A Spy by Nature. Charles Cumming

      ‘No, no,’ he says quickly. ‘It’s purely for vetting purposes. There shouldn’t be a problem. But I must ask you to refrain from discussing your candidature with her until after the Sisby examinations.’

      ‘Of course.’

      Then, as a savoured afterthought, he adds, ‘Sometimes wives can make a substantial contribution to the work of an SIS officer.’

      FIVE

      Day One/Morning

      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