The Network

3

This is not how it all begins. It begins a month earlier with a minor and, to my mind, forgivable act of theft committed on a grey March morning with Gerhardt, my partner in crime. We have been stealing firewood from a patch of forest not far from home, thanks to an undefended muddy track which Gerhardt has managed with ease, despite the full load of logs carried by his rear axle. It’s true that, at sixteen, he’s showing his age now and is far from perfect, but he still belongs to the fraternity of the most handsome and instantly recognisable four-wheel-drive vehicles in the world, the Mercedes G-Wagen, built to be indestructible and to go wherever their drivers take them.

I’ve rescued Gerhardt from a cruel and uncaring owner who kept him locked in a cold garage, understanding nothing of his potential. It’s true I keep a hammer in the glove compartment for when the fuel pump misbehaves, and for when the solenoid jams in wet weather. A few blows in the right spot usually do the trick. I also keep handy a spare bottle of transmission fluid, which tends to leak from the torque converter housing, and I try not to think about why the water pump makes a sort of puffing sound like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But apart from these foibles, Gerhardt is my pride and joy. Off-road, he comes into his own. He also weighs over two tons, which makes me remember what happens next all the more vividly.

I’m nearly home and travelling at speed along a narrow country lane. Turning a corner I find the road unexpectedly blocked by a tractor towing an evil-looking piece of farm machinery which takes up the entire width of the road. It’s a giant tiller with rows of curved shining blades, and as I hit the brakes hard a loud tearing sound comes from underneath me as the nearside wheels lock on the loose wet gravel. Logs come spilling into the front seats and I have a vision of Gerhardt being sliced into wafers at the moment of impact. We come juddering to a very timely halt, six feet short of the gleaming blades.

The driver of the tractor can’t hear me swearing. He hasn’t even seen me, and creeps forward at a snail’s pace. I try to squeeze past, but the road’s too narrow, so I follow for a while as my relief turns to frustration. My only chance to get ahead is to divert along a track through long grass and mud. I’ve driven it once before. It will add half a mile to the journey home but it’s a good excuse to put Gerhardt through his paces off-road.

When I reach the sign marked bridleway, I turn onto the track with a final curse at the tractor and slip the gearbox into four-wheel drive. The steering stiffens as the differentials lock and the power spreads to all four wheels. Lurching through the deep muddy ruts, Gerhardt is as happy as a horse released into the wild. Further on the track narrows and is choked with undergrowth, which flattens out submissively at our advance. Ten minutes later we rejoin the surfaced road. I push back the differential locks, return to two-wheel drive and head for home, listening to the tyres throwing off mud like a dog shaking water from its fur after a satisfying walk.

I’m a few minutes from home after this little detour when an unfamiliar sight catches my eye. A bright-red late-model Alfa Romeo is parked on the grassy verge with its hazard lights flashing. It’s an odd place to leave a car. There’s nothing to stop for nearby except empty fields. I slow up alongside and can see that the front wheels have spun themselves into the soft ground. I can see heat rising off the bonnet. Someone has got stuck and needs to be towed out.

I drive on and a hundred yards later see a figure up ahead. It must be the driver: a dark-haired woman, walking on the verge with her back to me. As I draw closer I can’t help noticing how well proportioned she is. She’s wearing a short wine-coloured jacket embroidered with what look like flowers and beads, dark close-fitting trousers and knee-high boots in cream and brown leather. They’re expensive, city clothes and look out of place on a country lane in Wiltshire. She turns her head as she hears Gerhardt’s engine and turns back again without changing pace, and I catch a glimpse of a shapely, Far Eastern-looking face.

She makes no effort to stop me as I pass, so I pull over just ahead of her. Leaning over to lower the passenger window I see the striking features of a thirty-year-old woman with long jet-black hair and high cheekbones. Her eyes are dark, narrow and intense, and their opposing curves resemble a pair of leaping dolphins. She brushes a strand of hair from her forehead, and comes to the window with an anxious smile. She looks Japanese, and is very beautiful.

‘Nice parking,’ I say. A soft leather handbag is slung over her left shoulder. In her right hand is a mobile phone, which she waves in a gesture of embarrassment.

‘Can you help me?’ she asks. ‘No signal!’ She sounds Russian, which is unexpected. ‘I have to make a phone call. Do you know where there’s a telephone?’

‘There’s no reception here,’ I say. ‘I have the same problem.’ I’m feeling in my pocket for my phone, then realise I’ve left it at home. ‘Maybe I can help,’ I suggest, because it’s not every day you get to come to the aid of an Oriental damsel in distress. ‘I have a rope,’ I tell her, wondering how I’ll extricate it from under half a ton of logs. ‘We can drive back to your car and try to pull it out.’

I open the passenger door for her, and apologise for the logs that have fallen into the front of the car. She looks hesitantly for a moment at the debris of bark on the seat.

‘You are farmer?’

I can’t explain I’ve been stealing wood, so the simplest thing is to agree.

‘I live here,’ I say, brushing off the seat and throwing a few logs into the back. Her accent is definitely Russian, though by her looks she’s from central Asia. She smiles, gives a girlish shrug of assent, and climbs aboard.

‘My name is Anthony,’ I say, feeling unexpectedly nervous to have such a beautiful stranger by my side. I turn the car around.

‘Anthony,’ she repeats. ‘I can call you Tony?’

‘Absolutely not. My friends call me Ant. Like the animal.’ I make a crawling motion on the dashboard. She laughs, and the slender gold circles of her earrings dangle with the motion of her head.

‘My name is Ziyba,’ she says.

‘The word for beautiful.’

‘My God!’ she squeals. ‘You speak Uzbek! How is it possible?’

‘A farmer knows many things,’ I say. I don’t actually speak a word of Uzbek, but the word has the same meaning in Persian, which I know well enough.

‘I am lucky to find such a farmer,’ she says with irony. But I’m the one who can’t believe my luck. Her jacket has fallen open and my eye has been caught by the contours of her sweater and the medallion-like buckle of her belt, which is made from concentric circles of pink coral beads. I’ve almost driven past her stranded car when I hear her point it out, and pull over. I retrieve the tow rope from under the seat, and make a show of effort hooking up the U-bolts to the towing brackets of both cars.

‘Start the engine and drive forward gently, and let’s see what happens.’

I drive ahead of her, take up the slack very slowly and in the mirror watch as the Alfa rolls onto the road. Then we both get out to admire our success.

‘It worked!’ She’s beaming. ‘Thank you,’ she says. There’s an awkward pause. I live half a mile away and haven’t the courage to ask her back for a coffee. I roll up the tow rope and throw it back into the car, but I can’t bear to see her go. She’s like a bird of paradise that’s landed in my lap, and I’m racking my brains for an idea that will stop her from disappearing.

‘If you need to make a phone call, you can follow me to a pub. It’s just two minutes away.’

She shrugs again after a moment’s thought, and agrees to drive behind me.

It’s my local, but I’m not there very often. A couple of scruffy-looking local cars are parked outside, as well as a powerful grey BMW, looking very out of place. We walk in together through the back door, where I point out the payphone in the corridor. I check if she has change for the phone, and ask if I can buy her a drink.

‘Just a mineral water,’ she says, smiling.

I push open the door to the bar and smell the smoke and beer. A few locals are sitting at tables with their drinks. Standing at the bar itself is a solitary man with his back to me, wearing a Barbour that has lost its shine. I order a mineral water and a pint of local beer, and glance at the man a few feet from me, who’s peering thoughtfully into his glass. The drinks appear. I take a few sips of beer as I wait and glance back at the door, but as the minutes pass I lose patience and walk back to see if I can help Ziyba. The corridor’s empty.

Outside, Gerhardt is where I’ve left him, but the Alfa has gone. I feel a pang of disappointment, and walk back to the bar, feeling desolate and stupid. Then, as I raise my glass to my lips, I hear a distinctly upper-class English voice say, ‘You look like someone who’s just been stood up.’

I turn my head in surprise and look at the face of the man who’s been standing near me, which is now fixed on me in a broad and knowing grin.

‘Hello, Ant,’ he says quietly. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

It’s an extraordinary coincidence. I haven’t seen the face for six or seven years. It’s broad and squarish, with a large and prominent brow framed with neat sandy-coloured hair. It has the same thin lips and prominent chin as I remember, the same mischievous eyes, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier. My most vivid memory of it is from ten years earlier, hanging upside down from the seat belt of an army Land Rover which the two of us have managed to roll over on Salisbury Plain. But it’s lost much of its boyish charm since then.

‘Captain Seethrough, I presume,’ I say with genuine astonishment. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Pronouncing his name out loud makes me want to laugh. His real name is Carlton-Cooper, or something very like it, which in an environment such as the army is as problematic as being called Hyper-Ventilate or Slashed-Peak. When he first made captain, and became Captain Carlton-Cooper, someone had the idea of calling him C3. Not long afterwards a fellow officer in a waggish mood tweaked the name to Seethrough, and for its ragging value and suggestion of lewdness, it stuck firmly. He never liked it much.

‘Well may you ask, Ant, well may you ask,’ he says, rather as if he knows something I don’t. He has the same manner of talking through his teeth in clipped tones that lends a quality of determination to everything he says, and the same playful habit of flexing his eyebrows as if a conspiracy were afoot. ‘I’d say the question is what are you doing here?’ He smiles charmingly. It’s a strange way to greet an old friend after such a long time, and I wonder for a moment whether there isn’t an hereditary streak of madness in his very distinguished family.

‘I’m here,’ I explain tolerantly, ‘because a tractor was blocking the road on my way home.’ I can’t decide whether to tell him about my unexpected encounter with the Uzbek girl, so I add, ‘I was just dropping a friend off.’

He looks at me with a smile that borders on smugness.

‘Naughty boy,’ he says as if to admonish a child. ‘Telling porkies again.’ His tone of voice suggests I’m a complete fool. I feel a mixture of resentment and curiosity towards him, which grows as he says, ‘Nice girl, though. Can’t blame you for liking her. Knew you would.’ He takes a sip from his glass and sighs with exaggerated relish. ‘God, you’ve really got proper beer in the country, haven’t you? Here.’ He passes me the untouched glass of mineral water. ‘Shall we sit?’

We move to a table in a corner of the room, facing the front door. I’m too baffled to speak.

‘Father was actually a KGB colonel, would you believe it?’ he goes on. ‘Unthinkable a few years ago. Now she works for us. Didn’t even have to twist her arm.’

‘Do you mind if I ask what you’re on about?’ I interrupt him. ‘I met that woman ten minutes ago by chance.’

‘Powerful illusion, isn’t it, chance?’ He takes a slow sip from his glass. ‘You met her because you stopped for her. You stopped for her because she was beautiful and driving a sports car. You saw her sports car because you took the long way home. You took the long way home because the road you were on was blocked by a tractor.’

‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me you put the tractor there.’ It’s too far-fetched. He’s bluffing wildly, but my mind’s racing through the possibilities. I can’t figure out how he knows I turned off the road, because I haven’t told him.

‘Actually, yes, we did. A little cash for an obliging farmer.’

‘What if I hadn’t turned off where I did?’

‘I admit we had to choose the right spot in advance. But you don’t like to be thwarted, and you do like going off-road. We knew you’d take the dirt track.’

‘I didn’t have to bring her here,’ I counter, wondering who ‘we’ are.

‘She needed to make a phone call. This is the nearest place where there’s a phone.’

‘I could have let her call from my mobile.’

‘You haven’t got your mobile with you, Ant. We know you left it at home from the last time it talked to the network. It’s called a handshake, and the transmitter density gives us a pretty good idea of the location it came from. Pretty soon all mobiles will be GPS-enabled and we’ll be able to know which pocket they’re in.’ He grins smugly and takes another sip of beer.

‘I could have taken her home,’ I say.

‘Oh, come on,’ he scoffs dismissively. ‘You’re much too old-fashioned for that.’

‘I might not have come to the bar. I could have left her in the car park.’

‘You like a drink, Ant. We both know that.’

He’s got me there. I feel strangely violated. He’s predicted my every step.

‘Why go to all the fuss?’ I asked. ‘If you wanted to meet why couldn’t you just call me like a normal person?’

He takes another sip of beer and his eyes scan the room from left to right as the glass is raised. His voice grows a little quieter.

‘This isn’t just a joke, Ant. People watch. This way, there’s nothing to show we didn’t meet by accident. No record, no phone calls, no prior meeting.’

‘Please. Who cares?’

‘The people you once nearly worked for care,’ he says, and turns to me in the manner of a parent admonishing a guilty child.

I feel the hair go up at the back of my neck. No one knows that. I’ve never told anyone. From wondering whether my old friend has lost his mind, I now have to ask myself how, unless he’s seen my personnel file at the Firm, he can possibly know about this secret chapter of my life which I buried a long time ago. My mind is scanning over the little history I really know about Seethrough.

We meet for the first time at Sandhurst, where he’s lecturing in Faraday Hall while I’m a still an officer cadet, and once again on exercise near Warminster, where we manage to topple the Land Rover. As a young lieutenant in a Guards regiment he’s rebadged during the Gulf War to operate with a branch of the SAS called the Force Projection Cell, based in Riyadh, where we meet again by chance at the end of hostilities. We see each other a few times in London after the Gulf but eventually lose touch. He’s always travelling, and the few times we speak by telephone, when I ask him what he’s doing he says he can’t talk about it. I regret the loss of contact. He’s a brave and principled soldier, gifted with charm, energy and a wide circle of distinguished friends, but I move, by choice and temperament, in less exalted circles. It occurs to me now that I’ve envied his enormous self-confidence, his freedom from introspection and his use of old-fashioned expressions that remind me of my father. But it makes sense now. My old friend Captain Seethrough has become a spy.

‘Why the approach?’ I ask casually, hoping to disguise my astonishment. ‘Am I a target? There’s not very much that’s secret about the landscaping business. I know some frogs and newts you could recruit.’

‘Don’t be facetious, Ant,’ he says, taking another sip from his glass. ‘We thought you might want to go back to Afghanistan. Courtesy of the Firm this time.’ He studies my reaction. I try not to have one. ‘There’s an op there if you want it. The Chief’s been looking for someone and I’ve managed to convince him that this one’s got your name on it. Think you might want to give it a try? Nobody’s poked around the place as much as you have, or speaks the languages.’ He pauses while the proposition sinks in. ‘You failed the first time and I’m giving you a second chance.’

‘I didn’t fail,’ I say, ‘I opted out.’

‘That’s not quite what your file says, Ant,’ he says with a sceptical tilt of his head. So he’s seen my PF after all. Then his manner changes completely and he looks around the room as if he’s just arrived.

‘Do they do food here?’ he asks loudly.

‘I haven’t got much of an appetite,’ I say.

Seethrough goes to the bar and orders two more beers, and I watch as he engages the barman in conversation, laughing with him as though the two of them are old friends. He has the gift of immense and apparently spontaneous charm. He can convince a complete stranger of nearly anything with what looks like untainted sincerity, and adapt his conversation to whatever subject comes up, even if he knows nothing about it. I can see he’s deliberately misleading the barman with an invented story about his reasons for being in the area, something about buying a yurt for his kids to play in. At the end of this contrived encounter, he reaches into his wallet for a note and hands it over with a theatrical flourish.

As I watch him, my thoughts are shunting back to the chapter I’ve allowed myself to forget. I didn’t fail. I wanted to join the Firm because I’d seen the effects of war first hand and believed that the weaknesses in intelligence that led to conflict could only be shored up by the more diligent use of human assets. I’d gone through the conventional channels, cleared the vetting and selection hurdles, signed Section 5 over tea in a room overlooking the Mall, and sat my qualifying tests in a gloomy office near Admiralty Arch. But the events of my personal life sent me spinning in a different direction. I was in the midst of my divorce at the time and my wife had told me I’d never see my children again if I was posted overseas. I had two young daughters and the prospect of not seeing them was too much. Then my wife had moved back to America with the girls, and my life felt as though it had been cut into small pieces.

When the trap came, I decided to walk into it rather than admit to the ongoing humiliations of my private life. A month after my QTs, while I was still under review, an old friend had contacted me out of the blue. He worked in the City and enjoyed the lifestyle that went with it. He’d introduced me to a new and distracting world, given me flying lessons in his private plane, lent me money and generally raised my spirits. Then came the offer of dinner with a married couple who liked, as he’d put it, to swing.

I’d known it was a set-up, and was deeply disappointed that my prospective employers had managed to persuade a friend to deceive me. The woman propositioned me the same evening, and I’d taken her up on the offer knowing that it would destroy my chances of a career in the Service. She looked a bit like Madonna, I now remember. But an aspiring Intelligence Branch officer can’t afford to be susceptible to sexual entrapment. He might one day be drugged while his computer is searched, or seduced into giving away secrets. The risk is too high. Shortly afterwards a curt letter had informed me that I had no future in the Service. As I’d expected.

‘Sorry,’ says Seethrough, after I briefly explain my motives for sabotaging my own career. ‘I don’t buy it. They assessed you in the old-fashioned way, and you fell for it. Don’t tell me you saw it coming. Nobody outwits the Firm.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I say. ‘People have been known to run imaginary sources and been paid handsomely for it.’

‘Only if it suits us, Ant. Look. Someone wants you on board and I’m willing to approve it. If you don’t want the op you can forget we ever met and go back to building ponds.’

‘Landscaping,’ I correct him. ‘Ponds are only a part of what I do, but they’re arguably the most fascinating aspect.’

‘Don’t fuck about, Ant. This affects you.’

I enjoy our sparring, but he sounds serious.

‘So where do we go from here?’ I ask.

‘Talk about it outside,’ he says. As he glances at his watch he sees that his shirt cuff is wet with beer, and curses quietly.

‘There’s a sale on at Turnbull and Asser,’ I tell him.

‘Ended last week,’ he corrects me. ‘How would you know, anyway? Can you afford to buy shirts in Jermyn Street? Building homes for newts?’

‘Actually I have them made by my tailor in Rome.’ It isn’t entirely true. I only had the one shirt made because it cost so much.

‘You haven’t changed, Ant,’ he says thoughtfully as we stand up, and for a moment the mask drops and I’m reminded of the young soldier I had so much fun with. ‘But it’s nice to see you.’

We walk through the corridor to the car park, where I unlock Gerhardt. Seethrough climbs into the passenger seat and looks disapprovingly over the dashboard, then tugs absent-mindedly on one of the differential lock levers.

‘What’s wrong with an English car?’ he asks. ‘Why can’t you just have a Land Rover like a normal person?’

I ignore the question, although it’s true I occasionally long for a different car. A later-model version of Gerhardt, with full-time four-wheel drive and electronic centre-diff control.

‘Are you going to tell me about the op or not?’ I ask.

He sighs to himself, as if making way again for the serious side of his personality. He looks at me, and then out of the windscreen towards some far-off place.

‘Not right now. You’re going to go home and carry on as normal, building ponds or doing whatever it is you do. You don’t call anyone, you don’t tell anyone, you don’t write anything down. A week today, you come to Legoland at midday.’

‘Is that what they call it? Legoland?’ A picture of the Secret Intelligence Service headquarters, perched on the lip of the Thames beneath the southern end of Vauxhall Bridge, flashes into my head. It does look a bit like a giant Lego construction.

‘You go to the main entrance,’ says Seethrough, ignoring my interruption, ‘and ask for Macavity at reception. Introduce yourself as Plato, and someone will come for you.’

‘Macavity? Plato? They’re T. S. Eliot’s cats, aren’t they? That’s very original.’

‘Quite,’ he replies, ruffled.

He opens the door and turns to me just before stepping out.

‘And for God’s sake, Ant, just don’t blab about it in the meantime. Otherwise,’ he adds with a schoolteacherish look, ‘Macavity won’t be there.’

He’s alluding to the poem, a fragment of which now returns to me.

You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in a square

But when a crime’s discovered, Macavity’s not there!

The door bangs shut, and his manner changes again as he gives an uncharacteristically cheerful wave as if seeing off an old friend. For the benefit, I suppose, of whoever he thinks might be watching. Perhaps it’s his habitual tradecraft kicking in. The grey BMW slides quietly and swiftly away like a shark into deep water, and I’m alone again.

It’s only lunchtime, but already the day seems long. I head home, briefly entertaining the fantasy that as I turn into my drive I’ll see a red Alfa Romeo parked there, and the beautiful Ziyba will be waiting for me nearby.

I don’t, and she isn’t.