The Zima Confession

“Must be terribly expensive to travel there though.”

“Contacts via ra unions. It’s all organised by his union. It’s dirt cheap, apparently.”

“Probably subsidised.” Richard didn’t hide a slightly sneering tone in the word “subsidised”. What was he, he asked himself. Some sort of “perfect market” apologist? Was it wrong for committed Party members to be subsidised? Especially when they were going on a high-minded cultural exchange to see one of the few working examples of a supposedly socialist country.

Richard felt embarrassed. He wondered if Eddie had noticed his sneering tone. To his dismay he realised he probably had, because Eddie was looking sideways at him; what he was saying amounted to a defence of Archie: “He has to go to a lot ay seminars while he’s there, cuz it’s supposed tae be an official visit, but he loves rat kinda hing anyhow.”

“Not my idea of fun though.” Richard winced to hear himself. Now why had he blurted that out? A lot of the stuff the activists did wasn’t fun. It was to do with attending long, boring meetings; committee work. They didn’t rush around doing exciting stuff. They didn’t try to assassinate anyone or commit terrorist acts, but they were quite convinced that passing resolutions at their meetings would eventually lead to international socialism, to fairness and equality. Richard didn’t mean to criticise this, only he wanted to short circuit it. He wanted something more direct. Something truly revolutionary.

“Anyway, wur here fur a purpose, Richard. You sure about this by ra way?”

Richard was aware that some of the Party members, including Eddie, doubted his sincerity. He was thankful that Stuart had vouched for him and convinced Eddie to take his plan seriously. Their first meeting to discuss things had gone well. This was the final hurdle. All he had to do now was avoid hesitation. Deep down he knew he was more committed and had clearer ideas about his objectives than any of the others, even Eddie.

“Dead sure. I don’t need any more discussion about it.”

“OK. We’ve been told what we need fur codes. We need things that you’ll remember in any context, mibby years frae now. Things that will stick out but no’ too much.”

“OK. I know that already from the last meeting.”

“You’ll write them down, and stick rum in this envelope, but don’t let me see rum. I’m no involved. I’m just goanie pass ruh envelope oan. As we discussed before, ruh first contact might be quite tricky. Someone just turning up out ay ra blue one day…”

“OK. So…” Richard wanted to check again if this was OK. “I need to be quite sure of one thing: that no one will know me personally. They’ll know me only as a set of code words that matches a person who’s going to identify himself and his location once a year (or no more than four times a year if things change quickly). I have to do this via a specific type of advert in a specific newspaper, as we discussed. This means a handler can locate me and then can identify himself to me using the first code word, or code phrase.”

Eddie nodded, “Yes, that’s the deal. Happy with that?” “Everything seems OK to me. I only have your word that you’re not going to look at the codes though.”

“You don’t need tuh worry about me, I canny do anything with the codes.”

Richard was agitated. “But how…”

“Listen, whit mair can ah do? For whit it’s worth, you can have mah word if you want it. You huv the word ae Eddie MacFarlane, the guy that’s nivvur let anybuddy in the Party down.” Eddie looked angrily at Richard. “OK, Eddie, it’s fine. This is a bit more stressful than I expected.”

“Your handler won’t have anything tae identify you by except these codes. And no one else will know them.” Eddie seemed to be trying to say it in a reassuring way.

“I don’t want to leave a trace of who I am.”

“That’s already agreed. Ah think ris wull work out just fine. The codes for the first contact just need to be quite exact so rut, wance we’ve goat a use fur ye, we assign a handler. He gets ra code words and then gets in touch with ye.”

“It’s all good Eddie.”

“Ruh hing is, you may never hear frae anyone. This all depends on you getting into some sort ae position where yu’re goannae be useful. It also depends on you no aborting when yu’re coantacted.” Eddie paused. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to say this but he was going to anyway. “By ruh way if you want tae abort fur ideological reasons dae it now, right? I don’t want tae be part ay a complete waste ay time.”

“No problem, Eddie. I don’t know why you doubt me. I trust the Party. I’m in agreement with its overall objectives. As far as I’m concerned, aborting is only for operational reasons – if there’s an obstacle. We can suspend and resume if we have doubts and only abort if we know for sure there’s an insurmountable problem. We discussed it all in detail back at your place. We went through lots of different scenarios. We even did some role play exercises, as you know.”

“Remember, frae now oan yu’re no going tae be dealing wi’ pals. There’s gonnae be no Stuart, no Eddie, no naebuddy tae help frae now oan. I know ruh guy that I’m handing this envelope tae, but I don’t know what kind of person or group that it goes tae efter rat. We have tae trust that it’s someone competent.”

“I’m sure it will be. I’ve never met anyone in the Party that was a fool.” He hesitated and then decided he’d better say it. “One thing though, Eddie. As you know, I’m not interested in marches or any of that sort of agitprop shite. I want this to be something real. If I’m going to do anything, I want it to be something significant. I don’t want to find that my mission is to unplug the photocopier or put some scratch marks on the boss’s car.”

“Fur this idea of yours to work, we have to hope that you end up somewhere useful.”

“That’s not looking too good at the moment. I might need to try to change the course of my degree a bit. Accountancy would be good but I don’t fancy it. I might have to add in a bit more Economics.”

“Ah wish ah could just casually say stuff like that. I struggled tae get a few O levels.”

“Well, I’m not saying it will be easy, but I need to find something that gets me somewhere.”

“Ah’m still worried. As soon as you get a decent job as an accountant, or whatever, you’ll be wan ay ‘them’ – the bosses. You’ll be driving around in a fancy car waving two fingers at yur old coamrades.” Eddie’s face was already starting to twist in anger at the thought.

“It’s not like that at all, Eddie. This is more important than making a few quid for myself. I want to see a new kind of society. If an advanced country like Britain can give a lead, the world will follow. It will transform the lives of millions of people. The way society’s organised just now, money and status are intertwined. In the society we want, the link will be broken. Do you see what I’m saying? Money …” he gave a grunt of disgust. He’d said stuff like this before anyway. He didn’t need to finish his sentence. Eddie knew what he meant.

“Right, OK, let’s get oan wi’ it. So this is what you need tae do. This is the list ay actions that need codes.” Eddie pushed a form towards Richard. “You already have this list from our last meet. I’ll go out tae ruh bookstore and leave you tae write codes that corre- spond to each of these actions. When yu’re done, droap it aw in ruh envelope here and I’ll come back in and get it. Take yur time. Yu’ve got aw day. I’m just going to go outside and chat to Linda while you get ruh codes written.”

Eddie went back out to the bookshop and left him to it.

Richard already knew his words. Four of them were right there on the wall in front of him: Zima, Vesna, Leyta, Ocyen. He needed something memorable and knew this would work. For identification, he needed phrases that would jump out. Hopefully the ones he had decided on were ones that he could remember no matter what, but anyone else (who overheard by accident) would presume to be just some sort of literary quote. He took out his copy of the codes that he’d decided on and copied them neatly onto Eddie’s form:

Identify handler: When the stranger returns you must wake up.

Discuss: You will remember me again when we meet one day, though we have not met.

Identify operation: Zima (Winter)

Suspend: Vesna (Spring)

Resume: Leyta (Summer)

Abort: Ocyen (Autumn)

He read them all one last time. He was happy enough. He folded the form neatly, put it in the envelope and sealed it. He stuffed his own copy back into his pocket. He would burn it later.

11. Focussed

He was a young man then. Now what was he? Nearly sixty! His life had gone past like a dream. He’d got into IT, then banking software. He had never settled down anywhere.

More years had passed than he had expected. He felt like one of those Japanese soldiers hidden in the jungle from the forties until the seventies, not realising WWII was over – except this war, the Class War, was not over. It hadn’t even started. The memory of choosing all those code words had faded to a blur. It all seemed not quite real any more. The codes themselves were firmly imprinted in his mind, even though, for many years, he had given up on ever hearing them. He even wondered if they had been totally serious at the time. Well, they must’ve been, because here he was: about to take the biggest risk of his life to put their plan into action.

In fact, he hadn’t climbed very far up the ladder to a position of any particular power. He hadn’t climbed to the dizzy heights he might have imagined as a student. Even Stuart’s progress had been greater – university lecturer, or whatever he was. That part of the plan had been a complete failure. In the end it was just luck that had put him into an IT job in the banking industry, where he believed he could carry out his plan. Where he was now, he was too lowly to attract much attention, but he had real opportunities to do damage – he was trusted to deploy software for an important private bank. If only the Party realised what they could do with him, and if only they had the right resources to exploit the opportunity. He had access to a weak point in the banking system. He could deploy software that could sabotage an important private bank. He could deliver a psychological blow that would spread uncertainty and panic among some of the richest and most powerful people in Europe.

He’d almost given up on getting anything from the Party when now, at last, it had become obvious that the financial system, still recovering slowly and painfully from the financial crisis of 2008, would not survive a further shock. At last they had sent him the package he’d been hoping for.

He’d lost touch with Stuart and Eddie years ago. Of course, losing touch was part of the deal. The last he’d seen of Eddie was an angry face, mouth wide open, shouting. Eddie’s enraged face shouted out of a photo in the Evening Times. That was Eddie: he had a short fuse. The accompanying story was that he, and several others, had been arrested on a demo in support of the miners during the miners’ strike in the eighties. The strike had failed. After that, the old-style socialism that Richard had grown up with, but never really believed in, had died worldwide.

Richard could remember the photo of Eddie almost as though it was projected into space in front of him. The furious anger of his face shouting out of the newspaper was iconic of those times. So many of the activists back then were angry young men. Angry, but not well focussed. Richard speculated that, deep down, Eddie wasn’t motivated by a desire to change society; he merely wanted to exorcise his own demons. Give vent to his fury at the world.

But Eddie was never more calm than he was that day when Richard handed the codes to him. That day they had both been focussed on achieving something.

12. A Real Campaigner

To begin with, Eddie had been shocked Richard had come up with this plan. He was also somewhat suspicious of his motives. Eddie sometimes doubted if Richard was even a socialist of any sort. Stuart had vouched for him, though, and Stuart knew him better than anyone. Stuart was rock solid. A real campaigner.