A Loyal Spy

by Simon Conway

  “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  There was a pause.

  “Alex told me that you had a chance to kill Nor in the Sahara in 2002, he said that you let him go.”

  “I’m not an assassin. What would you have done?”

  “You need to leave in the morning,” Beech told him.

  The house was silent. Beech and Flora had gone to bed. Nor’s hollowed-out face stared at him out of the screen and beneath it the title:

  A Spy’s Confession

  The Koran commands you to speak the truth, even if it be against your own selves (more)

  Jonah clicked on the link and the clip played.

  “I swear to God,” Nor said, “the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England …”

  Afterwards he sat in Beech’s chair, with his head tipped back, staring at the ceiling. He thought, What are you playing at Nor?

  What caused you to make such a public declaration? Was the penitent’s desire for confession or is it that someone paid you to do it? Or was it, as seemed most likely, the thirst for the public spectacle of revenge that compelled you? After all, he thought, revenge was nothing if it was not public. There was something else that bothered him. Why single out the British when there was an opportunity to ridicule the Americans too? Why not pour scorn on the neocon Winthrop, the hidden program Eschatos and the millenarian Pastor Bob? Why not trumpet the ease with which you defrauded them of the diamonds? He wanted to ask the actor’s question: what’s your motivation? Most of all he wanted to ask: who’s standing at your shoulder? Who lit your touch paper?

  The phone rang at 2 a.m. Beech was called to a domestic incident in Castlebay. Jonah was lying awake in the next room. He listened to the muffled sound of Beech getting dressed through the wall, the clomp of his policeman’s boots on the landing and finally his Land Rover starting up, and driving off down the lane.

  Flora came to him soon after, slipping soundlessly into his room and under the bed covers. She huddled naked against him, her head pressed against his shoulder, her whole body shaking with anger or remorse, he wasn’t sure which. He lifted her face to his and she closed her eyes and inhaled, and he felt her eyelashes brush his cheek. Then she pressed her mouth hungrily to his—kissing her felt like dissolving …

  She reached for his penis and he ran his hand up her side and cupped a breast, brushing the nipple between the fork of his fingers. Then he rolled over on to her and her legs parted and she steered him inside her; he plunged deep inside her, and his other hand moved down her back and between the groove of her buttocks, lifting her upwards. They slid back and forth on a film of sweat and it felt as if they were riding a wave, that there were no longer two bodies, but one single sensation building towards a climax. The savagery of his desire overwhelmed him: he came with his face in a violent grimace and she yelled: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck …!”

  THE VULNERABLE CITY RIFF AGAIN

  August 2005

  This time they met at Woolwich Reach, on the concrete apron at the entrance to the Thames Barrier visitors’ center. Alex was leaning against a picnic table outside the café, wearing a Day-Glo vest marked ENVIRONMENT AGENCY. The burnished-steel hoods of the barrier’s concrete piers stretched across the muddy swirl of the Thames before them. A row of flags carrying the Environment Agency emblem rattled on flagpoles on the freshly seeded grass banks beside the control room. From where they were standing, looking west, you could see the Millennium Dome and beyond it the towers of Canary Wharf.

  “Next to fire, water remains the greatest threat to the city.” Alex told him, jabbing an unlit cigarette at him. “December 1663—three years before the Great Fire—a storm surge in the North Sea carried a massive tidal wave down the Thames and flooded Whitehall. It swept away the government.”

  He paused to light the cigarette, cupping his palms to shield his lighter flame.

  “I’ve heard your vulnerable city riff before,” Jonah reminded him. He had little patience to hear it again.

  Alex inhaled and waved the cigarette in his face. “But have you been listening? London has always been vulnerable to flooding. Fourteen people died in the Thames flood of 1928, and three hundred and seven died in 1953. One hundred and sixty thousand acres of farmland were flooded. All it takes is a combination of two things: a storm surge and a spring tide. A storm surge generated by low pressure in the Atlantic Ocean tracks eastward past the north of Scotland and is then driven into the shallow waters of the North Sea, where a giant wave is formed. From there it’s funneled into the Thames Estuary. You couple that with a spring tide on a moonless night and, all of a sudden, more than a million East Enders are rushing for the high ground. And that won’t be pretty, mate.”

  “We’re British. We’ll form a queue. Anyway, isn’t that why we’ve got the Barrier?”

  “It may not be up to the task,” Alex explained. “In 1990, the number of barrier closures was one or two a year. In 2003 the Barrier was raised on fourteen consecutive tides.”

  “Why?”

  “Global warming and something called post-glacial rebound, which means that the south of England is tilting downwards like a badly made table.” Alex dropped his cigarette and ground the stub into the concrete. “A Thames Barrier flood defense closure is triggered when a combination of high tides in the North Sea and high river flows at Teddington weir indicate that water levels will rise more than five meters in central London. Control usually has nine hours’ warning; any less and we’re waist deep in water—five hundred thousand houses, four hundred schools, sixteen hospitals and eight power stations, and all of it fucked. One and a half million people at risk. The estimated cost of a flood that overwhelms the Barrier is somewhere in the region of thirteen billion quid. They’re making a film about it. Robert Carlyle—you know, Begbie from Trainspotting—but with a terrible cockney accent. He plays the engineer who has to raise the gates again after terrorists have stormed the control room. Terrible tosh, really. My people are working on it in an advisory capacity.”

  “You think that it’s a credible scenario?”

  Alex gave him an incredulous look. “Disabling the Barrier on a high tide? Are you stupid? Of course it’s fucking credible. Nor’s made a threat. He’s a resourceful chap. People are taking him at his word. They’re going to raise the threat level to critical. That means mobilization of the emergency services and the armed forces, or at least what we can find at the back of the cupboard given that most of them are in Iraq or Afghanistan.” Alex sprang up from the table and strode to the edge of the grass bank leading to the water, as if expecting some sudden activity to follow on from his words. “Ideally, that means the cavalry in tanks on the Barrier, SAS boys from Hereford camped out in the control room, marine commandos in RIBs escorting shipping in the estuary, a cordon of navy divers on the immediate approaches, roadblocks, helicopters, underwater netting, maybe even a submarine. Come to think of it the submarine is probably the one thing you can count on. That’s just to try and prevent it happening …”

  Alex paused and gave him a significant look. Jonah dutifully fed him his cue. “And if it happens?”

  Alex ran a hand through his hair. “Cobra is drafting a contingency plan for the flood relief effort and is discussing a full national disaster preparedness exercise. And nothing about it is easy. A flood on this scale will rip the heart out of the government. The emergency services won’t fare much better. Scotland Yard is in the flood zone so their special operations room will have to decamp to Hendon. The Fire Brigade will have to abandon Lambeth, and besides, fire engines can’t operate in water above exhaust level and they’ve only got two boats. The ambulance service is in worse condition. Their control centers are in Waterloo and Bow, both in the flood zone. Ambulances can’t operate in water of any depth. Hospitals will lose power and sanitation. The police will retain overall command but they will require substantial support from the army in rescue and repair operations. Under normal circumstances that assistance would be forthcoming,
but given the constraints currently on the army new thinking is required, and for this reason a significant role is envisioned for the private sector. We’re talking about the establishment and maintenance of camps for the internally displaced, a guard force for first-aid points, morgues, etc., as well as the provision of close protection to workers re-establishing electricity and sewerage. On top of that a general capacity to secure neighborhoods and confront criminals with lethal force.”

  “You’re talking about armed civilians on the streets of London?”

  “Armed professionals,” Alex corrected him. “The day-to-day burden of defending society is now too big for the state to handle alone.”

  There was something about the idea of it that struck Jonah as deeply wrong. “This isn’t America,” he protested.

  “It’s Blair’s Britain, mate, get used to it.”

  “And I suppose that you’ve secured yourself the contract?”

  “This is bigger than any British firm. We’ve had to take on American partners.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Let me put it this way, negotiations are at an advanced stage with a major US security contractor for the provision of manpower and services in the event of a catastrophic flood.”

  Jonah looked out across the water. It didn’t seem to matter how bad it got, Alex would find a way to profit from it.

  “Beech said that Monteith has been suspended?”

  “Monteith’s a spent force,” Alex replied. “Fisher-King has washed his hands of him. Five have stepped in with an audit team headed up by a wizened old spy-catcher called Holdfast. They’re going through all the files. They’re putting names to faces. It’s only a matter of time before they pin the Kiernan assassination on you. You’d better start making plans. If I was you I’d be liquidating my assets, preparing to disappear somewhere without an extradition treaty. I’ve heard Venezuela is nice. Mongolia less so …”

  “And you? What are you going to do?”

  “What I always do. I’m cutting a deal.”

  “With who?”

  “Listen to me, none of us owes a damn thing to Monteith.”

  “And the rest of us? Do you owe us?”

  “I’m sorry, Jonah, but you had your chance. You could have put a stop to all of this but you did nothing. I’m not taking a fall for you. And as for the others, Beech should be fine, he walked away, after all. He can justifiably claim he knew nothing. And Lennard, he’s in Burma, mate, he’s revoked all things material. He’s already in a cell.”

  “Where is Monteith?”

  “He’s hiding out down near Bristol at his old alma mater, Clifton College. It’s a little puppy kennel for would-be imperialists. They’ll love you down there. Tell him to find somewhere better to hide.”

  When he returned to the car park, Jonah discovered that his Land Rover had been stolen. He contemplated walking back to the visitors’ center to tell Alex but then thought better of it. He could do with a walk. He set off along the Thames path.

  He spent that night in a hotel in Earl’s Court frequented by backpackers. He lay on a single bed and stared up at the water-damaged ceiling. He could hardly bear to acknowledge the scale of his betrayal of both Beech and Miranda. Beech, who was an honest and loyal friend, and Miranda, who had given up everything to go with him to exist in virtual exile in Scotland, and who had waited patiently while he wrote his ridiculous memoir.

  At the same time, he could not clear from his mind the memory of Flora clinging to him, her mouth hungrily searching for his. He felt inflamed.

  How much Flora was in love with him he did not know; she had once asked him whether it was a game of secrets. He wanted to tell her that it was not.

  In the morning, Jonah took a taxi to Paddington and a train to Bristol. He found Monteith sitting at a long oak refectory table in the Clifton College school library with a pile of manuscripts on the table in front of him. Term had ended and the school was deserted.

  Monteith looked up with his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and gave him a candid stare. “Were you followed?”

  Jonah shrugged. “If there were enough of them and they were working in shifts. Do you know anyone that good?”

  “Maybe,” Monteith replied.

  “With respect, I don’t think that they need to follow me to find you. They probably already know where you are. You should move somewhere more secure.”

  Monteith grunted and returned to reading the manuscript on the desk. “The present age is generally thought to be more chaotic than those which went before it, he said, reading from the manuscript. Life has become more controversial; controversy is more violent; the unintelligent are perverting science into a new form of superstition. For science read security and they could be talking about the present day. It is ironic really. The letter was signed by four Old Cliftonians: Field Marshal Haig, Birdwood, who commanded the ANZAC forces at Gallipoli, the poet Henry Newbolt, and Younghusband.”

  Monteith was an avid student of Francis Younghusband, the repressed, headstrong Edwardian explorer who’d shadowed the Russians on the North-West Frontier, opened an overland route from China to India, and led a quixotic military invasion of Tibet. He was a student of anything that touched on the clandestine quest for information and power in the huge uncharted expanse of mountainous territory between the empires of Britain and Tsarist Russia that had been popularly known as the Great Game.

  “Come on,” Monteith said, pressing his hands palms down on the table and rising, “let’s go for a stroll in the grounds.” He picked up a canvas Gladstone bag by its handles. They walked past empty classrooms and down a steep set of stone steps and across a quadrangle.

  “It’s difficult to see now from looking at the current crop but Clifton’s founding ambition was to produce the sort of men who would run the British Empire. It was remarkably successful. Thousands of them set forth over the years: soldiers, sailors, political agents, civil servants. Men of moral and political integrity, imbued with the qualities of administration and leadership, and unsparing and unstinting of themselves in their country’s service.”

  They walked past the chapel and a memorial to those who had died in the South African War.

  “Isn’t that when we invented the concentration camp?” Jonah asked.

  “Don’t be flippant.”

  In front of the playing fields there was a statue of Field Marshal Haig, the inventor of trench warfare.

  “I’m trying to remember how many people died on the first day of the Somme,” Jonah said. “Twenty thousand, was it?”

  Monteith blithely ignored him. “I often wonder what it was like for them, when the school had only just been founded. How they went out into the world, conscious that they were the first and that it was up to them to set the school’s reputation. Sit down.” They sat on a bench, looking out over the empty playing fields. “For the rest of us it was merely a question of trying to live up to the standards that they set,” Monteith continued. “I’ve tried my best. There have been some nasty jobs that have had to be done and I’ve not shirked from them. I’ve seen them through. I don’t regret trying to assassinate Bin Laden in ’99. If we had succeeded the world would be a very different place today.”

  “We were played,” Jonah told him.

  “My overriding concern has been to protect the safety and security of the British populace.”

  Monteith was staring intently at the dark strip of woods in the distance.

  “Is everything alright?” Jonah asked.

  “Can you see someone?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought I saw someone.”

  Monteith reached inside his canvas bag and produced a pair of binoculars and turned to focus them on the woods. After a pause, he said gloomily, “Ramblers.”

  Jonah studied Monteith discreetly; he looked tired, but not unhinged.

  “You sound as if you’re disappointed.”

  “I want them watching me,” Monteith explained, in a to
ne that suggested that he was having to explain himself to a small child. “That way I’ll know where they are when I decide to disappear.” He returned the binoculars to the bag. “We’ve got a problem, a serious bloody problem.”

  “Go on.”

  “Fisher-King is suffering selective memory loss. He says he never sanctioned the parlay with the mullah. As if he wasn’t there, sitting at the back of the room with his bloody sanctimonious smile. He denies all knowledge of an order to assassinate Bin Laden or a conversation with our American cousins. He knows nothing about the death of Kiernan or the Department’s involvement in it. He knows nothing and his organization knows nothing. Instead, Fisher-King has chosen to accuse the MoD of running a black-ops kill squad run by yours truly and staffed by a gaggle of mulatto flotsam of questionable loyalty.”

  “Mulatto flotsam?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “I’ll try not to be offended.”

  “I’m offended on your behalf. But that’s not the worst of it.”

  “Go on …”

  “They’re going to let the plot run. They’ve no plans to intercept Nor before he gets here.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because Fisher-King thinks that he can score a propaganda coup and smash an al-Qaeda cell in this country if they can lure Nor here and catch him red-handed. He probably thinks they’ll give him a knighthood. How could he be so bloody foolhardy?”

  “Where is Nor now?”

  “The video confession was uploaded in an Internet café in Peshawar.”

  “Pakistan,” Jonah mused. “How is Pakistan these days?”

  “Most of the money that doesn’t go to service their international debt is spent by the military, which doesn’t leave anything over for schools or hospitals. And the military, which I would say is the last bastion of credible power in the country, is increasingly infiltrated by Islamist factions allied with jihadist elements and assisted by our old friends in the ISI. Efforts to impose rule over Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have largely been in vain. The Pakistan army was recently kicked out of South Waziristan by well-armed jihadis. Kashmir is a mess and there is, of course, the threat of loose nukes.”