A Spy by Nature (2001)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘Whenever someone comes round,’ he says, flatly.

  Both of us scan the garden for a waiter. I light Saul’s cigarette, my hand shaking.

  ‘Nervous about something?’ he asks.

  ‘No. Should I be?’

  No reply.

  ‘So what sort of shampoo was it?’

  ‘You really care?’ he says, exhaling.

  ‘Not really, no.’

  This is how things will start out: like our last meeting in March, the first few minutes will be full of strange, awkward silences and empty remarks that go nowhere. The broken rhythm of strangers. I can only hope that after two or three drinks Saul will start to loosen up.

  ‘So it’s good to finally meet the guys you work with,’ he says eventually. ‘They seem OK.’

  ‘Yeah. Harry’s a bit of a cunt, but the rest are all right.’

  Saul puffs out his lips and stares at the ground. There is a waitress about ten feet away moving gradually towards us, slim and nineteen. I try to catch her eye. A student, most probably, making her rent. She sees me, nods, and comes over.

  ‘Glass of champagne, gentlemen?’

  We both take a glass. Clear marble skin and a neat black bob, breasts visible as no more than faint shapes beneath the thin white silk of her shirt. She has that air of undergraduate self-confidence which gradually ebbs away with age.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Saul, the side of his mouth curling up into a flirty smile. It is the most animated gesture he has made since he arrived. The girl moves off.

  We have been talking for only ten or fifteen minutes when Cohen sidles up behind Saul with a look of intent in his eye. I take a long draw on my champagne and feel the chill and fizz on my throat.

  ‘So you’re Saul,’ he says, squeezing in beside him. ‘Alec’s often spoken about you.’

  Not so.

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cohen reaches across and touches my shoulder, acting like we’re best buddies.

  ‘It’s Harry, isn’t it?’ Saul asks him.

  ‘That’s right. Sorry to interrupt but I wanted to introduce Alec to a journalist from the Financial Times. Won’t you come with us?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, and we have no choice but to go.

  Peppiatt is tall, almost spindly, with psoriatic flakes of chalky skin grouped around his nose.

  ‘Mike Peppiatt,’ he says, extending an arm, but the grip goes dead in my hand. ‘I understand you’re the new kid on the block.’

  ‘Makes him sound like he’s in a fucking boy band,’ Saul says, coming immediately to my defence. I don’t need him to do that. Not tonight.

  ‘That’s right. I joined Abnex about nine months ago. August-September.’

  ‘Mike’s interested in writing a piece about the Caspian,’ Cohen tells me.

  ‘What’s the angle?’

  ‘I thought you might have some ideas.’ Peppiatt’s voice is plummy, precise.

  ‘Harry run out of them, has he?’

  Cohen clears his throat.

  ‘Not at all. He’s been very helpful. I’d just welcome a second opinion.’

  ‘Well what interests you about the region?’ I ask, turning the question back on him. Something about his self-assuredness is irritating. ‘What do your readers want to know? Is it going to be an article on a specific aspect of oil and gas exploration, or a more general introduction to the area?’

  Saul folds his arms.

  ‘Let me tell you what interests me,’ Peppiatt says, lighting a cigarette. He doesn’t offer the pack around. Journalists never do. ‘I want to write an article comparing what’s going on in the Caspian with the Chicago of the 1920s.’

  No one responds to this. We just let him keep talking.

  ‘It’s a question of endless possibilities,’ he says, launching a slim wrist into the air. ‘Here you have a region that’s rich in natural resources, twenty-eight billion barrels of oil, two hundred and fifty trillion cubic feet of gas. Now there’s a possibility that an awful lot of people are going to become very rich in a very short space of time because of that.’

  ‘So how is that like Chicago in the twenties?’ Saul asks, just before I do.

  ‘Because of corruption,’ Peppiatt replies, his head tilting to one side. ‘Because of man’s lust for power. Because of the egomania of elected politicians. Because somebody somewhere, an Al Capone if you like, will want to control it all.’

  ‘The oligarchs?’ I suggest.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe a Russian, yes. But what fascinates me is that no country at the present time has a clear advantage over another. No one knows who owns all that oil. That hasn’t been decided yet. Not even how to divide it up. It’s the same with the gas. Who does it belong to? With that in mind, we’re talking about a place of extraordinary potential. Potential for wealth, potential for corruption, potential for terrible conflict. And all of that concentrated into what is a comparatively small geographical area. Chicago, if you like.’

  ‘OK…’

  I had tried interrupting, but Peppiatt has not finished.

  ‘…But that’s just one angle on it. The former Soviet states - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan - are just pawns in a much bigger geographical game. Look at a map of the region and you see the collision of all the great powers. China on the eastern flank of the Caspian Sea, Russia on its doorstep, the EU just a few hundred miles away to the west of Turkey. Then you have Afghanistan in the south-east and a fundamentalist Islamic republic right next door to that.’

  ‘Which one?’ Saul asks.

  ‘Iran,’ Cohen says, without looking at him.

  ‘So you can see why the Yanks are in there,’ Peppiatt says, as if none of us was aware of an American presence in the Caspian. ‘They’re trying to get a piece of the action. And their best way of doing that is to toady up to the Turks. And why not? We Europeans treat the government in Ankara as though they were a bunch of good-for-nothing towel heads.’

  Saul snorts out a laugh here and I look around, just in case anyone has heard. But Peppiatt is on a roll: this guy loves the sound of his own voice.

  ‘In my view it’s an outrage that Turkey hasn’t been offered membership of the EU. That will come back to haunt us. Turkey will be Europe’s gateway to the Caspian, and we’re allowing the Americans to get in there first.’

  ‘That’s a little melodramatic,’ I tell him, but Cohen immediately looks displeased. He doesn’t want me offending anyone from the FT.

  ‘How so?’ Peppiatt asks.

  ‘Well, if you include Turkey in the EU, your taxes will go up and there’ll be a flood of immigrants all over western Europe.’

  ‘Not my concern,’ he says, unconvincingly. ‘All I know is that the Americans are being very clever. They’ll have a foot in the door when the Caspian comes online. There’s going to be a marked shift in global economic power and America is going to be there when it happens.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I say, my head doing an easy bob back and forth. Saul smiles.

  ‘Only to an extent,’ Cohen says, quick to contradict me. ‘A lot of British and European oil companies are in joint ventures with the Americans to minimize risk. Take Abnex, for example.’ Here comes the PR line. ‘We got in at about the same time as Chevron in 1993.’

  ‘Did you?’ says Peppiatt. ‘I didn’t realize that.’

  Cohen nods proudly.

  ‘It’s true,’ he says.

  There is a brief lull while Peppiatt gathers his thoughts.

  ‘Well, you see that in itself will be interesting for my readers. I mean are all these joint ventures between the multinational oil conglomerates going to make millions for their shareholders in five or ten years’ time, or are they all on a hiding to nothing?’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ says Cohen, giving Peppiatt a chummy smile. It’s sickening how much he wants to impress him.

  ‘You know what I think you should write about?’ I say to him.

  ‘What’s that?’ he replies briskly.

&nb
sp; ‘Leadership. The absence of decent men.’

  ‘In what respect?’

  ‘In respect of the increasing gap between rich and poor. If there aren’t the right kind of politicians operating down there, men who care more about the future of their country than they do about their own comfort and prestige, nothing will happen. Look what happened to Venezuela, Ecuador, Nigeria.’

  ‘And what happened to them?’ Peppiatt asks, his brow furrowing. I’ve found a gap in his knowledge and he doesn’t like that.

  ‘Their economies were crippled by oil booms in the 1970s. Agriculture, manufacturing and investments were all unbalanced by the vast amounts of money being generated by oil revenues in a single sector of the economy. Other industries couldn’t keep up. There was no one in power who foresaw that. The governments in the Caspian are going to have to watch out. Otherwise, for every oil tycoon fucking a call-girl in the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, there’ll be a hundred Armenian farmers struggling to make enough money to buy a loaf of bread. And that’s how wars start.’

  ‘I think that’s a bit melodramatic, Alec,’ Cohen says, again smiling at Peppiatt, again trying to put a positive spin on things. ‘There’s not going to be a war in the Caspian. There’s going to be an oil boom for sure, but no one is going to get killed in the process.’

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’ Peppiatt asks.

  Cohen’s eyes withdraw into calculation. That is what he wants most of all. His name in the papers, a little mention in Lex.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Of course you can quote me. But let me tell you a little bit about what our company is doing down there.’

  Saul catches my eye, but I can’t tell whether or not he’s bored.

  ‘Fine,’ says Peppiatt.

  Cohen takes a step back.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he says, suddenly looking at me. ‘Why don’t you tell him, Alec? You could explain things just as effectively as me.’

  ‘All right,’ I reply, slightly off balance. ‘But it’s quite straightforward. Abnex is currently conducting two-dimensional seismic surveys in several of Kazakhstan’s one hundred and fifty unexplored offshore blocks. It’s one of our biggest projects. Some of this is being done in conjunction with our so-called competitors, as a joint venture, and some of it is being done independently, without any external assistance. I can have details faxed to you tomorrow morning, if you like. What we want to do is start drilling exploration wells in two to three years’ time if evidence of oil is found. We have sole exploration rights to six fields, thanks to the Well Workover Agreements negotiated by Clive Hargreaves, and we’re very hopeful of finding something down there.’

  ‘I see.’ This may be too technical for Peppiatt. ‘That’s a long and expensive business, I take it?’

  ‘Sure. Particularly when you don’t know what you’re going to find at the end of the rainbow.’

  ‘That’s just it, isn’t it?’ says Peppiatt, with something approaching glee. ‘The truth is you boys don’t know what you’ve got down there. Nobody does.’

  And Saul says:

  ‘Print that.’

  12

  My Fellow Americans

  This is when I see her for the first time, standing just a few metres away through a narrow break in the crowd. A sudden glimpse of the future.

  She is wearing a backless cotton dress. For now, all that is visible is the delicate heave of her pale shoulder blades and the faultless valley of skin which lies between them. It is not yet possible to see her face. Her husband, twenty years older, is standing opposite her, bored as a museum guard. His lower back is slumped down and his thick greying hair has been blown about by a wind that is whipping around the garden. You can tell right away that he is an American: it’s in the confident breadth of his face, the particular blue of his shirt. He seems somehow larger than the people around him.

  There is an older man standing with them, thinned out by age, his cheeks like little sacks. This is Doug Bishop, former CEO of Andromeda, moved upstairs in 1994 but with one hand still on the tiller. The fourth member of the group is a monstrous suburban matron wearing pearls and Laura Ashley, her hair piled up in a beehive like an astronaut’s wife. The pitch and yaw of her voice whinnies across the garden. These words are actually coming out of her mouth:

  ‘And this is why I told my friend Lauren that feng shui is an absolute scandal. And Douglas agrees with me. Don’t you Doug?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ says Bishop in a voice of great fatigue.

  ‘And yet not only ordinary members of the public but actual corporations are prepared to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Oriental tricksters just so’s they can rearrange the alignment of their plant pots.’

  Listening to this, Katharine takes a sip of her drink and smiles weakly. Then she turns, so that her face is more clearly visible. Male heads in the immediate vicinity spring to catch a glimpse of her, alert as dogs.

  ‘When were you thinking of writing the piece?’ Cohen is asking Peppiatt. ‘In the near future, or is this an ongoing project?’

  ‘The latter, most definitely,’ Peppiatt replies, accepting a champagne refill from a passing waiter. ‘I want to talk to the tobacco industry, to car manufacturers, to all of these huge corporations who are making big moves into Central Asia.’

  The Hobbit comes up behind me.

  ‘Can I have a word, Alec?’

  I nod at the others and say: ‘Excuse me a moment. Back in a second.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Cohen.

  When the Hobbit and I are a few paces away, moving towards a corner of the garden, he turns and says:

  ‘That’s them. That’s Katharine and Fortner.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell him, smiling, and he grins sheepishly, realizing that he has stated the obvious. He wouldn’t have wanted to let on how nervous he is.

  ‘We should do it now,’ he says. ‘While Bishop is with them. I know him and I can introduce you.’

  ‘Good. Yes,’ I reply, feeling a slight lift in my stomach. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the Hobbit says wearily. ‘The whole fucking office fancies her.’

  And in that instant, Katharine seems to sense that we are talking about her. She turns her head and looks directly at me through the crowd, smiling in a single movement. It is as if the shape of her glance, the timing of it, had been minutely planned. My face freezes and I cannot summon a smile. I merely stare back and then almost immediately look away. But the Hobbit acts smartly, quick on his feet. He has smiled back at her, a colleague’s acknowledgement, using the eye contact to legitimize our approach.

  ‘Here we go,’ he says, moving towards her. ‘Bring Saul.’

  So, as we pass Cohen and Peppiatt, I extract him from their conversation.

  ‘Come with me, will you mate?’ I say to him. ‘You remember Matt, don’t you?’ (They met at my flat a few months ago, to ease this evening’s events.) ‘He wants to introduce us to some people he works with.’

  ‘Sure,’ Saul replies, acknowledging the Hobbit with a nod. ‘You don’t mind, do you guys?’

  ‘No,’ they say in unison.

  And we are on our way, the three of us moving through the crowd towards the Americans. My sense of nervousness is suddenly overwhelming.

  ‘Mr Bishop,’ the Hobbit says as we arrive, playing the ingratiating underling to great effect. ‘Could I just introduce you to an old friend of mine? Alec Milius. And Saul…’

  ‘Ricken,’ says Saul.

  ‘Of course.’

  Bishop transfers a glass of champagne to his left hand so that he can effect the handshakes.

  ‘Good to make your acquaintance,’ he says. ‘How do you know Matthew here?’

  ‘Long story,’ I tell him. ‘We met travelling in 1990 and just bumped into each other at a social occasion a few months ago.’

  This is also the story I told Saul.

  ‘I see. Well, allow me to introduce my wife, Audrey.’

  ‘Pleased to me
et you,’ she says, scanning the two of us up and down.

  ‘And this is Katharine Lanchester and her husband, Fortner Grice.’

  Katharine looks at me. There is now no flirtatiousness in her manner, not with Fortner so close.

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ she says. Her hand is cool and soft.

  Then it’s Fortner’s turn. He pumps my arm, doing a little side-jerk with his head. His forehead is dark and creased by frown lines, as if he has spent a lifetime squinting up at a bright sun.

  ‘Good to meet you guys,’ he says, very unruffled, very cool. ‘You in oil, like everybody else here?’

  ‘With Abnex, yes. Caspian development.’

  ‘Oh right. Kathy and I work as consultants for Andromeda. Exploration. Geological surveying and so on.’

  ‘You spend much of your time down there?’

  Fortner hesitates, clearing his throat with a stagey cough.

  ‘Not for a while. They like to keep us in London. Yourself?’

  ‘Ditto.’

  The conversation misses a beat here, to the point of becoming awkward, and Doug takes a half-step forward.

  ‘We were just talking about politics back home,’ he says, taking a mouthful of champagne.

  ‘We were,’ Beehive adds animatedly. ‘And I was asking why that grotesque man from Little Rock is living in the White House.’

  Bishop rolls his eyes as Fortner cuts in. He must weigh fifteen or sixteen stone, and not much of it is fat.

  ‘Now hold on there, Audrey. Clinton’s been doin’ a lot of good. We’ve all just been away from home too long.’

  ‘You think so, honey?’ Katharine asks, disappointed that he should hold such an opinion. She’s from Republican stock, New England money.

  ‘Damn right I do,’ he replies forcefully, and the Hobbit laughs politely. Things are awkward again.

  ‘Is anybody else hot?’ Bishop asks.

  ‘I’m OK, actually,’ Saul tells him.

  ‘Me too,’ says Fortner. ‘Maybe you should be wearing a cocktail dress, Doug. You’d feel more comfortable.’

  I smile at this and Saul lights another cigarette.

  ‘Can we go back to Clinton, for a moment?’ Audrey is saying. Somebody on the far side of the garden drops a glass and there is a momentary hush. ‘What I mean to say is…’ She loses herself, struggling to find the words. ‘Is it your interpretation that Clinton will be re-elected this year?’