Norman Smith's Sojourn

Introduction

The following document was found, physically printed on A4 paper in a brown envelope, on the back seat of a taxi at Albert Embankment, London. The taxi driver, by fortunate coincidence, a regular informant of mine, discovered the envelope immediately after dropping off a middle-aged gentleman outside number 85, but, despite driving around for a few minutes, was unable to locate the passenger and decided to see if there was any address on the paperwork for forwarding purposes. Upon realising there was not and bearing in mind the potentially sensitive nature of the material, the taxi driver called me and asked if I could help to reunite the document with its owner.

As an intelligence correspondent for one of the national newspapers, I was just leaving a meeting at the Press Association on Vauxhall Bridge Road at the time and was able to arrange to meet up my informant almost immediately. The document was therefore in my possession within less than half an hour of its discovery. My contact was unable to give more than a cursory description of the passenger, the ride from Whitehall to Albert Embankment having been short in duration, during which no conversation took place and few glances were made at the passenger by the driver in the rear-view mirror. Apparently, he had few distinguishing features, being neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, hirsute nor bald. He was just an average, if rather ‘old school’, middle-aged, professional person wearing a grey suit and a sober tie. He paid for his fare with a ten-pound note and asked the cabby to keep the change, disclosing no particular accent.

As the envelope had no address on it, the only clues as to the identity of the sender or that of the intended recipient lay solely within the text. The title, ‘Report to MI6’ was singularly unrevealing. Furthermore, the term ‘Director’ is used very loosely within MI6 and in a variety of contexts. Identifying a member of staff by this appellation is impossible.

I, therefore, decided to focus on the identification of the author. My first line of inquiry was to seek out Bailey and Benfield Accountancy and establish whether there was a Norman Smith on their payroll. There is no such accountancy firm based in London, but I did manage to find an accountancy firm named Benfield Smith, based in Horsham, West Sussex. The only name close to Norman Smith was George Rupert Smith, a senior and founding partner who had recently deceased at the age of ninety-three. The electoral roll for Reigate in Surrey contains one Norman R. Smith. He turned out to be a twenty-six-year-old plumber.

I was not surprised. In such circumstances, I would not expect the author to use his real name for security reasons, so my next line of approach was with MI6, a notoriously secretive organisation. As a well-known and reputable reporter, I do have access to some senior staff and eventually managed to arrange a brief and confidential conversation about the report with one of them, as in a well-worn cliché, on a bench in Green Park. After a cursory glance through the contents, I was advised that there was very little likelihood of the document being of any significance and that it looked like the ramblings of a fantasist. However, a copy was taken away for further investigation.

In the public interest, following that internal investigation, I asked for a formal response to be sent to me so that I may be assured that there was no need for me to investigate the scandalous possibility of confidential MI6 files, containing no cipher or other security, being discovered in a public place.

The next day, I received an encrypted email from MI6 with the following statement:

"Having analysed the document presented to us, we can assure the public that it bears absolutely no relationship to any work being carried out by MI6 either now or in the past. It contains allusions to working methods that we do not adopt and does not comply with our policies for either international operational activities or the reporting of these. MI6 has a robust security methodology and it is impossible that any communication of this kind would ever be transmitted in physical paper format or without secure encryption. The public may rest assured that there has been no leak of classified information. This is quite clearly a hoax, and a poor one at that."

Following the MI6 statement, I decided that the report had no news value and that a serious article based on such uncorroborated and obscure information would bring my newspaper into disrepute and invite ridicule, let alone damage my professional career.

However, in a private capacity, I could not help continuing to dwell on the report and found myself re-reading it on several occasions during the following weeks. What if there were some important information hidden within the text? What if the apparently extraneous descriptions and humorous anecdotes were merely paddings, protecting more sinister underlying truths? What if MI6 was trying to cover up a mission so bungled in its concept and execution as to be almost laughable?

I, therefore, decided to forward a copy of the text to a publisher, in order to gauge independent reaction in the hope that, even if it had no intelligence value, it may be of some literary interest.

The publisher wrote back asking me how I had managed to write such obscure, fantastical fiction in between my activities as a serious reporter. The author, who he assumed to be me, was clearly intending not to expose state secrets, but to make a mockery of the whole process of intelligence gathering, not to mention social conventions.

From that point onwards, I felt sure that this was, rather than a mislaid intelligence report, a piece of literary fiction with some value, and have since managed, with some difficulty, to arrange for its publication in that category.

I do, however, still harbour some suspicions about the way in which the papers came so readily into my possession, which I now believe to have been the result of a deliberate plan rather than pure coincidence. I do not suspect my informant, though it is not impossible that he is party to the plot, though I do suspect that the documents were left in his cab on purpose rather than by accident. I have no proof to corroborate this theory. However, had I not been the primary recipient, who knows what would have happened to the package?

I am still no wiser as to the true identity of the author or their intentions, but I hope that he (or she) will be gratified, and even perhaps amused, rather than angry to find that their ramblings have eventually made it into the public domain. It is fortunate that the time between writing and publication has been relatively short; otherwise, the context of political and social conditions in South Africa may have lost relevance and have been overtaken quickly by events. Most intelligence stories have a notoriously short shelf-life, one of the reasons why my day-job is so challenging.

Despite my continued desire to unearth the author, I expect that their continued anonymity is the best means of avoiding backlash in the event of anything contained in this document having any veracity at all. I will continue my inquiries but am decreasingly optimistic about the chances of positive identification as time goes by.

I have absolutely no intention of commenting publically on any aspect of the report, having professionally designated it as a work of fiction, so I will leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Finally, I trust that you will also find it within yourself to forgive the author for any insults or insinuations that may appear to be directed at real persons (living or dead), organisations (existent or defunct), nations (complacent or humiliated), and social mores (revered or abhorred), whether or not these are intended or inadvertent.

I hope you enjoy the read as much as I did.

Donald Osman (nom de plume)

Newspaper reporter and public relations consultant

Report to MI6

Dear Director,

It is probably contrary to established protocol for me to file a report to MI6 in this format, but you will forgive the presentation style, for, as you know, I am completely naive in such matters and both the report and the field work that prompted it are both areas in which I have no previous experience. Nor do I have access to invisible ink, encryption codes, self-combusting paper, or microfilm technology.

As an accountant, I am much more familiar with numbers than words and am never happier than when achieving the sublime balance between the debit and credit sides of the ledger. Like most men of my profession, I obtain huge personal satisfaction from balancing the books, even if this occasionally means, as in the manner of one cheating at Solitaire, removing unwanted numbers into vague and obscure sub-categories, such as accruals, depreciation, and contingencies. I can read a set of accounts like a book and find more stimulus in doing so than in reading newspapers, reports, or appendix notes that are filled solely with words, which, as we all know, can be ambiguous and even duplicitous, lacking the clarity that logically ordered digits present.

From this you will probably gather that I consider myself to be a man with a logical, if formulaic, mind and a tendency to bundle issues onto either the debit or credit category for the sake of clarity and resolution. Mrs G cannot understand such a black and white view of the world because, for her, every single thing seems to be complicated and ambiguous, resulting in clinical analysis and clear decision-making being nigh on impossible. I do not, however, see my approach to the world as incompatible with the illogicality of human feelings. In fact, I find that sometimes emotions can be dealt with more satisfactorily if you take a logical approach, though this theory does tend to infuriate Mrs G beyond words.

The point of this rather laboured introduction is to explain how, in my opinion, by choosing me for this mission, your department seemed to be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I am sure there was some reasoning behind the choice of field operator, but I am still not entirely sure that you picked the right man for the job. Very little that I have discovered on this mission has been either black or white, and most of the issues I have come across I have struggled to find a solution to or have had so many multiple potential solutions as to make an accountant’s head reel with frustration.

I realise, of course, that I was not engaged to find any solutions, but merely to observe, in order to provide objective feedback and information. However, objectivity can easily be muddied when you do not know which side of the fence you are supposed to be sitting on.

In view of the brevity of my briefing for this assignment, I thought it would be useful to start off by outlining exactly what I believe I was sent to South Africa to do. This may of course differ considerably from the expectations of MI6, which would render my mission a complete failure, but I expect you had built in that risk from the outset.

When you summoned me to your office in Albert Embankment some months ago, I was under the impression that Bailey and Benfield Accountancy had recently won a new and prestigious government contract that I was unaware of. As the partners do not keep me informed of all company business, this was a reasonable assumption.

You can, then, understand my astonishment upon learning from you that I had been hand chosen, in a personal capacity and through the electoral roll, to serve HM Government on a covert overseas operation. In view of the fact that our meeting lasted less than forty-five minutes (fitting nicely into my lunch break), there was little time for me to absorb everything that you told me. Afterward, many questions troubled me about the task I had been set, but it had by then been made clear to me that no further contact with you would be possible until the mission was completed. I, therefore, managed to gather the following brief, though I admit there may have been either sub-text or alternative activities that I either missed or was unable to absorb at the time, being under so much pressure. However, I did manage to establish, or perceive, the following facts:

I was expected to use my forthcoming holiday to the West and Eastern Cape regions of South Africa with Mrs G to gather informal and anecdotal information about current issues facing South Africa and its people. All this was to be achieved discreetly and without meeting any person in an official capacity. The idea being to generate genuine, first-hand intelligence rather than that loaded and inconsistent hype being received through official channels and from established agents on the ground.

I was expected to deliver an envelope and receive another one from a code-named contact, returning the received one to the UK.

I was to tell no one about my mission, including Mrs G, and to maintain cover as a British tourist.

Should my cover be blown for whatever reason, MI6 would deny all knowledge of my existence.

I was to compile my findings in a written report to be delivered to you by hand, within two weeks of my return, and v) Depending on results, a retrospective stipend may be considered by HM Government, but due to departmental financial pressures, this was dependent on budgetary conditions at the time of decision (I fully understood this part).

I am sure there is a reason why the exact nature of my information-gathering activities was kept deliberately obscure. Frankly, such an open brief does not sit well with a man, such as myself, who works much better when items can be categorised and boxed-up independently from each other. I would have felt far more comfortable, for example, had you asked me to gather information about accounting practices or supermarket consolidation in South Africa. However, after some thought, I surmised that MI6 would be little interested in such specifics and that there was probably at least some part of my brief that covered socio-political and economic conditions in the Cape, as well as potential issues such as infrastructure, lawlessness, and economic development. None of this, however, was made clear at all and if I had come back with a report on South African ornithology, you could surely not have complained. It is a good thing that I am not completely ignorant of the intelligence gathering needs of our country and that I am, generally speaking, a loyal and patriotic citizen.

Preconceptions

Director, I have to admit, I had some reservations about visiting South Africa which I did not share in their complexity with Mrs G lest she implied from this a lack of enthusiasm for the trip on my part. For many people of my generation, the very mention of South Africa conjures up a host of preconceptions and uncomfortable feelings, most connected directly with the word ‘apartheid’. Clearly, since the 1990s, things have changed, but it is hard to shake off the past if you are as old and staid as I am. There is a bitter taste which still needs to be expunged.

I realise it is not the role of a field agent to share personal misgivings about a country to MI6, when the service demands clinical objectivity in obtaining intelligence. I am merely trying to put my approach to the South Africa into context. Please be assured that I have no bias in matters relating to the country’s recent history and am neither a supporter of die-hard apartheid sympathisers nor a messianic believer that the ANC has now changed everything entirely for the better. I hope that this sceptical position has served me well as an objective observer for Her Majesty’s Government.

I do not need to dwell on the background of modern-day South Africa, but I feel that a few basic facts may be appropriate to give my report some context. The population of the country is estimated at around fifty-five million, of which less than nine percent are whites. Around eighty percent of the population consists of black people, and the rest are mainly coloured or Asian.

It has recently been claimed that 40,000 white families own 80% of the land, though there is some genuine debate about the veracity of this fact. Exact figures are skewed by corporate and government ownership of land that is not in private hands. Nonetheless, considering the size of the white population, this group still owns an apparently disproportionate amount of land. Recent survey data suggests that 10% of the population owns at least 90% to 95% of all assets in South Africa. The exact figures, again, are probably a matter of dispute, something I absolutely abhor as a chartered accountant, but they offer a good enough guide as to the general state of wealth distribution in the country.

Experts believe that rising income inequality is a key challenge for South Africa that adversely impacts economic development and socio-political stability, whilst also impeding reforms in health and education. Huge variations in income also increase the incidence of poverty and contribute towards high crime rates. Personally, I would generally avoid using the word ‘incidence’ in such a context when the issue is so widespread. But that is just semantics.

As far as the economy is concerned, it could be said to be in the doldrums, having posted its lowest growth rate for seven years in 2016. Analysts are concerned that the country may be facing an investment rating downgrade and could even require IMF support unless things improve in the near future.

It seems that the government of Jacob Zuma has not exactly cloaked itself in glory. Some might even say that it has been in absolute shambles, but I neither agree nor disagree with this analysis due to lack of sufficient evidence. However, it seems that foreign investors are spooked by high levels of government corruption, evidenced by alleged bribes for government contracts, gate-keeping, vote buying, and electoral fraud, as well as political infighting within the ANC.

These are all facts or lies that I have quoted from public sources. I cannot corroborate or deny their veracity, as I have not had the time or inclination to conduct any meaningful research, so busy have I been earning fees for the partners of Bailey and Benfield Accountancy. Nonetheless, they probably give the gist of how things stand in the country.

Director, please be assured that this is not a socio-economic thesis or travelogue, so I will not dwell further on the economy or the details of hotels and tourist activities which are not relevant to my report.

Against