A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [6]
Almost immediately, before the ink can be properly dry, Lucas snatches the document away from me and stands to leave. Distant traffic noise on the Mall. A brief clatter in the secretarial enclave next door.
‘Do you see the file on the table?’
It has been sitting there, untouched, for the duration of the interview.
‘Yes.’
‘Please read it while I am gone. We will discuss the contents when I return.’
I look at the file, register its hard red cover, and agree.
‘Good,’ says Lucas, moving outside. ‘Good.’
*
Alone now in the room.
I lift the file from the table like a magazine in a doctor’s surgery. It is bound in cheap leather and well-thumbed. I open it to the first page.
Please read the following information carefully. You are being appraised for recruitment to the Secret Intelligence Service.
I look at this sentence again and it is only on the third reading that it begins to make any sort of sense. I cannot, in my consternation, smother a belief that Lucas has the wrong man, that the intended candidate is still sitting downstairs flicking nervously through the pages of The Times. But then, gradually, things start to take shape. There was that final instruction in Lucas’s letter: ‘As this letter is personal to you, I should be grateful if you could respect its confidentiality.’ A remark which struck me as odd at the time, though I made no more of it. And Hawkes was reluctant to tell me anything about the interview today. ‘Just be yourself, Alec. It’ll all make sense when you get there.’ Jesus. How they have reeled me in. What did Hawkes see in me in just three hours at a dinner party to convince him I would make a suitable employee of the Secret Intelligence Service? Of MI6.
A sudden consciousness of being alone in the room checks me out of bewilderment. I feel no fear, no great apprehension, only a sure sense that I am being watched through a small panelled mirror to the left of my chair. I swivel and examine the glass. There is something false about it, something not quite aged. The frame is solid, reasonably ornate, but the glass is clean, far more so than the larger mirror in the reception area downstairs. I look away. Why else would Lucas have left the room but to gauge my response from a position next door? He is watching me through the mirror. I am certain of it.
So I turn the page, attempting to look settled and businesslike.
The text makes no mention of MI6, only of SIS, which I assume to be the same organization. This is all the information I am capable of absorbing before other thoughts begin to intrude.
It has dawned on me, a slowly revealed thing, that Michael Hawkes was a Cold War spy. That’s why he went to Moscow in the 60s.
Did Dad know that about him?
I must look studious for Lucas. I must suggest the correct level of gravitas.
The first page is covered in information, three-line blocks of facts.
The Secret Intelligence Service (hereafter SIS), working independently from Whitehall, has responsibility for gathering foreign intelligence…
SIS Officers work under diplomatic cover in British Embassies overseas…
There are at least twenty pages like this one, detailing power structures within SIS, salary gradings, the need at all times for absolute secrecy. At one point, approximately halfway through the document, they have actually written: ‘Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.’
On and on it goes, too much to take in. But I tell myself to keep on reading, to try to assimilate as much of it as I can. Lucas will return soon with an entirely new set of questions, probing me, establishing whether or not I have the potential to do this.
It’s time to move up a gear. What an opportunity, Alec. To Serve Queen and Country.
The door opens, like air escaping through a seal.
‘Here’s your tea, sir.’
Not Lucas. A sad-looking, perhaps unmarried woman in late middle-age has walked into the room carrying a plain white cup and saucer. I stand up to acknowledge her, knowing that Lucas will note this display