Legacy (23 page)

There was another silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Charles. ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’

‘Of course you shouldn’t. On the other hand.’ Hookey leaned forward, clasping his hands on his desk and turning his head sideways, once again as if reading something from the
wall. ‘On the other hand, now that you have – and if he does not report or confess it – it is possible to derive some encouragement from his response.’ He grinned at
Charles. ‘His acknowledgement of the existence of Legacy, implicit in his response to your nicely-tuned question, indicates to me that he is prepared to say more. Mention of secrets is like
mention of sex between a man and woman: any mutual discussion of it is significant. If he is prepared to admit that he knows of this great secret, then I think he is prepared to say more. And his
translating the word for you is a little like some floozie telling you she doesn’t lock her bedroom door. After all, it would have been very easy to feign ignorance and cut you off stone
dead. That, combined with his insistence that you are failing in your professional duty by not pressing him as to what he’s up to – even though he says he wouldn’t tell you
– suggests that this is a man who wants to tell us – or you – something, even if he doesn’t want to go the whole hog. He might even help us to monitor the progress of
Legacy. Pity you’re leaving, eh?’

He stared with eyebrows raised and the form of his grin still on his face. ‘Do you mean that if I didn’t resign we might be able to continue the case?’ asked Charles.

‘I don’t mean anything beyond what I’ve said. There’s no question of MI5 agreeing to further conversations with either Koslov or his tart. Not on. Even less so now that
you’ve possibly compromised Legacy. So if you still feel you should resign, do so. No one’s forcing you, remember. Free for lunch? Good. Ask Maureen to book my club on your way
out.’

Charles felt he was being urged both to resign and not to resign. His instinct was to stay, his determination to go. Avoiding the lift, he trudged heavy-heartedly up to Personnel on the
eighteenth floor.

Beyond a notice in the corridor which facetiously promised that anything could be fixed, would be, he was received by Peter Sidley, the tall man of saturnine good looks and impeccable suits who
chain-smoked small cigars and who had lectured the course on the case of the important Eastern European official. He was said to have an impeccable operational record and incalculable private
income, having apparently never drawn expenses while head of station on his last post because he couldn’t be bothered with the claim forms.

‘Obviously, we wouldn’t want to give your real reason for leaving,’ he said, ‘and we don’t like the lie direct, so what if we say “family reasons”? That
covers almost anything you want to suggest and is the sort of thing people feel inhibited from being too nosy about. At the same time it needn’t be your fault.’

Charles accepted one of the small cigars. ‘Sounds fine, except for my own family.’

‘Ultimately, that depends on whether MI5 will want to interview your mother but meanwhile I suppose you could consider disillusionment, dislike of the sound of embassy life overseas, need
for more money, girlfriend who won’t leave her job and whom you don’t want to leave behind or whatever. Of course, there’s no problem if you decide you do want to transfer to the
Foreign Office and they like you enough to have you. There’s a trickle each way and we’ve taken a couple of theirs recently so they owe us one. There’d be no need to say anything
to people outside the office while inside we simply say you’d rather be a diplomat than a spy. The question remains as to whether what your father did – is alleged to have done –
would affect your own vetting status. A department of the Home Civil Service might be easier from that point of view.’

This businesslike acceptance of his resignation was disconcerting. ‘Wouldn’t it have affected my vetting here, if I hadn’t decided to go?’

‘If you weren’t in already you might not have got in, if this were known about. But since you are you wouldn’t lose your PV certificate over it unless’ – Peter
smiled – ‘we wanted to get rid of you because of your appalling drink problem, monstrous incompetence or you were found to be a shirt-lifter. Then it could become an issue. But we
don’t, so it won’t. You really don’t have to go. Think carefully about it.’

Others said the same. Martha, whom he ran into in the corridor outside Hugo’s office and who made no secret of knowing about it already, stared at him through her enormous glasses.
‘Premature,’ she said, as if recalling a code-name. ‘You are acting prematurely. A perennial failing in this service. Shooting from the hip. Better wait until all the facts are
known.’

‘But the important ones are.’

‘Not in my book, they’re not.’ The trolley bell rang and the corridor filled with hurrying people parting around her. ‘You don’t know why.’

‘Well, we think we do. It seems pretty clear –’

‘Because we think we know we stop looking. That’s another service perennial. You’ll be back, I daresay, before you’re properly gone. Seen it before, dear.’ She
moved through the trolley queue like a liner through harbour craft.

Hugo was searching for something in his overflowing in-tray. ‘Bit of a flap on. But speak.’ He barely looked up at Charles’s account of his conversations. ‘Not surprised,
to be frank. Do the same in your position. Family disgrace and all that. Nothing to do with you but you feel responsible. Quite rightly. Anna will be pleased.’

‘Pleased?’

‘Takes a maternal interest in your career. Thinks you’re not cut out for the service. Probably thinks nobody is. But she has a soft spot for people who harm themselves on principle.
Likes that sort of thing. Did I see you coming away from Hookey’s office earlier?’

‘Yes, I was telling him.’

‘Not discussing the case? Because I should be included in all casework discussions.’

‘No.’

‘Drop in again before you go. Ah. Found it.’

Gerry and Rebecca were in their Rasen, Falcon & Co. office. ‘Pity,’ said Gerry. ‘I had a feeling something was up. Good luck with the family, whatever the problem is. Your
merry men are doing well on the ex., on the whole. One or two bog-ups, but that’s what it’s for.’ He took off his glasses. ‘No, but I mean it, Charles. It’s a pity.
You’d have done all right. Have a good life.’

Rebecca came out into the corridor with him. The place was scruffier than Head Office, older and more cluttered. A partially dismantled cipher machine was being pushed along on a trolley by two
men in brown coats, heading for an unmarked door at the end of the corridor, beyond which none of the students had ever been. Charles and Rebecca had to squeeze against the wall to let it pass.

‘It’s very sad to lose you,’ she said.

‘It’s sad to go. I like the people, I believe in what we’re doing, but I feel compromised, as if I compromise it – you.’ The words came in a rush and he checked
himself. ‘But we can keep in touch.’

‘Have you told Anna March?’

‘In outline. Hugo will fill her in, no doubt.’ He smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Another time. We’ll miss you, Charles. I’ll miss you.’

‘We might have dinner.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘I’ll ring.’

Lunch with Hookey meant delaying viewing the flat he was supposedly buying, but Mary had said that the woman with the key would be there during the middle of the day, which he interpreted as
until mid-afternoon. He wasn’t greatly bothered.

There were people in Hookey’s outer office when he arrived before lunch, including two anxious-looking A officers. ‘Bit of a flap on,’ said Maureen.

‘There is on the sixth floor, too, according to Hugo. The office seems one big flap this morning.’

‘It’s catching. I’ve noticed before. One floor gets a flap on and gradually it spreads to other floors, although the reasons for the flaps are quite unrelated. Maybe it’s
competitive, sort of demand for attention. Hugo’s not in on this one, though I’m sure he’d love to be. Hookey won’t be long. Believes that nothing in life should get in the
way of lunch. I’d booked you into the Travellers but he said there were too many office and Foreign Office people there. The office’s other canteen, he calls it. So you’re going
to Brooks’s, one of his other clubs.’

‘How many does he have?’

‘He admits to three, these two and Pratts, but I suspect more.’

‘Does he ever take you?’

She smiled. ‘Funnily enough, it does occur to him now and again, yes. Usually when someone’s cancelled, but still. Or if he thinks it’s my birthday, which he invariably gets
wrong although I’ve put it in his diary in red ink and capitals.’ She was summoned by an irascible shout from within. ‘Here we go again. I’ll tell him you’re
here.’

As a controller, Hookey merited a car to take him to lunch. ‘Thing about office flaps,’ he said as they waited at the Parliament Square traffic lights, ‘is that everyone enjoys
them, really. People love cock-ups. Ideally other people’s, of course, but even their own provided responsibility is shared. It’s the excitement.’

He walked quickly past the bar in Brooks’s. ‘We’ll go straight in, if you don’t mind. Danger of bores in the bar and I’d have to explain you. I had the misfortune
to be in the army with the editor of
The Times
, who’s there now, and because he still doesn’t know what I do he thinks I’m a failed would-be ambassador and commiserates
infuriatingly.’ He laughed and coughed. ‘One of the problems of an office career. Either they don’t realise and think you’re a Foreign Office failure or they do and think
you’re far more influential than you are and keep pestering you with things they think you want to know. Not a problem you’ll have, of course, if you do as you say.’

As soon as they were at their table a pink gin was put at his elbow. He took four or five seconds over the menu, ordering lobster bisque, roast beef and the club claret. Charles, not minding
what he ate, chose the same. Like Viktor, he thought.

‘What’ll you do when you’ve left?’ Hookey continued. ‘Have to do something. Young chap like you can’t do nothing, even if you can afford it. Can
you?’

‘No.’

‘Foreign Office the obvious thing, of course. More postings, more high status jobs, more self-importance, gratifying illusion of being responsible for international relations, lots of
important boring stuff like negotiating numbers of potatoes with this wretched Common Market. Wish to God that referendum had gone the other way. I seem to be in a minority of one in Whitehall on
that. But if real diplomatic work is what you want you shouldn’t be with us anyway. Postings apart, I’d have thought the Home Civil Service might offer more real jobs, interesting jobs.
That’s if you want government service at all. Perhaps you’d rather go to the City and make some money.’

‘I might if I understood what it is they do to get it.’

‘I agree. Baffles me. My brother’s in it. Makes fortunes. Every Christmas I ask him what exactly he does when he gets in in the morning and every Christmas he tells me and at the
time I think I understand but by New Year I’m still none the wiser. Dreadful old boy network, of course. Not that that’s necessarily dreadful. Way the world is, works on connections.
Like the office. Journalism’s no different. Maybe you should go for that. Maybe I should’ve introduced you to
The Times
man.’

They took their coffee upstairs, sitting in the windows overlooking St James’s. ‘Best view in London,’ said Hookey. ‘Everything you need to know about life can be
surmised from the human traffic below us. Wonderful perspective, best justification for privilege there is. Perhaps the only one. Pity about the portraits, eh?’ Charles began looking about
him but Hookey allowed no more time for that than for menus. ‘Thing about our profession,’ he continued, ‘is that, apart from the enduring fascination with the foibles of human
nature and the interaction between the individual and bureaucracy, the individual and ideology, the individual and power, and the occasional bit of excitement, there’s the feeling that at the
end of it you might, if you are lucky, have done the state some service. Peculiarly gratifying. Lot of people long to feel they’ve made a contribution in life. We’re lucky. Not easy to
find that combination in a single job. Port, brandy?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Don’t mind if I do?’

‘In that case brandy, please.’

‘Sensible fellow. Lunchtime drinking is a positive virtue. People treat each other better, helps the world go round more smoothly. It’s like dancing, does people good. You
don’t dance, I s’pose? So few do now.’

‘Hugo does, apparently.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘His wife, Anna, told me.’

‘Well, that’s something, anyway.’ Hookey seemed lost in thought for a while. Charles knew he should be on his way to the flat.

‘I understand why you feel you can’t remain,’ Hookey resumed. ‘It reflects well on your – your – what do we call it? – your sense of honour?’ He
stared at Charles with raised eyebrows. ‘That is, I sympathise with your reasons although I don’t agree with the action. Whatever you might feel, and whatever I said this morning, it is
not necessary for you to leave. You don’t know the full story and you may very well be no better placed to discover it from without, as it were. It would be sensible to wait, eh?’

In his heart, Charles agreed, but he was reluctant to go back on his decision so easily. It was beginning to feel like an issue over which he had to prove himself. ‘It’s not only a
question of honour, or how I feel about it. Given the restrictions on what I can do if I stay in, I don’t see how anything can emerge which would alter the fundamentals. And it is important
to me to know exactly what, and why.’

‘Have you sent your letter of resignation to Personnel?’

‘It’s written but not sent. I’ve got it with me.’

‘May I see?’

Charles handed the brief letter over. Hookey put on his glasses and scanned it in a second or two. ‘I’m seeing Personnel after lunch. I’ll drop it in for you.’

It was a statement, not an offer. Hookey slipped it into his inside pocket. Charles had not yet sent it because doing so would feel like the point of no return for which he had not quite
prepared himself. Its disappearance into Hookey’s pocket was brutally final.