A Spy by Nature. Charles Cumming

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.

      SIX

      Day One/Afternoon

      After lunch–a ham and cheese sandwich at the National Gallery–we sit in the stifling classroom faced by a phalanx of numerical facility tests divided into three separate sections: Relevant Information, Quantitative Relations, and Numerical Inferences. Each batch of twenty questions lasts exactly twenty-two minutes, after which Keith allows a brief interlude before starting us on the next paper. Each problem, whether number-or word-based, must be solved in a matter of seconds, with no time available for checking the accuracy of the answer. Calculators are forbidden. It is by far the most testing part of Sisby so far, and the mind-thud of intellectual fatigue is overwhelming. I crave water.

      We are all of us squeezed by time, clustered in the classroom like caged hens as the heat intensifies. Everything–even the most testing arithmetic calculation–has to be answered more or less on instinct. At one point I have to estimate 43 per cent of 2,345 in under seven seconds. Often my brain will work ahead of itself or lag behind, concentrating on anything but the problem at hand. The tests blur into a soup of numbers, traps of contradictory data, false assumptions, and trick questions. Any apparent simplicity is quickly revealed as an illusion: every word must be examined for what it conceals, every number treated as an elaborate code. My ability to process information gradually wanes. I don’t complete any of the three batches of tests to my satisfaction.

      Shortly before four o’clock, Keith asks us with nasal exactitude to stop writing. Ogilvy immediately glances across to gauge how things have gone. He tilts his head to one side, creases his brow, and puffs out his cheeks at me, as if to say, I fucked that up, and I hope you did, too. For a moment I am tempted into intimacy, a powerful urge to reveal to him the extent of my exhaustion, but I cannot allow any display of weakness. Instead, I respond with a self-possessed, almost complacent shrug to suggest that things have gone particularly well. This makes him look away.

      A few minutes later, we emerge narrow-eyed into the bright white light of the corridor. Better air out here, cool and clean. The Hobbit and Ann immediately walk away in the direction of the toilets, but Ogilvy lingers outside, looking bloodshot and leathery.

      ‘Christ,’ he says, pulling on his jacket with an exaggerated swagger. ‘That was tough.’

      ‘You found it difficult?’ Elaine asks. My impression has been that she does not like him.

      ‘God, yeah. I couldn’t seem to concentrate. I kept looking at you guys scribbling away. How did it go for you, Alec?’

      He smiles at me, like we’re long-term buddies.

      ‘I don’t go in for postmortems much.’ To Elaine: ‘You got a cigarette?’

      She takes out a pack of high-tar Camels.

      ‘I only have one left. We can share.’

      She lights up, crushing the empty pack in her hand. Ogilvy mutters something about giving up smoking, but looks excluded and weary.

      ‘I need to get some fresh air,’ he says, moving away from us down the hall. ‘I’ll see you later on.’

      Elaine exhales through her nostrils, two steady streams of smoke, watching him leave with a critical stare.

      ‘Have you got anything else today?’ she asks me. ‘An interview or anything?’

      I don’t feel like talking. My mind is looped around the penultimate question in the last batch of tests. The answer was closer to 54 than 62, and I circled the wrong box. Damn.

      ‘I have to meet Rouse. The SIS officer.’

      She glances quickly left and right.

      ‘Careless talk costs lives, Alec,’ she whispers, half smiling. ‘Be careful what you say. The five of us are the only SIS people here today.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘It’s obvious,’ she says, offering the cigarette to me. The tip of the filter is damp with her saliva and I worry that when I hand it back she will think the wetness is mine. ‘They only process five candidates a month.’

      ‘According to who?’

      She hesitates.

      ‘It’s well known. A lot more reach the initial interview stage, but only five get through to Sisby. We’re the lucky ones.’

      ‘So you work in the Foreign Office already. That’s how you know?’

      She nods, glancing again down the corridor. My head has started to throb.

      ‘Pen pushing,’ she says. ‘I want to step up. Now, no more shoptalk. What time are you scheduled to finish?’

      ‘Around five.’

      Her hair needs washing and she has a tiny spot forming on the right side of her forehead.

      ‘That’s late,’ she says, sympathetically. ‘I’m done for the day. Back tomorrow at half past eight.’

      The cigarette is nearly finished. I had been worried that it would set off a fire alarm.

      ‘I guess I’ll see you then.’

      ‘Guess so.’

      She is turning to leave when I say, ‘You don’t have anything for a headache, do you? Dehydration.’

      ‘Sure. Just a moment.’

      She reaches into the pocket of her jacket, rustles around for something, and then uncurls her right hand in front of me. There in the palm of her hand is a short strip of plastic containing four aspirin.

      ‘That’s really kind of you. Thanks.’

      She answers with a wide, conspiratorial smile, dwelling on the single word, ‘Pleasure.’

      In the bathroom, I turn on the cold tap and allow