‘What about a real operational situation? What should I do if a recognizable car stays with me?’
‘Abort,’ declared Charlie. ‘But sensibly. Don’t panic and go dashing back to where you started: panic is proof of guilt. If it had been operational, we’d have taken the next turn-off to whatever reasonably sized town was signposted. That would have been an explanation for the first suspicious manoeuvre: we’d made a mistake and came off too early. Every town has something historical it’s proud of. We’d have been tourists, looking at the sites. After which we would have made our way back leisurely.’
‘And then?’
‘I told you. Abort.’
‘Abandon an assignment?’ Gower seemed surprised.
Charlie frowned across the car at the other man. ‘What’s the alternative? Leading whoever is watching you to whatever that assignment is?’
‘That seems …’ began Gower slowly, searching how to explain himself. Charlie talked across him. ‘What was the final thing I said to you at the last meeting?’
‘Something …’ Gower stopped abruptly, suspecting another test and remembering the instruction to recall everything, word for word. ‘I asked if what we were doing had a title. You said “It’s called survival.’”
Charlie smiled, pleased. ‘If you as much as think an operation is blown get out: save yourself and maybe the operation. Let someone else come in after you to take it over …’ Charlie saw the other man prepare to speak. ‘That’s not failing: giving up. That’s being professional.’
‘It’s not been explained to me like that before.’
‘For Christ’s sake lose your public school pretension. You haven’t joined a club your father put you down for at birth. Road-sweepers and refuse-collectors go around the streets, picking up the shit and muck that people cause. Our job is picking up the shit and muck that governments and countries cause.’ He remembered virtually the same exchange with Patricia Elder: she hadn’t appeared to accept it.
Gower took the proper turning off the motorway, heading into Berkshire.
‘Isn’t there some inverted snobbery there somewhere?’
‘Complete objectivity,’ insisted Charlie. Not completely true, he conceded. Always a problem: always a self-admitted fault. He was uncomfortable the inherent attitude had shown through.
At the creeper-clad Georgian mansion they had to sign in at a reception desk to one side of the huge entrance hall. The straight-backed man who recorded their arrival would have medals at home, guessed Charlie, recalling Patricia Elder’s threat: being a teacher was definitely better than being part of the security staff at a safe house. Charlie chose a preparation time of fifteen minutes, ignoring Gower’s questioning look, leading the way into a small but immaculately maintained drawing-room.
There was a bowl of roses on a piano set in the larger of two window areas, with a low table and two easy chairs to the right. There was an arrangement of magazines on the table. Near the door was an open-fronted display case, showing a series of miniature porcelain figurines set out on the shelves. There was a spray of dried flowers filling the cold fireplace. At either end of an elaborately carved marble mantelpiece there were porcelain statues of red-coated Georgian military figures. Between the figures there was a porcelain-cased clock, the bottom half-glassed to show the wheeled movement. A large couch fronted the fireplace, with matching chairs either side. A padded leather fender sealed off the fireplace, with a magazine lodged on one corner. There were two bookcases, one open, one glass-doored and closed, to the left. The open bookcase had a protruding reading ledge. There were books on it, one lying open. A telephone stood on an adjacent glass-topped table. The curtains in the second window annex were draped almost to meet at the top of the rail, looping down practically to the floor. They were held back by plaited crimson cords.
‘Room intrusion!’ recognized Gower.
‘Standard rules,’ acknowledged Charlie. ‘It’s a room you’ve been allocated, possible in unfriendly surroundings. You occupy it briefly, then leave. You’ve got to itemize the indications of it having been searched.’
Gower walked carefully around the room just once before announcing that everything was registered in his mind and that he was ready. They left the room for the ex-army duty officer to go through the pretence of a search. When the man recalled them, Gower repeated the examination he’d made to imprint everything in his mind but this time turned back on himself, retracing the route to return to the centre, by the couch. He missed ten items that had been rearranged by the duty officer.
‘Shit!’ said Gower, viciously, when they were pointed out to him.
‘Your advantage was knowing there had been some rearrangement: you’ll never know that for certain, in a genuine situation,’ lectured Charlie. ‘Your mistake was looking for the probable tricks. Play your own. Leave something ajar when you leave a room. A searcher invariably closes a door, after looking to see what’s inside. You can even extend it. In a hotel room you’ll have a suitcase, which would have to be looked at by anyone going though your things. Leave one lock secure, the other one open, and remember the sequence. Again it’s instinctive for anyone looking through to resecure the locks. Keep that in mind if you’re doing the searching: always remember what’s open and what’s closed.’
‘I missed too much,’ insisted Gower.
‘In an operational situation you only have to realize one thing is out of place to know you’ve been turned over. You’re not expected to score a hundred per cent.’
Charlie took the duty officer’s recommendation of a pub with outside tables in an orchard with chickens running free, pecking at the fallen apples. Gower ordered beer, like Charlie, and drank with obvious enjoyment. Charlie eased his shoes off. Each was well into the first pint when Gower said suddenly: ‘I’m quite nervous, you know.’
Charlie frowned across the rough wood table. ‘About what?’
‘The job. What it will be like. Because that’s the trouble: there’s no way of knowing what it will be like, is there? Not really like. I wish I wasn’t. Nervous, I mean.’
‘I’m glad you are,’ said Charlie. ‘It gives you the right edge. I’ve never known an over-confident intelligence officer who was good at his job.’
‘You were operational?’
Charlie swallowed at the use of the past tense, nodding again.
‘Tell me what it’s like!’
At once aware of the man’s need, Charlie said: ‘There are some generalities. You’ll usually be working alone. So you’ll be lonely: miserable. It’s not uncommon, if you are sent in to a foreign capital, to be ordered to keep away from the embassy, to avoid it becoming compromised if anything goes wrong. If you are attached in any way to an overseas embassy, you’ll be unwelcome: diplomats are always frightened of people like us. You’ll make mistakes. A lot of the things you’ll be sent to do won’t work: most don’t, in fact. A success rate of twenty per cent is excellent.’
‘A failure rate that high isn’t going to look good on a personnel record.’
‘Hold it, now!’ cautioned Charlie, glad of the conversation. ‘We’re back to public school now, without the pretensions. Don’t ever look upon what you’re doing like it earns high or low marks to be totted up for a good end-of-term report.
‘Always remember an operation aborted or simply walked away from is better than a diplomatic incident that requires ministerial apologies to foreign governments and statements in the House of Commons. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be disowned: become a non-person.’