A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [7]
No serving SIS officer has been killed in action since World War Two.
I turn another page, skimming the prose.
The meanness of the starting salary surprises me: only PS17,000 in the first few years, with bonuses here and there to reward good work. If I do this, it will be for love. There’s no money in spying.
Lucas walks in, no knock on the door, a soundless approach. He has a cup and saucer clutched in his hand and what looks like a renewed sense of purpose. His watchfulness has, if anything, intensified. Perhaps he hasn’t been observing me at all. Perhaps this is his first sight of the young man whose life he has just changed.
He sits down, tea on the table, right leg folded over left. There is no ice-breaking remark. He dives straight in.
‘And what are your thoughts about what you’ve been reading?’
The weak bleat of an internal phone sounds on the other side of the door, stopping efficiently. Lucas waits for my response. But it does not come. My head is suddenly loud with noise and I am rendered incapable of speech. His gaze intensifies. He will not speak until I have done so. Say something, Alec. Don’t blow it now. His mouth is melting into what I perceive as a disappointment close to pity. I struggle for something coherent, some sequence of words that will do justice to the very seriousness of what I am now embarked upon. But the words simply do not come. Lucas appears to be several feet closer now than he was before, and yet his chair has not moved an inch. How could this have happened? In an effort to regain control of myself I try to remain absolutely still, to make our body language as much of a mirror as possible: arms relaxed, legs crossed, head upright and looking ahead. In time - what seem vast vanished seconds - the beginnings of a sentence form in my mind, just the faintest of signals. And when Lucas makes to say something, as if to end my embarrassment, it acts as a spur. I say:
‘Well… now that I know… I can understand why Mr Hawkes didn’t want to say exactly what I was coming here to do today.’
‘Yes.’
The shortest, meanest, quietest ‘Yes’ I have ever heard.
‘I found the pamphl… the file very interesting. It was a surprise.’
‘Why is that exactly? What surprised you about it?’
‘I thought, obviously, that I was coming here today to be interviewed for the Diplomatic Service, not for SIS.’
‘Of course,’ he says, reaching for his tea.
And then, to my relief, he begins a long and practised monologue about the work of the Secret Intelligence Service, an eloquent, spare resume of its goals and character. This lasts as long as a quarter of an hour, and allows me the chance to get myself together, to think more clearly and focus on the task ahead. Still spinning from the embarrassment of having frozen openly in front of him, I find it difficult to concentrate on Lucas’s voice. But his description of the work of an SIS officer appears to be disappointingly devoid of macho derring-do. He paints a lustreless portrait of a man engaged in the simple act of gathering intelligence, doing so by the successful recruitment of foreigners sympathetic to the British cause who are prepared to pass on secrets for reasons of conscience or financial gain. That, in essence, is all that a spy does. As Lucas tells it, the more traditional aspects of espionage - burglary, phone-tapping, honeytraps, bugging - are a fiction. It’s mostly desk work. Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.
‘Clearly, one of the more unique aspects of SIS is the demand for absolute secrecy,’ he says, his voice falling away. ‘How would you feel about not being able to tell anybody what you do for a living?’
That is how it would be. Nobody, not even Kate, knowing any longer who I really was. A life of absolute anonymity.
‘I wouldn’t have any problem with that at all.’
Lucas begins to take notes again. That was the answer he was looking for.
‘And it doesn’t concern you that you won’t receive any public acclaim for the