Authors: Alan Judd
‘Anyway, at that moment the phone rang and I put the telegram down to answer it. Peter picked it up and looked at the distribution list and file number, then he put it down. But the phone
call went on a bit and he stood looking at the first page. He could see only the first page, I’m sure of that, but I do remember noticing he was reading it. As soon as I put the phone down he
turned away as if he’d lost interest.
‘“Don’t bother to file it,” he said. “Just shred it when he’s seen it. It’ll be filed in Head Office and Washington and it’s nothing to do with
us. So much crud gets copied to us just for the sake of it. I’d chuck it if I were you.”’
She thought nothing of this at the time and didn’t realise she’d remembered it until Charles arrived with his questions.
‘I feel awful; I should have thought. I knew Peter wasn’t on the distribution, of course, but he didn’t try to read it all, didn’t seem that interested. And I just
thought it was something technical that was nothing to do with us, the name Configure didn’t mean anything and there were other things going on, you know how it is. I’m sorry, I’m
so very sorry.’
‘Not your fault but thank you for telling me. He almost certainly didn’t pass it on because he was back in London shortly after and he had no more meetings with his friend. It was
the head office’s fault, not yours.’
The telegram, it later transpired, was the first Configure report indicating the possibility of Crown Jewels. Charles had written it, unaware of its full technical implications. But Peter Tew
was scientifically more literate and probably did. He may not have been able to pass it at the time but now that he was out of prison he could have put it to use, if he had a mind to. And he
probably had.
Tim was talking by the time Charles gave the meeting his full attention again. ‘Michael’s right that we must keep the police fully informed of anything relevant in the backgrounds of
Frank Heathfield and Configure, which means explaining the possible link with Peter Tew. Meanwhile it would help if Charles could get us a more complete list of who in MI6 has access to computers
which link to the outside world and whether it is possible for anyone other than the staff member concerned to access them. It would also help if we could have a staged shut-down, allegedly for
maintenance, of MI6 servers. If we could identify a server which, whenever it’s down, means that no other systems are accessed, that would narrow the search.’ He looked at Charles.
‘It might, of course, mean that you would have to indoctrinate someone else in MI6 into what’s happening.’
‘Unless I simply say it’s a process all government systems have to go through during the present crisis.’
They discussed technicalities. All was going well from Charles’s point of view until Michael, trying to be helpful, said, ‘If we’re assuming Tew as the link between the
murders, then we’re also assuming he’s revenging himself on those responsible for putting him away. Of whom there’s only one left alive – and he’s sitting
here.’
Everyone laughed. Angela mentioned Agatha Christie. Michael said that had struck him too. Everyone laughed again. ‘But there is a serious point here,’ said Michael.
‘Protection. Should Charles have police protection?’
It was the last thing he wanted. Smiling with the others, he rushed to reoccupy the middle ground. ‘Reluctant as I am to be a further charge on the public purse, I agree it’s
something we should seek police advice on. I’ll raise it with them myself. Fortunately, we’ve just moved house and I think I’ve neglected to let anyone know the new
address—’
‘Why does that not surprise me?’ interjected Angela, to further laughter.
‘– but I’ll discuss it with the police, I promise.’
S
arah prepared a prawn stir-fry for supper and opened a bottle of claret, which Charles would drink with anything, including fish and chips, if he
could. Most of the unpacking remained but their bedroom and her study were more or less done. She dared not start on his study because that would mean arranging his precious books and whatever she
did would doubtless be wrong. There’d be no more unpacking this evening, anyway, just a cosy dinner during which he could tell her about his meetings and she could confess her approach from
Mr Mayakovsky. She still felt as if, merely by being approached, she’d done something wrong.
Again, the telephone rang as she heard his key in the door. This time it was Jeremy Wheeler, exclaiming how wonderful it had been to see them both, how they must get together more often and how
delighted he and Wendy were to have them in the area. She mouthed his name to Charles who gritted his teeth and turned his eyes to the ceiling. She mouthed, ‘Are you here?’ while saying
how much she was looking forward to writing to Wendy that very evening. Charles shook his head too late because by then she’d had to say he’d just got in. He made a strangulated grimace
as she passed him the receiver. She closed the door and left them to it.
Dinner and the claret were restorative and Charles’s irritation with Jeremy found relief in expression. ‘Bloody fool wanted a line to take with the press over Viktor’s murder.
When I said he didn’t need one, it was nothing to do with him, no-one was going to ask him about it, he said he thought they would because they had known each other socially and what was he
to say if they asked whether Viktor had been bumped off because he’d worked for us? Then when I said there was no reason for anyone to suspect that Viktor had worked for us and so the
question wouldn’t arise, he confessed he’d already put out a press statement saying he much regretted Viktor’s death but had no knowledge of his past. Can you believe it? After
we’d all gone last night Wendy told him that Viktor told her he had been a British spy. Wendy saw more of him than Jeremy did, apparently.’
‘How much more?’
‘No idea but between them, for good reasons or bad, they’ve hit upon the right answer and Jeremy, true to form, has done the one thing guaranteed to bring about the very thing we
want to avoid. Needs to protect his own public reputation, he says. Pompous twat. He didn’t have one before but he might be on the way to one now. Publicity is the last thing we want at the
moment, publicity about anything.’
Again she put off telling him, asking instead how the meeting had gone. By the time he’d finished that, the claret was also finished. She emptied the remains of her glass into his.
‘Your unified field theory, or whatever you call it, your desire for a single explanation for everything—’
‘Maybe impossible, I admit, but I’m sure it’s more likely than Michael Dunton’s two groups theory. For one thing—’
‘You haven’t heard what I’m going to say yet—’
‘– there is already a link between the two groups: misuse of the Service’s system. Someone is using it to wreak cyber havoc and someone must have used it to it to get
Viktor’s name and address. Assuming, as I do, that there’s a professional explanation for his murder—’
She put her hand over his glass as he was about to drink. ‘– because you won’t let me finish—’
‘– and that explanation is Peter Tew—’ He struggled not to smile as he tried to take his glass with the other hand and she leaned across the table and grabbed his
wrist.
‘The point about your unified field theory is that it doesn’t have to account for everything at once,’ she said, as they contested the glass. ‘It just has to account for
enough for you to run with it and see whether the rest falls in later. The missing submarine, for instance—’
He stopped struggling. ‘Your nephew who’s about to get married – what did you say was the name of his ship? Boat, I mean. The Navy calls submarines boats.’
Her grip slackened. ‘I didn’t, I don’t know—’
‘
Beowulf
?’
She let go. ‘Oh God, it might be. I must ring Susan, I meant to earlier. Does she know?’
‘Don’t ring yet.’ He emptied his glass.
‘I think we might need another bottle,’ she said. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you.’
He heard her in silence, all the while holding the new bottle. When she finished he poured for them both and questioned her on detail, gently and precisely going over exactly what was said and
in which order. At the end she smiled in relief and sipped the wine she didn’t want. ‘Doesn’t do much for your unified field,’ she said.
‘It does, it reinforces it. The fact that they want to know whether I’m in touch with Peter Tew and that odd reference to his computer suggests they don’t know where he is but
would like to. They may be in some sort of contact but not as close as they want. Well done.’
‘I didn’t do anything. I was done to rather than doing. It was horrible. Will they really try and ruin us, d’you think?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not yet. They’ll want to see if it works first. It’s a very crude approach. I’d have thought better of them.’
‘But I said no, absolutely clearly. And I said I’d tell you. They can’t be under any illusion that it’s going to work.’
‘If they’re crude enough to have done it in the first place, they’re crude enough to hope for second thoughts and have another go. Puts us in a good position.’
‘What do you mean?’ He was talking about it as if it were happening to someone else. Professional detachment was all very well but this was personal, personal for them both. And she
had felt so wretchedly guilty, as if she had brought trouble upon him herself.
‘There’s some advantage in playing them along for a while, if you could bear it. Getting them to expose more of themselves – whom they’re using, what they need to know,
how they would run you if you agreed. Give them enough rope to hang themselves, then prosecute or expel them. Michael Dunton would enjoy a good expulsion case.’
She put down her glass. ‘You mean I should pretend to agree?’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘He’s a horrible man, I hate him.’
‘Just once and only if they approach you again. Just so that you can find out what they would ask you. Useful to know what they want to know. We might even wire you up, stick something on
you. So you can bug the conversation. Miss Moneypenny stuff.’ He smiled. ‘Could be fun.’
‘I don’t think that’s fun at all. What if they do what they threaten? Go to the press and make a great fuss about you and me and Nigel? It would be so easy to spin all that to
make it sound sleazy and disgusting. And mud sticks, you know. For the rest of our lives.’
‘They wouldn’t if they knew that we would roll up their cosy little network here and expose it, complete with
News at Ten
recordings of clumsy attempts to debrief
you.’
She was horrified. ‘You’d put me on the news?’
He laid his hand on hers. ‘It won’t come to that. This is a little game for them, a tiny part of the Big Game. Nice if it works easily but drop it if it doesn’t, that’s
what they’d do. Mayakovsky and his Snow Queen are just walk-on players, trying to face both ways. Keen to stay here, anxious to keep in with Moscow and show they’re nice, patriotic,
rich, capitalist, modern Russians. Moscow wouldn’t expose them like this if they weren’t expendable.’
‘But don’t you think Katya Chester might be spying on Jeremy Wheeler? I mean, he must come across things – political gossip or more serious things to do with this committee
he’s on – that they can use in some way.’
‘Almost certainly. That’s another reason for not letting it run on too long. Michael Dunton will want her out, provided the Home Secretary agrees and our ECHR judges don’t say
we’re depriving her of a happy family life.’
‘With Jeremy perhaps?’
‘That would make expulsion a kindness.’
Monday for Sarah was wall-to-wall meetings. The two London Bridge project meetings were lengthy but fine – that at least was what the job was supposed to be. But the two
career appraisals, her own and the one she was obliged to give her temporary trainee, were the waste of time all three participants privately knew they would be. No-one should need formal sessions
with people they worked alongside everyday. On top of that there was a teleconference with the New York office at which she had to stand in for her managing partner. It took an hour and they never
got to her agenda item because there was so much grandstanding by two of the litigation partners. Then there was the quarterly meeting of the business flow committee, a body supposed to determine
who did what but which merely recorded everything and determined nothing.
The day was also punctuated by calls from Katya Chester, who had the irritating knack of leaving a message nearly every time Sarah was away from her phone. When Sarah eventually rang back she
had to endure waves of apologies for bothering her and tender concern for how she was feeling, her weekend, the dinner party at Jeremy’s and whether Charles had enjoyed it. Eventually she cut
Katya short with, for her, unusual brusqueness.
‘Katya, I’m fine, we’re both fine, everything’s fine and I’m very busy. What is it you want?’
‘Of course, I understand. I am sorry. I shall be quick for you. First, the conveyancing on my house. Is everything all right and is there anything else I can do?’
‘Until you send me the details I asked you for the other day there’s nothing I can do. You just need to get on with it.’
‘Of course, yes, thank you for reminding me. I will do that immediately.’ There was a very slight pause. ‘The second thing is a message from Mr Mayakovsky. He wishes to know
whether you are able to act for him concerning the properties he wishes to buy.’
There was a brief struggle between conscience and desire. Her desire was never to see Mr Mayakovsky again but she still felt, irrationally, as if she were potentially a cause of trouble to
Charles and that she should therefore do what he wanted. She knew he didn’t see it like that but nevertheless she felt responsible. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘please tell Mr
Mayakovsky I am content in principle to act for him.’
‘He will be very pleased.’ Katya giggled, an irritating tinkle. ‘He told me that if you agree to act for him he would like me to make an appointment for him to see you. May we
do so?’
She wasn’t having that. If he wanted her to play ball he could make some effort himself. ‘Tell him to ring and make an appointment with me or my secretary. If you’ve nothing
else, I’m afraid I have to go now.’