A Spy By Nature (22 page)

“Abnex has just done some commercial price sets, which include our assumptions about how the global economy is going to pan out over the next few years. They’d give Andromeda some idea of our short-term plans, where we think the price of oil is going, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds good,” she says, flatly. They expected more.

“It’s available in e-mail format, but I suppose that’ll be traceable if I send it to you.”

“That’s the right way to be thinking,” Fortner says, keeping his voice low. “Safety first. You could direct your messages via a remailing service that will strip them of their identifying features, but that’s probably too risky as a first venture. We can’t simply encrypt them. We’ll have to think of another method. Maybe on floppy or a straight printout.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem,” I tell him, trying to appear amenable and cooperative.

Katharine comes in with a suggestion: “If you just ran it off the printer at the Abnex office under the pretext that you wanted to do some work at home, would that be okay? I’m sure everyone does that as a means of staying on top of his workload.”

Fortner nods in agreement, as though there were nothing more to be said on the subject, but something about this worries me. Just standing here watching the two of them discuss these vital first stages with such apparent calm makes me feel edgy and rushed. Katharine drops her hair back into the pool and a thin film of water on her neck glistens in the light. When she brings her head back up, she looks directly at me in anticipation of some sort of response.

“Yes,” I tell her. “We do it all the time. It won’t be a problem.”

But it might be. How can I get the information onto the printer and out of the office without running the risk of somebody at Abnex noticing? There is constant movement in the office, constant observation. I cannot be certain that someone won’t start asking questions. In an attempt to avoid looking nervous, I try to convince myself that it is best to let the Americans dictate things at this early stage. All of us are keen for the first handover to be completed and out of the way. Their experience here is greater than mine, but I do not like letting others make decisions on my behalf. There is already the danger that my best interests could be undermined by forces beyond my control. With this development, it feels almost as if the Americans are laying traps for me, and yet I know that this can surely not be the case.

“The actual process of handing over any information should be simple and straightforward,” says Fortner, who halts momentarily as the swimmer approaches us, does a brisk turn, and moves away. He continues, “There’s an absence of risk if you just keep to the basics. Let me give you a few examples of how we can work all this to our mutual advantage.”

Hot chemical air is rising off the water and continuing to sting my eyes, but I manage a nod that I hope looks alert and concentrated.

“To start out, you can make duplicates of disks on the laptop at your apartment and photocopy any sensitive documentation at a convenience store in your neighborhood without arousing undue suspicion. Who’s in those places, after all? Old ladies buying scratchcards and teenage kids sifting through porno magazines. Nobody’s gonna notice. Better to do it there than under the cameras at Abnex, right?”

“What about getting the documents to you?” I ask.

“Just get a cab or subway over to our apartment like you would any other time. Or you can meet me in a restroom, a movie theater, any public area where an exchange will go unnoticed. Or we can do it at your apartment in Shepherd’s Bush. The key is variety, to avoid anything that may look like a routine to a possible tail.”

I bob my head without responding. This is the first time they have mentioned anything about my being followed.

Katharine says, “The only thing I would add…”

The man is already back again, swimming fast and hard to burn himself out. The three of us stare wanly out at the pool as he touches down, somersaults, and swims away. When he is safely out of earshot, Katharine continues.

“The only thing I would add is that it’s better to say as little as possible about JUSTIFY when you’re visiting Colville Gardens, or if we’re meeting at your apartment. Just in case there’s any audio surveillance. We’ll put some background music on whenever you show up, and you should do the same when we come to Shepherd’s Bush. And don’t just do it when it’s us that’s visiting. Make a habit of putting on a CD whenever somebody comes round. That way it won’t stand out as unusual if anyone happens to be listening in. Now, is there anywhere in particular that you would like to use as a location for the first drop?”

Her voice is full of patience. 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?”

“One sixty-two.”

“On both sides?”

I nod.

“All right, then.” He shifts his legs under 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.

“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.” There’s now a hint of irritation in Fortner’s voice. “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 anymore. 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. 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 by 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 okay about it.”

“You sure? 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 pressing 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 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 more subtle 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 develop cold feet at a later date.

Fortner pulls up in the car outside. Katharine moves to the door. Just as I am standing up to leave, Cohen’s girlfriend walks into the lobby. I recognize her from the Christmas party. She is tall and self-confident, with an older face that she will grow into. We catch each other’s eye and stare lingeringly without words. In different circumstances, the moment might even be construed as flirtatious. We both consider the prospect of a brief, embarrassed greeting in which neither of us knows the other’s name, but she soon looks the other way and walks off toward 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.

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 tangerine on my desk and I tear open its skin. The smell of Christmas billows up out of the fruit.

I hit Reply.

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 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 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 toward me throughout the meeting is spiteful and manipulative. At one point, he presses me for details about a research project 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. Cohen, by contrast, is sharp and alert. He listens with faked overattentiveness to Murray’s every word, nodding vigorously in agreement and taking detailed minutes on his laptop with neat little punches on 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 tartar sauce. There’s a man at the next 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 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 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 café where there’s a pretty waitress and a fuzzy TV bolted to the wall. The BBC is replaying highlights from the Euro ’96 soccer tournament—a Czech player saluting the crowd after chipping the goalkeeper, 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 in which overpaid hacks tell 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, lattés 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 toward 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 that 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. Panpipe music issues from a speaker above my head.

I emerge slowly from the lift as the doors glide open and immediately look through the window partition in the direction of Cohen’s desk. My view is partially obscured by a rubber plant. I carry on to 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 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 printout 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 that 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 behavior for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. I do this for the better part of an hour. It is unthinkable that George is watching with any great attentiveness, 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 pages constituting about thirty seconds of normal printing time. The Print dialogue box prompts me—Best, Normal or Draft? Grayscale 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 causes me to spill 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 runovers. The third page follows. I try to read some of the words as it comes out upside down, my neck twisted around, 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.

I wait, but there’s no sign of it. The printer must have run out of paper.

The drawer is stuck, and I have to give it a sharp tug before it opens, but there is still a half inch of A4 paper lying inside the machine. I slam it shut, but this has no effect. It is as if every piece of hardware in the building has suddenly shut down.

There must be a bad connection somewhere, or a fault with the main server.

And I am on the point of crouching down, ready to trace leads and check power cables, when I hear his voice.

“What’s this?”

Cohen is absolutely beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder. Not looking at me, but down at the printer. I breathe in hard and cannot disguise the sound of it, a startled gasp of air as my face flushes red. His breath smells of menthol.

Cohen has picked up the three sheets from the printer tray and started reading them.

“What do you want these for?”

If you ever get caught, they told me, don’t answer the question. Deflect and deny until you know that you can get clear.

Think. Think.

“You gave me a shock,” I tell him, mustering a half laugh, in the hope that this will explain my blushing. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“I was on the sixth floor,” Cohen says coolly. “Library.”

I didn’t hear the lift. He must have used the staircase. I look down at his shoes, silent suede loafers.

“What do you want this for?”

“The commercial price sets?”

“Yes,” he says. “The price sets.” He holds up the first page and flaps it in my face.

“I needed a copy at home.”

“Why?”

“Why not? So I can get on top of my work. So I can see the long-term picture.”

Don’t go on too long. The bad liar always embellishes.

Cohen nods and mutters, “Oh.”

I look back at the printer, trying to avoid his eyes.

“So what happened to shopping in the West End? Got to get myself some new clothes, you said.”

“I had some letters to finish by Monday. Forgot.”

“And this, of course,” he says archly, passing me the sheets of paper.

Cohen knows that something is not right here.

The fourth and final page has emerged into the printer tray without my realizing it. I bend over to scoop it out and tap the pages into a neat pile, stapling them in the top left corner. Cohen walks back to his desk and takes a pen out of a drawer.

“I’m going now,” he says.

“Me too. I’m all done.”

“Better switch off your computer, then,” he says, housing the pen in his jacket pocket.

“Yes.”

I move around to my desk and sleep the system. It folds into a slow screen saver, colored shapes in space disappearing into a vast black hole.

He is already halfway to the exit when he says, “Couldn’t you have written your letters at home?”