He had achieved a double-first in French and German and when a perceptive senior member of the faculty had introduced him to one of their former honours graduates who had suggested a career in the Foreign Office, he had accepted the offer immediately.
There had been several internal FO selection boards. The first had indicated some doubts about his suitability for the diplomatic service and he had been posted to SIS. After two years he had been moved to one side, out of the mainstream of SIS’s operation. It was then he had started work for Nick Carter.
He had mixed feelings about Carter. Almost like the feelings he had for his father. He respected him for his experience and courage, but there were times when he went out of his way to antagonize Carter. And when he was taken to task those pale blue eyes looked at him as if they knew his innermost secrets. Knew the pleasure he got when his fist thudded into flesh until it met bone. And the pleasure that was almost ecstasy that he felt at the fear in a victim’s eyes. He didn’t want Carter to know those things. He wanted Carter to admire him, and he wasn’t sure whether Carter approved or disapproved his private zest for violence. He wasn’t even certain that Carter had noticed it.
Arnold Fergus Sturgiss could have been the monozygotic twin of Maclaren except for his physical appearance. And his background.
Sturgiss was only a couple or so inches over five foot. Born and raised in Govan, within sight and sound of the football crowds in Ibrox Park, in one of the tenement blocks off Shieldhall Road, he was typical of his roots. Social workers who came with their various sociology degrees and a wild enthusiasm to put the world to rights were sent early on to the Govan tenements. It brought them back to earth in a matter of weeks. The very conscientious and loving were driven to nervous breakdowns, and the more politically inclined would experience their first doubts as to whether Marxism could actually work if human beings had to be involved.
His father had died in a foundry accident in Possil when the boy was nine, and his mother had done her best for the boy until her basically frail body had succumbed to the long hours of grinding work that had earned her just enough to keep their heads above water. When there was only her minute widow’s pension and Social Security benefits to live on she had eventually given up the struggle. She took to her bed, and at eleven years old the boy became their only bread-winner. Devoted to his mother he treated the rest of the world as his enemies. He fought, stole and bullied for food and cash. Working for money was too time-consuming and ill-rewarded. Just once he had taken money for having sex with a man from Bearsden and when the agony was over he had left the man unconscious. He had taken his wallet, cheque-book, and even his clothes.
At school he was admired for his courage by both teachers and pupils but he was no scholar. His mind was never on his books, and teachers gave up expecting homework from him. They knew his circumstances and knew that so far as school was concerned he was doomed.
A friendly neighbour had got him a labourer’s job at the foundry where his father had worked, and died. He was fifteen then, and his mother was bedridden. Pressed by the doctor to go into the isolation hospital to see if they couldn’t cure her TB she had adamantly and tearfully refused. She died a couple of months before his eighteenth birthday.
He sold their few sticks of furniture, and with twelve pounds in his Post Office Savings book he joined the army. Everything about him suited the army. His aggression, his guts, and his liking for every aspect of the military life. A sergeant by the time he was twenty he saw the notice on the company board for volunteers for a Field Security parachute unit and he applied.
After the parachute course he was sent down to the Intelligence Corps depot in Kent where he completed the course in three months. His first posting was to Hong Kong, and after that, Berlin and Hamburg. It was the SIS detachment in Hamburg who noticed him, and after some routine checking on his background he was transferred to their establishment. He made no protest when he was given the more violent subjects to handle when the interrogators were in a hurry for information. There were odd occasions when they left some minor interrogation to Sturgiss and were surprised that just being street-smart was sometimes more effective than the usual grinding down by multiple interrogations. Despite the fact that he was an established field-agent for SIS he wasn’t really part of the group. Nothing had ever been said, but when they invited him to one of their parties or picnics they obviously didn’t expect him to accept. They admired him for his guts, but they were embarrassed by his lack of even the elementary social graces. He was neither hurt nor angered by their attitude. The world was still his enemy. And they were part of it.
When Carter interviewed him he was 26, and for the first time in his life another human being made him feel wanted. Carter was big and tough, and he talked with Sturgiss about his background and SIS experience for a whole weekend. Carter was looking for another man for his small group who carried out SIS’s borderline assignments. The borderline between mere illegality, which they were well used to, and outrage.
Sturgiss had heard nothing after the weekend for almost three months, and then he had been told to make his way to an address just outside Stratford on Avon. A house set in its own grounds. The house had once been a parsonage, but its windows were
