pleasantly surprised, Baldwin wrote down a number on his notepad, tore the sheet off and handed it to her. ‘You can reach me on this number,’ he said. ‘Day or night.’
Isabel walked back to Piccadilly, phoned the travel agency with the news that she would not be back that day, and took a 19 bus to Highbury Corner. It was almost five o’clock. Her flatmate would probably not yet be home, but Isabel felt reluctant to risk having her thoughts interrupted by more instalments of the endless romantic soap opera which Rowan passed off as a life. She bought a cup of tea at the outdoor café in Highbury Fields and carried it across to one of the seats in the area barred to dogs.
For a while she just sat there and watched the world go by. Or rather, watched England go by. Since the meeting in Baldwin’s office she had felt like she was living in an alien country. Which, of course, she was. It was just that most of the time the feeling was buried somewhere at the back of her mind.
‘You must miss the heat,’ people used to say to her when she first arrived. She had tried to explain that her birthplace in the far south of Argentina was just as cold and a lot windier than most of Scotland, let alone England, but nobody really listened. South America was jungle and gauchos and Pele and the carnival in Rio. It had to be hot.
She conjured up a picture of ice floes in the Beagle Channel, the wind like a knife, a beach full of penguins, the aurora australis shimmering in the southern sky. That was her home.
It was the one line, she realized, which had got to her. ‘Would you consider returning to your country?’ That simple question had somehow brought it all back. She had not been really unhappy in the prison of exile, not since the year or more of grieving for Francisco and of learning to live with what they had done to her. But she had not really been happy either, just endlessly marking time. The line from that Bob Dylan album of Michael’s said it better than she ever could: ‘And I’ve never gotten used to it, I’ve just learned to turn it off.’
That was her life – turned off. Friends, a lover, but no real comradeship, no real love. No purpose.
But could she really work for the English?
‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ she said softly to herself. ‘Sometimes,’ she added. Surely the Junta would lose this war anyway, without her putting her own life at risk?
‘If no one else will fight, then all the more reason for us to.’ She could hear Francisco saying it, in the candlelit lodgings in Córdoba. They had just made love, and as usual he had been lying on his back, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, surveying the world situation.
They had tortured and killed him, and maybe this was fate’s way of giving her the chance to even the score. Maybe the wretched Malvinas had finally found a use for themselves, as a grave for the military’s prestige. Defeat would bring a new government in Buenos Aires, one with untainted hands, one that could admit to what had been done to all those tens of thousands. Such honesty might bring the hope of redemption for her country. And for her.
‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina,’ she muttered ironically.
She got up and walked slowly across the park to the flat she shared. Rowan was not home yet, and for once Isabel felt the need of some alcohol. An opened bottle of burgundy supplied the necessary, and she sat nursing a glass in front of the six o’clock news. The fleet was sailing out of Portsmouth harbour, flags flying, men saluting, loved ones waving. She remembered what Michael had said the previous evening, that no matter how much he despised the patriotism and the flag-waving, no matter how clearly he could see through all the sanctimonious crap, he had been appalled to discover that there was still a small part of him that felt somehow connected, even proud, of all this.
She had understood exactly what he meant, because she knew that a small part of her wanted the English to fail in this war, wanted the beasts of the Junta to triumph in Argentina’s name. And more than anything else, or so she later came to believe, it was the need to silence that small voice which led her to call Baldwin the next morning.
The next few days seemed more than a little unreal. She called in sick to her two jobs, perhaps not really believing that her new career as a Mata Hari would amount to anything. The Englishmen who were supposedly preparing her for her new career certainly did not inspire much confidence.
For one thing, it rapidly became clear to Isabel that they knew next to nothing about her country, either in the general sense or in terms of the current situation. What information they did have seemed to come from either the Argentinian press or American signals intelligence. The latter source offered great wads of information, almost all of which was rendered useless by the lack of any accompanying indication of the enemy’s intentions. The newspapers, needless to say, offered only lies and conceits. It was obvious that British Intelligence had no one on the ground in Argentina.
Now, faced with the prospect of having someone, the Intelligence people seemed initially incapable of deciding what to do with her. Isabel could imagine them discussing the possibility of her seducing General Galtieri and learning all the Junta’s secrets. Still, she did not fool herself into believing that they thought any more highly of her than she did of them. She was, after all, an Argie, a woman and a communist – which had to be three strikes and out as far as the Foreign Office was concerned. If it was not for the fact that she was the intelligence services’ only proof that they were doing anything at all that was useful, she would probably have just been sent home in a taxi.
It was on Friday 9 April, the day the other Western European countries swung into line behind Britain’s call for sanctions, that some semblance of a coherent mission was offered to her. Baldwin escorted her through a maze of Whitehall corridors and courtyards to a spacious top-floor office overlooking St James’s Park, and into the presence of a cadaverous-looking Englishman with slicked-back black hair and a worried expression. His name was Colonel William Bartley, but he wore no uniform, unless the City gent’s pinstripe suit counted as one.
‘We have thought long and hard about where and how you could be most usefully deployed,’ he said, after the exchange of introductions and Baldwin’s departure. ‘And…’ He stopped suddenly, sighed, and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve read your file, of course,’ he continued, ‘and you wouldn’t expect me to sympathize with your politics…’
‘No,’ she said.
‘But of course, if these weren’t your politics then you would not be willing to betray your own country on our behalf, so I can hardly complain.’ Bartley grunted, probably in appreciation of his own logic. ‘But you’re obviously intelligent, and you can doubtless see our problem.’
She could. ‘You don’t want to tell me anything which I might turn over to my beloved government. Well, what could I say to convince you?’
‘Nothing. In any case we are not merely concerned at the possibility that you will pass on information willing. There is always the chance you will be captured. And of course…’ Bartley left the unspoken ‘tortured’ hanging in the air.
‘I understand. And you are right – there’s no way I would endure torture to save your secrets.’ As I once did for a lover, she thought. ‘So,’ she said, ‘it’s simply a matter of calculating risks, is it not? The risk of my being a double agent, or of getting caught, against the risk of not telling me enough to make using me worthwhile.’
‘Exactly,’ Bartley agreed.
She stared at him in silence.
‘You are from the south,’ he said, ‘which is useful from our point of view. How difficult
