Faithless (24 page)

The years went by. He and Karen married. The wedding was a thing foretold -
enjoyed by all but no surprise. The next thing would be children, unreflected upon and as natural as Summer follows Spring. But Karen had trouble conceiving. Lots of visits to the doctor but while they waited for the National Health Service, life went on. After several years, he began to feel that he was stuck in his job so he applied for a transfer to General Intelligence Duties. This would promote him to the "officer class". He had to take a Civil Service IQ test but then a peculiarly MI5 written test which was of two parts. The first part was a multiple choice questionnaire which included such tasks as putting the aristocracy in order of precedence and saying which items required an export licence - an old master painting, a vintage bottle of Haut Medoc wine, and an Arab Stallion going to Argentina. After that they asked him to compose a letter as if he were the assistant of some nobleman on his country estate trying to persuade the Government to be lenient on death duties. It was a long way from the coal mines of Lothian but fortunately he had his education at the distinguished Heriot School to fall back on - where having your vintner send you a case of Haut Medoc and requesting export licences for stallions were everyday matters.

After the exams he met
with Charles Blount, his personnel officer in B Branch, to discuss the results. Charles was a career MI5 officer, who despite family connections had chosen counter espionage over Merchant Banking. Charles would spend a posting as a personnel officer then some time in Protective Security before another posting in Counter Subversion or Counter Terrorism. He spoke in an accent that conflated mouse with mice and where house rhymed with lice. He wore a grey suit with a thin pinstripe. He invited John to sit.

             
"You've passed. But only just," he said, raising his eyes from the notes in front of him.

             
"Thank you," said John graciously.

             
Thinking John had misheard him, he rephrased his point. "I'm not sure it's a solid pass."

             
John smiled awkwardly. "I think the questions on the aristocracy threw me. A little out of my experience."

Charles looked at him over his gold-rimmed spectacles with a questioning glance. He said,
              "In my experience, linguists do not enjoy becoming intelligence officers."

             
"I didn't know you were a linguist," said John, knowing his impertinence.

             
"Not my personal experience of course."

             
"But it's still a pass," John insisted.

             
"Yes." Charles put the papers down, feeling a trifle irritated. "Tell me, why do you want to transfer?"

             
"I feel the role will be more varied. I've been doing what I've been doing for nearly eight years. Also, it'll be a salary increase."

             
"Quite." Charles looked down at the papers in front of him. "You are married, I see." The idea of struggling for money was alien to Charles but he was aware it was a problem for some people. He pondered. The transfer could be seen as a rational move. Generally he felt that being dissatisfied with one's place in life showed arrogance: as if one had the right to change things. As if one were a better judge of the order of things than Providence itself. Charles was  traditionally religious. His mind drifted off from the conversation to fond memories of country churches near his family's home in Berkshire. After allowing a pause for politeness, John answered, "Yes, just after I joined the Office,"

             
Charles returned to the matter in hand. Children?" he said.

             
"Not yet, unfortunately."

             
"I'm sorry to hear that." He meant it. His own children were a blessing.

             
"But we're still trying."

             
"And the salary increase will help with that." Charles understood John's situation better and his irritability passed. He felt suddenly avuncular.

             
"Well it seems to make sense." Charles put down the papers on the desk and steepled his fingers together.

             
"So what happens now?" asked John

Charles nodded. "Yes. Well, you will be posted to F2."

              "Communists?"

             
"Yes. It's either that or F7."             

             
"Trots?"

For the first time Charles laughed. "Yes. Difficult to choose between them, but I think the Tankies are more
likeable than the Trots. You should get joining instructions in the next few weeks."

John was posted to F2. But first he  had to go on the new officers induction course, the creatively named Training Course 1. There he met Rob Parry who became his friend
. Rob had gone to a minor public school in the North of England then to Reading University where he'd studied history. Others on the course included the daughter of a gentleman farmer from Oxfordshire, the heiress to a substantial fortune that John had never heard of, the daughter of a wine dealer, a man from Birmingham who still had a strong regional accent, an ex member of Hong Kong Special Branch and around six others. They learned the basic skills of identification and had lectures from the various MI5 specialists on Communism, Trotskyism, Anarchism, Soviet Bloc Espionage, Arab terrorism, protective security, as well as an overview of the technical A Branch sections. There were some basic field exercises designed to introduce them to tradecraft. The only one going to an agent running section however was the ex  Special Branch officer.

The course took about four weeks and then he arrived with Rob at F2A. He was responsible for identifying all the members of the Communist Party in North West England. Most m
embers were already identified as by the early 1980s British Communism was not a growth area. He found that one of them was his University friend William Frankton.There were no central surveillance resources devoted to the CPGB but the local Special Branch sometimes followed them around. Any anti War or anti Poverty or anti Nazi marches would be photographed and the photographs would be sent to John to list who had been present. Often he would get minutes from the local CPGB branch meetings provided by agents working for Special Branch or directly for F4, MI5's communist agent running section. There were also reams of tedious telephone intercept material. Party members tended to be verbose and speak in Marxist-Leninist jargon. The branch officials' letters were intercepted and again were routine. He read the Communist Party newspaper The Morning Star every day. He would also receive NOISY PAINTING material - photographed membership records as every branch had at least one if not several MI5 agents with covert cameras. They used to joke that there were so many MI5 or Special Branch agents on each branch committee that it was they who were really running the CPGB. Rob once said, "If we stopped paying our agents there would be no Communist Party".

One day there w
as a flicker of excitement when a Soviet Embassy official was travelling up to give a talk in Manchester. He was meeting the local CPGB branch secretary. Afterwards,  the Russian was going for dinner with a local businessman. The K4 desk officer asked John to speak to Special Branch to see if they had any contacts who could report back on what the meeting was about. John phoned Greater Manchester Special Branch and spoke to a policeman who said he would look into it. When John told him the name of the businessman. The policeman perked up. "Oh that's handy. He's the chairman of the local Conservative Party."

             
John urged caution. "Perhaps leave this one then. We don't want to get too close to politicians."

             
"No, " said the policeman, trying to reassure John. "Don't worry. We do favours for them. They do favours for us. It's a longstanding arrangement."

             
John wondered what favours Special Branch could do for the Conservative Party.

When trying to identify someone from a name or a phone number there was a recognised process to go through to make sure the correct details were obtained and no innocent person ended up with a file. As part of this identification process any possible trace would be sent up for the desk officer to compare against the hundreds of thousands of files held by MI5's registry. These files could be for anyone, no matter why they had been recorded. Thousands of the files had been created due to MI5 responsibility to make sure that people who were a security risk did not gain access to government secrets. Vetting was usually carried out when someone applied for a job. John remembered seeing various files of careers blocked on people who would never realise why. For example there was the file of a young naval rating who, in a political debating session, had argued too well for Maoism. That was reported it to Naval Security and whenever he came up for promotion he did not get it. Another one was a young soldier who time after time was recommended for promotion by his commanding officer but because when he originally joined the Army the local Special Branch reported that his father had Communist views, he stayed a private.  Because vetting was based on intelligence there was no need for the evidence that someone had left wing views to be strong - just that some provincial policeman had heard that your father was a Leftie.

MI5 made efforts to appear apolitical. It could not just open a file on anyone. There had to be a specific security reason. To support this method a system of "recording categories"
was drawn up which related to MI5's task of protecting the British State from terrorism, subversion or espionage. Some individuals who had left wing views but had not joined any political party. In this case they were "unaffiliated subversives". The standard of evidence for putting someone into this category was by definition,  ill-defined

One day John looked his father up. It was strictly against the rules but no one in MI5 knew who his father was or that he had been a Communist. James Fee's file was in the Archive and came to him three days later. It gave details of his father's life on yellowed typed paper. Where he'd been born, his address. There was an agent report on his views as a pro-Soviet hard liner. There was a photograph of him going out of his front door. It was grainy and old but he looked just like John. There was a report of a meeting where he condemned the Zinoviev letter, which had been forged by MI6 in order to bring down the Labour Government. In the file was a reference to another file with a higher security level. John took a chance and sent a slip requesting it. His need to see the file might be challenged, but it was closed and old, so he took the chance. When it arrived he realised it was an agent file. It detailed an operation run by a now retired MI5 officer – Bunny Panchev. Panchev had been a White Russian émigré. John had heard of him. His family had owned land and factories but had to flee the revolution in 1917. He had got alongside John's father by pretending to be a Soviet illegal - a classic false flag operation. The file said that James had been fired from his job at the colliery for punching his boss.  After that, James had no money and was vulnerable. The file detailed a series of meetings where Panchev flattered his father that he was helping the workers' cause. As time went on, he requested more and more sensitive material. One night he gave James some money just to help him out, saying he knew how tough things must be. Then when the money was taken, Panchev revealed he was an MI5 officer and said if James didn't continue to help them he would tell his communist colleagues that he was a traitor.

             
As John read the story of his father's betrayal with mounting horror he began to feel sick. He looked at his shaking hand. Suddenly he stood up.

             
"You all right mate?" asked Rob.

             
"I feel odd. I'll just go to the bathroom."

             
He went out into the corridor. His head spun. He made it to the toilet but there  noisily vomited.

5th April, 1984:
Karen and John's twin girls were born on 5th April 1984 at Finchley Memorial Hospital. John had driven her in the early hours when she woke him to tell him her waters had broken. The labour took hours. Karen was offered fish and chips but didn't want them so he ate them and read the newspaper.Even at the height of her labour, she never swore at him, she never blamed him for her pain. Eilidh was born first, her blonde curls and blue eyes wrapped up in a clean towel and handed to him while Karen pushed to deliver Morag. Nine minutes later the small, red headed bundle came into the world.

             
John's mother and stepfather had come down in Karen's parents' car from Scotland.

             
"Well," said John's mother. "I thought I was never going to have any grandchildren, and now I've got two!"

             
"We have go two!" said Karen's mother. They laughed like kindly witches.

The two grandfathers insisted on taking John out for a pint while the women cooed around the babies and Karen in the maternity ward.

             
"It's no so bad this English beer," said William. "Drink up, I'll get ye another pint, Archie. And you too John, unless you fancy a whisky? Or both!"

             
"Aye get me them both," said John.

             
William went off to the bar. Archie Laurie said, "They're bonnie wee things and you've called them queer old Highland names."

             
John laughed. "Aye, my grandmother was from Skye. She was Eilidh. We wanted them to have Scottish names. We liked Morag. Karen said she had an aunt Morag."

             
"Aye, the wife's sister. Pity they couldn't be born in Scotland though," said Archie.

             
"Never mind. We'll bring them up to cry at Flowers of the Forest and drink Irn Bru, don't worry."

             
William came back with the beer and a whisky for John. "It's gey dear, the drink down here."

             
As he put down the beer he bumped into the back of a young man who was part of a loud group, who from the emblems on their shirts were members of a rowing club."Watch where you're going," he snapped.

             
"No offence there son," said William.

             
The young man sneered in his posh accent, "I'm not your son," and all his friends laughed. John felt himself tense, he moved to get up and Archie put his hand on his arm. "Easy Johnny. It's supposed to be a happy occasion. Forgive and forget."

             
John looked at the two men. Old before their time with a lifetime of hard physical work. They'd worked all hours and had little to show for it. Those on the table opposite had got everything for nothing. It began in his heart, not his head, but John knew that now his children had been born something had to change. "Why should I forgive or forget?," he said.

May 1984, London:
John was still officially in F2A but after the start of the coal miners strike there was lots of overtime in F2N. The situation in Britain was politically tense. The Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was setting out to destroy Socialism, which she believed was the enemy of human freedom. Socialists had always organised themselves into unions. Individually they were weak against their bosses, but together they could bring the country to its knees. Thatcher remembered the way the miners had humiliated the previous Conservative Government and she was determined to break them. Thatcher provoked a strike, which she had secretly planned for, so that she could defeat the workers once and for all.

The head of F2N at
that time was Esther Harrington, a middle class woman who was certainly not a die hard Conservative. One morning over the coffee percolator John said, "You look tired."

             
"Burning the candle at both ends. I was in until midnight last night. Here at six this morning."

             
"You'll make yourself ill," said John.

             
"Just can't keep up with the Government's demands for intelligence on the miners' strike. They want Box 500 reports every hour."

             
"The Communist penetration angle is just an excuse isn't it?"

             
She looked at him shrewdly. "They may want strike plans from the Unions, but all they get from me is intelligence on subversive penetration - the CPGB, Militant, et cetera."

             
"That won't satisfy Thatcher. She sees all workers as enemies of freedom. Her freedom anyway."

             
Esther sipped her coffee. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. You're in F2A aren't you?"

             
He shook her hand. "Normally, just shipped in here to help out. I'm John Gilroy."

             
"Well, John. I think they are just fighting to defend their communities, but the Office has lots of people with close connections to the Conservative Party. You should be careful where you voice your opinions. My advice would be to try to do the right thing and don't make a fuss about it."

John was late finishing again that night. He had worked long hours sifting through intelligence from phone taps, police surveillance and agent reports. He got home about nine o'clock. Karen was sitting in their two bedroom flat in North Finchley with a glass of wine in hand. Their one month old twins were asleep in Moses Baskets on the sofa. She looked up from the television as he walked in.

             
"You're late," she said. "Again."

             
"I see you've opened the wine."

             
"I finished decorating the nursery, then I waited for you, but you didn't arrive so I've eaten and now am having a drink."

             
He hung up his coat and went over and kissed her. "Let me look at the nursery."

             
He went through and saw how she'd painted the walls and got the two cots ready for when the girls were big enough to move into their own room. On one wall Karen had painted Pan's Neverland. He came back through to the living room. "It's beautiful. My lovely talented wife. "

             
"I'm mad at you," she said, "no amount of flattery will get round that."

             
He leant over and kissed her hair. "Sorry, it's the job. You know."

             
"I know, but you should have rung me."

             
"I kept thinking I would get away but more stuff kept coming in. The Home Office wants round the clock reports."

             
"Surely there must be other people than you there to write them?"

             
"Not as many as you'd think."

             
Her face softened. "You look tired."

             
He rubbed his eyes. "I am. Is there any food?"

             
"I put yours in the bin."

             
"There must be some bread and cheese?"

             
"Should be. I'll pour you a glass of wine," she said, softening towards him.

He went through and carved himself a hunk of bread, getting cheese from the fridge and then adding some Branston Pickle to the plate. He came and sat through in the living room.  There was a documentary on about unemployment in Liverpool.

              "Have you been watching this?" he asked.

             
"Yes, terrible. 3 million unemployed. Whole parts of the country laid to waste."

             
"I thought you had no interest in politics."

             
"I don't generally. But this is terrible. People hate Thatcher."

             
He shook his head. "She is decimating the country for her ideology. She's destroying whole communities because they dare stand up to her. It's not about economics. It's about destroying the "enemy within" as she calls those who don't buy her free market."

             
Karen laughed. "Who do you work for again?"

             
"I'm serious. There's 8000 police in Nottinghamshire operating like a paramilitary Conservative Party strike force. All the miners want is to be able to live decently. But if they take their slice of the cake then there's less left for profit for the ruling class. And the rich don't like having less."

             
"So it's back down to class war?"

             
"We've been at war since 1917."

             
"Who's we?"

             
He ignored her and continued.  "They talk about freedom. The ruling class want you to be free enough to buy what they sell you and free enough to work for them at rates they dictate and free enough to fire you when they want. The only freedom in this country is theirs."

             
"And so I say again. Who do you work for?"

             
He said, "I'm not proud of it."

             
"Well quit then. Don't offend your morals any longer. Go and teach Russian somewhere."

             
"There's a struggle going on Karen. A struggle for our communities. If you don't take sides, you side with the strong."

             
"I don't think that's your copyright. Someone clever said it first."

             
"If we lose this strike, then our communities will be destroyed for decades. They may never recover. All the wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the super rich living in their penthouses and Chelsea mansions. The working class will become an out of work underclass and be vilified as lazy and undeserving. Whole generations left with no purpose or reason to exist. I hate Thatcher," he spat.

             
"Hate's a strong a word."

             
"I hate her. If we had a government that took everything away from the rich down here in London and the Home Counties and reduced their communities to poverty living on welfare, then the bankers and stockbrokers would finally understand why we hate her."

             
Karen shook her head. "You should be focusing on me and the babies. All I want is to lead a normal life - to have a nice house - to go on holidays maybe - to bring up our kids healthy and happy. That's what you should want."

             
He snorted. "Very bourgeois. That's what they want you to do - to suborn you into their system, to be cogs in their machine - to bow down and keep quiet."

             
She leaned forward and slapped his face. He was shocked more by the fact she did it than the sting of her hand. He put his hand up to his face in bafflement.

             
"So, I'm just a bourgeois, while you are the great noble revolutionary - seeing horizons far beyond my pitiful gaze. Well let me remind you that you work for the very people you so despise.  I'd call that hypocrisy, what do you think?"

             
He didn't say anything.

             
"Well?"

             
He still didn't say anything. She was derisive. "I've had enough of your pomposity. I'm going to bed. And you, you should either put up, or shut up."

London: Monday, 18 June 1984:
  John was late back from work again. The night after she slapped him, she had hardly spoken to him now expressed her disapproval by retreating into the bedroom to watch Coronation Street on the portable television. The twins were two months old. John fed the babies with bottled milk warmed up by placing the bottles in a jug of boiling water. Eilidh and Morag worked a kind of a shift system whereby one woke and cried for food while the other slept. When the first was burping and warmly dozing, the second would awake and cry. John realised that Karen's nerves were fragile and he did his best to help when he got home but his work days were long and she shouldered most of the burden herself. He sat in the living room in front of the gas fire with sleepy Morag and Eilidh, eating his potnoodle and watching the news.

The main news was of the so called "Battle of Orgreave" where striking miners attempted to picket a coking plant near Rotherham. They gathered in thousands in t-shirts and jeans on a hot summer day. Th
ey waved placards saying, "Coal not Dole" and played football until the police ranks formed up. The TV showed images of riot police attacking miners and clubbing them to the ground. Ranks of mounted men charged and recharged the miners ranks to break them as if they were medieval cavalry - heavily armoured knights crushing lines of dirty and blood stained serfs.

John knew about the Police operation because he had spent the past few days compiling Box 500 reports drawing on telephone intercepts on the miner
s' leaders and reports from inside the National Union of Mineworkers. Thatcher's Government was greedy for the information to put into operation a battlefield plan reminiscent of the Normans at Hastings. The Police funnelled the miners into an area where they could be contained. They hid horses and dogs in the woods on either side. Then they emerged in uniformed ranks with vicious purpose. The miners didn't know what was coming. They resisted at first, but then broke under the violence of the Police assault. They routed over a railway line, harried by  dogs. Some ran into the village where the Police clubbed them down. They broke arms and legs and dragged men off to jail. The charge was riot, the real crime was standing up to Thatcher.