Accidental Agent Read online

  Praise for Alan Judd

  ‘Fascinating . . . if one of the hallmarks of a good novel is that the characters do not remain static but are subtly transformed by events, then this is a very good novel indeed’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Credible, intriguing and admirably developed . . . a substantial and entertaining book’

  Scotsman

  ‘Perhaps the best work of fiction about modern soldiering since the books of Leslie Thomas and David Lodge’

  Evening Standard

  ‘Judd keeps plot and action centre-stage . . . he has written a novel perfect for brightening up a drizzly winter Sunday’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge’

  New Statesman

  ‘Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever’

  Peter Hennessy on Legacy

  ‘He knows that world backwards and writes with an understanding of human frailty that is rare’

  Sunday Express

  ‘This is a documentary novel that has the authentic feel of a race against time. It might be unwise to miss it’

  New Fiction Society

  ‘A page-turner . . . This is a novel that bears reading carefully, savouring the historical detail and the use of tension that Judd employs’

  The Historical Novel Society

  ‘Well constructed, witty and at times moving’

  The Independent on Tango

  ‘Brilliant, original . . . the triumph of this novel is that it presents a picture of a man tortured by his own conscience and does it with verve, compassion and humour. I have absolutely no doubt that it will become a minor modern classic’

  Books and Bookmen

  ‘Judd has complete command of the subtleties of character, ambition and emotional ambiguity’

  Anne McElvoy on The Kaiser’s Last Kiss

  ‘Judd writes with a silky deadliness, a serious purpose evident beneath the comedy and the social satire’

  British Book News

  To Jo

  Chapter One

  Reflecting on it afterwards, it seemed to Charles Thoroughgood that the whole sad affair began with a wedding reception. The origins long pre-dated that, of course, germinating secretly in the characters and careers of the principal actors, but it was at that sunlit reception on the lawn of a large house in south-west London that it all began to unravel.

  Or come together, depending on how you looked at it. There was, it turned out, a pattern in the carpet that Charles hadn’t spotted because he wasn’t looking. Even if he had looked, it would have seemed fanciful to perceive such an emerging shape. It was his failure, he had to admit afterwards; as chief of MI6 part of his job was to be alive to such possibilities but he had allowed familiarity and friendship, twin enemies of vigilance, to cloud his sight. Not to mention complacency and – harder to admit – age. The pattern was in the carpet all along but he did not see it until it was too late. Almost.

  He later dated it to a precise moment at the reception, the first flickering indication that there might be a problem. The wide, red, wine-mottled face of a former colleague had grinned at him across a champagne glass and said, ‘Must say, retirement’s taught me what I long suspected.’ He paused for Charles to respond.

  Charles struggled. He remembered the man – one or two of his postings and MI6 Head Office jobs, a minor scandal in New Delhi that led to divorce, his retirement party a couple of years before. Everything except his name.

  ‘That people have jobs to avoid work.’ The red face creased in laughter, the eyes almost disappearing in folds of flesh.

  Avoidance of work was something else Charles now remembered about the man. He had done his quota of that in a so-so career limited not so much by lack of ability as by lack of aspiration and a preference for the diplomatic drinks circuit over the hard graft of finding and recruiting useful agents. One of those officers who was always in or between meetings, another way of avoiding work. But the name – Jerry something? John? There were so many Johns.

  ‘Of course, your own retirement must be coming up, isn’t it? Unless MI6 chiefs can prolong themselves indefinitely, which I doubt, these days. I suppose Gareth Horley will take over, will he? What he always wanted. Hungry Horley, we called him in Lagos. Always rushing off to the high commissioner with some titbit before telling his head of station. Usually a report that turned out to be exaggerated, putting it kindly. Mind you, with old What’s-His-Face as head of station – old Thingy, you know, that madman – can’t do names for the life of me these days – you couldn’t blame Gareth. Jimmy Milton, that’s it. Did you ever work with Jimmy? Mad as a hatter about security. Used to bury his house keys in his garden before going anywhere under alias. As if anyone claiming to live a blameless ordinary life in 123 Acacia Avenue wouldn’t have the means for getting back into 123 Acacia Avenue when he got home. I remember one day when Jimmy . . .’

  Charles tried to look interested without too obviously gazing across the lawn crowded with other wedding guests. He was recalling ever more about his interlocutor, but still not the name. A genial cove – a word the man would himself have used – helpful, friendly, dependable, limited, loyal. Above all, loyal, the most important quality in an intelligence officer. Lack of any other quality could be compensated for or worked around but lack of loyalty undermined everything. It was probably the most common, and therefore most underrated, quality among people in the Office. It was a given: you were part of the family, you could have rows and disagreements daily but loyalty, absolute loyalty, was taken for granted. Rightly, in almost every case. And therein lay its danger.

  Interesting that the man should name Gareth Horley as his possible successor as chief. Charles had discussed his likely recommendation with no one apart from Sarah, his wife, and the cabinet secretary, to whom he answered. Gareth was director of MI6 operations, effectively Charles’s deputy, promoted by him because he was everything that this nameless interlocutor was not – hard-working, with a good operational record of recruiting and running important agents, an effective bureaucrat who understood how to work Whitehall without appearing too manipulative, a charming, effective and amusing colleague. Granted, he wasn’t universally popular in the Office, being seen – by his own generation in particular – as nakedly ambitious, a smiling assassin whose chief loyalty was to himself. But that was not incompatible with loyalty to the Office and to his country, and ambition was now regarded as creditable so long as it furthered the cause as well as the individual. It was different when Charles had joined decades before, when to call someone ambitious was a serious criticism. The trick then was to be ambitious without showing it; now, you were marked down on your annual assessment if you didn’t display it. The change had favoured Gareth.

  But no one was perfect and Charles was persuaded that the Office would do better under Gareth than under any other in-house choice. He was also satisfied that his choice would have been the same even if he and Gareth had not been on friendly terms for years and had not, as younger officers, run operations together. Not that these days the choice of successor was any longer his; EU rules required that the post be advertised to outsiders and Whitehall might well decide that it would look more fashionably inclusive to have a woman, or someone from an ethnic minority or an out-to-grass politician to run Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But his view would still carry informal clout because of his relations with the cabinet secretary and the various departmental permanent secretaries who would decide the shortlist before recommending it to the foreign secretary and prime minister. So long as he didn’t make a mess of things in the meantime. Also, with Brexit the reign of EU rules was presumably coming to an end.

  ‘One thing I wanted to ask.’ The man lowered his voice
and moved closer, with the exaggerated solemnity of a spaniel begging a biscuit. ‘These negotiations, this Brexit stuff – I hope we’re reporting on the buggers, their position papers, fallbacks and all that? Bloody well should be.’

  It had become a frequent question since the Brexit referendum, easily answered. ‘Off-limits as far as Whitehall is concerned. They wouldn’t wear it. Spying on friends is politically more dangerous than spying on enemies. Anyway, the EU is so leaky we don’t need to; it all comes out in the wash. Maybe it’ll change after we’ve left.’

  ‘But they’re not our friends, they’re trading partners who are also competitors. Anyway, countries don’t have friends, they have interests. Can’t remember who said that. Applies even more to intelligence services.’

  Charles was relieved to spot Sarah’s blue and white dress as she detached herself from the crowd and came across the lawn towards them. Luckily, he was spared the embarrassment of introductions. ‘Robin,’ she said, smiling and holding out her hand to the red-faced man, ‘we haven’t met since your retirement party. How’s retirement treating you?’

  ‘Sarah, how are you, lovely to see you. I was just saying to Charles, it’s taught me what I’ve long suspected . . .’

  Charles relaxed. Sarah, a lawyer who was not in the Office herself, was unique in having married successive chiefs and so had long experience of the kind of social chit-chat required. Also, she had a rather better memory than Charles for names and people, many of whom she knew through her late husband. She knew too that they would all have a simplified version of her and Charles’s history – youthful lovers at Oxford, rivalry with the man she later married, a child sent for adoption, decades of estrangement from Charles followed by reconciliation after the disgrace and death of her husband; and Charles’s role in his downfall. Knowing that this was what they would all be thinking of while talking to her, she had felt awkward and self-conscious for months after she and Charles had married but the gradual realisation that most people were more interested in themselves than others had made things easier. Now, she knew that if she didn’t let the past become a problem for her, everyone else would ignore it, even if they didn’t quite forget. After a few minutes she said, ‘Robin, much as you two would like to continue your Office gossip I’m afraid I have to grab Charles and force him to bid our farewells. He has to go back to work.’

  Robin raised his eyebrows in mock, or perhaps genuine, dismay. ‘What, working at weekends? Surely as chief you could get other people to do that for you?’

  ‘Thank God you came,’ Charles whispered as they walked arm in arm towards the marquee. ‘I thought I was trapped there for the duration. How’s it been for you?’

  ‘I think I’ve got away with it so far. Just hope we can leave before I put a foot wrong. What time’s this thing you’re doing?’

  His phone was vibrating in his pocket. He acknowledged the text. ‘Okay if we leave in the next ten minutes.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I must stay a bit longer. You go off and I’ll get a cab back.’

  It was an Anglo-Indian wedding in the bride’s parents’ home in Wimbledon, a large Edwardian house with a garden the size of two tennis courts. Robin was there because he lived in the modest bungalow next door – ‘The best my pension will pay for in this part of London. Not that you’ll have to worry about that sort of thing, I suppose’ – and Charles and Sarah because the groom, Daniel Adamson, was her godson. It was a colourful affair, the saris and costumes of the bride’s family outshining and outnumbering Daniel’s more soberly and uncertainly dressed relatives. Daniel, who had converted to Islam, wore a long green jacket edged with gold, his red beard trimmed and his hair cut. His bride, Akela, wore a flowing white dress, high-necked with long diaphanous sleeves and a see-through hood, the whole thing populated by what seemed to Charles to be sewn-in table-tennis balls. She smiled continuously but was generally quiet and looked nervous, unlike her parents, who were energetically gregarious and hospitable.

  ‘But ten minutes is a bit soon,’ continued Sarah. ‘Can’t it be longer? You must say goodbye to Deborah and everyone.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Sarah was uncharacteristically brittle over anything to do with Daniel and his mother, Deborah, an old schoolfriend. She felt guilty over her self-perceived neglect of her godmotherly duties, though Daniel himself had never welcomed them.

  ‘I’m forever on edge with Deborah and I don’t really understand why,’ she had admitted on their drive from Westminster to Wimbledon. ‘We get on, we’ve never fallen out or fought over anything, there are no obvious issues. It’s just that she’s always so perfect in everything, always has been, which makes me feel I have to act up to her expectations – which I can’t because I’m anything but perfect and it makes me nervous and I overdo it and it probably comes across to her as if I’m competing . . .’ She paused. ‘. . . There was space for comment there.’

  ‘You are perfect. It goes without saying.’

  ‘I’m not and it doesn’t, which is why it needs saying.’

  ‘She’s not exactly perfect where Daniel’s concerned. She’s all over the place with him.’

  ‘That’s because she’s hyper-defensive, which makes it worse. She can’t admit she doesn’t like the way he’s turned out, so we all have to pretend we don’t notice, and I make extra efforts to be the godmother he plainly doesn’t want so that she doesn’t think I disapprove. And of course my efforts fail because he never has wanted them, so I stop trying for a while and then she says something and I renew my efforts, which are obviously insincere, and he goes on as before.’

  ‘But converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim seems to have introduced some discipline to his life, which must surely be a good thing.’

  ‘Let’s hope. Not that it’s what Deborah would have wanted for her one and only, rich though they are. Still, she’s putting a brave face on it and we have to keep telling her how pleased we all are for him, which of course she doesn’t believe.’

  Daniel’s troubled past had cost Deborah and her then husband a deal of anxiety and money. His expulsions from successive private schools, usually couched in terms of recommendations for a specialist education more suited to his needs, culminated in his absconding from the last on the eve of examinations. He was eventually picked up by the police following an outbreak of rioting in Bradford, where he had been living rough. Charges relating to public disorder were not proceeded with and there followed a decade of unfinished courses, abandoned careers, temporary unskilled jobs, expensive stays in rehabilitation units and taxpayer-funded fresh starts. Eventually, following his parents’ divorce, he completed a course that qualified him as a carpenter, funded by his father as part of the divorce settlement. He found work with a small building firm in south-west London and had been a convert to Islam for a year or so before telling his parents. He changed his name to Abdul-Salaam, met and married Akela and now worked for himself.

  Her family had multifarious business interests but were mainly food wholesalers. ‘I get the impression he’s more religious than his in-laws,’ whispered Sarah, as they approached the marquee. ‘Enthusiasm of the convert, I suppose. He’s stopped drinking and all that whereas they obviously have no inhibitions. But they can’t be over the moon about their beloved daughter marrying a mere carpenter rather than the scion of another wealthy Indian Muslim family. And one of Jewish origin at that, albeit non-practising. Deborah’s lot just look baffled, don’t they?’

  ‘His sister-in-law, Anya, seems nice. She told me Akela is a Muslim name meaning wise. It had never occurred to me. I only knew it as the name of the leader of the Cub pack.’

  Anya was younger than Akela and was a trainee lawyer with a City firm. She wore a brilliant blue sari and made valiant efforts with all the groom’s guests. She was the only one to mention Charles’s job.

  ‘Of course, I have to believe everything my new brother-in-law tells me,’ she had said, smiling, ‘but I had
a moment of doubt when he told me the head of MI6 was coming to a Muslim wedding. Is that allowed?’

  Charles smiled back. ‘Almost compulsory now. We employ Muslims, have done for decades though no one knew it. But this is my – our – first Muslim wedding.’

  ‘I hope you feel safe?’

  ‘Safer here than anywhere.’

  They found Daniel just inside the marquee, sipping water and patiently receiving congratulations. His beard, grown since his conversion, was neatly squared off and his previously shoulder-length hair was cut above the ears. He smiled at their approach, something he would not have done before. ‘No cloaks or daggers here for you two, I’m afraid. Unless you want to disappear into the rhododendrons.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Might be misconstrued.’

  As they elaborated on their congratulations, Charles’s mind returned to his working lunch with Michael Dunton, director general of MI5, earlier that week. He and Michael lunched monthly on sandwiches and fruit juices, alternately in each other’s offices. Charles, being like red-faced Robin of a generation for whom lunchtime drinking had been a sustaining prop for the rest of the day, deferred unprotestingly to the fashion for abstinence while secretly regretting it.

  ‘One last thing,’ Michael had said. ‘Sarah has a godson, I believe, who is a recent Muslim convert?’ They had dealt with all their other business, the usual run of incipient turf disputes, resource allocations and personnel issues that it was in their mutual interest to resolve before they became too serious.

  Charles raised his eyebrows. Any item introduced as ‘one last thing’ was rarely an afterthought. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Facebook, apparently. Not that Sarah’s on it, I’m told, but the godson’s mother is and Sarah features on her page. Ditto young Daniel, of course, hence some of his associates, and it’s them we’re interested in. A couple of them, anyway. They’ve been recommending certain extremist websites to him, the sort that encourage self-starters to strike a blow for Allah with knife or vehicle, that kind of thing. No indication that he’s about to oblige but they’re saying that converts need to prove themselves and he doesn’t seem to argue with it. I only mention it because we discovered your connection with him via Sarah via his mother and all the wedding stuff and the desk officer thought you should be aware of it.’