Agent Running in the Field (23 page)

Short silence for commiseration.

‘And Washington?’ I ask.

‘Oh my God,
fucking awful
, Nat’ – with an even wider smile – ‘civil wars breaking out like measles all over the shop and you never know who’s leaning which way for how long and who’s for
the chop tomorrow. And no Thomas Wolsey to hold the ring. A couple of years ago we were America’s man in Europe. All right, spotty, not always easy. But we were
in
there, part of the package, outside the euro, thank God, and no wet dreams about unified foreign policies, defence policies or what have you’ – squeeze of the eyes, chortle. ‘And
that
was our special relationship with the United States
for you. Sucking away merrily on the hind tit of American power. Getting our rocks off. Where are we now? Back of the queue behind the Huns and the Frogs. With a bloody sight less to offer. Total disaster.’

Benign chuckle, and barely a hiatus as he advances to his next amusing topic:

‘I
was
rather taken by what your pal Shannon had to say about the Donald, incidentally: the notion that he’d
had all the democratic chances and blown them. Not absolutely sure that’s true. Point about Trump is, he’s a gang boss, born and bred. Brought up to
screw
civil society all ways up, not be part of it. Your Shannon chap got that one wrong. Or am I being unfair?’

Unfair to Trump or unfair to Ed?

‘And poor little Vladi Putin never had any democratic potty training at all,’ he goes on indulgently.
‘I’d agree with him on that one. Born a spy, still a spy, with Stalin’s paranoia to boot. Wakes up every morning amazed the West hasn’t blown him out of the water with a pre-emptive strike.’ Munches cashews.
Washes them down with a thoughtful pull of Scotch. ‘He’s a dreamer, isn’t he?’

‘Who?’

‘Shannon.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What sort?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Really not?’

‘Really not.’

‘Guy Brammel
has come up with a
grudgefuck
theory,’ he runs on, delighting in the term like a naughty boy. ‘Ever heard that one before?
Grudgefuck?
’

‘I’m afraid not. Cluster only recently, and never grudge. I’ve been abroad too long.’

‘Me neither. Thought I’d heard everything. But Guy’s got his teeth into it. A man on a
grudgefuck mission
is saying to the person he’s hopped into bed with – in this case Mother
Russia – the only reason I’m here screwing you is because I hate my wife even more than I hate you. So it’s a grudgefuck. Might that play for your boy? What’s your personal take on it?’

‘Bryn, my personal take is: I took a hell of a beating last night, first from Shannon, then from my beloved friends and colleagues, so I’m rather wondering why I’m here.’

‘Yes, well, they did over-egg it a bit,
it’s true,’ he agrees, open as ever to all points of view. ‘But then, nobody knows who they are just now, do they? Whole fucking country in disarray. Maybe that’s the clue to him. Britain in pieces on the floor, secret monk in search of an absolute, even if it involves absolute betrayal. But instead of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, he sneaks off to the Russians. Possible?’

I say
anything is possible. A prolonged squeezing of the eyes and a beguiling smile warn me that he is about to venture into more perilous territory.

‘So tell me, Nat. For my ear alone. How did
you personally
respond, you as Shannon’s mentor, confessor, proxy daddy, what you will, when you spotted your young protégé, without a word of warning, cosying up to the overweening Gamma?’ – topping up my Scotch.
‘What went through your private and professional heads as you sat there on your tod, watching and listening in frank amazement? Don’t
think
too hard.
Spout.
’

In other times, sitting captive and alone with Bryn, I might indeed have unbared my innermost feelings to him. I might even have told him that, as I sat listening transfixed to Valentina’s voice, I imagined that I detected between her Georgian
and Russian cadences the presence of an intruder that was neither: a copy, yes, but not the original. And that, at some point during a day of waiting, an answer of sorts had come to me. Not as a blinding revelation, but on tiptoe, like a latecomer to the theatre, edging his way down the row in the half-dark. Somewhere in the most distant rooms of my memory, I was hearing my mother’s voice raised
to me in anger as she reproached me for some perceived dereliction in a language unknown to her current lover, before as quickly disowning it. But Valentina–Gamma had not
disowned
the German in her voice. Not to my ear. She was
affecting
it. She was imposing German cadences on her spoken English in order to
cleanse
it of its Russian–Georgian stain.

But even as this wild thought comes to me, more
fancy than fact, something inside me tells me that it cannot on any account be shared with Bryn. Is this then the germinating moment of a scheme that is forming in my head, but I am not yet cleared for? I have often thought so.

‘What I
suppose
I felt, Bryn,’ I reply, taking up his question about my two heads, ‘was that Shannon must be suffering some sort of mental breakdown in place. Schizophrenia,
big-time bipolarity, whatever the shrinks come up with. In which case, we amateurs are wasting our time trying to ascribe rational
motives to him. And then of course there was the
trigger
, the final straw’ – why am I overreaching? – ‘his
epiphany
, for Christ’s sake. The one he denied having. The thing that actually made Sammy run, as we used to say.’

Bryn is still smiling but the smile is rock-hard,
daring me to venture further.

‘Shall we cut to the chase?’ he enquires blandly, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘As of early this morning, Moscow Centre has requested a
second
meeting with Shannon one week hence and Shannon has consented to it. Centre’s haste may seem indecent, but to me it spells sound professional judgement. They fear for their source in the long term – who wouldn’t? – which means
of course that we must be equally fast on our feet.’

A wave of spontaneous resentment comes to my aid.

‘You keep saying
we
as if it was a done thing, Bryn,’ I complain with our usual determined joviality. ‘What I find a bit hard to swallow is that all this stuff is happening over my head. I’m the author of Stardust, in case you’ve forgotten, so why am I not being kept informed of the progress
of my own operation?’

‘You
are
being kept informed, dear boy. By me. To the rest of the Service you are history, and rightly so. If I’d had my way you’d never have got the Haven. Times are a-changing. You’re at the dangerous age. You always were, but it’s showing. Prue well?’

Sends her best, thank you, Bryn.

‘Is she conscious? To the Shannon thing?’

No, Bryn.

‘Keep it that way.’

Yes, Bryn.

Keep it that way?
Meaning keep Prue in the dark about
Ed
? Prue, who only this morning pledged her unconditional loyalty, even if I should feel moved to tell the Office to shove it up their arses? Prue, as good a soldier-spouse as the Office could wish
for, who never once by word or whisper betrayed the trust that the Office had invested in her? And now Bryn, of all people, is telling me she is
not to be trusted? Fuck him.

‘Our sister Service is of course baying loudly for Shannon’s blood, which won’t come as any surprise to you,’ Bryn is saying. ‘Arrest him, shake him out, make an example of him, everybody gets a medal. Result: a national scandal that achieves bugger all and makes us look bloody fools bang in the middle of Brexit. So we take that option straight off the table, as far
as I’m concerned.’

The ‘we’ again. He offers me the plate of cashews. I take a handful to satisfy him.

‘Olives?’

No thanks, Bryn.

‘You used to love them. Kalamata.’

Really not, thanks, Bryn.

‘Next option. We haul him into Head Office and make the classic pass at him. Okay, Shannon, you’re a fully identified agent of Moscow Centre and henceforth you’re under our control or you’re for the
high jump. Think it would play? You know him. We don’t. Neither does his department. They think he’s got a girl but they’re not even sure about that. Could be a fellow. Could be his interior decorator. He’s fixing his flat, they say. Taken out a mortgage on his salary and bought the one upstairs. Did he tell you that?’

No, Bryn. He didn’t.

‘Did he tell you he’s got a girl?’

No, Bryn.

‘Then
maybe he hasn’t. Some chaps can manage without, don’t ask me how. Maybe he’s one of the few.’

Maybe he is, Bryn.

‘So what’s your best guess if we make the classic pass at him?’

I give the question the consideration it deserves.

‘My best guess is, Bryn, that Shannon would tell you to go fuck yourselves.’

‘Why so?’

‘Try playing badminton with him. He’d rather go down with all guns blazing.’

‘We are not playing badminton, however.’

‘Ed doesn’t
bend
, Bryn. He’s not up for flattery or compromise or saving his own skin if he thinks the cause is greater than he is.’

‘Then he’s out for martyrdom,’ Bryn observes with satisfaction, as if recognizing a well-trodden path. ‘Meanwhile, we are of course engaged in the usual tug-of-war about who owns his body. We found him, ergo, for as long
as we play him he’s ours. Once we’ve no more use for him, it’s game over and our sister Service has its wicked way. Now let me ask you this. Do you still
love
him? Not carnally. Love him for real?’

And that’s Bryn Jordan for you, the river you only cross once. Charms you, listens to your gripes and suggestions, never raises his voice, never judgemental, always above the fray, walks you round
the garden until he owns the air you breathe, then skewers you.

*

‘I’m fond of him, Bryn. Or I was, until this blew up,’ I say lightly, after a long pull of whisky.

‘As he is of you, dear boy. Can you imagine him talking to anyone else the way he talks to you? We can use that.’

‘But how, Bryn?’ I insist, with an earnest smile, playing the good disciple despite the chorus of conflicted voices
resounding in what Bryn was pleased to call my private head. ‘I keep asking you, but somehow you don’t quite answer. Who’s
we
in this equation?’

The Father Christmas eyebrows rise to their extremity as he awards me the broadest of smiles.

‘Oh my dear boy. You and I together, who else?’

‘Doing
what
, if I may ask?’

‘What you’ve
always
done best! You befriend your man all ways up. You’re halfway
there already. Judge your moment and go the other half. Tell him who you are, show him the error of his ways, calmly, undramatically, and
turn
him. The moment he says “yes I will, Nat,” put a halter round his neck and lead him gently into the paddock.’

‘And when I’ve led him gently in?’

‘We play him back. Keep him beavering away at his day job, feed him carefully concocted disinformation which
he passes up the pipeline to Moscow. We run him for as long as he lasts, and once we’ve done with him we let our sister Service wrap up the Gamma network to the sound of trumpets.
You
get a commendation from the Chief,
we
cheer you on your way and you’ve done the best you can for your young pal. Bravo. Any less would be disloyal, more would be culpable. And now hear
this
,’ he goes on vigorously,
before I have a chance to object.

*

Bryn has no need of notes. He never did have. He isn’t reeling off facts and figures at me from his Office mobile. He’s not pausing, frowning, searching his mind for that irritating detail he has mislaid. This is the man who learned fluent Russian in one year flat at the School of Soviet Studies in Rome and added Mandarin to his portfolio in his spare time.

‘Over the last nine months, your friend Shannon has formally declared to his employers five visits
in toto
to European diplomatic missions based here in London.
Two
to the French Embassy
for cultural events solely.
Three
to the German Embassy, one for their Day of German Unity, one to an award ceremony for British teachers of the German language. And one for social purposes undefined. You said
something’ – abruptly.

‘Just listening, Bryn. Just listening.’

If I had said something, it was only in my head.

‘All such visits were approved by his employing department, whether in advance or retrospectively we may not know, but the dates are logged and you have them here’ – conjuring a zip-up folder from beside him. ‘And one unexplained phone call from a public call box in Hoxton to the
German Embassy. He asks for a Frau Brandt from their travel department and is correctly told they haven’t got a Frau Brandt.’

He pauses, but only to make sure I am attending. He needn’t bother. I’m transfixed.

‘We
also
learn, as the street cameras open their hearts to us, that in the course of his cycle ride to Ground Beta yesterday evening, Shannon parked his bike and sat in a
church
for twenty
minutes’ – an indulgent smile.

‘What sort of church?’

‘Low. The only sort that leaves its doors open these days. No silver, no sacred paintings, no raiment worth a damn.’

‘Who did he talk to?’

‘Nobody. There were a couple of rough sleepers, both bona fide, and an old nelly in black across the aisle. And a verger. Shannon didn’t kneel, according to the verger. Sat. Then walked out and cycled
off again.
So
’ – with revived relish – ‘what was he up to? Was he committing his soul to his Maker? Pretty bloody odd moment to choose in my judgement, but every man to his own. Or was he making sure his back was clear? I favour the second. What do you reckon he was up to on his visits to the French and German embassies?’

He tops up our glasses yet again, sits impatiently back and
waits for my
answer – much as I do, but none immediately occurs to me.