by Ian Rankin
“Who’s he speaking to just now?”
Phillips went across to check the notepad that lay on Tony Sinclair’s knees.
“To Jermyn Street. Arranging a fitting. These people.” Phillips shook his head in ironic disbelief.
Miles knew what he meant. The watchmen seemed to spend half their lives trailing men and women who did little more than buy expensive clothes and gifts for their families back home.
“He’s making another call,” said Tony Sinclair, the section’s most recent recruit. Miles was watching him for any signs of weakness, of hesitation or misjudgment. Tony was still on probation.
“Speaking Arabic again,” he said now, switching on the tape recorder. As he began to scribble furiously with his ballpoint pen, Jeff Phillips went to his shoulder to watch.
“He’s arranging a meeting,” Phillips murmured. “This looks a little more promising.”
Miles Flint, attuned to such things, doubted it, but it gave him a good excuse not to go home just yet. He would phone Sheila and tell her.
“Mind if I come along on this one?” he asked. Phillips shrugged his shoulders.
“Not at all,” he said. “Your Arabic is as good as mine, I’m sure. But isn’t this supposed to be your night off?”
“I’d like to stick with this one,” lied Miles. “I’ll just make a quick call home.”
“Fine,” said Phillips. “I’ll go downstairs and fetch the car.”
TWO
HAVING PUT HIS CAR INTO the hotel’s basement garage, Miles began to unwind in the firm’s gleaming Rover.
Miles Flint was a watchman. It was his job to look and to listen, and then report back to his section chief, nothing more. He did not mind such a passive role in life, but was aware that others did not share his meticulous pleasure in sifting through the daily affairs of those he was sent to watch. Once or twice, to his certain knowledge, Billy Monmouth had tried to induce his promotion laterally through a word in the right ear. Miles did not want promotion. It suited him to be a watchman.
Billy and he had been invited to join the firm back in 1966, when it was just beginning to recover from a devastating few years of defection, rumor, and counter-rumor. It was said that a super-mole had confessed to wartime subversion, but was being kept under wraps, and that a more dangerous double agent had been active, too, in later years. Much soul-searching and navel-gazing had been taking place back then, and really, that sense of suspicion had never blown away, like rotting leaves left too long in a garden.
And now there were new scandals, new stories to be foisted on the same old public. One could choose to ignore it all, of course, and get on with life. Nevertheless, Billy and he had talked about these things over lunch.
The more Miles thought about Billy, the more it struck him how odd he had seemed at the club. He had laughed, but not with his usual timbre. Billy had been worried about something, but could not bring himself to speak of it. He was a longhorn beetle, the self-sufficient predator of the family. Miles wasn’t so sure about his own classification: most of the time he settled for the quiet life of the museum beetle. Jeff Phillips, on the other hand, driving the car with effortless grace, belonged to Buprestidae, the splendor beetles. They loved warmth and sunshine, were brightly colored, and spent their days sipping pollen and nectar. Ah yes, that was Jeff Phillips, with his silk ties and his noisy Italian shoes. Looking across at Phillips now, Miles remembered that despite the splendor beetle’s airs and graces, its young fed upon rotten wood and old vegetables. For some reason, the thought cheered him up immensely.
They drove slowly. Phillips really was an excellent driver, unshowy but never losing his prey. He had been a watchman for just over a year, but was already busy, Miles knew, trying for one of those “lateral promotions” so beloved by Billy Monmouth.
“Turning into the Strand.”
The Arab’s code name was Latchkey. Miles wondered just who was responsible for these absurdities. Someone had to sit at a desk all day doing nothing else but inventing code names. In the past few months, Miles had been detailed to watch a real rogues’ gallery: Ivanhoe, Possum, Conch, Tundish, Agamemnon. And now Latchkey, who was perhaps the main assassin for a group of lesser-known oil-producing states in the Gulf. Conceivably, however, he might be merely what his public image and his passport showed, a well-placed civil engineer, in London to advise his embassy on possible contracts for British companies in the Gulf. Some very high-tech refineries were about to be built—were, as Billy had put it, “in the pipeline”—in order to extract every last drop of commercial goodness from the crude natural product. And that was why no toes were to be stepped on, no possible evidence of interference left lying around. Discretion was paramount if the contracts were not to be endangered, and the burden belonged to Miles.
“Taxi signaling and stopping,” said Phillips. “I’ll drop you and park the car.”
Miles slipped out of the car and followed Latchkey into the Doric, one of the capital’s grandest hotels, feeling uncomfortably shabby. His shoes were scuffed and unpolished, his trousers just a little too creased. Well, he could always pretend to be American. In Philly, we always dress down for dinner, he thought to himself as he pushed through the revolving door. The Arab was gliding into the cocktail bar, smoothing down his tie as he went.
“Would you have a light?”
The girl who barred his way was blond, petite and very pretty, with a trained voice and a trained smile. Everything about her looked trained, so that her movements told the prospective customer that she was a professional girl. Miles had no time to waste.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, moving past her.
She was not about to waste time herself, time being money in her world. She smiled again, drifting off toward another tired-looking traveler.
The bar was busy with early-evening drinkers, not those who leave their offices tired and thirsty, but those who feel it a duty to consume a few expensive drinks before an expensive meal. Miles pushed an earpiece into his ear as he walked, the slender cord curving down his neck and into his top pocket. He found a chair with his back to Latchkey, who was seated alone at a table for two. Having ordered a whiskey, miming to the waiter that he was partially deaf, Miles took a notebook from his pocket and produced a silver pen from the same place. He looked like the perfect accountant, ready to jot down a few calculations of profit margins and tax contributions.
In poising the pen, an expensive-looking fountain model, Miles angled its top toward Latchkey, and through his earpiece came the chaotic sounds of the bar. He cursed silently the fact that there were so many people around. Latchkey, having coughed twice, ordered a fresh orange juice from the waiter—“as in freshly squeezed, you understand”—while Miles, appearing to mull over his figures, listened.
Jeff Phillips would be calling for assistance, though it still seemed unlikely that anything important was about to take place. The really important meetings always occurred either in obscure, well-guarded rooms or else in parks and on heaths, preferably with a storm raging in the background. Nothing that the constantly ingenious technical-support experts could rig up in their dark chambers was of much help on a windswept hill.
The pen, however, was superb, a tiny transmitter inside the cap sending information to the receiver inside his pocket, and from there to the earpiece. It was as close to James Bond as the firm’s scientists ever came, but it was not perfect. Miles was hard pressed to hear what Latchkey was saying to the waiter who had brought him his drink. A couple nearby, thinking themselves involved in the most intimate dialogue, kept interrupting, the woman’s voice of just sufficient flutedness to block out the Arab’s soft inflections. Miles, listening to their conversation, hoped that they would turn words into deeds and slip upstairs to their room. But then Latchkey wasn’t saying anything yet, so where was the harm in trying out the equipment on other couples in the vicinity? No one, however, as a quick sweep revealed, was saying the sorts of thing that the fluted woman was saying to her partner.
&nb
sp; Miles’s great fear was that Latchkey and his contact would speak together in Arabic, for he knew that his Arabic, despite Phillips’s protestations, was a little rusty. The meeting had been arranged in Arabic, but with English pleasantries at the end of the dialogue. Tony Sinclair had worked quickly and accurately on the transcription, and Miles would remember that. He tried to ignore the niggling feeling that he had been stupid to come here tonight, stupid to have insisted on playing a role in what was not his drama. He should have gritted his teeth and gone home. His own fears for his marriage had caused him to make an error of professional judgment. That was the most worrying thing of all.
The woman shrieked suddenly, laughing at her partner’s lubricious joke, and looking up, Miles saw that Phillips was standing in the doorway, looking around as though for a friend. Their eyes met for less than a second, and Miles knew that the backup had arrived. At that moment, a swarthy man brushed past Phillips and walked across to Latchkey’s table. Miles, nodding as a drink was laid before him by the sweating waiter, concentrated hard on the table behind him.
“Salaam alaikum.”
“Alaikum salaam.”
“It’s good to see you again. How is the refinery project progressing?”
“There have been some difficulties.”
As their conversation continued—in English, praise Allah—it became obvious to Miles that he was wasting his time. The two men discussed what introductions were to be made to what companies. They even spoke about bribes that might be offered to them by certain work-hungry corporations in return for a slice of this or that contract. It was all very businesslike and aboveboard. The contact was Latchkey’s man in the City, nothing more. They drank little and spoke slowly and clearly.
It was just after ten o’clock when they rose to shake hands. Both seemed pleased with the money that would be slipped into their hands sub rosa in the days to follow. Latchkey told his friend to wait for him outside, and then went into the toilet, looking back and smiling as he did so.
“Drinking alone?”
It was the girl again, not having much luck tonight, but determined to keep on trying. Miles tucked the earpiece back into his pocket while she pulled a chair across from where the Arab’s contact had been sitting.
“Just finishing,” he said, watching her cross her legs as she sat down.
“What a pity,” she said, her bottom lip full. “What else are you doing tonight then?”
“Going home to my wife, that’s all.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it. Why not stay here and keep me company? I’d make you happy.”
Miles shook his head.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Which night then?”
“A year next Saturday.”
She laughed at this.
“I’ll hold you to that. You see if I don’t.”
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
He was beginning to enjoy this little game, signaling as it did the end of his evening’s work. At the same time, however, Latchkey was taking a long time, considering that he had a friend waiting for him outside, and when the door of the gentlemen’s toilet opened and Latchkey’s dark suit, white shirt, and pale tie emerged, the man wearing them was not Latchkey.
Aghast, Miles recalled that a bearded businessman, a little the worse for drink, had entered the toilet before Latchkey, and that the same bearded businessman had emerged during his conversation with the girl. Something was very, very wrong, for it was that bearded businessman who now wore Latchkey’s clothes.
Miles rose to his feet a little shakily, the girl forgotten, and walked quickly from the bar. Phillips was seated in the foyer, flicking uninterestedly through a newspaper. When he saw the look on his superior’s face, he jumped to his feet.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. We’ve been sold a dummy. There was a bearded man, a bit drunk, gray suit, glasses. Did you see him leave?” Miles felt queasy. It had been an old trick, fairly clumsy in execution. Nevertheless, it had caught him dead.
“Yes, he left a couple of minutes ago, but he looked as sober as the proverbial judge to me.”
“I’ll bet he did. It was Latchkey. And there’s a ringer in the bar just now wearing Latchkey’s clothes.”
“Hook, line, and bloody sinker. Where would he be going?”
“Well, you can bet he’s not off for a late-night fitting in Jermyn Street. Has someone taken the contact?”
“He’s being tailed.”
“Right, stay here and keep a tab on the one still in the bar. I’d better phone in with the happy news.”
“OK. Anything else?”
“Yes. Pray that nothing happens in London tonight. Not a bombing or a break-in or a single solitary mugging, because if it does, we’re all in trouble.” He looked back toward the bar. “Double bloody trouble.”
As the whirligig of his thoughts slowed and began spinning in the right direction, Miles saw how perfectly everything had been underplayed by the Arab. His own error had been in under-estimating every single move. Would a younger man have done that? Probably. What he could not deny, however, was that his mind had been on other things throughout. He had been only half interested. And there was something else, something at the edge of his vision. What was it? It had something to do with the girl. Yes, she had approached just as Latchkey was disappearing into the toilet, and Latchkey had turned and, seeming to sum up the situation, smiled toward him. No, not toward him, directly at him. There could have been many reasons for that smile. The most obvious now was that Latchkey had known who Miles was. He had known.
And he hadn’t even bothered to hide the fact.
THREE
ALL IN ALL, THOUGHT THE Israeli, it had been a successful if not an enjoyable evening. He did not enjoy mixing with people. They could be such treacherous animals, their claws hidden by smiles and bows, handshakes and pats on the back. A pat on the back usually heralded some conspiracy or other, one’s opponent touching one for luck. The alcohol had been very pleasant, however, and Nira had been there, flaunting her beauty as though she were a display case and it her precious diadem. Ah, but she would not believe that he could know such words as “diadem,” or have such cultured thoughts. His outward appearance bespoke a large, earthy, and vaguely unpleasant appetite, and this had aided him in his life’s work, if not in love. He might be all things to all women, if only they would allow him the opportunity of pleasuring them. He knew the most intricate paths of delight, but to taste them alone was to taste nothing.
The taxi dropped him at the end of his street so that he could catch a few gulps of brisk night air before retiring. There had been talk tonight both during and after dinner which he should file in his memory before going to sleep, but it could wait until morning. Not an interesting night then, but successful insofar as he had met Nira again, and had spoken with her alone for a few moments, and had registered in the strongest terms his interest in her. She had been embarrassed, of course, and had walked away at the first possible and excusable moment, but it was done. He could afford to take his time over such a challenging seduction, when the prize would be so wondrously sweet.
He was fumbling for the bunch of keys in his trouser pocket when, staggering backwards, he began to choke, his tongue swelling to fill his throat, brain squeezed with blood. The professional within him knew in a final moment of lucidity that he did not have time to resist the wire that now melted through his neck. Spinning toward a blackening vertigo of spirit, he hoped instead for heaven and redemption.
The Arab, job done, did not even smile this time.
Sheila Flint rose early, not surprised to find that she had been sleeping alone. She found Miles still at his desk in the downstairs study, his head lying across folded arms. September sun, milk-warm, poured through the window. Sheila stood in the doorway, watching him sleep, his face puffy like that of a well-fed child, his breath quiet with stealth.
He had always been something of a mystery to her, even
in sleep. She had been attracted to him in the beginning because his long silences and half-aware eyes had betokened some kind of inner calm and, even, genius. But he had quickly shown her another face, brawling with other students after drinking binges, fiercely jealous of her other friends. Well, he had changed over the years, had come to have a genius only for passivity, and for a decade and a half she had pretended to herself that she too liked the quiet life. Then she had set about educating herself in life, going to night classes, attending the cinema and the opera—alone, or with Moira, her clever, trustworthy, and only slightly too good-looking ally—and enrolling for Open University courses that kept her mind moving. Miles showed little interest. Nothing, it seemed, could push him back into his younger self. He was growing old, and oh God, she was growing old too.
She liked her job in the civil service, but hated London. To her continual surprise, it did not hate her back. It seemed to her a city without love or compromise, and she was forever finding examples of both to confound her feelings. The same ambivalence existed in her marriage. Despite a lack of real communication and, at times, even animosity, Miles and she had lasted longer than any of the other couples they had known, and they had a son who had grown into a normal, mistrustful, and unloving young man. People called theirs “the perfect marriage.”
Watching Miles now as a trickle of saliva left the corner of his mouth, she was reminded of Jack as a baby, spluttering food and monosyllables, tying her to him with chains of guilt and dependence. She remembered, too, that Jack was due home in the next week or two, gracing them with his presence for a few days until university term started.
On the wall above Miles’s desk was mounted the certificate from London Zoo reminding him that he was the adoptive parent of a dung beetle. Jack’s gift had infuriated her, for it showed that even he knew more about Miles than she did. Miles had been delighted with the present. So original, so unusual. I’m original, too, she had wanted to cry, as father and son had burrowed deep into each other’s embrace. I want to be part of your bloody little conspiracy. She had a mind, didn’t she? She had inspired ideas. Everyone at work came to her with their problems, thinking her a genius at lateral thinking. She would have liked to tell Miles this, to have him see her more clearly, but they never talked about work. Miles bloody Flint and his “internal security.” She knew who he worked for; he worked for the Ministry of Euphemisms.
