A Spy by Nature (2001) Read online

  ‘Not everyone gets a chance like this. You’re twenty-four now. You’ve only got that small amount of money your father left you in his Paris account. It’s time you started thinking about a career and stopped working for that crooked Pole.’

  I argued with her a little more, just enough to convince myself that if I went ahead it would be of my own volition, and not because of some parental arrangement. Then, two days later, I rang Hawkes.

  It was shortly after nine o’clock in the morning. He answered after one ring, the voice crisp and alert.

  ‘Michael. It’s Alec Milius.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘About the conversation you had with my mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In Waitrose.’

  ‘You want to go ahead?’

  ‘If that’s possible. Yes.’

  His manner was strangely abrupt. No friendly chat, no excess fat.

  ‘I’ll talk to one of my colleagues. They’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Good. Thanks.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Three days later a letter arrived in a plain white envelope marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

  Foreign and Commonwealth Office

  No. 46A––Terrace

  London SW1

  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Mr Milius,

  It has been suggested to me that you might be interested to have a discussion with us about fast stream appointments in government service in the field of foreign affairs which occasionally arise in addition to those covered by the Open Competition to the Diplomatic Service. This office has a responsibility for recruitment to such appointments.

  If you would like to take this possibility further, I should be grateful if you would please complete the enclosed form and return it to me. Provided that there is an appointment for which you appear potentially suitable, I shall then invite you to an exploratory conversation at this office. Your travel expenses will be refunded at the rate of a standard return rail fare plus Tube fares.

  I should stress that your acceptance of this invitation will not commit you in any way, nor will it affect your candidature for any government appointments for which you may apply or have applied.

  As this letter is personal to you, I should be grateful if you could respect its confidentiality.

  Yours sincerely,

  Philip Lucas

  Recruitment Liaison Office

  Enclosed was a standard issue, four-page application form: name and address, education, brief employment history, etc. I completed it within twenty-four hours - replete with lies - and sent it back to Lucas. He replied by return of post, inviting me here today.

  I have spoken to Hawkes only once in the intervening period.

  Yesterday afternoon, with less than twenty-four hours to go before my appointment, I was becoming edgy about what the interview would entail. I wanted to find out what to expect, what to prepare, what to say. So I queued outside an Edgware Road phone box for ten minutes, far enough away from the CEBDO office not to risk being seen by Nik. None of them know that I am here today.

  Hawkes answered on the first ring. Again his manner was curt and to the point. Acting as if people were listening in on the line.

  ‘I feel as if I’m going into this thing with my trousers down,’ I told him. ‘I know nothing about what’s going on.’

  He sniffed what may have been a laugh and replied:

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Everything will become clear when you get there.’

  ‘So there’s nothing you can tell me? Nothing I need to prepare for?’

  ‘Nothing at all, Alec. Just be yourself. It’ll all make sense when you get there.’

  How much of this Lucas knows I do not know. I simply give him edited highlights from the dinner and a few sketchy impressions of Hawkes’s character. Nothing permanent. Nothing of any significance.

  In truth we do not talk about him for long: the subject soon runs dry. Lucas moves on to my father and, after that, spends a quarter of an hour questioning me about my school years, dredging up the forgotten paraphernalia of my youth. He notes down all my answers, scratching away with the Mont Blanc, nodding imperceptibly at given points in the conversation.

  Building a file on a man.

  2

  Official Secrets

  The interview drifts on.

  In response to a series of bland, straightforward questions about various aspects of my life - friendships, university, bogus summer jobs - I give a series of bland, straightforward answers designed to show myself in the correct light: as a stand-up guy, an unwavering patriot, a citizen of no stark political leanings. Just what the Foreign Office is looking for. Lucas’s interviewing technique is strangely shapeless: at no point am I properly tested by anything he asks. And he never takes the conversation up to a higher level. We do not, for example, discuss the role of the Foreign Office, or British policy overseas. The talk is always general, always about me.

  In due course I begin to worry that my chances of recruitment are slim. Lucas has about him the air of someone doing Hawkes a favour: he will keep me in here for a couple of hours, fulfil what is required of him, but the process will go no further. Things feel over before they have really begun.

  But then, at around three thirty, I am again offered a cup of tea. This seems significant, yet the thought of it deters me. I do not have enough conversation left to last out another hour. But it is clear that he would like me to accept.

  ‘Yes, I would like one,’ I tell him. ‘Black. Nothing in it.’

  ‘Good,’ he says.

  In this instant something visibly relaxes in Lucas, a crumpling of his suit. There is a sense of formalities passing. This impression is reinforced by his next remark, an odd, almost rhetorical question entirely at odds with the established rhythm of our conversation.

  ‘Would you like to continue with your application after this initial discussion?’

  Lucas phrases this so carefully that it is like a briefly glimpsed secret, a sight of the interview’s true purpose. And yet the question does not seem to deserve an answer. What candidate, at this stage, would say no?

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘In that case I am going to go out of the room for a few moments. I will send someone in with your cup of tea.’

  It is as if he has changed to a different script whose words I have not yet learned. Lucas looks relieved to be free of the edgy formality that has characterized the interview thus far. There is, at last, a general sense of getting down to business.

  From the clipboard on his lap he releases a brown piece of paper, smaller than A4, printed on both sides. This he places on the table in front of me.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ he says, with well-rehearsed blandness. ‘Before I leave I’d like you to sign the Official Secrets Act.’

  The first thing I think of, even before I am properly surprised, is that Lucas actually trusts me. I have said enough here today to earn the confidence of the State. That was all it took: sixty minutes of half-truths and evasions. I stare at the document and feel suddenly catapulted into something adult, as though from this moment onwards things will be expected and demanded of me. Lucas, his blue eyes flared, is keen to assess my reaction. Prompted by this I lift the document and hold it in my hand like a courtroom exhibit. I am surprised by its cursoriness. It is simply a little brown sheet of paper with space at the base for a signature. I do not even bother to read the smallprint because to do so might seem odd or improper. So I sign my name at the bottom of the page, scrawled and lasting. Alec Milius. The moment passes with what seems an absurd absence of seriousness, an absolute vacuum of drama. I give no thought to the consequence of it.

  Almost immediately, before the ink can be properly dry, Lucas snatches the document away from me and stands to leave. Distant traffic noise on the Mall. A brief clatter in the secretarial enclave next door.

  ‘Do you see the file on the table?’

  It has been sitting there, untouc
hed, for the duration of the interview.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please read it while I am gone. We will discuss the contents when I return.’

  I look at the file, register its hard red cover, and agree.

  ‘Good,’ says Lucas, moving outside. ‘Good.’

  *

  Alone now in the room.

  I lift the file from the table like a magazine in a doctor’s surgery. It is bound in cheap leather and well-thumbed. I open it to the first page.

  Please read the following information carefully. You are being appraised for recruitment to the Secret Intelligence Service.

  I look at this sentence again and it is only on the third reading that it begins to make any sort of sense. I cannot, in my consternation, smother a belief that Lucas has the wrong man, that the intended candidate is still sitting downstairs flicking nervously through the pages of The Times. But then, gradually, things start to take shape. There was that final instruction in Lucas’s letter: ‘As this letter is personal to you, I should be grateful if you could respect its confidentiality.’ A remark which struck me as odd at the time, though I made no more of it. And Hawkes was reluctant to tell me anything about the interview today. ‘Just be yourself, Alec. It’ll all make sense when you get there.’ Jesus. How they have reeled me in. What did Hawkes see in me in just three hours at a dinner party to convince him I would make a suitable employee of the Secret Intelligence Service? Of MI6.

  A sudden consciousness of being alone in the room checks me out of bewilderment. I feel no fear, no great apprehension, only a sure sense that I am being watched through a small panelled mirror to the left of my chair. I swivel and examine the glass. There is something false about it, something not quite aged. The frame is solid, reasonably ornate, but the glass is clean, far more so than the larger mirror in the reception area downstairs. I look away. Why else would Lucas have left the room but to gauge my response from a position next door? He is watching me through the mirror. I am certain of it.

  So I turn the page, attempting to look settled and businesslike.

  The text makes no mention of MI6, only of SIS, which I assume to be the same organization. This is all the information I am capable of absorbing before other thoughts begin to intrude.

  It has dawned on me, a slowly revealed thing, that Michael Hawkes was a Cold War spy. That’s why he went to Moscow in the 60s.

  Did Dad know that about him?

  I must look studious for Lucas. I must suggest the correct level of gravitas.

  The first page is covered in information, three-line blocks of facts.

  The Secret Intelligence Service (hereafter SIS), working independently from Whitehall, has responsibility for gathering foreign intelligence…

  SIS Officers work under diplomatic cover in British Embassies overseas…

  There are at least twenty pages like this one, detailing power structures within SIS, salary gradings, the need at all times for absolute secrecy. At one point, approximately halfway through the document, they have actually written: ‘Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.’

  On and on it goes, too much to take in. But I tell myself to keep on reading, to try to assimilate as much of it as I can. Lucas will return soon with an entirely new set of questions, probing me, establishing whether or not I have the potential to do this.

  It’s time to move up a gear. What an opportunity, Alec. To Serve Queen and Country.

  The door opens, like air escaping through a seal.

  ‘Here’s your tea, sir.’

  Not Lucas. A sad-looking, perhaps unmarried woman in late middle-age has walked into the room carrying a plain white cup and saucer. I stand up to acknowledge her, knowing that Lucas will note this display of politeness from his position behind the mirror. She hands me the tea, I thank her, and she leaves without another word.

  No serving SIS officer has been killed in action since World War Two.

  I turn another page, skimming the prose.

  The meanness of the starting salary surprises me: only PS17,000 in the first few years, with bonuses here and there to reward good work. If I do this, it will be for love. There’s no money in spying.

  Lucas walks in, no knock on the door, a soundless approach. He has a cup and saucer clutched in his hand and what looks like a renewed sense of purpose. His watchfulness has, if anything, intensified. Perhaps he hasn’t been observing me at all. Perhaps this is his first sight of the young man whose life he has just changed.

  He sits down, tea on the table, right leg folded over left. There is no ice-breaking remark. He dives straight in.

  ‘And what are your thoughts about what you’ve been reading?’

  The weak bleat of an internal phone sounds on the other side of the door, stopping efficiently. Lucas waits for my response. But it does not come. My head is suddenly loud with noise and I am rendered incapable of speech. His gaze intensifies. He will not speak until I have done so. Say something, Alec. Don’t blow it now. His mouth is melting into what I perceive as a disappointment close to pity. I struggle for something coherent, some sequence of words that will do justice to the very seriousness of what I am now embarked upon. But the words simply do not come. Lucas appears to be several feet closer now than he was before, and yet his chair has not moved an inch. How could this have happened? In an effort to regain control of myself I try to remain absolutely still, to make our body language as much of a mirror as possible: arms relaxed, legs crossed, head upright and looking ahead. In time - what seem vast vanished seconds - the beginnings of a sentence form in my mind, just the faintest of signals. And when Lucas makes to say something, as if to end my embarrassment, it acts as a spur. I say:

  ‘Well… now that I know… I can understand why Mr Hawkes didn’t want to say exactly what I was coming here to do today.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The shortest, meanest, quietest ‘Yes’ I have ever heard.

  ‘I found the pamphl… the file very interesting. It was a surprise.’

  ‘Why is that exactly? What surprised you about it?’

  ‘I thought, obviously, that I was coming here today to be interviewed for the Diplomatic Service, not for SIS.’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, reaching for his tea.

  And then, to my relief, he begins a long and practised monologue about the work of the Secret Intelligence Service, an eloquent, spare resume of its goals and character. This lasts as long as a quarter of an hour, and allows me the chance to get myself together, to think more clearly and focus on the task ahead. Still spinning from the embarrassment of having frozen openly in front of him, I find it difficult to concentrate on Lucas’s voice. But his description of the work of an SIS officer appears to be disappointingly devoid of macho derring-do. He paints a lustreless portrait of a man engaged in the simple act of gathering intelligence, doing so by the successful recruitment of foreigners sympathetic to the British cause who are prepared to pass on secrets for reasons of conscience or financial gain. That, in essence, is all that a spy does. As Lucas tells it, the more traditional aspects of espionage - burglary, phone-tapping, honeytraps, bugging - are a fiction. It’s mostly desk work. Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.

  ‘Clearly, one of the more unique aspects of SIS is the demand for absolute secrecy,’ he says, his voice falling away. ‘How would you feel about not being able to tell anybody what you do for a living?’

  That is how it would be. Nobody, not even Kate, knowing any longer who I really was. A life of absolute anonymity.

  ‘I wouldn’t have any problem with that at all.’

  Lucas begins to take notes again. That was the answer he was looking for.

  ‘And it doesn’t concern you that you won’t receive any public acclaim for the work you do?’

  He says this in a tone which suggests that it bothers him a great deal.

  ‘I’m not interested in acclaim.’

  A seriousness has enveloped me, nudging panic aside. An idea of the job is slowly
composing itself in my imagination, something that is at once very straightforward, but ultimately obscure. Something clandestine and yet moral and necessary.

  Lucas ponders the clipboard in his lap.

  ‘You must have some questions you want to ask me,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Would members of my family be allowed to know that I am an SIS officer?’

  Lucas appears to have a check-list of questions on his clipboard, all of which he expects me to ask. That was obviously one of them, because he again marks the page in front of him with his snub-nosed fountain pen.

  ‘Obviously, the fewer people that know the better. That usually means wives.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But obviously not friends or other relatives?’

  ‘Absolutely not. If you are successful after Sisby, and the panel decides to recommend you for employment, then we would have a conversation with your mother to let her know the situation.’

  ‘What is Sisby?’

  ‘The Civil Service Selection Board. Sisby as we call it. If you are successful at this first interview stage, you will go on to do Sisby in due course. This involves two intensive days of intelligence tests, interviews and written papers at a location in Whitehall, allowing us to establish if you are of a high enough intellectual standard for recruitment to SIS.’

  The door opens without a knock and the same woman who brought in my tea (now cold and untouched on the table) walks in. She smiles apologetically in my direction, with a flushed, nervous glance at Lucas. He looks visibly annoyed.

  ‘I do apologize, sir.’ She is frightened of him. ‘This just came through for you and I felt you should see it right away.’

  She hands him a single sheet of fax paper. Lucas looks over at me quickly and proceeds to read it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispers and the woman leaves. Then he turns to me. ‘I have a suggestion. If you have no further questions I think we should finish here. Will that be all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  There was something on the fax that necessitated this.