Jason Elliot - The Network

I return to England. I am racked by feelings of guilt at what I have seen of a conflict to which the world is largely indifferent, and experience shock and loathing at the comforts of ordinary life back home. In Afghanistan I have lived surrounded by random death, destruction and misery of every kind, and am mystified at why people in England, a country at peace, seem so very miserable.

The Network’s operation in Afghanistan has died. There is nothing more that can be done. As time passes I make my peace with ordinary life, and my hopes of seeing Manny again harden into a knot of despair. I refuse to believe he is dead, and he haunts me like the phantom limb of an amputee. There is not a day that passes when I do not think of him. I know in the deepest part of myself that one day, somewhere, I will find him, or his corpse, and be free of this pain, which is like a barrier between me and life, and through which all my experience is unwillingly filtered. When I experience moments of joy, I wish Manny were there to share them; when I am stalked by misery, I think of the difficulties and loneliness he must be having to face. He is my closest friend. With Manny I have shared the unforgettable intimacy of being alive – not only with the personal intensity that war or a shared love can bring to a friendship, but with the greater and impersonal love born of being in the service of something wholly bigger than us both.

The Baroness offers me a new role. While I start my landscaping business, finding consolation in working with nature, I’m given the task of advising and instructing new recruits to the Network. In London I teach the rudiments of counter-surveillance and field codes to a small number of men and women who will operate in places I don’t know about.

One afternoon I’m in Selfridges to demonstrate the use of switchback escalators as a surveillance trap. The idea is to carefully clock the faces of travellers on a lower escalator, ‘trapping’ them into becoming visible. Part of good counter-surveillance is not giving any indication that you suspect you’re being followed, which means techniques like stopping to tie shoelaces or peering at reflections in shop windows are never really used, and the switchback configuration of escalators in big department stores is one of the few ordinary means to see who’s behind you without having to turn around in the manner of a fugitive. But life is so strange you couldn’t make it up. I’m just wondering about a good way to challenge the three pairs of young watchers trying to keep up with me when I spot a striking-looking woman on the escalator below. I follow her, deciding that I’ll demonstrate to my watchers impromptu techniques for getting the telephone number of a perfect stranger. I catch up with the woman I’ve chosen on an upper floor. She’s flicking through clothes on a rail, and already I’m thinking of a story about being a designer and how, if she loves those designs, she’ll love the line I’ve designed, which is about to be launched. But she’s unexpectedly beautiful, and has the predatory gaze of a panther, and I’ve already fallen under the spell of her feline power and grace. I make a joke about the colour of a dress she’s considering. She’s American, it turns out, and within a few seconds she asks me the question that takes English people months to get around to, enquiring what line of business I’m in.

‘I teach spies how to pick up good-looking foreign women.’

‘Saw you coming,’ she says.

And perhaps she did. I manage to get her phone number, but I haven’t had to tell a single lie. Six months later we’re married, and our first child is soon on the way. But we’re not happy. I’ve been blinded by her beauty and energy, and have failed to notice a cruel streak that makes all the other cruel people I’ve met seem like Good Samaritans. My attempt at family life turns out to be a multiplying sequence of disasters, and my wife is destructively angry at the whole of life. She’s angry at England, angry at the English, angry at my friends and angry at me. One day, before I’ve lost all hope for the relationship, I call her mother in America to ask why her daughter is so angry.

‘Angry?’ she laughs chillingly. ‘She was born angry.’

I’m two years back into life as a bachelor when the Baroness calls an urgent meeting. I drive from London to Chevening House, where she occasionally holds quiet gatherings with members of the Foreign Office. With her are two nameless officials who are eager to know my assessment of a piece of intelligence just received by the Americans. It’s single-threaded, meaning it comes from only one source, and as such would normally be unactionable. But it’s so hot the CIA is screaming for help to assess its authenticity, and has turned to its allies for advice. The source suggests that a summit meeting is about to be held in Afghanistan involving all the leading jihadist commanders currently in the country. Bin Laden, who’s on the ascendant, is planning to be there himself, and the Americans need to decide how to act. Based on everything I’ve learned from Orpheus’s reports, I confirm that the details seem credible, and that the location and the names of the parties involved are consistent with what I know. The officials thank me for my contribution.

Later, I stroll with the Baroness through the grounds, and we walk to the green boathouse on the northern edge of the lake. We sit on a small bench. ‘I thought I should tell you first,’ she says as we look across the water. I feel a momentary sense of dread as she speaks these words, and I remember how at that moment my eyes fall on the dark green calfskin gloves she is wearing, and how her hands are folded in her lap. ‘There’s a rumour,’ she goes on, ‘of an Englishman operating in one of bin Laden’s groups. He’s been in prison in Chechnya for a year, which makes him a bit of a hero. The Americans felt they should share it with us.’ She pauses, then speaks again before I can ask the question. ‘They don’t have a name, but apparently he’s called the Christian commander, based on a military operation he led in the time of the jihad against the Soviets.’ Then she turns to me with a slight smile. ‘They remember that sort of thing, don’t they?’

I hardly dare believe it. Despite periods of numbing doubt I have never fully believed he was dead. It strikes me that the east, where fate put us together like a cosmic matchmaker, is now delivering him back to me.

The Baroness has read my mind again. ‘I know,’ she says with a look that suggests she understands how much the news means to me. ‘We need to get you back there. I shall have to arrange a context.’

My mind’s racing, then comes to a sudden halt at a dark thought. ‘It’s been a long time,’ I say. ‘We don’t know what’s happened to him in the meantime.’

‘He should come in. You either bring him back,’ says the Baroness quietly, looking across the water, ‘or you deal with the situation on the ground as you see fit. You were his best friend, and it must be for you to decide.’

It’s February and I realise I’ve forgotten that the next day is my birthday.

It’s now Saturday, five days after my temporary incarceration with Billy, the Face and the charming colonel with the nice green beret. My rib still hurts when I take a deep breath or laugh, and my eye has a purplish corona around it which gives me a slightly menacing look that I enjoy. It’s time for another briefing with Seethrough and, as promised, he’s laid on transport.

At dusk I drive with H to the outskirts of Hereford, where we board a black Puma helicopter fitted with additional fuel tanks and passenger seats around the sides. It’s run by the best specialist pilots from the RAF and is called the Special Duties Flight, part of the Firm’s special operations capability. It’s the limousine of helicopters, says H, and rattles much less than others because it’s maintained more diligently and they actually take the trouble to tighten up all the nuts and bolts. Even the pilot sounds quite posh. It’s the Firm’s preferred means of transport between London, Hereford and Fort Monckton on the coast, where among other things, H now tells me, he occasionally teaches the finer points of MOE – covert methods of entry – to selected aspirants, based on the exceptional talents of his mentor, a Major Freddy Mace.