Uncommon Enemy (26 page)

‘What kind of titbits?’

‘Nothing much. The main one was something about CIA saying they had no agents in AQ core, their cupboard was bare. I was supposed to have seen that in court transcripts. I got a flight
next day.’

‘Without talking to your case officers?’

Martin paused while breaking another piece of bark. ‘I assumed they knew all about it. Didn’t they?’

Charles shook his head. ‘He did it off his own bat. What happened when you got there?’

‘I went to Peshawar as per normal but when I called on my usual contact I was welcomed by the very man Mr Measures had kindly recommended to me. Only he wasn’t the great facilitator
I was promised. He was a nasty bit of work from Yemen with a visceral suspicion of Western converts and a reputation for sniffing out and snuffing out spies. I knew in about sixty seconds that this
was a one-way trip, but I sort of didn’t believe it at first. In the way that things can seem too good to be true, they can seem to be too bad to be true, too. You can’t believe it, you
think there must be some mistake, you’re misreading the signals. So I went along with it, playing the innocent abroad, feeding my titbits to him and the others.’

‘Then we left the others and he took me to what was meant to be a safe house, a compound in a village over the border, about a day’s drive. It was safe, all right, a regular meeting
place for AQ and Taliban heavies. Also pretty handy as a prison and interrogation centre for people like me. That was where I finally accepted that this wasn’t just a cock-up but that
Measures, your very own Measures, had deliberately sent me to my death. Is that how the SIA gets rid of its old agents these days?’

‘They don’t. But Measures does.’

‘Why did he do it? What’s the point? All he needed to do was leave me alone and never contact me. I’d never have gone knocking on his door.’

‘Because he’s chief now, or virtually, and because you know about his treachery in Paris, and he doesn’t want anyone associated with the SIA to know that. He wants to get rid
of us both. He had me arrested.’

Charles told his story. By the time he finished Martin had no bark left to break and sat motionless, his hands clasped over his knees. The light was fading and Charles was cold.

‘Must be off his head,’ Martin said.

‘There may be other reasons, emotional reasons of his own, that feed into it.’

Martin put his head on one side. ‘Been a naughty boy with Sarah, have you? How is she? Sounded strained on the phone.’

‘Haven’t seen much of her. But—’ He hesitated. Their temporary physical removal from the rest of life made it feel like a time for frankness. But again he stalled, as he
always had. Having no feel for what Martin’s reaction might be, he feared it. Sarah’s reaction was not an encouraging precedent. He was reluctant, too, to confront his own guilt again.
Anyway, it would take too much time, time that should be spent deciding what they were going to do. They could talk later. ‘But I get the impression things aren’t that great between
them,’ he said. ‘She must have been pleased to hear from you.’

‘Maybe. He couldn’t have done it all on his own, though, could he? There must be others in on it with him. Just getting you arrested and your pass withdrawn, for example, he
couldn’t do that on his own. There must be others who know about it.’

Defending colleagues still came naturally to Charles, even if it was the SIA. Maybe it wasn’t what the old services had been, maybe it was less than the sum of its constituent parts. But,
like monastic ruins, it still stood for something. ‘He did it all on his own. You and me both. Agents and staff are never sacrificed or betrayed. Ever. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Nigel is manipulating the service for his own ends. He’s got away with it so far because it’s become bureaucratically flabby and has lost its rigour. But tell me what happened to you.
What did they do to you, how did you get back?’

Martin was feeling among the leaves for another piece of bark, but found none. He clasped his hands again. ‘I was lucky, dead lucky. They didn’t get the chance to do much. What they
would’ve done doesn’t bear thinking about. Fortunately – praise be to Allah and Uncle Sam for working together – we were blown up. A US drone strike. Half a dozen heavies
killed, along with the Yemeni and some nearby women and children. Plenty wounded. I was knocked out, came round and got away in the confusion. Took me nearly a week to get back to Peshawar, living
on nothing, almost freezing to death. Then I had to get back to Islamabad and get out. I daren’t go to the High Commission for help because that might have given Measures another chance to do
me in. I had to go black, as I think your CIA friends put it. Luckily, I still had contacts who do passports, credit cards, that sort of thing. They obliged because they thought I was working
against you, not for you. Things have changed out there.’

‘But Measures must know you’re back, or believe you are. From before you rang Sarah. That’s the only reason he would have put me under surveillance, to lead him to you. And
he’s telling everyone you’re al-Samit.’

‘I’m the Silent One?’ Martin shook his head slowly. ‘I should’ve been, I should’ve stayed silent. If I had I wouldn’t have had to move in here.
I’ll tell you what happened. I travelled back under alias with no problems, cleared out everything I needed from my office and home and went back into hiding, where I’ve been ever
since. I reckoned I had a while before they’d find out I was missing, not dead, and that contacting you was my only hope because I knew you were out of it. I tried old numbers, addresses,
everything. Eventually, I got a fix from a database on some place up in Scotland, but no response. So I rang Sarah. Last resort. I knew that would put Measures on to me but reckoned by then he must
suspect I was back. It was the only way I could get a message to you. I actually had something to report, quite apart from what happened to me. Still trying to help, you see. Pathetic, isn’t
it?’ He grinned. ‘Because I did learn something about al-Samit, an overheard bit of conversation. Guess.’

‘It’s Nigel Measures.’

‘Not bad. Try again.’

‘We haven’t time. Who is he?’

‘
She
.’

‘It’s a woman?’

‘Good to see you’re still on the ball. I was going to keep it to myself, because I don’t reckon the bunch of fruitcakes she’s dealing with here are up to much. And of
course it wasn’t exactly safe for me to ring my case officers and report. But then there was that cinema bomb a few weeks ago, remember? Nutter blew himself up. I don’t know whether
that was them or not but I thought, blood on the streets and all that, innocent people, I can’t risk it. So I rang my old agent number, got an answerphone and just said, “al-Samit is a
woman”, nothing more. Didn’t leave my name or anything, but I guessed they’d work out it was me. Voice recognition?’

‘It was a dedicated number. Only you had it.’ The red tractor entered the farmyard below, accompanied by two more collies. Charles got to his feet. He felt damp, stiff and cold.
‘Let’s go over all that again later. We need to work out what we’re going to do. We could chance dinner, if there’s somewhere you could get cleaned up. Where are you
staying?’

‘Here.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I can but I shan’t. I have been, but I’ll move on tonight, walking cross-country, lying up during the day. I’ve got enough rations to get me back.’

‘Back where?’

‘If I tell you, it’s a burden. Someone might get it out of you. Need to know, you always used to say.’

‘High Wycombe?’

‘Don’t want to risk getting a good Muslim family into trouble.’

‘I’ll book you into the Lion at Leintwardine. In my name, my credit card. I won’t stay, but we can eat there. Then you can go black again.’

Martin was reluctant. He didn’t want to appear anywhere in public, especially with Charles. Charles argued that the chances of his having brought surveillance with him were negligible. If
they didn’t plot Nigel’s downfall now, they’d have to meet again to do it another time, which would be more dangerous.

‘Convenience and comfort are the enemies of security, you always used to say,’ said Martin. ‘What’s changed?’

It was almost dark by the time Charles prevailed.

‘It’s the thought of a bath, really,’ said Martin, getting up and brushing himself down. ‘Getting soft in my old age.’

He gathered his kit and they walked together back up the darkening hill and then down to where the car was parked, taking care not to be silhouetted against the stippled western sky.

When they reached the Lion, Charles went in and paid while Martin took his time unloading his kit from the car.

‘Wait till I open the fire escape for you to come up that way,’ Charles had said before he went in. ‘If they see you looking like that, let alone smell you, they’ll say
they’re full.’ He waited downstairs while Martin changed into his reserve shirt and trousers.

They ate a leisurely dinner of local lamb. Martin described the slaughter and preparation of sheep and goats, which he’d learned in Afghanistan. A shave, a bath, a comb through his hair
and a change of clothes took five or ten years off him, though he still had to wear his boots. As they talked Charles wondered yet again at the mystery of his own flesh and blood, at those lips,
those teeth, those eyes, those hard but now clean hands moving with the easy grace of youth; all conjured unknowingly during a few moments in the dark. As before, he waited to feel some tug at the
solar plexus, some lurch in the heart, some intimate stab of recognition. But none came: instead, there was the old incredulity at the astonishing matter-of-factness of it, of this man eating and
talking before him. It was knowledge that made the difference, he told himself again. Had he not known, he would never have wondered at the creation of this being, would never have watched his
expression for flashes of likeness to Sarah, fleeting as shooting stars, would never have taken any more interest in him than in any other likeable man in his thirties. Blood, he concluded, as he
had before, knew not itself; but knowledge of blood was all.

Martin talked about his charity in Afghanistan and the work he hoped, one day, to do again. More than once Charles was on the point of telling him. He wanted to, wanted him to know. But he
remembered what Matthew had said about not putting himself first, thought of what Sarah might want, and held back yet again. If he took that step he wanted to take her with him.

He came closest when Martin said: ‘I just don’t understand why Measures should be so frightened. If no-one cared enough to sack him years ago, they’re hardly going to now. And
who’s going to blow the gaff, anyway? Not you, you’re too loyal to your old service. Not me, I’ve no interest. Not Sarah, she’s got too much to lose. Not this Sonia you
mentioned, she’s probably like you and anyway, he doesn’t know about her. No-one would tell his dirty little secret, if he hadn’t had you arrested and tried to get me killed. He
knows I’m not al-Samit. Is he just crazy or is there something else?’

‘When I was a student I read a judgement by a fourteenth-century judge on
mens rea
. He said, “The devil alone knoweth the heart of man.” We’re no farther
forward.’

‘That was when you knew Sarah and Measures together, wasn’t it? When you were students? I keep forgetting that. She told me once, or maybe you did.’

‘We all knew each other, yes.’

‘Maybe lifelong jealousy on his part, then. It was obvious you always carried a candle for Sarah.’

‘It was, was it?’ Now, he thought, right now.

But Martin went on. ‘Anyway, it’s the future we need to worry about. What are we going to do? Apart from get another bottle.’

They plotted that Charles would confront Nigel, with Sarah’s help, if she agreed. Martin would go back into hiding but with contact arrangements in place; Sonia would act as go-between and
cut-out. If Nigel refused to resign at Charles’s first attempt, then he and Martin would confront him together, threatening to go public.

‘And if he still refuses?’ asked Martin.

‘He won’t.’

‘But if he does? Going public would have consequences, especially for me and my practice.’

‘If we say it, we’ve got to mean it. But you’d have more to lose, of course.’

‘Not as much as he has. Besides, there’s always the memoirs.’

After dinner they walked out into the car park and stood gazing at the Teme where it rippled around the garden and under the bridge. It was a moonless, cloudy night with few stars.

‘You must be over the limit,’ Martin said.

‘Maybe.’ It wouldn’t be the first time. He could book himself in for the night, which would mean paying for two hotel rooms – three, with Martin’s – and doing
without his clean clothes and shaving kit, which were in the Feathers. A slightly greater security risk, from Martin’s point of view. Anyway, being a few points over the limit didn’t
worry him as much as most people he knew might think it should. He put that down to his generation. Across the road, where a lane ran parallel to the river, he glimpsed a figure move between two
parked cars, a white Mondeo and a Range Rover. ‘This was a Roman settlement,’ he said. ‘They built the first bridge here.’

‘Here? Where this one is?’

‘I’m not sure. The original might’ve been downstream.’ They sauntered over to his car to get the rest of Martin’s gear. Charles opened the boot and passed him a
webbing belt and pouches. ‘Anything else?’

‘Just my sticks.’

Charles handed him the two metal telescopic walking poles and shut the boot. Someone shouted from close by. There was more shouting, but he couldn’t distinguish what was said except for
the word, ‘police’. Martin moved and said something. Afterwards, and for the rest of his life, Charles would struggle in vain to recall what it was. There were several sharp cracks and
he felt a shocking blow to his left shoulder, as if someone had hit him with a cricket bat. He staggered to his knees, then was knocked flat and winded, his right cheek and ear hitting the tarmac
hard. A great weight fell on him and he saw and felt no more.