Читать книгу A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming - Страница 13

It’s 6:00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 9. There are two and a half hours until Sisby.

I have laid out a grey flannel suit on my bed and checked it for stains. Inside the jacket there’s a powder-blue shirt at which I throw ties, hoping for a match. Yellow with faint white dots. Pistachio green shot through with blue. A busy paisley, a sober navy one-tone. Christ, I have awful ties. Outside, the weather is overcast and bloodless. A good day to be indoors.

After a bath and a stinging shave I settle down in the sitting room with a cup of coffee and some back issues of The Economist, absorbing its opinions, making them mine. According to the Sisby literature given to me by Liddiard at the end of our interview in July, ‘all SIS candidates will be expected to demonstrate an interest in current affairs and a level of expertise in at least three or four specialist subjects.’ That’s all I can prepare for.

I am halfway through a profile of Gerry Adams when the faint moans of my neighbours’ early-morning lovemaking start to seep through the floor. In time there is a faint groan, what sounds like a cough, then the thud of wood on wall. I have never been able to decide whether she is faking it. Saul was over here once when they started up and I asked his opinion. He listened for a while, ear close to the floor, and made the solid point that you can only hear her and not him, an imbalance that suggests female overcompensation. ‘I think she wants to enjoy it,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘but something is preventing that.’

I put the dishwasher on to smother the noise, but even above the throb and rumble I can still hear her tight, sobbing emissions of lust. Gradually, too rhythmically, she builds to a moan-filled climax. Then I am left in the silence with my mounting anxiety.

Time is passing. It frustrates me that I can do so little to prepare for the next two days. The Sisby programme is a test of wits, of quick thinking and mental panache. You can’t prepare for it, like an exam. It’s survival of the fittest.

Grab your jacket and go.

The Sisby examination centre is at the north end of Whitehall. This is the part of town they put in movies as an establishing shot to let audiences in South Dakota know that the action has moved to London: a wide-angle view of Nelson’s Column, with a couple of double-decker buses and taxis queuing up outside the broad, serious flank of the National Gallery. Then cut to Harrison Ford in his suite at The Grosvenor.

The building is a great slab of nineteenth-century brown brick. People are already starting to go inside. There is a balding man in a grey uniform behind a reception desk enjoying a brief flirtation with power. He looks shopworn, overweight, and inexplicably pleased with himself. One by one, Sisby candidates shuffle past him, their names ticked off on a list. He looks nobody in the eye.

‘Yes?’ he says to me impatiently, as if I were trying to gatecrash a party.

‘I’m here for the Selection Board.’

‘Name?’

‘Alec Milius.’

He consults the list, ticks me off, gives me a flat plastic security tag.

‘Third floor.’

Ahead of me, loitering in front of a lift, are five other candidates. Very few of them will be SIS. These are the prospective future employees of the Ministry of Agriculture, Social Security, Trade and Industry, Health. The men and women who will be responsible for policy decisions in the governments of the new millennium. They all look impossibly young.

To their left a staircase twists away in a steep spiral and I begin climbing it, unwilling to wait for the lift. The stairwell, like the rest of the building, is drab and unremarkable, with a provincial university aesthetic that would have been considered modern in the mid-1960s. The third-floor landing is covered in brown linoleum. Nicotine-yellow paint clings to the walls. My name, and those of four others, have been typed on a sheet of paper that is stuck up on a pockmarked notice board.

COMMON ROOM B3: CSSB (SPECIAL)

ANN BUTLER

MATTHEW FREARS

ELAINE HAYES

ALEC MILIUS

SAM OGILVY

A woman–a girl–who can’t be much older than twenty is standing in front of the notice board, taking in what it has to say. She appears to be reading an advertisement requesting blood donors. She doesn’t turn to look at me; she just keeps on reading. She has pretty hair, thick black curls tied halfway down with a dark blue velvet band. Strands of it have broken free and are holding on to the fabric of her tartan jacket. She is tall with thin spindly legs under a knee-length skirt. Wearing tights. A pair of thick National Health glasses obliterates the shape and character of her face.

A middle-aged man comes around the corner and passes her at the top of the stairs. She turns to him and says, ‘Hello. By any chance you wouldn’t know where Common Room B3 is, would you?’

She has a Northern Ireland accent, full of light and cunning. That was brave of them to take her on. Imagine the vetting.

The man, probably a Sisby examiner, is more helpful than I expect him to be. He says yes of course and points to a room no more than ten feet away on the far side of the landing with B3 clearly written on the door. The girl looks embarrassed not to have noticed this but he makes nothing of it and heads off down the stairs.

‘Good start, Ann,’ she says under her breath, but the remark is directed at me. ‘Hello.’

‘Hi. I’m Alec.’

‘This Alec?’ She is tapping ALEC MILIUS on the notice board.

‘The same.’

Her skin is very pale and lightly freckled. She has a slightly witchy way about her, a creepy innocence.

‘I’m so nervous,’ she says. ‘Are you? Did you find it okay?’

‘Yes, I did. Where are you from?’

‘Northern Ireland.’

We are walking into B3. Cheap brown sofas, dirty windowpanes, a low MFI table covered in newspapers.

‘Oh. Which town?’

‘Do you know Enniskillen?’

‘I’ve heard of it, yes.’

Old men with medals pinned to their chests, severed in two by the IRA. Maybe an uncle of hers, a grandpa.

‘And you?’

‘I’m English.’

‘Aye. I could tell by your accent.’

‘I live here. In London.’

The small talk here is meaningless, just words in a room, but the beats and gaps in the conversation are significant. I note Ann’s sly glances at my suit and shoes, the quick suspicion in her wide brown eyes.

‘Which part of London?’

‘Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘I don’t know that.’

No talk for a moment while we survey the room, our home for the next forty-eight hours. The carpet is a deep, worn brown.

‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks, but her smile is too full of effort. There is a machine in the corner surrounded by polystyrene cups, threatening appalling coffee.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

A gnomic man appears now in the doorway of the common room, carrying a brown leather satchel. He looks tired and bewildered, encumbered by the social ineptitude of the fabulously intelligent.

‘Is this B3?’ he asks. His hair is unbrushed.

‘Yes,’ Ann says, keenly.

He nods, clearly heavy with nerves. A hobbit of a man. He shuffles into the room and sits across from me in an armchair that has sponge pouring out of its upholstery. Ann seems to have decided against coffee, moving back toward the window at the back of the room.

‘So you’re either Sam or Matthew,’ she asks him. ‘Which one?’

‘Matt.’

‘I’m Alec,’ I tell him. We are near each other and I shake his hand. The palm is damp with lukewarm sweat.

‘Nice to meet you.’

Ann has swooped in, bending over to introduce herself. The Hobbit is nervous around women. When she shakes his hand, his eyes duck to the carpet. She fakes out a smile and retreats below a white clock with big black hands that says half past eight.

Not long now.

I pick up a copy of The Times from the low table and begin reading it, trying to remember interesting things to say about Gerry Adams. Matt takes a cereal bar out of his jacket pocket and begins tucking into it, oblivious of us, dropping little brown crumbs and shards of raisin on his Marks & Spencer blazer. It has occurred to me that in the eyes of Liddiard and Lucas, Matt and I have something in common, some shared quality or flaw that is the common denominator among spies. What could that possibly be?

Ann looks at him.

‘So what do you do, Matt?’

He almost drops the cereal bar in his lap.

‘I’m studying for a master’s degree at Warwick.’

‘What in?’

‘Computer science and European affairs.’

He says this quietly, as though he is ashamed. His skin is fighting a constant, losing battle with acne.

‘So you just came down from Warwick last night? You’re staying in a hotel?’

She’s nosy, this one. Wants to know what she’s up against.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Not far from here.’

I like it that he does not ask the same question of her.

A young man appears in the doorway. This must be Sam Ogilvy, the third male candidate. He has an immediate, palpable influence on the room that is controlling. He makes it his. Ogilvy has a healthy, vitamin-rich complexion, vacuous turquoise eyes, and a dark, strong jawline. He’ll be good at games, for sure, probably plays golf off eight or nine; bats solidly in the middle order and pounds fast, flat serves at you that kick up off the court. So he’s handsome, undoubtedly, a big hit with the ladies, but a drink with the lads will come first. His face, in final analysis, lacks character, is easily forgettable. I would put money on the fact that he attended a minor public school. My guess is that he works in oil, textiles, or finance, reads Grisham on holiday, and is chummy with all the secretaries at work, most of whom harbour secret dreams of marrying him. That’s about all there is to go on.

‘Good morning,’ he says, as if we have all been waiting for him and can now get started. He has broad athletic shoulders that manage to make his off-the-peg suit look stylish. ‘Sam Ogilvy.’

And, one by one, he makes his way around the room, shaking hands, moving with the easy confidence of an £80,000 per annum salesman used to getting what he wants–a closed deal, a wage increase, a classy broad.

Ann goes first. She is reserved but warm. It’s a certainty that she’ll find him attractive. Their handshake is pleasant and formal; it says we can do business together.

The Hobbit is next, standing up from the armchair to his full height, which still leaves him a good five or six inches short. Ogilvy looks to get the measure of him pretty quickly: a bright shining nerd, a number cruncher. The Hobbit looks suitably deferential.

And now it’s my turn. Ogilvy’s eyes swivel left and scope my face. He knew as soon as he came in that I’d be the one he’s up against, the biggest threat to his candidacy. I knew it, too. Ann and Matt won’t cut it.

‘How do you do? Sam.’

He has a strong, captain-of-the-school grip on him.

‘Alec.’

‘Have you been here long?’ he asks, touching the tip of his tanned nose.

‘About ten minutes,’ Ann replies behind him.

‘Feeling nervous?’

This goes out to anyone who feels like answering. Not me. Matt murmurs ‘mmmm,’ which I find oddly touching.

‘Yeah, me too,’ says Sam, just so we know he’s like the rest of us, even if he does look like Pierce Brosnan. ‘You ever done anything like this before?’

‘No,’ says Matt, sitting down with a deep, involuntary sigh. ‘Just interviews for university.’

Matt picks up a Sisby booklet from the table and starts flicking through it like a man shuffling cards. For a moment, Ann is stranded in the middle of the room, as if she was on the point of saying something but decided at the last minute to remain silent on the grounds that it would have been of no consequence. Sam smiles a friendly smile at me. He wants me to like him but to let him lead. I stand up, a sudden attack of nerves.

‘Where are you off to?’ Ann asks, quick and awkward. ‘If you’re looking for the toilet it’s down the hall to the right. Just keep on going and you’ll come to it.’

She stretches out a pale arm and indicates the direction to me by swatting it from left to right. A ring on her middle finger bounces a spot of reflected sunlight around the common room.

The loo is a clean, white-painted cuboid room with smoked-glass windows, three urinals, a row of push-tap basins, and two cubicles. Half-a-dozen other candidates are crowded inside. I squeeze past them and go into one of the cubicles. It is 8:40 A.M. Outside, one of the candidates says, ‘Good luck,’ to which another replies, ‘Yeah.’ Then the door leading out into the corridor swishes open and clunks shut. Somebody at the sink nearest my cubicle splashes cold water onto his face and emits a shocked, cleansing gasp.

I remain seated and motionless, feeling only apprehension. I just want to focus, to be alone with my thoughts, and this is the only place in which to do so. The atmosphere in the building is so at odds with the princely splendour of Lucas’s and Liddiard’s offices as to be almost comic. I put my head between my knees and close my eyes, breathing slowly and deliberately. Just pace yourself. You want this. Go out and get it. I can feel something inside my jacket weighing against the top of my thigh. A banana. I sit up, take it out, peel away the skin, and eat it in five gulped bites. Slow-burn carbohydrates. Then I lean back against the tank and feel the flush handle dig hard into my back.

The water has stopped running out of the taps on the other side of the cubicle door. I check my watch. The time has drifted on to 8:50 A.M. without my keeping track of it. I slam back the lock on the door and bolt out of the cubicle. The room is empty. The corridors, too. Just get there, move it, don’t run. My black shoes clap on the linoleum floors, funneling down the corridor back to B3. I reenter, trying to look nonchalant.

‘Right, he’s here,’ says a man I haven’t seen before who obviously works in the building. He has a strangulated Thames Valley accent. ‘Everything all right, Mr Milius?’

‘Fine, sorry, yes.’

Leaning against the window in the far corner of the common room is the fifth and last candidate, Elaine Hayes. I don’t have time to have a proper look at her.

‘Good. We can make a start then.’

I find a seat between Ogilvy and Matt on one of the sofas, dropping down low into its springless upholstery. One of them is wearing industrial-strength aftershave with a curiously androgynous fragrance. Must be Ogilvy. The man hands me a piece of paper with my timetable on it for the next two days.

‘As I was saying, my name is Keith Heywood.’

Keith’s sparse hair is grease combed and badger grey. He has skin the colour of chalk and puffy hairless arms. He looks sixty-five but is probably twenty years younger. Most of his working life has been spent in this building. He wears a light blue short-sleeved shirt and black flannel trousers with meandering creases. His shoes, also black, are at least five years old: no amount of polishing could save them now. He looks, to all intents and purposes, like a janitor.

‘I’m your intake manager,’ he says. ‘If you have any questions about anything at all over the course of the next two days, you come to me.’

Everyone nods.

‘I’ll also be monitoring the cognitive tests. You won’t, of course, be permitted to talk to me during those.’

This is obviously Keith’s big opening-speech gag. Ogilvy is polite enough to laugh at it. As he smiles and sniggers, he looks across and catches my eye. Rivalry.

‘Now,’ Keith says, clapping his hands. ‘Do you have any questions about your timetables?’

I look down at the sheet of paper. It is headed AFS NON-QT CANDIDATES, a phrase that I do not understand. I am known only as Candidate 4.

‘No. No questions,’ says Ann, answering for us all.

‘Right,’ says Keith. ‘Let’s get started.’

Keith lumbers down the corridor to a small classroom filled with desks in rows and orange plastic chairs. We follow close behind him like children in a museum. Once inside, he stands patiently at one end of the room beside a large wooden examiner’s table while each of us chooses a desk.

Ann sits immediately in front of Keith. Matt settles in behind her. He places a red pencil case on the desk in front of him, which he unzips, retrieving a chewed blue Bic and a fresh pencil. Ogilvy heads for the back of the room, separating himself from the rest of us. Elaine, who is older than me, sits underneath a single-pane window overlooking the trees of St. James’s Park. She looks bored. I position myself at the desk nearest the door.

‘I have in my hand a piece of paper,’ says Keith, surprisingly. ‘It’s a questionnaire that I am obliged to ask you to complete.’

He begins dishing them out. Ann, helpfully, takes two from his pile, swivelling to hand one back to Matt. She moves stiffly, from the waist and hips, as if her neck were clamped in an invisible brace.

‘It’s just for our own records,’ says Keith, moving between the desks. ‘None of your answers will have any bearing on the results of the Selection Board.’

The first page of the questionnaire is straightforward: name, address, date of birth. It then becomes more complicated.

1 What do you think are your best qualities?

2 And weaknesses?

3 What recent achievement are you most proud of?

These are big subjects for nine o’clock in the morning. I ponder evasive answers, wild fictions, blatant untruths, struggling to get my brain up to speed.

‘Of course,’ says Keith, as we begin filling out the forms, ‘you’re not obliged to answer all of the questions. You may leave any section blank.’

This suits me. I complete the first page and ignore all three questions, sitting quietly until the time elapses. The others, with the exception of Elaine, begin scribbling furiously. Within ten minutes, Ann is on her third page, unravelling herself with a frightening candour. Matt treats the exercise with a similar seriousness, letting it all out, telling them how he really feels. I turn to look at Ogilvy, but he catches my glance and half smiles at me. I turn away. I can’t see how much, if anything, he has written. Surely he’d be smart enough not to give anything away unless he had to?

It’s over after twenty minutes. Keith collects the questionnaires and returns to his desk. I turn around to see Ogilvy leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like a matinee idol.

Keith coughs.

‘In just over ten minutes you’ll begin the group exercise,’ he says, leaning to pick up a small pile of papers from the top right corner of his desk. ‘This involves a thirty-minute discussion among the five of you on a specific problem described in detail in this document.’

He flaps one of the sheets of paper beside his ear and then begins distributing them, one to each of us.

‘You have ten minutes to read the document. Try to absorb as much of it as possible. The board will explain how the assessment works once you have gone into the second examination area. Any questions?’

Nobody says a word.

‘Right, then. Can I suggest that you begin?’

This is what it says:

A nuclear reprocessing plant on the Normandy coast, built jointly in 1978 by Britain, Holland, and France, is allegedly leaking minute amounts of radiation into a stretch of the English Channel used by both French and British fishermen. American importers of shellfish from the region have run tests revealing the presence of significant levels of radiation in their consignments of oysters, mussels, and prawns. The Americans have therefore announced their intention to stop importing fish and shellfish from all European waters, effective immediately.

The document–which has been written from the British perspective by a fictional civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food–suggests that the American claims are nebulous. Their own tests, carried out in conjunction with the French authorities, have shown only trace levels of radiation in that section of the English Channel, and nothing in the shellfish from the area that might be construed as dangerous. The civil servant suspects an ulterior motive on the part of the Americans, who have objected in the past to what they perceive as unfair fishing quotas in European waters. They have asked for improved access to European fishing grounds, and for the French plant to be shut down until a full safety check has been carried out.

The document suggests that the British and French ministries should present a united, pan-European resistance to face off the American demands. But there are problems. An American car company is one step away from signing a contract with the German government to build a factory near Berlin that would bring over three thousand jobs to an economically deprived area. The Germans are unlikely to do anything at this stage to upset this agreement. Ditto the Danes, who have an ongoing row with the French over a recent trade agreement. The Spanish, who would suffer more than anyone under any prolonged American export ban, will side firmly with the British and French, though their position is weakened by the fact that the peseta is being propped up by the U.S. dollar.

It’s a fanciful scenario, but this is what we are required to talk about.

Keith has given each of us a sheet of blank paper on which to scribble notes, but I write as little as possible. Eye contact will be important in front of the examiners: I must appear confident and sure of my brief. To be constantly buried in pages of notes will look inefficient.

Ten minutes pass quickly. Keith asks us to gather up our things and accompany him to another section of the building. It takes about four minutes to get there.

Two men and an elderly lady are lined up behind a long rectangular desk, like judges in a bad production of The Crucible. They have files, notepads, full glasses of water, and a large chrome stopwatch in front of them. The classroom is small and cheaply furnished, with just the one window. Somehow I expected a grander setup: varnished floors, an antique table, old men in suits peering at us over half-moon spectacles. A stranger might walk in here and be offered no hint that the three people inside are part of the most secret government department of them all. And that, of course, is as it should be. The last thing we are supposed to do is draw attention to ourselves.

‘Good morning,’ says the older of the two men. ‘If you’d all like to take a seat, we’ll make a start.’

From his accent, he is unmistakably English, yet his suntan is so pronounced that he might almost be Indian. He looks well into his fifties.

There is a table with five chairs positioned around it no more than two feet away from the examiners. We move toward it and are suddenly very polite to one another. Shall I go here? Is that all right? After you. Ann, I think, overdoes it, actually holding Elaine’s chair for her. I find myself in the seat farthest from the door, flushed with shirt sweat, trying to remember everything I have read while at the same time appearing relaxed and self-assured. An age passes until we are all comfortably seated. Then the man speaks again.

‘First off, allow us to introduce ourselves. My name is Gerald Pyman. I am a recently retired SIS officer. I’ll be chairing the Selection Board for the next two days.’

Pyman’s eyes are like black holes, as if they have seen so much that is abject and contemptible in human nature that they have simply withdrawn into their sockets. He wears a tie, a smart one, but no jacket in the heat.

‘To my left is Dr Hilary Stevenson.’

‘Good morning,’ she says, taking up his cue. ‘I’m the appointed psychologist to the board. I’m here to evaluate your contributions to the group exercises and–as you will all have seen from your timetables–I will also be conducting an interview with each of you over the course of the next two days.’

She has a kind, refined way of speaking, the trusting softness of a grandmother. The room is absolutely still as she speaks. Each of us has adopted a relaxed but businesslike body language: arms on laps or resting on the table in front of us. Ogilvy is the exception. His arms are folded tight against his chest. He seems to realize this and lets them drop to his sides. It is the turn of the man on Pyman’s right to speak. He is a generation younger, overweight by about forty pounds, with a pale, rotund face that is tired and paunchy.

‘And I’m Martin Rouse, a serving SIS officer working out of our embassy in Washington.’

Washington? Why do we need intelligence operations in Washington?

‘Can I just emphasize that you are not in competition. There’s nothing at all to be gained from scoring points off one another.’

Rouse has a faint Manchester accent, diluted by a life lived overseas.

‘Now,’ he says, ‘we’ll just go around the table and allow you to introduce yourselves to us and to each other. Beginning with Mr Milius.’

I experience the sensation of breathing in both directions at once, inhalation and exhalation cancelling each other out. Every face in the room shifts minutely and settles on mine.

I look up and for some reason fix Elaine in the eye as I say, ‘My name is Alec Milius. I am a marketing consultant.’

Then I slide my gaze away to the right, taking in Stevenson, Rouse, and Pyman, a sentence for each of them.

‘I work in London for the Central European Business Development Organization. I’m a graduate of the London School of Economics. I’m twenty-four.’

‘Thank you,’ says Rouse. ‘Miss Butler.’

Ann dives right in, no trace of nerves, and introduces herself, quickly followed by the Hobbit. Then it’s Ogilvy’s turn. He visibly shifts himself up a gear and, in a clear, steady voice, announces himself as the surefire candidate.

‘Good morning.’

Eye contact to us, not to the examiners. Nice touch. He stares me right down without a flinch and then turns to face Elaine. She remains unmoved.

‘I’m Sam Ogilvy. I work for Rothmans Tobacco in Saudi Arabia.’

This information knocks me sideways. Ogilvy can’t be much older than I am, yet he’s already working for a major multinational corporation in the Middle East. He must be earning thirty or forty grand a year with a full expense account and company car. I’m on less than fifteen thousand and live in Shepherd’s Bush.

‘I graduated from Cambridge in 1992 with a first in economics and history.’

Bastard.

‘Thank you, Mr Ogilvy,’ says Rouse, planting a full stop on his pad as he looks up at Elaine and smiles for the first time. He doesn’t need to say anything to her. He merely nods, and she begins.

‘Good morning. I’m Elaine Hayes. I’m already employed by the Foreign Office, working out of London. I’m thirty-two, and I can’t remember when I graduated from university it was such a long time ago.’

Both Pyman and Rouse laugh at this and we follow their cue, mustering strained chuckles. The room briefly sounds like a theatre in which only half the audience has properly understood a joke. It intrigues me that Elaine is already employed by the Foreign Office. If she was looking to join SIS, surely they would promote her internally without the bother of going through Sisby?

‘We’d like to proceed now with the group exercise,’ Pyman says, interrupting this thought. ‘The discussion is unchaired, that is to say you are free to make a contribution whenever you choose to do so. It is scheduled to conclude after thirty minutes, at which time you must all have agreed upon a course of action. If you find yourselves in agreement before the thirty minutes are up, we shall call a stop then. I must emphasize the importance of making your views known. There is no point in holding back. We cannot assess your minds if you will not show them to us. So do participate. There’s a stopwatch here. Miss Hayes, if you’d like to start it up and set it on the desk where everyone can see it.’

Elaine is closest to Rouse, who takes the stopwatch from Pyman and hands it to her with his right arm outstretched. She takes it from him and sets it down on the table, positioning the face in such a way that we can all see it. Then, with her thumb, she pushes the bulbous steel knob at the top of the stopwatch, starting us off.

It has a tick like chattering teeth.

‘Can I just say to begin with that I think it’s very important that we maintain a tight alliance with the French, though the problem is of their making. Initially, at least.’

Ann, God bless her, has had the balls to kick things off, although her opening statement has a forced self-confidence about it that betrays an underlying insecurity. Like a pacesetter in a middle-distance track event, she’ll lead for a while but soon tire and fall away.

‘Do you agree?’ she says, to no one in particular, and her question has a terrible artificiality about it. Ann’s words hang there unanswered for a short time, until the Hobbit chips in with a remark that is entirely unrelated to what she has said.

‘We have to consider how economically important fish exports are to the Americans,’ he says, touching his right cheekbone with a chubby index finger. ‘Do they amount to much?’

‘I agree.’

I say that, and immediately regret it, because everyone turns in my direction and expects some sort of follow-up. And yet it doesn’t come. What happens now, for a period of perhaps five or six seconds, is appalling. I become incapable of functioning within the group, of thinking clearly in this unfamiliar room with its strange, artificial rules. This happened with Lucas and it is happening again. My mind is just terrible blank white noise. I see only faces, looking at me. Ogilvy, Elaine, Ann, Matt. Enjoying, I suspect, the spectacle of my silence. Think. Think. What did he say? I agree with what? What did he say?

‘I happen to know that annual exports of fish and shellfish to the United States amount to little more than twenty or thirty million pounds.’

The Hobbit, tired of waiting, has kept on going, has dug me out of a hole. Immediately attention shifts back to him, allowing me the chance to blank out what has just happened. I have to think positively. I may not have betrayed my anxiety to the others, or to Pyman, Rouse, or Stevenson. It may, after all, have been just a momentary gap in real time, no more than a couple of beats. It just felt like a crisis; it didn’t look like one.

Stay with them. Listen. Concentrate.

I look over at Elaine, who has taken a sip from a glass of water in front of her. She appears to be on the point of saying something in response to the Hobbit. She has a perplexed look on her face. You happen to know that, Hobbit? How can someone happen to know something like that?

Ann speaks.

‘We can’t just abandon exports of fish and shellfish to America on the grounds that they only bring in a small amount of revenue. That’s still twenty million pounds’ worth of business to the fishing community.’

This is the humanitarian angle, the socialist’s view, and I wonder if it will impress Rouse and Pyman, or convince them that Ann is intellectually unevolved. I suspect the latter. Elaine shapes as if to put her straight, moving forward in her chair, elbows propped on the table. A woman in her twenties who is not a socialist has no heart; a woman in her thirties who is still a socialist has no brain. Instead, she ignores what Ann has said and takes the conversation off on a different tack. We are all of us rushing around this, just trying to be heard. Everything is moving too fast.

‘Can I suggest trying to persuade the Americans to accept imports of fish from European waters that are not affected by the alleged nuclear spillage? We can accept a temporary export ban on shellfish, but to put a stop to all fish exports to the U.S. seems a bit draconian.’

Elaine has a lovely, husky voice, a been-there, done-that, low-bullshit drawl with a grin behind it. All the time the examiners are busy scribbling. I have to operate at a level of acute self-consciousness: every mannerism, every gesture, every smile is being minutely examined. The effort is all-consuming.

A pause opens up in the discussion. My brain fog has cleared completely, and a sequence of ideas has formed in my mind. I must say something to erase the memory of my first interruption, to make it look as though I can bounce back from a bad situation. Now is my chance.

‘On the other–‘

Ogilvy, fuck him, started speaking at the same time as me.

‘Sorry, Alec,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Thank you, Sam. I was just going to say that I think it’s going to be difficult to make a distinction between fish and shellfish in this instance. Nuclear contamination is nuclear contamination. The Americans have a very parochial view of Europe. They see us as a small country. Our waters, whether they be the English Channel or the Mediterranean, are connected geographically in the minds of the Americans. If one is polluted, particularly by nuclear waste, then they all are.’

‘I think that’s quite a patronizing view of America.’

This comes from Elaine. I had made the mistake of perceiving her as an ally. In my peripheral vision I see Rouse and Pyman duck into their pads.

‘Okay, perhaps it is, but consider this.’

This had better be good or I’m finished.

‘Any lasting export ban of radioactive shellfish to America will quickly become an international ban. No one wants to eat contaminated food. If we don’t put a stop to it soon, other countries, even in Europe, will refuse to buy shellfish and fish from British and French waters. It’s a domino effect.’

This goes down well. Both Ann and the Hobbit nod respectfully. But Ogilvy has decided he has been silent too long. He leans forward, like a chess grand master on the point of making a telling move in the endgame. He’s going to make me look ineffectual.

‘The question is an interesting one,’ he says, drawing us into his web of good-naturedness. A bird sounds territorially outside. ‘Is this a direct face-off between the United States of America and a United States of Europe? Do we as British citizens want to see ourselves that way, as part of a federal Europe? Or do we value our sovereignty too much, our prerogative to dictate terms to other European states and to the world at large?’

This is inch-perfect, not a fluffed line. He goes on.

‘I suggest that we see this problem in those terms. There are too many conflicting European interests to mount an effective British campaign. We must do it with the assistance of our European partners and present a united front to the Americans. We hold many of the cards. Our major problem is Germany, and that is what we have to address. Once they’re on board, the rest will follow.’

This is the smart move. He has set the foundations for the conversation, given it a clear starting point from which it can develop and assume some shape. Ogilvy has essentially proposed to chair the discussion, and this aptitude for leadership will not go unnoticed.

Ann takes up the argument.

‘I don’t see why we have to present pan-European resistance to America as the civil servant in this document suggests.’

As she says this, she taps the printed sheet quite vigorously with the point of her middle finger. She is not as good at this as Ogilvy is, and she knows it. Every contour of her body language betrays this to the rest of us, but some dark stubbornness in her, some Ulster obstinacy, will not allow her to back down. So she will wade in, deeper and deeper, pretending to know about things she barely understands, feigning a self-confidence she does not possess.

‘To put it bluntly, this is France’s problem,’ she says, and her voice is now overexcited. ‘It’s a French nuclear reprocessing’–her tongue trips on this last word several times–‘plant that is leaking. I suggest that, perhaps with EU funding, you know, we conduct some definitive checks on the plant with American observers on site. On the site. If it proves to be clean, then there’s no reason why the Americans shouldn’t begin rebuying European fish. If it’s leaking, we demand that the French get it fixed. We then try to persuade the Americans to buy fish and shellfish from non-French, uncontaminated waters.’

‘So you’re suggesting we just abandon the French?’ I ask, just so that my voice is heard, just to make it look like I’m still taking part.

‘Yes,’ she says impatiently, hardly taking the time to look at me.

‘There’s a problem with that solution.’

Ogilvy says this with the calm bedside manner of a family GP.

‘What?’ says Ann, visibly unsettled.

‘The plant was built in 1978 with joint British, French, and Dutch cooperation.’

This trips everyone up. Nobody had recalled it from the printed sheet except Ogilvy, who is happy to let this fact make its way across the room to the impressed examiners.

‘Yes, I’d forgotten that,’ Ann admits, to her credit, but she must know that her chance has passed.

‘I still think Ann has a point,’ says a gallant Hobbit. He is surely too kind to be caught up in this. ‘The French facility needs to have a thorough checkup with American observers. If it’s leaking, we all have to put it right collectively and be completely open about that. But I suspect it’s fine, and that these American claims are disingenuous.’

In the tight lightless classroom, this last word sounds laboured and pretentious. Ann’s face has flushed red and the hand in which she is holding her pen is shaking. Ogilvy inches forward.

‘Let’s look at it this way,’ he says. ‘We don’t know all the facts. What we do know is that the Americans are playing games. And in my view, the best way to deal with a bully is to bully them back.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I’m suggesting, Alec, that if the Americans are proposing to squeeze us, then we in turn should squeeze them.’

They’ll like this. We’re supposed to play hardball. We’re supposed to be capable of a trick or two. Ogilvy glances across at Rouse, then back at the Hobbit.

‘Matthew, you seem to know about the levels of import and export of fish and shellfish going to and fro between Britain and America.’

The Hobbit, flattered, says, ‘Yes.’

‘Well, I suspect that the Americans export significantly higher numbers of fish and shellfish to Europe than we export to them. Is that right?’

‘Off the top of my head, yes, as much as three times the amount,’ says the Hobbit.

It’s just between the two of them for now, and it’s an impressive thing to watch. Ogilvy is giving us all a lesson in man management, in how to make the little guy feel good about himself. A trace of sweat has formed above the Hobbit’s upper lip, a little vapour of nerves, but he is otherwise entirely without self-consciousness. Just getting the words out, happy to talk in facts. Maybe even enjoying himself. Ogilvy has rested his elbows on the table, fingers interlocked and raised to his dark face.

‘So a ban on American fish and shellfish imports would hit them even harder?’

‘In theory,’ says Elaine, a dismissiveness in her voice.

‘Of course,’ says Ogilvy, cutting her off before she has a chance to tell him how unworkable a trade embargo with the United States would be, ‘I actually don’t think that we’ll have to go as far as reciprocating their ban with one of our own.’

He wants to show Rouse and Pyman that he’s seen all the angles.

‘The key to this, as I’ve said, is the Germans. If we can get them on our side, and as long as any problem with the reprocessing plant can be addressed, I can’t foresee the Americans continuing with their demands. It’s important that we be seen to stand up to them.’

It’s time to steal some ideas from Ogilvy, before he runs away with it.

‘The sticking point is the automobile manufacturer. We have to make sure that that contract is secured and goes ahead. At the same time, we might offer the Germans a sweetener.’

‘What kind of a sweetener?’ Elaine asks. She lingers on sweetener as if it is the most absurd word she has ever heard.

‘Sell them something. At a bargain price. Or we could buy more of their exports.’

This sounds meek and ill-informed. It is clear that I have not thought it through. But Ogilvy bails me out, saying yes with a degree of enthusiasm that I had not anticipated. Ironically, this leads to a bad mistake. He says, ‘We could offer to buy up deutsch marks, to push up their value briefly against the pound.’

This is ludicrous, and Elaine tells him so.

‘You try it. You’d have to be owed some pretty big favours at the Exchequer to get something like that done.’

She delivers this in a tone of weary experience and for a moment Ogilvy is stumped. His square jaw tremors with humiliation, and it gives me a small buzz of pleasure to watch him ride it out. It’s important that I don’t let this opportunity slip. Shut him down.

‘I have to agree with Elaine, Sam. We mustn’t pass the buck to another department. It’s difficult, without knowing more about our other negotiations with the Germans, to determine how exactly we might go about persuading them to side with us. It may not even be necessary, for two reasons. The first has already been made clear. The French plant may in fact be safe and the Americans may be acting illegally. If that’s the case, we’re in the clear. But if it does prove necessary to get the Germans onside, we could try another tactic.’

‘Yes, I–‘Ann tries to grab the floor, but I’m not about to be interrupted.

‘If I could just finish. Thank you. If we succeed in convincing a majority of other European states to form a united front against the Americans, the Germans will not relish being isolated. While they may not want to be seen to be taking issue with the United States, at the same time they won’t want to be seen by their European partners to be forming an unholy alliance with America. We can, in effect, shut them up.’

‘We shouldn’t underestimate the Germans or their influence,’ the Hobbit mumbles. ‘Nobody here wants to acknowledge the truth of this situation, which is that the Germans are the dominant economic force in European politics. They are, in effect, our masters.’

This annoys me.

‘Well, if that’s what they’re teaching you on your European affairs course at Warwick, I’m not signing up.’

Elaine, Pyman, and Rouse emit snorty laughs. I’m winning this, I’m coming through. The Hobbit’s cheeks rouge nicely. He can’t think of a comeback, so I carry on.

‘This notion of the Germans as the European master race is contrived. Their economy will slow in the next few years, unemployment is chronic since unification, and Kohl’s days are numbered.’

I read this in The Economist.

‘Let’s not get off the point.’ Ogilvy wants back in. ‘Let’s talk about how to get the Spaniards and the Danes onboard.’

Suddenly Ann sneezes, a great lashing a-choo that she only half covers with her hand. In stereo, Ogilvy and I say, ‘Bless you,’ to which he adds, ‘Are you okay?’ Ann, not one to be patronized, lets her guard drop and says, ‘Yeah,’ with sullen indifference. Her voice, with its sour accent, sounds impatient and spoiled. In this brief moment, we can all see her for what she really is: a tough nut of steely ambition, looking for a one-way ticket to London and a better life. In the wake of it, Ogilvy glides away, talking with great efficiency about how to get the Spaniards and Danes ‘on board.’ As time ticks away, the stopwatch edging toward our thirty-minute limit, he is left more or less on his own, with occasional interjections from the Hobbit, whose knowledge of European Union bylaws is as extensive as it is tedious. He must be the star pupil at Warwick. Ann, for the most part, turns in on herself and merely disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Elaine barely speaks. From my point of view, I feel that I have done enough to please the examiners, both by what I have said and by my personal conduct, which has been forthright but respectful of the other candidates. I also feel that Ogilvy and the Hobbit are flogging a dead horse. Most of the points that were there to be made have been made saliently some time ago. Nevertheless, it will look good if I try to wrap things up.

‘If I could just interrupt you there, Sam, because we’re running out of time, and I think we should try to reach some sort of conclusion.’

‘Absolutely.’

He gives me the floor. Don’t fuck it up.

‘I think we’ve covered most of the angles on this problem. Judging from the last ten minutes or so, we’re mostly agreed on a course of action.’

‘Which is?’ says Ann, coldly.

‘That we need to–as you pointed out right at the start–present a united front to the Americans. We must conduct conclusive tests on the French plant. If needs be, we should bargain with the Germans to get them on our side.’

‘We never said how we were going to do that.’ The manner in which Elaine says this, with just under a minute to go, implies that this is largely my responsibility.

‘No, we didn’t. But that’s not something that should worry us. I think the Germans would be unlikely to do anything that would undermine the EU.’

‘And what do we do about the American export ban?’ the Hobbit asks, looking in my direction as he tips forward on his chair. It was a mistake to take this on.

‘Well, there’s very little we can do…’

‘I don’t agree,’ says Ann, cutting me off short so that my incomplete sentence sounds weak and defeatist.

‘Me too,’ says Ogilvy, but he too is interrupted.

‘I’m afraid that your thirty minutes is up.’

Rouse has tapped his pen twice–tap tap–on the hard surface of the examiners’ table. We all turn to face him.

‘Thank you all very much. If you’d like to gather up your things and make your way back to the common room, where Mr Heywood is waiting for you.’

I think we all share a sense of disappointment at not managing to conclude the discussion within the allocated time. It will reflect badly on the five of us, although I may score points for trying to tidy things up toward the end. Ogilvy is first up and out of the room, followed by the rest of us in a tight group, waddling out like tired ducks. Elaine is the last to leave, closing the door behind her. She does this with too much force, and it slams shut with a loud clap.

Keith is waiting for us in the common room, idling near the coffee machine. As soon as we are all inside, he instructs us to follow him back down the corridor to begin the first of the written examinations. There is no time to relax, no time to ruminate or grab a drink. They won’t let the pressure off until five o’clock this evening, and then it starts all over again tomorrow.

On the way to the classroom, Elaine and Ann peel away from the group to go to the loo. This flusters Keith. While Ogilvy, the Hobbit, and I are taking our seats in the classroom, he lurks nervously in the corridor, waiting for their return.

The Hobbit, who has taken a seat by the window, grabs this opportunity to tuck into yet another cereal bar. Ogilvy returns to his previous spot at the back of the room. To annoy him I move to the desk nearest his, close in and to the left. For a moment it looks as though he may move, but politeness checks him. He looks across at me and smiles very slowly.

With no sign of Elaine and Ann, Keith trundles back in, head bowed, and starts handing out thick pink booklets, which he leaves facedown on every candidate’s desk. The Hobbit thanks him through the crumbly munch of his mid-morning snack, and Ogilvy begins twirling a pencil in his right hand, rotating it quickly through his fingers like a helicopter blade. It’s a poser’s party trick and it doesn’t come off: the pencil spins out of his hand and clatters onto the lino between our two desks. I make no attempt to retrieve it, so Ogilvy has to bend down uncomfortably to pick it up. As he is doing so, Elaine and Ann bustle in, sharing the cozy mutual smiles and solidarity of women returning from a shared trip to the loo.

‘This section of the Sisby program is known as the Policy Exercise,’ Keith says, beginning his introductory talk before they have had a chance to sit down. He’s on a strict timetable, and he’s sticking to it. ‘It is a two-hour written paper in which you will be asked to analyse a large quantity of complex written material, to identify the main points and issues, and to write a thorough and cogently argued case for one of three possible options.’

I stare at the pink booklet and pray for something other than shellfish.

‘You may start when you are ready. I will let you know when one hour of the examination has passed, and again when there are ten minutes of the exercise remaining.’

A crackle of paper, an intake of breath, the incidental noises of beginning.

Here we go again.