Inside Enemy (6 page)

At the end of the table, facing Charles, was Elaine, his private secretary, recently assistant private secretary to Angela Wilson and posted, he suspected, to keep an eye on him and the new MI6.
But anyone who survived working for Angela would also be good. She was athletic-looking with quick, intelligent features and an obliging manner.

‘Welcome to Croydon,’ he said. They smiled. At that moment a power-drill started in a nearby office. They laughed. ‘We won’t complain if there are gaps in the
minutes,’ he told Elaine, ‘or perhaps no minutes at all.’

Elaine stood. ‘I’ll just see if I can—’ She hurried out.

The boardroom was in the corner of the fourth floor of the 1960s block, which was to have been refurbished before they moved in. The continuing works were described as ‘making good’
the trunking routes for the IT system. It was running late because of delays in security clearance for the workers and frequent power cuts. The emergency generators were installed but not yet
working.

The drilling stopped and Elaine returned. ‘They’re going to find somewhere else to drill.’

‘Well done.’ Charles turned to Stephen Avery. ‘We may as well start with a progress report on the move here, which I gather you had wished upon you.’

‘A cup I prayed would pass from my lips but to no avail.’ Stephen smiled. ‘Naturally, it’s all taking longer and costing more than anticipated. No surprises there. The
main thing now is not just when it’s going to work but whether. We’ve had to change the IT specifications more than once in view of all these recent hacking attacks but our internal
system works okay, more or less. The problem is we’ve still got no secure way of communicating with OGDs – other government departments. We’re having to rely on the GSN, the
government secure network. Which, as everyone knows, is not really secure.’

‘So we can’t email CX reports to our customers?’ asked Charles. ‘What about comms with our overseas stations?’

‘They’re all right because they’re on our own system. It’s where we link with outsiders that we have problems. We can do it but not securely.’

‘How are we getting our reports out?’

‘We’re not,’ said Clive Thatcham, director of requirements. ‘Not since the last of the old SIA reports went out the week before last. We’re getting them in from the
stations but we’re sitting on them until we’ve got secure comms. Not ideal, I agree. Quite appalling, in fact. But par for the course where things technical are concerned.’ He
sounded almost gratified.

‘It’s worse than appalling. It’s unacceptable.’ Charles stared at Clive, aware of the stiffening around the table. Most of what he had achieved in life he had achieved by
being pleasant, being reasonable, but he was conscious now that he had to be, if not unpleasant – invariably counterproductive in Whitehall – then at least unreasonable. Unreasonably
but justifiably demanding. He had hoped for a board that was keen, collegiate and cooperative. So far, it had the smell of complacency.

‘How many reports are we sitting on?’

Clive shrugged, as if it weren’t really anything to do with him. ‘Well, I couldn’t say exactly, of course. We wouldn’t have issued them all anyway. Maybe not most of
them. So many don’t really come up to the mark, if we’re honest with ourselves. Fall into the “interesting if true” category. Of the good ones – well, a dozen or so,
maybe.’

‘Could you find out?’

‘Of course.’

‘Now, if you please.’

For a moment Clive didn’t move. Then he got up and left the room.

Charles turned to Simon Aldington, director of operations. Like the rest now, he looked sombre. ‘That doesn’t sound very many. How many stations do we have?’

Simon pursed his lips. He had become bloated since his days as an energetic head of station and his complexion had coarsened. ‘Well, about – I would say – probably a couple of
dozen worldwide.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I could find out, if you like.’

‘Do.’

Simon also left the room. The meeting was beginning to resemble an Agatha Christie novel, thought Charles. The body would be next. Those remaining looked chastened. It was not going as he had
intended. He would not backtrack but neither did he want to bully. ‘An intelligence service that can’t issue reports may as well not exist,’ he said. ‘If we go for too long
without reporting, the government will cease to miss it and conclude it doesn’t need us anyway. We must get those reports out this week even if it means taking them round
ourselves.’

That was what happened. When the two directors returned with their figures Charles asked them to organise a daily delivery system of paper copies, which had been the norm before Whitehall went
over to electronic systems. Granted, there had been more drivers and cars then and MI6 was just over the river in Lambeth, not Croydon; granted, too, there were rules about the numbers of people
required for carrying top-secret material in public places and the kinds of security container required. These would all have to be complied with.

‘It will be cumbersome, costly and inconvenient and if not enough bodies can be found then we – I mean us, the board – will set an example by taking them ourselves. I was in
the Cabinet Office this morning and will have to go to the Foreign Office tomorrow afternoon so if there are any urgent reports overnight, Clive, I could take them with me. Not on the train, of
course. I’ll need a car and driver.’

‘There may be health and safety implications,’ said Michelle Blakeney, HR director.

Charles stared. She didn’t seem to be joking. ‘Let me know if you find any. Meanwhile, we start this afternoon.’

He was about to ask whether there was any other business when a mobile phone rang. ‘Sorry,’ said Melissa Carron, director of security. She scrabbled in her handbag and silenced the
phone, then stared for some seconds at the screen.

‘Which reminds me,’ said Charles. ‘Mobiles. I noticed one or two people had them on their desks this morning. I thought we weren’t supposed to bring them into the
building? That we had to lock them in those special cages downstairs?’

‘The ones you saw would have been HMG people – higher management group,’ said Melissa. ‘They’re issued with office mobiles, like us. All senior managers in the SIA
had them.’

Charles had been hoping to end the meeting on a conciliatory note. ‘Why don’t junior staff have them?’

Melissa looked at him through her heavy-framed glasses, irritation and puzzlement contending in her enlarged eyes. ‘Because of the security threat. Because of how they can be turned into
microphones, cameras, tracking devices, quite apart from normal call interception. You must remember from your previous service what we can do with them – identify all the members of a group
from one number, travel patterns, contacts, everything. And phones have got more sophisticated since you left the old MI6, and the more sophisticated they are, the more we can do with them. And if
we can do it, others can.’

She spoke carefully as if explaining to someone of limited understanding.

‘I myself am fully satisfied that there’s a strong security case for not allowing mobiles into the office, apart from the HMG,’ she continued. ‘It’s what we did in
the SIA, it’s what MI5 do, it’s what we should do. I don’t think anyone around this table would disagree with that.’ She looked at the others.

Charles waited to see if anyone wanted to make the obvious point. No-one did. He too spoke slowly, trying not to sound confrontational. ‘So why are we allowed them? Is a phone any less of
a threat because someone in HMG or on the board has it? More, surely.’

He wondered whether he was on the verge of provoking a bureaucratic insurrection and becoming the shortest-serving C on record. He wondered too whether Angela Wilson and George Greene would back
him up. They wouldn’t want a fuss, especially if it became public.

Michelle Blakeney leaned forward, her fingers resting on the closed laptop before her. It was the first time Charles had noticed it. No-one else had one. Laptops, too, he thought. But that could
wait.

‘Of course, there’s no denying that mobiles are a threat,’ she said, sounding as if it were an effort to remain polite. ‘But in themselves they’re neutral.
It’s the user who determines whether or not they are actually threatening. As with firearms. If we trust the people who have them – and I hope we can trust ourselves and the HMG in
general, otherwise we shouldn’t be here – then they shouldn’t be a threat. In fact, for many people in the outside world, as I well know – people we have to influence and
communicate with – it would look very odd indeed if we didn’t have them. It would be hard to explain and would make us look corporately quaint and out of touch.’

‘Also, from an operational point of view, case officers need them for agent contacts,’ said Simon Aldington. ‘Especially if they’re under natural cover as business people
or whatever. It would be frankly incredible – unworkable – for them not to have them.’

‘And people do have family responsibilities,’ said Melissa. ‘Arrangements with children and childminders and so on. Some of us, anyway.’

Charles looked at Clive Thatcham and Stephen Avery. They may as well all have their say now. ‘Any other views?’

‘Michelle makes a good point,’ said Clive. ‘If we want to be taken seriously within Whitehall and beyond we have to be like the people we work for. Ministers carry mobiles,
everybody does. We can’t afford to look like some furry little creature that hides in the undergrowth and has to be dragged blinking into the sunlight of the modern world.’

Stephen was doodling, eyes downcast. ‘Everything that’s been said so far is true. True – but.’ When he looked up his eyes took in everyone. ‘More than one but. The
first is that the phone itself is the danger. It’s not like a gun. Its user may be entirely trustworthy and innocent but the phone itself may have been tampered with or accessed remotely
without the user knowing. If it is like a gun it’s one that someone else can aim and fire without your having any control over it, or even knowing they’ve done it.’ He put down
his pen and clasped his hands. ‘The second but is that where I come from, GCHQ, this would not be tolerated for a moment. If it were, the Americans – the NSA – would suspend
sharing stuff with us. We know only too well the potential for any electronic device to be turned into something apart from what it’s meant for. We know it because we do it. I was frankly
astonished when I first went to the old SIA head office and found people with mobiles on their desks. And then here. The third but – last one, I promise – is, where do they come from?
Who, physically, supplied these mobiles?’

All except Melissa shrugged or shook their heads. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said, as if she had been unreasonably accused. ‘Presumably the supplier who supplies
our operational phones. They’ve always been perfectly reliable.’

‘Perhaps you could enquire,’ said Charles.

‘Meanwhile, I’m afraid I have to agree with Charles on this,’ said Stephen, who had picked up his pen and was doodling again. ‘Mobiles are bad news.’

‘I think we’ll have to do something about it,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll return to the subject.’

They broke up with a shuffling of chairs and no lightening of the atmosphere. Charles had been conscious throughout of how much he was keeping back from them: the fact that they were penetrated,
that GCHQ were secretly monitoring their systems, that he was going to recontact Viktor, the very existence of Viktor, all the concerns of COFE. He had thought he could tell them about Peter Tew,
warning that anyone who had known him should report contact, but decided to turn it into a fence-mending exercise by offering it to Melissa to announce to the Office as a whole, to make the issue
hers. However, she left the room first, closing her bag with a snap, followed by Michelle with her laptop. He would have to ring her later. Elaine, still finishing her notes at the end of the
table, was the last to stand. ‘Come and chat about the minutes before you do them,’ Charles told her.

His office was occupied by workmen.

‘They’re just connecting some trunking,’ said Elaine. ‘They said they’ll only be another ten minutes.’

‘Let’s go to the canteen.’

‘There’s quite a list of things we need to discuss.’

‘Bring it.’

They were early and there were not many people. They took curries and salads to a table in the far corner. ‘I suppose this will have to close when they get round to refurbishing it,’
said Charles.

‘It’s been done. Finished two weeks ago.’

She laughed, which he was glad to see. She had with her a list of impending visits from Dutch, American, French, Danish, South African, Indian and Singaporean heads of liaison services, with a
longer list of calls he had to make in Whitehall and of cases into which he had to be indoctrinated. There were also issues arising from his previous service, adjustments to his MI6 pension, and a
photograph swipe-card pass to be arranged. Elaine had had to escort him in that morning on a visitor’s pass. There were also alias identities, including passports, to be set up for when he
visited liaisons overseas. He queried this. ‘I was blown decades ago, I’ve been global Red for years. Anyone who Googles me can see what I was and now that what I am is being publicly
announced what’s the point in hiding it?’

‘Security department ruling.’ One of many, I’m afraid. Because of the public announcement, you’re an obvious terrorist target if you appear on any flight manifest in your
own name.’

He thought he’d left all that behind him when he ceased operational work. ‘What if I’m prepared to accept the risk?’

‘You’d be accepting it for everyone else on the flight, too.’

He held up his hands. ‘Okay, just make sure my new names are easily said and spelt. No Cholmondelys.’

‘Believe it or not, the first one they’ve come up with is Goodenough.’

‘But what is it?’

She laughed again. But he still felt she was watchful, as if he might explode. He knew from having been one that you had to have complete trust in your private secretary, even if she were
reporting back – ad hoc and informally, of course – to Angela Wilson. ‘That was a surprise, that meeting this morning,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t expected it to turn
out like that.’