the start – and not for want of telling from us, I can tell you. But there we are.