News recently of the arrest of a suspected Chinese spy at Westminster and the escape of a suspected spy for Iran from prison was a reminder that London, whatever else it has lost, retains its intrigue as a hotbed of international espionage.
It also reminded me of house hunting this year, when I wondered if I had stumbled into a not-so-secret spy nest.
It is written into most leases in London that for the final two months, you agree to reasonably facilitate estate agents giving viewings to the next prospective tenants. Having strangers led through your home seems intrusive but it is just another factor of the hot and heavy London rental market. Tenants accept it because they must. Landlords love it because it cuts rental void periods between tenancies – the next mug is always lined up.
I had a preliminary agreement earlier this year on a house in southwest London but, mindful of the need for a backup, I kept looking. One morning, I arranged to view a small house in Maida Vale, a salubrious enclave in north London. Properties there were way out of my budget but what the hell: no harm asking if they might negotiate. Surprisingly, they would.
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I showed up outside the little mews house down a cobbled lane near the canal district. The estate agent was a bright and breezy younger man. He showed me around the house, which was clearly occupied. I knew in an instant it wasn’t for me. It was far smaller than it seemed from the pictures, which must have been taken using a fish-eye camera lens. It was dark with a baffling layout, but still capable of raising a king’s ransom in rent due to its location. Not from me, though.
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He enthusiastically showed me the “bijoux” kitchen, where you could probably cook a meal while setting the table at the same time, all without having to move your feet. He showed me the bedrooms and the cramped bathroom. I asked where the sittingroom was. He led me back upstairs (the layout really was quite odd) and threw open a door.
The “sittingroom” was long and narrow, running from the front of the house all the way to the back. All of the usual furniture had been removed. There were no sofas or armchairs, nor even a television. Instead, there were at least ten or 12 desktop computer screens lined up on trestle tables running the full length of the room.
The screens and their whirring hard drives were all linked by ream after ream of heavy cables, while down at one end of the room, everything seemed to converge on what resembled a large mixing desk, the sort you find in a radio broadcast studio. Boxes of documents were everywhere.
“Who lives here?” I asked. “A few young guys,” he replied. “What do they do?” I pressed. “Erm,” he said somewhat hesitantly, “I’m told they all work for the Iranian embassy.”
At that moment, one of them emerged seemingly from nowhere and headed downstairs towards their bijoux kitchen. I had just been in all the bedrooms and hadn’t spotted him. He was in his late 20s with one of those geometrically perfect beard lines so fashionable in the Middle East. He wasn’t rude – he nodded an acknowledgment – but he wasn’t staying around to chat either. Who could blame him, as yet another randomer was trotted through his home?
Weeks later, I attended a group breakfast briefing with Alicia Kearns, a feisty young Conservative MP who is also the chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee. Heavily critical of states she perceives as hostile to Britain, such as China, she spoke of how politicians must be careful of being targeted by spies.
Making small talk afterwards, she mentioned her father was from Ballyfermot in west Dublin. Meanwhile, I casually mentioned that I had recently been to view a house that, somewhat comically, looked like an Iranian intelligence operation. She joked that she’d like to know the address. I joked that I would tell her. But, of course, I never did.
Maybe the four young men weren’t Iranian intelligence agents. If not, they were the world’s best-equipped online gamers.
I moved on and so, presumably, did they.
In recent days, it emerged that a young Brit with a pass for the Westminster parliamentary estate was arrested in March for allegedly spying for China. He was employed as a researcher by Kearns, who, weeks earlier, had warned us she was a target.
Also last week, helicopters kept buzzing over my local area. I soon realised they were looking for Daniel Khalife, a young British man of Iranian origin who is held on terrorism charges but who is routinely described in British media as a “suspected Iranian spy”. He temporarily escaped from nearby Wandsworth Prison by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck.
I thought first of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, who played the best undercarriage-grabber of all time. Then, I thought of those Iranian spy/gamers in the Maida Vale mini mews house. I wonder where they are now.