Free Confessor by John Gardner Page A

with Christopher Andrew. There were works on psychiatry and tradecraft and international diplomacy, plus obligatory tomes on intelligence services—Mossad, the KGB, CIA, NSA and others in a similar line of business. Most of these were now period pieces, outdated in the rush to realignment since the main enemy had ceased to be, and the true menace lay under different patches of earth, in unfamiliar places.
    He heard the line of some once-popular song in his head, and he turned it around, as was his practice. Singing under his breath, “I’ll be seeing you, in all the unfamiliar places …”
    In the center of the room an old, polished table, almost too big for the space, sat covered with items of work. It was a fine and wonderful table, probably worth a small fortune. Herb suspected that it was the real thing: a refectory table from some convent. Get thee to a nunnery, Gus. There was a laser printer at the fireplace end, next to a Macintosh Centris. To the left of the high-tech hardware lay a small printout of manuscript, about an inch high, while the rest of the table was taken up by piles of bulging ring binders, riding into a skyline.
    On that first night, full of vindaloo and vegetable curry, Kruger looked only at one red folder carrying the word “Correspondence” on a laser-produced sticky label. The correspondence seemed haphazard, mainly between Gus and his publishers: for the most part a series of letters between the interrogator/author and a faceless editor with the unlikely name of Mark Collier. He flipped through the letters, noting that the earliest dates had very correct salutations and sign-offs:
Dear Mr. Keene,
    I was delighted to learn that we have finally come to an agreement, via your agent, Mr. De Monds, whom I have known for a number of years … et cetera, et cetera …
    Sincerely,
    Mark Collier.
    As things progressed, after a first meeting was arranged and kept—at The Connaught, no less—the letters became more relaxed. “Dear Gus” and “As ever, Mark.” The formal wooing was over and the honeymoon began. There was an enthusiastic piece about the title, Ask a Stupid Question . (So what was the twaddle Carole was giving me? he wondered.)
    Mark had written: “It is absolutely right for a wide market, as it should appeal to the serious scholars of what you refer to as your trade, plus the huge readership of the more superior novels of espionage.”
    Herbie pondered, sitting there at three in the morning, asking himself if Gus was pulling a fast one, with the connivance of the Chief. Producing a book of only near-fact, for who but the archivists—and Angus Crook—would be able to gainsay him?
    The thought was banished when he came to a long letter bemoaning the news that it was unlikely Gus would be allowed to include the more juicy details of some highly sensitive interrogations, in both Belfast and London, concerning operations against the Irish Republican Army. “For instance, we could sell the book on Operation Cataract alone,” Mark had written more in sadness than in anger.
    Kruger nearly fell from Gus’s comfortable chair at the mention of Cataract . His heart thudded, he could hear it in his ears; and a lance of alarm passed through his nervous system, for this had been one of the closely guarded secrets of the late 1980s. The simple fact of its being there, in an open letter, caused him to peer earnestly around the room, as if to assure himself that nobody was peeping over his shoulder.
    Unless he was very much mistaken, Cataract documents were classified at the highest level, and everything remotely touching on it was probably locked away in a nuclear shelter in some remote part of Norfolk, never to be opened until the last trump.
    Herbie knew about Cataract because he had been involved, as had the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Special Air Service—the PIRA and the SAS—not to mention the Office—the SIS. Shame and scandal in the family that is the British