‘Sir Colin Templeton was the most courageous, patriotic and decent public servant I have had the privilege of knowing. During his long career, culminating in seven years as head of the organization many of us gathered here today are honoured to serve, he faced this country’s enemies unflinchingly.’
I paused, and as my words echoed around the magnificent building, I glanced up from the lectern and was overcome for a moment by the memory of the last time I’d seen the man I’d come to think of simply as ‘Chief’. The way he had nodded at me when he had seen that my glass needed refilling: no smile, no words, just a tiny nod of the head. I relived, in a flash, the shuffling walk he had taken across the room, the sharp clinking as he had lifted the bottle from the cabinet, the shuffle back to pour me out a measure. Then the widening of his eyes as I had raised the gun and squeezed the trigger…
He hadn’t flinched in the face of this enemy – I hadn’t given him the time.
I gazed out at the line of stern faces in the front pew, bathed in the white glow from the windows high above. John Farraday was seated in the centre, dapper and bored. He was acting Chief now, but had already announced that in a couple of weeks he would return to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whence he had come. He was flanked by William Osborne, owlish in spectacles and tweeds. Once Farraday had gone he would take over, at which point I would be appointed Deputy Chief.
I’d got away with it: I was in the clear. A couple of months ago, this might have filled me with a sense of achievement, even triumph. But in the last few weeks I had been stripped of everything I’d ever held dear, left a trail of blood in my wake, and was now being blackmailed into continuing to serve a cause I no longer believed in. The triumph tasted of ashes, and all that was left was the realization that I had made a monumental error, and that it could never be reversed.
I glanced along the rest of the front row, which was filled out with Section heads and politicians, including the Foreign and Home Secretaries. Behind them, the congregation stretched into the distance, two solid blocks of Service officers, former army colleagues and family members, parted by the checked marble aisle. Several Redcaps hovered discreetly by the entrance, turning tourists away.
It was an unorthodox memorial service. The reading from Ecclesiastes, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ were all standard fare, but the eulogy was being given by the murderer of the deceased, while the men who had plotted the fall of the government a short while ago were brazenly sitting next to Cabinet ministers. And around us all spun Wren’s conception, as it had for centuries, cloaking us in false majesty.
I had washed down a Benzedrine tablet before leaving the flat in the hope it would stave off the remnants of my fever, but while it had succeeded in dulling the pain and heightening my senses – I could make out the grain of Osborne’s tortoiseshell spectacle frames – it also seemed to have filled me with a feeling of recklessness. As I read from my hastily prepared address, I fought a rising urge to blurt out the truth to the congregation. I remembered hearing about Maclean’s drinking in Cairo, and how he had eventually cracked and started telling colleagues he was working for Uncle Joe. Nobody had believed him, of course, and on hearing the story I’d blithely asked myself what could have brought him to such a state. But now, with the enormity of my sins bearing down on me, I wondered if this was where my crack-up was going to begin. It was an oddly tempting idea, like the thought of jumping in front of a train as it came into the platform. It would be a story to fill the Service’s basement bar for years to come: the man who had confessed to murdering Chief in his eulogy at St Paul’s. Perhaps they could get Bateman to make it into a cartoon.
I reminded myself that I was feeling the effects of the Benzedrine. I took in the Corinthian columns, the Whispering Gallery, and higher still the frescoes stretching across the interior of the dome, then forced myself back to my address.
‘But for some,’ I said, raising my voice to counter my loss of nerve, ‘Sir Colin was much more than the man charged with securing this country against foreign threats. He was a friend, a husband and a father.’
Christ, what had I been thinking when I wrote this? Other memories sprang into my mind: his delight at catching a large trout that summer in Ireland, after he had insisted on using his ancient ‘lucky’ bait; the way Joan had looked at him when we’d returned to the cottage with the tail of the fish poking out of the basket, knowing he’d want it for supper that night. And Vanessa, of course…
I stopped myself going any further down that track. I realized that my hands were gripping the sides of the lectern, and that they were coated in sweat. My voice had frozen in my throat. I couldn’t do this – it was monstrous. My only sop was that it hadn’t been my idea. ‘You knew him best,’ Dawes had said when the arrangements had been discussed. ‘Nobody else was as close.’
I looked down at the rest of the address. It ran through Templeton’s career, from military service to Cambridge to intelligence in Germany and beyond: his friendship with my father in Cairo, then Istanbul, Prague, London. His body in the Thames, thrown there by Sasha and me in the dead of night… Not the last bit.
I looked up again and was surprised to see Farraday standing by the lectern. He was fiddling frantically with his tie, whispering urgently.
‘What is it?’ I asked. He mounted the steps.
‘You’re making a scene,’ he hissed, pushing past me. ‘Return to your seat, or I’ll—’
But I never found out what he’d do, because at that moment he fell to the ground, and blood started gushing from the centre of his shirt. The cathedral was filled with screaming, but my mind was now totally lucid. I looked up. The shot had come from somewhere in the Whispering Gallery – and it had been meant for me.
I started running down the aisle.