But the more he tried to concentrate on what he had to do tomorrow, the more he began to think he’d had enough.
He had lived the lie for too long.
***
It must have been something he’d said.
For the life of him, though, he couldn’t remember what, or to whom, or when, or where, or why he had said it, whatever it was.
But here he was, in James Piper’s office.
“I hear on the grapevine, that you’d like a break from overseas work,” said his boss, the Head of Section 7.
“Whatever makes you think that?” asked Maurice, playing for time.
He hadn’t been expecting this; a new assignment abroad, perhaps, but not this.
“A little bird told me that you were beginning to think you’d had enough.”
“Who?”
“Can’t remember,” James lied.
“When?”
“Shortly after your visit to Sandhurst.”
“You weren’t supposed to know about that,” said Maurice. “Nobody was.”
James Piper, stood up from behind his desk, and went to his bookcase.
“Scotch?”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s stop playing around,” he said. “We both know you’re the best field operator we’ve got, and have been for years. We both know, too, that life’s not been any easier for you since Marjory died. Shocking blow that was, for you and for Peter. So I’m not surprised if you feel like a change for a bit. Something quieter – less stressful.”
Maurice sipped his glass of malt.
“And you shouldn’t be surprised either, that word got back that you had been to the Royal Military Academy to see Peter graduate. I can’t blame you for that. Anyone else would have done the same. Anyone else, though, would have asked.”
“And been refused.”
“Anyone else, perhaps. But not you, Maurice.”
James grinned.
“It was a bloody good effort, if I may say so, and you almost got away with it.”
“I knew it was risky, going to the heart of the military establishment like that. But I simply had to be there. I just hoped nobody would spot me.”
“Nobody did.”
“So how do you know?”
“You were looking through the Sovereign’s Parade programme on the return aircraft out east. One of the crew noticed, and mentioned it to our Military Attaché in Singapore, who just happened to be on the same flight.”
“I didn’t know Alastair Carter was on the aircraft.”
“He recognised you.”
“I hadn’t had time to look through it properly until then. I should have thought that someone might notice. I must be slipping.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m not sure I want to jack it in just yet, though.”
“We don’t want you to, either. But when you do want to, you only have to say. We can’t afford to have people like you filling a vital role when their mind isn’t on the job.”
“Total commitment.”
“That’s what we want. And that’s what you’ve always provided.”
“Things are a bit different, now.”
“Since Marjorie died, you mean?”
“Yes. Twenty-four years ago, that was. That, and the fact that Peter is doing his own thing now. The Army and all that.”
“No roots anymore.”
“I suppose that’s it, in a way.”
“You’ve got your place in Hampshire.”
“But I never get there. It isn’t home, somehow. Nothing is, until you’ve lived there a bit.”
“Good fishing though.”
“What I’ve always wanted. A quiet place on the river, with my own trout fishing when I want it.”
“But you never get there.”
“Peter uses it more than I do. Sometimes we get there together, for the odd day. But not often.”
“Not often enough.”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps it is often enough,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “Could I really settle there, after everything?”
“It would certainly be a change of lifestyle. Very different,” agreed James.
“Nothing to do all day? Doesn’t sound like me, somehow, and yet sometimes I wonder.”
“Better than ‘travelling’, perhaps.”
“But I really enjoy that. The challenges keep me going. I’m not sure I could manage without the adventure of working overseas.”
“Keep going then, for a bit longer.”
Maurice sipped his whiskey.
“Perhaps I will then. Just for a bit longer.”
“Finish the job you’re on?” asked James.
“Of course.”
“Going well, I hear.”
“I’m happy with progress so far. I think we shall pull it off in the end.”
“You will, you mean. How long?”
“Four months or so, with luck. Maybe sooner.”
“That would be perfect,” said James with a smile.
“Why?”
“I have something else in mind. Timing could be about right, and it would mean being based here for a bit. Give you a change. You could spend some time in Hampshire.”
“With Peter.”
“Depending on where he’s posted by then.”
“What sort of job is it?”
“Recruiting, shall we say.”
“Who?”
“A guy we want on our side. With any luck, he’ll be in London about then. If you can turn him for us, you would well end up working overseas again, with him when he gets back home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Never mind. Later will do, if the job’s still on.”
“Important chap?”
“Very. Could be a major coup for us, which would have the Americans begging at our doorstep. If we can pull it off.”
“A few months based back here might help me to decide, I suppose.”
“If you do decide to keep going, there will always be work for you somewhere overseas if you want it. Or you could stay here in London. It’s up to you.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s agreed, then.”
Maurice stood to leave.
“There’s one other thing to bear in mind,” said James.
“What’s that?”
“No promises or anything.” James put his finger to his lips. “But I shall be retiring in a year or so, and ‘C’ will want a safe pair of hands to sit here when I go. When you do get back from Jakarta, you can sit next door. As Deputy Head.”
Maurice looked around the office.
“No promises or anything.”
***
So Maurice went back to Jakarta, although most people thought he’d gone to Warsaw, where they all knew he was working. Or thought they knew.
He wasn’t able to make contact with Peter before he returned. For a start, Peter didn’t know he’d been in London, or even to Sandhurst, and for a second thing Maurice wasn’t sure where Peter was, either.
It was some time since they’d exchanged letters, what with the graduation parade and everything.
It was only their letters that kept them in touch, really.
They were a bridge between them, and always had been, since Marjorie died.
***
Suddenly, though, the Jakarta job stopped going as well as it had been. It nearly stopped altogether.
It was as if they knew what he was up to. Somebody somewhere had got suspicious, or talked or something.
It was an ambush, of sorts.
His car was rammed on an isolated road, miles from anywhere, and he ended up in the ditch. He recognised the car that had forced him off the road, and guessed who was driving it.
He saw the car stop, and the driver and passenger get out. It was them, all right. They ran towards his smashed car.
He played dead. He nearly was anyway. But his trusted contact and driver, lying on top of him, was still alive enough to try to get out of the
wrecked car. Maurice could do nothing to stop him.
A bullet in the head did that.
Somehow, Maurice survived. It flashed through his mind that it was 24 years since Marjorie died. She hadn’t been to Sandhurst, like he had. He just wished that Peter had known he had been there. One day he’d tell him, perhaps. If he survived a bit longer.
One more time.
He watched the assassin’s car drive off at speed. He drifted off, sure he was dying.
Eventually, the police turned up, and called the para-medics.
He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and knew he was running out of time to complete his mission.
He was getting much better.
Recovering quite quickly now, he thought, and when he pulled the drips and wires and everything away one night and nothing much happened, he made for the door.
Still nothing much happened, so he had decided he was better enough.
He kept going.
He knew who had been responsible. They could be sorted later. Meanwhile, he had a job to finish. At least the opposition thought he was dead. Otherwise, he’d have collected a bullet in the head as well. In the end, it took him longer to finish the operation than he had planned. Five months since his chat with James Piper, not the four he had forecast. But at last he was able to send a ‘mission accomplished’ message to the Head of Section 7.
He eventually got home, wanting a few days with Peter at the cottage.
But Peter had been posted to Hong Kong.
The bridge had collapsed.
10.
THE TAVERN
There were three of them. Always together, but never seen outside the limits of their college, where they had been sent by North Korea’s ‘Supreme Leader’ for some very special training.
They were very special students, because only very special people ever got sent anywhere overseas. These students, the sons of senior officials who had found favour with the ruling elite in their country, were also among the few people there who spoke reasonably good English. It was for this reason, among others, that they had been selected for a term away from their Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, to continue their studies at Westminster University in London.
They were not like any other students, anywhere. For one thing, they were smartly dressed. For another, they devoted themselves to their studies to the exclusion of everything else, because they believed that this is what Kim Jong-un wanted them to do. The only time they left the confines of the Science and Technology Faculty in New Cavendish Street was to get to their nearby private lodgings. They had so far not explored London at all, but had stayed within the confines of the campus. It was plain to everyone who came across them there that they were totally brainwashed by the regime from which they had come. It was also plain that one of them had been sent as a ‘minder’, to ensure that the other two abided by the rules.
Which is why it was so very unusual to find them having lunch in the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street.
The Fitzrovia district of Central London had once been a highly fashionable area, inhabited by the great and the good and the wealthy. Part of it still was, but other parts had become - shall we say - less fashionable, with the university campus and its multifarious student population that goes with it. The Fitzroy Tavern, owned by the brewing family of Samuel Smith, was a typical London pub of the old sort. It was always a centre for the literati. George Orwell and Dylan Thomas both drank there, and it still attracted authors, musicians, actors and artists as it always did, together with the new mix of business and university clients.
So the three students had plenty of fellow scholars as company, as well as a few tutors.
The North Korean Embassy, however, based in its semi-detached house in Ealing, had taken much persuading before it eventually gave the students authority to investigate the rowdy drunkenness and decadence to be found in this underground hell-hole so typical of the capitalist life style of alcohol and drugs in England’s capital city, just a few hundred yards from their university home.
When they arrived, they were therefore rather surprised to find a quite civilised gathering of students, tutors and well-dressed and well behaved office workers enjoying good food and drink during their lunch break. They were made welcome, shown to a table and offered the menu. Two of them were anxious to learn more by entering into conversation with other diners, some of whom they recognised as being from their faculty, but their fellow minder soon warned them off. There was to be no fraternising without incurring the wrath of their Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. And they all knew what that meant, for themselves and their families.
Nevertheless, this was far from what they had been led to expect. No doubt if they returned at some other time, or even explored a different establishment of a similar nature, they would discover that their briefing had been absolutely accurate.
But they were nevertheless not comfortable in this strange environment, and their discomfiture was made the more acute when one of the customers who had been at the bar, came across to sit with them at their table, which was set for four people.
“Do you mind?” he asked politely. “I don’t want to interrupt, but it is always so crowded here, and this seems to be the only available seat.”
Off hand, they could think of no reason why the man should not share their table, so they nodded, with a smile. Apart from anything else, they were waiting for the food they had ordered.
“Thank you,” said the man, looking at the menu. “Most kind of you.”
“What have you ordered?” he asked, as the waiter approached.
“The steak and kidney pudding,” replied one of them. “We want to sample your traditional food.”
“An excellent choice,” said the man. “It’s always good here. I think I’ll join you.” He nodded to the girl waiting to take his order. “And a pint of best bitter, please.” he added.
“When they have it, the liver and onions is very good, too,” he told the students.
The trio smiled, but said nothing.
“Have you been here before?” asked the man.
“Never before,” replied one of them eagerly. “We have special permission to make this visit.”
“Special permission?” queried the man.
“Special permission,” he repeated. “We are students from North Korea. We need special permission to leave our studies.”
“Ah,” said the man. “What an interesting country yours is! I would love to visit it myself sometime.”
“Visitors are made very welcome by our supreme leader,” said one.
“But because of the vile efforts of America to cripple our country, not many do people visit except from China, and they are mostly on day trips. Because of their hostile policy towards us, the US will not let others visit our wonderful homeland,” said the ‘minder’.
The man decided not to argue.
“How do you like England,” he asked. “Where else have you been?”
“Nowhere else.”
“Where else in London?”
“Nowhere else, except the University. Until today.”
“How long have you been here then?”
“Nearly three weeks,” replied the talkative student.
“And until today, you have been nowhere at all?”
“We are here to study for the benefit of our country, not to behave as tourists.”
“But are you not curious to learn more about this country – about London, even?”
“There is nothing here we need to learn about, that we do not already have in our own glorious country. You could learn a lot from us, in spite of what the imperialist Americans may think of us.”
“Apart from our studies,” said the ‘minder’, “we are also here to improve our English, so that we can defend our leader against the lying and traitorous propaganda spread by the wretched scum in America.”
The food arrived. “Just in time,” the man thought.
T
hey ate in silence.
After a short time, the ‘minder’ said something to his colleagues in Chosŏnŏ.
He asked the man, “Where is the toilet, please?”
“At the back,” he pointed towards the far end of the bar.
As he left the table, he muttered something else to his two fellow students.
“Is he in charge of you?” asked the man with a smile.
“Almost,” replied one of them. “Apart from furthering his studies with us, his main duty is to make sure we both abide by the rules which govern our visit here, and do not stray from the wishes of our dear leader.”
“These rules forbid us from conversation with strangers, although we may extol the virtues of our own wonderful country,” said the other.
“And I would certainly like to learn more about your country and its people,” replied the man.
“And we would also wish to learn more about yours, but regrettably this is not allowed except from our tutors at the University.”
“So we do not meet ordinary citizens,” concluded the other.
“We should meet again,” suggested the man. “Would that be possible?”
The two students glanced at one another, and towards the toilets, beyond the far end of the bar.
“It might be possible, if we are careful.”
“We would welcome the chance to correct all the false information propagated by our enemies the Americans.”
“As well as learning more about life here,” added the other.
“We had not imagined a place like this, for instance.”
“And yet it is full of our fellow students and a few of our tutors,” responded the other.
The man pulled out a small wallet from his pocket and extracted three visiting cards.
“Take these,” he said, offering them one each. “My name and phone number is on them. You can see I work and live near here, so this would be a good place to meet again if you want. Please write your names on this one for me.”
He gave them the third card.
As one wrote his name, they looked carefully to make sure their fellow student was not in sight. The other then wrote his name hurriedly on the back. He glanced around, just as their ‘minder’ emerged from the Gents, and quickly added a note in Chŏsongŭl script.
The man took the card and without a word slipped it into his pocket.
The students’ minder paid the bill at the bar on his way back to the table, and ushered them to their feet.
“We must go,” he demanded. “We have been in this place long enough and should return to our studies.”
Without a word, the other two students stood and left, giving the man a courteous nod of the head as they made their way towards the stairs and the fresh air of Charlotte Street.