A Spy by Nature (2001) Page 5

  ‘Good,’ he says, nodding. ‘Good. And what about being unable to tell your friends about what you do? Have you had any concerns about that? We obviously prefer it that you keep the number of people who know about your activities to an absolute minimum. Some candidates have a problem with that.’

  ‘Not me. Mr Lucas told me in my previous interview that officers are able to tell their parents.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But as far as friends are concerned…’

  ‘…Of course.’

  ‘That’s what I’d come to understand.’

  Both of us nod simultaneously and suddenly, for no better reason than that I want to appear solid and reliable, I do something quite unexpected. It is unplanned and dumb. A needless lie to Liddiard which could prove costly.

  ‘It’s just that I have a girlfriend.’

  ‘I see. And have you told her about us?’

  ‘No. She knows that I’m here today, but she thinks I’m applying for the Diplomatic Service.’

  ‘Is this a serious relationship?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve been together for almost five years. It’s very probable that we’ll get married. So she should know about this, to see if she’s comfortable with it.’

  Liddiard touches his tie again.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘What is the girl’s name?’

  ‘Kate. Kate Allardyce.’

  He copies this into his notes. Liddiard writes down Kate’s name in his notes. Why am I doing this? They won’t care that I am about to get married. They won’t think any more of me for being able to sustain a long-term relationship. If anything, they would prefer me to be alone.

  He asks when she was born.

  ‘December 28th 1971.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Argentina.’

  A tiny crease saunters across his forehead.

  ‘And what is her current address?’

  I had no idea that he would ask so much about her. I give the address where we used to live together.

  ‘Will you want to interview her? Is that why you want all this information?’

  ‘No, no,’ he says quickly. ‘It’s purely for vetting purposes. There shouldn’t be a problem. But I must ask you to refrain from discussing your candidature with her until after the Sisby examinations.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Then, as a savoured afterthought, he adds:

  ‘Sometimes wives can make a substantial contribution to the work of an SIS officer.’

  5

  Day One / Morning

  It’s six a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, 9 August. There are two and a half hours until Sisby.

  I have laid out a grey flannel suit on my bed and checked it for stains. Inside the jacket there’s a powder blue shirt at which I throw ties, hoping for a match. Yellow with faint white dots. Pistachio green shot through with blue. A busy paisley, a sober navy one-tone. Christ I have awful ties. Outside, the weather is overcast and bloodless. A good day to be indoors.

  After a bath and a stinging shave I settle down in the sitting-room with a cup of coffee and some back issues of The Economist, absorbing its opinions, making them mine. According to the Sisby literature given to me by Liddiard at the end of our interview in July, ‘all SIS candidates will be expected to demonstrate an interest in current affairs and a level of expertise in at least three or four specialist subjects’. That’s all I can prepare for.

  I am halfway through a profile of Gerry Adams when the faint moans of my neighbours’ early-morning lovemaking start to perforate through the floor. In time there is a faint groan, what sounds like a cough, then the thud of wood on wall. I have never been able to decide whether or not she is faking it. Saul was over here once when they started up and I asked his opinion. He listened for a while, ear close to the floor, and made the solid point that you can only hear her and not him, an imbalance which suggests female over-compensation. ‘I think she wants to enjoy it,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘But something is preventing that.’

  I put the dishwasher on to smother the noise, but even above the throb and rumble I can still hear her tight, sobbing emissions of lust. Gradually, too rhythmically, she builds to a moan-filled climax. Then I am left in the silence with my mounting anxiety.

  Time is passing. It frustrates me that I can do so little to prepare for the next two days. The Sisby programme is a test of wits, of quick thinking and mental panache; you can’t revise for it, like an exam. It’s survival of the fittest.

  I go to the fridge and take out the ham and cheese sandwich that I made last night, knowing I wouldn’t have time to do it this morning. There’s also a yoghurt in there, and a banana for the Tube. Getting on for seven thirty now. I sit down at the kitchen table and spoon back the yoghurt, leaning over the carton so as not to drop gobbets of strawberry goo on my suit trousers. That and the soggy sandwich, as well as a second cup of coffee, initiate the first adrenalin quiver in my bowels, and by the time I come out it’s nearly a quarter to eight.

  Grab your jacket and go.

  The Sisby examination centre is at the north end of Whitehall. This is the part of town they put in American movies as an establishing shot to let audiences in South Dakota know that the action has moved to London: a wide-angled view of Nelson’s Column, with a couple of double-decker buses and taxis queuing up outside the broad, serious flank of the National Gallery. Then cut to Harrison Ford in his suite at The Grosvenor.

  The building is a great slab of nineteenth-century brown brick. People are already starting to go inside. There is a balding man in grey uniform behind a reception desk enjoying a brief flirtation with power. He looks shopworn, overweight, inexplicably pleased with himself. One by one, Sisby candidates shuffle past him, their names ticked off on a list. He looks nobody in the eye.

  ‘Yes?’ he says to me impatiently, as if I were trying to gatecrash a party.

  ‘I’m here for the Selection Board.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Alec Milius.’

  He consults the list, ticks me off, gives me a flat plastic security tag.

  ‘Third floor.’

  Ahead of me, loitering in front of a lift, are five other candidates. Very few of them will be SIS. These are the prospective future employees of the Ministry of Agriculture, Social Security, Trade and Industry, Health. The men and women who will be responsible for policy decisions in the governments of the new millennium. They all look impossibly young.

  To their left a staircase twists away in a steep spiral and I begin climbing it, unwilling to wait for the lift. The stairwell, like the rest of the building, is drab and unremarkable, with a provincial university aesthetic that would have been considered modern in the mid-1960s. The third-floor landing is covered in brown linoleum and nicotine-yellow paint clings to the walls. My name, and those of four others, have been typed on a sheet of A4 paper which is stuck up on a pock-marked notice board.

  Common Room B3: CSSB (Special)

  ANN BUTLER

  MATTHEW FREARS

  ELAINE HAYES

  ALEC MILIUS

  SAM OGILVY

  A woman - a girl - who can’t be much older than twenty is standing in front of the notice board, taking in what it has to say. She appears to be reading an advertisement requesting blood donors. She doesn’t turn to look at me; she just keeps on reading. She has pretty hair, thick black curls tied halfway down with a dark blue velvet band. Strands of it have broken free and are holding on to the fabric of her tartan jacket. She is tall with thin spindly legs under a knee-length skirt. Wearing tights. A pair of thick National Health glasses obliterates the shape and character of her face.

  A middle-aged man comes around the corner and passes her at the top of the stairs. She turns to him and says:

  ‘Hello. By any chance you wouldn’t know where Common Room B3 is, would you?’

  She has a Northern Ireland accent, full of light and cunning. That was brave of them to take her on. Imagine the vetting.

  The man, pro
bably a Sisby examiner, is more helpful than I expect him to be. He says yes of course and points to a room no more than ten feet away on the far side of the landing with B3 clearly written on the door. The girl looks embarrassed not to have noticed it but he makes nothing of it and heads off down the stairs.

  ‘Good start, Ann,’ she says under her breath, but the remark is directed at me. ‘Hello.’

  She looks at me directly, for the first time.

  ‘Hi. I’m Alec.’

  ‘This Alec?’ she says, tapping ALEC MILIUS on the notice board.

  ‘The same.’

  Her skin is very pale and lightly freckled. She has a slightly witchy way about her, a creepy innocence.

  ‘I’m so nervous. Are you? Did you find it OK?’

  ‘Mmmm. Where are you from?’

  ‘Northern Ireland.’

  We are walking into B3. Cheap brown sofas, dirty window panes, a low MFI table covered in newspapers.

  ‘Oh. Which town?’

  ‘Do you know Enniskillen?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it, yes.’

  Old men with medals pinned to their chests, severed in two by the IRA. Maybe an uncle of hers, a grandpa.

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘I’m English.’

  ‘Aye. I could tell by your accent.’

  ‘I live here. In London.’

  The small talk here is meaningless, just words in a room. But the beats and gaps in the conversation are significant: Ann’s sly glances at my suit and shoes, the quick suspicion in her wide brown eyes.

  ‘Which part of London?’

  ‘Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘I don’t know that.’

  No talk for a moment while we survey the room, our home for the next forty-eight hours. The carpet is a deep, worn brown.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks, with a smile that is too full of effort. There is a machine in the corner surrounded by polystyrene cups, threatening appalling coffee.

  ‘I’m all right, thanks.’

  A gnomic man appears now in the doorway of the common room, carrying a brown leather satchel. He looks tired and bewildered, encumbered by the social ineptitude of the fabulously intelligent.

  ‘Is this B3?’ he asks. His hair is slightly greasy.

  ‘Yes,’ Ann says, keenly.

  He nods, heavy with nerves. A hobbit of a man. He shuffles into the room and sits across from me in an armchair which has sponge pouring out of its upholstery. Ann seems to have decided against coffee, moving back towards the window at the back of the room.

  ‘So you’re either Sam or Matthew,’ she asks him. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Matt.’

  ‘I’m Alec,’ I tell him. We are near one another and I shake his hand. The palm is damp with lukewarm sweat.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And Ann.’

  She has swooped in, bending over to introduce herself. The Hobbit is nervous around women: when Ann shakes his hand, his eyes duck to the carpet. She fakes out a smile and retreats below a white clock with big black hands that says half past eight.

  Not long now.

  I pick up a copy of The Times from the low table and begin reading it, trying to remember interesting things to say about Gerry Adams. Matt takes a cereal bar out of his jacket pocket and begins tucking into it, oblivious of us, dropping little brown crumbs and shards of raisin on his Marks & Spencer blazer. It has occurred to me that in the eyes of Liddiard and Lucas, Matt and I have something in common, some shared quality or flaw that is the common denominator among spies. What could that possibly be?

  Ann looks at him.

  ‘So what do you do, Matt?’

  He almost drops the cereal bar in his lap.

  ‘I’m studying for a Masters degree at Warwick.’

  ‘What in?’

  ‘Computer Science and European Affairs.’

  He says this quietly, as though he were ashamed. His skin is fighting a constant, losing battle with acne.

  ‘So you just came down from Warwick last night? You’re staying in a hotel?’

  She’s nosey, this one. Wants to know what she’s up against.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Not far from here.’

  I like it that he does not ask the same question of her.

  A young man appears in the door. This must be Sam Ogilvy, the third male candidate. He has an immediate, palpable influence on the room which is controlling: he makes it his. Ogilvy is the sort of guy you see in shaving foam advertisements hugging their fathers. He has a healthy, vitamin-rich complexion, vacuous turquoise eyes and a dark, strong jawline. He’ll be good at games, for sure: probably plays golf off eight or nine, bats solidly in the middle order and pounds fast, flat serves at you which kick up off the court. So he’s handsome, undoubtedly, a big hit with the ladies, but a drink with the lads will come first. His face, in final analysis, lacks character, is easily forgettable. I would put money on the fact that he attended a minor public school. But I could be wrong. My guess is he works in oil, textiles or finance, reads Grishams on holiday and is chummy with all the secretaries at work, most of whom harbour secret dreams of marrying him. That’s about all there is to go on.

  ‘Good morning,’ he says, as if we had all been waiting for him and can now get started. He has broad athletic shoulders which manage to make his off-the-peg suit look stylish. ‘I’m Sam Ogilvy.’

  And, one by one, he makes his way around the room, shaking hands, moving with the easy confidence of an PS80,000 per annum salesman used to getting what he wants: a closed deal, a wage increase, a classy broad.

  Ann goes first. She is reserved but warm; it’s a certainty that she’ll find him attractive. Their handshake is pleasant and formal: it says we can do business together.

  The Hobbit is up next, standing up from the armchair to his full height, which still leaves him a good five or six inches short. Ogilvy looks to get the measure of him pretty quickly: a bright shining nerd, a number cruncher. The Hobbit looks suitably deferential.

  And now it’s my turn. Ogilvy’s eyes swivel left and scope my face. He knew as soon as he came in that I’ll be the one he’s up against, the biggest threat to his candidature. I knew it too; Ann and Matt won’t cut it.

  ‘How do you do? Sam.’

  He has a strong, captain-of-the-school grip on him.

  ‘Alec.’

  ‘Have you been here long?’ he asks, touching the tip of his tanned nose.

  ‘About ten minutes,’ Ann replies from behind him.

  ‘Feeling nervous?’

  This goes out to anyone who feels like answering. Not me. Matt murmurs ‘Mmmm’, which I find oddly touching.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ says Sam, just so we know he’s like the rest of us, even if he does look like Pierce Brosnan. ‘You ever done anything like this before?’

  ‘No,’ says Matt, sitting down with a deep, involuntary sigh. ‘Just interviews for university.’

  Matt picks up a Sisby booklet from the table and starts flicking through it like a man shuffling cards. For a moment, Ann is stranded in the middle of the room, as if she had been on the point of saying something but had decided at the last minute to remain silent on the grounds that it would have been of no consequence. Sam smiles a friendly smile at me. He wants me to like him, but to let him lead. I stand up, a sudden attack of nerves.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Ann asks, quick and awkward. ‘If you’re looking for the toilet it’s down the hall to the right. Just keep on going and you’ll come to it.’

  She stretches out her long, pale right arm and indicates the direction to me by swatting it from left to right. A ring on her middle finger bounces a spot of reflected sunlight around the common room.

  ‘I was looking for it,’ I tell her. ‘Thanks.’

  The loo is a clean, white-painted cuboid room with smoked-glass windows, three urinals, a row of push-tap basins and two cubicles. Half-a-dozen other candidates are crowded inside. I squeeze past them and go into one of the cubic
les. There is a stale, hanging odour and I lock the door. Twenty to nine. Outside, one of the candidates says ‘Good luck’, to which another replies ‘Yeah’. Then the door leading out into the corridor swishes open and clunks shut. Somebody at the sink nearest my cubicle splashes cold water on to his face and emits a shocked, cleansing gasp.

  I remain seated and motionless, feeling no need to shit now, only apprehension. I just want to focus, to be alone with my thoughts, and this is the only place in which to do so. The atmosphere in the building is so at odds with the princely splendour of Lucas and Liddiard’s office as to be almost comic. I put my head between my knees and close my eyes, breathing slowly and deliberately. Just pace yourself. You want this. Go out and get it. I can feel something inside my jacket weighing against the top of my thigh. The banana. I sit up, take it out, peel away the skin and eat it quickly in five gulped bites. Slow-burn carbohydrates. Then I lean back against the cistern and feel the flush handle dig hard into my back.

  The water has stopped running out of the taps on the other side of the cubicle door. I check my watch. The time has drifted on to 8.50 without my keeping track of it. I slam back the lock on the door and bolt out of the cubicle. The room is empty. And the corridors too. Just get there, move it, don’t run. My black shoes clap on the linoleum floors, funnelling down the corridor back to B3. I re-enter, trying to look nonchalant.

  ‘Right, he’s here,’ says a man I haven’t seen before who obviously works in the building. He has a strangulated Thames Valley accent. ‘Everything all right, Mr Milius?’

  ‘Fine, sorry, yes.’

  Leaning against the window in the far corner of the common room is the fifth and last candidate, Elaine Hayes. I don’t have time to look at her.

  ‘Good. We can make a start then.’

  I find a seat between Ogilvy and Matt on one of the sofas, dropping down low into its springless upholstery. One of them is wearing industrial-strength aftershave with a curiously androgynous fragrance. Must be Ogilvy. The man hands me a piece of paper with my timetable on it for the next two days. The four other candidates have theirs already.

  ‘As I was saying, my name is Keith Heywood.’