Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  Connolly looked across the table again, at the man with no name. Then he began to get up, knowing at once that it was an act of impertinence, and a mistake. The man in the leather jacket slid into the seat beside him. He took an automatic from the back of his waistband and placed it carefully on the table in front of him. He smelled faintly of aftershave. The letters L-O-V-E were tattooed across the knuckles of his right hand. All three men gazed at the automatic. Connolly noted the cross-hatching on the butt, the well-oiled click as the man in the leather jacket slid the mechanism back and forth, easing a bullet into the breech. He swallowed hard, but his voice gave him away, higher than usual, slightly querulous.

  “Is that the answer?” he said. “To my question?”

  The man across the table motioned him to sit down again. He was looking thoughtfully at the gun.

  “It’s an insurance,” he said at last. “An incentive. A gesture of intent. Ambiguity’s a terrible thing. Far better to be frank …” he offered Connolly a thin smile, “from the outset.”

  There was a long silence. The man across the table was studying the remains of his tea.

  “They know us all,” he said quietly. “Every one of us. They have us on file. They have our photographs. They follow us around. Here. In the Republic. Everywhere. They know the size of our shoes, the way we like our tea, the names of our loved ones. They know what we eat, whether we drink or not, everything …” He paused. “So what we need, what we always need, are new people … friends … comrades …” He paused again. “That’s what they fear the most. People with no record. No past. No file. Faces totally unknown to them. Someone to take them by surprise …”

  He cupped his hands around the mug, warming them, letting the silence descend.

  Connolly stared at him. “Me?” he said at last.

  The man across the table nodded.

  “You.”

  “You want me to join the movement?”

  “I want you to help us with Leeson.” He looked up. “And I want you to think about Mairead.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  The man hesitated for a moment. Then he smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I think it is.”

  Connolly said nothing for a moment, looking at the gun. Then he shrugged and glanced up, amazed at how quickly this small moment of choice had come and gone.

  “How do I stay in touch?” he said.

  “You don’t.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No,” the other man paused, “we do.”

  “I see.”

  There was another silence. The gun disappeared. Then the man across the table leaned towards him.

  “You’ll have heard of Robert Mugabe …?” he began.

  Connolly nodded assent, back on safe ground. The negotiations on Rhodesian independence were barely a year old, but he was already thinking of incorporating the salient points in one of his second-year lectures.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Then think of us as fellow travellers,” he said. “Same tactics. Same prize.”

  Connolly looked at him for a moment, wondering about the comparison, whether it was legitimate or not. Finally he concluded that it didn’t really matter. Whether there was any real parallel between the new President of Zimbabwe, and this forbidding figure across the table, was – in the strictest sense of the word – academic. What mattered now was getting out. Back to West Belfast. Back to Mairead.

  “Tiocfaidh Ar La,” Connolly said, his voice hollow.

  The other man inclined his head, accepting it like a benediction.

  “Tiocfaidh Ar La,” he said.

  SIX

  Leeson’s postponed PV took place a week later.

  He dressed for it with care, not too formal, not too smart, nothing to indicate that he found the occasion special in any way whatsoever. No concessions, in short, to the man he knew he’d find behind the desk, the jowly, heavy-set, permanently tired Intelligence professional he’d so far met on four previous occasions, the man from MI5 who held his file.

  He took the tube from Hammersmith to Hyde Park Corner, then the underpass to the north exit, and emerged, blinking, into the daylight. In the lee of the hotels along Park Lane, there was a hint of warmth in the sun, and he slowed, glancing at his watch, taking his time, enjoying himself. Since Christmas, he’d felt much, much better. The old zest, the old confidence, had returned. The strange purple rash was still there, chest and upper arms, but he was eating well, and the cough had gone completely. He was ready, he felt, for anything.

  Past the Dorchester, he turned into Mayfair. He’d been given the usual address in South Audley Street, the handsome, four-storeyed house with the black-glossed railings, and the matching front door. He knocked twice. The door opened. A man in a dark suit smiled a welcome and addressed him by name. He stepped inside, accepting the invitation to wait in a small side room, the low reproduction table beside his chair amply stocked with copies of Country Life.

  They kept him waiting for ten minutes or so, a cup of coffee at his elbow. Then the man in the suit appeared again, ever friendly, taking him into the heart of the building, up the broad staircase, past the pale watercolours, along a wood-panelled hall, to a door at the end. The man in the suit knocked once, didn’t wait for an answer, opened the door. Leeson stepped inside, his coat over his arm. He half-turned to say thank you, but he was too late. The door was already closing. The man had gone.

  Leeson turned back into the room. Something was different already. Usually he attended his vettings in a room with two tall windows and a view across the street to the terrace opposite, a handsome room, well-proportioned, with a beautifully restored Adam fireplace and a couple of decent oils on the wall. This room was small, shadowed, a single window, barred on the outside, with a glimpse of a fire escape. The walls were bare. There was a desk, and two chairs, and not very much else. Leeson paused for a moment, taking stock, smiling his careful smile at the man behind the desk, a stranger, someone new, someone different, like the room in which he sat.

  The man glanced up. He was shorter than Leeson, and a little older, perhaps fifty, but broad, strongly made, with wide shoulders, and big hands, and a shock of sandy hair, receding slightly at the temples. His face was open, and weathered, freckles everywhere, and there were laughter lines, deeply etched at the corners of his eyes. He wore a plaid shirt, fraying slightly at the collar, open at the neck. An old black leather jacket hung on the back of the chair. He reminded Leeson of a rugby coach, someone used to physical violence and the company of large men, someone who’d been around a bit, someone it might be all too easy to underestimate. Not at all the sallow, watchful, cipher-like spooks he’d previously encountered from the world of Intelligence.

  The man behind the desk got to his feet and held out his hand.

  “My name’s Miller,” he said, “we’ve never met before.”

  Leeson stepped towards the desk, returning the smile of welcome. The man had a rural accent, possibly Bristol, possibly somewhere further west, the vowels rounded, soft. The voice went well with the look of the man. His own person, untouched by the Establishment’s tribal markings. They shook hands. Miller had a light, dry handshake. He nodded at Leeson’s coat.

  “There’s a hook on the back of the door,” he said. “Use that.” Leeson did what he was told. He could feel Miller watching him. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, no sense of threat, none of the usual MI5 heebie-jeebies. Leeson returned to the desk and sat down, making himself comfortable, easing one leg over the other, careful to preserve the creases in his trousers, wondering quite what had happened to his usual inquisitor. A palace coup, perhaps, or a transfer to some distant out-station or other. Recently, life in the Intelligence Services had become something of a standing joke in Whitehall. The Irish situation had sharpened the old inter-service rivalries, MI5 battling for turf against MI6, the pair of them plotting against the other agencies in the field: Military Intelligence, RUC, Special Branch, and the dozens of other
tiny empires spawned by the twelve-year conflict. Lately, the shadowy world of Intelligence had acquired an almost Central American feel, fuelled by gossip and rumour, heads rolling, reputations in shreds. Safer, said some, to take a job in El Salvador. At least you might last the month.

  Leeson masked a smile, and glanced across at Miller. Miller was deep in a file, one thick finger tracing a path down a page of dense print. Leeson gazed round, noticing for the first time a holdall on the floor beside the desk. It was beige, standard Army issue, as battered as the leather jacket on the back of Miller’s chair. Somehow it reinforced the overwhelming impression the man had already made. That he didn’t, somehow, belong here. That he’d come in from somewhere else, and borrowed this bare, musty room, and paused a while to ask a question or two, and that soon he’d disappear again. Quite where Leeson fitted into all this was beyond him, but Miller looked a good deal more engaging than his oaflike predecessor, and for that Leeson was grateful. Life, after all, still owed him a surprise or two. Perhaps he’d even enjoy it.

  Miller looked up and smiled at him, a gesture of apology, and then began to run briskly through the facts of Leeson’s life. He began at the beginning, birthplace, parents, siblings, early days at prep school, the move to Glennister, the first taste of the glittering prizes, then the step onward to Oxford, and the First in Modern Greats, and then the real meat of it, the ten years in the Service, the effortless moves upward from Grade Eight to Grade Five, First Secretary, the overseas postings along the way, and now the imminent move to Washington.

  Leeson listened, impressed. Miller made his life sound more than a collection of jobs, dates, promotions. There was a hint of admiration there, even applause. It sounded like a grand adventure.

  “So …” Miller eased slowly back in the chair, “how did I do?”

  Leeson smiled. “Word perfect,” he said, ‘alpha plus.”

  “Happy with it all?”

  “Your version,” Leeson was still smiling, “or mine?”

  “Yours. This life of yours.” Miller tapped the thick file, still open on the desk. “This career.”

  Leeson looked at him a moment, resisting the easy answer. His previous inquisitor he’d treated like a tradesman: with patience, good humour, and the faintest disdain. There’d never been any kind of relationship on offer, any kind of rapport, and so this attitude of his had seemed – at the time – about right. The man had been entirely witless. He’d asked the wrong questions, in the wrong way, and in consequence his annual grillings had been about as psychologically revealing as a dental inspection. But this man, Miller, was different. He seemed genuinely interested. He touched a deeper nerve. His whole manner invited an indiscretion or two, and Leeson – ever game – was willing to risk it. He gazed down at his own file, still pondering Miller’s last question.

  “It’s been fun,” he said at last, “so far.”

  “Frustrating? Ever?”

  “Yes. Oh … certainly.”

  “Bosses? Policy?” He paused. “Politicians?”

  Leeson smiled. “All three. One time or another.” He paused. “How much do you know about the set-up?”

  Miller shrugged. “Bits and pieces,” he said, “the bare essentials. Enough to listen.”

  He slowly closed the file, a curiously intimate gesture: trust me, go off the record, bare what’s left of your soul. Leeson realized where they were heading, and began, imperceptibly, to slow down.

  “I’m not here to complain,” he said.

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “I’m sure you’re not.”

  There was the beginnings of a silence. Miller smiled, and ran a big hand backwards through his hair. The backs of his hands were freckled, like his face.

  “You’re off to the States,” he suggested.

  “Yes.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Excited.” He paused. “It’s another step forward. Like they’ve all been.”

  Miller nodded, changing tack. “That planning staff setup you’ve got over there. Ever been tempted?”

  Leeson blinked at him, surprised at the depth of the man’s knowledge. The Planning Staff was an autonomous unit, much maligned by working diplomats, a tiny coterie of civil servants, young, bright, paid by the ship of state to scale the rigging, and search the horizon, and spot the oncoming icebergs before they became a problem. They operated from an imposing ground-floor room next to the Head of the Diplomatic Corps’ suite. They had ready access to the Permanent Secretary and the Joint Intelligence Committee and they had the right to see all incoming telegrams. They had a licence to think the unthinkable, to play make-believe games with the big divisions, and recently Leeson had wondered whether his own doubts about the Falklands policy shouldn’t be their concern too. He’d toyed with approaching them directly, but somehow it had smacked, however faintly, of treason, a betrayal of working colleagues, of men and women at the sharp end. They saw as much of the staff from Buenos Aires as he did. They should, by now, have reached the same conclusions. The fact that they hadn’t had simply reinforced his cynicism.

  “They’re academic,” he murmured, ‘I’m a humble diplomat.”

  “Doesn’t policy matter to you?”

  “Policy?” Leeson looked up. “We don’t have a policy any more. We have rhetoric. There’s a difference.”

  There was a brief silence, long enough for Leeson to mask the beginnings of a smile. Then Miller leaned back in his chair.

  “So how do you see your job? What do they pay you for?”

  Leeson looked him in the eye, bringing himself to a full stop, acknowledging the man’s professionalism, the rapport he’d established, the ten brief minutes it had taken him to coax a little of the truth from Leeson.

  “I represent my country’s interests,” he said carefully.

  “And where do you think those interests lie?”

  Leeson pondered the question, aware of Miller watching him, alert, friendly, a passing stranger enjoying half an hour’s good conversation.

  “In finding a new role,” he said finally. ‘In matching means to ends.”

  Miller nodded, toying with a pencil. “Are you some kind of salesman?” he wondered aloud. “Is that it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Peddling the national line?”

  “Helping define it.”

  “And where none exists?”

  Leeson looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. “We make it up,” he said, “as you well know.”

  Miller nodded, and smiled, evidently happy with the answer, then he returned to the file, riffling through it, checking a detail here, a date there, covering the obvious squares, Leeson’s political leanings, his religious beliefs, his connections in the City, and the media, and the countless other worlds beyond the doors of the Foreign Office. None of it added to what Leeson knew was already in the file, and he was beginning to feel slightly bored, even disappointed, when Miller turned a page in the file and glanced up.

  “You’ve been ill,” he said casually. “Sick.”

  “I have.”

  “What was the matter?”

  Leeson shrugged. “Chest infection. Something I picked up. The doctor gave me some antibiotics. I’m fine now.” He smiled. “Thanks very much.”

  “A cold, was it? To begin with?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you get chilled at all? Wet?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  Miller nodded, all sympathy. “Lots of it about,” he said, “this time of year.” He glanced down at the file. “This doctor of yours … good man?”

  “Good doctor.”

  “Known him long?”

  “Ten years or so. Since I’ve lived there.”

  “Anything else been the matter?”

  Leeson hesitated for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Leeson looked at him, wondering how far the man would push, how much he could p
ossibly know. After a long conversation with Connolly on the phone, he’d paid a visit to a private clinic off the Holloway Road. He’d given them a candid account of his affair with the American, and he’d shown them the rash on his chest. A cheque for £400 had bought a series of exhaustive tests. The results of the tests were due soon, and they came with the assurance of total anonymity. For that price, he suspected they probably meant it. Miller was up a blind alley. Had to be. Leeson smiled at him.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Fit as a butcher’s dog.”

  Miller returned the smile, glanced at his watch, and then – abruptly – closed the file. “Good,” he said, standing up and extending his hand. “Good to hear it.”

  Leeson blinked up at him. Vettings normally lasted most of the morning, sometimes longer. He’d been here barely forty minutes.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  Miller nodded, putting on his leather jacket and extracting a crumpled tie from a side pocket. “That’s it,” he said. “Time is money.” He grinned. “That’s the new line, isn’t it?”

  He grinned again, an almost conspiratorial gesture that took Leeson by surprise, two civil servants confronting the same keen wind blowing through the corridors of Whitehall. Cost effectiveness. Value for money. A fitter, leaner bureaucracy. Leeson shrugged.

  “Plus ça change,” he murmured.

  Miller stepped out from behind the desk, knotting his tie.

  “What’s that mean?” he said cheerfully.

  “It means nothing ever changes. Plus ça change. All talk. No do.”