Inside Enemy (2 page)

He parked at the steps leading up to the wide front door. With his back to the house, he opened the pannier and assembled and loaded the shotgun but left it in the pannier, the protruding end of
the barrel covered by the jeans. He took out a clipboard with a printed form and a handwritten address, pushed up his visor, mounted the steps and pulled the iron bell-pull.

The door was opened by a tall middle-aged man with grey crew-cut hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He wore green corduroys and a thick rust-red shirt, open at the neck.

The motorcyclist glanced at his clipboard. ‘Mr Line?’

The man shook his head. ‘No, I am sorry.’

‘Mr C. Line? No-one else here of that name?’

‘There is no-one else here. I am Dr Klein. Is it possible there is some confusion?’ He spoke careful, accented English.

‘Maybe. If you check the address, sir, I’ll get the package.’ The man handed him the clipboard and returned to his motorbike.

The man studied the form, looking up as the motorcyclist came up the steps towards him. ‘I am sorry but I do not understand. This form does not have my name or address and appears to be
for applying for a refund from the railway—’

He must have seen the gun, just, but would have had no time to react. The blast, point blank into his face, lifted him off his feet and flung him backwards into the hall. A clamour of rooks rose
from the trees around the church and the sheep in the paddock scattered like minnows before reforming into a huddle, facing the house.

The man did not bother to confirm death. He picked up the clipboard and pulled the door to with his gloved hand. He dismantled the gun, wrapped it in the jeans and tucked it and the clipboard
neatly back in the pannier. Then he pulled down his visor and rode carefully back down the rutted track.

Back in his garage with the door safely closed, he unplugged a pay-as-you-go mobile from its charger behind one of the clock cases and texted
Job done
. By the time he had finished
covering the Triumph there was a reply which said
Thank you
.
Collect as before after 2200 hrs.

When the man got home he hung his dry towel and swimming trunks on the line in the back yard. The woman was back and the television was on upstairs, which meant her boy was also back. He called
up to her. ‘Put the kettle on. I’m coming up.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ she called.

‘Went for a dip. Colder than I thought.’

‘All right for some.’

‘Bloody freezing.’

Later that night, after she’d cooked for them, he said he’d had enough of television and computer screens and was going for a drink. She was ironing in one corner of the room and
didn’t object to having him out of the way. They’d been together over a year now. It was about three minutes’ walk to his local pub where he read a
Daily Mail
someone had
left and sipped at a pint of beer until the landlord called time. The place still adhered, more or less, to the old hours. He put his empty glass on the bar and called goodnight to the landlord,
who was in the back somewhere. Once outside, he turned into the alleyway at the side of the pub and went into the Gents. He locked himself in the cubicle, lowered the lavatory seat, took off his
shoes and stood on the seat to lift the top off the ancient cistern above. Taped to the underside was a fat package wrapped in black plastic. He replaced the lid, then sat on the lavatory and
opened the package. The notes were used tens and twenties, the amount correct.

He walked slowly back to his shop, the cash distributed between the two back pockets of his jeans. The sense of a job well done was always pleasing. He would get the woman a treat tomorrow, some
sexy underwear, perhaps. That might please her. There hadn’t been much going on in that department recently. He would get the boy something, too. That would definitely please her; she’d
want to show her gratitude.

‘
J
ust shows – while there’s death there’s hope. Right as usual, the old fraud.’ George Greene, the Foreign Secretary,
chuckled, straining his checked shirt against his stomach. It was a grey day and he was sitting on the leather sofa in his unlit office overlooking St James’s Park, one arm along the back and
one plump leg crossed over the other. His audiences often failed to appreciate his quotations and allusions and he knew they were a political liability, since a reputation for cleverness was
usually equated with arrogance. But he relished life too much to permit the sensitivities of others to interfere with what he enjoyed. ‘Disraeli, that is,’ he added. ‘It was he
who said it. Can’t think of whom.’

He looked at Charles Thoroughgood. ‘Your late and unlamented predecessor, Nigel Measures, must have been the first Chief of the Secret Service ever to be killed in a road accident,
wasn’t he? And weren’t you and he rivals for his widow at Oxford? Now your wife, of course?’

‘Not exactly rivals but we all knew each other.’ The story was too complicated to explain briefly and Charles had long since given up trying. ‘But Sarah and I are now married,
yes.’

‘So two-in-one, then? You inherit his job and his wife? Like Wellington and Napoleon’s mistress.’ It wasn’t a very precise analogy but it was good enough for George
Greene.

‘If that’s a formal job offer, yes.’

‘And if that’s a formal acceptance, it is.’

The two men grinned. They were relaxed with each other, having served together at the embassy in Vienna many years before when Charles was a junior member of the MI6 station
and George a rising star in chancery. But he rose too fast for the constraints of the Foreign Office and left to begin a political career as speechwriter for the shadow Home Secretary. Now, after
entering Parliament and enduring years in opposition, followed by two brief junior ministerial posts, he had at last plucked the plum he cherished.

Charles was relaxed, too, with the other half of George’s audience, Angela Wilson, the Foreign Office Permanent Secretary. Clever, like George, but without his careless joviality, she had
overlapped with them both in Vienna on her way to the top of the tree. She and Charles had once hovered on the brink of an affair, or so it had seemed to him. Looking at her now, a soberly dressed
woman in her fifties with grey hair cut severely short, he couldn’t help wondering whether it would have changed either of their lives. He had no regrets, and doubted she did. He was sure she
wouldn’t even remember it as a hovering. She certainly gave the impression she would have no time now for such frivolity.

‘The point, Secretary of State,’ Angela said, emphasising his formal title, ‘is what the press will make of it when news that Charles is to be the new head of MI6 gets out.
Cosy, incestuous Whitehall cronyism, that’s how they’ll see it. Which is what it is, of course.’ She sounded exasperated. ‘At the very least we should give the press desk a
line to take.’

George shrugged. ‘Sure, they can have an LTT. It’ll be a nine-minute wonder.’

The lights came on, illuminating the paintings and panelling and casting homely inviting pools on the Foreign Secretary’s desk. Then they flickered and went off again. No-one remarked on
it.

‘Part of my plan to drag the Foreign Office forwards and upwards towards a glorious past’ – George Greene waved at the nineteenth-century paintings of naval battles that had
replaced his predecessor’s choice of Brit Art – ‘is that, along with restoring our linguistic and subject expertise, we should avoid openness as far as legislation permits. You
can have openness or you can have government, but you cannot have open government. Not effective government, anyway. It is therefore my intention that the reconstituted secret service you are about
to command, Charles – MI6 or whatever you want to rename it and note I say command, not manage – keeps mum, shtoom, says sod all in public. No chiefly interviews or speeches, no PR, no
profile or social media presence or nonsense of that sort. The secret service will do its work in secret. Your name and head office will be announced, of course – that can’t be helped
– but that’s about it. The same will go for GCHQ. What happens with MI5, I don’t know. That’s the Home Secretary’s business. Are you okay with that?’

Charles was.

‘The Intelligence Services Committee may have views,’ said Angela. ‘They will expect to be consulted, at the very least.’

‘They will be. I’ll tell them. Get the chairman in for a briefing.’

‘The chair is a woman, George. You’ve met her.’ Angela emphasised ‘chair’.

‘Chairwoman, then. Nothing wrong with that, is there – no shame in being a woman? Why hide it?’

George Greene grinned again. He enjoyed baiting Angela, or indeed anyone baitable, but his off-the-cuff comments masked a powerful and unresting intellect. As a young man he had not come across
as obviously ambitious, Charles reflected, but he could not have got where he was without ambition. Assuming he still had it, there was only one place to go.

George turned to Charles again. ‘I know you were expecting this to be a selection interview rather than confirmation of appointment and I know you weren’t looking for the job, so
it’s only reasonable that I should give you time to think about it despite the formality of my recent offer and your kind acceptance. Ten minutes? Two? You were always a cautious
chap.’

‘I’ve thought.’

‘Good. Start on Monday. There’s a nice new office. Well, a new old office, different office, probably not to your taste. I haven’t seen it. Angela will tell you all about it.
Any questions?’

The door opened and the private secrety said, ‘Secretary of State, the Israeli Ambassador is here.’

‘Wheel him in.’ George bounced up from the sofa and held out his hand. ‘Thank you, Charles. Look forward to working with you again.’ The lights flickered and he smiled at
them both. ‘Good to have the old team back together, isn’t it? Funny how things turn out. Only one problem: no money. Angela will tell you all about that too.’ He pointed at the
lights. ‘She’ll also tell you it’s part of your job to sort out these bloody power failures. And she’ll be right. Get that sorted and there’ll be coffee and biscuits
next time.’

Angela walked briskly down the corridor without pausing to check that Charles was following.

‘You look cross,’ he said.

‘I am.’

‘What did he mean about me sorting out the power failures? I’m not exactly technical. Nor is the job, is it? I hope.’

‘I’ll brief you. Meanwhile, you should know that we went to no end of trouble to set up a proper appointments procedure for heads of the intelligence agencies, getting agreement from
the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, the MOD, the Treasury, Number Ten, everyone. Everything was to be open and above board, posts advertised, candidates interviewed by the heads of major customer
departments, two to be put up to the Foreign Secretary, one to go forward to the Prime Minister for approval. All transparent, rational and defensible.’ She paused while they passed two very
short women pushing a trolley laden with old paper files. ‘You see what we’re having to do now, go back to paper because of all these power cuts? Hopeless. Anyway, then – heigh-ho
– a cabinet reshuffle and a new secretary of state who says he doesn’t need any damn committee to tell him what he wants, picks up the telephone to you and says come in for a chat and
it’s done, wham, bang, thank you, ma’am. Just like the old days, as if we’d never modernised at all.’

Charles knew all about George’s views. The call to his mobile had come that morning when he and Sarah were moving into their Westminster house. Charles was lingering in his old rooftop
flat in the Boltons, mentally saying goodbye to the gardens and plane trees below as the removers struggled with boxes of books and the heavy oak desk his father had made. George Greene had been
characteristically brisk.

‘Charles, it’s George Greene. Long time no speak. You’ve heard about my new job? Well, I’ve got one for you. Is this a good moment?’

‘No, I’m in the middle of moving house.’

‘You’ll have heard that we’re disbanding the Single Intelligence Agency and reverting to its original constituent parts, the three intelligence agencies as were. I want you to
head your old bit, the MI6 bit. Smaller than it was, of course, money being what it is, but at least the chain of command and responsibility will make sense again. Daft idea to have the SIA
answering to a single junior minister who knows sod all when all the fruits of its work – and all the dog-turds – land in the laps of the foreign and home secretaries. Typical of the
last government. I’ve got Tim Corke to take over GCHQ. You know him? Good. Anyway, the officials here had set up some balls-aching appointments procedure for senior posts in the SIA which
they fondly imagine we’re going to be using for the new heads of agency. Expect us to advertise the jobs and open them to anyone in the EU, if you’ve ever heard such crap. I’m
ignoring it, of course. With the Prime Minister’s support. Come in and have a chat later today, unless you want to say yea or nay now.’

‘I can’t. I’m in the middle of moving house.’

‘Two minutes. This afternoon will do. Just two, I promise.’

Angela stopped in her outer office to say something about the permanent secretaries’ meeting, waving Charles on. Her office was about the size of the Foreign Secretary’s but lacked
his double aspect. There were three paintings, one of a life-like turnip, one a green-and-white-striped rectangle and the other a medley of muddy colours with a single pinpoint of white just
off-centre.

‘My predecessor’s choices,’ she said, closing the door. ‘I suppose I should find time to change them. It was the first thing George did, of course, on his first morning.
He chose sea battles against the French and Spanish as – quote – reminders for Johnny Foreigner – unquote. His very words. Hardly
communautaire
for a foreign
secretary.’ She dumped an armful of files and papers on the desk. Even as a young second secretary in Vienna she was always hurried, as if everything she dealt with was by definition
important and urgent. Presumably it was, now. For a moment, however, the determined busyness of her expression softened into lined weariness. She looked older.