Her voice is full of patience and without thinking I reply:
‘What about Saul’s flat on Saturday night? We’re all going for dinner anyway, so it might just as well be there.’
Fortner’s response is tentative.
‘You cannot be seen handing any information to us. That’s critical, Alec.’
‘Yeah. Maybe it’s not such a good idea.’
He narrows his eyes, working things through in his mind.
‘Not necessarily,’ he says, as two young girls come out of the changing-room and make their way gingerly down the steps into the pool. ‘There is a way we could work it.’
‘How?’
He waits for the girls to swim away.
‘What’s the combination on your briefcase, the one you take to work?’
‘162.’
‘On both sides?’
I nod.
‘All right, then.’ He shifts his legs underneath the water, moving his left hand in the shallows. ‘Just bring the information to Saul’s apartment at, say, seven-thirty, and at some point during the evening either Kathy or myself will get to the case, open it up and take out whatever’s there.’
‘That’s not making things too complicated?’
‘Piece a cake,’ he replies confidently. ‘Once that’s done and we’ve had a chance to examine the price sets, we’ll arrange for ten thousand dollars to be deposited in the account that our operation is setting up for you in Philadelphia.’
‘Pounds.’
‘What?’
‘I said pounds. I want it in pounds.’
‘That wasn’t a part of our initial agreement.’
Katharine nervously passes her hand over her hair, flattening it down.
‘I’m making it one now,’ I tell him, my voice still light and friendly. ‘I understood that payment would be in sterling.’
‘Alec, this is highly irregular.’
‘I don’t think so. And don’t tell me the Agency can’t afford it.’
‘That’s not the point. There’s a principle involved.’
I say nothing: Fortner’s hands are tied and he will have to consent.
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ he says quietly.
Katharine looks away.
‘Thank you.’
I feel bad now, like I’ve gone too far. The chill of the water is again starting to take hold.
‘What if there’s no opportunity to get to the case during dinner?’
‘Most probably there will be, Alec, if you put it somewhere smart,’ Fortner says, with a hint of irritation. ‘If we can’t do it safely, we won’t do it at all. And if that happens, just take the case home and bring it to us some other time. But just remember one thing…’ He brings his hand out of the water to make his point firmly and with great care. ‘Nobody is expecting you to do what you’re doing. That’s the beauty of it. Nobody’s watching us any more. That should help to calm any nerves you might have.’
I do not answer this, merely nod my head.
‘That’s settled then,’ he says, crouching down until the water is up to his neck. Katharine does the same. ‘Just leave the case in the hall of Saul’s apartment. We’ll take care of the rest. It’s gonna be real easy. Now let’s do some laps.’
It has started to rain as we make our way through the lobby doors and out on to Chichester Street. A strong wind is blowing along the face of the building and it catches on the trapped globs of water inside my ears. I shiver with sudden cold and Katharine comments on how quickly the summer has passed. Fortner tells us to stay indoors while he fetches the car, so we head back inside and sit down.
Katharine immediately leans forward and adopts the manner of a concerned friend. She wants to get back that closeness we had, that shared understanding with which I was first ensnared.
‘Alec, it’s difficult for you, I know,’ she says. ‘You wanna do everything right by Fortner, you don’t want to let him down. But all this must be quite a shock for you. You sure you don’t have any concerns?’
‘Of course,’ I tell her with a confident smile. ‘I’m completely OK about it.’
‘You sure?’ she says, ‘Because back there in the pool you seemed a little spaced out, a little tense.’
It’s bad that she thought this.
‘Not at all, no. I was just a bit apprehensive about using Saul’s flat. You know, the friend thing.’
‘We can change that if you want.’
‘It’s fine. It makes sense. I’ve thought about it now. Don’t worry.’
‘You sure? Because you know you can always come to me if there’s a problem.’
And with this she reaches across to touch my sleeve, her fingers pushing against my wrist.
‘I’m sure,’ I tell her, looking away.
Clearly this is how they will proceed from now on: the pattern has been set. Fortner will handle the business end of things while Katharine takes care of the emotional side, coddling me whenever I am beset by doubt. It’s pointless, of course, to confide in her, for my every word will be reported back to him for careful analysis. All of my conversations, no matter who they are with, have this quality of evasion about them. They are significant not for what is said in the everyday to and fro of mutual trickery, but rather for what is left unspoken. It’s all about hidden meanings, reading between the lines, teasing out the subtext. This is where the skill resides.
The first handover, for example, is not about the leaking of sensitive information: its true purpose is subtler than that. Katharine and Fortner set it up with such ease in the pool because they know that a duplicate of our commercial price sets is of no more use to them than a copy of The Economist. The true value of the exchange at Saul’s flat lies in giving JUSTIFY a dummy run. Katharine and Fortner want to see how effectively I can operate within our new arrangement: whether, in the heat of the action, I become sloppy, forgetful, thrown by nerves. More crucially, it is essential from their point of view that I commit an act of industrial espionage - however slight - as soon as possible. That will bind me into the treachery and give them leverage with which to threaten me should I, at a later date, develop cold feet.
Fortner pulls up in the car outside and Katharine moves towards the door. Then, just as I am standing up to leave, Cohen’s girlfriend walks into the lobby. I recognize her from the Christmas party: tall and self-confident, with an older face which she will grow into. We catch one another’s eye and stare lingeringly without words: in different circumstances, the moment might even be construed as flirtatious. We both consider, momentarily, the prospect of a brief embarrassed greeting where neither of us knows the other’s name, but she soon looks the other way and walks off towards the reception desk.
There is no doubt in my mind that she recognized me, at least as an Abnex employee or, more exactly, as a member of Murray’s team. She will tell Cohen of this encounter when she sees him tonight, perhaps giving him a description in the hope of discovering my name. He will piece it together from there.
‘Was he with anyone?’
‘Yes,’ she will reply.
‘Really?’ Cohen will say. ‘A woman in her thirties, tall, good-looking? An older man too?’
‘Yes,’ she’ll say. ‘As a matter of fact he was.’
22
Plausible Deniability
To: Alec Milius
Address: [email protected]
Subject: Dinner Sat
Alec
Hi. Hope you get this and your system doesn’t fuck it up like last time. What’s happening about tomorrow night? Let me know what time you’re picking up Fortner & Katharine. I’ve invited a guy who was working on the Spain film to come to dinner with his girlfriend - haven’t met her before.
I’m trapped in a vortex of daytime television - Big Breakfast, Kilroy (good hair), Richard and Judy, Call my Bluff, Home and Away & Rikki, Esther, Oprah, some crap about antiques and now Fifteen to One. William G. Stewart is smug. But he never fluffs a line.
Looking for
ward to Saturday. I don’t see enough of you these days my friend - it’ll be good to catch up.
Saul
Q: What’s the difference between an egg and a wank?
A: You can beat an egg.
Tanya walks past and floats a single sheet of paper into my in-tray. It’s a circular about restricting noncommercial use of the Internet within the office. There is a satsuma on my desk and I tear open its skin. The smell of Christmas billows up out of the fruit.
I hit Reply.
To: Saul Ricken
Address: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Dinner Sat
Meeting F + K at your place - seven-thirty OK with you? I have to work, so coming direct from here.
Can’t believe you’ve never heard the egg joke before.
See you tomorrow night.
Alec
I have a long meeting on Saturday morning between nine o’clock and twelve thirty with Murray and Cohen in one of the small conference rooms on the sixth floor. With the exception of George on security duty downstairs, the office is completely deserted. Even the canteen is closed.
I am the last to arrive and the only one of us not wearing a suit. Cohen remarks on this immediately and Murray reminds me about ‘company policy’ as we sit down at the start of the meeting. Another black mark against my name. Cohen, of course, looks trim and showered, elegantly attired in a bespoke navy herringbone: you could take him anywhere, the little fucker.
His attitude towards me throughout the meeting is spiteful and manipulative. At one point he presses me for details about a research project which he knows I have yet to begin working on. When I can’t give a full answer, a shadow of irritation falls across Murray’s face and he coughs lightly, writing something down. They are both sitting opposite me at the conference table so that the relationship between us takes on the characteristics of an interrogation. My mind is slipped and weak: I woke up late and missed breakfast, and I have a gathering nervousness about the handover tonight which parries clear thinking. Cohen, by contrast, is sharp as a pin: he listens with faked over-attentiveness to Murray’s every word, nodding vigorously in agreement and taking detailed minutes on his laptop with neat little punches of the keyboard. If Murray cracks a joke, Cohen laughs. If Murray wants a cup of coffee, Cohen fetches it for him. The whole affair is sickening. By lunchtime my gut feels hollow and my mood is one of blank anger.
I eat alone in a pub on Hewett Street, haddock and chips with plastic sachets of tartare sauce. There’s a man next door to my table reading FHM, one of those glossy magazines for men who don’t have the guts to buy porn. A bikini-clad actress beams out from the cover, all cleavage and flat tummy. There’ll be a suggestive interview inside about what she looks for in a guy, next to a Q&A health page answering readers’ queries on penis size and bad breath.
Cohen has had a sandwich (prepared at home) at his desk, washed down with a carton of low-sugar Ribena. ‘I had some e-mailing to catch up on,’ he tells me as I come back into the office, ‘a query from a law firm in Ashgabat.’ I sit down at Piers’s desk and flick through a copy of the Wall Street Journal.
‘Where’s Murray?’
‘He’s had to go home. Family crisis. Jemma’s fallen off a swing.’
‘Who’s Jemma?’
‘His youngest daughter.’
This could make it more difficult to print the price sets from my computer.
‘So what are we supposed to do?’ I ask him.
‘You can go, if you like.’
This is exactly Cohen’s style: probing, arch, ambiguous. The remark is designed to test me. Will I work through the afternoon, or take the opportunity presented by Murray’s sudden departure to clock off early? Cohen won’t make a move until he knows what I intend to do. If I stay in the office, he’ll stay too. If I leave, he will remain another half-hour and then pack up. He can never be anything other than the last man to go home at night.
My best option is to leave now, have a cup of coffee, and return to the office in two hours. By then Cohen will almost certainly have gone. He’s clinical and industrious, but he likes his weekends as much as the next man. I can then pretend to do an hour’s work at my desk - for the benefit of the security cameras - during which I can print out the price sets on the laserjet. That way I’ll still be on time for the seven-thirty handover.
‘I might go,’ I tell him firmly.
‘Really?’ he says, disappointment in his voice.
‘Lots to do. I want to go shopping in the West End, get myself some new clothes.’
‘Fine.’
He isn’t interested in any excuses.
‘So I’ll see you on Monday.’
‘Monday.’
Three blocks away I order a macchiato and a chocolate wafer in a decent Italian cafe where there’s a pretty waitress and a fuzzy TV bolted to the wall. I haven’t been in here before; my usual place was closed. The BBC are replaying highlights from Euro 96 - a Czech player saluting the crowd after chipping Peter Schmeichel, Alan Shearer reeling away from the goal with his right hand raised in triumph. Simpler pleasures. My neck starts to hurt from craning up at the screen, so I turn to the copy of The Times that I brought with me to pass the time until four o’clock. I read it almost cover to cover: op-eds, news, arts, sports, even the columns I usually hate where an overpaid hack tells you about their children going off to nursery school, or what brand of olive oil they’re using this week. I drink two more coffees, lattes this time, and then make my way back to the office.
George is still on security duty as I come in through the revolving doors.
‘Forget something, did we?’
George has just come back from holiday. He looks sunburned and overfed.
‘You won’t believe this,’ I tell him, all casual and relaxed. ‘I got all the way home, made myself a nice cup of tea and was just settling down to watch Grandstand when I remembered I had some letters to finish by Monday morning. I’d forgotten all about them, and my notes are here in the office. So I had to get on the Tube and come all the way back.’
‘That’s too bad,’ says George, rearranging a bunch of keys on his desk. ‘And on a weekend an’ all.’
I walk past him towards the lifts, clutching my security pass in the sweat of my palm. I have to wait for some time for a lift to arrive, pacing up and down on the cold marble floor. George ignores me: he is reading today’s Mirror next to the flickering monochrome of five closed-circuit televisions. The crackle of his newspaper provides the only noise in the reception area. Then a lift chimes open and I ride it to the fifth floor.
The coffees have started to kick in: I am fidgety without being any more alert. If I can see that Cohen is still working at his desk, through the glass which separates our section from the lift area, I will leave the building for another hour. If Cohen has gone home, as I expect he has, I can proceed. Pan-piped music issues from a speaker above my head.
I emerge slowly from the lift as the doors glide open, immediately looking through the window partition in the direction of Cohen’s desk. My view is partially obscured by a rubber plant. I carry on towards the door of the office, still looking around for any sign of him.
Keep moving. The cameras are watching. Don’t loiter.
The team area appears to be clear. No sign of Cohen. His briefcase has gone and his desk has been tidied the way he leaves it night after night: neat piles, immaculate in-trays, a squared-up keyboard with the mouse flush along one side. It’s all about control with Cohen, never letting anything slip. Even his Post-It notes are stuck down in exacting straight lines.
I sit down at my desk and disturb the screen saver with a single touch on the space bar. Why is this suddenly so hard? I had not expected it to be as difficult as this. There is no risk, no chance of trouble, and yet I feel somehow incapable, lost in an immense space surveyed by invisible eyes. Even the simple process of keying in my password feels unlawful. I should have done this yesterday, not now, should have let the print-out
get lost in the constant traffic and buzz of office life. To do this alone on a Saturday afternoon looks all wrong.
So I wait. As a smokescreen I type e-mails that I don’t need to send and fetch reference books which I flick through ostentatiously at my desk. I go to the gents, fetch coffee from the machine, drink water at the fountain, overdoing every aspect of normal everyday behaviour for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. I do this for the best part of an hour. It is unthinkable that George is watching with any great attentiveness, and yet I go through with the absurd routine. I am held back not by cowardice, or by a change of heart, but by the simple panic of being caught.
Finally, at around five o’clock, I resolve to do what I came here to do. I sit at the computer and load the file. Three clicks of the mouse and the document opens up on the screen.
There are four A4 pages constituting about thirty seconds of normal printing time. The Print dialogue box prompts me - Best, Normal or Draft? Greyscale or Black & White? Number of copies? I go for the default setting and press Return.
The file spools over to the printer, but it takes longer than usual to emerge from the laserjet. I busy myself with other tasks, trying not to look distracted by the yawning gap of time. I pour myself a plastic cup of water at the fountain, but my nervousness is all-consuming: when the fax machine on the facing wall beeps with an incoming message, the shock of it spills a small amount of the water as I am bringing it up to my mouth.
Why was I not more prepared for this? They’ve trained you. It’s nothing. Be logical.
I look down at the printer, willing it to work, and, finally, the first page discharges, smooth and easy. Then the second. I look closely at the two sheets of paper and the printing quality is good: no smudges or run-overs. The third page follows. I try to read some of the words as it comes out upside-down, neck twisted round, but I am too disoriented to make any sense of it. Then I stand over the printer, waiting for the fourth and final sheet.
It isn’t coming out.
A Spy by Nature (2001) Page 24
