She didn’t bother with an answer. Her sigh was dismissive enough. ‘The Director told you there were to be changes? That there was no longer room – nor intention – for special relationships?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So this is reorganization time.’
Charlie abruptly felt a deep, gouging hollowness. ‘Am I being retired?’
Patricia Elder held his look for several seconds before lowering her head over the written account of Charlie Muffin’s entire career as an intelligence officer. Remaining head-bent, she said: ‘We couldn’t risk your being retired. Beyond our control, until it was too late.’
There was a distant snap of hope, a spark in the darkness. ‘What then?’
The dossiers got another momentary pat. ‘You were good: bloody good.’
Past tense, Charlie noted. ‘So?’
‘You’ve still got something to contribute. By teaching others.’
‘Teaching!’
‘Not the manual stuff: there are staff colleges for that. Or your insubordination, either. There’s no place for that in the sort of service the Director-General and I envisage. I want you to teach selected officers what isn’t in the manuals …’ She allowed herself a smile: one tooth crossed slightly over the other in the front. ‘You’re so very proud of being a survivor. Instruct the new people how to survive, as you did for so long.’
Charlie was listening, of course – to every word – but his mind was way ahead of what she was saying. Over, he realized: his operational life was over, being ended right here with matter-of-fact efficiency by a woman who considered him an anachronism. A dinosaur. The hollowness was still there but different now: it was an empty helplessness, at having taken away from him something he never thought he’d lose. Charlie had never liked feeling helpless.
‘I’m not sure I’d be any good at it.’
‘You’ll have to learn,’ she said, impatiently.
‘I could decline?’ suggested Charlie, who never in his life had refused any assignment, because the job was not one in which a person could refuse.
She pushed the files to one side of the desk, with further impatience. ‘In which case you could be assigned to Records: see a lot of boxes and folders like these. Or Archives. Same job except that the boxes and folders are older. Or department or safe-house security, the sort of thing usually allocated to retired military personnel. You’ve probably met a few of them in the past.’
He had, Charlie remembered. Upright, polished-booted men in gate-houses or hallway cubby-holes, trying to imbue a meaningless existence with a sense of urgency, automatically calling everyone ‘sir’ and standing to attention. Charlie had actually thought of them as dinosaurs. ‘Or I could retire, if you’ve no further use for me.’
‘You haven’t been listening!’ she said, curtly. ‘I didn’t say we’ve no further use for you. The opposite. I said you still had something to contribute. You’re not eligible for retirement, which we wouldn’t accept in any case. I also said I want you in a position I can control. I’m not risking you as a wild card: offering yourself as some sort of commentator on intelligence on television or in newspapers, like all those supposed experts who emerge whenever espionage becomes newsworthy and don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.’
Charlie opened his mouth to argue her wild-card nonsense, but changed his mind because there wasn’t any point: she wasn’t going to be persuaded to any opinion other than her own. Instead he said: ‘I thought Henry Wilberforce got slavery abolished in the 1800s.’
Patricia Elder gave another of her heavy sighs. ‘I’ve told you what your new role is to be in this department.’
There was no point in arguing. He had to take it: give himself time to think. It didn’t necessarily have to be permanent: Director-Generals and deputies with new-born theories came and went, so there was always the chance of recovering. ‘Selected officers?’
She nodded. ‘On a one-to-one basis. They will have graduated from all the usual instructional courses: this is going to be something beyond the normal …’ There was another frigid smile. ‘You tell me how long it will take to pass on your particularly special expertise.’
He couldn’t teach instinct: how to know that something was wrong, without anything apart from a feeling on which to base that judgement. ‘It’ll depend, upon your selected officers.’
‘You’ll like your first apprentice. He’s good.’
‘I wouldn’t consider liking him!’ said Charlie, instantly.
‘That was thoughtless,’ she apologized at once. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘I’ll operate from here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s hope it works,’ said Charlie, rising to leave.
‘It’s got to work,’ said the woman, as if she were affronted by the suggestion of failure. ‘And it was William.’
Charlie stopped at the door. ‘What?’
‘The Member of Parliament who campaigned against slavery in the 1800s. It was William Wilberforce. Not Henry.’
Charlie had been worried she wouldn’t respond. He smiled and said: ‘Well done.’ Her face tightened, in belated realization. Not much of a victory, decided Charlie. But something at least. He was a schoolmaster now: schoolmasters knew things like that.
At her control post at the apex of the triangle Julia Robb scarcely looked up as he left. Bugger you, too, thought Charlie.
Miller personally poured the tea, offering it across his desk to the woman. ‘How did it go?’
‘As I intended,’ she said, which was a slight exaggeration.
‘He’s got to do the job properly. Believe in its importance.’
Patricia Elder shook her head. ‘His feeling is against me. I’ve read everything that’s ever been written about the man. Know him. He’ll do the job, to the very best of his ability. And it’s a pretty damned good ability. He out-argued me, a couple of times.’
‘Everything set up with Gower?’
The woman nodded this time. ‘I’ve fixed the meeting.’
‘Let’s hope it works,’ said the Director.
Patricia Elder laughed, abruptly. ‘That’s what Charlie said. It was interesting, listening to him. His views about the future of intelligence are exactly the same as ours.’
‘I hope he doesn’t think we’re fools.’
‘Of course he does! How can he think otherwise?’ She paused. The conversation about Charlie Muffin was over. ‘Is Ann coming up from the country?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’ Increasingly Patricia Elder was regretting the absolute commitment she’d made to their relationship, neglecting and finally abandoning other friends and acquaintances until Peter was the only person she had now. There was nothing she could do about it: nothing she wanted to do about it. He’d make the decision. She was sure he would. Dear God how much she wished he’d make it soon.