The Network - Jason Elliot [57]
‘It is the work of years, rather than weeks or months,’ she says, ‘and the very practice that the ordinary intelligence services have abandoned. We like to think of it as directed towards obtaining higher intelligence. The Service addresses the changing affairs of the day. We march to a different drum. By its nature it involves a fateful commitment and the sacrifice of all lesser ambitions. Above all, this task must be secret and known only to the smallest possible number of people. As long as the Network exists, its work cannot be spoken about to outsiders.’
It is for this reason, she adds, that its members are painstakingly recruited from the families of trusted friends who have demonstrated what she calls the ‘appropriate spirit’.
The Network serves an idea, not an authority. It has no overt hierarchy. Even the Baroness has her teachers, she says. The role of its members is to understand a given target, to deepen their understanding and to transmit this to those who can hear. Their ambition is not to change the world, but to influence it, for lasting change is brought about by understanding rather than the application of external force. Advancement in the Network is acquired on the basis of understanding alone.
We will never know its exact numbers, the Baroness tells us, because no such information exists and its members never gather in a single place. They collaborate when necessary, but not for gain or advancement. There are Network members in government, in the military, in commerce and academia; others serve in more dangerous roles. They are content for their work to be invisible and for the most part lead ordinary lives, incorporating, without any outward show, their hidden task into the fabric of their daily responsibilities.
Such a possibility, if we wish to reflect on it, now exists for us.
She gives us time to think, but we don’t need long. We are young and keen, and we accept. Nothing changes for us on the surface of things, but in our spare time we meet the Baroness whenever our duties allow, and begin our secret course of study.
There are some things you learn which, when you first encounter them, make each day seem like a gift beyond value. Our first few sessions have this quality. The fact that what we’re learning must be kept secret adds a further, intoxicating aspect to our work, which is why the protocols for secrecy are drummed into us from the start.
The success of all our future work is founded on the twin arts of observation and clandestine communication – essential practices, the Baroness tells us, which have not changed since men first learned to spy on one another, and which require nothing of technology. We learn first to see and hear through a new version of our senses, as if an extra dimension has been added to their habitual function. Our task is to act at all times on the assumption that we are being observed, and to see ourselves through the eyes of our observers. We learn to watch and follow a human target, to note and then predict his actions. Then, by inverting the same skills, to evade a follower and to conceal our own telltale gestures of impatience, anxiety or relief. We must be able, the Baroness endlessly reminds us, to transmit the signals of whatever emotion we choose to whoever is watching, as well as to draw the attention of others in whatever direction we wish.
To sharpen our skills of observation, she invites us to assign a portion of our attention to something going on around us,