Uncommon Enemy (8 page)

‘It was Matthew Abrahams’s idea to get you back, as you probably know from Jeremy. With my enthusiastic support. Brilliant idea, of course. Brilliant man, Matthew. You knew him well,
didn’t you? Highly regarded in Whitehall, in his day. Very sad about his cancer. You know about that?’

‘I knew he was ill.’

‘Not much longer for this world, I fear. Still, there we are, comes to us all. Jeremy’s sorting out with the A desk – action desk, I’ve got that right, haven’t I?
– for you to get briefed and have access to the files. Must get a grip on this new terminology. Like a foreign language. Any problems, come to me. Don’t hesitate.’ He stood and
held out his hand, smiling. ‘Welcome again, Charles. Great to have you on board.’

They shook hands again. By unspoken agreement it was as if their last conversation, years before over a hurried lunch in the National Theatre, had never happened.

Matthew Abrahams’s flat was in a 1930s art deco block in Westminster. He had been CSS – Chief of the Secret Service – when Charles had left, and it was hard
to reconcile memories of the austere and authoritative figure of the later Cold War with the culture of the new SIA. Still less with the title, CEO.

The walls of the flat were lined with books, mostly in English but some Classics and some in Chinese and Russian. In gaps between shelves and windows, above doors and fireplaces, were pictures
of birds. Matthew was an ornithologist and a chronicler of the Chinese gulag. He smiled as they shook hands.

‘Don’t be shocked. I am dying. But there is enough life left, I hope, to enjoy working with you again. And for us to conspire together one last time. Come in.’

Charles was shocked. The tall figure he had known was shrunken and skeletal, like a relic of one of the secret labour camps he meticulously catalogued. His skin was blotched parchment, his
cheeks sunken, his hand a chicken’s claw. Charles knew Matthew would eschew consolation. ‘What is it?’

‘Prostate. The one that gets us all eventually, if nothing else does first. Spread to the liver. I accept some alleviation in the hope of delaying it until this business is sorted out. I
am not in pain. Do you prefer any particular tea?’

The flat was suffocatingly warm and the winged armchair too soft. ‘How is Jenny?’

‘In Cambridge, coping. I’m there most of the time now. Our sons find it harder because there is nothing for them to do. She wants me to stop work, of course. Biscuits are in the
tin.’

Refusing help, Matthew lowered the tea tray onto a lacquered Chinese table and then himself onto the sofa, where he leaned back, rubbing his thighs. His bespectacled grey-blue eyes rested on
Charles like the gaze of a judge weighing sentence.

‘I did not, of course, ask you to tear yourself away from your researches, and to confront something you may not wish to be reminded of, simply to investigate the disappearance of
Gladiator. Anyone could do that, or no-one. How is your book?’

‘Becalmed. Either it’s been said before, or it isn’t known and can’t be said. It’s a good time to have a break and take stock.’

‘Is Walsingham hero or villain, d’you think?’

‘Something of each.’

‘We at least have a simpler task. Our man is only one.’

Charles poured the tea.

‘The reason I asked you to return is that we have an insider problem. We get one about every ten years, as you know. But this particular problem has been around a long time, as you also
know. In fact, you and I are two of only three still serving who are aware of it. The other is Sonia, you’ll be pleased to hear. It was very tightly held at the time, since when people have
retired, moved on or died. There is only one record: the secret annex to the paper file which you were once familiar with. No-one conducting an electronic search would discover it, unless they
already knew where else to look. We have become an intelligence service which no longer knows what it knows, and has no way of recovering what once it knew, which is a slow suicide. But the urgency
now is that our insider has become nastier. We might even call him malignant, a word I’ve heard quite often recently.’ He smiled and sipped his tea. ‘You’re ignoring the
biscuits.’

Charles had not lunched. He helped himself to two shortbreads.

‘Too many things have gone wrong,’ Matthew continued. ‘You may have seen leaks of SIA assessments in the press. They amount to a pattern, an agenda. But there’s more than
that, though it wouldn’t be visible to any other security reviewer but you. There’s something internal, relating to Gladiator.’

‘Nigel Measures thinks he might have been turned.’

Matthew’s eyes rested on Charles’s. ‘Is that what he said?’ He looked down at his withered hands, nodding. ‘He was very anxious not to have you back, although he
didn’t want to say so outright. Instead, he argued that you might be indiscreet, now that you are a writer. That is of a piece with his saying that Gladiator might have been turned. Neither
is what he really thinks, or knows. You’ll have to be careful.’

‘Of what?’

‘Nothing in particular, therefore everything. Measures wants you to fail. He does not want Gladiator found.’

‘So Nigel is the problem – again?’

‘Not only because of what happened in the past. Or could be happening now – we don’t know. But he’s a problem because of what he’s prepared to do to cover that up.
The cover up, you see, it’s always the cover up that gets people.’ He nodded to himself.

‘I was very surprised when I heard he was to get your job.’

‘A political fix, over my dead body. But not quite, not yet.’ He smiled again. ‘If they’d left it a little longer, it would have been. And he’d have got away with
it. He could still, if you can’t help.’

‘I came back because it was you that asked. I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. I’ll do everything I can.’ Charles was glad of the chance to say it, while there was
still time. He and Matthew had rarely discussed personal subjects, still less feelings. The unsaid was understood, and Charles always felt that their communication was better – subtler and
more honest – for it.

Matthew inclined his head. ‘So, Gladiator,’ he resumed after a pause. ‘He did a lot for us in Afghanistan before 9/11, and for a while afterwards. But, foolishly, the office
let him drift away, until a couple of years ago when they re-contacted him and he agreed to become re-involved. He did a few trips to Pakistan, for which he has genuine business reasons, but during
which he was able to re-establish contacts among the AQ external operations people. After UBL was killed he went on another and hasn’t been heard of since. His AQ and Taliban contacts are
arranged via cutouts and couriers and he doesn’t always meet face-to-face. It takes weeks to set up each trip and he travels incognito into Waziristan and Afghanistan. If they do meet,
it’s a big deal; usually he returns with intelligence on their tasking and plenty of leadership gossip. Very risky for him, of course, not only because of the threat of discovery but because
he might be killed in a US drone strike.’

‘The Americans don’t know about him?’

‘Too dangerous. Either it would leak, or they’d be unable to resist killing any AQ figure he was with, and him too. During his last visit, he met no senior leaders, but a number of
second-rankers. They speak freely before him – they’ve known him for years, regard him as tried and tested, the blue-eyed emir they’re always seeking who can come and go freely in
the West. He gives them good stuff. At least, what they think is good stuff. They once suggested he might like to martyr himself over here as a suicide bomber, but he said his faith wasn’t
strong enough and they’ve not mentioned it again. Anyway, this last meeting was reasonably productive, but nothing sensational. Then, about three weeks after he returned, he got a message to
go back. This was unprecedented. The message came via a contact on the fringes of al-Jazeera, the television station, from a man who has family connections with AQ. Not the usual route, but the
reason given was that this was urgent. They wanted his advice in connection with a forthcoming wedding – you know that they sometimes refer to attacks as weddings.’

‘Nigel Measures told me this morning he wasn’t going to go back, then abruptly did.’

Matthew nodded again. ‘True, so far as it goes. We advised – through his case officers – that he shouldn’t go. It sounded too fishy, too pat, and why should he have to go
there to give his advice? He agreed, and sent a message back via the not-really al-Jazeera man saying a backlog of court cases wouldn’t permit another absence so soon – he’s set
up his own law firm, by the way, handles a lot of Pakistani marriage and inheritance cases – but he’d send any advice he could via the same route. Then – suddenly, unexpectedly,
without a word to his case officers – he went. Since when nothing has been heard.’

‘That’s what Nigel said.’

Matthew sipped his tea, swallowed slowly and conspicuously, then carefully lowered his cup and sat back with his hands fingertip to fingertip. ‘Except that something has been heard, the
full significance of which is apparent only to me. A while after he went back we intercepted a call between one of the people he saw on his last trip and a colleague in Yemen. They were speaking
Arabic, but the caller repeated and translated two sentences into English because, he said, it was important to get it right. Those sentences were: ‘The CIA say they have no agents in Core
AQ. Their cupboard is bare.’

Charles put down his own cup. ‘How do they know that?’

‘That, of course, is the question. But there’s a hidden significance in those two sentences, beyond the obvious one. The real significance is that they were mine. They were my
sentences. I wrote them in a record I made following my last trip to Washington. I was ill shortly afterwards; I never circulated a formal record of the trip. I still haven’t. But I did show
my notes to Nigel Measures, who had by then arrived to take over from me.

‘So how did my words reach AQ? The intercepted speaker was very careful to repeat them exactly, which suggests someone must have given them word for word, not just the gist. It
wasn’t anyone from Washington or Langley, or anyone else the Americans might have told, because they were not CIA’s words, they were mine. CIA’s words to me were: “We have
no assets in AQ Central. The shelf is empty, our cupboard is bare. But if the drone strategy continues to work, we won’t need them.” If AQ’s source had given them all that, they
would have quoted it all. Note, too, that the CIA typically referred to “assets” where I say “agents”; and their use of AQ Central compared with our Core AQ or AQ Core. It
could have come only from my notes, which means Measures, the only person to have seen them. And the only way I can think those sentences might have reached AQ from Measures is via someone who
might have had contact with both, which is Gladiator. I have no evidence that he did, but I’m suspicious. The question is, did Measures meet Gladiator before he went back, and did he offer
him those sentences as a titbit?’

Charles was sceptical. It was intrinsically unlikely. ‘They wouldn’t have met, would they? An agent wouldn’t meet anyone in Nigel’s position. The only people who’d
have contact with Gladiator would be his case officers. And that’s much more than a titbit, anyway. It would be hugely important to AQ. No-one would give intelligence like that away, surely?
Not if it were true. And Nigel hardly knows Gladiator. They met only once – you know, years ago, in the early days, not long before the Paris trip. At dinner at Nigel’s house, I
think.’

‘Of course Measures wouldn’t have, shouldn’t have seen him, or have had any other contact with him. Normally. But Measures’s situation is not normal. If what we know
about him came out he would be sunk, holed beneath the water-line, even though it happened long ago. Remember who’s still around and knows about it. There’s Sarah, his wife – have
you had contact with her?’

‘No.’

‘She is still—’ Matthew broke off and smiled thinly, nodding. ‘And there’s me, but I’m on my way out and dying, so that’s all right. There’s
Sonia, buried deep in some bit of the SIA that Measures has never heard of and longing for early retirement. He never knew her, never knew she knew, so probably she’s safe. Then there’s
Gladiator, or was until he disappeared. Measures knows that he witnessed the incident, with you. Some idiot in Foreign Office security let it slip a few years later, when Measures was clamouring
for another Europe job and wanted to know why he wasn’t getting one. So it must have been very disagreeable for him to find when he came here that we were still running Gladiator. And
finally, there’s you, of course. You know the whole story, but you were out of sight, out of mind, until I brought you back, much against his will. He did all he could to delay it or
sidetrack it, short of being seen to do so. That’s why you must take care, Charles.’ He smiled again.

‘But, given all that, why should he want to risk returning and taking your job? He was doing well as an MEP, very comfortable, well paid, highly thought of. Why not just continue to keep
well away, keep quiet, as he has for so long? There was no risk of anyone saying anything until he came here.’

Matthew raised his eyebrows and parted his fingers, as in supplication. ‘Ambition? Revenge? Who knows what bitterness stirs in all our murky depths. And what better way to revenge yourself
on MI6 than by taking charge of it? He’s off to a pretty good start. The SIA and its legions of lawyers and mud-slides of management will castrate and suffocate the old office. He’s
keen on all that.’

Charles remained sceptical. Everything Matthew said was plausible, given Nigel’s personality and what they both knew of his past, but it was unlikely in practice. ‘I still
don’t see how Nigel could have contrived contact with Gladiator without anyone knowing. He couldn’t just go and look up the contact details himself. It would be too extraordinary.
He’d have to ask someone for them.’

‘Maybe someone does know.’

‘You haven’t investigated?’

‘I can’t, in my position, without others knowing and therefore probably without Measures knowing. All eyes are always on the monarch, there’s no privacy for a chief without
gross and elaborate deceit. But you can make inquiries, you can mount discreet investigations. You’re below the radar.’ A bus pulled up outside. Matthew closed his eyes and rested his
head against the sofa until the bus pulled away. ‘Measures mounted a massive behind-the-scenes campaign to get this job, a very political campaign. I’m as certain as I can be, without
actual evidence, that he is behind all these press leaks. If you look at the coverage in its entirety, especially the Sunday pieces by James Wytham, there’s a pattern. It begins with opinion
pieces about the SIA being a new body in need of a new head, a new way of thinking. Then there are leaks from documents, accusations of insecurity and poor morale, signs that things are going
wrong, calls for an outsider to take over, someone who understands the new world and its challenges. But when Measures arrived it all changed. Coverage since then has become more favourable; there
are no more leaks, criticism is muted and there are calls for more resources. Soon, I predict, there will be a few more leaks, but they’ll be of triumphs under the new regime. You don’t
know anything about James Wytham? Pity.’