Room 503 appeared to be designed to seat six comfortably. Unfortunately, well over twenty people were squeezed into the dark wood-panelled room—and they were all men. Dense with smoke and testosterone, the room felt more like a seedy nightclub than a meeting of key members of the intelligence community.
When Atticus walked through the threshold, every head twisted in his direction. He was examined from head to toe. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, although Atticus was at a loss to recall a time it had been so intense.
Rather than warmly greeting familiar co-workers, Oliver slunk into the room. He hunched his shoulders and aimed for the periphery, trying to make the smallest impact possible. Once again, Atticus was conscious of the lack of interaction between his benefactor and the rest of the organisation. Aside from the occasional reluctant sidestep to let them through, every person in the room seemed to ignore Oliver completely. The short bespectacled spy was an invisible man amongst invisible men.
Perhaps that was the reason Oliver had taken Atticus in so readily. With Future Man under his wing, Oliver would have a potential inside line to success. He could leverage Atticus’s knowledge of upcoming events to demonstrate unsurpassed intuition and insight. He could manoeuvre himself into a position of power within the organisation, finally clawing out some semblance of the respect he so clearly lacked. Atticus had to admit, as plans went, it wasn’t terrible.
Nearing the back of the room, a weak-chinned man sneered in their direction. He blew out smoke as Oliver approached. “Here he comes, boys. Backs to the walls.”
There was general sniggering, and Atticus took particular note of the fact that no one came to Oliver’s defence. It seemed there could be another reason Oliver had befriended him. Atticus treated him as an equal, while his compatriots mocked and treated him as a joke at best, at worst, an affront. In their eyes, his sexuality was his defining feature. Was that the reason he was looked down upon, or was it the foundation from which their derision was built?
Reaching the smoking man, Oliver sighed heavily. “Move, Henderson.”
The other man tutted and failed to move a muscle. He turned his head slowly and blew smoke from his nose. “You need to learn respect for your betters, Preston.”
“As soon as I find any, I’ll let you know. Now, move.”
As if it were the greatest effort ever experienced by man, Henderson moved three inches to let the two of them pass. Once they’d taken their places, Atticus had time to read the room. There was a clear undercurrent; everyone was tightly wound. Atticus heard words like “Kennedy”, “Oswald”, “Soviet” and “ramifications”, but there was far more in what they didn’t say. It was the clenched jaws, the sleeplessness of their darkened features. These men were on edge. All of them were coated in a slick veneer of fear. The room positively reeked of it. What made it worse was none of them, not one, knew exactly what they were afraid of.
Barging in with folders stuffed under his arm, Rathdowne positioned himself behind the podium at the front of the room. He slapped down the files and loudly cleared his throat.
“I’ll keep this short and to the point.” Rathdowne’s forehead crinkled as the room remained obstreperous, disinclined to quieten at Rathdowne’s command. It seemed he didn’t have the respect of the room either. In retrospect, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. He was blue collar; the rest of the room, bar Atticus and Oliver, seemed entitled. The audience smacked of pomposity and contemptuousness; Atticus could almost taste its vile stench.
“Gentlemen.” Rathdowne’s frustration was palpable. If anything, the volume in the meeting room increased. “Pillar!”
The target of Rathdowne’s wrath appeared to have walked off a polo field. The man with premature grey on his temples, which added to his handsomeness rather than detracting from it, continued his conversation. He had an air about him that suggested he was the kind of person who might say “forsooth” without irony.
Again, Atticus was reminded of the class war currently raging in English society. The likes of Rathdowne on one side; Pillar, Henderson and their ilk on the other. Rathdowne’s fight for class equality seemed to be playing out right before his eyes. It was telling that none of these upper-class men knew their time was ending. The working-class success of the Beatles meant that anyone could make it. Society no longer cared where you came from. The working class were becoming successful in art, music and fashion, and they were leaving the aristocrats behind. In a few short years their heritage would be forgotten, their titles meaningless. Society would move on, leaving their kind resigned to history. They just didn’t know it yet.
And it was plain from Rathdowne’s frustration that they weren’t quite there yet.
He puffed out his chest and slammed his fist into the podium. “Our new man in East Berlin has been kidnapped.”
That shut the room up. Every head turned in his direction.
“Alistair Jayne was discovered missing at 3 pm yesterday afternoon, German Standard time. We suspect foreign intervention.”
A young man with a ridiculously large chin at the front of the room waved a cigarette in Rathdowne’s direction. “We all know you think the communists are behind everything. Christ, it was only last week you suspected the Soviets of being behind the missing biscuits in the tearoom. How do we know—”
“His room was ransacked,” Rathdowne interrupted, “his blood type strewn across the room. Upturned furniture and broken pictures and mirrors suggest a significant struggle. The walls were hacked into; his mattress slashed. All his books were sliced open. Whoever took him was searching for something. Our man was targeted. We were targeted, gentlemen.” He cast a contemptuous expression. “Does that answer your query, Hildebrand-Burke?”
To his credit, Hildebrand-Burke remained silent and issued a reluctant tilt of his head, yielding the point. It didn’t garner Rathdowne more respect, but it did quell further questioning on the matter.
A grey-bearded man, the oldest in the room, poked a pipe at Rathdowne. “What if it was a defection made to appear like a kidnapping?”
Rathdowne inhaled deeply. “We’re eliminating nothing at this point. All stations in Europe have been placed on high alert. Given what’s going on in the US, you can imagine that’s put a few knickers in a twist. As far as we know he wasn’t in possession of classified materials, but we can’t afford to make assumptions. If our man has been kidnapped, the clock is ticking. Recovering him is our top priority. Are we clear?”
Despite the lack of initial respect, the room was now all business. The already tense atmosphere ratcheted up another notch. Backs straightened; cheer melted from arrogant expressions. Pockets of whispering broke out, but now with one intent.
“I say,” Hildebrand-Burke waved his cigarette about. “He must have given himself away, surely, said something to a bird who gave him up.” He shook his head. “They must have been watching him for months, he’ll have created a pattern they picked up on.”
“He’d been in the city for a sum total of thirteen hours.” Rathdowne’s voice was even.
“Christ.”
“Exactly. Are we on the same page now?”
There were nods all around. Rathdowne had won the room over. Atticus was impressed, but his thoughts soon spiralled. Alistair Jayne wasn’t a name he was familiar with, but that was no surprise. Spies rarely made headlines, and it wasn’t like MI6 had ever been eager to educate anyone on its past failures.
The grey-bearded man spoke up again. “If this wasn’t a defection and he has actually been kidnapped…”
Rathdowne lowered his chin. “Then we have a mole in MI6.” He waited for the alarmed mumblings to subside. “If we do have a leak, I’m here to make damn sure it doesn’t bloody well sink us. Make no mistake, this could potentially be the most grave breach in our short history, gentlemen. We have no idea what this could mean. Given the chaotic state of the world right now, who knows? Worst-case scenario, this could be a prelude to a new Soviet push.”
Oliver turned to Atticus, alarm in his eyes. Making sure no one else could see, Atticus gave a slight shake of his head. He knew the future, but for everyone else in room, their fear was palpable.
Rathdowne once again called for their attention. “This meeting wasn’t organised to find Jayne; every station in Europe is on that. No, we’re here to find any evidence that Jayne’s assignment was leaked to the other side. If, and let me blatantly clear on this, if his mission was compromised, it came from this office.” He slammed his palm on the podium to quell the chatter. “Settle down! I said if. I know it’s a big if. But we must consider it a possibility until proven otherwise. Let’s do what we do well, gentlemen. MI6 isn’t about finding truth. It’s about uncovering lies.”
Taking moment to steady himself, Rathdowne went on. “If Jayne was nicked because he was reckless and blew his cover, that is unfortunate. If he was betrayed by his own countrymen who knowingly sent him to his death, well, that is not only a disaster, it puts every person in this room, this building and this country in peril. Make no mistake, until we know what occurred, nobody is above reproach, nobody is can be trusted and above all, nobody rests. Do I make myself clear?”
Atticus’s mind reeled. An MI6 mole? Atticus knew moles were a part of the history of this time. In fact, he’d written his Political Science doctoral study on the subject. The term “Five” was first heard by MI6 in the early sixties, when KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn named two spies directly. The first, Donald Maclean, was a British diplomat who spied for the Soviet Union during World War II and early on in the Cold War. He’d studied at Cambridge in the early 1930s, where he met the second of the five, Guy Burgess, another diplomat who spied for the Soviets at the same time as Maclean. They both disagreed with the idea of capitalist democracy. A decade prior to this time, both had disappeared in what was known rather uncreatively as the “affair of the missing diplomats”, reappearing years later at a press conference in Moscow. Since that odious event, MI6 had been battling its own demons, none more satanic than the spectre of Kim Philby, who had been known as the “probable” third man.
Atticus realised it had only been months since Philby, fearing abduction by MI6, had defected to the Soviet Union under cover of night. The organisation would still be reeling. The scars were still visible in Atticus’s time, but they would be red raw to everyone in this room.
The involvement of the remaining two of the infamous “Ring of Five”, Blunt and Cairncross, would only be discovered years later, but in this time, both men were already long gone from the halls of MI6. Neither would have the access needed to expose a new agent in the field. If MI6 had a mole, it wasn’t one Atticus knew of. That was potentially the most concerning aspect. If there was a mole, had MI6 buried it so deep that Jayne had remained an unknown casualty of the Cold War, or was something else at play?
“Where do we start?” It was the first time Oliver had spoken in the meeting.
“The exact opposite of what you suggest, I’d say, Preston,” Pillar chuckled, to the accompanying mirth of those seated around him.
Someone Atticus couldn’t see said, “That’s not helping, old chap.”
“It’s quite alright.” Oliver waved a hand. “Pillar knows he’s Hildebrand-Burke without the talent. But then again, so is Hildebrand-Burke.”
“Alright, you lot.” Before the room erupted further, Rathdowne slammed his folder down. “We do need to start. That’s why you’re all here. I want to hear from you. So, let’s have it.”
“We start with affiliations, obviously.” Hildebrand-Burke turned and pointed to a younger man two rows behind. “Bridgeman, start digging into the history of everyone in the Berlin station—university associations, anything to tie them to connections to anyone with a socialist leaning. We go through their… Have I said something wrong?”
The room was quiet. Atticus looked up. The entire meeting room gawped in his direction. Without realising it, he’d been shaking his head, and now Hildebrand-Burke was staring directly at him.
“Do you have something to offer, Mister—?”
“Wolfe, Atticus Wolfe.”
Rathdowne called from the front of the room, “Mr Wolfe comes to us highly recommended by Naval Intelligence.”
“That’s all fine, but we’re not here to pick barnacles off our peckers. This is an MI6 issue, not some outsider’s—”
“He started here this morning.” Oliver tried to come off as authoritarian, which might have worked if his voice hadn’t broken.
“I don’t care if he’s been here for a hundred years.” Hildebrand-Burke’s eyes narrowed on Atticus. “You seem to disagree with my idea. I’m curious as to why, Mr Wolfe.”
“You seem convinced there must be a socialist affiliation.” Atticus spoke carefully. “I respectfully disagree.”
“May I enquire why?” With the room’s attention, Hildebrand-Burke’s arrogance grew. “I say, you’re new here, I’ll explain it to you. That’s just how socialists work. They get them young, impressionable. They bore into their brains like a woodworm.”
It took all Atticus’s strength not to groan out loud. Hildebrand-Burke seemed so set in his ways, they all did. He was clearly referring to the Cambridge Five—although Atticus wasn’t sure they’d earned that particular moniker just yet—who’d been recruited during their early education, when they were suggestible. It was a long-term strategy that, in reality, was far removed from the norm. If this room was any indication, MI6 was suffering from a terminal case of groupthink. The scars from the recent past seemed to be clouding their judgement.
“No, not always, they don’t.” Atticus shook his head once more, this time with intent. “The vast majority are cultivated by a technique far more nefarious than that. And simple. They find those prone to blackmail, bribery, someone with a particularly interesting fetish or skeleton in their closet to exploit. Do they have a mistress? Did they drunkenly run down someone in the middle of the night? Were they the president of the Milli Vanilli fan club?” Realising what he’d said, Atticus could have kicked himself. Only minutes before, he’d told himself to be more careful. He moved on before anyone could question his nonsensical comment. “The Soviets call it компрометирующий материал. More specifically, they have one word for it: Kompromat. In English, compromising material. They’ll use any damaging information they can find. It’s far easier than cultivating a fellow traveller over years or even decades.”
“Yes, of course, we all know that.” Hildebrand-Burke shifted uncomfortably in his chair, suggesting he didn’t. “But I don’t know who the hell you think you are. This is an MI6 problem. You stick to boats and semen and leave the spy stuff to us, alright, boy?”
“That’s enough, Hildebrand-Burke.” Rathdowne seethed. “You’d better learn some respect. He’ll be heading up the investigation.”
The entire room was struck dumb, none more than Atticus.
“I will?”
With a slanted smile, Rathdowne bowed his head in agreement. “You will. Who better to find a mole than a man who has no skin in the game?”
“It’s the colour of it that’s got me worried.”
Thankfully Atticus couldn’t see who had slung the insult. There were a few sniggers throughout the room, but Atticus also heard grunts of protest and a few “Steady on, there’s. He wasn’t without support, if it could generously be called such a thing.
“Vincent, watch your tone or you’ll be counting penguins in the Antarctic, got me?”
Lucky for Vincent, whoever he was, he didn’t respond, so Atticus couldn’t pick him out of the crowd.
“Now wait a moment, this department doesn’t need outside help,” Pillar protested. “We don’t need some iron-glove approach from an outsider causing a ruckus. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were spies here.” Atticus leaned back and folded his arms. “You’re worried about a ruckus? We’re talking about finding a potential traitor. Did I walk into the wrong room? Is this the knitting circle?”
Beside him, Oliver sniggered.
“Steady on, old chap, there’s some cheek.” Pillar’s cheeks grew red.
“Am I wrong?”
“It’s the impertinence I resent…”
“Am I wrong?” Atticus’s eyes didn’t flicker from the polo-club toff.
It was as if all the air had been siphoned from the room. No one moved.
Atticus inhaled slowly, trying to keep emotion from his tenor. “Spy craft isn’t about making friends, it’s not about playing nice. It is a dirty, bloody business. It’s about being better than the other side.” There were grunts of agreement in the room. It was good to know he hadn’t alienated all of MI6. “Catching a double agent isn’t about making friends. It’s about preventing more losses like our man Jayne. I’m terribly sorry if it causes you some minor inconvenience, but you can’t play nice when hunting traitors, unless you want more deaths on your watch.”
It had been a bad habit of Atticus’s from school onward. He came out swinging in all aspects of his life. Those who weathered the initial stages of his need to attack things head-on eventually saw his softer side, his genuine and caring side. They were the ones who stayed for the long haul.
Atticus was once again reminded how alone he was in this world. He had no such network of friends here, no allies, no support. He was starting from scratch, and as impressions went, he wasn’t rallying many to his side.
“Listen up.” Rathdowne raised his voice to silence the growing chatter. “Everyone in this room will have their nose to the grindstone and their balls to the wall and any other contortion you can think of finding out what the hell is going on after Friday. Might I remind everyone the head of a superpower has been murdered. And just to add a cherry on top, this hasn’t been released yet, but Oswald once lived in the Soviet Union.” There were grumbles and moans. They all knew the implications that would carry. “Quiet down! So, as you can imagine, the Prime Minister is thinking this might be some kind of prelude to a communist attack on the West. The disappearance of an MI6 field agent hasn’t helped his constitution one bit, either. You all have your assignments. This meeting isn’t about any of that—at least, we don’t think so. Wolfe is in charge of this investigation because if we have a mole the rest of you will be up to your armpits trying to find Jayne and, if you can find the time, prevent World War Three. I’ll hear no more about it.”
It was a definitive statement that quelled discontent.
For about three seconds.
“Look here, Rathdowne, this just isn’t cricket.” Hildebrand-Burke took a long drag of his cigarette for dramatic effect. “We minister to our own, here. Your predecessor wouldn’t have stood for this. He would have—”
“Let Philby leave in the middle of the night on a Soviet freighter?” Once again, Rathdowne silenced them. He may not have been the most popular man in the room, but he knew how to control it in the face of hostility.
Atticus wouldn’t let him fight these men alone. He spoke up. “If Philby wasn’t tipped off by a member of this organisation he would currently be enjoying several lifetimes at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Instead, they’re building statues in his honour the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.” Atticus took a long sweep of the room. “So, you tell me, how has looking after our own worked out for us lately?”
A whistle emanated from the doorway and all heads turned in that direction. A fit man in his fifties with intense blue eyes commanded the room. Atticus knew the face—it was Dick White, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. He was the only man to have held the top job at both MI5 and MI6.
He turned to the front of the room. “If you don’t put that man in charge, I bloody will, you hear me, Rathdowne?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
The Chief gave Atticus a nod of appreciation. Rathdowne positively beamed. That settled it. Atticus was on a mole hunt.