Strange, mad, noble and persistent.
I wish I could say that my mind is fully focused on these lofty thoughts, and their application to my, as yet, fledgling dissertation; instead I am wondering what the people from SO15 want to talk to me about. Am I obliged to get in touch with them? If they are the Met’s counter-terrorist arm, what do they want with me? I am worried; I know from my reading that injustices happen daily:
Someone must have slandered Josef K, for, one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested
.
I call Lettie from the train and ask her if she can speak to me urgently. She suggests the coffee shop at Blackwell’s, and I tell her I will be there in just over an hour. I have read that spies often choose very crowded places to meet. Lettie has bagged a table near the windows overlooking Broad Street. I can just see two of the Roman emperors across the road.
‘Hello, Richard.’ We kiss rather unconvincingly. ‘What a surprise. It’s your turn to get the coffee by the way; mine’s a double macchiato.’
‘Anything to eat?’
‘No, nothing, thanks.’
I order for myself a latte and a large round biscuit that looks as if it were fashioned in playschool. I need the comfort of a sugar rush.
‘What’s up?’ Lettie asks.
‘The usual. I have been researching my dissertation at the BM. It is interesting that in Palestine in the eleventh century, Byzantine and Western art were coming together, don’t you think?’
‘Gosh, I never knew that. Fascinating.’
‘Lettie, I have something to ask you.’
‘Shoot.’
‘I don’t know if this is the sort of question I should be asking you, but I was told that two men from SO15 are looking for me . . .’
I fumble in my pocket and hand her the card. She looks at it for a moment.
‘SO15 is a branch of the Metropolitan Police. They make the arrests for the secret services.’
‘Arrests?’
‘That’s their most public activity. They rush into houses before dawn, fully tooled up, and drag Muslims out of bed. It has to be said, they often get the wrong people and the wrong street.’
‘What would they want with me?’
‘It must be something to do with Noor’s kidnap. Don’t worry, they are also sent out on the street as information gatherers, to do routine police work.’
I see that she enjoys the higher intrigue.
‘Do you think I should call them?’
‘Yes, but give it a day and I will see what my contacts think might be going on in the investigation into the kidnappers and their links. Your name may have cropped up and you might have been put on the watch list as a result. You haven’t joined the Oxford branch of Al-Qaeda without telling me, I hope?’
‘Sorry, yes. It was that or Scientology, and I opted for the rational choice.’
‘Very droll.’
‘You told me once that Noor was a spy. Could that be it?’
‘It may be that there are some details about just who she was working for that need to be confirmed. Or they may think that you, without even being aware of it, have information, what they call ‘pocket litter’. By the way, you don’t want these people to come into Ed’s house. One will look for pocket litter while the other keeps you busy. To you, what’s in your pocket or beside the bed is nothing, but to them a credit card transaction, a train ticket, these are dates which help them. Or it may be they want to talk to you about who paid the ransom, and why. Do you know?’
‘No.’
‘OK, let me ask a few questions before you call.’
I wonder what questions she is going to ask.
‘Have you heard from Ed?’ I ask.
‘He sent me a postcard of a kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree and I had a text today. He is hoping to get the job after a good interview. By the way, he told me you have had a bad episode. I am sorry.’
‘It wasn’t great, but it only lasted a few days. Officially I had a syndrome brought on by stress. There was a lot going on and I couldn’t cope; suddenly I flipped. Ed was an angel. I really owe him big time. Are you an item again? I hope so.’
‘Yes, we are, although no thanks to you. He told me what you said by the way.’
‘Oh shit. I am sorry. I really was ranting.’
‘You probably did him a favour by discouraging him from continuing with his doctorate. It was making him miserable.’
I feel a sudden warmth for Lettie and I am glad that my unkind – although chemically induced – words didn’t drive Ed and her apart. She is edging towards the first stages of middle age. Her neck is just a little wobbly, and there is a skein of tiny lines around her eyes, visible when she turns towards the light. There seems to be a moment when young women lose the bloom of youth. Men are given more latitude. This may be a scandalous inequality. I see Lettie, high-powered spook-academic, clever, successful, and with a taste for the higher mysteries. At the same time I see Lettie, the woman who is wondering if she will be fertile for much longer, desperate to be married to my old chum, Ed, so that she can bask in the warm currents of domesticity, even if she knows in advance that it will be unfulfilling.
When we step into Broad Street I embrace her. Across the road the Roman emperors are grimacing.
‘Lettie, will you forgive me? And will you find out what you can?’
‘You’re forgiven. And yes, I will do what I can. I’ll text you when I have anything and we should meet. Rich, don’t worry about it; this is just about what they call
humint
, human intelligence, in covert operations. It’s getting information from real people.’
I cross the quad and go to the Upper Reading Room. I try to imagine what might have happened to the small party of Richard’s men when they left Arles for the Auvergne. I remind myself what Stephen Feuchtwanger said, that there can be profound truth in fiction. At the same time, real life seems to have found me, in the form of SO15. Already I am beginning to fear that I will be badly treated. They may cite my psychiatric episode and threaten to have me locked up. Or they may question me about Noor’s background or our trip to Jordan.
25
Dearest, dearest Richie
,
Thank you so much for your letter. About Moose Creek – no moose there any more, sadly. For your information, their favourite meal is aquatic plants.
I love to hear about our father. Maybe you and he didn’t get on so well because of your mother. Do you think maybe you blamed him, without knowing the facts?
Rich, I am not saying that we should
never
meet again. But I don’t think we can do it soon. I can’t put a time on it, and that breaks my heart. I think the tragedy is that I won’t ever get over you, which is what the counsellors and psychiatrists say I must do. My biggest worry is that you won’t love me in my fragile state and that you won’t be able to forget – talking of the impossibility of true forgetting – what happened to me. And this is before we try to come to terms with the fact that Room 6 is a thing of another time. We were shown heaven and then banished. I can’t even begin to imagine how I could explain this to my adoptive father. It’s all so, so unfair. The message from my shrink is that I have to start again and I have to find someone else. I don’t want to find someone else: all I want is you. But then she goes on: if I tried to have a chaste (her words) relationship with you, it just wouldn’t work and we would destroy what is so beautiful and innocent and we would deny ourselves children. By the way, only this one shrink knows the whole story.
Do I make sense? I am crying again. Look, just under the word ‘again’ is a large teardrop.
I am having physiotherapy every day and I am becoming stronger, physically. In my mind I am preparing to swim with you to that little island you mentioned, both of us singing ‘Mamma Mia’. There is comfort in the cheesy.
Richie, please have patience, and please write to me about our father, as I have a lot of catching-up to do.
All my love, my darling,
Noor xxx
26
Lettie is meeting
me in the café in St Mary’s Church. I once climbed the many steps winding up the inside of the steeple to a balcony from where you can see the whole of Oxford spread out before you. Way below, entering All Souls that day, I saw a procession to install a new vice-chancellor. Academic gowns flew in the breeze, exposing bright undersides, like the wings of tropical birds. I felt like Jude the Obscure then, gazing at the steeples and towers and ancient colleges, each one of which hid within its walls secret gardens, and I looked at the wooded hills beyond, and I was thinking that I would never fully belong.
The café is busy, in a measured kind of way. I know already just how the cappuccino will be: thin, weak, bubbly foam, sprinkled liberally with cocoa and watery coffee, which will taste as though it has already had a turn in the espresso machine. Of course the coffee will be sourced responsibly in some far-off land. The Church of England has abandoned souls for gesture politics.
I sit nervously for five minutes before Lettie arrives. Under her arm she carries a fat document folder. Is this about me?
‘Hello, Richard.’
We kiss. She places the folder on the table ominously; the word ‘brief’ comes to mind.
‘What would you like?’
She comes back with our coffee in rude mugs.
‘Right. The boys in blue do want to talk to you. They just want you to tell them – by the way you don’t have to tell them anything – what you know about Noor’s background, and if she had any contacts with the UK, also if she had been targeted for kidnap or whether it was an entirely opportunistic job. When you do see them, don’t do it at Ed’s place or wherever, as they are inclined to have a little look around later.’
‘You told me that. What do they want from me?’
‘There is obviously something missing. Maybe they think you can fill in some details for them.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well for instance, what do you know about her covert work?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know anything.’
‘Whatever you do, don’t tell them any lies.’
I am beginning to wonder whose side she is on. Supposing they know that Haneen is her mother. That Noor is my sister? They would find that really interesting. And how plausible would it be that I had met my own, unknown, sister by chance in the famous Cellar Bar, nest of spies?
‘So you think I should call Detective Sergeant whatsit to fix a time for a cosy chat?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And if he doesn’t believe me?’
‘Get a lawyer.’
I think of the lugubrious lawyer, Derek Cocks, who wore the brown suit with the cleverly camouflaged tie, and who presided over my signing of the sub-agreement. I don’t think he will do.
‘Lettie, the whole thing is absolutely crazy. I don’t want to talk to SO15, whoever they are. I don’t want to be part of this investigation. I don’t want my life fucked over by these people. In fact I don’t want to be dragged into it at all. I am not involved.’
‘From what I have heard, I don’t think they believe you are involved.’
‘Lettie, tell me, how do you know details like that?’
‘You asked me to find out, and I did. If you want my advice – which, can I remind you, you requested – talk to them, try not to become angry and tell them what you know.’
‘What did Ed tell you about Noor and me?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t trust you any longer. You may already have given your contact all sorts of bits of information. You tell me how I am supposed to answer if they ask me how I met Noor. You know it was in the Cellar Bar in Jerusalem, you know that it is famous for clandestine meetings, spook central, and you know they aren’t going to believe the truth, that I was staying there while researching for my fucking project on Crusader art, and that I met Noor by chance, and you know that I went to Jordan with Noor, and you know the reason they want to speak to me is that they want to discover if I am some sort of jihadi myself, or Noor’s controller, and one with delusions to boot. Have you told them I was in the Warneford? Did you tell them that your lover took me there? That he has been talking to me, and passing it on to you, at least until he left for the land of the kookaburra? Did you warn me off meeting the plods at Ed’s place for a reason, that it could have been embarrassing for you? You know what I think? I think you are a spook, not the pocket-litter type of spook of course, but the high-altitude, well-connected,
gosh isn’t this exciting
type of spook. Am I right?’
‘No, you are totally wrong and you are incredibly ungrateful, not only for what I have done, but especially for what Ed has done. Goodbye.’
She walks out of the café, composed, but rigid with anger. I sit frozen. If anybody has been watching this scene, they will think we have been having one of those lovers’ arguments where the more injured party stands up and walks majestically away, leaving the other looking guilty and embarrassed, even if he or she is in the right and as blameless as a newborn lamb.
I am overwhelmed. The spooks want me and, for all the
Mamma Mia!
shtick, Noor has all but rejected me, and my five brave knights, who are supposed to make my name as the writer of an upmarket
The Da Vinci Code
, are stranded somewhere, both in my mind and in the region of the Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne, now best known for its lentils. And Richard the Lionheart is still a prisoner, and becoming bitter: