Our Kind of Traitor

But as time passed, the turbulent contrarian in Hector showed signs of raising its head. A new wave of Service power-brokers was pressing for a louder voice in the Westminster village. Hector, in a closed address to Senior Officers that turned out to be not quite as closed as it might have been, castigated the Wise Fools of the fourth floor who were ‘willing to sacrifice the Service’s sacred obligation to speak truth to power’.

The dust had barely settled when, presiding over a stormy post-mortem into an operational cock-up, Hector defended the perpetrators against the Joint Services’ planners, whose vision, he claimed, had been ‘unnaturally restricted by having their heads stuck up the American arse’.

Then sometime in 2003, not surprisingly, he vanished. No farewell parties, no obituary in the monthly newsletter, no obscure medal, no forwarding address. First his encoded signature disappeared from operational orders. Then it disappeared from distribution lists. Then it disappeared from the closed-circuit email address book, and finally from the encrypted phone book, which was tantamount to a death notice.

And in place of the man himself, the inevitable rumour mill:

He had led a top-floor revolt over Iraq and been sacked for his pains. Wrong, said others. It was the bombing of Afghanistan, and he wasn’t sacked, he resigned.

In a stand-up argument, he had called the Secretary to the Cabinet a ‘mendacious bastard’ to his face. Wrong again, said a different camp. It was the Attorney-General and ‘spineless toady’.

Others with rather more hard evidence to go on pointed at the personal tragedy that had befallen Hector shortly before his departure from the Service when his wayward only son Adrian, not for the first time, had crashed a stolen car at high speed while under the influence of class-A drugs. Miraculously, the only victim had been Adrian himself, who suffered chest and facial injuries. But a young mother and her baby had escaped by inches and CIVIL SERVANT’S RUNAWAY SON IN HIGH STREET HORROR made ugly reading. A string of other offences was taken into account. Broken by the affair, said the rumour mill, Hector had withdrawn from the secret world in order to support his son while he was in gaol.

But while there might have been some merit in this version – it had at least a few hard facts in its favour – it could not have been the whole story, because a few months after his disappearance, it was Hector’s own face staring out of the tabloids, not as the distraught father of Adrian but as the doughty lone warrior fighting to save an old-established family firm from the clutches of those he dubbed VULTURE CAPITALISTS, thereby securing himself a sensational headline.

For weeks, Hector-watchers were regaled with stirring tales of this old-established, decently prosperous docklands firm of grain importers with sixty-five long-serving employees, all shareholders, whose ‘life-support system has been switched off overnight’, according to Hector who also overnight had discovered a gift for public relations: ‘The asset-strippers and carpet-baggers are at our gates, and sixty-five of the best men and women in England are about to be tossed on to the rubbish heap,’ he informed the press. And sure enough, within a month, the headlines shouted: MEREDITH FIGHTS OFF VULTURE CAPITALISTS – FAMILY FIRM IN TAKEOVER TRIUMPH.

And a year later, Hector was sitting in his old room on the fourth floor, raising a little hell, as he liked to call it.

* * *

How Hector had talked his way back in, or whether the Service had gone to him on bended knee, and what anyway were the functions of a so-called Director of Special Projects were mysteries Luke could not but ponder as he followed him at a snail’s pace up the splendiferous staircase of his club, past the crumbling portraits of its imperial heroes, and into the musty library of books that nobody read. And he continued to ponder it as Hector pulled shut the great mahogany door, turned the key, dropped it into his pocket, unfastened the buckles of an old brown briefcase and, shoving a sealed Service envelope at Luke with no stamp on it, ambled to the ceiling-high sash window that looked out on to St James’s Park.

‘Thought it might suit you a bit better than pissing around in Admin,’ he remarked carelessly, his craggy body silhouetted against the grimy net curtains.

The letter inside the Service envelope was a printout from the same Queen of Human Resources who only two months ago had passed sentence on Luke. In lifeless prose it transferred him with immediate effect and no explanation to the post of Coordinator of an embryonic body to be known as the Counterclaim Focus Group, answerable to the Director of Special Projects. Its remit would be to ‘consider proactively what operational costs may be recovered from customer departments who have significantly benefited from the product of Service operations’. The appointment carried an eighteen-month extension to his contract, to be credited to his length of service for the purpose of pension rights. Any questions, email this address.

‘Make sense to you at all?’ Hector inquired, from his place at the long sash window.

Mystified, Luke said something about it helping with the mortgage.

‘You like proactive? Proactive grab you?’

‘Not much,’ said Luke, with a baffled laugh.

‘The Human Queen adores proactive,’ Hector retorted. ‘Gets her horny as a cat. Shove in focus, you’re home and dry.’

Should Luke humour the man? What on earth was he up to, hauling him off to his awful club at eleven in the morning, giving him a letter that wasn’t even his to give, and making pedantic cracks about the Human Queen’s English?

‘Heard you had a bad time in Bogota,’ Hector said.

‘Well, up and down, you know,’ Luke replied defensively.

‘Bonking your number two’s wife, you mean? That sort of up and down?’

Staring at the letter in his hand, Luke saw it start to tremble but by an act of self-control managed to say nothing.

‘Or the sort of up and down that comes of being hijacked at machinegun-point by some shit of a drug baron you thought was your joe,’ Hector pursued. ‘That sort of up and down?’

‘Very probably both,’ Luke replied stiffly.

‘Mind telling which came first – the hijack or the bonk?’

‘The bonk, unfortunately.’

‘Unfortunately because, while you were being detained at your drug baron’s leisure in his jungle redoute, your poor dear wife back in Bogota got to hear you’d been bonking the girl next door?’

‘Yes. That’s right. She did.’

‘With the result that when you escaped from your drug baron’s hospitality, and found your way home after a few days of rubbing shoulders with nature in the raw, you didn’t get the hero’s welcome you were expecting?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Did you tell all?’

‘To the drug baron?’

‘To Eloise.’

‘Well, not all,’ said Luke, not entirely sure why he was going along with this.

‘You confessed to whatever she already knew, or was certain to find out,’ Hector suggested approvingly. ‘The partial hang-out posing as the full and frank confession. Fair reading?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Not prying, Luke, old boy. Not judgemental. Just getting it straight. We stole some good horses together back in better days. In my book you’re a bloody good officer and that’s why you’re here. What d’you think of it? Overall. The letter you’re holding in your hand. Otherwise?’

‘Otherwise? Well, I suppose I’m a bit puzzled by it.’

‘Puzzled by what exactly?’

‘Well why this urgency, for a start? All right, it’s with immediate effect. But the job doesn’t exist.’

‘Doesn’t have to. Narrative’s perfectly clear. Cupboard’s bare, so the Chief goes to the Treasury with his begging bowl and asks ’em for more cash. Treasury digs its toes in. “Can’t help you. We’re all broke. Claw it back from all the buggers who’ve been getting a free ride off you.” I thought it played rather well, given the times.’

‘I’m sure it’s a good idea,’ said Luke earnestly, by now more lost than he had been ever since his untriumphant return to England.

‘Well, if it doesn’t play, now’s your time to speak up, for Christ’s sake. No second