the old man as he entered, hanging up his coat and lowering himself onto one of the sofas with a sigh.
‘You’ve only been gone a quarter of an hour,’ Toby replied. ‘It’ll be months before we get so much as a pencil holder.’
‘Then maybe I should pass some of the time with a little story. During my walk I saw … or possibly I didn’t … something that has shone a new light on things.’
‘I’m glad things continue to be so clear.’
Shining smiled. ‘Let me tell you about something that happened to me when
I
first joined the Service.’
CHAPTER THREE: NOSTALGIA
a) Soho, London, 19th December 1963
Espionage in the ’60s reeked of boiled cabbage and old rot. It was a grim, tawdry affair that makes even the present day world of paperwork, politics and accountancy seem attractive.
At that time I was still a few months away from a department of my own. My specialist area of espionage had thrived during the Second World War but petered out as the Service focused elsewhere. That said, there was still enough money and enthusiasm to bring me onboard as a sounding post for other sections. You couldn’t move for funding and the obsession with the Russians was at its peak. If someone in the war office suspected our Soviet friends of being able to fly, they would have had a Cambridge graduate on the roof flapping his arms within forty-eight hours.
I operated out of a creaking office building in Soho. I would walk to work through a maze of blue neon and questionable promises. Posters offered glamour that the threadbare carpets and well-worn stages could never live up to. It was a place ofhoney traps, luring the lustful into dark, sordid interiors where their money would be drained away as surely as their dreams. It couldn’t have suited us better.
The front door of the office peeled like an Englishman on a package holiday. The electric bells to the left offered a life insurance company, a tailor, a travel agency and a film production house. They were all as fake as the pneumatic dancers that jiggled on the advertising poster of the club next door.
Stepping inside, you might have thought you had been transported to a solicitor’s office from Dickens. The entrance hall was a mixture of black and white floor tiles and the sort of dark, dreary wood that feeds on natural light.
The Service was an uneasy combination of confused scholars and old soldiers; each quite incapable of understanding the other. The concierge, George, was from the military school – an aged infantryman who had lost his left arm during the war. He compensated for this loss of mass with a paunch that stretched the buttons of his suit jacket until they threatened to pop. It was the sort of belly you can only gain through liquid refreshment, a sack of digested beer that he hauled around like a camel’s hump.
‘Morning, Mr Shining,’ he would say, looking up from his copy of the
Daily Mirror
, before offering a comment on the weather. Those meteorological statements had the stiff formality of codewords, shifting alongside the seasons. ‘Fresh as you like,’ he would say during the cold of winter; ‘Damp enough for Noah,’ when it was raining; ‘Bright as a button,’ when the sun shone. If he ever varied from his script I certainly never heard it. He was reliable, old George, as much a part of the fixtures and fittings as the creeping mould or the carpet that did its best to hold the stairs together.
I’d work my way up to the second floor, where I had my office alongside the fake travel agency, its small windows filled with wilting posters of beaches and old monuments.
I had done my best to make the office comfortable, but it was like placing a cotton valance on a bed of nails. The building fought all attempts at pleasant habitation. The windows were draughty and their sills collected dead flies. The wallpaper was damp to the touch and the furniture creaked when you applied weight to it.
On the morning the Krishnin affair began, I
‘You’ve only been gone a quarter of an hour,’ Toby replied. ‘It’ll be months before we get so much as a pencil holder.’
‘Then maybe I should pass some of the time with a little story. During my walk I saw … or possibly I didn’t … something that has shone a new light on things.’
‘I’m glad things continue to be so clear.’
Shining smiled. ‘Let me tell you about something that happened to me when
I
first joined the Service.’
CHAPTER THREE: NOSTALGIA
a) Soho, London, 19th December 1963
Espionage in the ’60s reeked of boiled cabbage and old rot. It was a grim, tawdry affair that makes even the present day world of paperwork, politics and accountancy seem attractive.
At that time I was still a few months away from a department of my own. My specialist area of espionage had thrived during the Second World War but petered out as the Service focused elsewhere. That said, there was still enough money and enthusiasm to bring me onboard as a sounding post for other sections. You couldn’t move for funding and the obsession with the Russians was at its peak. If someone in the war office suspected our Soviet friends of being able to fly, they would have had a Cambridge graduate on the roof flapping his arms within forty-eight hours.
I operated out of a creaking office building in Soho. I would walk to work through a maze of blue neon and questionable promises. Posters offered glamour that the threadbare carpets and well-worn stages could never live up to. It was a place ofhoney traps, luring the lustful into dark, sordid interiors where their money would be drained away as surely as their dreams. It couldn’t have suited us better.
The front door of the office peeled like an Englishman on a package holiday. The electric bells to the left offered a life insurance company, a tailor, a travel agency and a film production house. They were all as fake as the pneumatic dancers that jiggled on the advertising poster of the club next door.
Stepping inside, you might have thought you had been transported to a solicitor’s office from Dickens. The entrance hall was a mixture of black and white floor tiles and the sort of dark, dreary wood that feeds on natural light.
The Service was an uneasy combination of confused scholars and old soldiers; each quite incapable of understanding the other. The concierge, George, was from the military school – an aged infantryman who had lost his left arm during the war. He compensated for this loss of mass with a paunch that stretched the buttons of his suit jacket until they threatened to pop. It was the sort of belly you can only gain through liquid refreshment, a sack of digested beer that he hauled around like a camel’s hump.
‘Morning, Mr Shining,’ he would say, looking up from his copy of the
Daily Mirror
, before offering a comment on the weather. Those meteorological statements had the stiff formality of codewords, shifting alongside the seasons. ‘Fresh as you like,’ he would say during the cold of winter; ‘Damp enough for Noah,’ when it was raining; ‘Bright as a button,’ when the sun shone. If he ever varied from his script I certainly never heard it. He was reliable, old George, as much a part of the fixtures and fittings as the creeping mould or the carpet that did its best to hold the stairs together.
I’d work my way up to the second floor, where I had my office alongside the fake travel agency, its small windows filled with wilting posters of beaches and old monuments.
I had done my best to make the office comfortable, but it was like placing a cotton valance on a bed of nails. The building fought all attempts at pleasant habitation. The windows were draughty and their sills collected dead flies. The wallpaper was damp to the touch and the furniture creaked when you applied weight to it.
On the morning the Krishnin affair began, I
Similar Books
