One was of Penelope's head six inches from Thorne the Horn's fly as she gazed dotingly up at him with her breasts peeping out of her new designer suit. The other was of Hannah's wide eyes not daring to blink, and her open mouth silently singing her joy as she squeezed the last drops of life out of me on the sofa-bed in her nun's cell.
“Parcel for Harry,” I intoned, and watched the magic door open.
• • •
I haven't described Mr Anderson's appearance beyond remarking on his similarity to Brother Michael. Like Michael he is a man complete, at once tall and bearish, the features as permanent as lava stone, every movement an event. Like Michael, he is a father to his men. He is somewhere in his late fifties, you assume, yet you have no sense that he was yesterday a dashing lad, or tomorrow will be on the shelf. He is rectitude personified, he is constabular, he is the oak of England. Just crossing a room he takes the moral justification for his actions with him. You can wait an eternity for his smile, but when it comes you're closer to God.
Yet for me the real man, as ever, is the voice: the singer's considered tempo, the timed pauses always for effect, the fireside north country cadences. In Sevenoaks, he has told me more than once, he is the leading baritone. In his younger years he sang tenor-contralto and had been tempted to go professional, but loved his Service more. And it was Mr Anderson's voice again that dominated all other impressions at the instant of my venturing through the doorway. I was aware, dimly, of other sounds and other bodies on the premises. I saw an open sash window and billowing net curtains, so evidently there was a breeze blowing up here which hadn't been the case at street level. But the focus of my interest was the upright silhouette of Mr Anderson against the window and his homey northern tones as he went on speaking on his cellphone.
“He'll be here any minute, Jack, thank you,” I heard him say, apparently oblivious that I was standing six feet from him. “We'll turn him round just as fast as we can, Jack — no faster.” Pause. “You are correct. Sinclair.” But Sinclair wasn't the name of whoever he was talking to. He was confirming that Sinclair was the man. “He's fully aware of that, Jack. And I shall make him even more aware when he arrives” — by now looking straight at me yet still not admitting to my presence “no, he's not a new boy. He's done a bit of this and that for us, and you can take it from me he's the man for the job. All the languages you can eat, capable in the extreme, loyal to a fault.” Could it really be me he was referring to capable in the extreme — loyal to a fault? But I contained myself. I doused the eager gleam in my eye.
“And his insurance goes on your tab, not ours, you'll remember, Jack. All risks, please, plus sickness in the field and repatriation by fastest available. Nothing ends on this doorstep. We're here if you need us, Jack. Just remember, every time you call up, you slow the process. I do believe he's coming up the stairs now. Aren't you, Salvo?” He had rung off. “Now pay close attention to me, son. We've a lot of growing up to do in a short space of time. Young Bridget here will provide you with your change of clothing. That's a fine dinner jacket you're wearing, it's a pity you've to take it off. They've come a long way, have dinner jackets, since my day. It was black or black at the Annual Songsters' Ball. Dark red like yours was bandleaders. So you told your wife all about it, did you? A top-secret assignment of national importance which has blown up overnight, I expect?”
“Not a single word, sir,” I replied firmly. “You told me not to, so I didn't. I bought it specially for her night,” I added, because, Hannah or no Hannah, I had a need to preserve his faith in my connubial fidelity until it was time for him to be advised of my altered arrangements.
The woman he called young Bridget had positioned herself square to me and was looking me over while she held a varnished fingertip to her lips. She was wearing pearl earrings and designer jeans well above her pay-grade, and she was swaying her hips to the rhythm of her cogitations.
“What waist have you got, Salv? We reckoned thirty-two.”
“Thirty, actually.” Hannah had said I was too thin.
“Know your inside leg?”
“Thirty-two, last time I looked,” I riposted, matching her jokey style.
“Collar?”
“Fifteen.”
She disappeared down a corridor, surprising me with a wildfire desire for her until I realised it was merely a resurgence of my desire for Hannah.
“We've a bit of live action for you, son,” Mr Anderson announced, with great portent, as he tucked his cellphone back into his handkerchief pocket. “No more sitting in a nice comfortable cubicle and listening to the world from a safe distance, I'm afraid. You're about to meet some of those ruffians in the flesh, and do a bit of good for your country while you're about it. You're not averse to changing your identity, I take it? Everybody wants to be somebody else at some point in their lives, they tell me.”
“Not averse at all, Mr Anderson. Not if you say it's necessary. Very willing indeed.” I'd already changed it once in the last twenty-four hours, so twice wasn't going to make a lot of difference. “Who are we saving the world from this time?” I enquired, careful to conceal my excitement beneath a breezy manner. But to my surprise, Mr Anderson took my question to heart, mulling it over before putting one of his own.
“Salvo.”
“Mr Anderson?”
“How squeamish are you about getting your hands dirty in a good cause?”
“I thought I was doing that already — well, only in a way,” I corrected myself hastily.
I was too late. Mr Anderson's brow had clouded. He set great store by the moral integrity of the Chat Room, and did not care to have it impugned, least of all by me.
“Until now, Salvo, you have performed an entirely essential, but defensive role on behalf of our beleaguered nation. As of tonight, however, you will be taking the struggle to the enemy. You will cease to be defensive, and you will become” — he was hunting for the mot juste — “proactive. Do I sense a reluctance on your part to go that extra mile?”
“None at all, Mr Anderson. Not if it's a good cause, which you say it is. I'd be happy to. As long as it's just the two days,” I added, mindful of my life-decision regarding Hannah, which I was anxious to implement with all speed. “Or three at the outside.”
“I do, however, have to warn you that from the moment you leave this building you will be deniable as far as HMG is concerned. If for any reason you are rumbled — blown, as we say — you will be abandoned without scruple to your fate. Did you hoist that aboard, son? You're looking somewhat other-worldly, if I may say so.”
With slender, well-groomed fingers, Bridget was coaxing my dinner jacket off me, unaware that, just a skull's width away from her, Hannah and I were nearly falling off her sofa-bed while we tore the remaining clothes off each other and made love a second time.
“Hoisted aboard and accepted, Mr Anderson,” I quipped gaily, if a little late. “What languages do they need? Are we talking a specialised vocabulary here? Maybe I should pop back to Battersea while the coast is clear and grab some works of reference.”
My offer was clearly not to his liking, for he pursed his lips. “That will be a matter for your temporary employers to determine, thank you, Salvo. We are not privy to their detailed plans, neither do we wish to be.”
Bridget marched me to a dingy bedroom but did not come in. Laid out on the unmade bed were two pairs of used grey flannels, three hand-me-down shirts, a selection of Prisoners' Aid underwear, socks and a leather belt with the chrome peeling off the buckle. And beneath them on the floor three pairs of shoes, part worn. A mangy sports coat dangled from a wire hanger on the door. Divesting myself of my evening wear, I was again rewarded with a waft of Hannah's body odour. Her tiny room had contained no washbasin. The bathrooms across the corridor were occupied by nurses about to go on duty.
Of the shoes, the least offensive were the worst fitting. In a mistaken victory of vanity over common sense, I nonetheless selected them. The sports jacket was of industrial-strength Ha
rris Tweed with iron armpits: push my shoulders forwards and the collar sawed my neck. Backwards, it locked me in a citizen's arrest. An olive-green tie of knitted nylon completed the dismal ensemble.
And here, if only for a minute, my spirits plummeted, for I must own straight out to my love of sartorial finery, my relish for impact, colour and display that no doubt springs direct from my Congolese mother's genes. Peek into my briefcase any working day and what will you find tucked among the written depositions, briefings, background papers and deportation orders? Glossy give-away magazines of the world's most pricey menswear, items I could never in half a dozen lifetimes afford to buy. And now look at me.
Returning to the living room I found Bridget writing out an inventory of my possessions on a legal pad: one state-of-the-art cellphone — slimline brushed steel with flip camera — one bunch of house keys, one driving licence, one British passport which for reasons of pride or insecurity I always carry on my person, and one slender wallet of genuine calf containing forty-five pounds in notes plus credit cards. Obedient to my sense of duty, I handed her the last vestiges of my former glory: my dinner jacket trousers not yet run in, my Turnbull & Asser bow tie to match, my pleated dress shirt of best sea-island cotton, my onyx dress studs and cufflinks, silk socks, patent leather shoes. I was still undergoing this painful ordeal when Mr Anderson came back to life.
“Are you familiar with one Brian Sinclair by any chance, Salvo?” he demanded accusingly. “Think hard, please. Sinclair? Brian? Yes or no?”
I assured him that, bar hearing him speak the name on his cellphone a few moments previously, I was not.
“Very well. From now on, and for the next two days and nights, Brian Sinclair is who you are. Note please the felicitous similarity of initials — B.S. In matters of cover, the golden rule is to remain as close to the reality as operational requirements permit. You are no longer Bruno Salvador, you are Brian Sinclair, a freelance interpreter raised in Central Africa, the son of a mining engineer, and you are temporarily employed by an internationally based syndicate registered in the Channel Islands and dedicated to bringing the latest agricultural techniques to the Third and Fourth Worlds. Kindly advise me whether you have any problems with that, of whatever nature.”
My heart didn't sink, but it didn't exactly rise either. His anxiety was getting to me. I was beginning to wonder whether I should be anxious too.
“Do I know them, Mr Anderson?”
“Know who, son?”
“The agricultural syndicate. If I'm Sinclair, who are they? Perhaps I've worked for them before.”
It was hard for me to see Mr Anderson's expression because he had his back to the light. “We are talking, Salvo, of an anonymous syndicate. It would be illogical indeed for such a syndicate to have a name.”
“The directors have names, don't they?”
“Your temporary employer as such has no name, any more than the Syndicate does,” Mr Anderson rebuffed me. Then he appeared to relent. “You will, however — and I suspect I am speaking out of turn — be given into the charge of one Maxie. Please do not on any account, at any future date, indicate that you have heard that name from me.”
“Mr Maxie?” I demanded. “Maxie Someone? If I'm putting my head into a noose, Mr Anderson—”
“Maxie will be quite sufficient on its own, thank you, Salvo. In all matters of command and control you will, for the purposes of this exceptional operation, report to Maxie unless otherwise directed.”
“Should I trust him, Mr Anderson?”
His chin came up sharply and his first reaction, I am sure, was that anyone named by himself was by definition a person to be trusted. Then, seeing me, he softened.
“On the strength of such information as has reached me, you would indeed be justified in placing your confidence in Maxie. He is, I am told, a genius in his field. As you are, Salvo. As you are.”
“Thank you, Mr Anderson.” But the sound-thief in me had caught the note of reservation in his voice, which was why I pressed him further. “Who does Maxie report to? For the purposes of this exceptional operation? Unless otherwise directed?” Daunted by the severity of his glare, I hastened to modify my question in a manner more acceptable to him. “I mean, we all report to someone, don't we, Mr Anderson? Even you.”
Pressed beyond bearing, Mr Anderson has a habit of breathing in deeply and lowering his head like a large animal on the point of charging.
“I understand there is a Philip,” he conceded with reluctance, “or, I am told, when it serves him” — a sniff — “Philippe, in the French manner.” Despite his polyglot calling, Mr Anderson has always considered English enough for anybody. “As you are in Maxie's hands, so Maxie is in Philip's. Does that satisfy you?”
“Does Philip have a rank, Mr Anderson?” Given his previous hesitation, his answer came fast and hard:
“No, Philip does not. Philip is a consultant. He has no rank, he is a member of no official service. Bridget. Mr Sinclair's visiting cards, if you please, hot off the presses.”
With a facetious bob Bridget presented me with a plastic purse. Prising it open, I extracted a flimsy card introducing Brian S. Sinclair, Accredited Interpreter, resident at a post-office box in Brixton. The telephone, fax and e-mail numbers were unfamiliar to me. None of my diplomas was mentioned, none of my degrees.
“What does the S stand for?”
“Whatever you wish,” Mr Anderson replied magnanimously. “You have only to select a name and stick to it.”
“What happens if someone tries to ring me?” I asked, as my thoughts went racing back to Hannah.
“A courteous recorded announcement will advise them that you will be back at your desk in a few days. Should somebody elect to e-mail you, which we consider improbable, that message will be received and dealt with in the appropriate manner.”
“But otherwise I'm the same person?”
My persistence was putting a strain on the last of Mr Anderson's patience.
“You are the same person, Salvo, recast in circumstances parallel to your own. If you are married, remain married. If you have a dear grandmother in Bournemouth, you may retain her with our blessing. Mr Sinclair himself will be untraceable, and when this operation is over, he will not have existed. I can't make myself plainer than that, can I?” And in a more emollient tone: “It's a very normal type of situation in the world you are about to enter, son. Your only problem is, you're new to it.”
“What about my money? Why do you have to keep my money?”
“My instructions are that—”
He stopped. Meeting his stare, I realised that he was surveying not Salvo the sophisticated party-goer, but a coffee-coloured Mission boy in a Salvation Army sports coat, baggy flannels and increasingly tight shoes. The sight evidently touched a chord in him.
“Salvo.”
“Yes, Mr Anderson.”
“You're going to have to harden yourself up, son. You'll be living a lie out there.”
“You said. I don't mind. I'm ready. You warned me. I need to ring my wife, that's all.” For wife, read Hannah, but I didn't say so.
“You'll be mixing with others who are living lies. You understand that, don't you? They are not like us, these people. The truth is not an absolute to them. Not the Bible truth that you and I were brought up to, much as we might wish it was.”
I had never identified, and have not to this day, Mr Anderson's religious affiliations which I suspect were largely Masonic. But he had always made a point of reminding me that we were comrades in whatever faith we both adhered to. Having handed me my cellphone for one last call, Bridget had removed herself to the bedroom no more than six feet from where I stood. Mr Anderson was anchored in the drawing room, and able to hear every word. Hunched in the little entrance hall, I underwent a crash course in the complexities of marital infidelity. My one desire was to tell Hannah of my undying love and warn her that, contrary to my assurances, I wouldn't be able to talk to her for two days. But with only a spindly door se
parating me from my audience, I had no option but to ring my legal wife and listen to her answerphone:
You have reached Penelope Randall's voicemail. I'm away from my desk right now. If you'd care to leave a message, do so after the tone. To talk to my assistant, ask for Emma on 9124.
I took a breath. “Hi, sweetie. It's me. Look, I'm terribly sorry, but I've been called away on yet another rather high-powered job. One of my oldest and best corporate clients. They say it's a matter of life and death. Could be two or three days. I'll try and ring you but it's going to be tricky.”
Who was I sounding like? Nobody I'd met. Nobody I'd listened to. Nobody I wanted to meet again. I tried harder:
“Look, I'll call as soon as they give me a spot of breathing space. I really am heartbroken, darling. Oh, and your party looked just great. Repeat, great. The outfit was fab. Everyone was talking about it. I'm just so sorry I had to walk out on you all. Lots to sort out when I come back, okay? See you, darling. Bye.”
Bridget took back my cellphone, passed me my night-bag and watched me while I checked its contents: socks, handkerchiefs, shirts, underpants, a sponge-bag, one grey pullover with V-neck.
“Using any medication at all, are we?” she murmured suggestively. “How about contact lenses? No lubricants, little boxes?”
I shook my head.
“Well, off you both go then,” Mr Anderson declared, and I went.
4
It is frankly a conundrum to me, observing these events from where I sit today, that as I followed Bridget down the stairs and back onto the pavement of South Audley Street, attired as I was in the garb of a secondary-school master up from the country, and with nothing to attach me to the world except a bunch of bogus business cards and the assurance that I was about to endure unfamiliar perils, I should have counted myself the most blessed fellow in London that night, if not the whole of England, the most intrepid patriot and secret servant, but such was indeed the case.