Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The girl did not move. Her arms were around her knees, her head sunk low. Sometimes he heard her murmur, mostly she was silent. He rested his hand on her arm. The silence clung between them but they would both have heard clearly the shouts and barked orders from below.

He sent another message. Was hunkered down, could not move. Would come out when safe to do so. The airwaves of that country were alive with encoded signals and scrambled talk, and great dishes swept for traffic. Would not give a commentary and would not invite an intercept.

He watched the country boy. Trouble with him, probably used to minding cattle or sheep or goats, was that he’d have the keen eyesight to go with his work. Would not need image intensifiers, nor the lights from the personnel carriers and the trucks… Suddenly, a moment of horror. A body must have moaned or twitched and half a magazine was fired into the pit. Might have been wolves where the country boy came from, or big cats, and with his eyesight would come quality hearing. He was on the perimeter line and would have been positioned because both his vision and hearing were trusted. The country boy should have been watching what was done on the football pitch, but a goat had come to him. Gaz did not know about goats, but knew about sheep and reckoned them contrary, easily scared and wanting to be loved, and the boy’s head twisted and his eyes would have raked the slope.

Gaz thought the country boy had seen her. He stood, holding his rifle in one hand, cupping the other to his mouth and shouted below him. The officer stopped digging and listened, and the commander threw down his cigarette and listened, and a vehicle manoeuvred and its lights lit part of the slope and caught the goats in their glare.

It took Arthur Jennings no more than a cursory glance to realise the scale of the sea change. Little time taken for the new order to move in lock, stock and barrel. He would be the first one facing it, the barrel… The pictures so beloved by his friend were still in place but Jennings doubted they’d last until the evening, and the ornaments had not yet been binned, but the framed photographs of the Director-General with the American President and other, lesser, heads of government had been removed.

A quiet voice, with a squeak in it, like an oil change beckoned. “Good of you to come, Mr Jennings. Gather you had to interrupt one of your little sessions. Hope not too inconvenient… My predecessor, sadly, has health problems, is going under the knife in the next twenty-four hours, won’t be coming back, if he survives the ordeal – as we all hope he will – but can look forward to his retirement after distinguished service. The world moves on.”

No answer required and none given.

“I have no intention of faffing about during any interregnum. I expect sooner rather than later to be named as D-G, have the ‘acting’ scratched out. Am beginning as I mean to continue. Games of charades in a public house will cease to have any relevance to the actions of the Service. If a few of you, past retirement age or nearly there, wish to entertain yourselves with fabricated tales of the ‘good old days’, of course you are free to do so. But not with our support, not with our resources, not utilising any individual on the Service staff. Fanciful stories of legendary activities are ‘yesterday’, and the Service believes in ‘tomorrow’. Understood?”

Those activities cavorted in Arthur Jennings’ memory. Triumphant successes, victory snatched from clamping jaws, the dismissal of an odious functionary in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran for manifest failure. On occasions the perpetrator of a no-argument win would be brought to a Round Table gathering and a little of what had been achieved would be dispensed, and there would be an ovation: confidence that the ethos of the Service was alive, enjoyed rude health. He stared at the usurper sitting in comfort behind his friend’s desk: would probably change the bloody carpet the following day, might even have the decorators in by the end of the week.

“We are a modern outfit. We are, I am proud to say and I’ve played a part in establishing this, a place of excellence. We employ many of the best intellects that Britain produces. We have graduates with first-class degrees queuing to join us. We are not a building where mumbo-jumbo, sorcery, is tolerated. Let us be clear, Mr Jennings, we are not going to continue as if the Russian Federation is the only enemy on our horizons: simplistic, convenient and flawed. You are hearing me?”

Nothing to say. ‘AJ’ was always described as having fine eyes. Not a judgement on his vision capabilities, but his ability to bead on an opponent. Even the little inscrutables, the Chinese from the Ministry of State Security, were said to blink or deflect eye contact when it was lasered on them at rare meetings. It was reported to be fearsome. For a moment the DD-G hesitated, might have considered he had lost face, then pressed on and had a page of bullet points in front of him.

“We have endured the circus of Salisbury and relations between the Federation and the UK have been fraught and reached base camp levels. I do not intend to pursue that agenda. We have to talk, find common areas of interest, cooperate against mutual enemies. The Federation shows justifiable irritation in the way that we harbour opponents of the regime, and the extent to which dissidents and spies are awarded asylum here. I want to reach out, while in no way slackening our vigilance, and have sensible conversations. Unless our national security is directly threatened, I will not authorise hostile acts against Russian territory or interests. Most certainly I will not be permitting, on my watch, missions that have little purpose other than to further dubious policy aims abroad, or are designed only to annoy. You are quiet today, Mr Jennings.”

And would stay quiet, and would consider… too early for sherry but coffee would have been welcome.

“I believe the Service, as it moves forward, will put aside – once and for all – these playground antics. Few of them I believe would survive examination by our risk assessment teams. For heaven’s sake, we are dealing with people’s lives. We have set ourselves up as Lord God Almighty if we cling to ludicrous clichés such as ‘can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs’. I won’t have it. I will not go home at night and consider that – through my dereliction – some wretch faces execution in the morning in Evin gaol, in some hell-hole prison tucked away from sight in China, and for what? For the grotesque amusement of dinosaurs who were once on our payroll. Will not have it. Am I clear? And my predecessor’s links with your Round Table are cancelled with immediate effect. You will appreciate that the clock moves forward so we will be opening discreet channels to agencies we have formerly considered to be hostile. Don’t think this a sign of weakness. Absolutely not. It is pragmatism. Any comment?”

Arthur Jennings shook his head. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair and started to turn but it was a slow movement because of the density of the carpet pile. It was good to turn away because the gimlet in the eyes was distorted by a damp mist, like fine drizzle. His back was to the desk.

“Before you go, please Mr Jennings. Are you aware of any operations running at this time? Are there? A direct question, requiring a direct answer.”

He thought of Knacker, thought of Knacker and his girls, thought of Knacker and his girls and their quarters down from the pub where the wake would be in good heart and good voice on the first floor. He could have mentioned a couple of people who were high in the foothills adjacent to the Iranian border with Turkey and who had an asset inside. Could have summoned up the face of a woman, ugly as sin and as crafty as a ferret, who had her asset loose in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Seemed to forget them. Called to his mind Knacker and the girls who stayed close to him and the little office suite, the Yard… Within a few hours the usurper would be in contact with those parts of VBX dealing in funding and travel arrangements, and liaison with Norwegian agencies, and there would be a record of Knacker’s paper – what could be achieved, and how, and in the briefest time-frame because of the inevitable hazard of information leakage. He never had a running commentary from Knacker, but it was likely one of his girls would have a line into Operations and that brief résumés would be received in London. But the DD-G would have to know what code-name was attached to the mission, might find it hard to expose Matchless before the end of the day.