Chapter 7

As with much of Andrew’s life, periods where things were busy, or perhaps more accurately, when a lot was happening were followed by much calmer periods. The first four weeks of term three that first year at Cambridge was one of those times. Other than one event there was a comforting sameness to the start of the term. Everything and everybody seemed to quieten down across the town, it was time to put the work in, and for a large percentage of the students that meant playing catch up. So everything was quieter and tenser around town, the Department and within the College. At the same time the desire to let off steam seemed to increase at the same pace and so the bars didn’t get busy until much later yet most people tried to consume the same amount of booze just in a shorter time. There was a world of difference between those farmers five years earlier at Harry and Josephine’s party and the students at Cambridge University that Spring. But the need for a self-administered anesthetic in the name of fun was universal. Andrew drank three or four pints a night several times a week and yet felt like a Puritan.

Over those four weeks he averaged between 55 and 60 hours of classes and studying. His Supervisions finished and he had done well with all five supervisors. His lab work was strong although not across all the disciplines and Olivia was slightly better than Andrew at most lab work other than civil, and especially structural, engineering. So as classes finished he was well placed. Their experimental work covered 10% of the final mark and all four of them had done well, although none of them were as good as Olivia. She was an intuitive hands-on engineer. The quiet shy French girl was a great experimental engineer. She opened up a little bit with them over the year, but it was only in later years that they got the full story, and the three of them were the beneficiaries of her ability. The best way Andrew could describe it was from a scene in the movie Apollo 13 that he saw 25 years later. The astronauts on the ground had to construct a vital oxygen scrubber using parts not designed for it. Now this example was a movie but that was Olivia’s absolute forte. She was the person who could make it work. In all the years he worked as an engineer, in a lot of different environments, she was by far the best at solving problems, salvaging a situation. Keith, Matt and Andrew thanked that misogynistic idiot who wouldn’t work with her, at least once a term. Plus she had the most fantastic French accent. At least once a week they would bait her to say ‘I am going to keek your arse’ just to hear her French pronunciation.

But other than complete his last month of classes and labs Andrew worked to his usual routine. He still went to Addenbrooke’s on a Monday, the OTC on a Tuesday and for the first two weeks of term he modelled for the four students at the Art College on the Thursday night. Without hockey he was able to study on Wednesday evenings as well as Saturdays. Nothing stood out from the OTC at that time, attendance was patchy as exams and revision pressed in on everyone but Andrew continued attending through until the end of May.

Addenbrooke’s that term tested Andrew’s resolve to the point he was close to quitting, really for the only time he was at Cambridge. When roughly one fifth to one third of the patients do not respond to treatment you were always fighting the maths. That term Andrew got to the point where he was afraid to talk to anyone because of how many of the patients he talked to did not respond to their treatment. What was most appalling for him personally was that they all merged into an indistinct blob in his memory. He wished he could even remember the names never mind some of their details like he was able to do with Graham or Eric, in term one, but they never stayed in his mind. It was probably a way of coping. Andrew often walked home from the hospital to let the rage and sadness purge from his system and his Tuesday morning swims were an angry attempt to calm himself down. But in other ways, in a perverse cruel way, it was the best thing for him. He never fretted about his exams, sure he studied like a crazy person to make sure he was prepared as possible, but when in the month run up to the exams six children wither and die in front of you, literally shrink so it looks like the bed is swallowing them, it grounded him and made him realise what was really important.

At times Andrew felt he was practising being a modern day hermit but in reality it was nothing like that. He saw tens of people every day, woke Helena every morning, walked to the Department with Matt and Malcolm. But everybody had the same day to day existence, the same lack of chat. It was obvious in his calls back to Edinburgh. Leslie and Julian were in the same boat and as they had as little chat as Andrew they agreed to skip the calls, there was very little to say. His Grandma was always happy to chat and although every week’s call was a variation on the previous one, ‘studied hard all week Grandma’, Andrew knew that it was important to keep in touch with her. She was the link to the extended family. Andrew and his mother kept up a very intermittent correspondence but the sulking vulture of his father cast a shadow over ever page. The one call where there was something to talk about, well for Andrew to listen to, was his call with Maggie and Tony. The first call of the term involved Maggie moaning at Andrew for getting her sick. Who would have thought sitting naked at the top of a 3,000ft mountain for 20 or 30 minutes would give you a cold? It wasn’t going to stop her doing it again but she needed to have a good moan first. But both her and Tony talked about the pictures at length. They had created an album from the shoot with shots in all four directions. But they were very excited to show Andrew the ‘artist painting’ set of pictures. Once Tony had finished about the photos on Schiehallion Maggie took the phone back.

“Well you will be pleased to know you made Stacey cry.”

Andrew instinctively was worried but Maggie’s laughter calmed his momentary angst.

“Relax, they were tears of happiness. I gave her the two albums and the framed picture after work one day when she came back from her holiday. Oh Andrew, it was a shame you weren’t there. She was tracing the photos like she couldn’t believe that it was her that was in them. She loved the first album and we definitely got the cover picture right. She shrieked with laughter at the second album, blushed a little, but saw the humour in it. But Andrew, the framed picture. That made her cry. She said she had always wondered what it would be like to be a model but the picture was beyond anything she had ever dreamed of. Be prepared for hugs when you get back. And when I saw her three days later she was even happier. Hamish had absolutely loved everything. They both want to put the framed picture up in the house but there is nowhere they can put it that the kids won’t see it. I asked her if she was going to do it again and she was pretty sure it was going to be a one-off but she wasn’t 100% adamant. I know that she loved it. Her friend Elspeth is thinking about doing a shoot as well.”

As the term progressed Andrew got updates from them both as to how the business was doing. As they had talked about at Easter, it was slow going but Stacey and Elspeth had been telling all their friends and they were allegedly several women considering doing a shoot. But so far it was all talk. But the calls with the two of them were by far the most interesting of Andrew’s week,

So life was routine. Then the letter from the Ministry of Defence arrived, asking Andrew to attend an interview for the summer job. Fortunately it was to be on a Friday and so on May 18^th 1984 he was on the early train to London with a few commuters. He had let Freya know but did not stay with, or see, her or Jim on this visit. Andrew Tubed across the city centre to Charing Cross and walked the 100 yards or so down Whitehall to the Old War Office Building. Before there was the Ministry of Defence the services were separate with the Admiralty on the west side of Whitehall and the War Office (the name for the government ministry that controlled the Army) on the east side. They were all merged into the Ministry of Defence 20 years earlier but somehow all the previous buildings were still used. So his interview was scheduled to be held in this left over relic from a previous age. There may have been some more decorative or grand parts of the building but all he saw was government utilitarian.

This was the first time that Andrew understood the reach of a government and its impact on someone’s life, in this case his. After confirming his identity he was sent to the waiting room where he discovered three other candidates already there. When Andrew was called for his interview there were three of them in a bland meeting room, again functional, and the expressions and air of the three interviewers put him on guard immediately. Andrew had the sense of an interrogation rather than an interview. Other than a pad of paper and a file of notes in front of each of them there was nothing else in the room. They were well versed in his life and were able to talk about most of it without recourse to the notes in front of them. And Andrew could not make this last part up. His interviewers were Mrs. Smith, Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones. No honestly.

Mrs. Smith started with getting Andrew to talk about school, including the time off for his cancer treatment, and his involvement with the CCF, although they did not go into details on that at the time. Then Mr. Jones took over and started to delve into his interactions with the Army, starting with the CCF, and here he was thorough, he knew all the camps from Otterburn onwards. But it was when he started talking about the first Royal Engineers camp two years earlier that Andrew started to get a sense there was more to this.

“Please explain your interest in explosives.”

Andrew had got to the edge of the map and the large sign was flashing ‘there be dragons’.

“My interest in explosives?”

Nothing like extemporising while trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Yes.”

Well thanks for that clarification!

“Are you referring to my physics project at school?”

Andrew got a nod but no words.

“I don’t have an interest in explosives themselves, it is more the impact of them. I was at the very periphery of the Chelsea Barracks bomb three years ago and was amazed and disconcerted by the physical force of the blast. That was 20lbs of explosive and I felt the strength of the blast from a hundred and fifty yards away. So at the Sapper camp in the summer of 1982 I asked the training staff about how buildings were protected against blasts. I had read about 2,000lb bombs in Northern Ireland and was interested, given the role we were training for, as to how permanent and temporary buildings were constructed to take into account this risk. I assumed that there were studies and reports based on bomb damage but given that we were being shown how to construct temporary structures I was interested. The training staff did take the time to ask but I was told that the information was not available. I presumed it was sensitive or classified so I said thank you sir and moved on.

“That autumn I decided to take my interest in this subject a step further by working on the impact of structure, and especially materials used in the structure, and their resilience to explosives. After many requests I was granted permission to take the models I had constructed for the project out to the range outside Edinburgh and was able to watch as three Sappers placed tiny pieces of explosive where I requested on the models, fired them and then noted the impact. But I at no point was in possession of, or allowed to use the explosives. The pieces were barely bigger than a thimble. I wrote that project up and passed my Physics exam partly due to it.

“Since then I have been to a second Royal Engineers camp last summer and have been a member of the OTC at university where you know I am studying Engineering.”

There are lots of times in a person’s life when suddenly the penny drops and you see what others have already seen, and you feel such a fool. That was Andrew at that moment. He had expressed interest in how resilient buildings were to bombs, and had done a project on the impact of explosives on different materials. At the same time as a skilled, determined and ruthless group of terrorists was using explosives to blow up and kill people throughout Northern Ireland and England (the IRA only ever attacked in Scotland once when they tried to blow up the Queen in the Shetlands). Mr. Jones tried and mostly succeeded in hiding his smile as a full range of emotions played out across Andrew’s face.

“Thank you, that confirms our previous investigations.”

Before Andrew had a chance to even process that statement Mrs. Smith smoothly took over.

“You are an unusual young man. You already have a degree from the Open University, obtained while still at school.”

He didn’t know what to say to that so just acknowledged it was true.

“What made you apply for this program?”

Given that Freya had told Andrew to use her as a reference he figured there was no problem in telling the truth.

“I was made aware of the program by a friend, she told me about it and thought I should apply. I had been unsure what I wanted to do this summer and this seemed like an interesting opportunity.”

Standard bland, bullshit, interview answer. She accepted it and moved onto what he was studying at Cambridge. The rest of the interview was formulaic and straightforward. It was all smiles and bonhomie at the end but then Smith and Jones, no really, left and then Mr. Brown asked Andrew to sit down again.

“As I am sure you are now aware, you came to our attention two years ago with your enquiries about structural strength. Most candidates for jobs here have to be screened to get Background clearance. You already have that. Here are the requirements for Secret clearance, please read them and then complete the attached forms. I do not know whether you will be granted Secret clearance but you are the applicant that we are going to use as the trial for the process. Now let me take you up to the personnel department.”

Andrew was handed a package of forms and taken upstairs to personnel where he had a perfunctory interview with a bored personnel officer. At the end of which she smiled, in a spectacularly fake manner, congratulated him on being accepted to the program and he was given a further set of forms to complete.

At 1.30 Andrew was back on the street feeling like a polished rock at the end of the lapidary process. He walked to the Silver Cross and had a large pub lunch and thought about the day. It sank in as he ate his lunch that he was known, he had a file. Now who had that file was a mystery but Andrew recalled Jones’ comment ‘confirms our investigation’. He had been investigated. Any pretence at secrecy in his life was long gone, Andrew had made too much of a splash with the Trusts. If he applied to be commissioned in the Territorial Army upon graduation then most of what was discussed today would have either been known or disclosed. But he was not yet 19, a university student and known to the government. Oddly he wasn’t upset, more disquieted. One of the things he thought about was how Deborah or Andrea would have reacted to this news. They would have been off to the New Statesman in a flash.