Patrick West is an agent with the NSLG.
That obscure acronym stands for the National Strategic Liaison Group, a very hush-hush, seldom mentioned part of the British Intelligence community having its unadorned headquarters "at the end of Craig Court, a cul-de-sac leading off Whitehall at its Trafalgar Square end. "It was inside the inner concrete and lead-lined shell of a shabby red-brick building that at the beginning of the First World War years the oil lamps were burned late into the night and early morning analysing threats to the British Empire from its enemies. Other than the identity of those enemies little had changed in the fifty-eight years that had passed since then. Those that plunged their hands into hazy secrets had kept their oil burning until this day. The reasons for keeping secrets seldom change, it's the custodians that do."
More telling about the clandestine nature of the NSLG is: "The NSLG, or just plain Group as it was known throughout those who knew of its existence, had no classification within the intelligence community. It was answerable only to the Minister of Defence, or so it was thought." Tha closing phrase is particularly of interest.
West is, as stated, one of its operatives. He did not start out to be such a covert entity, having started out working as a police detective for the Met. "I was at Oxford when the offer to join the 'Job' was first put to me. I declined that offer, favouring to stay and follow my chosen path of studying analytical chemistry and my secondary recreational pastime; the science of psychology." The unexpected death of his father from a heart attack at 49 followed by his mother's death from sadness two months later changed his mind. "The security of a degree became less important to me on accepting another approach from a senior Metropolitan police officer named Barrington Trenchard. He spoke passionately about his desire to root out this criminality that was being linked to Members of Parliament. He wanted me and knew my weakness."
West wanted an opportunity to root out corruption in the upper ranks of the government. "I was about to find out that justice could be found in more places than a court of law, and bribes come in more ways than mere money."
Good Lines:
- Said by an interesting fellow to Patrick West regarding being precise in wording: "Precision can and often does save lives, but it can also cost lives when it confuses the enigmatic and ambivalent of this life leaving them lost to understand the rationality of thought."