A Spy By Nature (8 page)

I read this in
The Economist.

“Let’s not get off the point.” Ogilvy wants back in. “Let’s talk about how to get the Spaniards and the Danes onboard.”

Suddenly Ann sneezes, a great lashing
a-choo
that she only half covers with her hand. In stereo, Ogilvy and I say, “Bless you,” to which he adds, “Are you okay?” Ann, not one to be patronized, lets her guard drop and says, “Yeah,” with sullen indifference. Her voice, with its sour accent, sounds impatient and spoiled. In this brief moment, we can all see her for what she really is: a tough nut of steely ambition, looking for a one-way ticket to London and a better life. In the wake of it, Ogilvy glides away, talking with great efficiency about how to get the Spaniards and Danes “on board.” As time ticks away, the stopwatch edging toward our thirty-minute limit, he is left more or less on his own, with occasional interjections from the Hobbit, whose knowledge of European Union bylaws is as extensive as it is tedious. He must be the star pupil at Warwick. Ann, for the most part, turns in on herself and merely disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Elaine barely speaks. From my point of view, I feel that I have done enough to please the examiners, both by what I have said and by my personal conduct, which has been forthright but respectful of the other candidates. I also feel that Ogilvy and the Hobbit are flogging a dead horse. Most of the points that were there to be made have been made saliently some time ago. Nevertheless, it will look good if I try to wrap things up.

“If I could just interrupt you there, Sam, because we’re running out of time, and I think we should try to reach some sort of conclusion.”

“Absolutely.”

He gives me the floor. Don’t fuck it up.

“I think we’ve covered most of the angles on this problem. Judging from the last ten minutes or so, we’re mostly agreed on a course of action.”

“Which is?” says Ann, coldly.

“That we need to—as you pointed out right at the start—present a united front to the Americans. We must conduct conclusive tests on the French plant. If needs be, we should bargain with the Germans to get them on our side.”

“We never said how we were going to do that.” The manner in which Elaine says this, with just under a minute to go, implies that this is largely my responsibility.

“No, we didn’t. But that’s not something that should worry us. I think the Germans would be unlikely to do anything that would undermine the EU.”

“And what do we do about the American export ban?” the Hobbit asks, looking in my direction as he tips forward on his chair. It was a mistake to take this on.

“Well, there’s very little we can do….”

“I don’t agree,” says Ann, cutting me off short so that my incomplete sentence sounds weak and defeatist.

“Me too,” says Ogilvy, but he too is interrupted.

“I’m afraid that your thirty minutes is up.”

Rouse has tapped his pen twice—
tap tap
—on the hard surface of the examiners’ table. We all turn to face him.

“Thank you all very much. If you’d like to gather up your things and make your way back to the common room, where Mr. Heywood is waiting for you.”

I think we all share a sense of disappointment at not managing to conclude the discussion within the allocated time. It will reflect badly on the five of us, although I may score points for trying to tidy things up toward the end. Ogilvy is first up and out of the room, followed by the rest of us in a tight group, waddling out like tired ducks. Elaine is the last to leave, closing the door behind her. She does this with too much force, and it slams shut with a loud clap.

Keith is waiting for us in the common room, idling near the coffee machine. As soon as we are all inside, he instructs us to follow him back down the corridor to begin the first of the written examinations. There is no time to relax, no time to ruminate or grab a drink. They won’t let the pressure off until five o’clock this evening, and then it starts all over again tomorrow.

On the way to the classroom, Elaine and Ann peel away from the group to go to the loo. This flusters Keith. While Ogilvy, the Hobbit, and I are taking our seats in the classroom, he lurks nervously in the corridor, waiting for their return.

The Hobbit, who has taken a seat by the window, grabs this opportunity to tuck into yet another cereal bar. Ogilvy returns to his previous spot at the back of the room. To annoy him I move to the desk nearest his, close in and to the left. For a moment it looks as though he may move, but politeness checks him. He looks across at me and smiles very slowly.

With no sign of Elaine and Ann, Keith trundles back in, head bowed, and starts handing out thick pink booklets, which he leaves face-down on every candidate’s desk. The Hobbit thanks him through the crumbly munch of his midmorning snack, and Ogilvy begins twirling a pencil in his right hand, rotating it quickly through his fingers like a helicopter blade. It’s a poser’s party trick and it doesn’t come off: the pencil spins out of his hand and clatters onto the lino between our two desks. I make no attempt to retrieve it, so Ogilvy has to bend down uncomfortably to pick it up. As he is doing so, Elaine and Ann bustle in, sharing the cozy mutual smiles and solidarity of women returning from a shared trip to the loo.

“This section of the Sisby program is known as the Policy Exercise,” Keith says, beginning his introductory talk before they have had a chance to sit down. He’s on a strict timetable, and he’s sticking to it. “It is a two-hour written paper in which you will be asked to analyze a large quantity of complex written material, to identify the main points and issues, and to write a thorough and cogently argued case for one of three possible options.”

I stare at the pink booklet and pray for something other than shellfish.

“You may start when you are ready. I will let you know when one hour of the examination has passed, and again when there are ten minutes of the exercise remaining.”

A crackle of paper, an intake of breath, the incidental noises of beginning.

Here we go again.

After lunch—a ham and cheese sandwich at the National Gallery—we sit in the stifling classroom faced by a phalanx of numerical facility tests divided into three separate sections: Relevant Information, Quantitative Relations, and Numerical Inferences. Each batch of twenty questions lasts exactly twenty-two minutes, after which Keith allows a brief interlude before starting us on the next paper. Each problem, whether number-or word-based, must be solved in a matter of seconds, with no time available for checking the accuracy of the answer. Calculators are forbidden. It is by far the most testing part of Sisby so far, and the mindthud of intellectual fatigue is overwhelming. I crave water.

We are all of us squeezed by time, clustered in the classroom like caged hens as the heat intensifies. Everything—even the most testing arithmetic calculation—has to be answered more or less on instinct. At one point I have to estimate 43 percent of 2,345 in under seven seconds. Often my brain will work ahead of itself or lag behind, concentrating on anything but the problem at hand. The tests blur into a soup of numbers, traps of contradictory data, false assumptions, and trick questions. Any apparent simplicity is quickly revealed as an illusion: every word must be examined for what it conceals, every number treated as an elaborate code. My ability to process information gradually wanes. I don’t complete any of the three batches of tests to my satisfaction.

Shortly before four o’clock, Keith asks us with nasal exactitude to stop writing. Ogilvy immediately glances across to gauge how things have gone. He tilts his head to one side, creases his brow, and puffs out his cheeks at me, as if to say,
I fucked that up, and I hope you did, too.
For a moment I am tempted into intimacy, a powerful urge to reveal to him the extent of my exhaustion, but I cannot allow any display of weakness. Instead, I respond with a self-possessed, almost complacent shrug to suggest that things have gone particularly well. This makes him look away.

A few minutes later, we emerge narrow-eyed into the bright white light of the corridor. Better air out here, cool and clean. The Hobbit and Ann immediately walk away in the direction of the toilets, but Ogilvy lingers outside, looking bloodshot and leathery.

“Christ,” he says, pulling on his jacket with an exaggerated swagger. “That was tough.”

“You found it difficult?” Elaine asks. My impression has been that she does not like him.

“God, yeah. I couldn’t seem to concentrate. I kept looking at you guys scribbling away. How did it go for you, Alec?”

He smiles at me, like we’re long-term buddies.

“I don’t go in for postmortems much.” To Elaine: “You got a cigarette?”

She takes out a pack of high-tar Camels.

“I only have one left. We can share.”

She lights up, crushing the empty pack in her hand. Ogilvy mutters something about giving up smoking, but looks excluded and weary.

“I need to get some fresh air,” he says, moving away from us down the hall. “I’ll see you later on.”

Elaine exhales through her nostrils, two steady streams of smoke, watching him leave with a critical stare.

“Have you got anything else today?” she asks me. “An interview or anything?”

I don’t feel like talking. My mind is looped around the penultimate question in the last batch of tests. The answer was closer to 54 than 62, and I circled the wrong box. Damn.

“I have to meet Rouse. The SIS officer.”

She glances quickly left and right.

“Careless talk costs lives, Alec,” she whispers, half smiling. “Be careful what you say. The five of us are the only SIS people here today.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s obvious,” she says, offering the cigarette to me. The tip of the filter is damp with her saliva and I worry that when I hand it back she will think the wetness is mine. “They only process five candidates a month.”

“According to who?”

She hesitates.

“It’s well known. A lot more reach the initial interview stage, but only five get through to Sisby. We’re the lucky ones.”

“So you work in the Foreign Office already. That’s how you know?”

She nods, glancing again down the corridor. My head has started to throb.

“Pen pushing,” she says. “I want to step up. Now, no more shoptalk. What time are you scheduled to finish?”

“Around five.”

Her hair needs washing and she has a tiny spot forming on the right side of her forehead.

“That’s late,” she says, sympathetically. “I’m done for the day. Back tomorrow at half past eight.”

The cigarette is nearly finished. I had been worried that it would set off a fire alarm.

“I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Guess so.”

She is turning to leave when I say, “You don’t have anything for a headache, do you? Dehydration.”

“Sure. Just a moment.”

She reaches into the pocket of her jacket, rustles around for something, and then uncurls her right hand in front of me. There in the palm of her hand is a short strip of plastic containing four aspirin.

“That’s really kind of you. Thanks.”

She answers with a wide, conspiratorial smile, dwelling on the single word, “Pleasure.”

In the bathroom, I turn on the cold tap and allow it to run out for a while. Flattery is implicit in Elaine’s flirtations. She has ignored the others—particularly Ogilvy—but made a conscious effort to befriend me. I puncture the foil on the plastic strip of pills and extract two aspirin, feeling them dry and hard in my fingertips. Drinking water from a cupped hand, I tip back my head and let the pills bump down my throat. My reflection in the mirror is dazed and washed out. Have to get myself together for Rouse.

Behind me, the door on one of the cubicles unbolts. I hadn’t realized there was someone else in the room. I watch in the mirror as Pyman comes out of the cubicle nearest the wall. He looks up and catches my eye, then glances down, registering the strip of pills lying used on the counter. What looks like mild shock passes quickly over his face. I say hello in the calmest, it’s-only-aspirin voice I can muster, but my larynx cracks and the words come out subfalsetto. He says nothing, walking out without a word.

I spit a hoarse “fuck” into the room, yet something body-tired and denying immediately erases what has just occurred. Pyman has seen nothing untoward, nothing that might adversely affect my candidacy. He was simply surprised to see me in here, and in no mood to strike up a conversation. I cannot be the first person at Sisby to get a headache late in the afternoon on the first day. He will have forgotten all about it by the time he goes home.

This conclusion allows me to concentrate on the imminent interview with Rouse, whose office—B14—I begin searching for along the corridors of the third floor. The room is situated in the northwestern corner of the building, with a makeshift nameplate taped crudely to the door:
MARTIN ROUSE: AFS NON-QT/CSSB SPECIAL.

I knock confidently. There is a loud, “Come in.”

His office smells of bad breath. Rouse is pacing by the window like a troubled general, the tail of a crumpled white shirt creeping out the back of his trousers.

“Sit down, Mr. Milius,” he says. There is no shaking of hands.

I settle into a hard-backed chair opposite his desk, which has just a few files and a lamp on it, nothing more. A temporary home. The window looks out over St. James’s Park.

“Everything going okay so far?”

“Fine, thank you. Yes.”

He has yet to sit down, yet to look at me, still gazing out the window.

“Candidates always complain about the Numerical Facility tests. You find those difficult?”

It isn’t clear from his tone whether he is being playful or serious.

“It’s been a long time since I had to do maths without a calculator. Good exercise for the brain.”

“Yes,” he says, murmuring.

It is as if his thoughts are elsewhere. It was not possible during the group exercise to get a look at the shape of the man, the actual physical presence, but I can now do so. His chalky face is entirely without distinguishing characteristics, neither handsome nor ugly, though the cheekbones are swollen with fat. He has the build of a rugby player, but any muscle on his broad shoulders has turned fleshy, pushing out his shirt in unsightly lumps. Why do we persist with the notion of the glamorous spy? Rouse would not look out of place behind the counter of a butcher’s shop. He sits down.

“I imagine you’ve come well prepared.”

“In what sense?”

“You were asked to revise some specialist subjects.”

“Yes.”

His manner is almost dismissive. He is fiddling with a fountain pen on his desk. Too many thoughts in his head at any one time.

“And what have you read up on?”

I am starting to feel awkward.

“The Irish peace process…”

He interrupts before I have a chance to finish.

“Ah! And what were your conclusions?”

“About what?”

“About the Irish peace process,” he says impatiently. The speed of his voice has quickened considerably.

“Which aspect of it?”

He plucks a word out of the air.

“Unionism.”

“I think there’s a danger that John Major’s government will jeopardize the situation in Ulster by pandering to the Unionist vote in the House of Commons.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“And what would you do instead? I don’t see that the prime minister has any alternative. He requires legislation to be passed, motions of no confidence to be quashed. What would you do in his place?”

This quick, abrasive style is what I had expected from Lucas and Liddiard. More of a contest, an absence of civility.

“It’s a question of priorities.”

“What do you mean?”

He is coming at me quickly, rapid jabs under pressure, allowing me no time to design my answers.

“I mean does he value the lives of innocent civilians more than he values the safety of his own job?”

“That’s a very cynical way of looking at a very complex situation. The prime minister has a responsibility to his party, to his MPs. Why should he allow terrorists to dictate how he does his job?”

“I don’t accept the premise behind your question. He’s not allowing terrorists to do that. Sinn Fein/IRA have made it clear that they are prepared to come to the negotiating table and yet Major is going to make decommissioning an explicit requirement of that, something he knows will never happen. He’s not interested in peace. He’s simply out to save his own skin.”

“You don’t think the IRA should hand over its weapons?”

“Of course I do. In an ideal world. But they never will.”

“So you would just give in to that? You would be prepared to negotiate with armed terrorist organizations?”

“If there was a guarantee that those arms would not be used during that negotiating process, yes.”

“And if they were?”

“At least then the fault would lie with Sinn Fein. At least then the peace process would have been given a chance.”

Rouse leans back. The skin of his stomach is visible as pink through the thin cotton of his shirt. Here sits a man whose job it is to persuade Americans to betray their country.

“I take your point.”

This is something of a breakthrough. There is a first smile.

“What else, then?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“What else have you prepared?”

“Oh.” I had not known what he meant. “I’ve done some research on the Brent Spar oil platform and some work on the Middle East.”

Rouse’s face remains expressionless. I feel a droplet of sweat fall inside my shirt, tracing its way down to my waist. It appears that neither of these subjects interests him. He picks up a clipboard from the desk, turning over three pages until his eyes settle on what he is looking for. All these guys have clipboards.

“Do you believe what you said about America?”

“When?”

He looks at his notes, reading off the shorthand, quoting me, “‘The Americans have a very parochial view of Europe. They see us as a small country.’”

He looks up, eyebrows raised. Again it is not clear whether this is something Rouse agrees with, or whether his experience in Washington has proved otherwise. Almost certainly, he will listen to what I have to say and then take up a deliberately contrary position.

“I believe that there is an insularity to the American mind. They are an inward-looking people.”

“Based on what evidence?”

His manner has already become more curt.

“Based on the fact that when you go there, they think that Margaret Thatcher is the queen, that Scotland is just this county in a bigger place called England. That kind of ignorance is unsettling when you consider that American capitalism is currently the dominant global culture. To anyone living in Texas, global news is what happens in Alabama. The average American couldn’t care less about the European Union.”

“Surely you can appreciate that in our line of work we don’t deal with ‘the average American’?”

I feel pinned by this.

“I can see that. Yes.”

Rouse looks dissatisfied that I have capitulated so early. I press on.

“But my point is still valid. Now that America is the sole superpower, there’s a kind of arrogance, a tunnel vision, creeping into their foreign policy. They don’t make allowances for the character and outlook of individual states. Unless countries fall into line with the American way of thinking, they risk making an enemy of the most economically powerful nation on earth. This is the position that Britain finds itself in all the time.”

“In what respect?”

“In order to keep the special relationship alive, successive governments have had to ignore their better judgment and do some pretty unsavory things when called upon to do so by the United States. They would defend that by saying it’s in the nature of politics.”

“You don’t think the special relationship is worth preserving?”

“I didn’t say that. I think it’s worth preserving at any cost. Maintaining close ties with America will make the UK a pivotal force within the European Union.”

Rouse nods. He knows this is true.