A most congenial spy. MI6 veteran turned novelist spills the beans on Russian espionage

“A Spy Alone” tells the story of Oxford students — the “Costello Group” — who are drawn into working for Russia by a brilliant academic named Peter Mackenzie and are “handled” by the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence arm. Against them works the “Pole,” a small unit within MI6 composed of brave, skilled, but very human officers. A superbly drawn former GRU officer Vasya Morozov assists, albeit unwillingly now that he has become something of a “mingarch.” Beaumont’s description of Vasya’s various recruitment strategies as a GRU operator, and his “turning” by the Pole is worth the read alone. One could well believe these incidents were drawn very much from life — and I think it is likely that they were.

The well-paced action takes us from Oxford in the 1990s (Beaumont himself was there at that time) through to today by way of oligarch mansions, intelligence operations all over Europe, and the unexpected denouement in a desolate part of Northern England.

In a case of life imitating art, Charles Beaumont and I meet for coffee in an English pub deep in the rolling Cotswold hills not far from Oxford. As is the way with the Oxford-Cambridge dominated British establishment — one of the themes of his book — it is through “friends of friends” that we got in touch. Beaumont is not quite the ideal intelligence “gray man” passing unnoticed through the world. He is understated, constantly smiling, and has the gift of maintaining eye contact without seeming intense, his gaze wandering off occasionally when talking. Someone once said that an Englishman can place another Englishman’s origin, class, wealth, and education within five seconds of hearing him speak, and I believe that this maxim is at least partly true. Charles speaks with what we call “received pronunciation,” with a slight rural southern accent, probably privately educated. He is modest, with a charm that foreigners might describe as “typically English,” polite to a fault, and possessed of a formidable intelligence lightly carried. All of these are very distinct advantages in Charles’ former profession: he was for more than a decade a senior officer in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6 (a formulation ex MI6 people hardly ever use).

Our conversation ranges around mutual friends and acquaintances, some common “travel” destinations, and the situation of the world today. Charles still works on the edges of his old profession, providing strategic and risk advice to companies throughout the world. Eventually we move on to talk about his new book and the world it describes. We start, as so many conversations about British spies do, with John le Carre. One former head of MI6 once told me the classic novelist was overly critical of MI6 and lacked experience of the real world of intelligence. As a real intelligence veteran, is Charles Beaumont as critical of his former colleagues as Le Carre was?

“In fairness, Le Carre said that he was inexperienced, so he had to invent the service pretty much from scratch,” Beaumont says. “He created fictional and not always heroic characters operating around ambiguity within a deeply flawed organization penetrated by the Russians. My experience was different. I was of the generation that went through the extraordinary global drama after 9/11. I didn’t ever feel that the institution was broken. On the contrary, the people I worked with were largely highly competent, motivated, and decent. Yes, of course, some did live double lives or were deficient, but you will find that in any profession.”

Clearly the nature and work of modern intelligence has changed significantly since the Cold War. ”It's much more fluid,” says Beaumont. “There has been a democratization of the business. We see open-source entities such as Bellingcat operating at or close to the level of national intelligence services. A lot of the work going on now is, of course, in the tech space, heavily involving the use of communications technology, especially the phones we all carry.”

Whatever the situation of the Secret Intelligence Service or the intelligence trade more generally, Beaumont is considerably more critical of British society as a whole. In real life, during the 1930s the KGB recruited a group of agents from one of England’s two ancient universities: the so-called “Cambridge Five.” Beaumont’s fictional circle of traitors comes from Oxford, and rather than an affinity for left-wing causes, their recruitment is centered around a deeply compromised right-wing academic, a true Oxford “don.” Could there be just such a real-life Oxford group that has penetrated the British government and society acting on instructions from Moscow?

“Why not?” Beaumont replies. An Oxford man himself, Beaumont knows firsthand that “Oxford and Cambridge still have a really strong hold over our government and Civil Service. Similarly, Russia has spent decades looking at our society and its weaknesses.” Beaumont brings up Russia’s influence deep within British society more generally. “Over the last couple of decades we have become a laundromat for Russia’s wealth…..we’ve left our institutions open to the highest bidders.”

It’s not only the Russians of course. Beaumont gives the contemporary example of the man who may be buying the UK’s Royal Mail. This centuries-old institution, owned and operated by the state, ensured the reliable and safe passage of letters and packages globally. As we met, a plan was announced to sell it to a Czech billionaire with substantial interests in, amongst many other assets, the supply of Russian gas to Europe via the Slovak Eustream pipeline. There are many, many other similar examples of the sale of key UK assets to foreign interests or individuals.

“Whilst yesterday it was Russian oligarchs to whom we sold our credibility and integrity, today it might be China. What is clear to me is that China has a better long-term strategy. This is something we in the West do not have, especially in Europe, where we see the U.S. trying to turn away from Europe. As for Britain, it has deluded itself that it represents a link between the Anglosphere and Europe. With or without Britain, Europe has overall shown itself for many years to be incapable of strategic thinking. Ukraine was the shock to the system which has contributed to the German Zeitenwende and the embracing of NATO by the vital Nordic states of Sweden and Finland.”

Nonetheless, Beaumont wonders how it is that a country with an economy smaller than the top four European states — one dominated by fossil fuels rather than productive capacity — maintains a vast lead in defense expenditure and production over Europe.

So we come to Ukraine, which Beaumont visited last year and where his next book will be set. “Despite Russia’s brutal invasion, I was struck by the extent to which Ukraine has retained an apparent level of normality, at least on the surface. However, there is a risk that we in the West will fall into Ukraine fatigue. I am not sure that Ukraine’s friends have the necessary staying power. I want my new book to be about whether or not we have the will and ability to supply Ukraine enough to arm itself and the degree to which Russia has used its disinformation resources to influence the West, especially in the United States. We see this fought out daily in the Republican Party, which barely seems to be on Ukraine’s side at all.”

As we finished and said our goodbyes, I thought, “What a nice guy; he’s the sort of person you would want to confide in, to tell the odd secret perhaps.” He’s good, in other words, at eliciting information. Now that I think of it, maybe I let him into one or two secrets that I might not have shared if I’d thought about it. But then, that’s exactly the sort of person one wants as an intelligence officer for your country. Beaumont is not a spy any longer of course, but the skills he developed in his previous career are also those of a great writer. I look forward very much to the sequel to “A Spy Alone.”