SEA OF FAITH
cave
The preliminary briefings are long, brutal, and exhilarating. File upon file upon file: names, histories, allegiances, and contacts. Quickly he realises that simple recall is going to be insufficient to the task and switches to a combination of mnemonics and visual association techniques.
Nicholas does not need MI6 to train him to think in code.
"Let's move on to Warner's people, shall we?" Today it is the woman, Eppling; she is the others' superior, muted and almost officious with barely made-up lips and the omnipresent packet of cigarettes. Her pace is different from the men's. "Christopher Styles," she offers, a tip to an eager palm.
"Thirty-two. Harvard educated," Nicholas says promptly. He pauses and considers the relevant facts. "Blue-blooded Republican. Uncle a federal judge and former state senator, grandfather a former governor of Virginia. Military-corporate connections going every which way, as one would expect. He was properly groomed for this."
Memory of a face surfaces.
"Both parents alive but no longer politically active – unusual. An elder brother living in Italy, no one talks about him. Styles has been in Warner's inner circle less than twelve months but has already caught the Defense Secretary's attention. She has taken him into her confidence."
Eppling lifts two fingers of her right hand in a shrug that does not extend above the wrist. Yes, well, her wide eyes seem to say, we can't nip them all. "Nothing suspicious?"
"His official record is immaculate, he's kept mostly out of the media's eye, loyal to his party and his beneficiaries. Any defamatory suggestions his enemies made were quickly labelled as malicious rumour. Which brings us to our unofficial dossier on him." Nicholas does not suppress the smile. Are his instincts wrong about this? He does not think so.
Eppling relaxes her shoulders, leans back from the table as if their briefing is over. She lights another Rothmans. Her hair falls forward from the side of her face; it is a greying auburn colour that must have been quite lovely fifteen, twenty years ago, Nicholas thinks. You have to be careful with clever, redheaded women. They are used to winning attention and keeping it. He could learn a lot from her.
"We want you to keep an eye on them – I mean them especially."
The use of cryptic pronouns to deliver imprecise, non-committal orders is a proud Service tradition. Nicholas waits a moment, then gives an equally non-committal answer.
"Yes?"
crescent
It takes time to learn someone, inside and out. Discover their secrets, their fears, their ambitions, and their weaknesses. It is not enough to observe and wait, only the wet ankles penetrating ocean-mirror, the placid, glittering surface. If you have the time and the need to justify it, you look deep, face the mirror; submerge eyes, ears, nose, tongue. Then count the seconds. Don't stay too long. Capture the subtle creatures in full, rounded, undiluted detail, before they see you in return.
Christopher finds the scar on his hip and does not relent until Nicholas has told him about the fifteen-year-old Iraqi boy at the other end of the rifle that caused it.
"So you were in the Gulf," Christopher says in a voice that gives no hints as to how he feels about this.
Nicholas waits for some further reaction, a clue to how much Christopher already knew, and how much he only suspected. As the newly appointed Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence, surely he checked every single source legitimately and illegitimately at his disposal for information about the British diplomat whom he has allowed into his home; he could not be so naïve, so incautious as to not. It is inconceivable.
Nicholas shifts his body away. "Don't worry." He laughs. "I'm not some bitter war veteran with nothing better to do than to criticize his own government's foreign policy. Isn't that obvious?"
Christopher stares at him. Nicholas knows that he is probably thinking about Thomas Warner, killed just three weeks ago by a car bomb in Afghanistan. All of Washington is talking about Secretary Warner's speech, her righteous, irrebuttable defense of the incumbent president, standing by the coffin at her only son's state funeral. That must have required an almost Spartan sense of purpose, if it is to be believed.
"My brother wanted to enlist in the army," Christopher says. "My father and mother were not happy, you can imagine. Why waste all that fine education – they told him – leave it to people with less to lose, you can serve your country better elsewhere."
This is news to Nicholas, but he is not surprised. He knows that Christopher admires Lynne Warner.
"Do you agree with Secretary Warner?"
"Yes." Then Christopher is silent for several seconds, as if he is choosing his words. "If it is a just war, the American people's war, then we need to give it our best, not just our most expendable. How can we win if our heart isn't in it? That way lies our nation's ruin."
That does not sound like a phrase Christopher would use and Nicholas suspects that he was repeating the Defense Secretary in her more private, sermonising moments. That thought makes him irrationally angry with them both, but he says nothing. What can he say? Does he think now that he is going to be the voice of reason and moderation? Wouldn't he rather accept Britain's obsolescence in the eyes of this glamorous, overconfident, designing young man? His country declared its independence more than two hundred years ago with the barrel of a gun. Does he, Nicholas, really want to help them pull the trigger this time? Better to let America care for her own.
"Is that how she really feels?" Nicholas finally asks, meaning Warner. "That her son's death was right and necessary?"
Could Christopher do that, send his own brother to war to die?
Christopher hesitates. Again, he is suddenly unfathomable. He does not look away from Nicholas. "I honestly don't know, but I'm glad you're alive."
clash
Josephine Eppling waves Nicholas into her office at Vauxhall Cross, moves to the desk and drops immediately back into the impression in her chair. They get the pleasantries over with as quickly as possible; the ugliness of the situation has made them both more than usually taciturn. Eppling's ashtray, gunmetal and solid as a paperweight, lands in the space between them in throwaway defiance to the No Smoking sign in the corridor. Nicholas is fidgety from the flight over, his eyes restless, and his mouth dry.
Eppling turns the volume up on the television behind him, tuned to analysis of the latest news from Washington. On the plasma screen Christopher Styles is calmly, without fault or hesitation, delivering his testimony. Denying both his and Lynne Warner's involvement in the activities that led his disgraced predecessor to resign. The lighting in the committee room is harsh, insensitive on his face. Nicholas has already seen the ghastly thing enough times to have every word memorised.
"A sterling performance." Eppling lights a cigarette and strokes the lighter shut with brusque animosity. Nicholas tenses but remains silent. They have their own shorthand, perfected over the last three years, a rhythm to their exchanges that skirts the frail boundary of objectivity and professionalism. Just like the nature of his assignment.
"Medea must be very proud at how her adoptive son is holding up under pressure. British citizens illegally held for years and tortured and our so-called allies in war are going to bury it like it was just another –" she breathes out smoke in a disdainful whisper, "regrettable oversight. Blame it on imperfect Intelligence."
"That's the plan," Nicholas agrees carefully. "Throw the old to the dogs, go along with business as usual."
"What does Styles think about this? If this comes out, and it still very well might, he won't have the immunity that Warner does."
"He listens. It boosts his ego to think he can play with Six. But he doesn't talk to me any more."
"So, what's changed? Was it Thomas Warner's death? It's been almost two years."
"Among other things, but mostly that."
"Christ Jesus!"
Eppling switches off the television and leans forward intently, dark glints in her eyes. Nicholas wonders not for the first time what her personal stake in this operation is; if known it can be lanced and cauterized. Whatever the cost, it must not be allowed to overwhelm. "Tell me, Nicholas," she asks. "Does the Under Secretary improve on close acquaintance or is he as much of a posturing charlatan as he is in front of a camera? Because if so, if there really isn't a thought in that pretty head that the Defense Secretary herself hasn't put there, what possible use is he to us? And what use are you?"
"He could still be valuable. I yield the position, we get nothing. And isn't that what we're here for, contingencies?"
"Among other things, Nicholas. I applaud your patriotism, but there are ways of dealing with the Americans that don't require getting into bed with them. Don't forget that."
Nicholas smiles grimly. "I'm due at the Home Office. Was there something else?"
"Yes." The clipped tone returns, and it occurs to Nicholas that he ought to be grateful that she isn't pressing the matter any further. Perhaps they are both hopeless optimists when you get down to it, he thinks, a little despairingly. What is the country coming to when its spies are all just hedging their bets?
"Do you know Anthony Hanley, of Hanley International? I want you to have a talk with him while you're in London." She hands an unmarked file across the desk. "It might be nothing. Might be something."
He pushes his chair back. "Of course."
Another wasted meeting. Nothing more for him here. Nicholas closes his briefcase over the forlorn file. There is still his job. He can still do that, whatever happens. Can have faith that not all of it will be for nothing.
Get on the plane. Go home.
THE END
5 December 2006
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
--MATTHEW ARNOLD