Agent Running in the Field

The next day, Prue and Nat have plans to meet their old friends Larry and Amy for lunch. Nat has Prue call the friends to tell them that he can’t attend, as he’s required to stay at the house until contacted by the Service. Stuck at home, Nat goes through the strange interactions he’d had with Ed, now recontextualizing them in light of the news about Ed’s proclivities.

At six o’clock in the evening, the front doorbell rings. Nat looks outside the window to see Arthur, the longtime driver for the boss of the entire Service, Bryn Jordan. Arthur takes Nat to a church in Hampstead Heath to meet Bryn. After pleasantries, Bryn and Nat start to discuss Ed. Bryn speculates that the reason Ed turned to Russia was due to a deep hatred of Trump and the governments running Western powers, rather than any sort of particular love for the Russian state. Nat secretly suspects that something else is going on as he considers the strangeness of the meeting between Ed and Valentina, as it seemed as if Valentina was putting on a German accent, oddly, to cover her natural Georgian accent. However, without any evidence, Nat instead speculates to Bryn that Ed might be having some sort of mental health crisis, which led to his treasonous behavior.

Bryn then asks whether Nat cares for Ed, to which Nat responds that he did, at least until the current fiasco. Bryn tells Nat what is expected of him: that he use his relationship with Ed to plant misinformation that Ed will then pass on to the Russians. Nat has been let go from the Service, with this most recent assignment being kept between him and Bryn. Bryn then tells Nat that he can ask any question he wishes. He asks about Dom and is told that Dom is on his way out from the Service, as he’s no longer considered trustworthy due to the scandal with his wife. Then, Nat asks Bryn to explain what Operation Jericho is.

Bryn calls Operation Jericho a “dialogue between adults” but refuses to clarify for Nat what that might mean specifically (231), outside of specifying that the document that Ed saw was a part of a longer conversation between Britain and the United States. He sends Nat off with the reassurance that he’s now the person in the best position to help Ed. Nat heads home and tells Prue about the meeting with Bryn, informing her that he agreed to help turn Ed into a double agent.

Early on Sunday morning, Nat heads to Primrose village to find a spy at the German embassy named Reni, who Nat had previously worked with in Helsinki. He slips a letter into her mailbox, presses the door buzzer, and heads to a park bench to wait for Reni to come meet him. He tells her that the Service has fired him for his relationship with Ed. He also tells Reni that he’s come to believe that Ed has tried to sell British secrets to the Germans because he’s enamored with Germany and their preeminence in the European Union. Though Reni denies everything, Nat tells her that he suspects her of being Maria Brandt, the German officer to whom Ed had initially tried to peddle British secrets before turning to the Russians. When Ed sold the secrets to the Russians, he had believed them to be Germans, which Nat figured out due to Valentina’s false German accent when meeting him. Now, he’s informing the Germans that the Russians are pretending to be them when accepting secrets from Britain.

He asks her to tell him what Operation Jericho is, as she should have knowledge of it from the documents that Ed showed her. Reni tells Nat that Operation Jericho is “an Anglo-American covert operation already in the planning stage with the dual aim of undermining the social democratic institutions of the European Union and dismantling our international trading tariffs” (244). Reni also says that her government had believed Ed since they had other intelligence supporting his story. Nat heads home, his suspicions about Ed’s and Russia’s motivations confirmed.

Ed heads into the locker room for his 15th badminton match with Nat, exuding cheerfulness. Nat watches him closely for any sign that he might have a suspicion about their friendship, but Ed acts normally. After the match, Ed takes Nat out for drinks, as usual for them. He informs Nat that he plans to get married soon, even though he’s never told Nat about a relationship, and he thanks him for introducing him to his future wife. The only person Nat has introduced to Ed is Florence, and he figures that Ed must be engaged to her. However, it seems as if Florence has never told Ed of her working relationship with Nat or her past as a spy. The wedding is to occur the following Friday, when Florence and Ed plan to head into the Register Office in Holborn to get married. He also asks whether Nat would be his best man, to which Nat agrees.

Ed also tells Nat that he’s booked a dinner for himself, Florence, and Nat at a local Chinese restaurant for that night. They head to the restaurant and meet Florence, who has clearly maintained the cover story under which she’d originally met Ed. Nat steps out for a moment to call Prue and notices a white van parked across the street, indicating that he’s being surveilled by British intelligence. Afterward, Ed, Florence, and Nat head to meet Prue at their home for further drinks. During the revelries, Nat slips into the hallway and places a folder into Florence’s jacket pocket. After a time, Ed and Florence take an Uber home.

Nat and Prue walk hand in hand into a park and sit on a bench to have a discussion. Nat wonders whether Ed and Florence are a real couple, but Prue assures him that they are. Nat tells Prue the full story of Ed, and they put their heads together and speak in hushed tones to invent a master plan to save him and Florence. Nat calls Bryn, who tells him that turning Ed is of utmost importance and that he is thinking about reassigning the case back to the Service if Nat can’t handle it. Nat tells him that it’s not as easy as he’s claiming and that he needs more time to be able to turn Ed. Nat claims to Bryn that the best way to reach Ed is to go through Florence, who will have a better time convincing him than Nat. Though he doesn’t like the idea, Bryn agrees to go along with this plan.

Nat meets Florence for lunch to discuss the document he slipped into her pocket earlier, informing her of Ed’s activities. The waiters are unusually attentive, which Nat recognizes as a sign that his meeting with Florence is being watched by the Service. Nat makes sure to take a seat at the bar where it will be harder for the microphones to hear them. Florence tells Nat that she had encouraged Ed, though she hadn’t known that he was selling secrets to Russians posing as Germans. They head for the table, and Nat puts on a show for the microphones while telling Florence about what Ed has done.

Florence launches into a tirade against Nat, which is so intense that he’s unable to tell whether her anger is real. Nat promises to her that Ed can save himself from prosecution if he becomes a double agent, but Florence refuses to accept this in front of the microphones, instead claiming that Ed would rather accept the prison time. Eventually, she accepts Nat’s proposal but insists that she’ll only tell Ed about what’s happening after their wedding the following week.

Under instructions from Nat, Prue arranges to rent a car under her given last name and calls Florence twice, once to ask about the hotel for their honeymoon and once to ask whether she can be of any help organizing the party at the pub following the wedding. All of this has been pre-arranged for Percy’s benefit at the Service since he’s certain to be listening in on them. The day before the wedding, Nat calls Ed and asks to have lunch with him. They discuss the wedding and Florence’s recent planning before leaving, with Ed insisting on keeping the ring himself until the following day.

The next day, Nat and Prue attend Ed and Florence’s wedding at the courthouse. Nat observes the assembled guests, knowing that the Service must have planted people in the room to watch the proceedings. After the exchange of vows, the wedding concludes, and the party descends the stairs from the courthouse. As they leave, they slip from Percy’s observation and jog toward the hired car in the parking garage. As they drive toward the airport, Florence tells Ed that Nat and Prue know what he’s done and that they’ve arranged for him and Florence to go abroad for a while to avoid prosecution in Britain. At the airport, Nat and Prue see Ed and Florence through security. As they leave, Ed refuses to meet Nat’s eyes, and, watching them walk out of sight, Nat thinks that he “had wanted to tell him [he] [i]s a decent man, but it [i]s too late” (281).