Jenny Frobisher was four floors underneath MI6’s Vauxhall headquarters and consequently, she calculated, actually below the Thames. She was also fuming – getting pulled off a case halfway through was a bloody nuisance. She had been tracking the Nottingham cell for the last eighteen months, and along with her colleagues in MI5 she’d linked the plotters to Lahore, northern Pakistan. This was not Al Qaida ‘inspired’ terrorism; it was the real deal. During the investigation Jenny could count the number of dinner parties she’d attended on one hand. But she was not a woman who let socializing get in the way of her job, nor did she mind as her circle of friends dwindled with each let-down, usually by telephone from some windswept northern service station. Even the collapse of her engagement hadn’t distracted her. And now she’d been pulled from the case, the decision as abrupt as it was unexplained.
Jenny wore a charcoal skirt cut below the knee paired with an anonymous jacket. From the latter she produced a mirror to check her make-up. The face that stared back would have been attractive were it not so severely arranged. She wore her blonde hair in a neat bob and her pale blue eyes shone with intelligence.
There were two of them waiting to brief her: a silver-haired woman in early middle age and a man in his late thirties who looked flabby and slightly soft. Jenny had never laid eyes on either of them before. A copy of the Guardian lay on the man’s desk and she glanced at the headline of the page at which it was open:
Britain’s military power waning, says thinktank.
The man beckoned her to sit.
“Jenny, I take it? Apologies for hauling you off your job. Realize it’s a pain in the arse.” For a large man his voice was high and he struck her as rather effeminate. “This is Evelyn Parr,” he said. The ladies exchanged nods. “And I’m Charlie. Charlie Waits.”
Jenny had heard of him; only now did she see how wide of the mark her first appraisal was. The pupils observing her from behind tortoiseshell glasses were cold and his mouth was a small hard line. A knot of blood vessels had burst in the white of his left eye, an ugly sight. She needed to be more on her game to work for Charlie Waits.
Waits was a mythical figure within The Firm. He had stopped two IRA plots in their tracks by the age of twenty-five, before moving on to counter-espionage. There he’d done battle with his Chinese and Saudi counterparts, and seen more than one ambassador hauled into Whitehall for a dressing-down. Finally, aged twenty-seven or so, he’d vanished from the coalface – ‘gone upstairs’, it was widely assumed.
“Drink?” Waits’s smile was drowned in the pads of his jowls.
Jenny glanced at her watch – it was 11.40 a.m. Was this some kind of test?
“No, thanks.”
“Evelyn?”
The woman shook her head.
“Then I hope neither of you mind if I have a quick peg?”
They assented and Waits produced a bottle of Glenfarclas eighteen-year-old single malt. Jenny watched him half-fill a tumbler with the straw-coloured medicine. What decade was this? But Waits’s fingers held the glass with the implacable grip of a glacier.
“We’re asking you to work on a rather special brief,” he said, sliding a file across the table. “There’s a journalist we want you to monitor.”
Jenny waited for him to continue, but Waits set down his drink and brought the tips of his fingers together. “That’s all there is to it.”
“What’s the background? What’s the case?”
“For now that’s unimportant,” said Waits. “I daresay if you stay on this beat you will, necessarily, learn more. We shall deal with the implications of that as and when they arise. It may be this journalist’s nothing to worry about, in which case the problem goes away. So for now, be a sport and tell us what he’s up to.”
Parr spoke for the first time. “We want to know what stories he’s working on, who he’s talking to, that sort of thing.”
“But we do want to know – everything.” Waits ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, the handiwork of an expensive gentlemen’s barber in Pimlico. “Leave out nothing whatsoever, no matter how daft it may seem.”
Jenny pursed her lips as she digested the brief. “Fine. What’s the level of intrusion?”
Waits waved a hand. “My dear, you can do whatever you like.” The offhandedness in his voice was that of an elderly thespian. “You’ll have a healthy war-chest. If you need more funds, just ask.”
“So what’s the journalist’s specialism? Security?”
“Actually, he’s a ‘historical correspondent’.”
Her brain whirred. “Some sort of declassified file issue then?”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “Perceptive, isn’t she?”
“With respect, it could hardly have been anything else,” she said. “Apart from declassified files it’s a fluffy newsbeat, I should think. Can you tell me more about the journalist?”
Now Parr took over. “Jake Wolsey. Age thirty-three. Made the broadsheets eight years ago and before that with the local press. Our contact on the paper says he was a real high flyer when he arrived. The editor of the day took a shine to him – reckoned he had the ‘gift of the journalistic eye’, whatever that means. He lacks organization and ruthlessness, but rose on the back of being able to spot a story from nothing. Seeing things other people miss.”
“A rather dangerous characteristic,” observed Waits, a gleam in his eye.
“But he’s been going backwards,” said Parr. “Our man there reckons he’s a drinker – in the last few years he’s more or less stopped delivering the goods. That’s why they shunted him to his current position.”
“Personal life?” Jenny asked. “Foibles?”
“No relationships to speak of,” said Parr. “Our contact thinks possibly gay. He used to go surfing in Cornwall a lot, but that seems to have petered out. An only child. His parents are still together – they live in Bath. The father’s a retired actuary and his mother was a headmistress.”
“Deputy headmistress,” corrected Waits. “Now, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but you’re working on as high a grade of secrecy as MI6’s lawyers have had the wit to enshrine in the English language. So do be discreet.”
“Of course.”
Waits’s eyes darted from her, as though he were about to impart something distasteful. “By the way, this brief doesn’t go to Reader Number One.”
Jenny was shocked. Reader Number One was The Queen; every state secret crossed her desk.
“We’re attaching three other watchers vetted to a similar grade,” said Waits. “They’ll be under your wing. You’re in charge.”
Jenny nodded, a touch of pink showing in her cheeks. “I’m really honoured, sir.”
“Not sir,” he scolded. “Charlie.” He pronounced his own name delicately.
“Thanks, Charlie.”
“One last thing.” The spymaster’s face was sympathetic. “I understand your mother isn’t well?”
Jenny flinched – Mum had got her preliminary diagnosis only yesterday. How did they know these things?
“This job has the potential to become very – how shall I put it – involving,” Waits said. “And before you sign on the dotted line, as it were, I just want to make sure you’re ready to commit, regardless of any … emotional difficulties that might lie around the corner.”
The man was blandly enquiring whether she’d break stride in the event of her own mother’s death. His detachment was staggering and very impressive. But Jenny wasn’t able to keep the waver from her voice when she said, “The work comes first, Charlie, that goes without saying.”
“Wonderful.” Waits drained the last of his whisky and offered her a clammy handshake. “We’ll be in touch.”
As the lift sent Jenny purring up to ground level, one refrain looped through her mind. What have I let myself in for?
*
“So what do you think?” asked Parr once she’d departed. “The right choice? Or a little too curious?”
“Oh, definitely the right choice,” replied Waits. “One does need a smattering of curiosity in this line of work. And have you seen her psychometric results? Her scores for loyalty and discretion are both off the scale.”
“In any case, she’s nothing we can’t handle,” said Parr with a private smile.
“Well, quite,” said Waits. “Now, where shall we lunch?”