Uncommon Enemy (7 page)

He would refer to Sarah occasionally and in passing, just as Charles had used to do with him. She was training with a City law firm and teaching part time at the law school she had attended. As
soon as she was qualified, they would start a family, he said, making it sound like booking a holiday. The baby was never mentioned.

‘You must come to dinner sometime,’ he always said on parting. Charles always replied that he would love to and they would leave it at that. But one day – it would have been in
the mid-eighties, Charles thought – Nigel surprised him by ringing him in his office. ‘Sarah and I are giving a small dinner party. We don’t do it very often. Just a couple of
friends.’

The address was an Edwardian house in Clapham. Charles hesitated at the garden gate. The last time he had seen Sarah was the day after the birth. Surrounded by banks of flowers in a nursing home
in Northumbria, she looked relaxed and radiant. In his hurried drive north, having pretended to his mother that he was going to a last-minute party at Nigel’s, he had spurned the about-to-rot
cellophaned flowers at motorway service stations. By the time he reached Hexham there were no florists open, only a single off-licence. He considered champagne, but doubted its aptness, given the
circumstances; also, whether it would be acceptable in a nursing home. He ended up with a shaming box of Black Magic chocolates which she received with humiliatingly good grace, tucking them behind
a bunch of Interflora roses on the bedside table. He saw from the card that they were from Nigel. He could not imagine why it had not occurred to him to do the same. He had never felt more useless,
nor more grubby.

Now, he could remember nothing of what he and Sarah had said to each other that evening. He did remember that she was friendlier, no doubt because more indifferent, than when they had last met a
month before the birth, over tea and a slow walk around Bamburgh Castle. Her hostility then had at least been a positive reaction, an indication that he mattered; but this distancing politeness
could have been deployed with anybody, which meant he had become nobody. Neither more nor less than he deserved, he remembered thinking.

He’d been directed to Baby Bourne on the way out. There was a room to the side of the ward filled with babies in cots, watched over by a nurse who smiled brightly.

‘Baby Bourne? This one here.’

There was a name tag tied to his wrist. He had wisps of dark hair and his eyes were closed. To Charles, all babies resembled each other or Winston Churchill. He didn’t expect to see
himself reflected, and didn’t know what to look for, anyway. Nor could he see whether there was anything of Sarah. The nurse stood watch as he lingered by the cot, trying to imagine the
unimaginable life to come. He laid the tip of his middle finger on the baby’s forehead and silently, as if in prayer, wished him well.

Lacking any immediate instinct for the paternal and conscious of no dynastic urge, Charles soon persuaded himself that life without family was probably more enjoyable, certainly freer, than life
with. During the ten years in which he thought more or less daily of Baby Bourne it was not with longing, nor with any sense of progression; he merely registered the child’s existence, every
day, finding nothing to think beyond the fact of it and no point in speculation that was limitless. He thought more particularly of Sarah, his heart crammed with the unsaid, with questions,
memories, debates and imagined arguments, a decades-long interior dialogue that would never, he thought, be had. So he had put his heart aside.

Certainly, it would not be had across the dining table in Clapham that night. But seeing her again would be enough to be going on with.

He arrived to find two couples and a plump, pretty woman called Liz who was an economist with the Bank of England. She laughed easily and was quick and bright. Bank employees could have Bank of
England accounts, she said, and over drinks recounted the problems she had convincing traders her cheques weren’t toy-town. Charles liked her and wished he could relax. He hadn’t yet
seen Sarah because the door had been answered by Nigel. When eventually she came in from the kitchen they were all laughing at something Nigel had said.

‘Charles, how nice to see you again.’

She presented herself for cheek-kissing. She looked as he remembered, though in both dress and manner she was now the middle-class London hostess. He wondered how he seemed to her.

‘Charles and I met at Oxford through Sarah,’ Nigel explained. ‘Now it’s the Foreign Office that brings us together.’ Like most diplomats, he took seriously the
obligation to maintain cover for the Friends.

Charles felt no more relaxed as the evening went on. He suspected no-one else did, either. There was a brittle tension that kept everyone talking as if in competition, with a lot of laughter but
no humour. Liz played her part valiantly and he helped as best he could, thinking she would make someone a good and capable wife. Sarah seemed edgy and assertive, as if conversation needed
sprinkling with the salt of contrariness. It was a tendency he remembered in her from before, but it had been less marked then. Nigel drew paradoxes and made verbal sallies which everyone laughed
at. Charles did not see them address a word to each other, except once, when they were both in the kitchen between courses and he passed the door on the way to the loo. Nigel was standing holding
the pile of dirty plates and she was on one knee before the open oven, wearing oven gloves, heedless of how far her skirt had ridden up her thigh.

‘Where shall I put them?’ Nigel asked.

‘Anywhere.’ She spoke shortly, without looking at him.

It meant nothing, of course; it was how people were under pressure, it was marriage. He didn’t like to hear her speak like that, but he wasn’t displeased.

There was another exchange, not involving her, that much later bubbled to the surface of his memory, under the pressure of a very different circumstance. It began over coffee, when Liz asked
Nigel something technical about the Single Market negotiations which, as a junior member of the Foreign Office European Community team, he was helping to conclude in London and Brussels. As often,
when asked a specific question, Nigel made a joke of it.

‘The first time I ever heard of the Single European Act I thought it was about legalising brothels. Long overdue.’ He laughed. ‘But I really can’t say, Liz, because
it’s one of the areas we’re still grappling with, thanks to that old nanny goat in Downing Street. If it weren’t for that niggling bitch we’d have had it all wrapped up
months ago.’

Liz would not be put off. ‘But it was partly Mrs Thatcher’s initiative, wasn’t it? We – the British – helped start the process.’

‘Only because she was persuaded it would be easier for British bankers and insurers and builders and whatever to get into Europe. Not through any enthusiasm for the European project
itself. There’s not a shred of idealism in her.’

‘I’m not sure I blame her. They’re all out for themselves as far as I can see, from where we sit.’

‘I blame her. I blame her absolutely. She’s a brake on the whole thing. Anything –
anything
– I can do to expedite the European project, I’ll do. She’s
got no feeling for it, no feeling at all – probably no feeling for anything, if truth be known. But luckily, she’s also got no idea of the political difference the act is going to make.
She’s such a bloody Philistine, she sees it only in economic terms. Doesn’t realise it’s a huge step towards integration. That’s why we want it, not just so that your filthy
rich bankers can get even richer and filthier.’

Liz smiled. ‘Hence the photo?’ She nodded at the mantelpiece on which stood a photograph of Nigel and the newly-appointed EC Commission president, Jacques Delors. They were smiling
at the camera and shaking hands.

Nigel shook his head. ‘You won’t find any of those in the witch’s den in Number Ten.’

It was Nigel’s tone, as much as what he said, that struck Charles at the time. He spoke with an almost personal bitterness rather than with his usual raillery and mocking detachment. It
was unusual, too, for him to show such enthusiasm for ideas and ideals. He normally scoffed at enthusiasm.

When Charles was leaving, he and Sarah repeated the cheek-kissing ritual. ‘So lovely to see you,’ she said. Those, and his response, were the only words they exchanged all evening.
He wished she had not said ‘so’ with such distancing emphasis.

T
he door-banger eventually gave up. Charles became aware of the silence without realising when it had started. He was again picturing Nigel in his
SIA office, hand raised to show that he had seen Charles and Jeremy waiting. Nigel had not hurried his call, leaving them to stare at the Westminster clock through the wide window while his
secretary sorted papers.

‘Not quite the paperless office, then?’ Charles said.

Jeremy ignored the remark. ‘Has the ear of ministers, Nigel,’ he murmured. ‘Not only Valerie’s. Well thought of in Brussels, too. People think being an MEP is a
backwater, but Nigel proved them wrong. He wasn’t just influential in the parliament; he was a regular channel between parliament and the Commission and between ministers here and the
Commission. Gave up a lot to come to us, but I doubt his political career is finished. Probably go on to bigger things, once he’s sorted this place out. You could do worse than hitch your
star to him. Especially as you knew him when he was in the Foreign Office.’

‘How did he get this job?’

Jeremy was spared an answer by Nigel ringing off and striding out to greet them. He took Charles’s hand in both of his. ‘Charles, Charles, it’s so good to see you. You
haven’t changed a bit. Must be God knows how many years. Not since before I went to Brussels, is it? That’s about a century ago. Very good of you to come back and help out. Thanks,
Jeremy.’ He nodded at Jeremy, who was about to follow them, and shut the door.

He had put on weight, not unduly, and had lost hair, not dramatically, but was otherwise tanned and looked fit. His suit was well cut, though fashionably un-vented. He wore a wedding ring, a
Breitling watch and gold cufflinks. He smiled all the time. The walls of his office, which in the old MI6 would have displayed portrait photos of previous chiefs, were adorned with photos of Nigel
with various dignitaries and well-known politicians, though not the one with Jacques Delors from his mantelpiece at home.

They sat. ‘So, tell me about your life, Charles. What’s it been? When did you leave the old office? What are you doing? Why did you leave? Sarah’s very well and sends love, or
would if she knew I was seeing you.’ He laughed. ‘She’s back at work full time now with Kent & Kent, where she was before we went to Washington. Extended career break, though
she did some work for them in Brussels. Good of them to take her back. Senior partner’s an old friend. Great fun, she’s enjoying it hugely. Doing very well, too. You’ve never
married.’

It was a statement rather than a question. From that and what followed, it was clear that Nigel must have read Charles’s file. He asked only questions to which he would have known the
answers.

‘Now, Gladiator, the missing Gladiator.’ Nigel leaned forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped. His brown eyes bulged at Charles. ‘Must admit, I can’t always get my
head round these nicknames or codenames you – we – use. But at least Gladiator’s memorable. Are they really necessary, d’you think?’

‘So long as you want to protect agent identities, they are. Nicknames or numbers.’ It was an unnecessary question, designed to ingratiate. He wondered inconsequentially whether Nigel
wore reading glasses now, or whether he had contact lenses. The way his eyes bulged and glistened gave the impression of someone struggling against worsening sight.

‘Sounds a bit Cold War-ish nowadays. This one was later than that, wasn’t he? In his origins?’

‘Yes, he was. The IRA – the Provisionals – first, then Afghanistan.’

‘Versatile fellow. He’s the one Sarah introduced you to, isn’t he, years ago? The one she told me about first?’

It was lightly put, and impossible to tell how much Nigel knew of the context of that introduction. ‘That’s right.’

‘Quite a coincidence.’

‘Huge.’

‘Anyway, he’s gone missing.’ Nigel sat back, his hands palms down on the desk. ‘What seems to have happened is that he went on one of his occasional trips back to
Pakistan – for which read Afghanistan, clandestinely – then came back and reported as usual. This was when UBL was still alive. Then, after UBL was killed, they suddenly summoned him
back again. He wasn’t going to go. Then he disappeared. He changed his mind, he did go back – we know that because we checked the flight manifest. Hasn’t been heard from
since.’

‘What would he report on now?’

‘Al-Qaeda remnants, Taliban general extremism, usual thing. You know he’s a convert?’

That was hard to imagine. ‘He was Catholic when I knew him, in so far as he was anything.’

‘Quite a high proportion of converts are – were – Catholics. It never stopped him reporting to us, surprisingly. You’d think it would’ve, given how keen converts of
all kinds usually are. Hates extremism, apparently. He’s against violence.’

‘He’s seen enough.’

‘What worries me is that they might have turned him and be running him back at us in order to do something dastardly. They did it with that Jordanian, who blew up all those CIA handlers
when they were debriefing him.’

‘What’s his product like?’

‘Excellent, I’m told.’

‘Have you read his file?’

Nigel nodded. ‘That’s why we’ve got you back, Charles. To go through everything and see if there’s any insecurity on our part or his that could have given him away. Or
any indication that he might be a double – double agent, that’s the term, isn’t it? In other words, we want you to do a security review.’

It was a politician’s answer. A nod could mean either that he had read the file or that he was acknowledging that Charles had hit the nail on the head, that it was necessary for someone to
read it. If Nigel had read it himself – in full – he clearly wasn’t giving anything away.