Alex's eyes widened.
'I've heard about Steak Knife and read about him in the papers all that stuff about Brian Nelson and the FRU handing over PIRA players' addresses to the UVF -but I didn't know that he actually existed. I assumed that was all black propaganda.'
'Well, of course it is, in part,' said Fenwick with a pale smile.
'But Steak Knife exists all right. And when the history of espionage finally comes to be written, our running of him as an agent will be seen as the greatest coup of them all. He's the very top man, Temple an international household name and he's working for British Intelligence.'
'You mean .. .' Into Alex's mind swam the now statesmanlike image of the figure he'd seen a thousand times on magazine covers and on television.
'I do mean,' said Fenwick.
'I'm not prepared to sit here and actually name him to you, but yes. He's ours.
She looked over at Alex who, still standing, was staring bleakly out of the window over St. James's.
'Do you begin to understand the scale of the field of battle now, Temple?
Forget the casualties you always get those. At the end of the day, as you well know, there's always the equivalent of the boy left tied to the tree in the Sierra Leone bush. You have to see the big picture.'
Alex closed his eyes. Felt his fingernails cutting into the flesh of his palms.
'The point to grasp,' continued Fenwick, 'is that having a direct handle on IRA policy has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands ..
'I can't,' said Alex flatly.
'Can't what?'
'I can't forget the casualties. I can't forget the Wheens and the Bledsoes, and the women and kids blown to smithereens in the supermarkets. I can't forget the boy tied to the tree. The human level the level on which that stuff happens is the only real level as far as I'm concerned. The rest is bollocks.'
'Well, that's hardly a very adult attitude. Your Service career's unlikely to prosper if that's how you think.'
'I'm sure you're right,' said Alex. He pulled a book from the bookcase at random, opened it, stared sightlessly at the page for a moment and returned it.
'You were lovers, weren't you? You and Dawn?'
Fenwick said nothing.
'I always used to tease her. Who's the lucky bloke you wake up next to, I used to say, missing the obvious by a mile.'
Fenwick sat unmoving, as if carved from stone.
'And now she's dead,' Alex continued.
'I watched her drown in her own blood on the side of Pen-y-Fan, and the last thing that she said before she died was your name. And you still you still think that this whole thing was worth it ..
He moved towards the door, glanced back at the motionless figure.
'Have a good life, Fenwick. I'd tell you to go to hell, but I reckon that you're probably already there.'
Marching through the dining room and down the main staircase with an alacrity rarely seen in that august institution, Alex departed the Carlton Club. It was midday and after an unpromising start the sun was making a go of it.
Pausing for a moment at the club portals, Alex took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers stored in its memory. After a moment's hesitation he selected one.
'Yep?'
'It's Alex.
There was a long silence. In the background he could hear the sound of female voices, shrieks, laughter. In the foreground, her breathing.
'Sophie?'
'Yes,' she said quietly.
'I'm still here.'
POSTSCRIPT.
London.
By 4 p.m. it was already dark and the rain-slicked pavements of Mayfair gleamed beneath the streetlights. As the driver nosed the big Jaguar into the electric glare of Piccadilly, Angela Fenwick turned to the HarperCollins publicity girl for a final confirmation that she was looking presentable, that everything was in place. Swivelling her head so that both sides of her face could be assessed, she received the publicity girl's smiling confirmation. Presentation, Angela knew, was everything at these affairs. Photographers would do anything to catch celebrities off guard even a new-born celebrity like herself, who had only emerged blinking into the flashlight of public regard a week earlier.
The launch at the club last night had gone wonderfully well, she mused, but then it wasn't every day that a senior member of MI-5 went public with her memoirs. Everyone had come: Tony and Cherie - Cherie looking lovely, as usual Gordon and Sarah of course, Patrick Mayhew, Mo Mowlam looking like something out of the Arabian Nights, Salman Rushdie (and boy, did that man owe her a favour), Tony Parsons .. . And Peter of course dear Peter with head held high since his vindication in the Hinduja passport business. The evening had been a triumph, with the only sour note struck by a scuffle between the security people and a rather tiresome group of civil rights demonstrators. In a way even that little embarrassment had worked in their favour. A paparazzo had been at hand to photograph the incident and the picture had made the cover of the Evening Standard.
The publishers had been marvelous, all in all, pulling out all the stops, footing the not inconsiderable bill without a murmur.
'We can only sell your memoirs once, Angela,' they'd told her.
'So let's go for broke!'
And they had. Naturally she hadn't put in any of the really top-secret stuW that went completely against the grain. But there had been plenty of colour, plenty of telling detail and plenty of human touches. She'd even managed to include a couple of David Trimble's famous 'knock, knock' jokes, a good Martin McGuinness fishing story and the account of how, on April Fool's day 2000, Jack Straw had officially requested that she tap Ali G's phone.
On a more serious note she'd well and truly stuck it to those bastards over at Vauxhall Cross. That had been the real pleasure kicking MI6 in the teeth. Without ever saying so directly, she'd managed to paint a picture of smug, pin-striped, public-school, all-male arrogance an arrogance that spilt over with wearying regularity into reckless free booting on the international stage. Bosnia, Russia, Serbia, Iraq .. . What the sacked MI6 whistle- blower Richard Tomlinson had started with his expos of Britain's overseas Intelligence Service, Angela Fenwick had finished.
The career-ending deal had been presented to her shortly after Downing Street had been presented with the facts concerning the violent deaths of four Service employees. Her failure to protect her people, she had been told, indicated a dangerously cavalier attitude. Resign, she had been told. Go now, honourably and with a full pension. Jump before you're pushed.
It wasn't just the murders, she'd guessed. The Home Office had wanted one of their own sort at the helm at Thames House it was as simple as that. A white, heterosexual, privately educated male. Someone who spoke their language. Someone they could do business with. Someone who'd behave in a civilised manner concerning Security Services budget deals rather than fighting tooth and nail for every penny. It wasn't to do with the Watchman murders, ultimately. The murders were just an excuse.
So she'd jumped. They'd won. And she had started collecting up all the notes she'd made over the years. And A Career Less Ordinary had been born.
Annabel, the HarperCollins publicity girl, had been particularly sweet and in the run-up to publication the two of them had become quite close. Not quite close enough to fill the aching void left by Dawn, of course eighteen months after Dawn's death Angela still thought of her prot~g& every day -but close enough for Angela to look forward to the upcoming publicity tour, and the nights c~ deux in the big provincial hotels.
The tour itself would start tomorrow; today was the big London signing.
They'd decided to do just the one, at Waterstones in Piccadilly. The event had been well advertised and according to Annabel, who'd phoned ahead to the shop, there was a good crowd building.
