Secret Asset

10

The city of dreaming spires looked wide awake to Liz. The sky was a rich enamel blue, and the temperature was moving into an almost summery seventy degrees as she and a half-breathless Peggy Kinsolving mounted the wooden staircase of the Sheldonian. It was hard to believe graduation ceremonies took place in the small area of this strange old building. Built by Christopher Wren, according to Peggy, when he was only thirty-one years old.

Arriving at the top, Liz and Peggy stood in a painted wooden cupola and looked out at a very different view of Oxford from the dense, almost claustrophobic world seen at ground level. Here church spires and college towers jutted like projectiles to form a jagged historical skyline.

Looking down, Liz watched the groups of tourists thronging the pavements of Broad Street—or the Broad as Peggy called it. Cars were parked in a neat line in the wide belly of the street, and a few others moved gingerly along, more in hope than expectation of a space, eventually coming full circle since the street was blocked at the far end by heavy bollards.

She looked across at Blackwell’s bookshop, where she and Peggy had browsed for a few minutes. It was nice to have this brief interlude, thought Liz. They had driven down together in Liz’s car, after she had collected Peggy from the flat she shared with two old college friends on the less salubrious side of Kilburn. Going against the London-bound traffic they made good time, then fought their way through a maddening one-way system and parked in a vast open car park on the western side of Oxford city centre. They walked up past the old prison, now finding new life as a luxury hotel, and into a shopping street indistinguishable in its frontage of chain stores from any other in England. But then they turned into a dark, narrow street of Dickensian houses, complete with overhanging shadows and protruding beams. A further turn and they were at Pembroke College, their first stop.

It was a seventeenth-century foundation with medieval bits, according to Peggy, who had swotted up diligently the day before. More obscure than its namesake in Cambridge, it nonetheless numbered among its distinguished alumni the writer Thomas Browne, Samuel Johnson, and more recently Michael Heseltine.

They were directed by a porter through an old quad, with a small square of tended lawn. On the far wall, window boxes were filled with early geraniums. They walked on into another quad and there against the wall of the older part of the College sat a small statue of a woman, hands folded in prayer or lament. Not a good omen, thought Liz, thinking of the impending interview. She was not conventionally religious, and wondered a little nervously what role theology was going to play in the conversation.

Chaplain Hickson turned out to be an enormous man, with a vast beer belly and a thick curly beard, more Friar Tuck than the ascetic theologian Liz had expected. A Northerner, he was jolly and startlingly impious, greeting Liz and Peggy effusively before offering them coffee or—“since the sun is over the yardarm in France”—a glass of sherry.

Both Liz and Peggy opted for coffee, and perching on a pair of uncomfortable chairs, held stained mugs of Nescafé while the chaplain hunted high and low for some biscuits. Only when he found them, after several minutes’ searching, did their interview begin. He sat down with a happy thump on the sofa, putting a plateful of chocolate digestives within easy reach. By this time Liz had formed the distinct impression that for Chaplain Hickson, material sustenance was more important than prayer.

Liz began by explaining their visit was strictly a formality, to update the original vetting. She had worried, back in London, whether a man of the cloth would be willing to speak freely about a former student’s personal life, particularly as it was the morally dubious aspects of that life she most needed to know about. But the chaplain was happy to talk about the young Patrick Dobson.

“He took things very seriously and he worked extremely hard. Nothing wrong with that,” he added with a rolling laugh that suggested there was. “But it did distance him a bit from some of the others. There was something almost middle-aged about the boy.”

“Nothing wild about him then?” said Liz with a faint smile.

“Certainly not. On every count, he was a model citizen.” He grabbed a biscuit from the plate. “He joined the Young Conservatives, ate all his suppers in Hall, and avoided temptation. There were no women in his life—not, I should add, because of disinclination on his part. It’s just that he was hardly irresistible to the fairer sex. Funny how that seems to happen, isn’t it?”

“How did you come to know him so well?” Liz asked, a little taken aback by this very personal portrait.

“He came to chapel a lot. Every week, sometimes on Wednesday.” He grimaced slightly. “It may sound odd coming from me, but I found him a little too religious, if you know what I mean. Pretty uncommon among lads that age, especially at Oxford.”

“Did he confide in you?”

For the first time the chaplain looked startled. “Me? Oh no. You see, there was something of a class divide between us.”

“Really?” asked Liz. If she remembered rightly, Dobson’s background was anything but patrician. Or was Hickson suggesting his own was? Looking at this biscuit-loving mountain of a man, she found it hard to believe.

“You see, young Patrick came from a working-class family. By dint of his admittedly healthy-sized brain he managed to win a scholarship to an independent school. There, he developed not only his mind, but”—the chaplain waved a finger, and Liz could see he was starting to enjoy himself—“a precocious sense of social advancement.”

“I see,” said Liz, masking her amusement.

“At Oxford these aspirations continued. He liked to wear a jumper most days,” Hickson continued, almost joyfully stressing the word’s initial “j,” “and sometimes even sported his old school tie. On Sundays, you would see him wearing a checked tweed suit which, he once told someone, was of the sort worn by ‘gentlemen in the country.’” Hickson looked at Liz with a twinkle in his eye. “You can imagine how much his fellow students loved that.”

“Was that the class difference you mentioned?” asked Peggy, who had stayed silent until now. She looked puzzled.

“Oh, there was no difference to begin with. We were both common as muck,” the chaplain said with a generous grin. “The thing is, I still am. I’m amazed they have me here. I suppose it’s a form of political correctness.” And this time he gave such a laugh that it shook the sofa.

Leaving a few minutes later, after declining another offer of sherry, Liz wondered whether the chaplain’s mocking portrait of Dobson provided real grounds for concern. Clearly Dobson had been an earnest, slightly geeky undergraduate, so intent on erasing the traces of his humble origins that, paradoxically, it made him stand out rather than fit in. Liz was uneasy about someone who had invented a persona for himself—checked tweed suit indeed—since if they could base their life on a lie, what would keep them from basing it on more than one?

At the same time, Liz found herself almost sorry for someone so obviously unsure of himself, amused as she had been by the chaplain’s satirical account. After all, she thought, remembering the unhappiness of her teenage years, if being a social misfit in late adolescence was grounds for suspicion, Liz would be a prime suspect in her own investigation.

They’d moved on to Somerville College, where they found Judith Spratt’s old tutor, an elegant bluestocking named Isabella Prideaux, who must have been near retirement age. In her ground-floor room, with French doors overlooking the enormous quad, Isabella gave a brief and laudatory account of Judith’s time as an undergraduate. She seemed to know where her ex-pupil had ended up. “She keeps in touch,” she said, adding proudly, “but then, most of my students do.”

They had met at twelve-thirty. After half an hour the ground had been covered, and Liz started to make her excuses, thinking that she and Peggy would go and find a sandwich somewhere. So it came as a small embarrassment when it became clear they were expected to stay for lunch. Peggy looked quizzically at Liz, but there seemed no polite way out, and they trooped to a small dining room near the larger hall.

Here conversation about Judith Spratt was not on the menu, since they sat surrounded by Fellows of the College. Most of them seemed to be men—somewhat to Liz’s surprise, since her view of Somerville had been formed by Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night. After a lengthy disquisition from a Physics lecturer seated next to her about the beauty of quarks, Liz was glad to escape with her host and Peggy for coffee to the Fellows’ Common Room, where they managed to occupy a quiet corner by themselves. “I’m sorry about Professor Burrell,” Miss Prideaux said to Liz, who realised she must mean her lunch partner. “When I listen to him he might as well be speaking in Urdu.”

They chatted on for a while, then, just as Liz and Peggy were about to go, Miss Prideaux suddenly said out of the blue, “I was awfully sorry to hear about Ravi.”

Liz’s ears pricked up now. “Yes?” she said.

“I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I do think these inter-racial alliances are always more fragile.” When Liz didn’t say anything, Miss Prideaux flushed slightly, perhaps worried that she sounded racist or indiscreet, or both. She made a show of looking at her watch. “Goodness me, here I am gossiping, and I’ve got a finalist in hysterics about her Anglo-Saxon paper waiting for me.”

Now, as they stood admiring the view from the top of the Sheldonian, Peggy asked Liz, “What did Miss Prideaux mean when she said she was sorry about Ravi?”

Liz shrugged. “I’m not sure. Ravi is Judith Spratt’s husband. His name is Ravi Singh; Judith uses her maiden name at work.”

“I gathered that,” said Peggy. “What does he do?”

“He’s a businessman, from India originally. They’ve been married a long time—I think they met at Oxford. He’s charming.”

“Oh, so you know him?”

“A bit. I’ve been to dinner there a few times.”

Peggy nodded. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? There’s nothing in Judith’s file that says her marital status has changed.”

Liz sighed. She supposed this was the inevitable downside of investigating your colleagues. “We’d better find out for sure then. Hopefully it’s nothing.” But mentally she made a note to talk to B Branch the following day.

Their last interview was in Merton College, which they approached down a narrow alleyway running off the High. The change in tempo from the bustle of a main street to a backwater of almost medieval calm was sudden. As they turned onto the wobbly cobblestones of Merton Street, Liz saw a small churchyard, with a path lined by several magnificent cherry trees. She imagined that this view would not have changed for five hundred years.

His name was Hilary Watts. Professor Watts to me, thought Liz, since he seemed to expect that kind of deference. He was an old-school Arabist with, inevitably, strong Foreign Office connections—he had taught summer school at MECAS, the famous Centre for Arabic Studies in the hills above Beirut, and tutored the more obscure relatives of Jordan’s King Hussein when they came for a final polishing stint to Oxford.

And he had played a long-time role, in the age before open recruitment, as a talent spotter for MI6. He had taught Tom Dartmouth for his postgraduate degree, and been asked for a reference by MI5 when his ex-pupil had applied. The reference, reeking of a past era of old boys’ network and public-school prose, had been three lines long, written on the back of a postcard from the Accademia in Venice: Sound chap. Good languages. More than clever enough for the domestic service.

“Domestic service”—once the prevalent Six view of MI5. Small surprise that Watts had not risen when she and Peggy had knocked on his door, but merely called out a peremptory “Come in.”

Entering, the two women found themselves in a dark room with high ceilings and one vast mullioned window at the far wall, which let very little light in since the curtains—thick velvet but badly in need of cleaning—were half drawn across. The Professor sat in an ancient wing chair, its covers faded to a dull sage. He faced the small slit of undraped window, through which he gazed out at the lush grass of a playing field in Christ Church Meadow.

“Do sit down,” he said, pointing to a long settee that ran at right angles to his chair. Obeying him, they positioned themselves carefully, and Liz examined the man, who continued to look out at the meadow. It was an aged but distinguished face, with a long aquiline nose that was sprinkled with veins, high concave cheekbones, and small darting eyes of vivid blue. He tilted his head onto one shoulder and took them both in. “Ladies,” he said shortly. “How can I be of assistance to you?”

Liz noticed that his hand was holding a pipe, and he lifted it now and made a show of knocking out the bowl. Bits of ash scattered over his thick trousers, and he brushed them away irritably while Liz explained they were there to ask him about Tom Dartmouth.

“Oh Tom,” he said. “Gifted fellow. Came to me for the lingo, though he was already good at it.”

At this he nodded and puffed leisurely at his pipe. Liz asked gently, “Had you known him as an undergraduate?”

Watts detached the stem with palpable reluctance from his lips. “I don’t teach undergraduates,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Mason at Balliol said young Dartmouth took the best First in PPE that year.”

“Was there anything distinctive about Tom? Anything you remember as unusual?”

“All my students are unusual,” he said matter-of-factly.

Peggy looked sideways at Liz. Liz had to admire the self-confidence of this dinosaur; it was so pronounced that it did not even sound boastful.

“I’m sure they are,” acknowledged Liz mildly. “But I wondered if there was anything in particular you remembered about Tom.”

This time Watts seemed happy to take his pipe out. He said sharply, “Only that he was a disappointment.”

Surprised, Liz asked, “Why was that?”

“I thought he had the makings of a very fine Arabist. He could have done a DPhil in no time—these days you’ve got to have one for a university post.”

Was that it? wondered Liz. Watts was cross with Tom because he’d left the land of academe. “Was that very disappointing?”

“What?” demanded Watts, sounding annoyed. “That he didn’t want to teach? No no, it wasn’t that. God knows the world isn’t short of academics.”

He looked slightly miffed, as if recalling some slight, and Liz decided not to press him. Though a large part of her wanted to say to this preposterous relic of an earlier age, “Come out with it. Tell us just how Tom Dartmouth—best First in his year, gifted chap, one of us, etc., etc.—let you, his mentor, down.”

But she didn’t have long to wait. With a show of regret that struck Liz as wholly insincere, Watts said slowly, “I arranged for him to see my friends in London.” For the first time he looked directly at Liz, his eyes opaque, uninterested. “Your counterparts.”

Six, thought Liz. Certainly the obvious place for a high-flying Arabist. “What happened?” she asked, discovering that this veteran of the old school was annoying her as much as she clearly annoyed him. Thank God the shutters have opened, she thought, thinking of the comparatively transparent conduct of the intelligence world these days.

Now Watts took his time responding, as if to teach Liz that she was not really in charge of the interview. Eventually he said, “The boy wasn’t interested. I thought at first that meant he wanted to join the Foreign Office, have a proper diplomatic career. But no, not at all. ‘What is it then?’ I asked him. ‘Money?’ I could understand that—he would earn a fortune helping some bank trying to get established in the Middle East. But no it wasn’t that either.” Watts paused, as if revolted by the memory. When he spoke again it was with his pipe stem half in his mouth, so he was quite literally biting his words. “He told me he wanted to work for you people. On the home front is how he put it to me. Said he wanted to tackle the security threats direct. I asked him if he’d really worked so hard and done so well in order to become some kind of bloody policeman.”

Out of nowhere, Peggy piped up for only the second time that day. “What did Tom say?”

Watts turned and gave Peggy a contemptuous look for her impertinence. Patronising old buffer, thought Liz, he’d have an absolute heart attack if he knew Peggy was from Six.

He spoke now with an angry current to his voice. “He laughed, and said I didn’t understand.” From Watts’s expression, it was clear this was the ultimate sin.