‘And that – suppose you had your way – would be this Service?’
‘No question.’
‘And you don’t feel – having skipped around the globe so much – family here, there and everywhere – dual passports – that you’re as it were too un-English for this kind of service? Too much a citizen of the world, rather than one of us?’
Patriotism was a thorny subject. How would Osnard handle it? Would he react defensively? Would he be rude? Or worst of all emotional? They need not have feared. All he asked of them was a place to invest his amorality.
‘England’s where I keep my toothbrush,’ he replied to relieved laughter.
He was beginning to understand the game. It wasn’t what he said that mattered, but how he said it. Can the boy think on his feet? Does he ruffle easily? Does he finesse, is he scared, does he persuade? Can he think the lie and speak the truth? Can he think the lie and speak it?
‘We have been perusing your list of Significant Others over the last five years, young Mr Osnard,’ said a bearded Scot, wrinkling his eyes for greater shrewdness. ‘It’s eh, somewhat of a long list’ – suck of the teeth – ‘for a relatively short life.’
Laughter in which Osnard joined, but not too heartily.
‘I guess the best way to judge a love affair is how it ends,’ he replied with sweet modesty. ‘Most of mine seem to have ended pretty well.’
‘And the others?’
‘Well, I mean Christ, we’ve all woken up in the wrong bed a few times, haven’t we?’
And since this was patently unlikely of any of the six faces round the table and of his bearded questioner particularly, Osnard won another cautious laugh.
‘And you’re family, did you know that?’ said Personnel, bestowing a knobbly handshake on him by way of congratulation.
‘Well, I suppose I am now,’ said Osnard.
‘No, no, old family. One aunt, one cousin. Or did you really not know?’
To the huge gratification of Personnel, he didn’t. And when he heard who they were, a riotous belly-laugh welled up inside him which he converted only at the last moment to an endearing smirk of amazement.
‘My name’s Luxmore,’ said the bearded Scot, with a handshake strangely similar to Personnel’s. ‘I run Iberia and South America and a couple of other places along the way. You may also hear me spoken of in connection with a certain little matter in the Falklands. I shall be looking out for you as soon as you have profited from your basic training, young Mr Osnard.’
‘Can’t wait, sir,’ said Osnard keenly.
Nor could he. The spies of the post-Cold War era, he had observed, were enjoying the best of times and the worst of times. The Service had money to burn but where on earth was the fire? Stuck in the so-called Spanish Cellar that could have doubled as the editorial offices of the Madrid telephone directory, cheek-by-jowl with chain-smoking, middle-aged debutantes in Alice bands, the young probationer jotted down an acerbic appraisal of his employers’ standing in the Whitehall marketplace:
Ireland Preferred: Regular earner, excellent long-term prospects, but slim pickings when divided between rival agencies.
Islam Militant: Occasional flurries, basically underperforming. As a substitute for Red Terror, total flop.
Arms for drugs plc: A washout. Service doesn’t know whether to play gamekeeper or poacher.
As to that vaunted commodity of the modern age, industrial espionage, he reckoned when you had broken a few Taiwanese codes and suborned a few Korean typists, there was really little more you could do for British industry than commiserate. Or so he had convinced himself until Scottie Luxmore beckoned him to his side.
‘Panama, young Mr Osnard’ – striding up and down his fitted blue carpet, snapping fingers, thrusting elbows, nothing still – ‘that’s the place for a young officer of your talents. It’s the place for all of us, if the fools in Treasury could only see beyond their noses. We’d the same problem with the Falklands difficulty, I don’t mind telling you. Deaf ears until the stroke of midnight.’
Luxmore’s room is large and close to Heaven. Through its tinted armoured-glass windows the Palace of Westminster stands brave across the Thames. Luxmore himself is small. A sharp beard and brisk stride fail to bring him up to size. He is an old man in a young man’s world, and if he doesn’t run he’s likely to fall down. Or so thinks Osnard. Luxmore gives a quick suck of the Scottish front teeth as if he has a boiled sweet permanently on the go.