Nic Slater had not planned on becoming a spy. Growing up in a small village just outside Sheffield, the steel making capital of Britain, a future working in a mill or down a coal mine had seemed more likely. However, his parents were determined that Nic and his older sister, Margaret, would escape the grind of working-class life.
His father, George, was a shift supervisor and union shop steward at the local steel mill. His mother, Kath, was a nurse. They had met just before the outbreak of the World War II and married after a whirlwind courtship, prompted by the imminent arrival of Nic’s sister, Margaret, or Mags as the family called her. It had created quite a scandal in the local community at the time.
Dominic, as he had been christened, followed three years later. He was named after Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order. His mother had found great comfort in her Catholic faith after the trauma she experienced as a child.
Kath was Russian by birth; her given name was Katarina. Her father was a founding member of the Bolshevik movement in 1912, and an associate of both Lenin and Trotsky. He had been killed during the early days of the Russian Revolution while leading a team tasked with blowing up a key railway supply line just outside Moscow.
Just over a year later, Katarina was an orphan; her mother a victim of the brutal civil war that followed the revolution. Aged eight, she was evacuated to England. After spending six months in a children’s home just outside London, she was adopted by a family living in the same village as her future husband.
While proud of her Russian heritage, she had no love for the Soviet Union. In her opinion, the revolution had failed to achieve the goals that her parents had so passionately believed in and died for. One ruling elite, the Tsars, had been replaced by another, communist party apparatchiks. She hoped that one day the totalitarian regime would collapse and be replaced by a truly democratic socialist system.
Once in Britain, Kath worked hard to eradicate any trace of her accent and rarely spoke of her childhood. The only concession to her heritage was to insist that both her children learn to speak Russian fluently.
George had served in the British Army during the war. He had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the second highest military honour for non-officers. Nic was not sure what his father had done to deserve the medal; like so many veterans he never talked about his wartime service. Nic suspected it was related to his time in North Africa where George had been one of the founding members of the Special Air Service (SAS).
George was both a patriot and a proud socialist, as many working-class men who had served were. He was a long-time member of the Labour Party, but never a communist. Partly influenced by his wife, he was no fan of the Soviet Union. He had been an ardent supporter of Clement Atlee who, as Britain’s first post war Prime Minister, had overseen the creation of the National Health Service, the independence of India, and the nationalisation of many industries.
Some of his more radical friends wanted to see a worker-led revolution in Britain, but George believed democracy was the way to achieve lasting socialism in Britain. To his mind, any right-minded individual would see that socialism was preferable to unchecked capitalism. He was disappointed that many of his fellow countrymen did not seem to agree.
For Nic and his sister, growing up in the immediate aftermath of the war had not been glamorous. Food rationing was pervasive, local industry in decline, and the promised post-war economic boom had taken its time in materialising. Notwithstanding the challenges, the Slater home was a loving, safe environment. Both parents had doted on their children.
The Slater’s were not wealthy, but George and Kath ensured their children never wanted for anything. Despite having little formal education themselves, they emphasised its importance to their children and were proud when both children passed the dreaded eleven-plus exam, earning places at the local grammar school.
In 1950’s Britain, the eleven-plus largely determined a child’s academic future. Pass, and grammar school beckoned. Foreign languages, English literature, biology, physics, and chemistry were all on the curriculum. Fail, as over eighty percent of children did, and you were consigned to less academically focused schools, leading to an apprenticeship at best. Despite benefiting from the system, Nic thought it unfair that a single exam, taken at such a young age, dictated a child’s future educational and career choices.
Nic had been a decent student, a bit lazy, but blessed with a good memory upon which he relied heavily. However, he lived in the shadow of his sister, who was the star pupil in her year. Nic was not sufficiently motivated to match her work ethic.
Mags earned top marks in every exam and won a scholarship to Oxford—the first girl from their school to do so. She had graduated with a first in Greats—an archaic curriculum focused on all things Latin and Greek—before going on to become one of the first female barristers in London.
Nic’s path had been less starry. He was a good all-round athlete, playing rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer. He passed his exams with middling grades and managed to secure a place at Leeds University to study Economics. Leeds was one of the rapidly expanding provincial universities, a notch or two below the elites of Oxford and Cambridge. He arrived having little idea what he wanted to do with his life. His father suggested he become an accountant. His mother saw him as a bank manager, becoming a pillar of local society. Neither prospect excited him much.
Rather than make the tough choices, Nic enjoyed the social side of university far more than the academics. He studied just enough, while playing rugby, unsuccessfully chasing girls, and drinking a lot of beer. He had no real direction until a strange encounter in his final year.
