Uncommon Enemy (12 page)

‘And who are you exactly – James Bond and M and MI5 and George Smiley all rolled up together?’ Martin smiled as if to soften his mockery, but not very much.

Declaring yourself as MI6 in your own name, without approval, in an allied country in which you were operating without the knowledge of the government, to a virtually unknown putative agent
whose loyalty was not established, was forbidden. Anything which might embarrass Her Majesty’s Government required Foreign Office approval and being caught operating in Dublin would certainly
be construed as embarrassing. It had happened some years before and the MI6 officer was released only after prime ministerial intervention. Charles knew very well what his response should be:
confirm nothing and refer back for advice.

‘MI6,’ said Charles.

‘Not sure I know the difference.’

Later, Charles dutifully recorded all this for the file. Since all went well and HMG was not embarrassed, no-one scolded him. What the file did not record was the impression Martin made of
someone more mature, more decided, less impulsive than the young man Sarah had described. At one point her questioning eyes indicated the door. Charles shook his head. If Martin was prepared to be
so frank before her, he probably wanted her there. Unless it was a set-up and he was secretly recording them both. But it was too late to worry about that.

‘Why do you want to spy for the British?’ Charles asked.

Martin shook his head and pushed his hair back. ‘I don’t
want
to spy for the bloody British. I don’t even like them. Well, institutionally, if you know what I mean.
Individually, I’ve no problem. I’m half British myself. But it’s the Brits in Ireland I don’t like.’

‘So why spy for them?’

‘You trying to persuade me not to?’ He glanced again at Sarah. ‘There was an incident a while ago which made me think a bit. You may have heard about it.’

‘In outline. Tell me.’

He described meeting his school-friend at the checkpoint, then the reactions of his colleagues to his friend’s death. He spoke without dramatisation, indicating rather than dwelling on his
own feelings. ‘Jokes about legless Brit stiffs in two-foot coffins and all that. Then the breaking of the ceasefire. Got me thinking.’ He concluded with a statement that sounded
prepared: ‘I do not approve of British occupation of or control over any part of the island of Ireland, but nor do I believe violence is the way to end it. I therefore want to do what I can
to increase mutual understanding, so that the republican movement and the British government can talk to each other and sort something out.’

‘I can’t engage in any sort of negotiation.’

‘And I can’t promise to answer all your questions. There are things and people I’m not prepared to talk about.’

‘So long as you tell me, that’s fine. If you don’t know something, or don’t want to talk about it, just say. Don’t mislead.’

They stared at each other.

Sarah stood. ‘Sorry, must go to the loo.’

While she was out Charles took Martin’s contact details, gave him a London number and suggested they meet the following week in the bar of Jury’s, where he’d met Sarah.
‘I take it we’re not likely to run into any of your friends? So long as you can think of a plausible reason for being there.’

‘No problem.’

‘What reason? What would it be?’

‘You’re very thorough, Mr Thoroughgood.’

‘It’s your life.’

‘Yours too. I’d say I was meeting my British uncle who’s over here on business.’

‘Okay. We’ll agree on what my business is when we meet.’

This much the file recorded. There was a good deal of minuting between Charles’s account of their first meeting and his account of their second a week later. The A desk queried the extent
of Martin’s access, his genuineness and the security of running him in Dublin. There were unanswered questions about his background, as full tracing details were still awaited. His offer of
service was suspiciously complete, the security officer commented, but willing agents with access to the republican leadership in Dublin were not two-a-penny. The case could go ahead.

After that first meeting, Charles rang Sarah’s study from his hotel but there was no answer, and he did not have the number of the friend with whom she stayed. The phone rang when he was
in his bath. He jumped out to get it, dripping, assuming it was the office.

She sounded nervous. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t mind me ringing you? Only you gave me this name and number. It’s all right, is it? It’s okay?’

‘Of course, of course it’s okay.’

‘I thought you’d want to hear how he was after you left. He thought you were a typical British army officer type. His words. He asked whether you’d been in the army and I said
I didn’t know. Was that right?’

‘Am I typical?’

‘Well.’ She laughed. ‘I doubt he’s very familiar with them, despite his friend.’

‘I’ve never thought of myself as typical.’

‘Don’t lose sleep over it. You’re the same as you always were, even before you joined the army.’

‘I guess that’s all right, then.’

‘Not necessarily.’

Martin seemed content with the meeting. He had said nothing about his arrangement with Charles for the following week, which was good. ‘But he did say one slightly surprising thing,’
she continued. ‘He asked how long we’d known each other. I was evasive and just said we’d met at Nigel’s request. That was right, wasn’t it? But I’m not sure he
believed me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because then he said, “Funny, I had the impression you already knew each other.” I don’t know what made him think that.’

The thought pleased Charles. ‘Intuition.’

‘Yes, but – anyway, it’s not a problem, is it?’

‘Not at all.’ His answer hung in the air. He felt that neither of them knew how to end the conversation. ‘How about dinner?’

‘Sorry. Work. Papers to mark.’

She sounded decided. He took her friend’s number, needlessly adding ‘for future reference’, which made him feel that the conversation ended on an unwelcome official note. He
dined alone in the hotel.

W
alking briskly towards Pimlico after his release that evening, Charles tried not to think any more about what he would say to Sarah. Successful
meetings – even those that were purely social, which this was not – usually went the way of those who knew what they wanted, who planned and rehearsed, who prepared their spontaneity.
He didn’t want to do that with her, yet he knew that what he wanted to tell her, and what he wanted of her, meant using her, meant calculation. It made him uncomfortable.

He had chosen to walk because walking was better for thinking, but his thoughts were about the past, about everything that led up to what he was about to do. It was a form of preparation, but at
least it was not planning.

He had certainly planned his first solo meeting in Dublin with Martin. It was to begin in Jury’s and then move on. He had recce’d several restaurants and bars, seeking good table
separation and, in terms of Martin being entertained by his notional businessman uncle, plausibility. Martin arrived wearing clean black jeans and a new-looking blue jersey. Charles asked if
he’d like to move on straightaway or have a drink first.

‘Always drink when you can. You never know how long till the next one,’ he said. ‘So my father used to say and he wasn’t even Irish.’

‘Tell me about your parents. Is your father dead, then?’

‘Dead and doubtless very thirsty. He was a lawyer. A cursed breed which I guess I’m destined to continue.’

After a while Charles realised that Martin was enjoying the novelty of Jury’s, and guessed he was hungry. Table separation in the restaurant was good, so they stayed.

They chose steak and claret. While they waited Martin lit another cigarette. ‘So what do you want to know?’ he asked quietly.

Reading it in the file recently, Charles found that those words still had the power to make his skin tingle. It was an unusual question at the start of an agent relationship; often you had to
work for such directness. But when you did hear it, you went for it: no generalities, no hypotheticals, no holding anything back for later. There might not be a later. He remembered looking into
Martin’s grey-green eyes and thinking it was like dealing with a fellow professional, or at least a natural.

‘Operational detail, names, addresses, telephone numbers, plans, who said what to whom, when, where, who else was there, who told you, who told him, everything you can think of. Nothing is
too small.’

‘I don’t know any of that, I’m not in the IRA, Sarah should have told you that. I’m on the political side. What I know about is structures, policies, politics, that sort
of thing.’

‘Identities? Personalities?’

‘Some.’

They paused while the waitress brought their first courses. Martin stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. With one bob of his Adam’s apple, he finished the Guinness he had brought in from
the bar and picked up his claret. ‘And what in return?’

Surprised, Charles misunderstood. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing. I told you, I’m not going to be a spy. I thought I’d made that plain. I want to help bring about some sort of reconciliation, and I want to see how whatever I tell
you will do that. I’m not going to feed the Brits information just so that their occupying army can lift more people, or kill them. I want to see how what I’m doing contributes to
progress.’

He spoke quietly but with energy. The normal response would have been reassurance – of course he wasn’t a spy. He was a sympathetic but objective observer who could give confidential
advice to help Charles nudge his government in the right direction and increase understanding, a different thing altogether. That was the off-the-shelf explanation, stocked by intelligence services
world-wide.

But it wouldn’t do with Martin. He had put his cards on the table and deserved equal frankness, even if it meant an upturned table and cards in the air. Better that than risk both their
lives on an unsatisfactory case.

‘And I thought I’d made it plain you would be spying,’ said Charles. ‘If you tell me what your friends wouldn’t want the British government to know, you’d be
spying. That’s what they’d call it, regardless of your motives. And I’m interested only in what they wouldn’t want me to know. Secrets, telling secrets, that’s what
spying is.’

They stared at each other.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Charles was thinking. This had to be sorted out. ‘I can’t promise you’d get anything out of it,’ he continued, ‘beyond the
satisfaction of doing it. If you get that. If you want money we’d pay you, but you say you don’t. If you want to revenge yourself on your republican friends, well, you’d be doing
just that. But I don’t get the impression that’s what motivates you.’

Martin’s features were unreadable. ‘What do you think motivates me, then?’

‘I don’t know. I know what you said about your school-friend and about the end of the ceasefire but they both sound more like triggers than the full account. Principle seems
important to you. You are republican because of principle rather than family tradition or social conformity. If you were to spy I suspect you’d be doing that through principle, too. And if I
had to guess I’d say your principle was that terrorist violence can’t be justified in a democracy.’

‘You’re calling the Six Counties a democracy?’

‘If a majority of the electorate voted for unification with the Republic, that’s what they’d have.’

‘So I’d be a principled spy? Spying for principle?’

‘Maybe you’d get a kick out of it, too. Maybe you’d enjoy it.’

Martin stared at Charles, his elbows on the table and the fingertips of both hands lightly cradling his claret. ‘Is that why you do it?’

‘Partly. I do enjoy it. It’s exciting, sometimes. And the people are interesting. As are the circumstances in which you meet them.’

‘Is that it, then? No principle?’

‘Patriotism, I guess.’

Martin grinned. ‘Is that enough?’

‘Enough for me.’

Back in the bar afterwards Martin drew with his forefinger on the table the new power structures within Provisional Sinn Fein and the IRA. These were well known to Charles, but he was
appreciative and encouraging. They moved on to policies and personalities, which were more interesting. Charles asked if he could take notes.

Martin lit another cigarette. ‘Write a bloody book if you want.’

There was enough for two reports: CX reports as they were known, for historical reasons only dimly apprehended by most of those who wrote them. Enough to help silence the doubters in Head
Office, Charles hoped.

Over the next few months Martin involved himself more deeply in the republican cause and reported with disciplined enthusiasm. He never joined the IRA itself but he was politically useful to it,
particularly in helping to spread propaganda and support among overseas student organisations. One or two of the IRA leadership confided in him following his suggestions for fundraising, usefully
enhancing his knowledge of Provisional strategy. Some of his reports went to Downing Street.

Once he reported on a London bombing team. He did not know their names, but was told by one of their trainers that there was a group of eight from whom four would be chosen; then, separately by
someone else, that the favoured four would be informed of their selection in a bar in Drogheda, north of Dublin.

He reported this to Charles late one night in a noisy pub. He had learned it earlier in the evening and the team was to meet the following lunchtime. ‘I could go up there myself,’ he
said. ‘Sit in the bar, see who comes and goes. I won’t get names, unless I recognise them, but I’ll have descriptions. Only I don’t have a car and don’t know how far
it is from the station. Look odd if I took a taxi or hired a car. I never do that. Could you lend me one? Any old Aston Martin will do.’

‘The Astons are all out but even if they weren’t you mustn’t go. If anyone recognises you or if either of your sources gets to hear about it they’ll put two and two
together.’

‘Disappointingly risk-averse, Mr Bond.’