Uncommon Enemy (13 page)

‘We’ll work something else out.’

‘Tell that to the marines. I bet you do nothing.’ He held up his empty glass.

Charles had to wait at the bar for their drinks. The recent Manchester bombing meant that the identities of the next cell would be top of the requirements list. He wanted very much to be the dog
that brought home the bone but doubted that anything could be done in time, despite his optimism with Martin. The clearance hoops the A desk would have to go through in London would be formidable.
No-one liked a hastily-scrambled operation with toxic political fall-out if it went wrong, not to mention the obvious physical risks. But the prospect of more blood and broken glass on English
streets would argue strongly for it. If the office wouldn’t go for it, he would do it himself.

It was late when he returned to his hotel. His only secure communication was via telegram from the embassy but it would attract attention if he called out the comcen staff late at night. Anyway,
no-one in Head Office was going to take that kind of decision in the early hours; it would need ministerial clearance. But he had reason to visit the embassy during working hours, as part of his
cover, and so he broke the rules by drafting his telegram in his room and hiding it while he slept. He called on the embassy as soon as it opened, typed his telegram straight onto the cipher
machine and sent it at second highest precedence.

Head Office came back promptly. The answer was polite, considered, clear and firm, a competent piece of work by the senior A desk officer. They thanked Charles for his proposal, which they were
naturally keen to follow up, but there were insurmountable problems. In the time available it would be impossible to deploy a surveillance team with a reasonable chance of success and assurance of
their safety; there would be no time for a recce and no time for political clearance, which would be essential. If the Drogheda bar was a regular meeting point then a recce could be conducted in
slower time – perhaps by Charles himself during one of his visits – but on this occasion, regretfully, the risks were too great. A failed operation or one that went off at half-cock
would be worse than no operation at all. And it should not be forgotten that the news of this meeting was from a single source only, and a new one on trial at that.

It was the response Charles expected, one he could have written himself – probably would have, he conceded, if he had been the desk officer. But it was not how things got done, and he
wanted to do things.

He ran upstairs to chancery. Angie, the secretary, was on the phone and everyone else was conveniently in the ambassador’s weekly meeting. Charles went to the open cupboard and found the
Pentax he knew they kept there, with several rolls of film. He mimed asking permission to take it, then left the room before Angie could finish her call. In town he found the nearest car-hire firm,
chose a small Ford van and set off north to Drogheda.

His report was factual and precise. The bar faced the road with a single main entrance and a car park to the front and side. Opposite, on a raised bank above the road, was the car park for the
local hospital. Charles drove in there and backed the van into a space from which its rear windows looked directly down to the bar entrance. It was far from ideal – the distance was too great
and the windows would blur the film – but anything on the next bombing team was better than nothing. There was a reasonable chance he’d be sacked for this, he remembered thinking. Would
he mind, he had asked himself? Yes, very much. Better an honourable dismissal than a career of unblemished bureaucratic caution. But he would mind.

For two hours he photographed everyone who entered or left until he ran out of film. Twice he heard voices near the van and stretched out, feigning sleep. Once he froze when two men came out of
the bar and stood talking, seemingly looking directly at him across the road. If he’d been spotted and others were coming round the back to seize him, that would be it. He lay on his back,
eyes half-closed, his heart thumping. Nothing happened. It was the only time he worried more about being caught than being sacked.

Recently he had found the black and white prints and negatives in an envelope in the file. Some were too blurred, all were distant and grainy, but most were just good enough to confirm an
identity already suspected. The file showed that they had been passed to Special Branch in London, who had dismissed them. He remembered his disappointment. Later in the file there were blow-ups of
some, allied with possible names from other sources, then, eventually, brief references to the identification and capture of the ASU, the active service unit. Finally, briefest of all, there was a
cursory acknowledgement from Special Branch that Gladiator’s information and Charles’s photos had led directly to the identification of two of the bombers, with the other two identified
subsequently through association.

But that was later, after Gladiator had left Ireland. At the time no-one doubted that Charles’s initiative had failed. There was minuting accusing him of irresponsible opportunism, with
someone from security suggesting he was out of control and should be reprimanded and withdrawn from operations. He had assumed that that was his fate when he was summoned one day by the controller
for operations in Europe. It was the first time he had met Matthew Abrahams.

Matthew stared severely over his reading glasses, without inviting Charles to sit. ‘You disobeyed your orders, you deceived the office, you put the government, the service, your agent and
yourself at grave risk. All that can be said in your favour is that you have not attempted to excuse yourself.’

‘I’m sorry it didn’t work.’

‘That’s irrelevant.’ Matthew’s grey-blue eyes held his unwaveringly. ‘Personnel are expecting me to recommend a formal reprimand. In most circumstances I would. But
I am reminded of Churchill’s dictum to the effect that mistakes made in carrying the battle to the enemy are forgivable.’

Charles began to relax.

‘Though not forgettable.’ There was a hint of something else in Matthew’s eyes. ‘If you sin again, sin in company. Responsibility is shared. Bureaucracies find that
easier to deal with. Discuss it with someone, make sure someone knows where you are. Even a phone call.’

‘Thank you.’

Matthew gave him the briefest of wintry smiles. ‘Pity it didn’t work.’

Nothing more was said or written about it. Because it had failed, Charles allowed Martin to assume that nothing had been done. ‘You’re all cloak and no dagger, you lot,’ said
Martin at their next meeting. When Charles told him later that it had worked after all, he formally thanked him on Matthew Abrahams’s orders. Charles himself was never thanked.

The file also showed that Head Office remained uneasy about Martin’s motivation. He seemed almost too perfect an agent, someone wrote: punctual, reliable, security conscious,
distinguishing in his reports between what he knew and what he assessed or assumed, and usually naming his sub-sources. Yet there was a sense of something unexplained in his motivation, of boxes
not ticked, unsettling to the bureaucratic mind. Had Martin been venal, disaffected or ideologically opposed to his cause, Head Office would have been happier. But he accepted no money other than
reimbursed expenses, disliked relatively few of his republican colleagues and continued to believe in a united Ireland. Security thought it suspiciously like running another intelligence officer
and speculated as to whether he could be a double agent.

Charles had to defend the case while trying to appear objective, since case officers were notorious for siding with their agents. With the exception of the Drogheda ASU, Martin’s
intelligence had proved reliable and his account of the death of his British Army school-friend was confirmed, as was the time and place of the checkpoint at which they recognised each other.
Martin’s presence in the car had been logged. At the same time, Charles had to play down how much he liked Martin, liked him for his conscientiousness, his irony, his intellectual poise, his
disciplined adherence to unparaded principles. He liked him too for his occasional refusals, for being honest where most would have been evasive.

Once, when asked to name a fellow-student who had just joined the movement, Martin said: ‘I’m not telling you that. I don’t think he’s serious, I think he’s just
being led on by a bit of heroic talk and glamour. He’s not a natural hater and I think he’ll drop out pretty soon. I don’t want his name on your list for evermore, especially if
he’s no longer involved.’

‘Just tell me if he does get seriously involved.’

Security argued this as evidence of Gladiator’s lack of commitment; Charles that it showed reassuring honesty.

He liked Martin too for his reserve. As with Matthew Abrahams, personal matters were conveyed via elliptical shorthand.

‘Women?’ asked Charles, one evening after they had finished business.

‘As and when. Depending. Yourself?’

‘The same.’

‘Sarah?’

It was not the first time Martin had teased him about her. ‘She’s her husband’s, not mine.’

‘But you’d like her to be.’

Charles smiled despite himself. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Intuition, genius.’

They usually met in hotel rooms; occasionally in bars or restaurants where Charles played the part of visiting uncle. He always stayed in a hotel other than that in which they met, walking the
streets facing traffic so that it would be harder for a car to pull up and bundle him in. They communicated as little as possible outside meetings and when they did, it was by phone under cover of
family arrangements. Few documents came Martin’s way and those that did were not urgent, so there was usually no need for dead letter boxes. For a heady few weeks, however, Martin was asked
to drive various senior republicans in the evenings, which gave him the chance of prolonged chats and the possibility of intelligence that would not wait for the next meeting.

‘Can’t you give me a concealed mike?’ he asked. ‘Then I could leave cassettes for you to pick up in secret places, like real spies.’

Charles promised him one, only to find that the technical department was unaccountably lacking in portable concealed devices, whether cameras or recorders. Affronted by Charles’s obvious
dismay, they offered to wire up the car, which would be much more effective. But Martin drove vehicles borrowed for the night without knowing in advance which he would get. Eventually all Charles
had to offer him was a bulky cassette recorder disguised as a fat diary which could just be squeezed into the wallet pocket of a jacket.

‘I’d be better off with a house-brick,’ said Martin. ‘Weighs the same, and I’m more likely to have one of those in my hand than wear a Harris tweed jacket to carry
it in, for Christ’s sake. They must think I’m like you.’

He took it, however, and recorded half a dozen conversations over the next few weeks. For transferring cassettes Charles chose lavatory cisterns in bars or hotels used by students, with the
cassette taped to the underside of the lid. Each time he cleared one he paused before lifting it, his fingertips hooked over the sides, lightly feeling the weight. Each time he rehearsed once again
the unlikelihood of Martin betraying him, or of having the location beaten out of him. In that case, they might wire it up so that lifting the lid would be the last thing he did. And each time he
failed to think any profound last thoughts, because each time there was no intense white flash, no oblivion, only the neat little package, securely taped.

Heady days, he had thought as he leafed through the file, years later. But not only for that reason.

H
e cut through to the King’s Road on his way to Pimlico that night. The pubs and food shops were thronged, traffic was at a standstill and
there was a fine drizzle, just enough to wet the pavements. He imagined his Scottish house; dusk would be more advanced there, with a leaden sea silvered by a strip of light on the horizon and
wavelets lapping the rocks. That would be all. There was a time when, in the midst of city life, he longed to be there. Now he was not so sure. The early evening bustle was cheering, he was
rediscovering his liking for crowds and he was stepping out to see someone. You could do that in a city. He imagined Sarah at that moment, putting on her coat, hurrying from the office, dashing
back to check something, hurrying away again. He slowed his pace. He was in good time for Pimlico, time to take another deep breath and submerge himself in the past.

Whenever he recalled that bright morning when he had made the discovery, he was struck by the limited part played by facts in the sense of an individual past. Facts were like longitude on a map,
measurements of temporal relativity, evoking but not containing the myriad associations, tones, colours, remarks, incidents, feelings that formed the patchwork brocade of a life. It was they that
drenched and infused the memory that was the person. Also, there were always gaps among facts, missing longitudinal lines whose absence was invisible to the reader, crucial to the participant.

That morning, the blinds in his eleventh-floor office in Century House, the old MI6 head office in Lambeth, were lowered against the sun. He shared the office with two others, one of whom was
ringing his girlfriend while the other was trying to persuade Alison, their Scottish secretary, to bring him coffee from the secretaries’ room.

‘What’s it worth?’ she kept asking in joshing Glaswegian. She had untidy dark hair and laughing eyes. ‘Come on, Paul, cough up, put your money where your mouth
is.’

Negotiations continued, but Charles was no longer listening. Among the sheaf of papers Alison had just dumped in his in-tray was a copy of Martin Worth’s birth certificate. Attached to it
was a note from Vetting explaining that tracing had been delayed because the subject had been adopted and his current name was not his birth name. Charles was asked to send the certificate on to
Registry for filing.

He remembered holding it and noticing that it was quite still in his hand. He stared at the name, James Bourne, at the name of the mother, Sarah Bourne, at the line struck through where the
father’s name should have been. The blinds rattled in the breeze, Alison told Paul to come off it, somebody laughed in the corridor, and Charles went on staring. The coincidence was too
great, almost too great to be credible; yet there it was, a sliver of bureaucracy, a pink form completed in black ink in a clear round hand.