Authors: Charles Cumming
“Sure,” says Fortner, listening hard. My glass of whiskey has a taste of aniseed on its rim. I want to take it back and complain.
“So I bought her a few drinks, tried to make her laugh, tried to act cool, tried to dance without making a fool of myself. But nothing seemed to work. All night she seemed to be getting further and further away from me and I had no idea why. Anyway, after the club closed we found ourselves in the hotel lift together, going back to our rooms, and I tried to kiss her. I lunged in and waited for a response, even though deep down I knew it wasn’t coming. I knew she didn’t like me, and sure enough she veered away. Then the doors of the lift opened onto her floor and she said good night—I couldn’t tell if she was giggling or offended—got out of the lift and went off down the corridor to her room.”
“What happened then?” says Fortner.
“I went back to my room. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, you name it.”
“You only tried kissin’ her, for Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t know Kate.”
Fortner frowns.
“It was five in the morning and I was drunk and melancholy. The time difference with London was four or five hours so I decided to ring Kate, to hear her voice, just to make myself feel better so that I could get some sleep. So I picked up the phone and dialed her number. She answered almost straightaway.”
“What’d she say?”
“She was crying.”
“Crying?”
“Yeah. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and without a second’s hesitation she said, ‘I just miss you. I woke up and you weren’t beside me and I was all alone and I miss you.’ That’s how much she loved me.”
Fortner absorbs the story, but his blank expression indicates that it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. Once you’ve seen one broken heart, you’ve seen them all. He waits for a few seconds, just out of politeness, and then asks, “Was Kate always emotional? Cryin’ all the time?”
It irritates me that he’ll think of her now as meek and timid, a little lamb of insecurity unable to sustain herself without me. She wasn’t like that at all.
“No. She’s very strong. She’s one of those people who are old before their time, who know exactly what they want and don’t waste any time getting it. Kate’s very low-bullshit. She has no ego.”
“Bet you’re wrong about that,” he says, swallowing a mouthful of whiskey. “Everyone has an ego, Milius. Some are just better at hidin’ it than others.”
“You think Katharine has an ego?”
“Hell, yeah. Why, you don’t think she does?”
I don’t want to give Fortner the impression that I’ve given too much time to thinking about his wife.
“I dunno. But it’s interesting. Kate seemed so perfect to me that by the end I just worshiped her. That had a lot to do with the fact that she was so kind. It didn’t seem proper, or possible, that someone could be as good and as pure as she was. I was in awe of her beauty. It got to such a point that I felt I could no longer touch her. She actually made me feel unworthy of her. Perverted, even. She was too good for me.”
“But you still see her?” he asks quickly, aware of an emerging contradiction. I’d forgotten that I’d lied about that.
“Yeah. But it’s just sex now. Sex and the occasional chat. Nostalgia.”
“If you could take her back, would you?” he asks. “Go back to having a full relationship, living together and all that?”
“Straightaway.”
“Why?”
It feels so good to be telling him even a semblance of truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly took out a notebook and began taking shorthand.
“This is what I truly believe,” I tell him, and this will be my last word on the subject. “I believe that people spend years looking for the right person to be with. They try on different personalities, different bodies, different neuroses, until they find one that fits. I just happened to find the right girl when I was nineteen years old.”
“That the only time you cheated on her, in Costa Rica?”
“Yes.”
No one knows about Anna. Only Kate and Saul, and the people at CEBDO.
“Truth?”
“Course it’s the truth. Why? Do you ever contemplate screwing around on Katharine?”
“Do I ever
contemplate
it?” Fortner appears to examine the word for its various meanings, like a lawyer checking small print. Then he says, “No,” with tremendous firmness.
“But you think about it?”
“Oh, sure, I think about it. Does Rose Kennedy have a black dress? Sure, I
think
about it. I’d been messin’ around for years before I met Kathy, and it’s been hard givin’ all that up. But you know what I finally realized?”
“No. What?”
“I realized that there’s a lot of attractive women out there, but you can’t fuck ’em all. It just ain’t possible. The problem with screwing around is you get yourself a taste for it. You fuck one woman, you start developing this lucky feelin’, start thinking you can fuck the next one that comes along, and the next one after that. What you have to learn is how to prefer looking at women instead of touching them. You see what I’m saying? It’s like giving up cigarettes. You might love to have a smoke, the smell of the tobacco on the air, but you know it’ll kill you if you do. You can never let that filter touch your lips again. Same with women. You gotta let ’em go.”
He takes another slug of scotch, as if anticipating applause, and lets the alcohol sloosh and sting around his mouth.
“It’s like gettin’ older.” Fortner’s hand ducks down below the table and he gives his balls a good, ill-disguised scratching. “When you’re a young kid, you think you can change the world, right? You see a problem and you can articulate it to your college friends and suddenly the world’s a much better fuckin’ place to live. But then you start gettin’ older, and you get yourself a whole new bunch of experiences. You’re aware of a lot more points of view. So now it’s not so easy sounding convinced about what you’re thinkin’ about, ’cos you know too many of the angles. You followin’ me?”
I have been distracted by the gradual exodus of people in the pub, the clatter and wipe of closing. But I know I can drift out of the conversation and still come back in to follow Fortner’s train of thought.
“Oh, yeah,” I tell him. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Jeez, I’m hammered,” he says suddenly, wiping his brow with his forearm. He had noticed that my attention was wandering. “We oughta be going, I guess. Hope my jacket’s still here.”
“It should be,” I tell him.
Both of us finish our drinks and stand up. I take my pack of cigarettes off the table and check that the lighter is still in my trousers. As we head for the exit, Fortner pulls his jacket off the hook by the bar—it’s the last one there—and flips it over his shoulder. He barks a friendly farewell to the Kiwi, who is busy emptying ashtrays into a blue plastic bucket. The barman looks up at us and says, “Night, guys, see y’again,” and then goes back to work.
Out on the street, a few paces up the road, Fortner turns to me.
“Well, young man,” he says, slapping me on the back. “It’s been a pleasure as always. Stay in touch. I’m gonna go home, wake up Kathy, take a fistful of aspirin, and try to get some sleep. You gonna be okay gettin’ back to your apartment? You wanna come up for a beer, a coffee or somethin’?”
“No. I’d better be off. Got work tomorrow.”
“Sure. Okay, I’ll see ya. Gimme a call in the next few days.”
“Will do.”
And he ambles up the street, a lost, faintly disheveled figure gradually moving out of focus. I have this sense that the evening has ended oddly, too quickly, but it’s a barely registered concern.
I head up the hill as far as Holland Park Avenue, but there isn’t a taxi in sight. Passing the underground station, my mobile phone goes off and I take it out of my jacket.
“Alec?”
“Yes.”
It’s Cohen.
“Harry. Hi. How are you?”
“I’m at the office.”
I look at my watch.
“But it’s past eleven.”
“Do you think I’m not aware of that?”
“No, I simply—”
He interrupts me, his voice bullish and proud.
“Look. When did you speak to Raymond Mackenzie?”
“Off the top of my head I can’t remember. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“Given that he’s leaving for Turkmenistan in seven hours, no it can’t.”
“I think I spoke to him yesterday. In the afternoon. I had everything he needs faxed over to him. He’s not going there with his trousers down.”
The connection falters here, dead noise and then broken words.
“Harry, I can’t hear you.”
Cohen is raising his voice, but it’s impossible to make out what he is saying.
“I can’t hear you. Harry? My battery’s dead. Listen, I’ll call you from a landline—”
He is cut off.
There is a phone booth nearby, decorated with a patchwork quilt of whore cards. A man is standing inside, a worn-out husband wearing a raincoat and training shoes. I look straight at him and our eyes briefly meet, but with no regard for this he just rocks back on his heels and has a good look at what’s on offer. He pans left and right, studying the cards, taking his time. Traffic sweeps by and suddenly I feel cold.
After a minute or so he makes up his mind, scribbling a number on a pad that rests on the thin metal shelf to the right of the phone. Then he drops a ten-pence piece into the slot.
I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to be waiting to make a phone call to Cohen at half past eleven at night. I tap on the glass, fast with the hard edge of my knuckle, but the man just ignores me, turning his back.
A cab drives past and I flag it down, riding back to Uxbridge Road. But when I try Cohen’s number from home, there is no reply. Just the smug disdain of his voice mail and a low-pitched beep.
I hang up.
The keypad on my telephone at home has four preprogrammed numbers: 1 is Mum; 2 is Saul; 3 is Katharine and Fortner; 0 is Abnex. The rest are blank.
I push Memory 3 and listen to the tone-dial symphony of their number ringing.
She answers. “Hello. Katharine Lanchester.”
Here we go.
“I don’t fucking believe it.”
“Alec. Is that you?”
“I don’t fucking
believe
it.”
“Alec, what is it?”
“Abnex told me they’re not satisfied with what I’m doing. With my work. They’re not convinced I’m doing the best I can.”
“Slow down, honey. Slow down.”
“I can’t get my head around it.”
“What did they say?”
“That if I don’t start pulling my weight they won’t give me a contract when my trial period is over.”
“When did they say this?”
She whispers, “It’s Alec,” to Fortner. He’s there in the room with her.
“Today. Murray called me into his office and we both went upstairs and I was given a dressing down by David Caccia, the fucking guy who hired me in the first place. Obviously Murray’s been on him about me. It was totally humiliating.”
“Just you? Was anyone else criticized?”
I have to think about this before answering. It’s all lies.
“Only Piers. But his job is safe, he’s on contract. He’s not in the same position as I am.”
“It’s possible they’re just giving everybody a scare. Management likes to do that from time to time.”
“Well then, fuck them for doing that, Kathy. I’ve worked my arse off for that company, learning my trade, doing overtime, making up for the fact that I came in through the back door. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to…”
“To what?”
“I just can’t believe I’m being treated like this. And they have the nerve to pay me twelve thousand a year and still talk to me like that.”
“It is kind of odd. I mean you’re there every night until eight or nine, right? Later sometimes.”
She’s finding it difficult to know what to say. My voice is shaking. I have taken her by surprise.
“Wait a minute, Alec.” There is a muffled noise on the line, like a piece of cloth being dragged across the receiver. “Fort’s trying to say something. What, honey?…Yeah, that’s a good idea. Why don’t you come over here, for dinner, huh? We can talk about it. We haven’t eaten yet, and besides, we haven’t seen you in almost two weeks.”
I wasn’t expecting this. It could all happen quicker than I anticipated.
“Now? Are you sure it’s not too late? Because that would be great.”
“Sure it’s not too late. Come on over. I got a chicken here needs roasting. There’s easily gonna be enough for three. Get a cab and you’ll be here in a half hour.”
They both come to the door. Katharine’s face is a haven of sympathy. Her hair is brushed out and she’s wearing a long black dress with red roses printed on the cotton. Fortner looks unsettled, nervous, even. He is wearing flannel trousers and a white shirt with an old, canary-yellow tie knotted tight against his larynx.
“Come on in,” says Katharine, putting her arm across my shoulders. They’ve obviously decided that she’ll play the mother figure. “You’ve had a shitty day.”
“I’m really sorry to bother you like this.”
“No. God, no. We’re your friends. We’re here for you. Right, Fort?”
Fortner nods and says, “Of course,” like he has something else on his mind.
“You wanna fix Alec a drink, honey? What do you feel like?”
“Do you have any vodka?”
“I think we have some left over from the last time you went at it,” Fortner says, going into the kitchen ahead of me. “You have it straight, Alec, or with tonic?”
“Tonic and ice,” Katharine calls after him, smiling at me broadly.
I am invited to come in and sit down, which I do, on the large window-facing sofa with the coffee table in front of it. All the lamps are on to make the room feel warm and cozy; there’s even jazz drifting out of the CD player. It’s John Coltrane or Miles Davis, one or the other. I light a cigarette and look over at Katharine, who has sat down on the sofa facing mine. I allow myself a courageous little smile, a gesture to suggest that things aren’t as bad as I might have made out on the phone. I want to appear gutsy, while at the same time eliciting their sympathies.
Fortner emerges with my drink in a large tumbler. As far as I can make out they aren’t having anything themselves. There’s an ice-melted glass on the mantelpiece above the fire, but it’s a leftover from early evening.
As Fortner hands me my drink, I smell shaving foam or aftershave on him, and indeed his face does look unduly smooth for this time of night. Is it possible that he has preened himself for me, as if I were the vicar coming for tea? He walks around the coffee table and falls heavily into his favorite armchair, the collapse of a man whose evening rhythm has been disturbed. There’s a smile on his face that his eyes aren’t backing up. My visit has thrown him: he’d like to have gone to bed with a Ludlum and seen the day off. Now he has to reengage his mind and give this situation his full attention.
“So come on. Spit it out,” he says, not unkindly. “What’d they say to you?”
“Just what I said on the phone.” He’s made the vodka strong, at least a double, and I am wary of this. Have to keep my wits about me.
“Go through it again for Fort, sweetie. He didn’t hear our conversation.”
For the old man’s benefit, I retread the shape of the threat from Abnex.
“You know, at least I’ve always told you, that I don’t really get on with the two senior guys on my team.”
“What are their names?” he asks. “Cohen, is that it, and Alan Murray?”
“Harry Cohen, yes. They’re very tight, very good friends.”
“And you feel that they…?”
Katharine says, “Let him finish, honey.”
“From day one they’ve treated me disrespectfully. I get given more work to do than any other member of the team. I have to work longer hours, I have to take more shit. If there’s a letter that needs writing, a phone call that has to be made, if a client needs to talk with one of us or if Abnex needs somebody to stay in the office over the weekend, it’s always me that has to do it. Alan swans up and says, ‘Alec, do this, Alec do that,’ or if he’s not around, Harry does the same thing. Never a please or a thank-you. Just this expectation that I will fall into line. Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m the junior partner. In a sense, I deserve to get given the menial tasks. But I am not
appreciated.
I am not afforded any respect. If I do a good job, it goes unnoticed. Either that or Harry will take the credit. But if I fuck something up, it sure as shit isn’t forgotten.”
Fortner’s mouth has dropped into a deep scowl, like a horseshoe spilling its luck.
“And I’ve never been sure whether they treat me like this because they genuinely dislike me, or because of jealousy….”
“The latter, most likely,” he mutters.
“Or it could be because they feel threatened by me. I really can’t believe that they think I’m no good at my job. That’s just impossible. If you could just see the fuck-ups J.T. makes. Lost business, bad planning,
basic
fucking mistakes. But today it’s me they chose to round on.”
“What did they say?” Katharine asks.
“They say I screwed up with this guy called Raymond Mackenzie. He went to the Caspian for us, he’s one of our top oil traders. I was supposed to do background for him, get logistical information about pipelines out there, how their refineries are set up, that kind of stuff.”
“Yes,” says Fortner slowly.
“I got hold of maps, spoke to a bunch of geologists, it was a normal job. And I did it well, you know?”
“Sure,” he says.
“There are so many things that I could have slipped up on but didn’t. I got the size of the export jetties—that took three days to discover—I got watertight information about pipelines that he was able to work with. But Mackenzie gets out there and he’s ready to finalize a deal with the Turkmenbashi refinery when it turns out that the oil is going to be too sulfurous for them to handle. So it’s looking like we’re going to have to recommend spending a hundred and fifty million dollars on a brand-new distillate hydro treating unit to strip out the sulfur at the refinery.”
“Surely that’s not your responsibility,” says Katharine. “Surely they would have found something like that out long ago?”
“Well, they didn’t,” I snap, though she does not look offended. “I was supposed to check it out, but it never crossed my mind. And now we have all this oil, an expectant market, and no way to fucking refine it and get it out to them.”
“There’s gotta be another refinery.”
“That’s what I’ve been working on. I’m trying the one in Baku. But the shit still hit the fan. Murray went fucking crazy.”
“Guy’s a chump,” says Fortner. “Class-A dickhead.”
Katharine looks upset.
“I can’t believe this,” she says. “After all you’ve done for them. I think it’s despicable the way you’re being treated.”
To which Fortner adds, “You must be mad as hell,” getting up from his chair to put some classical music on. The volume is louder than it needs to be. “Alan Murray is lucky to have a guy like you on board. Period.”
“Well, I must be doing something wrong.”
“No,” Katharine says sharply. “I don’t think so at all. In fact, quite the contrary. This is about personalities, it’s not about the job. Obviously there are people within your organization who feel threatened by you.”
Obviously.
“I’ve seen it a thousand times,” says Fortner, now moving to the window and closing the curtains. “A thousand times.”
“What do you think I should do?”
For once, the immediacy of their answers stalls. Fortner glances over at his wife and, only when a few seconds have passed, says, “We’ll come to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been thinking, and we have a few ideas as to how we might help you.”
“I don’t understand.”
My pulse starts to thump. It’s coming.
“Before we get to that, there’s something I’d like to say.”
“Sure. What is it?”
Fortner moves away from the window, pacing to the kitchen door and then back to the drawn curtains. At times he is talking behind me. The anxiety he was showing when I first arrived has receded completely.
“There’s a pattern of behavior here, Alec. Do you see it?”
Katharine is nodding confidently, as if she already knows what he’s going to say.
“What pattern? Does this have something to do with what you were saying about ideas to help me?”
Don’t rush them.
“You remember that conversation we had a while back about your interviews with MI6? Do you remember that?”
He’s behind me now. Only Katharine can see the distinct characteristics of his face.
“Of course, yes.”
“Well, it was my view then, and it still is, that if the British government could afford to throw away someone of your potential, then it’s either in much better shape than anyone thinks, or it’s just plain dumb. Now…”
He moves back to the bay window, turning to face me.
“Abnex appears to be doing the same thing. I get a sense that both of these organizations are overawed by you. You may think of that as an overstatement, but let me explain.” He touches his tie, loosening it. “It seems to us that Abnex doesn’t really know how to get the best out of you. It’s almost as if they can’t deal with an employee who shows a little flair or versatility. Now, I’m not blind, Alec. We both know that you can step out of line occasionally. But only—and this is crucial—only ever in the interests of the company.”
“I’m just sick of being underestimated,” I tell him, skirting the compliment. “I’m sick of being ignored and treated as a second-class citizen. I’m sick of knockbacks and failure.”
“You haven’t failed,” says Katharine, interjecting. “Not at all. You’re just in a very unfortunate situation.”
As she says this, Fortner walks back behind his armchair with the deliberation of an actor hitting a mark.
Katharine says, “Alec, this isn’t the first time that you’ve been upset, is it?”
“About Abnex? No.”
“And your financial situation hasn’t improved since you started there?”
I glance over at Fortner and there is a look of rocklike concentration on his face. His eyes are fixed on mine. The rest of the room has become invisible to me. It’s just the three of us, closing in on something unimaginable.
“No. Why?”
Katharine does not answer. There is no knowing why she asked that question, other than to remind me that I am being badly paid. A little subconscious hook.
“You want another drink?”
I almost jump when Fortner says this, and he smiles warmly, taking my glass from the table. From my position low down on the sofa, he looks suddenly vast and strong.
“Sure, that would be great. You having something?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna open a bottle of wine.”
“That’d be nice, honey,” says Katharine, very mellow. It’s as if they have both gone into a trance.
With Fortner out of the room, Katharine asks, “Do you still believe that Abnex is unprincipled in some of its activities?”
“When did I say I believed that?”
“So you don’t?”
There’s no noise at all coming from the kitchen. Fortner is listening.
“No, as a matter of fact I still do. Yes.”
“How do you feel about that? About unprincipled behavior?”
“What, generally?”
“Yes.”
“Kathy, it completely depends…”
“Of course…”
A cork pops in the kitchen.
“On the circumstances.”
“Right.”
“But I do think that a lot of the stuff that we’re getting involved in now will be detrimental to the company, not necessarily in the short term, but in ten to fifteen years’ time. That’s why I have a problem with it. It’s not the dishonesty that annoys me, so much as the stupidity of it.”
“What are they paying you, exactly?” Fortner asks, coming back into the sitting room with a bottle of good red wine and three upside-down glasses threaded through the fingers of his right hand.
“Twelve.”
“What’s that, around eighteen thousand dollars a year?” he says, setting the glasses on the surface of the coffee table. “In America, for the job you’re doing, that salary would be unsatisfactory. And we have lower taxes, medical plans built in, all that.”