Free Uncommon Enemy by Alan Judd

of the flat were lined with books, mostly in English but some Classics and some in Chinese and Russian. In gaps between shelves and windows, above doors and fireplaces, were pictures
of birds. Matthew was an ornithologist and a chronicler of the Chinese gulag. He smiled as they shook hands.
    ‘Don’t be shocked. I am dying. But there is enough life left, I hope, to enjoy working with you again. And for us to conspire together one last time. Come in.’
    Charles was shocked. The tall figure he had known was shrunken and skeletal, like a relic of one of the secret labour camps he meticulously catalogued. His skin was blotched parchment, his
cheeks sunken, his hand a chicken’s claw. Charles knew Matthew would eschew consolation. ‘What is it?’
    ‘Prostate. The one that gets us all eventually, if nothing else does first. Spread to the liver. I accept some alleviation in the hope of delaying it until this business is sorted out. I
am not in pain. Do you prefer any particular tea?’
    The flat was suffocatingly warm and the winged armchair too soft. ‘How is Jenny?’
    ‘In Cambridge, coping. I’m there most of the time now. Our sons find it harder because there is nothing for them to do. She wants me to stop work, of course. Biscuits are in the
tin.’
    Refusing help, Matthew lowered the tea tray onto a lacquered Chinese table and then himself onto the sofa, where he leaned back, rubbing his thighs. His bespectacled grey-blue eyes rested on
Charles like the gaze of a judge weighing sentence.
    ‘I did not, of course, ask you to tear yourself away from your researches, and to confront something you may not wish to be reminded of, simply to investigate the disappearance of
Gladiator. Anyone could do that, or no-one. How is your book?’
    ‘Becalmed. Either it’s been said before, or it isn’t known and can’t be said. It’s a good time to have a break and take stock.’
    ‘Is Walsingham hero or villain, d’you think?’
    ‘Something of each.’
    ‘We at least have a simpler task. Our man is only one.’
    Charles poured the tea.
    ‘The reason I asked you to return is that we have an insider problem. We get one about every ten years, as you know. But this particular problem has been around a long time, as you also
know. In fact, you and I are two of only three still serving who are aware of it. The other is Sonia, you’ll be pleased to hear. It was very tightly held at the time, since when people have
retired, moved on or died. There is only one record: the secret annex to the paper file which you were once familiar with. No-one conducting an electronic search would discover it, unless they
already knew where else to look. We have become an intelligence service which no longer knows what it knows, and has no way of recovering what once it knew, which is a slow suicide. But the urgency
now is that our insider has become nastier. We might even call him malignant, a word I’ve heard quite often recently.’ He smiled and sipped his tea. ‘You’re ignoring the
biscuits.’
    Charles had not lunched. He helped himself to two shortbreads.
    ‘Too many things have gone wrong,’ Matthew continued. ‘You may have seen leaks of SIA assessments in the press. They amount to a pattern, an agenda. But there’s more than
that, though it wouldn’t be visible to any other security reviewer but you. There’s something internal, relating to Gladiator.’
    ‘Nigel Measures thinks he might have been turned.’
    Matthew’s eyes rested on Charles’s. ‘Is that what he said?’ He looked down at his withered hands, nodding. ‘He was very anxious not to have you back, although he
didn’t want to say so outright. Instead, he argued that you might be indiscreet, now that you are a writer. That is of a piece with his saying that Gladiator might have been turned. Neither
is what he really thinks, or knows. You’ll have to be careful.’
    ‘Of what?’
    ‘Nothing in particular, therefore everything. Measures wants