Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game

Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game Charles Cumming This ebook omnibus edition brings together Charles Cumming’s two classic Alex Milius novels, also offering readers a sample of his following novel The Trinity Six.A SPY BY NATUREAlec Milius is young, smart, ambitious and comfortable with deceit. So when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, Alec thinks he’s landed the perfect job for his talents. But working alone, relying on instinct, he’s soon spinning a web of deception that has him caught between his new masters and powerful opponents. For in his new line of work the difference between the truth and a lie can be the difference between life and death. And Alec is having trouble telling them apart …THE SPANISH GAMEAlec Milius quit the spying game six years ago – or so he thought.Living in exile in Madrid, he is lured back into a brutal world of lies and deception by the mysterious disappearance of a prominent politician. Forced to work alone, without the support of his former masters in London, Alec comes face to face with the nightmare of modern terror. And this time there's no-one to call for help… Charles Cumming Alec Milius Spy Series: Books 1 and 2 A SPY BY NATURE and THE SPANISH GAME Copyright (#uf33ecc6f-77b6-56de-9bc7-ab9c13bed6f7) HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011 Copyright © Charles Cumming 2011 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014 Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2011 ISBN: 9780007432967 Version: 2014-12-16 Contents Cover (#u4ff040ef-e238-5c12-8123-f52a60ab40b5) Title Page (#uf697307a-7700-55dd-ad4f-678f6acfc68b) Copyright A Spy By Nature (#ulink_44b747e0-c09b-5565-8a76-4a27d0b51b7b) The Spanish Game (#litres_trial_promo) Extract from A Foreign Country (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author By Charles Cumming About the Publisher CHARLES CUMMING A Spy By Nature Copyright Harper An imprint of HarpercollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) This HarperCollins edition first published 2011 First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd. 2001 Copyright © Charles Cumming 2001. Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2011 Cover photographs © Silas Manhood Extract from The Sportswriter copyright © Richard Ford. Published in Great Britain by Harvill Press 1986 Extract from The Uses of Enchantment copyright © Bruno Bettelheim. Published in Great Britain by Thames & Hudson 1976 Extract from Rabbit Redux copyright © John Updike. Published in Great Britain by Andr? Deutsch 1972 ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ Words and Music by Thom Yorke, Edward O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, Jonathan Greenwood and Philip Selway © 1994 Warner/Chappell Music Ltd., London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Source ISBN: 9780007416912 Ebook Edition © July 2011 ISBN: 9780007416905 Version: 2014-12-15 Dedication For my wife, Melissa Contents Cover (#u3107c826-d38b-5980-a3a0-273f646dc5a8) Title Page (#u89b4e5d2-2592-5554-aa3f-c29c91d4a389) Copyright (#u7b851e55-c59b-5910-bd09-42c2ce1fc8a9) Dedication (#u9f430ced-760b-5a3b-bc02-3cd908962b25) Epigraph (#ua5024516-7262-5831-a15e-b1b52b4920c1) Author’s Note (#u0a810879-1c18-5730-ba33-04312621fcd3) Part One: 1995 (#u3af65b48-479f-5253-8430-ff36d356c9e7) One: An Exploratory Conversation (#u6356ef49-5695-500a-bf30-6656c20e9c6f) Two: Official Secrets (#ud67d6180-53bb-542a-b693-1c41823d7ce0) Three: Tuesday, 4 July (#ubb09690e-0ba6-505f-9740-a2551067dd75) Four: Positive Vetting (#ua0443f77-ea7d-5f33-8672-0e3d0332f8f9) Five: Day One/Morning (#u4c33aede-693a-556b-89de-1f410dbdd412) Six: Day One/Afternoon (#ub511177e-bc95-5ba3-a044-dd8f647f2298) Seven: Day Two (#uef1cb20c-ba6c-5c12-9fc5-be938829c890) Eight: Pursuit of Happiness (#ub28940d4-ad6d-56f4-b9a3-0afd11dc45b0) Nine: This is Your Life (#uab6a2cc0-b66c-5d8c-ab4a-60cb96d85618) Ten: Meaning (#u8e99dc6a-e13c-5850-ae03-bdb8270e0b9b) Part Two: 1996 (#u10f12d09-1124-5560-8927-1ee88675717e) Eleven: Caspian (#u234e7ae2-98a5-5f08-ad29-80ed0436f149) Twelve: My Fellow Americans (#udbe1f139-966f-5f76-a970-af8d3d636f83) Thirteen: The Searchers (#u1abd8b07-e21f-5b84-9a9a-84c526700521) Fourteen: The Call (#u37010295-68c3-5d11-9549-075082512217) Fifteen: Tiramisu (#u555f31aa-9c9e-5966-9c3b-c0b6b1ba2ccf) Sixteen: Hawkes (#u793b5f6c-2f90-533a-bd9a-0a9e1ecf5e61) Seventeen: The Special Relationship (#u49ca25ee-fecb-5018-9be8-9e181ea448fb) Eighteen: Sharp Practice (#litres_trial_promo) Nineteen: Seize the Day (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty: Creating Justify (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-One: Being Rick (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Two: Plausible Deniability (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Three: The Case (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Four: Final Analysis (#litres_trial_promo) Part Three: 1997 (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Five: The Lure (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Six: The Approach (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Seven: The Sting (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Eight: Cohen (#litres_trial_promo) Twenty-Nine: Truth Telling (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty: Limbo (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-One: Baku (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Two: End of the Affair (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Three: Caccia (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Four: Think (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Five: Fast Release (#litres_trial_promo) Thirty-Six: West (#litres_trial_promo) Epigraph I remember, in fact, the Lebanese woman I knew at Berkshire College saying to me, after I told her how much I loved her: ‘I’ll always tell you the truth, unless of course I’m lying to you.’ Richard Ford, The Sportswriter Author’s Note Were the events of this story entirely true, they would inevitably breach clauses in The Official Secrets Act. Nevertheless, members of the intelligence community both in London and in the United States may find that they catch their reflection in the account which follows. –C.C. London, 2001 PART ONE 1995 If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives. —Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment ONE An Exploratory Conversation The door leading into the building is plain and unadorned, save for one highly polished handle. No sign outside saying FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE, no hint of top brass. There is a small ivory bell on the right-hand side, and I push it. The door, thicker and heavier than it appears, is opened by a fit-looking man of retirement age, a uniformed policeman on his last assignment. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ ‘Good afternoon. I have an interview with Mr Lucas at two o’clock.’ ‘The name, sir?’ ‘Alec Milius.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ This almost condescending. I have to sign my name in a book and then he hands me a security dog tag on a silver chain, which I slip into the hip pocket of my suit trousers. ‘Just take a seat beyond the stairs. Someone will be down to see you in a moment.’ The wide, high-ceilinged hall beyond the reception area exudes all the splendour of imperial England. A vast panelled mirror dominates the far side of the room, flanked by oil portraits of grey-eyed, long-dead diplomats. Its soot-flecked glass reflects the bottom of a broad staircase, which drops down in right angles from an unseen upper storey, splitting left and right at ground level. Arranged around a varnished table beneath the mirror are two burgundy leather sofas, one of which is more or less completely occupied by an overweight, lonely-looking man in his late twenties. Carefully, he reads and rereads the same page of the same section of The Times, crossing and uncrossing his legs as his bowels swim in caffeine and nerves. I sit down on the sofa opposite his. Five minutes pass. On the table the fat man has laid down a strip of passport photographs, little colour squares of himself in a suit, probably taken in a booth at Waterloo station sometime early this morning. A copy of The Daily Telegraph lies folded and unread beside the photographs. Bland non-stories govern its front page: IRA hints at new ceasefire; rail sell-off will go ahead; 56 per cent of British policemen want to keep their traditional bobbies’ helmets. I catch the fat man looking at me, a quick spot-check glance between rivals. Then he looks away, shamed. His skin is drained of ultraviolet, a grey flannel face raised on nerd books and Panorama. Black oily Oxbridge hair. ‘Mr Milius?’ A young woman has appeared on the staircase wearing a neat red suit. She is unflustered, professional, demure. As I stand up, Fat Man eyes me with wounded suspicion, like someone on his lunch break cut in line at the bank. ‘If you’d like to come with me. Mr Lucas will see you now.’ This is where it begins. Following three steps behind her, garbling platitudes, adrenaline surging, her smooth calves lead me up out of the hall. More oil paintings line the ornate staircase. Running a bit late today. Oh, that’s okay. Did you find us all right? Yes. ‘Mr Lucas is just in here.’ Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. A firm handshake. Late thirties. I had expected someone older. Christ, his eyes are blue. I’ve never seen a blue like that. Lucas is dense boned and tanned, absurdly handsome in an old-fashioned way. He is in the process of growing a moustache, which undercuts the residual menace in his face. There are black tufts sprouting on his upper lip, cut-rate Errol Flynn. He offers me a drink, an invitation seconded by the woman in red, who seems almost offended when I refuse. ‘Are you sure?’ she says, as if I have broken with sacred tradition. Never accept tea or coffee at an interview. They’ll see your hand shaking when you drink it. ‘Absolutely, yes.’ She withdraws and Lucas and I go into a large, sparsely furnished room nearby. He has not yet stopped looking at me, not out of laziness or rudeness but purely because he is a man entirely at ease when it comes to staring at people. He’s very good at it. He says, ‘Thank you for coming today.’ And I say, ‘It’s a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a great privilege to be here.’ There are two armchairs in the room, upholstered in the same burgundy leather as the sofas downstairs. A large bay window looks out over the tree-lined Mall, feeding weak, broken sunlight into the room. Lucas has a broad oak desk covered in neat piles of paper and a framed black-and-white photograph of a woman whom I take to be his wife. ‘Have a seat.’ I drop down low into the leather, my back to the window. There is a coffee table in front of me, an ashtray, and a closed red file. Lucas occupies the chair opposite mine. As he sits down, he reaches into the pocket of his jacket for a pen, retrieving a blue Mont Blanc. I watch him, freeing the trapped flaps of my jacket and bringing them back across my chest. The little physical tics that precede an interview. ‘Milius. It’s an unusual name.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Your father, he was from the Eastern bloc?’ ‘His father. Not mine. Came over from Lithuania in 1940. My family have lived in Britain ever since.’ Lucas writes something down on a brown clipboard braced between his thighs. ‘I see. Why don’t we begin by talking about your present job. The CEBDO. That’s not something I’ve heard much about.’ All job interviews are lies. They begin with the r?sum?, a sheet of word-processed fictions. About halfway down mine, just below the name and address, Philip Lucas has read the following sentence: I have been employed as a Marketing Consultant at the Central European Business Development Organization (CEBDO) for the past eleven months. Elsewhere, lower down, are myriad falsehoods: periods of work experience on national newspapers (‘Could you do some photocopying please?’); a season as a waiter at a leading Genevan hotel; eight weeks at a London law firm; the inevitable charity work. The truth is that CEBDO is run out of a small, cramped garage in a mews off Edgware Road. The kitchen doubles for a toilet; if somebody has a crap, no one can make a cup of tea for ten minutes. There are five of us: Nik (the boss), Henry, Russell, myself, and Anna. It’s very simple. We sit on the phone all day talking to businessmen in central–and now eastern–Europe. I try to persuade them to part with large sums of money, in return for which we promise to place an advertisement for their operation in a publication known as the Central European Business Review. This, I tell my clients, is a quarterly magazine that enjoys a global circulation of four hundred thousand copies, ‘distributed free around the world.’ Working purely on commission I can make anything from two to three hundred pounds a week, sometimes more, peddling this story. Nik, I estimate, makes seven or eight times that amount. His only overheads, apart from telephone calls and electricity, are printing costs. These are paid to his brother-in-law who desktop publishes five hundred copies of the Central European Business Review four times a year. These he posts to a few selected embassies across Europe and to all the clients who have placed advertisements in the magazine. Any spares, he throws in the bin. On paper, it’s legal. I look Lucas directly in the eye. ‘The CEBDO is a fledgling organization that advises new businesses in central–and now eastern–Europe about the perils and pitfalls of the free market.’ He taps his jaw with the bulbous fountain pen. ‘And it’s entirely funded by private individuals? There’s no grant from the EC?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Who runs it?’ ‘Nikolas Jarolmek. A Pole. His family have lived in Britain since the war.’ ‘And how did you get the job?’ ‘Through the Guardian. I responded to an advertisement.’ ‘Against how many other candidates?’ ‘I couldn’t say. I was told about a hundred and fifty.’ ‘Could you describe an average day at the office?’ ‘Broadly speaking, I act in an advisory capacity, either by speaking to people on the telephone and answering any questions they may have about setting up in business in the UK or by writing letters in response to written queries. I’m also responsible for editing our quarterly magazine, the Central European Business Review. That lists a number of crucial contact organizations that might prove useful to small businesses that are just starting out. It also gives details of tax arrangements in this country, language schools, that kind of thing.’ ‘I see. It would be helpful if you could send me a copy.’ ‘Of course.’ To explain why I am here. The interview was set up on the recommendation of a man I barely know, a retired diplomat named Michael Hawkes. Six weeks ago I was staying at my mother’s house in Somerset for the weekend, and he came to dinner. He was, she informed me, an old university friend of my father’s. Until that night I had never met Hawkes, had never heard my mother mention his name. She said that he had spent a lot of time with her and Dad when they were first married in the 1960s. But when the Foreign Office posted him to Moscow, the three of them had lost touch. All this was before I was born. Hawkes retired from the Diplomatic Service earlier this year to take up a directorship at a British oil company called Abnex. I don’t know how Mum tracked down his phone number, but he showed up for dinner alone, no wife, on the stroke of eight o’clock. There were other guests there that night, bankers and insurance brokers in bulletproof tweeds, but Hawkes was a thing apart. He had a blue silk cravat slung around his neck like a noose and a pair of velvet loafers embroidered on the toe with an elaborate coat of arms. There was nothing ostentatiously debonair about any of this, nothing vain; it just looked as if he hadn’t taken them off in twenty years. He was wearing a washed-out blue shirt with fraying collar and cuffs and stained silver cuff links that looked as though they had been in his family since the Opium Wars. In short, we got on. We sat next to each other at dinner and talked for close on three hours about everything from politics to infidelity. Three days after the party my mother told me that she had spotted Hawkes in her local supermarket, stocking up on Stolichnaya and tomato juice. Almost immediately, like a task, he asked her if I had ever thought of ‘going in for the Foreign Office.’ My mother said that she didn’t know. ‘Ask him to give me a ring if he’s interested.’ So on the telephone that night my mother did what mothers are supposed to do. ‘You remember Michael, who came to dinner?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, stubbing out a cigarette. ‘He likes you. Thinks you should try out for the Foreign Office.’ ‘He does?’ ‘What an opportunity, Alec. To serve Queen and Country.’ I nearly laughed at this, but checked it out of respect for her old-fashioned convictions. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘an ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.’ She sounded impressed. ‘Who said that?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Anyway, Michael says to give him a ring if you’re interested. I’ve got the number. Fetch a pen.’ I tried to stop her. I didn’t like the idea of her putting shape on my life, but she was insistent. ‘Not everyone gets a chance like this. You’re twenty-four now. You’ve only got that small amount of money your father left you in his Paris account. It’s time you started thinking about a career and stopped working for that crooked Pole.’ I argued with her a little more, just enough to convince myself that if I went ahead it would be of my own volition and not because of some parental arrangement. Then, two days later, I rang Hawkes. It was shortly after nine o’clock in the morning. He answered after one ring, the voice crisp and alert. ‘Michael. It’s Alec Milius.’ ‘Hello.’ ‘About the conversation you had with my mother.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘In the supermarket.’ ‘You want to go ahead?’ ‘If that’s possible. Yes.’ His manner was strangely abrupt. No friendly chat, no excess fat. ‘I’ll talk to one of my colleagues. They’ll be in touch.’ ‘Good. Thanks.’ Three days later a letter arrived in a plain white envelope marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. Foreign and Commonwealth Office No. 46A———Terrace London SW1 PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL Dear Mr Milius, It has been suggested to me that you might be interested to have a discussion with us about fast-stream appointments in government service in the field of foreign affairs which occasionally arise in addition to those covered by the Open Competition to the Diplomatic Service. This office has a responsibility for recruitment to such appointments. If you would like to take this possibility further, I should be grateful if you would please complete the enclosed form and return it to me. Provided that there is an appointment for which you appear potentially suitable, I shall then invite you to an exploratory conversation at this office. Your travel expenses will be refunded at the rate of a standard return rail fare plus tube fares. I should stress that your acceptance of this invitation will not commit you in any way, nor will it affect your candidature for any government appointments for which you may apply or have applied. As this letter is personal to you, I should be grateful if you could respect its confidentiality. Yours sincerely, Philip Lucas Recruitment Liaison Office Enclosed was a standard-issue, four-page application form: name and address, education, brief employment history, and so on. I completed it within twenty-four hours–replete with lies–and sent it back to Lucas. He replied by return post, inviting me to the meeting. I have spoken to Hawkes only once in the intervening period. Yesterday afternoon I was becoming edgy about what the interview would entail. I wanted to find out what to expect, what to prepare, what to say. So I queued outside a Praed Street phone box for ten minutes, far enough away from the CEBDO office not to risk being seen by Nik. None of them know that I am here today. Again Hawkes answered on the first ring. Again his manner was curt and to the point. Acting as if people were listening in on the line. ‘I feel as if I’m going into this thing with my trousers down,’ I told him. ‘I know nothing about what’s going on.’ He sniffed what may have been a laugh and replied, ‘Don’t worry about it. Everything will become clear when you get there.’ ‘So there’s nothing you can tell me? Nothing I need to prepare for?’ ‘Nothing at all, Alec. Just be yourself. It will all make sense later on.’ How much of this Lucas knows, I do not know. I simply give him edited highlights from the dinner and a few sketchy impressions of Hawkes’s character. Nothing permanent. Nothing of any significance. In truth, we do not talk about him for long. The subject soon runs dry. Lucas moves on to my father and, after that, spends a quarter of an hour questioning me about my school years, dredging up the forgotten paraphernalia of my youth. He notes down all my answers, scratching away with the Mont Blanc, nodding imperceptibly at given points in the conversation. Building a file on a man. TWO Official Secrets The interview drifts on. In response to a series of bland, straightforward questions about various aspects of my life–friendships, university, bogus summer jobs–I give a series of bland, straightforward answers designed to show myself in the correct light: as a stand-up guy, an unwavering patriot, a citizen of no stark political leanings. Just what the Foreign Office is looking for. Lucas’s interviewing technique is strangely shapeless; at no point am I properly tested by anything he asks. And he never takes the conversation to a higher level. We do not, for example, discuss the role of the Foreign Office or British policy overseas. The talk is always general, always about me. In due course I begin to worry that my chances of recruitment are slim. Lucas has about him the air of someone doing Hawkes a favour. He will keep me in here for a couple of hours, fulfil what is required of him, and the process will go no further. Things feel over before they have really begun. However, at around three thirty I am again offered a cup of tea. This seems significant, but the thought of it deters me. I do not have enough conversation left to last out another hour. Yet it is clear that he would like me to accept. ‘Yes, I would like one,’ I tell him. ‘Black. Nothing in it.’ ‘Good,’ he says. In this instant something visibly relaxes in Lucas, a crumpling of his suit. There is a sense of formalities passing. This impression is reinforced by his next remark, an odd, almost rhetorical question entirely out of keeping with the established rhythm of our conversation. ‘Would you like to continue with your application after this initial discussion?’ Lucas phrases this so carefully that it is like a briefly glimpsed secret, a sight of the interview’s true purpose. And yet the question does not seem to deserve an answer. What candidate, at this stage, would say no? ‘Yes, I would.’ ‘In that case, I am going to go out of the room for a few moments. I will send someone in with your cup of tea.’ It is as if he has changed to a different script. Lucas looks relieved to be free of the edgy formality that has characterized the interview thus far. There is, at last, a sense of getting down to business. From the clipboard on his lap he releases a small piece of paper, printed on both sides. This he places on the table in front of me. ‘There’s just one thing,’ he says, with well-rehearsed blandness. ‘Before I leave, I’d like you to sign the Official Secrets Act.’ The first thing I think of, even before I am properly surprised, is that Lucas actually trusts me. I have said enough here today to earn the confidence of the state. That was all it took: sixty minutes of half-truths and evasions. I stare at the document and feel suddenly catapulted into something adult, as though from this moment onward things will be expected and demanded of me. Lucas is keen to assess my reaction. Prompted by this, I lift the document and hold it in my hand like a courtroom exhibit. I am surprised by its cursoriness. It is simply a little brown sheet of paper with space at the base for a signature. I do not even bother to read the small print, because to do so might seem odd or improper. So I sign my name at the bottom of the page, scrawled and lasting. Alec Milius. The moment passes with what seems an absurd absence of seriousness, an absolute vacuum of drama. I give no thought to the consequence of it. Almost immediately, before the ink can be properly dry, Lucas snatches the document away from me and stands to leave. Distant traffic noise on the Mall. A brief clatter in the secretarial enclave next door. ‘Do you see the file on the table?’ It has been sitting there, untouched, for the duration of the interview. ‘Yes.’ ‘Please read it while I am gone. We will discuss the contents when I return.’ I look at the file, register its hard red cover, and agree. ‘Good,’ says Lucas, moving outside. ‘Good.’ Alone now in the room, I lift the file from the table as though it were a magazine in a doctor’s surgery. It is bound in cheap leather and well thumbed. I open it to the first page. Please read the following information carefully. You are being appraised for recruitment to the Secret Intelligence Service. I look at this sentence again, and it is only on the third reading that it begins to make any sort of sense. I cannot, in my consternation, smother a belief that Lucas has the wrong man, that the intended candidate is still sitting downstairs flicking nervously through the pages of The Times. But then, gradually, things start to take shape. There was that final instruction in Lucas’s letter: ‘As this letter is personal to you, I should be grateful if you could respect its confidentiality.’ A remark that struck me as odd at the time, though I made no more of it. And Hawkes was reluctant to tell me anything about the interview today: ‘Just be yourself, Alec. It’ll all make sense when you get there.’ Jesus. How they have reeled me in. What did Hawkes see in me in just three hours at a dinner party to convince him that I would make a suitable employee of the Secret Intelligence Service? Of MI6? A sudden consciousness of being alone in the room checks me out of bewilderment. I feel no fear, no great apprehension, only a sure sense that I am being watched through a small panelled mirror to the left of my chair. I swivel and examine the glass. There is something false about it, something not quite aged. The frame is solid, reasonably ornate, but the glass is clean, far more so than the larger mirror in the reception area downstairs. I look away. Why else would Lucas have left the room but to gauge my response from a position next door? He is watching me through the mirror. I am certain of it. So I turn the page, attempting to look settled and businesslike. The text makes no mention of MI6, only of SIS, which I assume to be the same organization. This is all the information I am capable of absorbing before other thoughts begin to intrude. It has dawned on me, a slowly revealed thing, that Michael Hawkes was a Cold War spy. That’s why he went to Moscow in the 1960s. Did Dad know that about him? I must look studious for Lucas. I must suggest the correct level of gravitas. The first page is covered in information, two-line blocks of facts. The Secret Intelligence Service (hereafter SIS), working independently from Whitehall, has responsibility for gathering foreign intelligence… SIS officers work under diplomatic cover in British embassies overseas… There are at least twenty pages like this one, detailing power structures within SIS, salary gradings, the need at all times for absolute secrecy. At one point, approximately halfway through the document, they have actually written: ‘Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.’ On and on it goes, too much to take in. I tell myself to keep on reading, to try to assimilate as much of it as I can. Lucas will return soon with an entirely new set of questions, probing me, establishing whether I have the potential to do this. It’s time to move up a gear. What an opportunity, Alec. To serve Queen and Country. The door opens, like air escaping through a seal. ‘Here’s your tea, sir.’ Not Lucas. A sad-looking, perhaps unmarried woman in late middle-age has walked into the room carrying a plain white cup and saucer. I stand up to acknowledge her, knowing that Lucas will note this display of politeness from his position behind the mirror. She hands me the tea, I thank her, and she leaves without another word. No serving SIS officer has been killed in action since World War Two. I turn another page, skimming the prose. The meanness of the starting salary surprises me: only seventeen thousand pounds in the first few years, with bonuses here and there to reward good work. If I do this, it will be for love. There’s no money in spying. Lucas walks in, no knock on the door, a soundless approach. He has a cup and saucer clutched in his hand and a renewed sense of purpose. His watchfulness has, if anything, intensified. Perhaps he hasn’t been observing me at all. Perhaps this is his first sight of the young man whose life he has just changed. He sits down, tea on the table, right leg folded over left. There is no ice-breaking remark. He dives straight in. ‘What are your thoughts about what you’ve been reading?’ The weak bleat of an internal phone sounds on the other side of the door, stopping efficiently. Lucas waits for my response, but it does not come. My head is suddenly loud with noise and I am rendered incapable of speech. His gaze intensifies. He will not speak until I have done so. Say something, Alec. Don’t blow it now. His mouth is melting into what I perceive as a disappointment close to pity. I struggle for something coherent, some sequence of words that will do justice to the very seriousness of what I am now embarked upon, but the words simply do not come. Lucas appears to be several feet closer now than he was before, and yet his chair has not moved an inch. How could this have happened? In an effort to regain control of myself, I try to remain absolutely still, to make our body language as much of a mirror as possible: arms relaxed, legs crossed, head upright and looking ahead. In time–what seem vast, vanished seconds–the beginning of a sentence forms in my mind, just the faintest of signals. And when Lucas makes to say something, as if to end my embarrassment, it acts as a spur. I say, ‘Well…now that I know…I can understand why Mr Hawkes didn’t want to say exactly what I was coming here to do today.’ ‘Yes.’ The shortest, meanest, quietest yes I have ever heard. ‘I found the pamphl–the file very interesting. It was a surprise.’ ‘Why is that exactly? What surprised you about it?’ ‘I thought, obviously, that I was coming here today to be interviewed for the Diplomatic Service, not for SIS.’ ‘Of course,’ he says, reaching for his tea. And then, to my relief, he begins a long and practiced monologue about the work of the Secret Intelligence Service, an eloquent, spare r?sum? of its goals and character. This lasts as long as a quarter of an hour, allowing me the chance to get myself together, to think more clearly and focus on the task ahead. Still spinning from the embarrassment of having frozen openly in front of him, I find it difficult to concentrate on Lucas’s voice. His description of the work of an SIS officer appears to be disappointingly void of macho derring-do. He paints a lustreless portrait of a man engaged in the simple act of gathering intelligence, doing so by the successful recruitment of foreigners sympathetic to the British cause who are prepared to pass on secrets for reasons of conscience or financial gain. That, in essence, is all that a spy does. As Lucas tells it, the more traditional aspects of espionage–burglary, phone tapping, honey traps, bugging–are a fiction. It’s mostly desk work. Officers are certainly not licensed to kill. ‘Clearly, one of the more unique aspects of SIS is the demand for absolute secrecy,’ he says, his voice falling away. ‘How would you feel about not being able to tell anybody what you do for a living?’ I guess that this is how it would be. Nobody, not even Kate, knowing any longer who I really was. A life of absolute anonymity. ‘I wouldn’t have any problem with that.’ Lucas begins to take notes again. That was the answer he was looking for. ‘And it doesn’t concern you that you won’t receive any public acclaim for the work you do?’ He says this in a tone that suggests that it bothers him a great deal. ‘I’m not interested in acclaim.’ A seriousness has enveloped me, nudging panic aside. An idea of the job is slowly composing itself in my imagination, something that is at once very straightforward but ultimately obscure. Something clandestine and yet moral and necessary. Lucas ponders the clipboard in his lap. ‘You must have some questions you want to ask me.’ ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Would members of my family be allowed to know that I am an SIS officer?’ Lucas appears to have a checklist of questions on his clipboard, all of which he expects me to ask. That was obviously one of them, because he again marks the page in front of him with his snub-nosed fountain pen. ‘Obviously, the fewer people that know, the better. That usually means wives.’ ‘Children?’ ‘No.’ ‘But obviously not friends or other relatives?’ ‘Absolutely not. If you are successful after Sisby, and the panel decides to recommend you for employment, then we would have a conversation with your mother to let her know the situation.’ ‘What is Sisby?’ ‘The Civil Service Selection Board. Sisby, as we call it. If you are successful at this first interview stage, you will go on to do Sisby in due course. This involves two intensive days of intelligence tests, interviews, and written papers at a location in Whitehall, allowing us to establish if you are of a high enough intellectual standard for recruitment to SIS.’ The door opens without a knock and the same woman who brought in my tea, now cold and untouched on the table, walks in. She smiles apologetically in my direction, with a flushed, nervous glance at Lucas. He looks visibly annoyed. ‘I do apologize, sir.’ She is frightened of him. ‘This just came through for you, and I felt you should see it right away.’ She hands him a single sheet of fax paper. Lucas looks over at me quickly and proceeds to read it. ‘Thank you.’ The woman leaves and he turns to me. ‘I have a suggestion. If you have no further questions, I think we should finish here. Will that be all right?’ ‘Of course.’ There was something on the fax that necessitated this. ‘You will obviously have to think things over. There are a lot of issues to consider when deciding to become an SIS officer. So let’s end this discussion now. I will be in touch with you by post in the next few days. We will let you know at that stage if we want to proceed with your application.’ ‘And if you do?’ ‘Then you will be invited back here for a second interview with one of my colleagues.’ As he stands up to leave, Lucas folds the piece of paper in two and slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Leaving the recruitment file on the table, he gestures with an extended right arm toward the door, which has been left ajar by the secretary. I walk out ahead of him and immediately begin to feel all the stiffness of formality falling away from me. It is a relief to leave the room. The girl in the neat red suit is standing outside waiting, somehow prettier than she was at two o’clock. She looks at me, gauges my mood, and then sends out a warm broad smile that is full of friendship and understanding. She knows what I’ve just been through. I feel like asking her out for dinner. ‘Ruth, will you show Mr Milius to the door? I have some business to attend to.’ Lucas has barely emerged from his office: he is lingering in the doorway behind me, itching to get back inside. ‘Of course,’ she says. So our separation is abrupt. A last glance into each other’s eyes, a grappled shake of the hand, a reiteration that he will be in touch. And then Philip Lucas vanishes back into his office, firmly closing the door. THREE Tuesday, 4 July At dawn, five days later, my first waking thought is of Kate, as though someone trips a switch behind my closed eyes and she blinks into the morning. It has been like this, on and off, for four months now. Sometimes, still caught in a half dream, I will reach for her as though she were actually beside me in bed. I try to smell her, try to gauge the pressure and softness of her kisses, the delicious sculpture of her spine. Then we lie together, whispering quietly, kissing. Just like old times. Drawing the curtains, I see that the sky is white, a cloudy midsummer morning that will burn off at noon and break into a good blue day. All that I have wanted is to tell Kate about SIS. At last something has gone right for me, something that she might be proud of. Someone has given me the chance to put my life together, to do something constructive with all these mind wanderings and ambition. Wasn’t that what she always wanted? Wasn’t she always complaining about how I wasted opportunities, how I was always waiting for something better to come along? Well, this is it. But I know that it will not be possible. I have to let her go. Finding it so difficult to let her go. I shower, dress, and take the tube to Edgware Road, but I am not the first at work. Coming down the narrow, sheltered mews, I see Anna up ahead, fighting vigorously with the lock on the garage door. A heavy bunch of keys drops from her right hand. She stands up to straighten her back and sees me in the distance, her expression one of unambiguous contempt. Not so much as a nod. I push a splay-fingered hand through my hair and say good morning. ‘Hello,’ she says archly, twisting the key in the lock. She’s growing her hair. Long brown strands flecked with old highlights and trapped light. ‘Why the fuck doesn’t Nik give me a key that fucking works?’ ‘Try mine.’ I steer my key in toward the garage door, a movement that causes Anna to pull her hand out of the way like a flick knife. Her keys fall onto the grey step and she says fuck again. Simultaneously, her bicycle, which has been resting against the wall beside us, topples to the ground. She walks over to pick it up as I unlock the door and go inside. The air is wooden and musty. Anna comes through the door behind me with a squeezed smile. She is wearing a summer dress of pastel blue cotton dotted with pale yellow flowers. A thin layer of sweat glows on the freckled skin above her breasts, soft as moons. With my index finger I flick the switches one by one. The strip lights in the small office strobe. There are five desks inside, all hooked up to phones. I weave through them to the far side of the garage, turning right into the kitchen. The kettle is already full and I press it, lifting two mugs from the drying rack. The toilet perches in the corner of the narrow room, topped by rolls of pink paper. Someone has left a half-finished cigarette on the tank that has stained the ceramic. The kettle’s scaly deposits crackle faintly as I open the door of the fridge. Fresh milk? No. When I come out of the kitchen Anna is already on the phone, talking softly to someone in the voice that she uses for boys. Perhaps she left him slumbering in her wide, low bed this morning, the smell of her sex on the pillow. She has opened up the wooden doors of the garage so that daylight has filled the room. I hear the kettle click. Anna catches me looking at her and swivels her chair so that she is facing out onto the mews. I light a cigarette, my last one, and wonder who he is. ‘So,’ she says to him, her voice a naughty grin, ‘what are you going to do today?’ A pause. ‘Oh, Bill, you’re so lazy…’ She likes his being lazy, she approves of it. ‘Okay, that sounds good. Mmmm. I’ll be finished here at six, maybe earlier if Nik lets me go.’ She turns and sees that I am still watching her. ‘Just Alec. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.’ Her voice drops as she says this. He knows all about what happened between us. She must have told him everything. ‘Well, they’ll be here in a minute. Okay. See you later. Bye.’ She turns back into the room and hangs up the phone. ‘New boyfriend?’ ‘Sorry?’ Standing up, she passes me on her way into the kitchen. I hear her open the door of the fridge, the minute electric buzz of its bright white light, the soft plastic suck of its closing. ‘Nothing,’ I say, raising my voice so that she can hear me. ‘I just said, is that your new boyfriend?’ ‘No, it was yours,’ she says, coming out again. ‘I’m going to buy some milk.’ As she leaves, a telephone rings in the unhoovered office, but I let the answering machine pick it up. Anna’s footsteps clip away along the cobbles and a car starts up in the mews. I step outside. Des, the next-door neighbour, is buckled into his magnesium E-type Jag, revving the engine. Des always wears loose black suits and shirts with a sheen, his long silver hair tied back in a ponytail. None of us has ever been able to work out what Des does for a living. He could be an architect, a film producer, the owner of a chain of restaurants. It’s impossible to tell just by looking into the windows of his house, which reveal expensive sofas, a wide-screen television, plenty of computer hardware, and, right at the back of the sleek white kitchen, an industrial-size espresso machine. On the rare occasions when Des speaks to anyone in the CEBDO office, it is to complain about excessive noise or car-parking violations. Otherwise, he is an unknown quantity. Nik shuffles his shabby walk down the mews just as Des is sliding out of it in his low-slung, antique fuck machine. I go back inside and look busy. Nik comes through the open door and glances up at me, still moving forward. He is a small man. ‘Morning, Alec. How are we today? Ready for a hard day’s work?’ ‘Morning, Nik.’ He swings his briefcase up onto his desk and wraps his old leather jacket around the back of the chair. ‘Do you have a cup of coffee for me?’ Nik is a bully and, like all bullies, sees everything in terms of power. Who is threatening me; whom can I threaten? To suffocate the constant nag of his insecurity he must make others feel uncomfortable. I say, ‘Funnily enough, I don’t. The batteries are low on my ESP this morning, and I didn’t know exactly when you’d be arriving.’ ‘You being funny with me today, Alec? You feeling confident or something?’ He doesn’t look at me while he says this. He just shuffles things on his desk. ‘I’ll get you a coffee, Nik.’ ‘Thank you.’ So I find myself back in the kitchen, reboiling the kettle. And it is only when I am crouched on the floor, peering into the fridge, that I remember Anna has gone out to buy milk. On the middle shelf, a hardened chunk of overly yellow butter wrapped in torn gold foil is slowly being scarfed by mould. ‘We don’t have any milk,’ I call out. ‘Anna’s gone out to get some.’ There’s no answer, of course. I put my head around the door of the kitchen and say to Nik, ‘I said there’s no milk. Anna’s gone–‘ ‘I hear you. I hear you. Don’t be panicking about it.’ I ache to tell him about SIS, to see the look on his cheap, corrupted face. Hey, Nik, you’re twice my age and this is all you’ve been able to come up with: a low-rent, dry-rot garage in Paddington, flogging lies and phony advertising space to your own countrymen. That’s the extent of your life’s work. A few phones, a fax machine, and three secondhand computers running on outdated software. That’s what you have to show for yourself. That’s all you are. I’m twenty-four, and I’m being recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service. It is five o’clock in the afternoon in Brno, one hour ahead of London. I am talking to a Mr Klemke, the managing director of a firm of building contractors with ambitions to move into western Europe. ‘Particularly France,’ he says. ‘Well, then I think our publication would be perfect for you, sir.’ ‘Publicsation? I’m sorry. This word.’ ‘Our publication, our magazine. The Central European Business Review. It’s published every three months and has a circulation of four hundred thousand copies worldwide.’ ‘Yes, yes. And this is new magazine, printed in London?’ Anna, back from a long lunch, sticks a Post-it note on the desk in front of me. Scrawled in girly swirls she has written, ‘Saul rang. Coming here later.’ ‘That’s correct,’ I tell Klemke. ‘Printed here in London and distributed worldwide. Four hundred thousand copies.’ Nik is looking at me. ‘And, Mr Mills, who is the publisher of this magazine? Is it yourself?’ ‘No, sir. I am one of our advertising executives.’ ‘I see.’ I envision him as large and rotund, a benign Robert Maxwell. I envision them all as benign Robert Maxwells. ‘And you want me to advertise, is that what you are asking?’ ‘I think it would be in your interest, particularly if you are looking to expand into western Europe.’ ‘Yes, particularly France.’ ‘France.’ ‘And you have still not told me who is publishing this magazine in London. The name of person who is editor.’ Nik has started reading the sports pages of The Independent. ‘It’s a Mr Jarolmek.’ He folds one side of the newspaper down with a sudden crisp rattle, alarmed. Silence in Brno. ‘Can you say this name again, please?’ ‘Jarolmek.’ I look directly at Nik, eyebrows raised, and spell out J-a-r-o-l-m-e-k with great slowness and clarity down the phone. Klemke may yet bite. ‘I know this man.’ ‘Oh, you do?’ Trouble. ‘Yes. My brother, of my wife, he is a businessman also. In the past he has published with this Mr Jarolmek.’ ‘In the Central European Business Review?’ ‘If this is what you are calling this now.’ ‘It’s always been called that.’ Nik puts down the paper, pushes his chair out behind him, and stands up. He walks over to my desk and perches on it. Watching me. And there, on the other side of the mews, is Saul, leaning coolly against the wall smoking a cigarette like a private investigator. I have no idea how long he has been standing there. Something heavy falls over in Klemke’s office. ‘Well, it’s a small world,’ I say, gesturing to Saul to come in. Anna is grinning as she dials a number on her telephone. Long brown slender arms. ‘It is my belief that Jarolmek is a robber and a con man.’ ‘I’m sorry, uh, I’m sorry, why…why do you feel that?’ A quizzical look from Nik, perched there. Saul now coming in through the door. ‘My brother paid a large sum of money to your organization two separate times–‘ Don’t let him finish. ‘–And he didn’t receive a copy of the magazine? Or experience any feedback from his advertisement?’ ‘Mr Mills, do not interrupt me. I have something I want to say to you and I do not wish to be interrupted.’ ‘I’m sorry. Do go on.’ ‘Yes, I will go on. I will go on. My brother then met with a British diplomat in Prague at a function dinner who had not heard of your publication.’ ‘Really?’ ‘And when he goes to look it up, it is not listed in any of our documentation here in Czech Republic. How do you explain this?’ ‘There must be some misunderstanding.’ Nik stands up and spits, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ in an audible whisper. He presses the loudspeaker button on my telephone and Klemke’s riled gravelly voice echoes out into the room. ‘Misunderstanding? No, I don’t believe it is. You are a fraud. My brother of my wife has made inquiries into your circulation and it appears that you do not sell as widely as you say. You are lying to people in Europe and making promises. My brother was going to report you. And now I will do the same.’ Nik stabs the button again and pulls the receiver out of my hand. ‘Hello. Yes. This is Nikolas Jarolmek. Can I help you with something?’ Saul looks at me quizzically, nodding his head at Nik, fishing lazily about in the debris on my desk. He has had his hair cut very short, almost shaved to the skull. Suddenly Nik is shouting, a clatter of a language I do not understand. Cursing, sweating, chopping the air with his small stubby hands. He spits insults into the phone, parries Klemke’s threats with raging animosities, hangs up with a bang. ‘You stupid fucking arsehole!’ He turns on me, shouting, his arms spread like push-ups on the desk. ‘What were you doing keeping that fucker on the phone? You could get me in jail. You stupid fucking…cunt!’ Cunt sounds like a word he has just learned in the playground. ‘What, for fuck’s sake? What the fuck was I supposed to do?’ ‘What were you…you stupid. Fucking hell, I should pay my dog to sit there. My fucking dog would do a better job than you.’ I am too ashamed to look at Saul. ‘Nik, I’m sorry, but–‘ ‘Sorry? Oh, well then, that’s all right…’ ‘No, sorry, but–‘ ‘I don’t care if you’re sorry.’ ‘Look!’ This from Saul. He is on his feet. He’s going to say something. Oh, Jesus. ‘He’s not saying he’s sorry. If you’d just listen, he’s not saying he’s sorry. It’s not his fault if some wanker in Warsaw catches on to what you’re up to and starts giving him an earful! Why don’t you calm down, for Christ’s sake?’ ‘Who the fuck are you?’ says Nik. He really likes this guy. ‘I’m a friend of Alec’s. Take it easy.’ ‘And he can’t take care of himself? You can’t take care of yourself now, Alec, eh?’ ‘Of course he can take care of himself…’ ‘Nik, I can take care of myself. Saul, it’s all right. We’ll go and get a coffee. I’ll just get out of here for a while.’ ‘For more than a while,’ says Nik. ‘Don’t come back. I don’t want to see you. You come back tomorrow. This is enough for one day.’ ‘Jesus, what a cunt.’ Now Saul is someone who really knows the time and place for effective use of the word cunt. I feel like asking him to say it again. ‘I can’t believe you work for that guy.’ We are standing on either side of a table football game in a caf? on Edgware Road. I take a worn white ball from the trough below my waist and feed it through the hole onto the table. Saul traps the ball with the still black feet of his plastic man before gunning it down the table into my goal. ‘The object of the game is to stop that kind of thing from happening.’ ‘It’s my goalkeeper.’ ‘What’s wrong with him?’ ‘He has personal problems.’ Saul gives a wheezy laugh, lifts his cigarette from a Coca-Cola ashtray, and takes a drag. ‘What language was it that Nik was speaking?’ ‘Czech. Slovak. One of the two.’ ‘Play, play.’ The ball thunders and slaps on the rocking table. ‘Better than Nintendo, eh?’ ‘Yes, Grandpa,’ says Saul, scoring. ‘Shit.’ He slides another red counter along the abacus. Five–nil. ‘Don’t be afraid to compete, Alec. Carpe diem.’ I attempt a deft sideways shunt of the ball in midfield, but it skewers away at an angle. Coming back down the table, Saul saying, ‘Now that is skill,’ it rolls loose in front of my centre half. I grip the clammy handle with rigid fingers and whip it so that the neat row of figures rotates in a propeller blur. Saul’s hand flies to the right and his goalkeeper saves the incoming ball. ‘That’s illegal,’ he says. The shorter haircut suits him. ‘I’m competing.’ ‘Oh, right.’ Six–nil. ‘How did that happen?’ ‘Because you’re very bad at this game. Listen, I’m sorry if I interfered back there…’ ‘No.’ ‘What?’ ‘It’s okay.’ ‘No, I mean it. I’m sorry.’ ‘I know you are.’ ‘I probably shouldn’t have stuck my foot in.’ ‘No, you probably shouldn’t have stuck your foot in. But that’s how you are. I’d rather you spoke your mind and stood up for your friends than bit your tongue for the sake of decorum. I understand. You don’t have to explain. I don’t care about the job, so it’s okay.’ ‘Okay.’ We tuck the subject away like a letter. ‘So what are you doing up here?’ ‘I just thought I’d come up and see you. I’ve been busy with work, haven’t seen you for a week or so. You free tonight?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘We can go back to mine and eat.’ ‘Good.’ Saul is the only person in whom I have considered confiding, but now that we are face-to-face it does not seem necessary to tell him about SIS. My reluctance has nothing to do with official secrecy: if I asked him to, Saul would keep his mouth shut for thirty years. Trust is not an element in the decision. There has always been something quietly competitive about our friendship–a rivalry of intellects, a need to kiss the prettier girl. Adolescent stuff. Nowadays, with school just a vague memory, this competitiveness manifests in an unspoken system of checks and balances on each other’s lives: who earns more money, who drives the faster car, who has laid the more promising path into the future. This rivalry, which is never articulated but constantly acknowledged by both of us, is what prevents me from talking to Saul about what is now the most important and significant aspect of my life. I cannot confide in him when the indignity of rejection by SIS is still possible. It is, perversely, more important to me to save face with him than to seek his advice and guidance. I take out the last ball. We eat stir-fry chicken side by side off a low table in the larger of the two sitting rooms in Saul’s flat, hunched forward on the sofa, sweating under the chilli. ‘So is your boss always like that?’ It takes me a moment to realize that Saul is talking about the argument with Nik this afternoon. ‘Forget about it. He was just taking advantage of the fact that you were there to ridicule me in front of the others. He’s a bully. He gets a kick out of scoring points off people. I couldn’t give a shit.’ ‘Right.’ Small black-and-white marble squares are sunk into the top of the table, forming a chessboard, which is chipped and stained after years of use. ‘How long have you been there now?’ ‘With Nik? About a year.’ ‘And you’re going to stay on? I mean, where’s it going?’ I don’t like talking about this with Saul. His career, as a freelance assistant director, is going well, and there’s something hidden in his questions, a glimpse of disappointment. ‘What d’you mean, where’s it going?’ ‘Just that. I didn’t think you’d stay there as long as you have.’ ‘You think I ought to have a more serious job? Something with a career graph, a ladder of promotion?’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘You sound like a teacher.’ We are silent for a while. Staring at walls. ‘I’m applying to join the Foreign Office.’ This just comes out. I didn’t plan it. ‘You’re what?’ ‘Seriously.’ I turn to look at him. ‘I’ve filled in the application forms and done some preliminary IQ tests. I’m waiting to hear back from them.’ The lie falls in me like a dropped stitch. ‘Christ. When did you decide this?’ ‘About two months ago. I just had a bout of feeling unstretched, needed to take some action and sort my life out.’ ‘What, so you want to be a diplomat?’ ‘Yeah.’ It doesn’t feel exactly wrong to be telling him this. At some point in the next eighteen months, a time will come when I may be sent overseas on a posting to a foreign embassy. Saul’s knowing now of my intention to join the Diplomatic Service will help allay any suspicions he might have in the future. ‘I’m surprised,’ he says, on the brink of being opinionated. ‘You sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for?’ ‘Meaning?’ ‘Meaning, why would you want to join the Foreign Office?’ A little piece of spring onion flies out of his mouth. ‘I’ve already told you. Because I’m sick of working for Nik. Because I need a change.’ ‘You need a change.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So why become a civil servant? That’s not you. Why join the Foreign Office? Fifty-seven old farts pretending that Britain still has a role to play on the world stage. Why would you want to become a part of something that’s so obviously in decline? All you’ll do is stamp passports and attend business delegations. The most fun a diplomat ever has is bailing some British drug smuggler out of prison. You could end up in Albania, for fuck’s sake.’ We are locked into the absurdity of arguing about a problem that does not exist. ‘Or Washington.’ ‘In your dreams.’ ‘Well, thanks for your support.’ It is still light outside. Saul puts down his fork and twists around. A flicker of eye contact, and then he looks away, the top row of his teeth pressing down on a reddened bottom lip. ‘Look. Whatever. You’d be good at it.’ He doesn’t believe that for a second. ‘You don’t believe that for a second.’ ‘No, I do.’ He plays with his unfinished food, looking at me again. ‘Have you thought about what it would be like to live abroad? I mean, is that what you really want?’ For the first time it strikes me that I may have confused the notion of serving the state with a longstanding desire to run away from London, from Kate, and from CEBDO. This makes me feel foolish. I am suddenly drunk on weak American beer. ‘Saul, all I want to do is put something back in. Living abroad or living here, it doesn’t matter. And the Foreign Office is one way of doing that.’ ‘Put something back into what?’ ‘The country.’ ‘What is that? You don’t owe anyone. Who do you owe? The queen? The empire? The Conservative Party?’ ‘Now you’re just being glib.’ ‘No, I’m not. I’m serious. The only people you owe are your friends and your family. That’s it. Loyalty to the Crown, improving Britain’s image abroad, whatever bullshit they try to feed you, that’s an illusion. I don’t want to be rude, but your idea of putting something back into society is just vanity. You’ve always wanted people to rate you.’ Saul watches carefully for my reaction. What he has just said is actually fairly offensive. I say, ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting people to have a good opinion of you. Why not strive to be the best you can? Just because you’ve always been a cynic doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t go about trying to improve things.’ ‘Improve things?’ He looks astonished. Neither of us is in the least bit angry. ‘Yes. Improve things.’ ‘That’s not you, Alec. You’re not a charity worker.’ ‘Don’t you think we’ve been spoiled as a generation? Don’t you think we’ve grown used to the idea of take, take, take?’ ‘Not really. I work hard for a living. I don’t go around feeling guilty about that.’ I want to get this theme going, not least because I don’t in all honesty know exactly how I feel about it. ‘Well, I really believe we have,’ I say, taking out a cigarette, offering one to Saul. ‘And that’s not because of vanity or guilt or delusion.’ ‘Believe what?’ ‘That because none of us have had to struggle or fight for things in our generation we’ve become incredibly indolent and selfish.’ ‘Where’s this coming from? I’ve never heard you talk like this in your life. What happened, did you see some documentary about the First World War and feel guilty that you didn’t do more to suppress the Hun?’ ‘Saul…’ ‘Is that it? Do you think we should start a war with someone, prune the vine a bit, just to make you feel better about living in a free country?’ ‘Come on. You know I don’t think that.’ ‘So–what? Is it morality that makes you want to join the Foreign Office?’ ‘Look. I don’t necessarily think that I’m going to be able to change anything in particular. I just want to do something that feels…significant.’ ‘What do you mean “significant”?’ Despite the fact that our conversation has been premised on a lie, there are nevertheless issues emerging here about which I feel strongly. I stand up and walk around, as if being upright will lend some shape to my words. ‘You know–something worthwhile, something meaningful, something constructive. I’m sick of just surviving, of all the money I earn being plowed back into rent and bills and taxes. It’s okay for you. You don’t have to pay anything on this place. At least you’ve met your landlord.’ ‘You’ve never met your landlord?’ ‘No.’ I am gesticulating like a TV preacher. ‘Every month I write a cheque for four hundred and eighty quid to a Mr J. Sarkar–I don’t even know his first name. He owns an entire block in Uxbridge Road: flats, shops, taxi ranks, you name it. It’s not like he needs the money. Every penny I earn seems to go toward making sure that somebody else is more comfortable than I am.’ Saul extinguishes his cigarette in a pile of cold noodles. He looks suddenly awkward. Money talk always brings that out in him. Rich guilt. ‘I’ve got the answer,’ he says, trying to lift himself out of it. ‘You need to get yourself an ideology, Alec. You’ve got nothing to believe in.’ ‘What do you suggest? Maybe I should become a born-again Christian, start playing guitar at Holy Trinity Brompton and holding prayer meetings.’ ‘Why not? We could say grace whenever you come round for dinner. You’d get a tremendous kick out of feeling superior to everyone.’ ‘At university I always wanted to be one of those guys selling Living Marxist. Imagine having that much faith.’ ‘It’s a little pass?,’ Saul says. ‘And cold during the winter months.’ I pour the last dregs of my beer into a glass and take a swig that is sour and dry. On the muted television screen the Nine o’Clock News is beginning. We both look up to see the headlines. Then Saul switches it off. ‘Game of chess?’ ‘Sure.’ We play the opening moves swiftly, the thunk of the pieces falling regularly on the strong wooden surface. I love that sound. There are no early captures, no immediate attacks. We exchange bishops, castle king-side, push pawns. Neither one of us is prepared to do anything risky. Saul keeps up an impression of easy joviality, making gags and farting away the stir-fry, but I know that, like me, he is concealing a deep desire to win. After twenty-odd moves, the game is choking up. If Saul wants it, there’s the possibility of a three-piece swap in the centre of the board that will reap two pawns and a knight each, but it isn’t clear who will be left with the advantage if the exchange takes place. Saul ponders things, staring intently at the board, occasionally taking a gulp of wine. To hurry him along I say, ‘Is it my go?’ and he says, ‘No. Me. Sorry, taking a long time.’ Then he thinks for another three or four minutes. My guess is he’ll shift his rook into the centre of the back rank, freeing it to move down the middle. ‘I’m going for a piss.’ ‘Make your move first.’ ‘I’ll do it when I come back,’ he sighs, standing up and making his way down the hall. What I do next is achieved almost without thinking. I listen for the sound of the bathroom door closing, then quickly advance the pawn on the f-file a single space. I retract my right hand and study the difference in the shape of the game. The pawn is protected there by a knight and another pawn, and it will, in three or four moves’ time, provide a two-pronged defence when I slide in to attack Saul’s king. It’s a simple, minute adjustment to the game that should go unnoticed in the thick gathering of pieces fighting for control of the centre. When he returns from the bathroom, Saul’s eyes seem to fix immediately on the cheating pawn. He may have spotted it. His forehead wrinkles and he chews the knuckle on his index finger, trying to establish what has changed. But he says nothing. Within a few moments he has made his move–the rook to the centre of the back rank–and sat back deep into the sofa. Play continues nervously. I develop king-side, looking to use the advanced pawn as cover for an attack. Then Saul, as frustrated as I am, offers a queen swap after half an hour of play. I accept, and from there it’s a formality. With the pawn in such an advanced position, my formation is marginally stronger; it’s just a matter of wearing him down. Saul parries a couple of attacks, but the sheer weight of numbers begins to tell. He resigns at twenty to eleven. ‘Nice going,’ he says, offering me a sweaty palm. We always shake hands afterwards. At 1:00 A.M., drunk and tired, I sit slumped on the backseat of an unlicensed minicab, going home to Shepherd’s Bush. There is a plain white envelope on my doormat, second post, marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. Foreign and Commonwealth Office No. 46A———Terrace London SW1 PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL Dear Mr Milius, Following your recent conversation with my colleague, Philip Lucas, I should like to invite you to attend a second interview on Tuesday, July 25th, at 10 o’clock. Please let me know if this date will be convenient for you. Yours sincerely, Patrick Liddiard Recruitment Liaison Office FOUR Positive Vetting The second interview passes like a foregone conclusion. This time around I am treated with deference and respect by the cop on the door, and Ruth greets me at the bottom of the staircase with the cheery familiarity of an old friend. ‘Good to see you again, Mr Milius. You can go straight up.’ Throughout the morning there is a pervading sense of acceptance, a feeling of gradual admission to an exclusive club. My first encounter with Lucas was clearly a success. Everything about my performance that day has impressed them. In the secretarial enclave, Ruth introduces me to Patrick Liddiard, who exudes the clean charm and military dignity of the typical Foreign Office man. This is the face that built the empire: slim, alert, colonizing. He is impeccably turned out in gleaming brogues and a wife-ironed shirt that is tailored and crisp. His suit, too, is evidently custom-made, a rich grey flannel cut lean against his slender frame. He looks tremendously pleased to see me, pumping my hand with vigour, cementing an immediate connection between us. ‘Very nice to meet you,’ he says. ‘Very nice indeed.’ His voice is gentle, refined, faintly plummy, exactly as his appearance suggested it would be. Not a wrong note. There is a warmth suddenly about all this, a clubbable ease entirely absent on my previous visit. The interview itself does nothing to dispel this impression. Liddiard appears to treat it as a mere formality, something to be gone through before the rigours of Sisby. That, he tells me, will be a test of mettle, a tough two-day candidate analysis comprising IQ tests, essays, interviews, and group discussions. He makes it clear to me that he has every confidence in my ability to succeed at Sisby and to go on to become a successful SIS officer. There is only one conversational exchange between us that I consider especially significant. It comes just as the first hour of the interview is drawing to a close. We have finished discussing the European monetary union–issues of sovereignty and so on–when Liddiard makes a minute adjustment to his tie, glances down at the clipboard in his lap, and asks me, very straightforwardly, how I would feel about manipulating people for a living. Initially I am surprised that such a question could emerge from the apparently decent, old-fashioned gent sitting opposite me. Liddiard has been so courteous, so civilized up to this point, that to hear talk of deception from him is jarring. As a result, our conversation turns suddenly watchful, and I have to check myself out of complacency. We have arrived at what feels like the nub of the thing, the rich centre of the clandestine life. I repeat the question, buying myself some time. ‘How would I feel about manipulating people?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, with more care in his voice than he has allowed so far. I must, in my answer, strike a delicate balance between the appearance of moral rectitude and the implied suggestion that I am capable of pernicious deceits. It is no good telling him outright of my preparedness to lie, although that is the business he is in. On the contrary, Liddiard will want to know that my will to do so is born of a deeper dedication, a profound belief in the ethical legitimacy of SIS. He is clearly a man possessed of values and moral probity: like Lucas, he sees the work of the Secret Intelligence Service as a force for good. Any suggestion that the intelligence services are involved in something fundamentally corrupt would appall him. So I pick my words with care. ‘If you are searching for someone who is genetically manipulative, then you’ve got the wrong man. Deceit does not come easily to me. But if you are looking for somebody who would be prepared to lie when and if the circumstances demanded it, then that would be something I would be capable of doing.’ Liddiard allows an unquiet silence to linger in the room. And then he suddenly smiles, warmly, so that his teeth catch a splash of light. I have said the right thing. ‘Good,’ he says, nodding. ‘Good. And what about being unable to tell your friends about what you do? Have you had any concerns about that? We obviously prefer it that you keep the number of people who know about your activities to an absolute minimum. Some candidates have a problem with that.’ ‘Not me. Mr Lucas told me in my previous interview that officers are allowed to tell their parents.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But as far as friends are concerned…’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘That’s what I’d come to understand.’ Both of us nod simultaneously. Suddenly, however, for no better reason than that I want to appear solid and reliable, I do something quite unexpected. It is unplanned and dumb. A needless lie to Liddiard that could prove costly. ‘It’s just that I have a girlfriend.’ ‘I see. And have you told her about us?’ ‘No. She knows that I’m here today, but she thinks I’m applying for the Diplomatic Service.’ ‘Is this a serious relationship?’ ‘Yes. We’ve been together for almost five years. It’s very probable that we’ll get married. So she should know about this, to see if she’s comfortable with it.’ Liddiard touches his tie again. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘What is the girl’s name?’ ‘Kate. Kate Allardyce.’ Liddiard writes down Kate’s name in his notes. Why am I doing this? They won’t care that I am about to get married. They won’t think any more of me for being able to sustain a long-term relationship. If anything, they would prefer me to be alone. He asks when she was born. ‘December twenty-eighth, 1971.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Argentina.’ A tiny crease saunters across his forehead. ‘And what is her current address?’ I had no idea that he would ask so much about her. I give the address where we used to live together. ‘Will you want to interview her? Is that why you want all this information?’ ‘No, no,’ he says quickly. ‘It’s purely for vetting purposes. There shouldn’t be a problem. But I must ask you to refrain from discussing your candidature with her until after the Sisby examinations.’ ‘Of course.’ Then, as a savoured afterthought, he adds, ‘Sometimes wives can make a substantial contribution to the work of an SIS officer.’ FIVE Day One/Morning It’s 6:00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 9. There are two and a half hours until Sisby. I have laid out a grey flannel suit on my bed and checked it for stains. Inside the jacket there’s a powder-blue shirt at which I throw ties, hoping for a match. Yellow with faint white dots. Pistachio green shot through with blue. A busy paisley, a sober navy one-tone. Christ, I have awful ties. Outside, the weather is overcast and bloodless. A good day to be indoors. After a bath and a stinging shave I settle down in the sitting room with a cup of coffee and some back issues of The Economist, absorbing its opinions, making them mine. According to the Sisby literature given to me by Liddiard at the end of our interview in July, ‘all SIS candidates will be expected to demonstrate an interest in current affairs and a level of expertise in at least three or four specialist subjects.’ That’s all I can prepare for. I am halfway through a profile of Gerry Adams when the faint moans of my neighbours’ early-morning lovemaking start to seep through the floor. In time there is a faint groan, what sounds like a cough, then the thud of wood on wall. I have never been able to decide whether she is faking it. Saul was over here once when they started up and I asked his opinion. He listened for a while, ear close to the floor, and made the solid point that you can only hear her and not him, an imbalance that suggests female overcompensation. ‘I think she wants to enjoy it,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘but something is preventing that.’ I put the dishwasher on to smother the noise, but even above the throb and rumble I can still hear her tight, sobbing emissions of lust. Gradually, too rhythmically, she builds to a moan-filled climax. Then I am left in the silence with my mounting anxiety. Time is passing. It frustrates me that I can do so little to prepare for the next two days. The Sisby programme is a test of wits, of quick thinking and mental panache. You can’t prepare for it, like an exam. It’s survival of the fittest. Grab your jacket and go. The Sisby examination centre is at the north end of Whitehall. This is the part of town they put in movies as an establishing shot to let audiences in South Dakota know that the action has moved to London: a wide-angle view of Nelson’s Column, with a couple of double-decker buses and taxis queuing up outside the broad, serious flank of the National Gallery. Then cut to Harrison Ford in his suite at The Grosvenor. The building is a great slab of nineteenth-century brown brick. People are already starting to go inside. There is a balding man in a grey uniform behind a reception desk enjoying a brief flirtation with power. He looks shopworn, overweight, and inexplicably pleased with himself. One by one, Sisby candidates shuffle past him, their names ticked off on a list. He looks nobody in the eye. ‘Yes?’ he says to me impatiently, as if I were trying to gatecrash a party. ‘I’m here for the Selection Board.’ ‘Name?’ ‘Alec Milius.’ He consults the list, ticks me off, gives me a flat plastic security tag. ‘Third floor.’ Ahead of me, loitering in front of a lift, are five other candidates. Very few of them will be SIS. These are the prospective future employees of the Ministry of Agriculture, Social Security, Trade and Industry, Health. The men and women who will be responsible for policy decisions in the governments of the new millennium. They all look impossibly young. To their left a staircase twists away in a steep spiral and I begin climbing it, unwilling to wait for the lift. The stairwell, like the rest of the building, is drab and unremarkable, with a provincial university aesthetic that would have been considered modern in the mid-1960s. The third-floor landing is covered in brown linoleum. Nicotine-yellow paint clings to the walls. My name, and those of four others, have been typed on a sheet of paper that is stuck up on a pockmarked notice board. COMMON ROOM B3: CSSB (SPECIAL) ANN BUTLER MATTHEW FREARS ELAINE HAYES ALEC MILIUS SAM OGILVY A woman–a girl–who can’t be much older than twenty is standing in front of the notice board, taking in what it has to say. She appears to be reading an advertisement requesting blood donors. She doesn’t turn to look at me; she just keeps on reading. She has pretty hair, thick black curls tied halfway down with a dark blue velvet band. Strands of it have broken free and are holding on to the fabric of her tartan jacket. She is tall with thin spindly legs under a knee-length skirt. Wearing tights. A pair of thick National Health glasses obliterates the shape and character of her face. A middle-aged man comes around the corner and passes her at the top of the stairs. She turns to him and says, ‘Hello. By any chance you wouldn’t know where Common Room B3 is, would you?’ She has a Northern Ireland accent, full of light and cunning. That was brave of them to take her on. Imagine the vetting. The man, probably a Sisby examiner, is more helpful than I expect him to be. He says yes of course and points to a room no more than ten feet away on the far side of the landing with B3 clearly written on the door. The girl looks embarrassed not to have noticed this but he makes nothing of it and heads off down the stairs. ‘Good start, Ann,’ she says under her breath, but the remark is directed at me. ‘Hello.’ ‘Hi. I’m Alec.’ ‘This Alec?’ She is tapping ALEC MILIUS on the notice board. ‘The same.’ Her skin is very pale and lightly freckled. She has a slightly witchy way about her, a creepy innocence. ‘I’m so nervous,’ she says. ‘Are you? Did you find it okay?’ ‘Yes, I did. Where are you from?’ ‘Northern Ireland.’ We are walking into B3. Cheap brown sofas, dirty windowpanes, a low MFI table covered in newspapers. ‘Oh. Which town?’ ‘Do you know Enniskillen?’ ‘I’ve heard of it, yes.’ Old men with medals pinned to their chests, severed in two by the IRA. Maybe an uncle of hers, a grandpa. ‘And you?’ ‘I’m English.’ ‘Aye. I could tell by your accent.’ ‘I live here. In London.’ The small talk here is meaningless, just words in a room, but the beats and gaps in the conversation are significant. I note Ann’s sly glances at my suit and shoes, the quick suspicion in her wide brown eyes. ‘Which part of London?’ ‘Shepherd’s Bush.’ ‘I don’t know that.’ No talk for a moment while we survey the room, our home for the next forty-eight hours. The carpet is a deep, worn brown. ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks, but her smile is too full of effort. There is a machine in the corner surrounded by polystyrene cups, threatening appalling coffee. ‘I’m all right, thanks.’ A gnomic man appears now in the doorway of the common room, carrying a brown leather satchel. He looks tired and bewildered, encumbered by the social ineptitude of the fabulously intelligent. ‘Is this B3?’ he asks. His hair is unbrushed. ‘Yes,’ Ann says, keenly. He nods, clearly heavy with nerves. A hobbit of a man. He shuffles into the room and sits across from me in an armchair that has sponge pouring out of its upholstery. Ann seems to have decided against coffee, moving back toward the window at the back of the room. ‘So you’re either Sam or Matthew,’ she asks him. ‘Which one?’ ‘Matt.’ ‘I’m Alec,’ I tell him. We are near each other and I shake his hand. The palm is damp with lukewarm sweat. ‘Nice to meet you.’ Ann has swooped in, bending over to introduce herself. The Hobbit is nervous around women. When she shakes his hand, his eyes duck to the carpet. She fakes out a smile and retreats below a white clock with big black hands that says half past eight. Not long now. I pick up a copy of The Times from the low table and begin reading it, trying to remember interesting things to say about Gerry Adams. Matt takes a cereal bar out of his jacket pocket and begins tucking into it, oblivious of us, dropping little brown crumbs and shards of raisin on his Marks & Spencer blazer. It has occurred to me that in the eyes of Liddiard and Lucas, Matt and I have something in common, some shared quality or flaw that is the common denominator among spies. What could that possibly be? Ann looks at him. ‘So what do you do, Matt?’ He almost drops the cereal bar in his lap. ‘I’m studying for a master’s degree at Warwick.’ ‘What in?’ ‘Computer science and European affairs.’ He says this quietly, as though he is ashamed. His skin is fighting a constant, losing battle with acne. ‘So you just came down from Warwick last night? You’re staying in a hotel?’ She’s nosy, this one. Wants to know what she’s up against. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Not far from here.’ I like it that he does not ask the same question of her. A young man appears in the doorway. This must be Sam Ogilvy, the third male candidate. He has an immediate, palpable influence on the room that is controlling. He makes it his. Ogilvy has a healthy, vitamin-rich complexion, vacuous turquoise eyes, and a dark, strong jawline. He’ll be good at games, for sure, probably plays golf off eight or nine; bats solidly in the middle order and pounds fast, flat serves at you that kick up off the court. So he’s handsome, undoubtedly, a big hit with the ladies, but a drink with the lads will come first. His face, in final analysis, lacks character, is easily forgettable. I would put money on the fact that he attended a minor public school. My guess is that he works in oil, textiles, or finance, reads Grisham on holiday, and is chummy with all the secretaries at work, most of whom harbour secret dreams of marrying him. That’s about all there is to go on. ‘Good morning,’ he says, as if we have all been waiting for him and can now get started. He has broad athletic shoulders that manage to make his off-the-peg suit look stylish. ‘Sam Ogilvy.’ And, one by one, he makes his way around the room, shaking hands, moving with the easy confidence of an ?80,000 per annum salesman used to getting what he wants–a closed deal, a wage increase, a classy broad. Ann goes first. She is reserved but warm. It’s a certainty that she’ll find him attractive. Their handshake is pleasant and formal; it says we can do business together. The Hobbit is next, standing up from the armchair to his full height, which still leaves him a good five or six inches short. Ogilvy looks to get the measure of him pretty quickly: a bright shining nerd, a number cruncher. The Hobbit looks suitably deferential. And now it’s my turn. Ogilvy’s eyes swivel left and scope my face. He knew as soon as he came in that I’d be the one he’s up against, the biggest threat to his candidacy. I knew it, too. Ann and Matt won’t cut it. ‘How do you do? Sam.’ He has a strong, captain-of-the-school grip on him. ‘Alec.’ ‘Have you been here long?’ he asks, touching the tip of his tanned nose. ‘About ten minutes,’ Ann replies behind him. ‘Feeling nervous?’ This goes out to anyone who feels like answering. Not me. Matt murmurs ‘mmmm,’ which I find oddly touching. ‘Yeah, me too,’ says Sam, just so we know he’s like the rest of us, even if he does look like Pierce Brosnan. ‘You ever done anything like this before?’ ‘No,’ says Matt, sitting down with a deep, involuntary sigh. ‘Just interviews for university.’ Matt picks up a Sisby booklet from the table and starts flicking through it like a man shuffling cards. For a moment, Ann is stranded in the middle of the room, as if she was on the point of saying something but decided at the last minute to remain silent on the grounds that it would have been of no consequence. Sam smiles a friendly smile at me. He wants me to like him but to let him lead. I stand up, a sudden attack of nerves. ‘Where are you off to?’ Ann asks, quick and awkward. ‘If you’re looking for the toilet it’s down the hall to the right. Just keep on going and you’ll come to it.’ She stretches out a pale arm and indicates the direction to me by swatting it from left to right. A ring on her middle finger bounces a spot of reflected sunlight around the common room. The loo is a clean, white-painted cuboid room with smoked-glass windows, three urinals, a row of push-tap basins, and two cubicles. Half-a-dozen other candidates are crowded inside. I squeeze past them and go into one of the cubicles. It is 8:40 A.M. Outside, one of the candidates says, ‘Good luck,’ to which another replies, ‘Yeah.’ Then the door leading out into the corridor swishes open and clunks shut. Somebody at the sink nearest my cubicle splashes cold water onto his face and emits a shocked, cleansing gasp. I remain seated and motionless, feeling only apprehension. I just want to focus, to be alone with my thoughts, and this is the only place in which to do so. The atmosphere in the building is so at odds with the princely splendour of Lucas’s and Liddiard’s offices as to be almost comic. I put my head between my knees and close my eyes, breathing slowly and deliberately. Just pace yourself. You want this. Go out and get it. I can feel something inside my jacket weighing against the top of my thigh. A banana. I sit up, take it out, peel away the skin, and eat it in five gulped bites. Slow-burn carbohydrates. Then I lean back against the tank and feel the flush handle dig hard into my back. The water has stopped running out of the taps on the other side of the cubicle door. I check my watch. The time has drifted on to 8:50 A.M. without my keeping track of it. I slam back the lock on the door and bolt out of the cubicle. The room is empty. The corridors, too. Just get there, move it, don’t run. My black shoes clap on the linoleum floors, funneling down the corridor back to B3. I reenter, trying to look nonchalant. ‘Right, he’s here,’ says a man I haven’t seen before who obviously works in the building. He has a strangulated Thames Valley accent. ‘Everything all right, Mr Milius?’ ‘Fine, sorry, yes.’ Leaning against the window in the far corner of the common room is the fifth and last candidate, Elaine Hayes. I don’t have time to have a proper look at her. ‘Good. We can make a start then.’ I find a seat between Ogilvy and Matt on one of the sofas, dropping down low into its springless upholstery. One of them is wearing industrial-strength aftershave with a curiously androgynous fragrance. Must be Ogilvy. The man hands me a piece of paper with my timetable on it for the next two days. ‘As I was saying, my name is Keith Heywood.’ Keith’s sparse hair is grease combed and badger grey. He has skin the colour of chalk and puffy hairless arms. He looks sixty-five but is probably twenty years younger. Most of his working life has been spent in this building. He wears a light blue short-sleeved shirt and black flannel trousers with meandering creases. His shoes, also black, are at least five years old: no amount of polishing could save them now. He looks, to all intents and purposes, like a janitor. ‘I’m your intake manager,’ he says. ‘If you have any questions about anything at all over the course of the next two days, you come to me.’ Everyone nods. ‘I’ll also be monitoring the cognitive tests. You won’t, of course, be permitted to talk to me during those.’ This is obviously Keith’s big opening-speech gag. Ogilvy is polite enough to laugh at it. As he smiles and sniggers, he looks across and catches my eye. Rivalry. ‘Now,’ Keith says, clapping his hands. ‘Do you have any questions about your timetables?’ I look down at the sheet of paper. It is headed AFS NON-QT CANDIDATES, a phrase that I do not understand. I am known only as Candidate 4. ‘No. No questions,’ says Ann, answering for us all. ‘Right,’ says Keith. ‘Let’s get started.’ Keith lumbers down the corridor to a small classroom filled with desks in rows and orange plastic chairs. We follow close behind him like children in a museum. Once inside, he stands patiently at one end of the room beside a large wooden examiner’s table while each of us chooses a desk. Ann sits immediately in front of Keith. Matt settles in behind her. He places a red pencil case on the desk in front of him, which he unzips, retrieving a chewed blue Bic and a fresh pencil. Ogilvy heads for the back of the room, separating himself from the rest of us. Elaine, who is older than me, sits underneath a single-pane window overlooking the trees of St. James’s Park. She looks bored. I position myself at the desk nearest the door. ‘I have in my hand a piece of paper,’ says Keith, surprisingly. ‘It’s a questionnaire that I am obliged to ask you to complete.’ He begins dishing them out. Ann, helpfully, takes two from his pile, swivelling to hand one back to Matt. She moves stiffly, from the waist and hips, as if her neck were clamped in an invisible brace. ‘It’s just for our own records,’ says Keith, moving between the desks. ‘None of your answers will have any bearing on the results of the Selection Board.’ The first page of the questionnaire is straightforward: name, address, date of birth. It then becomes more complicated. 1 What do you think are your best qualities? 2 And weaknesses? 3 What recent achievement are you most proud of? These are big subjects for nine o’clock in the morning. I ponder evasive answers, wild fictions, blatant untruths, struggling to get my brain up to speed. ‘Of course,’ says Keith, as we begin filling out the forms, ‘you’re not obliged to answer all of the questions. You may leave any section blank.’ This suits me. I complete the first page and ignore all three questions, sitting quietly until the time elapses. The others, with the exception of Elaine, begin scribbling furiously. Within ten minutes, Ann is on her third page, unravelling herself with a frightening candour. Matt treats the exercise with a similar seriousness, letting it all out, telling them how he really feels. I turn to look at Ogilvy, but he catches my glance and half smiles at me. I turn away. I can’t see how much, if anything, he has written. Surely he’d be smart enough not to give anything away unless he had to? It’s over after twenty minutes. Keith collects the questionnaires and returns to his desk. I turn around to see Ogilvy leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like a matinee idol. Keith coughs. ‘In just over ten minutes you’ll begin the group exercise,’ he says, leaning to pick up a small pile of papers from the top right corner of his desk. ‘This involves a thirty-minute discussion among the five of you on a specific problem described in detail in this document.’ He flaps one of the sheets of paper beside his ear and then begins distributing them, one to each of us. ‘You have ten minutes to read the document. Try to absorb as much of it as possible. The board will explain how the assessment works once you have gone into the second examination area. Any questions?’ Nobody says a word. ‘Right, then. Can I suggest that you begin?’ This is what it says: A nuclear reprocessing plant on the Normandy coast, built jointly in 1978 by Britain, Holland, and France, is allegedly leaking minute amounts of radiation into a stretch of the English Channel used by both French and British fishermen. American importers of shellfish from the region have run tests revealing the presence of significant levels of radiation in their consignments of oysters, mussels, and prawns. The Americans have therefore announced their intention to stop importing fish and shellfish from all European waters, effective immediately. The document–which has been written from the British perspective by a fictional civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food–suggests that the American claims are nebulous. Their own tests, carried out in conjunction with the French authorities, have shown only trace levels of radiation in that section of the English Channel, and nothing in the shellfish from the area that might be construed as dangerous. The civil servant suspects an ulterior motive on the part of the Americans, who have objected in the past to what they perceive as unfair fishing quotas in European waters. They have asked for improved access to European fishing grounds, and for the French plant to be shut down until a full safety check has been carried out. The document suggests that the British and French ministries should present a united, pan-European resistance to face off the American demands. But there are problems. An American car company is one step away from signing a contract with the German government to build a factory near Berlin that would bring over three thousand jobs to an economically deprived area. The Germans are unlikely to do anything at this stage to upset this agreement. Ditto the Danes, who have an ongoing row with the French over a recent trade agreement. The Spanish, who would suffer more than anyone under any prolonged American export ban, will side firmly with the British and French, though their position is weakened by the fact that the peseta is being propped up by the U.S. dollar. It’s a fanciful scenario, but this is what we are required to talk about. Keith has given each of us a sheet of blank paper on which to scribble notes, but I write as little as possible. Eye contact will be important in front of the examiners: I must appear confident and sure of my brief. To be constantly buried in pages of notes will look inefficient. Ten minutes pass quickly. Keith asks us to gather up our things and accompany him to another section of the building. It takes about four minutes to get there. Two men and an elderly lady are lined up behind a long rectangular desk, like judges in a bad production of The Crucible. They have files, notepads, full glasses of water, and a large chrome stopwatch in front of them. The classroom is small and cheaply furnished, with just the one window. Somehow I expected a grander setup: varnished floors, an antique table, old men in suits peering at us over half-moon spectacles. A stranger might walk in here and be offered no hint that the three people inside are part of the most secret government department of them all. And that, of course, is as it should be. The last thing we are supposed to do is draw attention to ourselves. ‘Good morning,’ says the older of the two men. ‘If you’d all like to take a seat, we’ll make a start.’ From his accent, he is unmistakably English, yet his suntan is so pronounced that he might almost be Indian. He looks well into his fifties. There is a table with five chairs positioned around it no more than two feet away from the examiners. We move toward it and are suddenly very polite to one another. Shall I go here? Is that all right? After you. Ann, I think, overdoes it, actually holding Elaine’s chair for her. I find myself in the seat farthest from the door, flushed with shirt sweat, trying to remember everything I have read while at the same time appearing relaxed and self-assured. An age passes until we are all comfortably seated. Then the man speaks again. ‘First off, allow us to introduce ourselves. My name is Gerald Pyman. I am a recently retired SIS officer. I’ll be chairing the Selection Board for the next two days.’ Pyman’s eyes are like black holes, as if they have seen so much that is abject and contemptible in human nature that they have simply withdrawn into their sockets. He wears a tie, a smart one, but no jacket in the heat. ‘To my left is Dr Hilary Stevenson.’ ‘Good morning,’ she says, taking up his cue. ‘I’m the appointed psychologist to the board. I’m here to evaluate your contributions to the group exercises and–as you will all have seen from your timetables–I will also be conducting an interview with each of you over the course of the next two days.’ She has a kind, refined way of speaking, the trusting softness of a grandmother. The room is absolutely still as she speaks. Each of us has adopted a relaxed but businesslike body language: arms on laps or resting on the table in front of us. Ogilvy is the exception. His arms are folded tight against his chest. He seems to realize this and lets them drop to his sides. It is the turn of the man on Pyman’s right to speak. He is a generation younger, overweight by about forty pounds, with a pale, rotund face that is tired and paunchy. ‘And I’m Martin Rouse, a serving SIS officer working out of our embassy in Washington.’ Washington? Why do we need intelligence operations in Washington? ‘Can I just emphasize that you are not in competition. There’s nothing at all to be gained from scoring points off one another.’ Rouse has a faint Manchester accent, diluted by a life lived overseas. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘we’ll just go around the table and allow you to introduce yourselves to us and to each other. Beginning with Mr Milius.’ I experience the sensation of breathing in both directions at once, inhalation and exhalation cancelling each other out. Every face in the room shifts minutely and settles on mine. I look up and for some reason fix Elaine in the eye as I say, ‘My name is Alec Milius. I am a marketing consultant.’ Then I slide my gaze away to the right, taking in Stevenson, Rouse, and Pyman, a sentence for each of them. ‘I work in London for the Central European Business Development Organization. I’m a graduate of the London School of Economics. I’m twenty-four.’ ‘Thank you,’ says Rouse. ‘Miss Butler.’ Ann dives right in, no trace of nerves, and introduces herself, quickly followed by the Hobbit. Then it’s Ogilvy’s turn. He visibly shifts himself up a gear and, in a clear, steady voice, announces himself as the surefire candidate. ‘Good morning.’ Eye contact to us, not to the examiners. Nice touch. He stares me right down without a flinch and then turns to face Elaine. She remains unmoved. ‘I’m Sam Ogilvy. I work for Rothmans Tobacco in Saudi Arabia.’ This information knocks me sideways. Ogilvy can’t be much older than I am, yet he’s already working for a major multinational corporation in the Middle East. He must be earning thirty or forty grand a year with a full expense account and company car. I’m on less than fifteen thousand and live in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘I graduated from Cambridge in 1992 with a first in economics and history.’ Bastard. ‘Thank you, Mr Ogilvy,’ says Rouse, planting a full stop on his pad as he looks up at Elaine and smiles for the first time. He doesn’t need to say anything to her. He merely nods, and she begins. ‘Good morning. I’m Elaine Hayes. I’m already employed by the Foreign Office, working out of London. I’m thirty-two, and I can’t remember when I graduated from university it was such a long time ago.’ Both Pyman and Rouse laugh at this and we follow their cue, mustering strained chuckles. The room briefly sounds like a theatre in which only half the audience has properly understood a joke. It intrigues me that Elaine is already employed by the Foreign Office. If she was looking to join SIS, surely they would promote her internally without the bother of going through Sisby? ‘We’d like to proceed now with the group exercise,’ Pyman says, interrupting this thought. ‘The discussion is unchaired, that is to say you are free to make a contribution whenever you choose to do so. It is scheduled to conclude after thirty minutes, at which time you must all have agreed upon a course of action. If you find yourselves in agreement before the thirty minutes are up, we shall call a stop then. I must emphasize the importance of making your views known. There is no point in holding back. We cannot assess your minds if you will not show them to us. So do participate. There’s a stopwatch here. Miss Hayes, if you’d like to start it up and set it on the desk where everyone can see it.’ Elaine is closest to Rouse, who takes the stopwatch from Pyman and hands it to her with his right arm outstretched. She takes it from him and sets it down on the table, positioning the face in such a way that we can all see it. Then, with her thumb, she pushes the bulbous steel knob at the top of the stopwatch, starting us off. It has a tick like chattering teeth. ‘Can I just say to begin with that I think it’s very important that we maintain a tight alliance with the French, though the problem is of their making. Initially, at least.’ Ann, God bless her, has had the balls to kick things off, although her opening statement has a forced self-confidence about it that betrays an underlying insecurity. Like a pacesetter in a middle-distance track event, she’ll lead for a while but soon tire and fall away. ‘Do you agree?’ she says, to no one in particular, and her question has a terrible artificiality about it. Ann’s words hang there unanswered for a short time, until the Hobbit chips in with a remark that is entirely unrelated to what she has said. ‘We have to consider how economically important fish exports are to the Americans,’ he says, touching his right cheekbone with a chubby index finger. ‘Do they amount to much?’ ‘I agree.’ I say that, and immediately regret it, because everyone turns in my direction and expects some sort of follow-up. And yet it doesn’t come. What happens now, for a period of perhaps five or six seconds, is appalling. I become incapable of functioning within the group, of thinking clearly in this unfamiliar room with its strange, artificial rules. This happened with Lucas and it is happening again. My mind is just terrible blank white noise. I see only faces, looking at me. Ogilvy, Elaine, Ann, Matt. Enjoying, I suspect, the spectacle of my silence. Think. Think. What did he say? I agree with what? What did he say? ‘I happen to know that annual exports of fish and shellfish to the United States amount to little more than twenty or thirty million pounds.’ The Hobbit, tired of waiting, has kept on going, has dug me out of a hole. Immediately attention shifts back to him, allowing me the chance to blank out what has just happened. I have to think positively. I may not have betrayed my anxiety to the others, or to Pyman, Rouse, or Stevenson. It may, after all, have been just a momentary gap in real time, no more than a couple of beats. It just felt like a crisis; it didn’t look like one. Stay with them. Listen. Concentrate. I look over at Elaine, who has taken a sip from a glass of water in front of her. She appears to be on the point of saying something in response to the Hobbit. She has a perplexed look on her face. You happen to know that, Hobbit? How can someone happen to know something like that? Ann speaks. ‘We can’t just abandon exports of fish and shellfish to America on the grounds that they only bring in a small amount of revenue. That’s still twenty million pounds’ worth of business to the fishing community.’ This is the humanitarian angle, the socialist’s view, and I wonder if it will impress Rouse and Pyman, or convince them that Ann is intellectually unevolved. I suspect the latter. Elaine shapes as if to put her straight, moving forward in her chair, elbows propped on the table. A woman in her twenties who is not a socialist has no heart; a woman in her thirties who is still a socialist has no brain. Instead, she ignores what Ann has said and takes the conversation off on a different tack. We are all of us rushing around this, just trying to be heard. Everything is moving too fast. ‘Can I suggest trying to persuade the Americans to accept imports of fish from European waters that are not affected by the alleged nuclear spillage? We can accept a temporary export ban on shellfish, but to put a stop to all fish exports to the U.S. seems a bit draconian.’ Elaine has a lovely, husky voice, a been-there, done-that, low-bullshit drawl with a grin behind it. All the time the examiners are busy scribbling. I have to operate at a level of acute self-consciousness: every mannerism, every gesture, every smile is being minutely examined. The effort is all-consuming. A pause opens up in the discussion. My brain fog has cleared completely, and a sequence of ideas has formed in my mind. I must say something to erase the memory of my first interruption, to make it look as though I can bounce back from a bad situation. Now is my chance. ‘On the other–‘ Ogilvy, fuck him, started speaking at the same time as me. ‘Sorry, Alec,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’ ‘Thank you, Sam. I was just going to say that I think it’s going to be difficult to make a distinction between fish and shellfish in this instance. Nuclear contamination is nuclear contamination. The Americans have a very parochial view of Europe. They see us as a small country. Our waters, whether they be the English Channel or the Mediterranean, are connected geographically in the minds of the Americans. If one is polluted, particularly by nuclear waste, then they all are.’ ‘I think that’s quite a patronizing view of America.’ This comes from Elaine. I had made the mistake of perceiving her as an ally. In my peripheral vision I see Rouse and Pyman duck into their pads. ‘Okay, perhaps it is, but consider this.’ This had better be good or I’m finished. ‘Any lasting export ban of radioactive shellfish to America will quickly become an international ban. No one wants to eat contaminated food. If we don’t put a stop to it soon, other countries, even in Europe, will refuse to buy shellfish and fish from British and French waters. It’s a domino effect.’ This goes down well. Both Ann and the Hobbit nod respectfully. But Ogilvy has decided he has been silent too long. He leans forward, like a chess grand master on the point of making a telling move in the endgame. He’s going to make me look ineffectual. ‘The question is an interesting one,’ he says, drawing us into his web of good-naturedness. A bird sounds territorially outside. ‘Is this a direct face-off between the United States of America and a United States of Europe? Do we as British citizens want to see ourselves that way, as part of a federal Europe? Or do we value our sovereignty too much, our prerogative to dictate terms to other European states and to the world at large?’ This is inch-perfect, not a fluffed line. He goes on. ‘I suggest that we see this problem in those terms. There are too many conflicting European interests to mount an effective British campaign. We must do it with the assistance of our European partners and present a united front to the Americans. We hold many of the cards. Our major problem is Germany, and that is what we have to address. Once they’re on board, the rest will follow.’ This is the smart move. He has set the foundations for the conversation, given it a clear starting point from which it can develop and assume some shape. Ogilvy has essentially proposed to chair the discussion, and this aptitude for leadership will not go unnoticed. Ann takes up the argument. ‘I don’t see why we have to present pan-European resistance to America as the civil servant in this document suggests.’ As she says this, she taps the printed sheet quite vigorously with the point of her middle finger. She is not as good at this as Ogilvy is, and she knows it. Every contour of her body language betrays this to the rest of us, but some dark stubbornness in her, some Ulster obstinacy, will not allow her to back down. So she will wade in, deeper and deeper, pretending to know about things she barely understands, feigning a self-confidence she does not possess. ‘To put it bluntly, this is France’s problem,’ she says, and her voice is now overexcited. ‘It’s a French nuclear reprocessing’–her tongue trips on this last word several times–‘plant that is leaking. I suggest that, perhaps with EU funding, you know, we conduct some definitive checks on the plant with American observers on site. On the site. If it proves to be clean, then there’s no reason why the Americans shouldn’t begin rebuying European fish. If it’s leaking, we demand that the French get it fixed. We then try to persuade the Americans to buy fish and shellfish from non-French, uncontaminated waters.’ ‘So you’re suggesting we just abandon the French?’ I ask, just so that my voice is heard, just to make it look like I’m still taking part. ‘Yes,’ she says impatiently, hardly taking the time to look at me. ‘There’s a problem with that solution.’ Ogilvy says this with the calm bedside manner of a family GP. ‘What?’ says Ann, visibly unsettled. ‘The plant was built in 1978 with joint British, French, and Dutch cooperation.’ This trips everyone up. Nobody had recalled it from the printed sheet except Ogilvy, who is happy to let this fact make its way across the room to the impressed examiners. ‘Yes, I’d forgotten that,’ Ann admits, to her credit, but she must know that her chance has passed. ‘I still think Ann has a point,’ says a gallant Hobbit. He is surely too kind to be caught up in this. ‘The French facility needs to have a thorough checkup with American observers. If it’s leaking, we all have to put it right collectively and be completely open about that. But I suspect it’s fine, and that these American claims are disingenuous.’ In the tight lightless classroom, this last word sounds laboured and pretentious. Ann’s face has flushed red and the hand in which she is holding her pen is shaking. Ogilvy inches forward. ‘Let’s look at it this way,’ he says. ‘We don’t know all the facts. What we do know is that the Americans are playing games. And in my view, the best way to deal with a bully is to bully them back.’ ‘What are you suggesting?’ ‘I’m suggesting, Alec, that if the Americans are proposing to squeeze us, then we in turn should squeeze them.’ They’ll like this. We’re supposed to play hardball. We’re supposed to be capable of a trick or two. Ogilvy glances across at Rouse, then back at the Hobbit. ‘Matthew, you seem to know about the levels of import and export of fish and shellfish going to and fro between Britain and America.’ The Hobbit, flattered, says, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, I suspect that the Americans export significantly higher numbers of fish and shellfish to Europe than we export to them. Is that right?’ ‘Off the top of my head, yes, as much as three times the amount,’ says the Hobbit. It’s just between the two of them for now, and it’s an impressive thing to watch. Ogilvy is giving us all a lesson in man management, in how to make the little guy feel good about himself. A trace of sweat has formed above the Hobbit’s upper lip, a little vapour of nerves, but he is otherwise entirely without self-consciousness. Just getting the words out, happy to talk in facts. Maybe even enjoying himself. Ogilvy has rested his elbows on the table, fingers interlocked and raised to his dark face. ‘So a ban on American fish and shellfish imports would hit them even harder?’ ‘In theory,’ says Elaine, a dismissiveness in her voice. ‘Of course,’ says Ogilvy, cutting her off before she has a chance to tell him how unworkable a trade embargo with the United States would be, ‘I actually don’t think that we’ll have to go as far as reciprocating their ban with one of our own.’ He wants to show Rouse and Pyman that he’s seen all the angles. ‘The key to this, as I’ve said, is the Germans. If we can get them on our side, and as long as any problem with the reprocessing plant can be addressed, I can’t foresee the Americans continuing with their demands. It’s important that we be seen to stand up to them.’ It’s time to steal some ideas from Ogilvy, before he runs away with it. ‘The sticking point is the automobile manufacturer. We have to make sure that that contract is secured and goes ahead. At the same time, we might offer the Germans a sweetener.’ ‘What kind of a sweetener?’ Elaine asks. She lingers on sweetener as if it is the most absurd word she has ever heard. ‘Sell them something. At a bargain price. Or we could buy more of their exports.’ This sounds meek and ill-informed. It is clear that I have not thought it through. But Ogilvy bails me out, saying yes with a degree of enthusiasm that I had not anticipated. Ironically, this leads to a bad mistake. He says, ‘We could offer to buy up deutsch marks, to push up their value briefly against the pound.’ This is ludicrous, and Elaine tells him so. ‘You try it. You’d have to be owed some pretty big favours at the Exchequer to get something like that done.’ She delivers this in a tone of weary experience and for a moment Ogilvy is stumped. His square jaw tremors with humiliation, and it gives me a small buzz of pleasure to watch him ride it out. It’s important that I don’t let this opportunity slip. Shut him down. ‘I have to agree with Elaine, Sam. We mustn’t pass the buck to another department. It’s difficult, without knowing more about our other negotiations with the Germans, to determine how exactly we might go about persuading them to side with us. It may not even be necessary, for two reasons. The first has already been made clear. The French plant may in fact be safe and the Americans may be acting illegally. If that’s the case, we’re in the clear. But if it does prove necessary to get the Germans onside, we could try another tactic.’ ‘Yes, I–‘Ann tries to grab the floor, but I’m not about to be interrupted. ‘If I could just finish. Thank you. If we succeed in convincing a majority of other European states to form a united front against the Americans, the Germans will not relish being isolated. While they may not want to be seen to be taking issue with the United States, at the same time they won’t want to be seen by their European partners to be forming an unholy alliance with America. We can, in effect, shut them up.’ ‘We shouldn’t underestimate the Germans or their influence,’ the Hobbit mumbles. ‘Nobody here wants to acknowledge the truth of this situation, which is that the Germans are the dominant economic force in European politics. They are, in effect, our masters.’ This annoys me. ‘Well, if that’s what they’re teaching you on your European affairs course at Warwick, I’m not signing up.’ Elaine, Pyman, and Rouse emit snorty laughs. I’m winning this, I’m coming through. The Hobbit’s cheeks rouge nicely. He can’t think of a comeback, so I carry on. ‘This notion of the Germans as the European master race is contrived. Their economy will slow in the next few years, unemployment is chronic since unification, and Kohl’s days are numbered.’ I read this in The Economist. ‘Let’s not get off the point.’ Ogilvy wants back in. ‘Let’s talk about how to get the Spaniards and the Danes onboard.’ Suddenly Ann sneezes, a great lashing a-choo that she only half covers with her hand. In stereo, Ogilvy and I say, ‘Bless you,’ to which he adds, ‘Are you okay?’ Ann, not one to be patronized, lets her guard drop and says, ‘Yeah,’ with sullen indifference. Her voice, with its sour accent, sounds impatient and spoiled. In this brief moment, we can all see her for what she really is: a tough nut of steely ambition, looking for a one-way ticket to London and a better life. In the wake of it, Ogilvy glides away, talking with great efficiency about how to get the Spaniards and Danes ‘on board.’ As time ticks away, the stopwatch edging toward our thirty-minute limit, he is left more or less on his own, with occasional interjections from the Hobbit, whose knowledge of European Union bylaws is as extensive as it is tedious. He must be the star pupil at Warwick. Ann, for the most part, turns in on herself and merely disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Elaine barely speaks. From my point of view, I feel that I have done enough to please the examiners, both by what I have said and by my personal conduct, which has been forthright but respectful of the other candidates. I also feel that Ogilvy and the Hobbit are flogging a dead horse. Most of the points that were there to be made have been made saliently some time ago. Nevertheless, it will look good if I try to wrap things up. ‘If I could just interrupt you there, Sam, because we’re running out of time, and I think we should try to reach some sort of conclusion.’ ‘Absolutely.’ He gives me the floor. Don’t fuck it up. ‘I think we’ve covered most of the angles on this problem. Judging from the last ten minutes or so, we’re mostly agreed on a course of action.’ ‘Which is?’ says Ann, coldly. ‘That we need to–as you pointed out right at the start–present a united front to the Americans. We must conduct conclusive tests on the French plant. If needs be, we should bargain with the Germans to get them on our side.’ ‘We never said how we were going to do that.’ The manner in which Elaine says this, with just under a minute to go, implies that this is largely my responsibility. ‘No, we didn’t. But that’s not something that should worry us. I think the Germans would be unlikely to do anything that would undermine the EU.’ ‘And what do we do about the American export ban?’ the Hobbit asks, looking in my direction as he tips forward on his chair. It was a mistake to take this on. ‘Well, there’s very little we can do…’ ‘I don’t agree,’ says Ann, cutting me off short so that my incomplete sentence sounds weak and defeatist. ‘Me too,’ says Ogilvy, but he too is interrupted. ‘I’m afraid that your thirty minutes is up.’ Rouse has tapped his pen twice–tap tap–on the hard surface of the examiners’ table. We all turn to face him. ‘Thank you all very much. If you’d like to gather up your things and make your way back to the common room, where Mr Heywood is waiting for you.’ I think we all share a sense of disappointment at not managing to conclude the discussion within the allocated time. It will reflect badly on the five of us, although I may score points for trying to tidy things up toward the end. Ogilvy is first up and out of the room, followed by the rest of us in a tight group, waddling out like tired ducks. Elaine is the last to leave, closing the door behind her. She does this with too much force, and it slams shut with a loud clap. Keith is waiting for us in the common room, idling near the coffee machine. As soon as we are all inside, he instructs us to follow him back down the corridor to begin the first of the written examinations. There is no time to relax, no time to ruminate or grab a drink. They won’t let the pressure off until five o’clock this evening, and then it starts all over again tomorrow. On the way to the classroom, Elaine and Ann peel away from the group to go to the loo. This flusters Keith. While Ogilvy, the Hobbit, and I are taking our seats in the classroom, he lurks nervously in the corridor, waiting for their return. The Hobbit, who has taken a seat by the window, grabs this opportunity to tuck into yet another cereal bar. Ogilvy returns to his previous spot at the back of the room. To annoy him I move to the desk nearest his, close in and to the left. For a moment it looks as though he may move, but politeness checks him. He looks across at me and smiles very slowly. With no sign of Elaine and Ann, Keith trundles back in, head bowed, and starts handing out thick pink booklets, which he leaves facedown on every candidate’s desk. The Hobbit thanks him through the crumbly munch of his mid-morning snack, and Ogilvy begins twirling a pencil in his right hand, rotating it quickly through his fingers like a helicopter blade. It’s a poser’s party trick and it doesn’t come off: the pencil spins out of his hand and clatters onto the lino between our two desks. I make no attempt to retrieve it, so Ogilvy has to bend down uncomfortably to pick it up. As he is doing so, Elaine and Ann bustle in, sharing the cozy mutual smiles and solidarity of women returning from a shared trip to the loo. ‘This section of the Sisby program is known as the Policy Exercise,’ Keith says, beginning his introductory talk before they have had a chance to sit down. He’s on a strict timetable, and he’s sticking to it. ‘It is a two-hour written paper in which you will be asked to analyse a large quantity of complex written material, to identify the main points and issues, and to write a thorough and cogently argued case for one of three possible options.’ I stare at the pink booklet and pray for something other than shellfish. ‘You may start when you are ready. I will let you know when one hour of the examination has passed, and again when there are ten minutes of the exercise remaining.’ A crackle of paper, an intake of breath, the incidental noises of beginning. Here we go again. SIX Day One/Afternoon After lunch–a ham and cheese sandwich at the National Gallery–we sit in the stifling classroom faced by a phalanx of numerical facility tests divided into three separate sections: Relevant Information, Quantitative Relations, and Numerical Inferences. Each batch of twenty questions lasts exactly twenty-two minutes, after which Keith allows a brief interlude before starting us on the next paper. Each problem, whether number-or word-based, must be solved in a matter of seconds, with no time available for checking the accuracy of the answer. Calculators are forbidden. It is by far the most testing part of Sisby so far, and the mind-thud of intellectual fatigue is overwhelming. I crave water. We are all of us squeezed by time, clustered in the classroom like caged hens as the heat intensifies. Everything–even the most testing arithmetic calculation–has to be answered more or less on instinct. At one point I have to estimate 43 per cent of 2,345 in under seven seconds. Often my brain will work ahead of itself or lag behind, concentrating on anything but the problem at hand. The tests blur into a soup of numbers, traps of contradictory data, false assumptions, and trick questions. Any apparent simplicity is quickly revealed as an illusion: every word must be examined for what it conceals, every number treated as an elaborate code. My ability to process information gradually wanes. I don’t complete any of the three batches of tests to my satisfaction. Shortly before four o’clock, Keith asks us with nasal exactitude to stop writing. Ogilvy immediately glances across to gauge how things have gone. He tilts his head to one side, creases his brow, and puffs out his cheeks at me, as if to say, I fucked that up, and I hope you did, too. For a moment I am tempted into intimacy, a powerful urge to reveal to him the extent of my exhaustion, but I cannot allow any display of weakness. Instead, I respond with a self-possessed, almost complacent shrug to suggest that things have gone particularly well. This makes him look away. A few minutes later, we emerge narrow-eyed into the bright white light of the corridor. Better air out here, cool and clean. The Hobbit and Ann immediately walk away in the direction of the toilets, but Ogilvy lingers outside, looking bloodshot and leathery. ‘Christ,’ he says, pulling on his jacket with an exaggerated swagger. ‘That was tough.’ ‘You found it difficult?’ Elaine asks. My impression has been that she does not like him. ‘God, yeah. I couldn’t seem to concentrate. I kept looking at you guys scribbling away. How did it go for you, Alec?’ He smiles at me, like we’re long-term buddies. ‘I don’t go in for postmortems much.’ To Elaine: ‘You got a cigarette?’ She takes out a pack of high-tar Camels. ‘I only have one left. We can share.’ She lights up, crushing the empty pack in her hand. Ogilvy mutters something about giving up smoking, but looks excluded and weary. ‘I need to get some fresh air,’ he says, moving away from us down the hall. ‘I’ll see you later on.’ Elaine exhales through her nostrils, two steady streams of smoke, watching him leave with a critical stare. ‘Have you got anything else today?’ she asks me. ‘An interview or anything?’ I don’t feel like talking. My mind is looped around the penultimate question in the last batch of tests. The answer was closer to 54 than 62, and I circled the wrong box. Damn. ‘I have to meet Rouse. The SIS officer.’ She glances quickly left and right. ‘Careless talk costs lives, Alec,’ she whispers, half smiling. ‘Be careful what you say. The five of us are the only SIS people here today.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘It’s obvious,’ she says, offering the cigarette to me. The tip of the filter is damp with her saliva and I worry that when I hand it back she will think the wetness is mine. ‘They only process five candidates a month.’ ‘According to who?’ She hesitates. ‘It’s well known. A lot more reach the initial interview stage, but only five get through to Sisby. We’re the lucky ones.’ ‘So you work in the Foreign Office already. That’s how you know?’ She nods, glancing again down the corridor. My head has started to throb. ‘Pen pushing,’ she says. ‘I want to step up. Now, no more shoptalk. What time are you scheduled to finish?’ ‘Around five.’ Her hair needs washing and she has a tiny spot forming on the right side of her forehead. ‘That’s late,’ she says, sympathetically. ‘I’m done for the day. Back tomorrow at half past eight.’ The cigarette is nearly finished. I had been worried that it would set off a fire alarm. ‘I guess I’ll see you then.’ ‘Guess so.’ She is turning to leave when I say, ‘You don’t have anything for a headache, do you? Dehydration.’ ‘Sure. Just a moment.’ She reaches into the pocket of her jacket, rustles around for something, and then uncurls her right hand in front of me. There in the palm of her hand is a short strip of plastic containing four aspirin. ‘That’s really kind of you. Thanks.’ She answers with a wide, conspiratorial smile, dwelling on the single word, ‘Pleasure.’ In the bathroom, I turn on the cold tap and allow it to run out for a while. Flattery is implicit in Elaine’s flirtations. She has ignored the others–particularly Ogilvy–but made a conscious effort to befriend me. I puncture the foil on the plastic strip of pills and extract two aspirin, feeling them dry and hard in my fingertips. Drinking water from a cupped hand, I tip back my head and let the pills bump down my throat. My reflection in the mirror is dazed and washed out. Have to get myself together for Rouse. Behind me, the door on one of the cubicles unbolts. I hadn’t realized there was someone else in the room. I watch in the mirror as Pyman comes out of the cubicle nearest the wall. He looks up and catches my eye, then glances down, registering the strip of pills lying used on the counter. What looks like mild shock passes quickly over his face. I say hello in the calmest, it’s-only-aspirin voice I can muster, but my larynx cracks and the words come out subfalsetto. He says nothing, walking out without a word. I spit a hoarse ‘fuck’ into the room, yet something body-tired and denying immediately erases what has just occurred. Pyman has seen nothing untoward, nothing that might adversely affect my candidacy. He was simply surprised to see me in here, and in no mood to strike up a conversation. I cannot be the first person at Sisby to get a headache late in the afternoon on the first day. He will have forgotten all about it by the time he goes home. This conclusion allows me to concentrate on the imminent interview with Rouse, whose office–B14–I begin searching for along the corridors of the third floor. The room is situated in the northwestern corner of the building, with a makeshift nameplate taped crudely to the door: MARTIN ROUSE: AFS NON-QT/CSSB SPECIAL. I knock confidently. There is a loud, ‘Come in.’ His office smells of bad breath. Rouse is pacing by the window like a troubled general, the tail of a crumpled white shirt creeping out the back of his trousers. ‘Sit down, Mr Milius,’ he says. There is no shaking of hands. I settle into a hard-backed chair opposite his desk, which has just a few files and a lamp on it, nothing more. A temporary home. The window looks out over St. James’s Park. ‘Everything going okay so far?’ ‘Fine, thank you. Yes.’ He has yet to sit down, yet to look at me, still gazing out the window. ‘Candidates always complain about the Numerical Facility tests. You find those difficult?’ It isn’t clear from his tone whether he is being playful or serious. ‘It’s been a long time since I had to do maths without a calculator. Good exercise for the brain.’ ‘Yes,’ he says, murmuring. It is as if his thoughts are elsewhere. It was not possible during the group exercise to get a look at the shape of the man, the actual physical presence, but I can now do so. His chalky face is entirely without distinguishing characteristics, neither handsome nor ugly, though the cheekbones are swollen with fat. He has the build of a rugby player, but any muscle on his broad shoulders has turned fleshy, pushing out his shirt in unsightly lumps. Why do we persist with the notion of the glamorous spy? Rouse would not look out of place behind the counter of a butcher’s shop. He sits down. ‘I imagine you’ve come well prepared.’ ‘In what sense?’ ‘You were asked to revise some specialist subjects.’ ‘Yes.’ His manner is almost dismissive. He is fiddling with a fountain pen on his desk. Too many thoughts in his head at any one time. ‘And what have you read up on?’ I am starting to feel awkward. ‘The Irish peace process…’ He interrupts before I have a chance to finish. ‘Ah! And what were your conclusions?’ ‘About what?’ ‘About the Irish peace process,’ he says impatiently. The speed of his voice has quickened considerably. ‘Which aspect of it?’ He plucks a word out of the air. ‘Unionism.’ ‘I think there’s a danger that John Major’s government will jeopardize the situation in Ulster by pandering to the Unionist vote in the House of Commons.’ ‘You do?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And what would you do instead? I don’t see that the prime minister has any alternative. He requires legislation to be passed, motions of no confidence to be quashed. What would you do in his place?’ This quick, abrasive style is what I had expected from Lucas and Liddiard. More of a contest, an absence of civility. ‘It’s a question of priorities.’ ‘What do you mean?’ He is coming at me quickly, rapid jabs under pressure, allowing me no time to design my answers. ‘I mean does he value the lives of innocent civilians more than he values the safety of his own job?’ ‘That’s a very cynical way of looking at a very complex situation. The prime minister has a responsibility to his party, to his MPs. Why should he allow terrorists to dictate how he does his job?’ ‘I don’t accept the premise behind your question. He’s not allowing terrorists to do that. Sinn Fein/IRA have made it clear that they are prepared to come to the negotiating table and yet Major is going to make decommissioning an explicit requirement of that, something he knows will never happen. He’s not interested in peace. He’s simply out to save his own skin.’ ‘You don’t think the IRA should hand over its weapons?’ ‘Of course I do. In an ideal world. But they never will.’ ‘So you would just give in to that? You would be prepared to negotiate with armed terrorist organizations?’ ‘If there was a guarantee that those arms would not be used during that negotiating process, yes.’ ‘And if they were?’ ‘At least then the fault would lie with Sinn Fein. At least then the peace process would have been given a chance.’ Rouse leans back. The skin of his stomach is visible as pink through the thin cotton of his shirt. Here sits a man whose job it is to persuade Americans to betray their country. ‘I take your point.’ This is something of a breakthrough. There is a first smile. ‘What else, then?’ ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ ‘What else have you prepared?’ ‘Oh.’ I had not known what he meant. ‘I’ve done some research on the Brent Spar oil platform and some work on the Middle East.’ Rouse’s face remains expressionless. I feel a droplet of sweat fall inside my shirt, tracing its way down to my waist. It appears that neither of these subjects interests him. He picks up a clipboard from the desk, turning over three pages until his eyes settle on what he is looking for. All these guys have clipboards. ‘Do you believe what you said about America?’ ‘When?’ He looks at his notes, reading off the shorthand, quoting me, “‘The Americans have a very parochial view of Europe. They see us as a small country.’” He looks up, eyebrows raised. Again it is not clear whether this is something Rouse agrees with, or whether his experience in Washington has proved otherwise. Almost certainly, he will listen to what I have to say and then take up a deliberately contrary position. ‘I believe that there is an insularity to the American mind. They are an inward-looking people.’ ‘Based on what evidence?’ His manner has already become more curt. ‘Based on the fact that when you go there, they think that Margaret Thatcher is the queen, that Scotland is just this county in a bigger place called England. That kind of ignorance is unsettling when you consider that American capitalism is currently the dominant global culture. To anyone living in Texas, global news is what happens in Alabama. The average American couldn’t care less about the European Union.’ ‘Surely you can appreciate that in our line of work we don’t deal with “the average American”?’ I feel pinned by this. ‘I can see that. Yes.’ Rouse looks dissatisfied that I have capitulated so early. I press on. ‘But my point is still valid. Now that America is the sole superpower, there’s a kind of arrogance, a tunnel vision, creeping into their foreign policy. They don’t make allowances for the character and outlook of individual states. Unless countries fall into line with the American way of thinking, they risk making an enemy of the most economically powerful nation on earth. This is the position that Britain finds itself in all the time.’ ‘In what respect?’ ‘In order to keep the special relationship alive, successive governments have had to ignore their better judgment and do some pretty unsavory things when called upon to do so by the United States. They would defend that by saying it’s in the nature of politics.’ ‘You don’t think the special relationship is worth preserving?’ ‘I didn’t say that. I think it’s worth preserving at any cost. Maintaining close ties with America will make the UK a pivotal force within the European Union.’ Rouse nods. He knows this is true. ‘But you remain cynical about the government in Washington?’ Now I take a risk. ‘Well, with respect, so do you.’ That may have been a mistake. Rouse appears to withdraw slightly from the improving familiarity of our conversation, stopping to write something in longhand on the clipboard. ‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ he says, bringing the pen to his mouth. ‘You’re a serving SIS officer in Washington. It’s your job to be cynical.’ He goes cold on me. ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss that.’ ‘Of course. I’m sorry I brought it up.’ I have gone too far. ‘Not a problem,’ he says, as suddenly relaxed as he was distant just seconds before. I am relieved by this, yet the swing in his mood was eerie. He can be all things to all people. ‘At Sisby we are perfectly free to discuss the work of an SIS officer in general terms. That, after all, is one of the reasons why you are here.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So is there anything in particular you would like to ask?’ That he is permitting me to question him on matters of national secrecy is in itself astonishing, yet the blank slate provided somehow makes the process of thinking up a question more difficult. Rouse glances coolly at his watch. I have to say something. ‘It would interest me to know what sort of work SIS is involved in now that the Cold War is over. Is industrial espionage the main focus?’ Rouse knits his fingers. ‘For obvious reasons, I can’t talk about the specifics of my own operation. But, yes, industrial espionage, competitive intelligence–whatever you want to call it–poses a very grave threat to British interests. Purely in economic terms, allowing British secrets to pass into the hands of rival organizations and companies is catastrophic. There is an argument, in fact, that industrial spies are more damaging to British interests in the long term even than Cold War traitors. That’s not to say that we aren’t still concerned with traditional counterespionage measures.’ ‘What about organized crime?’ Rouse stalls. I may have hit upon his area of expertise. ‘You’re talking about Russia, I assume?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘A local problem, though one that will spread to the West if allowed to go unchecked. Likewise, the danger posed by religious fundamentalism. These are the kinds of issues we also take an interest in.’ Rouse has folded his arms across his belly, where they rest defensively. He will say no more on this subject. ‘Can I ask a more specific question about your lifestyle?’ ‘Of course,’ he says, apparently surprised by the frankness of my request. He moves forward in his chair, all of that weight now bulked on the desk in front of him. ‘Have you lost contact with the friends you had before you joined the intelligence service?’ Rouse runs a finger down the left side of his cheek. ‘Have I lost contact with my friends?’ A wistful silence lingers. ‘You’re perhaps talking to the wrong man. I’ve never been one for cultivating friendships.’ A grin appears at the side of his mouth, a little memory tickling him. ‘In fact, when I was applying for the job, I was asked for a number of written references and had trouble finding enough people who knew me well enough to give an account of my character.’ I smile. It seems the right thing to do. Rouse sees this. ‘Is that something that has been worrying you? Losing touch with your friends?’ I reply quickly, ‘Not at all. No.’ ‘Good. It shouldn’t necessarily. During my initial two-year training period in London, I worked alongside an officer who had a very busy social life. Seemed to enjoy himself a great deal. There’s no absolute standard.’ ‘But you have friends in Washington? Professional associates? People that you are able to see on a private basis away from work?’ Rouse emits a stout snort. And what he says now crystallizes everything. ‘Let me tell you this,’ he says, his eyes fixed on mine. ‘An SIS officer is asked to blend his private and professional selves into a seamless whole. We make no distinction between the two. An officer has, in a sense, no private life, because it is through his private life that much of his professional work is done. He uses his friendships, brokers trusts outside of the professional world, in order to gather information. That is how the system operates.’ ‘I see.’ He glances at his watch, a digital. ‘It appears that our time is up.’ It isn’t, but he knows where this conversation is going. They cannot risk telling me too much. ‘Why don’t I leave you with that thought?’ He stands up out of his chair, the white shirt more disheveled now. A man with no friends. ‘Thank you for coming in,’ he says, as if it had been a matter of choice. ‘It’s been interesting talking to you.’ I start backing away toward the door. ‘I’m glad I could be of some assistance,’ he says. ‘We will see you in the morning, I trust.’ ‘Yes.’ And with that I close the door. No handshake, no contact. I walk briskly in the direction of the common room with a light, flushed sense of success. The building is strangely quiet. The doors to the various classrooms and offices leading off the corridor have been closed. In the distance I hear a Hoover being dragged up and down on a worn floor. The common room, too, is empty. Everyone has gone home. There are plastic cups strewn across the low table in the centre of the room, one of which has tipped over and soaked a portion of the pink business insert of the Evening Standard. Chewed broadsheet pages lie stiffly against the back of the sofa, fanned out like a tramp’s bed. I just look in and turn away. Elaine is in the downstairs foyer, slouched against the wall. She is inspecting her nails. They are clear-varnished, neatly manicured. ‘Fancy a postmortem drink?’ she asks. ‘Oh, no. No, thanks. I’m just going to go home. Watch some TV.’ ‘Just like the others.’ ‘Just like the others. They’ve all gone home, have they?’ ‘Mmmm.’ ‘How come you’re still here?’ I ask. ‘I thought you finished an hour ago.’ ‘Met an old friend. Went for a coffee and forgot my bag.’ A lie. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ I tell her unconvincingly. ‘Tomorrow we’ll all go out.’ ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Tomorrow.’ SEVEN Day Two The morning of the second day is taken up with more written papers, beginning at nine o’clock. The In-Tray Exercise is a short, sharp, sixty-minute test of nerve, a lengthy document assessing both the candidate’s ability to identify practical problems arising within the Civil Service and his capacity for taking rapid and decisive action to resolve them. The focus is on leadership, management skills, and the means to devolve responsibility and ‘prioritize’ decisions. SIS is big on teamwork. Most of us seem to cope okay: Ogilvy, Elaine, and Ann finish the test within the allocated time. But the Hobbit looks to have messed up. At his desk, his shoulders heave and slump with sighing frustration, and he writes only occasionally, little half-hearted scribbles. He has not responded well to having his mind channelled like this: concision and structure are contrary to his nature. When Keith collects his answer sheet at the end of the exercise, it looks sparse and blotched with ink, the script of a cross-wired mind. The Letter Writing Exercise, which takes us up to lunch, is more straightforward. A member of the public has sent a four-page letter to a Home Office minister complaining about a particular aspect of the legislation outlined in the In-Tray Exercise. We are asked to write a balanced, tactful reply, conscious of the government’s legal position, but firm in its intent not to cave in to outside pressure. The Hobbit seems to find this significantly easier: sitting there in his blue-black blazer with its cheap gold buttons, he is no longer a sweating, panting blob of panic. The letter allows for a degree of self-expression, for leaps of the imagination, and with these he is more comfortable. There is a general sense that we have all returned here today locked into a surer knowledge of how to proceed. I have lunch for the second time at the National Gallery and again buy a ham and cheese sandwich, finding something comforting in the routine of this. Then the greater part of the final afternoon is taken up with more cognitive tests: Logical Reasoning, Verbal Organization, two Numerical Facility papers. Again there is not enough time, and again the tests are rigorous and probing. Yet, much of the nervousness and uncertainty of yesterday has disappeared. I know what’s required now. I can pace myself. It’s just a question of applying the mind. At three thirty, I find Elaine in the common room, alone and drinking coffee. She is sitting on a radiator below one of the windows, her right leg lifted and resting on the arm of the sofa. Her skirt has ridden up to the midsection of her thighs, but she makes no attempt to cover herself, or to lower her leg when I come in. ‘Nearly over,’ she says. I must look exhausted. I settle into one of the armchairs and sigh heavily. ‘My brain is numb. Numb.’ Elaine nods in agreement. Bare-skinned thighs, no tights. ‘You finished?’ ‘No,’ she says. ‘One more.’ Our conversation is slow monosyllables. It feels as if we are talking like old friends. ‘What is it?’ ‘Interview with the departmental assessor.’ ‘Rouse? He’s a straight-talker. You’ll like him.’ ‘What about you? What do you have?’ ‘Just the shrink. Four thirty.’ ‘Nice way to finish off. Get to talk about yourself for half an hour.’ ‘You’ve had her?’ ‘Yesterday. Very cozy. Like one of those fireside chats on Songs of Praise.’ Elaine stands up, smoothing down her skirt. ‘We’re all going to the pub later. Sam’s idea.’ ‘He’s a leader of men, isn’t he? Takes control.’ Elaine smiles at this. She agrees with me. ‘So meet you back here around five fifteen?’ I don’t feel like drinking with them. I’d rather just go home and be alone. So I ignore the question and say, ‘Sounds all right. Good luck with your interview.’ ‘You too,’ she replies. But in Dr Stevenson’s office I fall into a trap. There are two soft armchairs in the corner of the hushed warm room. We face each other and it is as if I am looking into the eyes of a kindly grandmother. Stevenson’s face has such grace and warmth that there is nothing I can do but trust it. She calls me Alec–the first time that one of the examiners has referred to me by my first name–and speaks with such refinement that I am immediately lulled into a false sense of security. The lights are dim, the blinds drawn. There is a sensation of absolute privacy. We are in a place where confidences may be shared. Everything starts out okay. Her early questions are unobtrusive, shallow even, and I give nothing away. We discuss the format of Sisby, what improvements, if any, I would make to it. There is a brief reference to school–an inquiry about my choice of A levels–and an even shorter discussion about CEBDO. That these topics go largely unexplored is not due to any reticence on my part. Stevenson seems happy simply to skirt around the edges of a subject, never probing too deeply, never overstepping the mark. In doing so she brokers a trust that softens me up. And by the time the conversation has moved into a more sensitive area, my guard is down. ‘I would like to talk about Kate Allardyce, if that would be all right?’ My first instinct here should have been defensive. Nobody ever asks Alec about Kate; it’s a taboo subject. And yet I quickly find that I want to talk about her. ‘Could you tell me a little bit about the two of you?’ ‘We broke up over six months ago.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ she says, and then, with sudden horror, I remember the lie to Liddiard. ‘I was led to believe that she was your girlfriend.’ She looks down at her file, staring at it in plain disbelief. Mistakes of this kind do not happen. She moves awkwardly in her seat and mutters something inaudible. It was a throwaway deceit. I only did it to make myself appear more solid and dependable, a rounded man in a long-term relationship. He asked for her full name, for a date and place of birth, so that SIS could run a check on her. And now that the vetting process is over they want to square their deep background with mine. They want to know whether Kate will make a decent diplomatic wife, a spy’s accomplice. They want to hear me talk about her. My left hand is suddenly up around my mouth, squeezing the ridge of skin under my nose. It is almost funny to have been caught out by something so crass, so needless, but this feeling quickly evaporates. The humiliation is soon total. Out of it, I knit together a shoddy retraction. ‘I’m sorry. No, no, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. We just…we just got back together again, about three months ago. Secretly. We don’t want anybody to know. We prefer things to be private. I’m just so used to telling people that we’re not back together that it’s become like a reflex.’ ‘So you are together?’ ‘Very much so, yes.’ ‘But no one else knows?’ ‘That’s correct. Yes. Except for a friend of mine. Saul. Otherwise, nobody.’ ‘I see.’ There is disappointment in the tone of this last remark, as if I have let her down. I feel ten again, a scolded child in the head-teacher’s study. ‘Perhaps we should talk about something else,’ she says, turning a page in my file. I have to rescue this situation or the game is up. ‘No, no. I’m happy to talk about it. I should explain. Sorry. It’s just that after we broke up I never spoke about it to anyone. No one would have understood. They might have tried to, but they would never have understood. They would have put things in boxes and I didn’t want that. It would have trivialized it. And now that we are back together, both of us have made a decision to keep things between ourselves. So we’re used to lying about it. Nobody else knows.’ An uneasy pause. ‘This must sound childish to you.’ ‘Not at all.’ I may have got away with it. ‘But can I ask why you broke up in the first place?’ This is expressed in such a way that it would be easy for me not to answer the question. But my embarrassment at having been caught out by Stevenson is substantial, and I do not want to refuse her request. ‘Largely on account of my selfishness. I think Kate grew tired of the fact that I was always withholding things from her. I had this insistence on privacy, a reluctance to let her in. She called it my separate-ness.’ There is suddenly a look of deep satisfaction in the lined wise eyes of Hilary Stevenson. Separateness. Yes. A good word for it. ‘But you don’t have a problem with that anymore?’ ‘With privacy? No. Not with Kate at least. I’m still an intensely private person, but I’ve become far more open with her since we got back together.’ This emphasis on privacy could even work in my favour. It is surely in the nature of intelligence work. ‘And why did you want to give the relationship a second chance? Do stop me if you think I’m being unduly intrusive.’ ‘No, no. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. I wanted to try again because I started thinking about the future. It was that simple. I looked around and thought about where I wanted to be in ten years’ time. The sort of life I wanted to lead. And I realized I’d thrown away the best chance I had of a kind of happiness.’ Stevenson nods encouragingly, as if this makes absolute sense to her. So I continue. ‘It’s one of the clich?s of breaking up, but you simply don’t know how much you love something until it’s taken away from you. I’m sure you come across this all the time in your profession.’ ‘All the time.’ ‘That’s the dangerous thing about being in a serious relationship with someone. In a very worrying sense, love guarantees you.’ ‘And then all that was taken away from you?’ ‘Yes.’ A first gathering of pain here. Don’t show it to her. Tell her what you know she wants to hear. ‘So I set myself a task. I tried to get it back. And luckily we hadn’t killed too much of it off.’ ‘I’m glad,’ Stevenson says, and I believe that she is. Everything I have told her is the truth about me, save for the plain fact that Kate has refused to come back. I had killed off too much of it, and she has now moved on. Stevenson writes something in my file, at least three lines of notes, and for some time the room is quiet save for the whisper of her pen. I wonder if the others were as open with her as I have been. ‘I was interested by what you said about not knowing how much you love somebody until they are taken away from you. Is that how you felt about your father?’ This comes out of the silence, spoken into her lap, and it takes me by surprise. I don’t recall mentioning my father’s death either to Liddiard or to Lucas. Hawkes must have told them. ‘In a way, yes, though it’s more complicated than that.’ ‘Could you say why?’ ‘Well, I was only seventeen at the time. There’s a toughness in you then. An unwillingness to feel. What do Americans call it–’denial’?’ A lovely amused laugh. Making out that she is charmed by me. ‘But more recently?’ ‘Yes. Recently his death has affected me more.’ ‘Could you say why?’ ‘On a basic level because I saw the relationships my male friends were having with their fathers in that transitional period from their late teens into early twenties. That was obviously a key period for some of them, and I missed out on that.’ ‘So the two of you weren’t particularly close when you were a child? You felt that your father kept you at a distance?’ ‘I wouldn’t say that. He was away from home a lot.’ Oddly, to speak about Dad in this way feels more deceptive than what I have told Stevenson about Kate. It is not a true account of him, nor of the way we were together, and I want to explain some of this to her. ‘This is difficult for me,’ I tell her. ‘I am rationalizing complex emotions even as I am talking to you.’ ‘I can understand that. These matters are never simple.’ ‘I can hear myself say certain things to you about my father and then something else inside me will contradict that. Does that make sense? It’s a very confusing situation. What I’m trying to say is that there are no set answers.’ Stevenson makes to say something, but I speak over her. ‘For example, I would like my father to be around now so that we could talk about Sisby and SIS. Mum says that he was like me in a lot of ways. He didn’t keep a lot of friends, he didn’t need a lot of people in his life. So we shared this need, this instinct for privacy. And maybe because of that we might have become good friends. Who knows? We could have confided in one another. But I don’t actively miss him because he’s not here to fulfil that role. Things are no more difficult because he’s not available to offer me guidance and advice. It’s more a feeling that I’ll never see his face again. Sometimes it’s that simple.’ Stevenson’s tender eyes are sunk in rolls of skin. ‘How do you think he would have felt about you becoming an SIS officer?’ ‘I think he would have been very proud. Perhaps even a little envious.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It’s every young man’s dream, isn’t it, to join MI6, to serve his country. Dad wouldn’t have thought ideas like that were out-of-date, and neither do I. And I think he would have been good at the job. He was smart, concealed, he could keep a secret. In fact, sometimes I feel like I’m doing this for him, in his memory. That’s why it’s so important to me. I want to show him that I can be a success. I want to make him proud of me.’ Stevenson looks perplexed and I feel that I may have gone too far. ‘Yes,’ she says, writing something down. ‘And Kate? How does she feel?’ This may be a test: they will want to know if I have broken the Official Secrets Act. ‘I haven’t told her yet. I didn’t see that there was any point. Until I actually became one.’ Stevenson smiles. ‘Don’t you think you ought to tell her?’ ‘I don’t think it’s necessary at this stage. And I was advised against it by Mr Liddiard. If I advance to the next level, then it would become increasingly difficult to keep things from her.’ ‘Yes,’ she says, giving nothing away. Stevenson looks at her watch and her eyebrows hop. ‘Good Lord, look at the time.’ ‘Are we finished?’ ‘I’m afraid so. I hadn’t realized how late it is.’ ‘I thought the interview would last longer.’ ‘It can do,’ she replies, uncrossing her legs and allowing her right foot to drop gently to the floor. ‘It depends on the candidate.’ Abruptly I am concerned. The implication of this last remark is troubling. I should have been less candid, made her work harder for information. Stevenson looks too satisfied with what I have given her. She closes my file with knuckles that are swollen with arthritis. ‘So you’re happy with what I’ve told you? Everything’s okay?’ That was a dumb thing to ask. I am letting my concern show. ‘Oh, yes,’ she says, very calmly. ‘Do you have anything else you might want to ask?’ ‘No,’ I say immediately. ‘Not that I can think of.’ ‘Good.’ She moves forward, beginning to stand. Things have shut down too quickly. She sets my file on a small table beside her chair. ‘I should have thought you were keen to be off. You must be tired after all your exertions.’ ‘It’s been hard work. But I’ve enjoyed it.’ Stevenson is on her feet, barely taller than the back of the chair. I stand up. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ she says, moving towards the door. There is a distance about her now, a sudden coldness. ‘Good luck.’ What does she mean by that? Good luck with what? With SIS? With CEBDO? She is holding the door open, a pale tweed suit. What did she mean? Brightness in the corridor. I look back into the office to check that I have left nothing behind. But there is only low light and Stevenson’s papers in a neat pile beside her chair. I want to go back in and start again. Without shaking her hand, I move out into the corridor. ‘Good-bye, Mr Milius.’ I turn around. ‘Yes. Good-bye.’ I walk back down the corridor feeling light and stunned. Ogilvy, Elaine, the Hobbit, and Ann are waiting for me in the common room. They stand up and approach me as I come in, a surge of kinship and relief, smiling broadly. This is the thrill of finishing, but I feel little of it. We have all done what we came here to do, but I experience no sense of solidarity. ‘What happened to you, Alec?’ Ann asks, touching my arm. ‘I had a tough one with the shrink. Grilled me.’ ‘You look exhausted. Did it go badly?’ ‘Difficult to say. Sorry to keep you waiting.’ ‘You didn’t,’ Ogilvy says warmly. ‘Matt only finished ten minutes ago.’ I look across at the Hobbit, whose nod confirms this. ‘Pub, then?’ Ogilvy asks. ‘You know what? I may just go home,’ I tell them, hoping they’ll just let me leave. ‘I have to have dinner with a friend later on. I’d like to have a shower, get my head together.’ Elaine appears offended. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘Just have a couple of drinks with us.’ ‘I’d love to. Really. But I have so much I have to do before–‘ ‘What? Like having a shower? Like getting your head together?’ Her mimicry irritates me, and only hardens my resolve. ‘No. You guys go ahead. I’m done for. I’ll see you all in the autumn.’ I smile here, and it works. The joke relaxes them. ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Ogilvy says. He’s probably relieved. Centre stage will be his. ‘I’m sure.’ ‘Either way,’ says Ann, and this seals it, ‘we should go now, ’cos I’ve got a flight to Belfast at half past nine.’ So we say our good-byes, and Sisby is over. EIGHT Pursuit of Happiness In the early hours of the following Sunday morning, I wake with a specific dream image of Kate being fucked by another man. She is in a strange, lightless room, almost suffocating with the pleasure of it. Her body is arched in a seizure of lust, but the lovemaking is so intense that she makes no sound. To desire and to be desired this much is inspiring in her a kind of awe. She has discovered a sexual pleasure far greater than the one that we shared in our innocence. She is relishing it because it has nothing to do with compromise or responsibility, nothing to do with the stagey romance of first love. She feared that she would never again experience the passion and tenderness that she knew in those first years with me. But now I look into her face and see that all of that has been consigned to the past. My room is in absolute darkness as these thoughts peck away at my heart. The shock of them has quickened my breathing to something approaching the panic of an asthma attack, and I have to sit up in bed and then walk slowly around the room, gathering myself together. I open the curtains and look outside. The colour of the sky is caught between the city’s reflected glow and the first light of dawn. She is out there with him somewhere, lying against pale sheets. I take out Kate’s T-shirt from the bottom of my chest of drawers and bury my face in its soft cotton folds. Her perfume has disappeared from it entirely. From a bottle of scent that I keep in the bathroom, I replenish the smell, tipping droplets of Chanel No. 19 onto the material before scrunching it up in a tight ball. It is the fourth time that I have had to do this since we separated. Time is passing by. I cannot get back to sleep, so I sit in the kitchen drinking coffee, my mind shuttling between memories of Kate and apprehension over the results of Sisby. Whatever happens now, win or lose, I can’t go back to CEBDO. Not after all this. I couldn’t shrink myself. So tomorrow, first thing, there’s something I must do. ‘Look, Nik, here’s the thing. I want to move on.’ This has been coming for months. It feels good to tell him. ‘You want to move on.’ This isn’t said as a question. More as a statement. Nik swallowing the news whole. ‘I feel I’ve achieved everything that I can working for you. And things have got very bad between me and Anna. We can’t work together anymore. It’s better that one of us should go.’ I have brought him to a small greasy spoon caf? on Edgware Road. It is 10 A.M. Traffic and people clapping by outside. There’s a red plastic bottle containing ketchup–probably not Heinz–sitting on the table between us. Nik stares at it. ‘Okay,’ he says. I had expected more of a reaction, a trace of hurt. ‘I’ve been offered a chance to do something…larger. Something more meaningful. You know?’ Nik shakes his head, still looking at the ketchup. ‘No, I don’t know. You tell me what that is, Alec. I’m not a mind reader.’ ‘I’m sorry. I’ve hurt your feelings. You’ve invested a lot of time in me and I’ve let you down.’ Now he lifts his head and looks me straight in the eye. There may be pity in his leering, condescending grin. ‘Oh, Alec. That’s what I always hated about you. You always think you’re the most important person in the room. Let me tell you something. The world is bigger than you. You understand? You don’t hurt my feelings. You think something like you handing in your notice could hurt my feelings? You think I can’t go out onto that street right now and find someone to replace you? You think I can’t do that?’ This is more like it. This is what I was expecting. ‘I’m sure you can, Nik. I’m sure you can. You’re amazing like that.’ ‘Don’t make fun of me, all right? I gave you a job of work. You come into my offices and all you’re interested in doing is fucking my staff, fucking Anna. And now you say you cannot speak with her. This is your problem. I gave you a job of work. That is a precious thing…’ ‘Oh, please.’ I really draw out the please here, and it deflects him. I often wonder when he is angry like this how much gets lost in translation, how much of what he wants to say is denied to him by his mediocre English. ‘This operation I have,’ he says, gesturing freely with his right hand. He’s about to embark on one of his delusional monologues. ‘You’re just a tiny fragment of something much larger. Something that you can’t even comprehend. I plan expansion, more offices, more people and workers. And do you know why you can’t comprehend that?’ ‘Is it just too complicated for me, Nik? Is it just too global and secret and amazing?’ ‘I tell you why. It’s not because I don’t allow you to comprehend it. No. It’s because you won’t allow yourself to see it. You see only what’s in front of your nose. You never see the bigger picture, the possibilities your work can offer. You and me, we could go places, make some money. The world is bigger than you, Alec. The world is bigger than you.’ ‘What does that fucking mean, Nik? What exact brand of shit are you talking?’ ‘You’re a clever boy. I thought this when I first met you. I still think it. But you need to take your head out of your arse. You’re soft.’ It’s time to draw things to a close. ‘Nik, I’m not about to take life lessons from you. These plans, these ambitions you talk about. I can’t tell you how little I care about them. You’re not running Ogilvy and Mather. You’re a crook, a petty thief.’ ‘You want to be careful what you–‘ I interrupt him. ‘I don’t have much stuff at the office. Someone will come and get it next week.’ ‘Fine.’ And with that he stands up, pivots away from the table, and walks out of the caf?, leaving me with the bill. Now it’s just a question of waiting for SIS to call. I don’t go outside for twenty-four hours in case the telephone rings, but by three o’clock on Tuesday I am growing impatient. The only person to have rung since lunchtime on Monday is Saul, who is just back from Spain. Perhaps SIS wants us to call them? I dial Liddiard’s office and a woman answers. ‘Seven-two-zero-four.’ They never say anything other than the number of the extension. It might just as well be a launderette. ‘Patrick Liddiard, please.’ ‘May I say who’s speaking?’ ‘Alec Milius.’ ‘Yes. Just one moment.’ Five seconds of dead noise. Ten. Then a click and Liddiard picks up. ‘Alec.’ ‘Good afternoon. How are you?’ ‘Very well, thank you.’ I can’t tell anything by the tone of his voice. He’s cheery and polite, but that is his manner. ‘I was ringing about the results of Sisby.’ ‘Yes. Of course.’ Well, say something, then. Tell me. Good or bad. ‘I wondered if you knew anything.’ ‘Yes, we do.’ And there’s a terrible beat now, a gathering of courage before bad news. ‘I’m afraid that the board felt you were not up to the very high standards required. I’m sorry, Alec, but we won’t be able to take your application any further.’ My first instinct is that he has mistaken me for somebody else: the Hobbit, perhaps even Ogilvy. But there has been no confusion. Soon every glimpse of promise I have ever shown is ebbing from me like a wound. Liddiard is talking, but I cannot pick up the words. I feel debilitated, bone weak, crushed. In the circumstances I should try to say something dignified, accept defeat graciously, and withdraw. But I am too shocked to react. I stand in the hall holding the phone against my ear, ingesting failure. And because I am not saying anything, Liddiard tries to placate me. ‘Would you like me to indicate to you where we felt the weakness was in your application?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘It was the group exercise primarily. The board felt you did not display sufficient depth of knowledge about the subjects under discussion.’ ‘Did anybody else make it through? Sam? Matthew?’ This is all I want to know. Just tell me that I came the closest out of all of them. ‘For obvious reasons I can’t reveal that.’ I think I detect contempt in the way he says this, as if my asking such a stupid question has only verified their decision not to hire me. ‘No, of course you can’t.’ ‘But thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the recruitment procedure. We all very much enjoyed meeting you.’ Oh, fuck off. ‘It’s nice of you to say so. Thank you.’ ‘Good-bye.’ NINE This is Your Life My first instinct, and this shames me, is to ring Mum. No sooner have I put the phone down on Liddiard than I am picking it up again and dialing her number in Somerset. She never goes out in the afternoon. She’ll tell me everything’s all right. The number rings out shrill and clean. I can tell her everything, I can get it all off my chest. And I can do so in the full assurance that she will actually express relief at my failure. She might even be horrified to learn that I had even considered employment in such a murky organization. That her only child, her son, could have gone into such a thing without telling his mother… I hang up. She’ll never know. It’s as simple as that. Receiving bad news is always like this: there’s too much information to process, too much at stake that has been irretrievably lost. Something similar happened when Mum told me that my father had died. My mind went absolutely numb, and there was nothing I could do to put his loss into perspective. The telephone rings, a volt of shock in my chest. I don’t even think about screening the call on my answering machine. I know it’s Hawkes. ‘Alec?’ ‘Yes. Hello, Michael.’ ‘I’ve just heard the news. I’m very sorry. I really thought you’d go the whole way.’ ‘You weren’t the only one.’ ‘They telephoned me about an hour ago.’ ‘Why? Why did they call you? I thought you’d retired?’ He stalls here, as if making something up. ‘Well, given that it was me who initiated your candidacy, they wanted to keep me informed.’ ‘But I thought you’d left? I thought you were in the oil business now.’ ‘You never really leave, Alec. It’s an ongoing thing.’ ‘So you’re not doing that anymore?’ ‘Don’t be concerned about me. Let’s talk about your situation.’ ‘Okay.’ His voice has thinned out, flustered, concealing something. ‘They suggested to me that your cognitive tests were fractionally below par. That’s all they said.’ ‘They told me it was the group exercise, not the cognitive tests.’ Another awkward pause. ‘Oh?’ ‘Yes. Said I wasn’t fully in control of my brief or something. Hadn’t covered all the angles.’ ‘Well, yes, there was that, too.’ He has obviously squared what to tell me with Liddiard, but one of them has fucked up. It must have been the interview with Stevenson. They know I lied about Kate. ‘Did they give you any other reason why I failed?’ ‘Don’t see it as a failure, Alec.’ ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it?’ Why can’t he just be honest about it? I’ve let him down. He recommended me and I’ve embarrassed him. I was so sure it was going to be all right. ‘The vast majority of candidates don’t even make it through to Sisby. To have progressed beyond the initial interviews is an achievement in itself.’ ‘Well, it’s good of you to say so,’ I say, suddenly wanting to be rid of him. ‘Thanks for recommending me in the first place.’ ‘Oh, not at all. What will you do now? Go back to your old job?’ ‘Probably.’ He pauses briefly before saying, ‘We haven’t exhausted every avenue, of course. There are alternatives.’ For now this is of no interest to me. I simply want the conversation to end. ‘You’ve done enough. Don’t worry. Thank you for everything.’ ‘You’re sure?’ He sounds disappointed. ‘Think about it, Alec. And in the meantime, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.’ ‘That’s kind. Thank you.’ ‘I’ll be in touch.’ A lie. Why would he bother contacting me again? My usefulness to him has passed. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t be too down, Alec. As I say, there are other options.’ At around six I go over to Saul’s, for company and for some way of shaking off the gloom. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to get there, driving through the rush-hour traffic and then finding somewhere to park. He has put up a notice on the door of his flat: just as much junk mail as you can spare, please. When I see it, I smile for the first time in hours. He pours two vodkas–mine without ice–and we sit in front of the television in the sitting room. A balding actor on This Is Your Life has just been surprised by the host, Michael Aspel, sporting his big red book. Saul says something about minor celebrities in Britain being ‘really minor’ and retrieves a cigarette he had going from an ashtray. ‘Who’s that?’ he asks as a middle-aged woman in pink emerges onto the stage, mugging to the camera. ‘No idea.’ She starts telling a story. Saul leans back. ‘Christ. Is there anything more tedious than listening to people telling anecdotes on This is Your Life?’ I do not respond. There is a constant, nagging disquiet inside me that I cannot shake off. ‘What’ve you been up to?’ he asks. ‘Day off as well?’ ‘Yeah. I’ve had a lot happening.’ ‘Right.’ He twists toward me on the sofa. ‘Everything all right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You look worn out.’ ‘I am.’ There shouldn’t be any need to, but I try to convey a greater sense of melancholy than may be visible, just in case Saul hasn’t detected it. ‘Alec, what is it?’ He switches the television off with the remote control. The image sucks into itself until it forms a tiny white blob, which then snuffs out. ‘Bad news.’ ‘What? Tell me.’ ‘I’ve done a stupid thing. I handed in my notice to Nik.’ ‘That isn’t stupid. It’s about time.’ This irritates me. He always thought I was wasting away at CEBDO. Fiddling while Rome burns. ‘I did it for the wrong reason. I did it because I was sure I was set at the Foreign Office.’ ‘That job you were applying for?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you didn’t get it?’ ‘No. I found out today.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘You didn’t tell anyone else I was applying for it, did you?’ ‘No. Course not. You told me not to.’ I believe him. ‘Thanks.’ ‘So what happened? Did you fuck up the exams?’ ‘Yeah. Toughest thing I’ve ever done.’ ‘You shouldn’t be disappointed. I’ve heard they’re like that. Hardly anyone gets through.’ ‘It’s more shame than disappointment. It’s as if my worst fears about myself have been confirmed. I thought I was clever enough to make a career out of it. It really seemed to make sense. I spent so long thinking I was good enough to do top-level work, but now it turns out I was just deluding myself.’ I don’t like admitting failure to Saul. It doesn’t feel right. But there’s an opportunity here to talk through a few things, in confidence, which I want to take advantage of. ‘Well, I never knew why you wanted to join in the first place,’ he says. I drain the vodka. ‘Because I was flattered to be asked.’ ‘To be asked? You never said anything about being asked. You didn’t say anything about anyone approaching you.’ Careful. ‘Didn’t I? No. Well, I met someone at a dinner party at Mum’s. He’d just retired from the Diplomatic Service. Put me onto it. Gave me a phone number.’ ‘Oh.’ Saul offers me a cigarette, lights one of his own. ‘What was his name?’ ‘George Parker.’ ‘And why did you want to join?’ ‘Because it was exciting. Because I wanted to do it for Dad. Because it beat ripping Czechs off for a living. I don’t know. This meant so much to me. I’ll never get a chance like that again. To be on the top table.’ The conversation dies now for a second or two. I don’t think Saul is really in the mood for it: I’ve come around uninvited on his day off. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I think you’re lucky not to have got in.’ This is exactly the wrong thing to say to me. ‘Why? Why am I in any way lucky? This was my big chance to get ahead, to start a career.’ ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think–‘ ‘It’s been every day for four months.’ ‘I had no idea–‘ ‘You’re not the only one who’s ambitious, you know. I have ambitions.’ ‘I didn’t say you didn’t.’ He is being defensive now, a little patronizing. My anger has unnerved him. ‘I wanted to work abroad, to have some excitement. I wanted to stop pissing away my youth.’ ‘So what’s stopping you? Go out and get a different job. The Foreign Office isn’t the only organization that offers positions overseas.’ ‘What’s the point? What’s the point in a corporate job when you can get downsized or sacked whenever the next recession comes along?’ ‘Don’t exaggerate. Don’t just repeat what you’ve heard on TV.’ ‘Anyway, it’s too late. I should have done it straight out of LSE. That’s the time to spend two or three years working away from home. Not now. I’m supposed to be establishing myself in a career.’ ‘That’s bullshit.’ ‘Look around, Saul. Everybody we knew at university did the job fair circuit, did their finals, and then went straight into a sensible career where they’ll be earning thirty or forty grand in a couple of years’ time. These were people who were constantly stoned, who never went to lectures, who could barely string a sentence together. And now they’re driving company cars and paying fifty quid a month into pension plans and “health insurance.” That’s what I should be doing instead of sitting around waiting for things to happen to me. It doesn’t work that way. You have to make your own luck. How did they know what to do with their lives when they were only twenty-one?’ ‘People grow up.’ ‘Evidently. I should’ve gone into the City. Read law. Taken a risk. What was the point in spending four years reading Russian and business studies if I wasn’t going to use them?’ ‘Jesus, Alec. You’re twenty-four, for Christ’s sake. You can still do whatever you like. It just requires a bit of imagination.’ There’s a glimmer here of something hopeful, a zip of optimism, but the stubbornness in me won’t grasp it. ‘If you could have just met some of the people I did the entrance exams with. To think that they could have got the job and not me. There was this one Cambridge guy. Sam Ogilvy. Smooth, rich, vacuous. I bet they took him.’ ‘What does it matter if they did? You jealous or something?’ ‘No. No, I’m not. He was…he was…’ How to describe Ogilvy to Saul? In an uncomfortable way, they reminded me of each other. ‘What did that man on TV call Tony Blair? “A walking Autocue in a sensible suit.” That’s exactly what this guy was like. In order to get anywhere these days we have to be like Sam Ogilvy. An ideas-free zone. A platitude in patent leather shoes. That’s what employers are looking for. Coachloads of Tony Blairs.’ There is a message from Hawkes on my answering machine when I get home at eight fifteen. Were it not for the fact that I have had four vodkas, I might be more surprised to hear from him. ‘Alec. It’s Michael. I’m coming to London tomorrow and I suggest we get together for lunch. Have a chat about things. Give me a ring in the country.’ His voice sounds stern. He leaves a contact number and I say, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ to the machine, but out of inquisitiveness scribble it down on a pad. For dinner I microwave some pasta and watch television for an hour, unable to concentrate on much beyond the shock of SIS. The rejection begins to act like heartbreak. Just when I think I’ve found some respite, after six hours of soul-searching and self-pity, something triggers the pain again–a memory of Stevenson, of Rouse standing firm in the window. So many ideas and plans, so many secret aspirations that will now remain untested. I was absolutely prepared to live my life as a shadow of who I really am. Surely they saw that? Surely there was something I could have done for them? I cannot understand why I have been discarded with such speed and ruthlessness. It makes no sense. To be left with this shaming feeling, the grim realization that there is nothing that marks me out from the crowd. At around nine, after finishing a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge, I go out to the corner shop and buy a four-pack of Stella. By the time I have finished the first can, I have written this in longhand: Alec Milius 111E Uxbridge Road London W12 8NL 15 August 1995 Patrick Liddiard Foreign and Commonwealth Office No. 46A———Terrace London SW1 Dear Mr Liddiard: Further to our conversation on the telephone this morning, there are one or two points I would like to raise in relation to my failed application to join the Secret Intelligence Service. It concerns me that your department is in possession of a file that contains detailed information about me, ranging across my background and education, with further confidential material about my professional and personal life. Could you please confirm by return of post that this file has been destroyed? Yours sincerely, Alec Milius I read it back a couple of times and extract ‘by return of post,’ which doesn’t sound right. Then, with the letter stamped, addressed, and in my pocket, I lock up the flat and head for a bar in Goldhawk Road. TEN Meaning I am woken at nine forty-five by the noise of the telephone, the sound of it moving toward me out of a deep sleep, growing louder, more substantial, incessant. At first I turn over in bed, determined to let it ring out, but the answering machine is switched off and the caller won’t relent. I throw back the duvet and stand up. It is as if one part of my brain lurches from the right side of my head to the left. I almost fall to the floor with the pain of it. And the phone keeps on ringing. Naked, stumbling across the hall, I reach the receiver. ‘Hello?’ ‘Alec?’ It’s Hawkes. With the sound of his voice I immediately reexperience the stab of my failure at SIS, the numb regret and the shame. ‘Michael. Yes.’ ‘Did I wake you?’ ‘No. I was just listening to the radio. Didn’t hear it ring.’ ‘My apologies.’ ‘It’s fine.’ ‘Can you meet me for lunch?’ The thought of gathering myself together sufficiently to spend two or three hours with Hawkes feels impossible with such a hangover. But there is a temptation here, a sense of unfinished business. I spot his telephone number scribbled on the pad beside the phone. We haven’t exhausted every avenue. There are alternatives. ‘Sure. Where would you like to meet?’ He gives me an address in Kensington and hangs up. There had better be something in this. I don’t want to waste my time listening to Hawkes tell me where I went wrong, saying over and over again how sorry he is. I’d rather he just left me alone. He cooks lunch for the two of us in the kitchen of a small flat on Kensington Court Place, beef Stroganoff and rice that is still crunchy, with a few tired beans on the side. Never been married, and he still can’t cook. There is an open bottle of Chianti, but I stick to mineral water as the last of my hangover fades. We barely discuss either SIS or Sisby. His exact words are, ‘Let’s put that behind us. Think of it as history,’ and instead the subjects are wide-ranging and unconnected, with Hawkes doing most of the talking. I have to remind myself continually that this is only the second occasion on which we have met. It is strange once again to encounter the man who has shaped the course of my life these last few months. There is something capricious about his face. I had forgotten how thin it is, drawn out like an addict’s. He is still wearing a frayed shirt and a haphazard cravat, still the same pair of velvet loafers embroidered on the toe with a coat of arms. How odd that a person who has given his life to secrecy and concealment should be so willing to stand out from the crowd. Afterward, scraping creamy leftovers of rice into a garbage bin, he says, ‘I often like to go for a walk after lunch. Do you have time?’ And largely because there has not yet been any talk of improving my situation, I agree to go. Hyde Park is buzzing with rollerbladers and a warm wind is blowing north to south across the grass. I have a desire for good, strong coffee, a double espresso to give me a lift after lunch. My energy feels sapped by the exercise. We have been talking about Mum when Hawkes says, ‘You remind me very much of your father. Not just in the way you look–he always seemed about twenty-one, never appeared to age–but in manner. In approach.’ ‘You’d lost touch? You said when we met…’ ‘Yes. Work took me away. It’s what happens in the Office, I’m afraid.’ I don’t feel like asking a lot of questions about Dad. I’d rather Hawkes brought up another subject. As we are passing the Albert Memorial he says, ‘I admired his tenacity tremendously. He was entrepreneurial almost before the word had been invented. Always working on a plan, a scheme for making money. Not a fast buck. Not to cheat anyone. But he loved working, he was ambitious. He wanted to make the best of himself.’ And this intrigues me. I remember Dad more as an absence, always away on business, and never wanting to talk about work when he came home. Mum has certainly never spoken about him in such a way. ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Let me give you an example,’ he says. ‘I imagine that you have friends from school or university who spend a lot of their time just sitting around or wasting away in dead-end jobs.’ I sure do. I’m one of them. ‘I don’t have that many friends,’ I tell him. ‘But yes, there are a lot of people who come out of higher education and feel that their choices are limited. People with good degrees with nowhere to go.’ Hawkes coughs, as if he hasn’t been listening. ‘And this job you’re doing at the moment. I suspect it’s a waste of your time, yes?’ The remark catches me off guard, but I have to admire his nerve. ‘Fair enough.’ I smile. ‘But it’s not a waste of time anymore. I quit over the weekend.’ ‘Did you now?’ His reply does not disguise a degree of surprise, perhaps even of pleasure. Is it possible that Hawkes really does have some plan for me, some opportunity? Or am I simply clinging to the impossible hope that Liddiard and his colleagues have made an embarrassing mistake? ‘So what are you going to do?’ he asks. ‘Well, right now it looks as though I’m going to become one of those people who spend a lot of their time just sitting around.’ He laughs at this, breaking into a rare smile that stretches his face like a clown. Then he looks me in the eye, that old paternal thing, and says, ‘Why don’t you come and work for me?’ The offer does not surprise me. Somehow I had expected it. A halfway house between CEBDO and the coveted world of espionage. A compromise. A job in the oil business. ‘At your company? At Abnex?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I’m very flattered.’ ‘You have Russian, don’t you? And a grounding in business?’ ‘Yes,’ I reply confidently. ‘Well then, I would urge you to think about it.’ We have stopped walking. I look down at the ground, drawing my right foot up and down on the grass. Perhaps I should say more about how grateful I am. ‘This is extraordinary,’ I tell him. ‘I’m amazed by how–‘ ‘There is something I would need to ask in return,’ he says, before I become too gushy. I look at him, trying to gauge what he means, but his face is unreadable. I simply nod as he says, ‘If you decided that you wanted to take up a position…’ Then he stalls. ‘What are your feelings, instinctively? Is oil something you’d like to become involved in?’ In my confused state, it is almost impossible to decide, but I am intrigued by Hawkes’s caveat. What would he ask for in return? ‘I would need to get my head together a little bit, to think things through,’ I tell him, but no sooner have the words come out than I am thinking back to what he said about my father. His ambition. His need to improve himself, and I add quickly, ‘But I can’t think of any reason why I would want to throw away an opportunity like that.’ ‘Good. Good,’ he says. ‘Why? What would you need me to do?’ The question sets us moving again, walking slowly down a path toward Park Lane. ‘It’s nothing that would be beyond you.’ He smiles at this, but the implication is clandestine. There is something unlawful here that Hawkes is concealing. ‘Sorry, Michael. I’m not understanding.’ He turns and looks behind us, almost as if he feels we are being followed. A reflex ingrained into his behaviour. But it’s just a group of four or five schoolchildren kicking a football fifty metres away. ‘Abnex has a rival,’ he says, turning back to face me. ‘An American oil company by the name of Andromeda. We would need you to befriend two of their employees.’ ‘Befriend?’ He nods. ‘Who is “we”?’ I ask. ‘Let’s just say a number of interested parties, both from the government side and private industry. All I can tell you firmly at this stage is that you would need to maintain absolute secrecy, in exactly the same way as was described to you during your selection procedure for SIS.’ ‘So this has something to do with them?’ He does not respond. ‘Or MI5? Are they the “alternative” you were talking about on the phone yesterday?’ Hawkes breathes deeply and looks to the sky, but a satisfied expression on his face seems to confirm the truth of this. Then he continues walking. ‘Five might be interested in using you as a support agent,’ he says. ‘On a trial basis.’ I am astonished by this. ‘Already?’ ‘It’s something that just popped up in the last couple of weeks. A rather discreet operation, in actual fact. Off the books.’ A dog runs across our path and vanishes into some long grass. ‘My contact there, John Lithiby, can’t use his regular employees and needs some fresh fruit off the tree. So I suggested your name…’ ‘I can’t believe this.’ ‘There’d be a job for you at the other end,’ he says, ‘if the operation is a success.’ I feel flattered, stunned. ‘You’re talking about a job with MI5?’ I am shaking my head, almost laughing. ‘Just for befriending some Americans?’ Hawkes turns and looks back down the path, as if searching for the dog, then faces me and smiles. He appears oddly proud, as if he has fulfilled a longstanding pledge to my father. ‘Questions, questions,’ he mutters. Then he puts his arm across my back, the right hand squeezing my shoulder, and says, ‘Later, Alec. Later.’ PART TWO 1996 Making millions on sheer gall. American Dream. —John Updike, Rabbit Redux ELEVEN Caspian The offices of Abnex Oil occupy five central storeys in an eyesore Broadgate high-rise about six minutes’ walk from Liverpool Street station. The company was founded in 1989 by a City financier named Clive Hargreaves, who was just thirty-five years old at the time. Hargreaves had no A levels and no formal higher education, just a keen business sense and an instinctive, immediate grasp of the market opportunities presented by the gradual collapse of communism in the Eastern bloc and, later, the former Soviet Union. With private investment attached to a chunk of money he’d made in the City during the Thatcher–Lawson boom, Hargreaves expanded Abnex from a small outfit employing fewer than one hundred people into what is now the third largest oil-exploration company in the UK. At the start of the decade, Abnex had minor contracts in Brazil, the North Sea, Sakhalin, and the Gulf, but Hargreaves’s masterstroke was to realize the potential of the Caspian Sea before many of his competitors had done so. Between 1992 and early 1994, he negotiated well-workover agreements with the nascent governments of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan, and sent down teams of geologists, contractors, and lawyers to Baku with a view to identifying the most promising well sites in the region. The Caspian is now awash with international oil companies, many of them acting as joint ventures and all competing for their chunk of what are proven oil reserves. Abnex is better placed than many of them to reap the benefits when the region goes online. On New Year’s Day 1995, Hargreaves was killed riding pillion on a motorcycle in northern Thailand. The driver, his best friend, wasn’t drunk or high; he was just going too fast and missed a bend in the road. Hargreaves, who was single, left the bulk of his estate to his sister, who immediately sold her controlling stake in Abnex to a former cabinet minister in the Thatcher government. This is where Hawkes came in. A new chairman, David Caccia, had been appointed by the board of directors. Caccia was also ex-Foreign Office, though not SIS. The two men had been posted to the British embassy in Moscow in the 1970s and become close friends. Caccia, knowing that Hawkes was approaching retirement, offered him a job. I work undercover for M15 as a business development analyst in a seven-man team specializing in emerging markets, specifically the Caspian Sea. On my first day, just four or five hours in, the personnel manager asked me to sign this agreement: CODE OF CONDUCT To be complied with at all times by employees and associates of Abnex Oil. The Company expects all of its business to be conducted in a spirit of honesty, free from fraudulence and deception. Employees–and those acting on behalf of Abnex Oil–shall use their best endeavours to promote and develop the business of the Company and its standing both in the UK and abroad. All business relationships–with government representatives, clients, and suppliers–must be conducted ethically and within the bounds of the law. On no account should inducements or other extracontractual payments be made or accepted by employees or associates of Abnex Oil. Gifts of any nature must be registered with the Company at the first opportunity. Employees and associates are forbidden to publish or otherwise disclose to any unauthorized person trading details of Abnex Oil or its clients, including–but not limited to–confidential or secret information relating to the business, finances, computer programs, data, client listings, inventions, know-how, or any other matter whatsoever connected with the business of Abnex Oil, whether such information may be in the form of records, files, correspondence, drawings, notes, computer media of any description, or in any other form including copies of or excerpts from the same. Any breach of the above regulations will be construed by the Company as circumstances amounting to gross misconduct, which may result in summary dismissal and legal prosecution. August 1995 All the guys on my team are university graduates in their mid-to-late twenties who came here within six months of leaving university. With one exception, they are earning upward of thirty-five thousand pounds a year. The exception, owing to the circumstances in which I took the job, is myself. I am over halfway through the trial period imposed by the senior management. If, at the end of it, I am considered to have performed well, my salary will be bumped up from its present level–which is below twelve thousand after tax–to something nearer thirty, and I will be offered a long-term contract, health coverage, and a company car. If Alan Murray, my immediate boss, feels that I have not contributed effectively to the team, I’m out the door. This probationary period, which ends on 1 December, was a condition of my accepting the job imposed by Murray. Hawkes and Caccia knew that they had brought me in over the heads of several more highly qualified candidates–one of whom had been shadowing the team, unpaid, for more than three months–and they were happy to oblige. From my point of view it’s a small price to pay. Like most employers nowadays, Abnex knows that they can get away with asking young people to work excessively long hours, six or seven days a week, without any form of contractual security or equivalent remuneration. At any one time there might be fifteen or twenty graduates in the building doing unpaid work experience, all of them holding out for a position that in all likelihood does not exist. So, no complaints. Things have swung around for me since last year and I have Hawkes to thank for that. The downside is that I now work harder, and for longer hours, than I have ever worked in my life. I am up every morning at six, sometimes quarter past, and take a cramped tube to Liverpool Street just after seven. There’s no time for a slow, contemplative breakfast, those gradual awakenings of my early twenties. The team is expected to be at our desks by eight o’clock. There is a small, aggressively managed coffee bar near the Abnex building where I sometimes buy an espresso and a sandwich at around 9 A.M. But often there is so much work to do that there isn’t time to leave the office. The pressure comes mainly from the senior management, beginning with Murray and working its way steadily up to Caccia. They make constant demands on the team for reliable and accurate information about geological surveys, environmental research, pipeline and refining deals, currency fluctuations, and–perhaps most important of all–any anticipated political developments in the region that may have long-or short-term consequences for Abnex. A change of government personnel, for example, can dramatically affect existing and apparently legally binding exploration agreements signed with the previous incumbent. Corruption is at an epidemic level in the Caspian region, and the danger of being outmanoeuvred, either by a competitor or by venal officials, is constant. A typical day will be taken up speaking on the telephone to clients, administrators, and other officials in London, Moscow, Kiev, and Baku, often in Russian or, worse, with someone who has too much belief in his ability to speak English. In that respect, little has changed since CEBDO. In every other way, my life has taken on a dimension of intellectual effort that was entirely absent when I was working for Nik. I look back on my first six months at Abnex as a blur of learning: files, textbooks, seminars, and exams on every conceivable aspect of the oil business, coupled with extensive MI5/SIS weekend and night classes, usually overseen by Hawkes. In late September, he and I flew out to the Caspian with Murray and Raymond Mackenzie, a senior employee at the firm. In under eight days we took in Almaty, Tashkent, Ashgabat, Baku, and Tbilisi. It was the first time that Hawkes or I had visited the region. We were introduced to Abnex employees, to representatives from Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP, and to high-ranking government officials in each of the major states. Most of these had had ties with the former Soviet administration; three, Hawkes knew for certain, were former KGB. It is not that I have minded the intensity of the work or the long hours. In fact, I draw a certain amount of satisfaction from possessing what is now a high level of expertise in a specialist field. But my social life has been obliterated. I have not visited Mum since Christmas, and I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to savour a decent meal, or to do something as mundane as going to the cinema. My friendship with Saul is now something that has to be timetabled and squeezed in, like sex in a bad marriage. Tonight–he is coming to an oil industry party at the In and Out Club on Piccadilly–will be only the third time that I have had the opportunity to see him since New Year’s. He resents this, I think. In days gone by, it was Saul who called the shots. He had the glamorous job and the jet-set lifestyle. At the last minute, he might be called off to a shoot in France or Spain, and any arrangements we might have made to go to a movie or meet for a drink would have to be cancelled. Now the tables have turned. Freelancing has not been as easy as Saul anticipated. The work hasn’t been coming in, and he is struggling to finish a screenplay that he had hoped to have financed by the end of last year. It may even be that he is jealous of my new position. There has been something distrustful in his attitude toward me since I joined Abnex, almost as if he blames me for getting my life in order. It’s a Thursday evening in mid-May, just past five o’clock. People are starting to leave the office, drifting in slow pairs toward the lifts. Some are heading for the pub, where they will drink a pint or two before the party; others, like me, are going straight home to change. If everything goes according to plan, tonight should mark a significant development in my relationship with Andromeda, and I want to feel absolutely prepared. Back at the flat, I put on a fresh scrape of deodorant and a new shirt. At around seven o’clock I order a taxi to take me to Piccadilly. This early part of the evening is not as awkward as I had anticipated. I am clearheaded and looking forward finally to making progress with the Americans. There are flames leaping from tall Roman candles in a crescent forecourt visible from the cab as it shunts down a bottlenecked Hyde Park towards the In and Out Club. I pay the driver, check my reflection in the window of a parked car, and then make my way inside. An immaculate silver-haired geriatric, wearing a gold-buttoned red blazer and sharp white tie, is greeting guests at the door. He checks my invitation. ‘Mr Milius. From Abnex. Yes, sir. Just go straight through.’ Other guests in front of me have been ushered into a high-ceilinged entrance hall. Most of them are, at a guess, over thirty-five, though a hand-in-hand, good-looking couple of about my age are gliding around in a circular room immediately beyond this one. The boyfriend is guiding an elaborate blonde counterclockwise around a large oak table, pretending to admire some cornice work on the oval ceiling. He points at it intelligently, and the girlfriend nods, openmouthed. I walk past them and turn right down a darkened corridor leading into a spacious, paved garden where the party is taking place. The noise of it grows sharper with every pace, the rising clamour of a gathered crowd. I walk out onto a terraced balcony overlooking the garden from the club side and take a glass of champagne from a teenage waiter who breezes past me, tray held at head height. The party is in full swing. Polite laughter lifts up from the multitudes in their suits and cocktail dresses, oil people in dappled light amid the ooze of small talk. Piers, Ben, and J.T., three members of my team, are standing in the far right corner of the garden, thirty or forty feet away, sucking back champagne. As usual, Ben is doing most of the talking, making the others laugh. Harry Cohen, at twenty-eight the oldest and most senior member of the team after Murray, is just behind them, schmoozing some mutton-dressed-as-lamb in a little black dress. No sign of Saul, though. He must have been held up. Just below me, to my left, I see the Hobbit talking to his new girlfriend. It is still extraordinary to witness the change that has come over him. Gone are the spots and greasy skin, and his once-raggedy hair has now been cropped short and combed forward to shield a gathering baldness. There are things that he still gets wrong. On his lapel he is wearing a bright orange badge imprinted with the name MATTHEW FREARS above the logo of his company, Andromeda. And his glance up at me is nervous, almost intimidated. Yet he is reliable, and honest to the point of candour. We make eye contact, nothing more. He’ll be as fired up as me. I walk down a short flight of stone steps and make my way through the crowd to the Abnex team. J.T. is the first to spot me. ‘Alec. You’re late.’ ‘Not networking?’ I say to them. ‘Pointless at parties,’ Piers replies. ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Everyone’s up to the same game. You’re never going to make an impression. Might as well neck the free booze and fuck off home.’ ‘It’s your optimism I admire,’ says Ben. ‘Life-affirmin’.’ ‘Murray arrived?’ ‘Coming later,’ he says, as if it were inside knowledge. ‘Why’d you go home?’ Piers asks me. ‘Change of shirt.’ ‘Sweaty boy,’ says Ben. ‘Sweaty boy.’ ‘You haven’t met someone called Saul, have you?’ He is a vital component in tonight’s plan, and I need him to get here. Ben says, ‘What kind of a name is Saul?’ ‘He’s a friend of mine. I’m supposed to be meeting him here. He’s late.’ ‘Haven’t seen him,’ he says, taking a sip from his drink. Cohen separates himself from the middle-aged woman with the facelift and turns towards us. His coming into our small group has the effect of tightening it up. ‘Hello, Alec.’ ‘Harry.’ The woman gives him a final smile before disappearing into the crowd. ‘Mum come with you?’ Ben says to him, trying on a joke. Cohen does not react. ‘Who was she?’ J.T. asks. ‘A friend of mine who works for Petrobras.’ ‘Sleeping with the enemy, eh?’ Ben mutters under his breath, but Cohen ignores him. ‘She’s involved with exploration on the Marlin field,’ he says, turning to me. ‘Where’s that, Alec?’ ‘You giving me a test, Harry? At a fucking party?’ ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you know where the Marlin field is?’ ‘It’s in Brazil. Marlin is in Brazil. Offshore.’ ‘Very good,’ he says with raw condescension. J.T. looks at me and rolls his eyes. An ally of mine. ‘Glad I could be of some assistance,’ I tell him. ‘Now, now, boys. Let’s all try to enjoy ourselves,’ Ben says, grinning. He must have been drinking for some time. His round face has taken on a rosy, alcoholic flush. ‘Plenty of skirt here.’ J.T. nods. ‘You still seeing that journalist, Harry?’ Ben asks. Cohen looks at him, irked by the intrusion into his private life. ‘We’re engaged. Didn’t you know?’ ‘Matter of fact, I think I did know that,’ he says. ‘Set a date?’ ‘Not as such.’ None of us will be invited. ‘Who’s that young bloke next to Henderson, the one with the dark hair?’ Cohen is half pointing at a lean, jaded-looking man in a crushed linen suit standing to the right of our group. ‘Hack from the FT,’ says Piers, taking a satay stick from one of the waiters. ‘Joined from the Telegraph about three months ago. Going places.’ ‘Thought I recognized him. What’s his name?’ ‘Peppiatt,’ Piers tells him. ‘Mike Peppiatt.’ This is registered by Cohen, the name stored away. Before the evening is out, he will have spoken to the journalist, made contact, chatted him up. Here’s my card. Call me anytime you have a query. Cohen has the patience to forge contacts with the financial press, to feed them their little tidbits and scoops. It gives him a sense of power. And Peppiatt, of course, will return the favour, putting another useful name in his little black book. This is how the world goes round. I spot Saul now, sloping into the party on the far side of the garden, and feel relieved. There is a look of wariness on his face, as if he is here to meet a stranger. He looks up, sees me immediately through the dense, shifting crowd, and half smiles. ‘There he is.’ ‘Your mate?’ says Ben. ‘That’s right. Saul.’ ‘Saul,’ Ben repeats under his breath, getting used to the name. The five of us turn to greet him, standing in an uneven semicircle. Saul, nodding shyly, shakes my hand. ‘All right, man?’ he says. ‘Yeah. How was your shoot?’ ‘Shampoo ad. Canary Wharf. Usual thing.’ Both of us, simultaneously, take out a cigarette. ‘These are the people I work with. Some of them, anyway.’ I introduce Saul to the team. This is J.T., this is Piers, this is Ben. Harry, meet an old friend of mine, Saul Ricken. There are handshakes and eye contacts, Saul’s memory lodging names while his manner does an imitation of cool. ‘So how are things?’ I ask, pivoting away from them, taking us out of range. ‘Not bad. Sorry I was late getting here. Had to go home and change.’ ‘Don’t worry. It was good of you to come.’ ‘I don’t get much of a chance to see you these days.’ ‘No. Need a drink?’ ‘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. ‘They seem okay.’ ‘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 each 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 that 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 in 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. ‘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 other than 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 his 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.’ ‘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, tilting his head 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.’ ‘Okay–‘ I had tried interrupting, but Peppiatt has still 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 southeast 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 over-reliant on Middle East oil and 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 in 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. ‘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. ‘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 another gap in his knowledge. ‘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 the financial press. ‘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. I can’t tell whether 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.’ TWELVE My Fellow Americans This is when I see her for the first time, standing just a few yards 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 that 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 back is stooped and his thick greying hair has been blown about by the 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 and 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 both of us are a few paces away, moving towards a corner of the garden, the Hobbit 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 feel 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, has been minutely planned. My face freezes, and I cannot summon a smile. I merely stare back and then almost immediately look away. The Hobbit acts smartly, quick on his feet. He has smiled back at her, a colleague’s acknowledgment, 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 meet you.’ She scans 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. Now 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.’ There is a gap in the conversation, to the point of becoming awkward. 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 200 or 220 pounds, 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 okay, 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?’ ‘What do you guys think? You reckon our president will be re-elected in November?’ Katharine looked at Saul rather than me as she asked this, but it is the Hobbit who answers, ‘I think he’ll be re-elected, if only because Dole is too old.’ ‘Mind what you’re saying there, son,’ Douglas says to him, his voice low and sly. ‘Old Dole’s only got a few years on me.’ ‘So do the Brits like him, then?’ This comes from Audrey. She must have used up a can of hairspray tonight. Her beehive hasn’t budged an inch in the wind. ‘I think he has the most impressive grasp of insincerity that I’ve ever seen,’ I tell her, though that isn’t the first time that I’ve used that phrase. It just sounds good coming out now. ‘I think the British people like him. We tend to admire your politicians more than our own, but it’s a hypocritical approval. We wouldn’t want any of them running our country.’ ‘Why in hell not?’ Fortner asks, and for a moment I am concerned that I may have annoyed him. Saul drops his half-finished cigarette on the ground and steps on the butt. ‘Your political system is seen as being more corrupt than ours,’ I reply. ‘Unfairly, I think.’ ‘Too right unfairly,’ he says. ‘What about Matrix Churchill? What about Westland? What about arms to Iraq?’ ‘The Scott Inquiry will clear everyone,’ Saul announces solemnly. ‘The old-boy network will see to that.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ says Douglas wistfully. ‘The old-boy network.’ ‘You wish you were a part of that, Doug?’ Fortner says, nudging him. ‘An old Etonian? An Oxford man?’ ‘Princeton’ll do me fine.’ ‘So how long have you been with Abnex?’ Katharine wants to change the subject. ‘About nine months.’ ‘You enjoying it?’ ‘Yes and no. I’ve had to learn a lot in a short space of time. It’s been a real eye-opener.’ ‘An eye-opener,’ she says, as if she enjoys this expression. ‘So your background was in…?’ ‘Russian and business studies.’ ‘You just out of college?’ ‘No. I worked in marketing for a bit.’ ‘Right.’ Now Saul joins in. ‘How long have you and your husband been living here?’ ‘Long time now. About four years.’ The Hobbit has cleverly started up a separate conversation with Bishop and Audrey, one that I cannot hear. ‘And you enjoy it?’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ The heavy, interjectory way that Fortner comes forward, answering the question on Katharine’s behalf, seems to reveal something about the dynamic of their relationship. ‘We love it here. Spending time with the allies. What do you do for a living, Saul?’ ‘I’m in advertising. Commercials. I’m an assistant director.’ ‘And, what? That will lead into television, into movies?’ ‘Something like that,’ he replies. ‘I’m working on a script at the moment, trying to get some development money.’ ‘What’s it about?’ Katharine asks. ‘It’s a kind of spoof thriller. A comedy about a serial killer.’ ‘No shit,’ Fortner says, laughing. ‘A comedy about a serial killer?’ He clearly thinks the idea is ludicrous. ‘I gotta say I prefer different kinds of movies myself. Old Bogarts and Cagneys. Westerns mainly.’ ‘Really?’ Saul replies enthusiastically. He is, albeit unwittingly, playing his role to perfection. ‘You like Westerns? Because the National Film Theatre is doing a John Wayne season at the moment.’ ‘Is that right?’ Fortner looks genuinely interested. ‘I didn’t know that. I’d love to catch one or two. The Searchers, Liberty Valance…’ ‘Me too.’ I sensed immediately that I could use this as a way of establishing a bond between us. ‘I love Westerns. I think John Wayne is great.’ ‘You do?’ Saul has screwed up his face in surprise. I have to be careful that he doesn’t undermine me. ‘Yeah. It’s a little fetish of mine. I used to watch them with Dad when I was growing up. Henry Fonda. Jimmy Stewart. But especially John Wayne.’ Katharine clears her throat. ‘So you like him too, Saul?’ she asks, as if it is a test of character. ‘Not as much as Clint,’ he replies. ‘But Wayne’s great. One of the best.’ ‘The best,’ says Fortner with emphasis. ‘Eastwood’s just a pretty boy.’ ‘Maybe it’s a generational thing, honey,’ Katharine suggests. ‘Sorry, guys. My husband has a weakness for draft dodgers.’ I don’t know what she’s referring to, and Fortner says, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘John Wayne didn’t fight in World War Two,’ Saul informs him. ‘He did everything he could to avoid conscription.’ ‘Right,’ says Katharine triumphantly. ‘So what?’ Fortner replies. Although his tone is aggressive, he may be enjoying the argument. ‘Wayne did more for the war effort as an actor than he ever coulda done getting shot at on Omaha Beach. He was a patriot, an anti-Communist–‘ ‘–Who hated riding horses, hated wearing his cowboy outfits, and actively encouraged American participation in the Vietnam War,’ Katharine interrupts him in full flow. She has a brazen, mischievous intelligence, a self-confidence not dissimilar to Kate’s. ‘But he made some great films,’ Saul says, perhaps as a way of defusing what he thinks is tension. And then the idea comes to me. As simple as it is shrewd. A way of guaranteeing a second encounter. ‘Well, I have an idea,’ I suggest. ‘We should solve this by going to see one of these films at the NFT. I was going anyway. Why don’t you join me?’ And without any hesitation, Fortner says, ‘Great,’ shrugging his shoulders. ‘You wanna go too, Saul?’ ‘Sure,’ he replies. Katharine looks less enthused, a reaction that may be more instinctive than premeditated. ‘Count me out,’ she says. ‘I can’t stand Westerns. You fellas go right ahead. I’ll stay home with Tom Hanks.’ The Hobbit, Bishop, and Audrey have by now been pulled away into a larger group of six or seven people, two of whom are employees of Abnex. And, across the garden, David Caccia is coming down a short flight of stone steps, joining the party late. He catches my eye, but when he sees that I am with the Americans a mild look of concern passes across his face. In his right hand he is balancing a little pastry parcel oozing feta cheese. ‘Is that David Caccia?’ Fortner asks. ‘That guy looking at ya?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘He and I had a couple of meetings back in the New Year. Tough negotiator. We were discussing the joint venture. You know about that?’ ‘A little. Fell through, I hear.’ ‘That’s right. Not a smart move if you ask me.’ ‘I have to say–off the record–I agree with you.’ My voice is quiet here, collaborative. ‘You do?’ Katharine seems surprised by my candour. This may be a good time to leave. ‘Look, I have to have a word with him about something. Will you excuse us?’ Saul takes an instinctive step backward and Fortner says, ‘Sure, no problem. It sure was nice to meet you fellas.’ He takes my hand and the shake is firmer than it was before. But I am worried that the plan to visit the NFT will be forgotten as a casual passing remark. I cannot mention it again at the risk of appearing pushy. The invitation will have to come from them. Fortner now turns to Saul, and Katharine takes me to one side. ‘Do you have a card?’ she asks, holding a slim piece of embossed white plastic in her hand. ‘So Fort can get in touch about the movie.’ Luck is on my side. ‘Of course.’ We exchange cards. Katharine studies mine carefully. ‘Milius, huh? Like the name.’ ‘Me too,’ says Fortner, breaking in from behind and slapping me hard on the back. ‘So we’re set for John Wayne? Leave the womenfolk at home?’ Katharine adopts an expression of good-humoured exasperation. ‘Looking forward to it,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll give you a call.’ An hour later the Hobbit weaves towards me carrying a glass of sparkling mineral water. Saul is inside the club, talking to the waitress. ‘Hi, Matt.’ He looks slightly sheepish. ‘How did you get on?’ ‘Very well. I think we’re going to see each other again. I just bumped into them as they were leaving and we chatted for another ten minutes.’ ‘Good,’ he says, picking a piece of lemon out of his drink and dropping it to the ground. ‘Manners, Matthew.’ ‘Nobody saw,’ he says, looking quickly left and right. ‘Nobody saw.’ THIRTEEN The Searchers ‘So how did it go?’ Hawkes is leaning back in a moulded plastic chair on the second floor of the Abnex building. The blinds are drawn in the small grey conference room, the door closed. His feet are up on the table, hands clasped behind his neck. ‘Fine. Really well.’ He arches his eyebrows, pressing me. ‘And? Anything else? What happened?’ I lean forward, putting my arms on the table. ‘I met Saul at seven for a drink in the bar. You know, where they have all those bookstalls under Waterloo Bridge.’ Hawkes nods. The soles of his shoes are scuffed to the colour of slate. ‘Fortner was on time. Seven fifteen. We had another round of drinks, bought our tickets, and went in.’ ‘Who paid?’ ‘For the drinks or the tickets?’ ‘Both.’ ‘Everybody went dutch. Don’t worry. There was no largesse.’ Somebody walks past outside at a fast clip. ‘Go on,’ he says. As it always is when we are talking business, Hawkes’s manner is abrupt to the point of being rude. Increasingly he has become a withdrawn figure, an enigma at the back of the room. ‘Saul sat between us. There was no planning to it. It just worked out that way. We saw The Searchers, and afterwards I told him we had to go to a party. Which we did.’ ‘Did you invite him along?’ ‘I thought that would be pushing things.’ ‘Yes,’ he says after a moment’s contemplation. ‘But in your view Grice wasn’t offended by that?’ I light a cigarette. ‘Not at all. Look, I’ve obviously been thinking about what I was going to tell you this afternoon. And it’s a measure of how well things went that I feel as if I have nothing of any significance to reveal. It was all very straightforward, very normal. It went exceptionally well. Fortner has a youthful side to his personality, like someone much younger. Just as you said he did. He fitted in, and if I’d invited him to the party, he would have fitted in there, too. He was making an effort, of course, but he’s one of those middle-aged men who are hanging on to something youthful in their nature.’ Hawkes folds his arms. ‘So it wasn’t at all awkward,’ I tell him. ‘When we were having the drink beforehand, we talked like we were old friends. It was a boys’ night out.’ ‘And how do you want to play it now?’ ‘My instinct is that they’ll call.’ ‘Why do you think that?’ ‘Because he likes me. Isn’t that what you wanted?’ No reaction. Hawkes is assessing whether I have read the situation correctly. I continue, ‘He left saying that Katharine wanted to have dinner sometime. He also wants to introduce Saul to a friend of his in advertising who used to be an actor. He’s interested, believe me.’ ‘But in Saul or in you?’ ‘What do you think?’ ‘That’s what I’m asking,’ he says, not impatiently. ‘Look. Saul has a lot of friends. Far more than I do. He likes Fortner, they laugh at each other’s jokes, but there’s no connection between them. Saul will fall by the wayside and resume his day-to-day life without even realizing he has brought the Americans to me. And then it’ll just be the three of us.’ FOURTEEN The Call Exactly two weeks later, at around three o’clock in the afternoon, J.T. walks over to my desk and presses a single sheet of Abnex-headed paper into my hand. ‘You seen this?’ he says. ‘What is it?’ I save the file on my computer and turn to him. ‘New staff memo. Unbelievable.’ I begin to read. While Abnex Oil fully respects the privacy of employees’ personal affairs, it expects them to discharge fully their obligations of service to the company. It also requires them to be law-abiding, both inside and outside working hours. Remember that any indiscreet and/or antisocial behaviour could not only affect an employee’s performance and position, but also reflect badly on Abnex Oil. ‘Jesus,’ I mutter. ‘Too right. Fucking nanny state.’ ‘Next they’ll be telling us what to eat.’ Cohen’s desk faces mine. We work staring into each other’s eyes. He looks up from his computer terminal and says, ‘What is that?’ ‘New memo. Just came up from personnel.’ J.T. looks at him. ‘Call it up on your e-mail. They’ve labelled it urgent. Some big-brother piece of shit instructing employees on how to conduct their private lives. Fucking disgrace.’ ‘Did you manage to get those figures I asked you for at lunch?’ Cohen asks him, ignoring the complaint entirely. He will not tolerate any hint of dissent on the team. ‘No. I can’t seem to get hold of the guy in Ankara.’ ‘Well, will you keep trying, please? They’ll be closing up and going home now.’ ‘Sure.’ J.T., suitably rebuked and sheepish, slopes back to his desk and picks up the phone. He leaves the memo beside my computer and I slide it into a drawer. All seven members of the team, including Murray and Cohen, share a secretary. Tanya is an anglophone Canadian from Montreal with strong views on Quebec separatism and a boyfriend called Dan. She is big boned, thickset, and straightforward, and has been with the company since it started. Tanya wears a lot of makeup and piles her hair up high in a thick ebony bunch, which she never lets down. ‘Only Dan gets to see my hair,’ she says. No one has ever met Dan. At half past three the telephone rings on my desk. ‘Who is it, Tanya?’ ‘Someone from Andromeda.’ I think that it may be the Hobbit, but then she says, ‘Katharine Lanchester. You want me to take a message?’ Cohen looks up, just a half glance, registering the name. ‘No. I’ll take it.’ I was a day away, no more, from calling them myself. From his desk nearby, Ben mutters, ‘Play hard to get, Alec. Birds love that.’ ‘I’m putting her through.’ ‘Okay.’ Adrenaline now, my hand in my hair, pushing it out of my face. ‘Alec Milius.’ ‘Alec? It’s Katharine Lanchester at Andromeda. Fortner’s wife.’ ‘Oh, hello. What can I do for you?’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine, thanks. It’s good to hear from you.’ ‘Well, Fort so enjoyed going to the movies with you. Said he had a great time.’ Her voice is quick and enthused. ‘Yes. You missed a good film.’ ‘Oh, I can’t stand Westerns. Guys in leather standing in the middle of the street twirling six-shooters, seeing who blinks first. I prefer something more contemporary.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Still, I had a nice dinner with Fortner afterwards and he told me all about it. Matter of fact, that’s why I was calling. I was wondering if you and maybe Saul would like to have dinner sometime?’ ‘Sure, I–‘ ‘I mean I don’t know if you’re free, but…’ ‘No, no, not at all, I’d like that very much. I’ll ask him and I’m sure he’d like to.’ ‘Good. Shall we set a date?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘When are you not taken up?’ ‘Uh, anytime next week except–just let me check my diary.’ I know that I’m free every night. I just don’t want it to appear that way. ‘How about Wednesday?’ ‘Terrific. Wednesday it is. So long as Saul can make it.’ ‘I’m sure he’ll be able to.’ Cohen’s eyes are fixed on the far wall. He is listening in. ‘How’s Fortner?’ I ask. ‘Oh, he’s good. He’s in Washington right now. I’m just hoping that he’ll be back in time. He’s got a lot of work to get through out there.’ ‘So where shall we meet?’ ‘Why don’t we just say the In and Out again? Just at the gate there, eight o’clock?’ She had that planned. ‘Fine.’ ‘See you there, then.’ ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ I hang up and there is a rush of blood in my head. ‘What was all that?’ Cohen asks, chewing the end of a pencil. ‘Personal call.’ FIFTEEN Tiramisu The only spy who can provide a decent case for ideology is George Blake. Young, idealistic, impressionable, he was posted by SIS to Korea and kidnapped by the Communists shortly after the 1950 invasion. Given Das Kapital to read in his prison cell, Blake became a disciple of Marxism, and the KGB turned him after he offered to betray SIS. ‘I’d come to the conclusion that I was no longer fighting on the right side,’ he later explained. Upon his release in 1953, Blake returned to England a hero. He had suffered terribly in captivity and was seen to have survived the worst that communism could throw at him. There is television footage of Blake at Heathrow Airport, modest before the world’s press, a bearded man hiding a terrible secret. For the next eight years, working as an agent of the KGB, he betrayed every secret that passed across his desk, including Anglo-American cooperation on the construction of the Berlin Tunnel. His treachery is considered to have been more damaging even than Philby’s. Blake was caught more by a process of elimination than by distinguished detective work. SIS summoned him to Broadway Buildings, knowing that they had to extract a confession from him or he would walk free. After three days of fruitless interrogation, in which Blake denied any involvement with the Soviets, the SIS officer in charge of the case played what he knew was his final card. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we know you’re working for the Russians, and we understand why. You were a prisoner of the Communists, they tortured you. They blackmailed you into betraying SIS. You had no choice.’ This was too much for George. ‘No!’ he shouted, rising from his chair. ‘Nobody tortured me! Nobody blackmailed me! I acted out of a belief in communism.’ There was no financial incentive, he told them, no pressure to approach the KGB. ‘It was quite mechanical,’ he said. ‘It was as if I had ceased to exist.’ The platforms and escalators of Green Park underground station are thick with trapped summer heat. The humidity follows me as I clunk through the ticket barriers and take a flight of stairs up to street level. The tightly packed crowds gradually thin out as I move downhill towards the In and Out Club. I am casually dressed, in the American style: camel-coloured chinos, a blue button-down shirt, old suede loafers. Some thought has gone into this, some notion of what Katharine would like me to be. I want to give an impression of straightforwardness. I want to remind her of home. I see Fortner first, about fifty yards farther down the street. He is dressed in an old, baggy linen suit, wearing a white shirt, blue deck shoes, and no tie. At first I am disappointed to see him. There was a possibility that he would still be in Washington, and I had hoped that Katharine would be waiting for me alone. But it was inevitable that Fortner would make it: there’s simply too much at stake for him to stay away. Katharine is beside him, more tanned than I remember, making gentle bobbing turns on her toes and heels, her hands gently clasped behind her back. She is wearing a plain white T-shirt with loose charcoal trousers and light canvas shoes. The pair of them look as if they have just stepped off a ketch in St. Lucia. They see me now, and Katharine waves enthusiastically, starting to walk in my direction. Fortner lumbers just behind her, his creased pale suit stirring in the breeze. ‘Sorry. Am I late?’ ‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘We only just got here ourselves.’ She kisses me. Moisturizer. ‘Good to see ya, Milius,’ says Fortner, giving me a butch, pumping handshake and a wry old smile. But he looks tired underneath the joviality, far off and jet-lagged. Perhaps he came here directly from Heathrow. ‘I like your suit,’ I tell him, though I don’t. ‘Had it for years. Made in Hong Kong by a guy named Fat.’ We start walking towards The Ritz. ‘So it was great that you could make it tonight.’ ‘I was glad you rang.’ ‘Saul not with you?’ ‘He couldn’t come in the end. Sends his apologies. Had to go off at the last minute to shoot an advert.’ I never asked Saul to come along. I don’t know where he is or what he’s up to. ‘That’s too bad. Maybe next time.’ Katharine moves some loose hairs out of her face. ‘Hope you won’t be bored.’ ‘Not at all. I’m happy it being just the three of us.’ ‘You gotta girlfriend, Milius?’ I don’t mind it too much that Fortner has decided to call me that. It suggests a kind of intimacy. ‘Not at the moment. Too busy. I used to have one but we broke up.’ This is quietly registered by both of them, another fact about me. We continue along the street, the silence lengthening. ‘So where are we heading?’ I ask, trying to break it, trying to stop any sense that we might have nothing to say to one another. I must keep talking to them. I must earn their trust. ‘Good question,’ says Fortner, loudly clapping his hands. It is as if I have woken him up from a nap. ‘Kathy and I have been going to this place for years. We thought we’d show it to you. It’s a small Italian restaurant that’s been owned by the same Florentine family for decades. Ma?tre d’ goes by the name of Tucci.’ ‘Sounds great.’ Katharine’s attention has been distracted. There are hampers, golf bags, and elegant skirts on display in the windows of Fortnum & Mason and she has stopped to look at them. I am watching her when Fortner puts his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘I like this part of town.’ He’s decided to play the avuncular card right away. ‘It’s so…anachronistic, so Merchant Ivory, you know? Round here, an English gentleman can still get his toast done on one side, have an ivory handle attached to his favourite shooting stick, get a barber to file his nails down and rub his neck with cologne. You got your bespoke shirts, your customized suits. Look at all this stuff.’ ‘You like that, honey?’ Katharine asks, pointing at a smart two-piece ladies’ outfit in a window. ‘Not a whole lot,’ Fortner replies, his mood abruptly fractious. ‘Why, you wanna get it?’ ‘No. Just askin’.’ ‘Well, I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Let’s go eat.’ The restaurant has an outside staircase flaked with dried moss leading down to a basement. Fortner, walking ahead of us, clumps down the steps and through the heavy entrance door. He doesn’t bother holding it open for Katharine. He just wants to get inside and start eating. Katharine and I are left on the threshold and I hold the door open for her, letting her glide past me with a whisper of thanks that is almost conspiratorial. The restaurant is only half full. There’s a small clearing immediately inside the entrance, where we are met by a paunchy, hair-oiled Italian in late middle-age. Fortner already has his arm wrapped around him, with a big, fulfilled smile all over his face. ‘Here they come now,’ he is saying as we come through the door, his voice hearty and full of good cheer. ‘Tucci, let me introduce you to a young friend of ours, Mr Alec Milius. Very smart guy in the oil business.’ ‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ says Tucci, shaking my hand, but he hasn’t even looked at me. His eyes have been fixed on Katharine since she walked in. ‘And your beautiful wife, Mrs. Grice,’ he says. ‘How are you, my dear?’ Katharine bends to meet Tucci’s puckered kiss, offering him a smooth, pale cheek. She doesn’t bother explaining that Grice isn’t her surname. ‘You look as beautiful as ever, madam.’ ‘Oh, you’re incorrigible, Tucci. So charming.’ The slimy old bastard leads us downstairs into a dark basement where we are shown to a small table covered in a faded red cloth and cutlery. The decor is very seventies, but it isn’t consciously retro. Cheap wood carvings line the walls and there are candles in old wicker flasks on shelves. Hardened wax clings to their sides like jewellery. Fortner shuffles onto a sofa attached to the wall and Tucci pins the table up against his legs. I take the chair to Fortner’s right and Katharine sits opposite me. Three of us in a booth. Rather than have one of his dumb-looking Sicilian studs do it, Tucci then goes back upstairs and brings down three menus and a wine list, thereby giving himself as much time as possible with Katharine. All of his premeal small talk is addressed to her. That’s a lovely dress, Mrs. Grice. Have you been on holiday? You look so well. By contrast, Fortner and I are treated with something approaching contempt. Eventually, Fortner loses his cool and tells Tucci to bring us some drinks. ‘Right away, Mr Fortner. Right away. I have a nice bottle of Chianti you try. And some Pellegrino, perhaps?’ ‘Whatever. That’d be great.’ Fortner takes off his jacket to eat, tossing it in a crumpled heap onto the sofa beside him. Then he undoes the top three buttons of his shirt and inserts a napkin, mafia-style, below his neck. His chest hair is clearly visible, tight black curls like cigarette burns. In the early part of the meal we do not talk about any aspect of the oil business. I am not tapped for information, for tips and gossip, nor do Katharine and Fortner discuss ongoing projects at Andromeda. I have ordered veal, but it is tough and bland. Both Americans are having the same thing–plump breasts of chicken in what appears to be a mushroom cream sauce; it looks a lot better than mine. We share out French beans and potato croquettes and get through the first bottle of red wine within half an hour. We get along fine, better even than I had expected. Everything is easy and enjoyable. The generation gap between us, as was proved by the trip to the NFT, is no hindrance at all. Although Fortner’s age is in some ways accentuated by the vigour of his younger bride, he has that certain playfulness about him that largely offsets his age. Still, I cannot work out why Katharine would ever have chosen to marry him. Fortner is handsome, yes, with a certain gruff charm and a full head of hair, but close up, sitting near her in the dim light of the restaurant, the virility dissipates: he suffers by comparison, looking blotchy and liquor-sick, just another man on the wrong side of fifty. With a few drinks inside him, Fortner has a nice, sly sarcastic manner that he can get away with on account of his age–in a younger man, it would look like arrogance–yet there is a quality of solipsism about him that overshadows any occasional glints of mischief. As I felt when I first met him, though Fortner looks to have experienced a great deal, he appears to have learned very little from those experiences. There is even an element of stupidity in him. He can at times appear almost a fool. Yet his attitude towards Katharine is not one of deference and admiration. He is often short with her, critical and dismissive. At one point, just as I am finishing off my veal, she embarks on a story about her college days at Amherst. Before she has really begun, Fortner is interrupting her, telling her not to bore Alec with stories from her youth. Then he simply takes the conversation off on a separate tangent with which he is more at ease. This is done consciously, as a premeditated recrimination, but Katharine barely seems to mind. It is as if she has accepted the subjugatory role of pupil, like a student who has moved in with her tutor and finds herself living in his shadow. This is not how things should be. Katharine is smarter, quicker-witted, and more subtle, in her views and manner, than Fortner. He is gauche by comparison. Just once or twice her face registers impatience when Fortner goes too far, though I sense that this may be largely for my benefit, another tactic she employs in flirtation. Nevertheless, it is all the more pointed for being concealed from him. By the time the pudding menus arrive I am convinced that she is starved of simple affections and would cherish a little attention. Tucci recommends the tiramisu and flatters Katharine by telling her that she is the last person on earth who should worry about putting on weight. She will not be persuaded and orders fruit instead. Fortner asks if the restaurant still serves ice cream, and Tucci gives him a slightly withering look before saying yes. Fortner then orders a large bowl of mint choc chip. I ask for the tiramisu, and Tucci disappears upstairs with our order. This is when they finally ask me a question about Abnex. ‘How long have you been there?’ Katharine inquires, rearranging her napkin so that it forms a neat square on her lap. ‘About nine months.’ ‘You like it?’ She has asked me this before. At the party. ‘Yes. I find the work interesting. I’m underpaid and the hours are antisocial, but I have prospects.’ ‘Boy, you really know how to sell it,’ Fortner mutters. ‘You’ve just got me on a bad day. I had an argument with my boss earlier. He comes down hard when things don’t go his way.’ ‘What did you do wrong?’ Katharine asks. ‘That’s just it. I didn’t.’ ‘Okay then,’ she says patiently. ‘What does he think you did wrong?’ I get all the components of the story straight in my mind, then kick off. ‘He told me to set up a meeting with an associate of his, who I think is unreliable. Name of Warner. This guy is an old friend of Alan’s, so he feels a residual loyalty towards him. In other words, he’s prepared to overlook the fact that Warner’s a loser. Alan knows I think this, and it’s almost as if he enjoys giving me as much contact with him as possible.’ Fortner’s head drops slightly, his eyes moving slowly across the table. ‘Anyway, Warner didn’t return any of my calls for a week. I must have been ringing him five times a day. I needed some figures. Eventually I gave up and just got them from someone else. Alan went spastic, said I’d gone over his head and questioned his authority. And I’m at Abnex on a trial basis, so it doesn’t bode well.’ ‘A trial basis?’ says Fortner, looking up immediately. He hadn’t stopped listening to me. ‘You mean you’re not a full-time employee?’ ‘I’m halfway through a trial period. I have to attain a consistently high standard of work or they’ll kick me out.’ ‘Jesus,’ says Katharine, swallowing a mouthful of Chianti. ‘That’s a lot of pressure to work under.’ ‘Yeah,’ adds Fortner. ‘You’re a human being, not a Cadillac.’ I laugh at this, making a snorting noise loud enough to cause someone at a neighbouring table to look up and stare at me. I bring my napkin to my face and dab away an imaginary speck. Keep going. ‘The trouble is that they don’t give me any indication of how well I’m doing. There’s very little in the way of compliments or praise.’ ‘I think people need that, the encouragement,’ Katharine says. ‘That’s right,’ says Fortner, his voice going deep and meaningful. ‘So is that usual for young guys like yourself to get hired by a company and then, you know, just see how it pans out?’ ‘I guess so. I have friends in a similar kind of position. And there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it. It’s work, you know?’ The pair of them nod sympathetically, and, sensing that this is the best opportunity, I decide to tell them now about my interviews with SIS last year. It is a great risk, but Hawkes and I have decided that to tell the Americans about SIS may actually draw me further into their confidence. To conceal the information might arouse suspicion. ‘It’s funny,’ I say, taking a sip of wine. ‘I nearly became a spy.’ Katharine looks up first, vaguely startled. ‘What?’ she says. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you, Official Secrets Act and all that, but I got approached by MI6 a few months before I got the job at Abnex.’ Not missing a beat, Katharine says, ‘What is MI6? Like your version of the CIA?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Jesus. That’s so…so James Bond. So…are you…I mean, are…?’ ‘Of course he’s not, honey. He’s not gonna be sitting here telling us all about it if he’s in MI6.’ ‘I’m not a spy, Katharine. I didn’t pass the exams.’ ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Why? Why are you sorry?’ ‘Well, weren’t you disappointed?’ ‘Not at all. If they didn’t think I was good enough for the job, then fuck ’em.’ ‘That’s a great attitude,’ Fortner exclaims. ‘A great attitude.’ ‘How else am I supposed to react? I went through three months of vetting and interviewing and IQ tests and examinations, and at the end of it all, after they’d more or less told me I was certain to get in, they turned around and shut me out. With a phone call. Not a letter or a meeting. A phone call. No explanation, no reason why.’ My sense of disappointment should be clear to them. ‘You must have been devastated.’ But I don’t want to overplay the anger. ‘At the time, I was. Now I’m not so sure. I had a pretty idealistic view of the Foreign Office, but from what I can gather it’s not like that at all. I had images of exotic travel, of dead drops and seven-course dinners in the Russian embassy. Nowadays it’s all pen pushing and equal opportunities. Right across the board, the Civil Service is being filled up with bureaucrats and suits, people who have no problem toeing the party line. Anybody with a wild streak, anyone with a flash of the unpredictable, is ruled out. There are no rough edges anymore. The oil business has more room for adventure, don’t you think?’ They both nod. It looks as though the gamble has paid off. ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to rant.’ ‘No, no, not at all,’ says Katharine, laying her hand on my sleeve. A good sign. ‘It’s good to hear you talk about it. And I have two things I wanna say.’ She refills my glass, draining the bottle in the process. ‘One, I can’t believe that a guy as smart and together as you didn’t make it. And two, if your government doesn’t have sense enough to know a good thing when it sees one, well then, that’s their loss.’ And with that she raises her glass and we do a three-way clink over the table. ‘Here’s to you, Alec,’ says Fortner. ‘And screw MI6.’ While we are eating pudding something odd happens between Fortner and Katharine, something I had not expected to see. I have been given a large bowl of tiramisu and Katharine is insisting on tasting it. Fortner tells her to leave me alone, but she ignores him, sliding her spoon into the ooze on my plate and retrieving it with her hand held underneath, catching stray droplets of cream. ‘It’s good,’ she says, swallowing, and turns to Fortner. ‘Can I try yours, sweetie?’ He rears back, shielding his bowl with his hand. ‘No way,’ he says indignantly. ‘I don’t want your germs.’ There is a startled pause before she says, ‘I’m your wife, for Chrissakes.’ ‘Makes no difference to me. I don’t want any foreign saliva on my mint choc chip.’ Katharine is embarrassed, as am I, and she stands up just a few seconds later to go to the ladies’. ‘Sorry, Milius,’ Fortner grunts, now shamed into regret. ‘I get real touchy about that kinda thing.’ ‘I understand,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t worry.’ To smooth things over, he starts telling me a story about how the two of them met, but the ease has gone out of the evening. Fortner knows that he has slipped up, that he has shown me a side of himself he had intended to remain concealed. ‘You want coffee, honey?’ he asks timidly when Katharine comes back. I can tell straightaway that she has forgiven him, gathered herself together in the ladies’ and taken a deep breath. There is no hint of admonishment or frustration on her face. ‘Yeah. That’ll be nice,’ she says, grinning. She has put on a new coat of lipstick. ‘You boys having one?’ ‘We are.’ ‘Good. Then I’ll have an espresso.’ And the incident passes. Half an hour later we emerge into the darkness of W1. Fortner, who has picked up the bill, puts his arm around Katharine and walks east, looking around for a cab. The weight of his arm seems to be pulling her down on one side. ‘We gotta do this again sometime,’ she says. ‘Right, honey?’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ High up to the left, Katharine gazes at the postcard lights of Piccadilly Circus and says how she never grows tired of looking at them. We walk down the hill towards Waterloo Place and pass the statue commemorating the Crimea. There are no cabs in sight, but an old red Audi curb-crawls us on the corner of Pall Mall. An unlicensed taxi. Fortner looks over nervously as the driver lowers the window on the passenger side and mutters, ‘Cab?’ under his breath. I lean down and tell him no thanks. He pulls away. ‘Did you want to go with him?’ I ask. ‘No, we’ll get a black,’ Fortner replies firmly. And no sooner has he said this than one shows up. ‘You sure you don’t want it?’ Katharine says, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to catch a train from Charing Cross.’ ‘Well, it was lovely seeing you.’ ‘Give me a ring,’ I say as she climbs in behind Fortner. I can see the slim outline of her arse and a long slender thigh taut against the cloth of her charcoal trousers. ‘We will,’ he shouts out. It went well. SIXTEEN Hawkes Hawkes leaves the country for the next four and a half months, ostensibly on Abnex business, although I am increasingly of the view that he is involved in other projects with at least one other company. In his absence my encrypted reports are sent to John Lithiby, who has not contacted me directly since the beginning of the year. I have taken this as a sign of his approbation. There is a rumour in the office–no more than that–that Hawkes has a girlfriend in Venice. When we meet in the grey conference room on the second floor for our first debriefing of the summer, he has just returned from a ten-day break ‘in northern Italy.’ ‘Nice this time of year?’ I ask him. ‘Crowded,’ he says. Lithiby will have informed Hawkes of the progress of my relationship with Katharine and Fortner: the Sunday lunch I cooked for them at my flat in May, with the Hobbit, his girlfriend, and Saul in attendance; the night we watched England lose on penalties to Germany in a pub on Westbourne Grove; the Saturday afternoon when Fortner got sick, and Katharine and I ended up going to the cinema together. It is the record of a gradually improving acquaintance, all of it planned and analysed to the last detail. ‘John said something about a drive you took with Fortner the week before last. Could you tell me more about that?’ I have been fiddling with my mobile phone, which I now place on the table in front of me. ‘He wanted to see Brighton, said he’d never been there.’ ‘Where was Katharine?’ ‘Visiting a pregnant friend.’ ‘What did you talk about?’ ‘It’s in the report, Michael.’ ‘I want to hear it from you.’ I have difficulty casting my mind back to that afternoon. There is an important call coming through from an Abnex client in Russia this evening, and I am eager to get back to my desk to prepare for it. ‘It was normal. I told him about my problems at Abnex.’ ‘What kind of problems?’ ‘Made-up stuff. Not getting enough money, that kind of thing.’ ‘Don’t overplay that,’ he says, one of the few times that Hawkes has hinted at any concern over the way I am handling things. ‘I won’t,’ I tell him, lighting a cigarette. ‘Fort likes to give me advice about the business, tells me how to handle Alan and Harry. He gets a kick out of it.’ ‘Playing the father figure?’ I hesitate here, uncomfortable with the analogy. ‘If you want to call it that, yes. He likes to think of himself as someone who helps out the younger generation. He tried to set Saul up with a contact he had in advertising.’ ‘Did anything come of that?’ ‘Don’t think so. Anyway, we chatted, drove around, had some coffee. I managed to bring up that conversation you suggested.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘You wanted me to complain to them about our government doing anything the Americans tell it to.’ ‘I do recall that, yes.’ ‘As a matter of fact, I think I used your phrase: “We’ve been hanging on to the shirttails of every presidential administration since Franklin Roosevelt.” ‘ ‘And how did Fortner respond?’ ‘Coolly, I would say. That’s the word I used in my report. I told him I felt Britain had become the fifty-first American state. Ask nicely, and we’ll bomb Baghdad. Just say the word and you can use our runways. You know the kind of argument. Cut us a deal and you can borrow our aircraft carriers, our military installations. Even our soldiers, for Christ’s sake.’ ‘You’re not trying to defect, Alec,’ he says suddenly, cackling at his own joke. ‘I trust you didn’t go too far?’ ‘Relax,’ I tell him. ‘Fortner agreed with everything I said.’ ‘And Katharine. How is she?’ ‘Very flirtatious. That’s still the predominant tactic. Little arguments every now and again with Fortner, then a little glance at me for sympathy. She’s very touchy-feely. But that may be just a Yank thing.’ Hawkes straightens up in his chair. ‘Keep using the sexual element,’ he says, with the detachment of a doctor discussing a prescription. ‘Don’t go too far, but don’t shut her out.’ ‘I won’t.’ ‘When are you next seeing them?’ ‘This weekend. Fortner’s gone to Kiev for the pipeline conference. Katharine called me almost as soon as he left for the airport.’ ‘She did?’ ‘Yeah. Asked if I wanted to spend Saturday with her. Go for a walk in Battersea Park.’ ‘Let me know how it goes,’ he says. Feeling oddly confident, I decide to press him on something. ‘Any news on the job? Has Lithiby said anything about taking me on full-time?’ Hawkes withdraws slightly, as if offended by the question. As far as he is concerned, this matter has already been dealt with. ‘Things remain as they were,’ he says. ‘If the operation is a success, the Security Service will consolidate its relationship with you. Your position will become permanent.’ ‘That was always the precondition,’ I say, speaking for him. And in a tired echo, Hawkes says, ‘Yes. That was always the precondition.’ SEVENTEEN The Special Relationship Standing easy against the fridge in the kitchen at Colville Gardens, Katharine sweeps hair out of her face and says, ‘Alec, I’m gonna take a shower, is that all right? I’m kinda hot after our walk. If the phone rings, the machine’ll pick it up. You be okay for a bit; watch TV or something?’ ‘Sure.’ Her cheeks have rouged to a healthy flush after being outside in the fresh air of Battersea Park. ‘Why don’t you fix us a drink while I’m gone?’ I know what she likes: a fifty-fifty vodka tonic in a tall glass with a lot of ice and lemon. ‘You want a vodka and tonic?’ She smiles, pleased by this. ‘That’d be great. I’ve got olives in the refrigerator.’ ‘Not for me.’ ‘Okay. Leave ’em. They’re really for Fort. He eats them like candy.’ The kitchen is open plan, chrome, gadget filled. Their entire apartment is expensively decked out, but clearly rented, with no evidence of personal taste. Just a few photographs, some CDs, and an old clock on the wall. ‘You like a lot of lemon, don’t you?’ I ask as Katharine crosses to a cupboard above the sink. She takes down two highball glasses and a bottle of Smirnoff Blue and sets them on the counter. She is tall enough to reach up without standing on tiptoe. ‘Yeah. A lot of lemon. Squeeze it in.’ I move towards the fridge and open the freezer door. ‘That’ll be the best ice you ever had,’ she says from behind me. ‘The best ice? How come?’ ‘Fort’s started putting Volvic in the tray. Says he read somewhere it’s the only way to avoid getting too much lead or something.’ I half laugh and retrieve the tray. By the time I turn round, Katharine has left the room. I break out two cubes and throw them gently into a glass. Then I pour myself a double vodka and sink it in a single gulp. Gladiators is on ITV. I look around the other three channels, but there’s nothing on, so I mute the sound and flick through a copy of Time Out. There’s a swamp of plays and films on in London that I will never get to see because of work. All that entertainment, all those ideas and stories just passing me by. After about ten minutes, I hear a rustle at the sitting-room door and look up to see Katharine coming in. She is wearing a dark blue dressing gown over white silk pyjamas, her hair still wet from the shower, combed back in long, straight even strands. She looks up at me and smiles with softened wide eyes. ‘Good shower?’ I ask, just to disguise my surprise. ‘Great, thanks. Oh, are you watchin’ Gladiators?’ She sounds excited, picking up the remote control and putting the sound back on. The thin silk of her dressing gown flutters as she sits beside me, releasing an exquisite mist of warm lathered soap. ‘The British version of this show is much better than ours.’ ‘You actually watch this?’ ‘I find it intriguingly barbaric. She’s pretty, huh, the blonde one?’ The dour Scots referee says, ‘Monica, you will go on my first whistle. Clare, you will go on my second whistle,’ and before long two tracksuited PE teachers are chasing each other around the Birmingham NEC. ‘So, you hungry?’ Katharine asks, turning away from the screen to face me. ‘I’m gonna make us some supper.’ ‘That’d be great.’ I am still getting over the pyjamas. ‘You wanna stay here or help me out?’ ‘I’ll come with you.’ In the kitchen, Katharine goes to the fridge and takes out a tray of freshly made ravioli, which I make all the right noises about. Did you make them yourself? That’s amazing. So much better than the packaged stuff. The delicate shells are coated in a thin dusting of flour, and she sets them down beside the fridge. I help by putting a large pan of salted water on the stove, placing a lid on top, and turning the gas up high. The speed of the ignition makes me jerk my head back and Katharine asks if I’m okay. Oh, yes, I say, as the blue flames glow and roar. Then I sit on a tall wooden stool on the far side of the kitchen counter and watch as she prepares a salad. ‘I’ll teach you a trick,’ she says, crunching down on a stick of celery, like a toothpaste ad. ‘If you’ve got yourself a tired lettuce like this one, just stick it in a bowl of cold water for a while and it’ll freshen right up.’ ‘Handy.’ I can think of nothing worthwhile to say. ‘You never had your drink,’ I tell her, looking over at the sink, where the ice in her vodka tonic has melted into a tiny ball. ‘Oh that’s right,’ she exclaims. ‘I knew there was something missing. Will you fix me a fresh one?’ ‘Of course.’ The bottle of Smirnoff is still sitting out and I mix two fresh vodka and tonics as she washes a colander at the sink. This will be my third drink of the evening. ‘There you go,’ I say, handing it to her. Our fingers do not touch. She takes a sip and lets out a deep sigh. ‘God, you make these so good. How’d you know how to do that?’ ‘My father taught me.’ She sets the glass on the counter and starts slicing up some tomatoes, a cucumber, and the sticks of celery on a wooden chopping board, throwing them gently into a large teak bowl. Steam has started to rise in thick clouds from the pan on the stove, rattling the lid, but rather than do anything about it, I say, ‘Water’s boiling, Kathy.’ ‘You wanna get it, honey? I’m kinda busy.’ ‘Sure.’ I remove the lid, twist the dial to low, and watch the water subside into little ripples. Honey. She called me honey. Katharine stops chopping and comes to stand beside me. She has a wooden spoon in her hand and says, ‘Let’s put the pasta on, shall we?’ And now very carefully, one by one, she lowers the ravioli pillows into the water on the wooden spoon, intoning, ‘This is the tricky bit, this is the tricky bit,’ in a low voice that is almost a whisper. I am beside her, watching, doing nothing, my shoulder inches from hers. When she is done I walk away from the stove and sit back down on the stool. Katharine brings out a large white plate, a flagon of olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, and a basket of sliced ciabatta. These she places on the counter in front of me. Still clutching the basket, she turns around to face the stove and the silk of her dressing gown rides up to the elbow. Her bared arm is slender and brown, the long fingers of her flushed pink hands crowned by filed white nails. ‘The trick is not to let the water boil too fast,’ she says, talking to the opposite wall. ‘That way the ravioli doesn’t break up.’ She turns back to face me and the sleeve of her gown slips back down her arm. Even with all the flavours and steam around us, the smell of her is lifting from her hair and shower-warmed skin. ‘You’ll love this,’ she says, looking down at the counter. She picks up the flagon of oil and pours it onto the plate in a thin, controlled line that creates a perfect olive circle. Then she allows tiny droplets of balsamic vinegar to fall into the green centre of the plate, forming neat black orbs that float loose in the viscous liquid. ‘Dip the bread in,’ she says, showing me how with a crusty slice of her own. ‘It tastes so good.’ I take a smaller chunk of bread from the basket and run it through the oil. ‘Try to get a little more of the oil than the vinegar,’ she says. I swirl the bread around and leave cloudy crumbs amid the black and green spirals. ‘Sorry. Messy.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, licking her lips. I take my first mouthful, sweet and rich. ‘Tastes good, huh?’ We eat the ravioli sitting at the kitchen table, and consume the better part of a bottle of Chablis by quarter past nine. As Katharine is taking the plates to the sink, the telephone rings and she goes next door to answer it, padding there softly in bare feet. From the tone of the conversation, I presume that it’s Fortner. There’s no forced politeness in Katharine’s voice, just the easy familiarity of long-term couples. At no point does she mention that I am in the next room, though there’s a section of the conversation that I can’t hear owing to a car alarm triggering in Colville Gardens. When it is finally shut off, I overhear Katharine say, ‘You could say that, yes,’ and, ‘Absolutely,’ with a guardedness that leads me to assume they are talking about me. It will be past midnight in Kiev. ‘That was Fort,’ she says, breezing back into the kitchen a few moments later. ‘He says hi. Jesus, those fucking vehicle alarms.’ She wouldn’t ordinarily say ‘fucking’ unless she’d had a few drinks. ‘I know, I heard it.’ ‘What’s the point of them, anyway? Nobody pays any attention when they go off. They don’t prevent car crime. Everybody just ignores them. You wanna coffee or something? I’m making myself one.’ ‘Instant?’ ‘’Fraid so.’ ‘No, thanks.’ ‘You’re such a snob about coffee, Alec.’ ‘Nescaf? is just an interestingly flavoured milk drink. You shouldn’t tolerate it. I’m going for a pee, okay?’ ‘You do what you have to, sweetie.’ The bathroom is at the far end of the apartment, through the sitting room and down a long corridor that passes the entrance to the flat. The bathroom door is made of light wood with an unoiled hinge that squeaks like a laughing clown when I open it. I walk in and slide the lock. There is a mirror hung above the sink and I check my reflection, seeing tiny pimples dotted along my forehead, which can’t look good in the stark white light of the kitchen. The rest of my face is blanched and I push out my lips and cheeks to bring some colour back into them. Once a little red flush has appeared, I go back outside. Walking towards the sitting room, I steal a look through the door of their bedroom, which Katharine has left open after her shower. This is the most basic sort of invasion, but it is something I have to do. There are clothes, shoes, and several issues of The New Yorker strewn on the floor. I walk farther inside, my eyes shuttling around the room, taking in every detail. There is a fine charcoal sketch of a naked dancer on the wall above the bed, and a discarded bottle of mineral water by the window. I go back out into the corridor and hear the distant running of water at the kitchen sink. Katharine is washing up. There is another bedroom farther down on the right side of the passage, again with its door open. Again I look through it as I am passing, prying behind her back. An unmade bed is clearly visible on the far side, with one of Fortner’s trademark blue shirts lying crumpled on the sheets. An American paperback edition of Presumed Innocent has been balanced on the windowsill, and there are bottles of cologne on a dresser near the door. Is it possible that they no longer share a room? There are too many of Fortner’s possessions in here for him simply to have taken an afternoon nap. I walk quietly back to the first bedroom. This time I notice that the bed has been slept in only on one side. Katharine’s creams and lotions are all here, with skirts and suits on hangers by the door. But there are no male belongings, no ties or shoes. A photograph in a gilt frame by the window shows a middle-aged man on a beach with a face like an old sweater. But there are no pictures of Fortner, no snaps of him arm in arm with his wife. Not even a picture from their wedding. No noise in the corridor. On a side table I spot a heavy, leather-bound address book and pick it up. The alphabetized guides are curled and darkened with use, each letter covered in a thin film of dirt. I check the As, scanning the names quickly. AT&T Atwater, Donald G. Allison, Peter and Charlotte Ashwood, Christopher AM Management Acorn Alarms No Allardyce. That’s a good sign. To B, on to the Cs, then a flick through to R. Sure enough, at the bottom of the third page: Bar Reggio Royal Mail Ricken, Saul His full address and telephone number are there as well. I have to get back to the kitchen. But there is just time for M. M&T Communications Macpherson, Bob and Amy Maria’s Hair Salon Milius, Alec Suddenly I hear footsteps nearby, growing louder. I shut the book and place it back on the table. I am turning to leave when Katharine comes in behind me. We almost collide, and her face sparks into rage. ‘What are you doin’ in here, Alec?’ ‘I was just…’ ‘What? What are you doing?’ I can think of nothing to say and wait for the wave of anger in her eyes to break over me. In the space of a few seconds, the evening has been ruined. But something happens now, something entirely artificial and against the apparent nature of Katharine’s mood. It is as if she applies brakes to herself. Had I been anyone else, there would have been an argument, a venting of spleen, but the fury in her quickly subsides. ‘You get lost?’ she asks, though she knows that this is unrealistic. I have been to the bathroom in their flat countless times. ‘No. I was snooping. I’m sorry. It was an intrusion.’ ‘It’s all right,’ she replies, moving past me. ‘I just came to get something to wear. I’m kinda cold.’ I leave immediately, saying nothing, and return to the sitting room. When Katharine comes back–some time later–she is wearing thick Highland socks and a blue Gap sweatshirt beneath her dressing gown, as if to suppress anything that I may earlier have construed as erotic. She sits on the sofa opposite me, her back to the darkening sky, and fills the silence by reaching for the CD player. Her index finger prods through the first few songs on Innervisions, and Stevie comes on, the volume set low. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ she says, as if ‘Jesus Children of America’ had prompted her. ‘I was going to fix us some coffee.’ ‘I’m not having any,’ I tell her as she leaves the room, and even that sounds rude. She does not reply. I should deal with this, do it now. I follow her into the kitchen. ‘Listen, Kathy, I’m sorry. I had no right to be in your bedroom. If I caught you looking around my things, I’d go crazy.’ ‘Forget about it. I told you it was okay. I have no secrets.’ She tries to smile now, but there is no hiding her annoyance. She is clearly upset; not, perhaps, by the fact that I was in her room, but because I have discovered something intimate and concealed about her relationship with Fortner that may shame her. I do not think she saw me with the address book. Leaning heavily on the counter, she spoons a single mound of Nescaf? into a blue mug and fills it with hot water from the kettle. She has not looked directly at me since it happened. ‘I need you to know that it doesn’t matter to me, what I saw.’ ‘What?’ Katharine stares at me, her head at an angle, tetchy. ‘I think every married couple goes through a stage where they don’t share a room.’ ‘What the hell makes you think you can talk to me about this?’ she says, straightening up from the counter with a look of real disappointment in her eyes. ‘Forget it. I’m sorry.’ ‘No, Alec, I can’t forget it. How is that any of your business?’ ‘It’s not. I just didn’t want to leave without saying something. I don’t want you thinking that I know something about you and Fort and that I’m jumping to conclusions about it.’ ‘Why would I think that? Jesus, Alec, I can’t believe you’re being like this.’ We have never before raised our voices at each other, never had a cross word. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’ ‘No, you’re right. You shouldn’t have. If I asked you personal stuff about Kate, you wouldn’t like it too much, would you?’ ‘That was a long time ago.’ ‘Was it? Does it feel that way? No. No it doesn’t. These things are our most private…’ I put my hands in the air defensively, moving them up and down in a gesture of contrition. ‘I know, I know.’ ‘Jesus,’ she says, a rasp in her voice. ‘I don’t wanna argue with you like this.’ ‘Neither do I. I’m sorry.’ Silence now, and the edge suddenly goes out of our rush of talk. We are left facing each other, quiet and spent. ‘Let’s just sit next door, she says, turning to pick up her coffee. ‘Let’s just forget all about it.’ We go into the sitting room, the breath of the fight still around us. Stevie is singing–ridiculously–‘Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing.’ Katharine flops down into one of the sofas and clutches her mug in both palms. She has the most beautiful hands. Eventually she says, ‘I hate fighting with you,’ as if we have done it many times before. ‘Me too.’ I sit on the sofa opposite hers. ‘Can we talk about it?’ She emphasizes the word can here as if it were a test of character. I do not know how to respond except with the obvious: ‘About what?’ ‘About Fortner.’ His name balloons out of her as if he were sick. ‘Of course we can. If you want to.’ Her voice is very quiet and steady. It is almost as if she has prepared something to say. ‘We–Fortner and I–haven’t shared a bed for more than a year. For longer than you’ve known us.’ My pulse skips. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’ I immediately regret saying this. ‘We’ll work it out,’ she says hopefully. ‘I just can’t be beside him in a bed right now. It’s not anyone’s fault.’ ‘No.’ ‘We’re just kind of going through this thing where we’re not attracted to each other.’ ‘Or where you’re not attracted to him?’ She looks up at me, acknowledging with a softened expression that this is closer to the truth. ‘Have you talked about it? Does he know how you feel?’ ‘No. He thinks he’s moved into the spare room because I can’t stand his snoring. He has no idea it’s because I don’t want to sleep with him.’ A brief quiet falls on the room, the lull after a sudden revelation. Katharine drinks her coffee and plays with a loose thread on her dressing gown. ‘There’s some history to it,’ she says softly, still staring into her lap. ‘When I met Fort, I was very vulnerable. I’d just come out of a long-term relationship with a guy I’d met in college. It ended badly, and Fort offered me the kind of support that I needed.’ ‘Was he a rebound?’ Katharine doesn’t want to admit this either to herself or to me, but she says, ‘I guess so. Yes.’ She looks up at me, and I can only hope that my face looks receptive to what she wants to say. ‘Before I’d even really thought about it, we were married. Fort had been hitched before–kids, divorce, the usual pattern–and he really wanted to make it work this time. He hasn’t had access to his children for more than ten years. I was still kind of hung up on this guy, and Fortner knew that. He’s always known it.’ She takes a deep, possibly stagey breath. ‘I wanted to have kids, to make a family, but he was reluctant to start again. Fort’s daughters are your age, you know, and he doesn’t think it’s fair to children to become a parent when you’re close to fifty. But I didn’t agree with him. I thought he didn’t want to have kids because he didn’t really love me. That was the state my mind was in. And after my father died, I thought there was something almost reverent about being a parent, like if you had the chance to be one you shouldn’t throw that away. Maybe you felt that too after your dad passed away. But I was…I was…’ She is suddenly tripping over her thoughts, too scared to hear them come out. ‘Tell me.’ ‘Alec, you can’t ever tell him that I told you this. Okay? There’s only a handful of people in the world who know about it.’ ‘You can trust me.’ ‘It’s just I wanted children so badly. So I did a terrible thing. I tricked Fort into getting us pregnant. I stopped using birth control, and then when I got pregnant, I told him.’ ‘How did he react?’ ‘He went crazy. We were living in New York. But Fort, you know, he’s totally against termination, so he agreed that I could keep her.’ There’s only one possible outcome to this story, the worst outcome of all. ‘But I lost her. Three months in, there was a miscarriage and…’ ‘I’m so sorry.’ Katharine’s face is an awful picture of despair. In an attempt to appear resilient, she is struggling to bury tears. ‘Well, what can you do, huh?’ she says, with a shrug. ‘It was just one of those things. I was paying the penalty for deceiving him.’ ‘Is that how you see it?’ ‘It gives me a sort of comfort to see it that way. Maybe it isn’t true. I don’t know. Anyway, pretty soon after that, work brought us here to London, but it’s never been the same between us. Never. We just have the friendship.’ ‘He’s Misstra Know-It-All’ comes on the stereo system, a song I like, and it distracts me. What I should properly be feeling now is a sense of honour at being made privy to the secrets of their marriage, but even as Katharine is relating the most intimate history of her relationship with Fortner, my mind is caught between the loyalty demanded of friendship and a growing desire to take advantage of her vulnerability. When she is speaking, I have tried to look solely at her eyes, at the bridge of her nose, but every time she has looked away I have stolen glimpses of her calves, her wrists, the nape of her neck. ‘You’ve repaired that?’ ‘It’s a slow process. I was very honest with Fortner about how I’d gotten pregnant. I told him that it had been a deliberate act on my part. That was a mistake. It would have been better to lie, to blame the Pill or something. But somehow I wanted him to know, like an act of defiance.’ ‘Sure, I can see that.’ ‘It’s so good having someone who understands,’ she says. ‘I mean, you’ve had your heart broken, you’ve been through some tough times. You know how all this feels.’ ‘Perhaps,’ I say, nodding. ‘But not to the extent that you’ve been through it.’ ‘It’s not so bad,’ she says. She is attempting to come out of her contemplative mood into something more positive. ‘In a lot of ways, I’m lucky. Fort’s great, you know? He’s so smart and funny and laid-back and wise.’ ‘Oh yeah, he’s great.’ ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘What?’ ‘Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here for me when I needed you.’ ‘That’s all right. Don’t mention it.’ In a single fluid movement, she stands and crosses the room to where I am sitting, crouching down low in her thick Highland socks. Before I have had time to say anything, she has wrapped her arms around my neck, whispering, ‘Thank you, you’re sweet,’ into my hair. The weight of her is so perfect. I put my hand lightly on her back. She stops hugging first and withdraws. Now we are looking at each other. Still on her haunches, Katharine smiles and, very softly, touches the side of my face with her hand, drawing her fingers down to the line of my jaw. She lets them linger there and then slowly takes her hand away, bringing it to rest in her lap. There is a look in her eyes that promises the impossible, but something prevents me from acting on it. This is the moment, this is the time to do it, but after all the thought-dreams and the longings and the signals coding back and forth between us, I do not respond. Before I have even properly thought about it, I am saying, ‘I should get a cab.’ It was pure instinct, something defensive, an exact intimation of the correct thing to do. I could not spend the night with her without jeopardizing everything. ‘What, now?’ She leans backward and her relaxed smile disguises well any disappointment she may be feeling. ‘It’s not even eleven o’clock.’ ‘But it’s late. You’ll want to–‘ ‘No, it’s not.’ I don’t want to offend her, so I say, ‘You want me to stick around?’ ‘Sure. Relax. I’ll fix us a whisky.’ She gives my knee a squeeze and I simply can’t believe that I have just let that happen. Just kiss her. Just give in to what is inevitable. ‘Okay, then, maybe just a quick one.’ She stands slowly, as if expecting me at any moment to pull her down onto the sofa. Just the action of her moving releases that exquisite scent as she turns and walks into the kitchen. I hear Fortner’s frozen Volvic falling into glass tumblers, then the slow glug-glug of whisky being poured onto ice. The noise of her moving quietly around on the polished wooden floor fills me with regret. ‘You take water in it, don’t you?’ she asks, coming back in with the drinks. ‘Yes.’ She hands me a glass and sits beside me on the sofa. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, taking a sip of her whisky straightaway. It is as if she has plucked up the courage for a big subject while she was in the kitchen. ‘Of course.’ Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she tries to make the question sound as easygoing as possible. ‘Are you happy, Alec? I mean really happy?’ The question takes me by surprise. I have to be very careful what I say here. ‘Yes and no. Why?’ ‘I just worry about you sometimes. You seem a little unsettled.’ ‘It’s just nerves.’ ‘What d’you mean nerves? What about?’ It was a mistake to say that, to speak of nervousness. I’ll have to shift the subject, work from memory. ‘I was joking. Not nervousness exactly. I’m just in a constantly fraught state because of Abnex.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because of the pressure to do the best job that I can. Because of the feeling of being watched and listened in on all the time. Because of the demands Alan and Harry put on me. All that stuff. I’m so tired. It’s so easy to get locked into a particular lifestyle in London, a particular way of thinking. And right now all I seem to worry about is work. There’s nothing else.’ Katharine has tilted her head to one side, eyes welled up with concern. ‘You’ll get the job, won’t you?’ ‘Probably, yes. They wouldn’t spend all that money training someone just to chuck them out after a year. But it still hangs over me.’ I take a sip from the whisky tumbler and a slipped ice cube chills my top lip. ‘The truth is I have this deep-seated fear of failure. I seem to have lived with it all my life. Not a fear of personal failure, exactly. I’ve always been very sure and certain of my own abilities. But a fear of others’ thinking that I’m a failure. Maybe they’re the same thing.’ Katharine smiles crookedly, as if she is finding it difficult to concentrate. ‘It’s like this, Kathy. I want to be recognized as someone who stands apart. But even at school I was always following on the heels of other students–just one or two, that’s all–who were more able than I was. Smarter in the classroom, quicker witted in the playground, faster on the football pitch. They had a sort of effortlessness about them which I have never had. And I always coveted that. I feel as though I have lived my life suspended between brilliance and mediocrity, you know? Neither ordinary nor exceptional. Do you ever feel like that?’ ‘I think we all do, all the time,’ she replies, lightly shrugging. ‘We try to kid ourselves that we’re in some way distinct from everyone else. More valuable, more interesting. We create this illusion of personal superiority. Actually, I think men in particular do that. A whole lot more than women, as a matter of fact.’ ‘I think you’re right.’ I have a longing for a cigarette. ‘Still,’ she says, ‘I gotta say that you don’t seem that way to us.’ ‘Who’s us?’ ‘Fort and I.’ ‘Don’t seem vain?’ ‘No.’ It’s good that they think that. ‘But are you disappointed to hear me say these things?’ She jumps at this: ‘No! Hell no. Talk, Alec, it’s fine. We’re friends. This is how it’s supposed to be.’ ‘I’m just telling you what I feel.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Like for a long time now I’ve thought that things are down to luck. Success has nothing to do with talent, don’t you think? It’s just good fortune. Some people are lucky, some aren’t. It’s that simple.’ Katharine tucks her feet under her thighs, curling up tight on the sofa, and she breathes out through a narrow channel formed between pursed lips. I can feel the wine now, the dissembling brew of vodka and whisky. ‘For example, I was predicted straight-A grades for university, but I got sick and took a string of Bs and Cs, so I didn’t get my chance to go to Oxbridge. That would have changed everything. Oxford and Cambridge are the only truly optimistic places in England. Graduates come out feeling that they can do anything, that they can be anybody, because that’s the environment they’ve been educated in. And what’s to stop them? It’s almost American in that sense. But I meet Oxbridge graduates, and there’s not one of them who has something I don’t, some quality I don’t possess. And yet somehow they’ve found themselves in positions of influence or of great wealth, they’ve got ahead. Now what is that about if it isn’t just luck? I mean, what do they have that I haven’t? Am I lazy? I don’t think so. I didn’t sit on my arse at university screwing girls and smoking grass and raving it up. I just didn’t get a break. And I’m not the sort of person who gets depressed. If I start feeling low, I tell myself it’s just irrational, a chemical imbalance, and I pull myself out of it. I feel as if I have had such bad luck, you know?’ Katharine brings her eyes down from the ceiling and exclaims, ‘But you’re doing such good work now, such important work. The Caspian is potentially one of the most vibrant economic and political areas in the world. You’re playing a part in that. I had no idea you harboured these frustrations, Alec.’ I shouldn’t go too far with this. ‘They’re not constant. I don’t feel like that all the time. And you’re right–the Caspian is exciting. But look at how I’m treated, Kathy. Twelve and a half thousand pounds a year and no future to bank on. There’s so little respect for low-level employees at Abnex, it’s staggering. I can’t believe what a shitty company it is.’ ‘How are they shitty?’ This has caught her interest. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Well…’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I’ve only just started admitting this to myself, but after what happened with MI6, Abnex was a bit of a rebound.’ ‘MI6?’ she says, as if she’s never heard of it. ‘Oh yes, of course. Your interviews. How do you mean a rebound?’ ‘Well, that was my dream job. To do that.’ ‘Yes,’ she says slowly. ‘I recall you saying.’ I watch her face for a trace of deceit, but there is nothing. ‘Not for Queen and Country–that’s all shit–but to be involved in something where success or failure depended entirely on me and me alone. Working in oil is okay, but it doesn’t compare to what I would have experienced if I’d been involved in intelligence work. And I’m not sure that I’m cut out for the corporate life.’ ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Let me put it like this. Sometimes I wake up and I think: is this it? Is this what I really want to do with my life? Is this the sum total of my efforts so far? I so much wanted to be a success at something. To be significant. And I still resent the Foreign Office for denying me that. It’s childish, but that’s how I feel.’ ‘But you are a success, Alec,’ she says, and it sounds as if she really means it. ‘No, I mean a successful individual. I wanted to make my own mark on the world. MI6 would have given me that. Is that too idealistic?’ ‘No,’ she says quietly, nodding her head in slow agreement. ‘It’s not too idealistic. You know, it’s funny. I look at you, and I think you have everything a guy your age could possibly want.’ ‘It’s not enough.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I want acclaim. I want to be acknowledged.’ ‘That’s understandable. A lot of young, ambitious guys are just like you. But do you mind if I give you a piece of advice?’ ‘Go ahead.’ After a brief pause, she says, ‘I think you should relax a little bit, try to enjoy being young. What do you say?’ Katharine edges towards me, lending a bending emphasis to the question. For the first time since she returned from the kitchen, we find ourselves looking each other directly in the eye. We hold the contact, drawing out a candid silence, and I tell myself: this is happening again. She is giving it another try. She is guiding us gradually towards the bliss of an infidelity. And I think of Fortner, asleep in Kiev, and feel no loyalty to him whatsoever. ‘Relax a little bit?’ I repeat, moving towards her. ‘Yes.’ ‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ ‘I dunno,’ she says, leaning back. ‘Get out a bit more. Try not to care so much about what other people think about you.’ In this split instant, I fear that I have read the situation wrongly. Her manner becomes suddenly curt, even distant, as if by flirting with her I have broken the spell between us, made it explicit. ‘Easier said than done.’ ‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Why is that easier said than done?’ ‘I find it so hard, Kathy. To relax.’ ‘Oh, come on,’ she says, tossing her face up to the ceiling. She finds my cautiousness disappointing. ‘You’re right…’ ‘You know I am. I know what’s best for you. What about Saul? Why don’t you go out with him more?’ ‘With Saul? He’s always busy. Always got a new girlfriend on the go.’ ‘Yes,’ she says quietly, standing and picking up the two empty glasses from the table. ‘Let me give you a hand with those.’ ‘No no, that’s okay.’ As she moves towards the kitchen she is shaking her head. ‘You’re so serious, Alec. So serious. Always have been.’ I don’t reply. It is as if she is angry with me. ‘You want another drink?’ she calls out. ‘No, thanks. I’ve had one too many.’ ‘Me too,’ she says, coming back in. ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ ‘Fine.’ ‘Be here when I get back?’ ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I had expected it. When she returns from the bathroom, Katharine is yawning, the elegant sinew and muscle on her neck stretched out in fine strands. She slumps down on the sofa and says, ‘Excuse me. Oh, I’m sorry. Must be tired.’ I take the cue. The hint is broad enough. ‘I should be going, Kathy. It’s late.’ ‘No, don’t,’ she says, jerking up out of her seat with a suddenness that gives me new hope. ‘It’s so nice having you here. I’m just a little sleepy, that’s all.’ She rests her hand lightly on my leg. Why is she blowing so hot and cold? ‘That’s why I should be going. If you’re sleepy.’ ‘Why don’t you stay the night? It’s Sunday tomorrow.’ ‘No. You’ll want to be on your own.’ ‘Not at all. I hate being alone. Strange noises. It would be nice if you slept over.’ ‘You sure?’ ‘Sure, I’m sure.’ ‘Because that would be great if I could. I’d save the money on a taxi.’ ‘Well there you go, then. It’s settled.’ She beams, lots of teeth. ‘It’ll be just me and you. You can look out for me. Be my protector.’ ‘Well, if I’m going to do that, I should sleep on the sofa. See the burglars coming in.’ ‘You won’t be all that comfortable.’ ‘Well, where do you suggest I sleep?’ I put as much ambiguity into this as is comfortable to risk, but Katharine doesn’t pick it up. ‘Well, there’s always Fortner’s room,’ she says. ‘I can change the sheets.’ Not what I wanted her to say. ‘That’s a chore. You don’t want to be doing that at this time of night.’ ‘No really. It’s no problem.’ I scratch my temple. ‘Look, maybe I should just get a taxi. Maybe you’d prefer it if I went.’ ‘No. Stay. I’ll fetch you a blanket.’ ‘You have one spare?’ ‘Yeah. I got plenty.’ She twists up from the sofa, her left sock hanging loose off the toes, and walks back down the corridor. ‘There you go,’ she says, returning with a green checkered rug draped over her arm. She lays it on the sofa beside me. ‘Need a pillow?’ She yawns again. ‘No, the cushions will be fine.’ ‘Okay, then. Well, I’m gonna get some sleep. Shout if you need anything.’ ‘I will.’ And she leaves the room. I am not sure that there was anything else I could have done. For a moment, sex was hovering in the background like a secret promise, but it was too much of a risk to make a move. I could not have been certain of her response. But now I am alone, still clothed, still wide awake, feeling cramped and uncomfortable on a Habitat sofa. I regret talking her into letting me stay the night. I only did it in the hope of being asked to join her in bed. I’d like to be on my way home, working back through the night’s conversations, thinking them through and noting them down. Now I am stuck here for what will be at least six or seven hours. At around two o’clock, perhaps a little later, I hear the noise of footsteps in the corridor. A quiet tiptoe in the dark. I turn on the sofa to face out into the darkened room, eyes squinting as a light comes on in the passage. I make out Katharine’s silhouette in the doorway. She pauses there, and the room is so quiet that I can hear her breathing. She is coming towards me, edging forward. ‘Kathy?’ ‘Sorry.’ She is whispering, as if someone might hear. ‘Did I wake you?’ ‘No. I can’t sleep.’ ‘I was just gonna get a glass of water,’ she says. ‘Sorry to wake you. You want one?’ ‘No, thanks.’ If I’d said yes, it would have brought her over here. That was stupid. ‘Actually, maybe I will have one.’ ‘Okay.’ She turns on a side light in the kitchen and the low hum of the fridge compressor cuts out as she opens the door. A narrow path of bright light floods the floor. She pours two glasses of water, closes the fridge, and comes back into the sitting room. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/charles-cumming/alec-milius-spy-series-books-1-and-2-a-spy-by-nature-the-s/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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