Authors: Charles Cumming
The year draws to an end.
There are four more drops, one roughly every month, for each of which I am paid ten thousand pounds sterling, deposited in an escrow account in Philadelphia. I will have access to the money when the Americans have the data from 5F371.
The first handover takes place at a West End theater, a simple exchange almost as soon as the house lights have gone down. The next two occur at my flat in Shepherd’s Bush, and the fourth inside Fortner’s car on the way to Andromeda’s Christmas party. That was last week.
Were they straightforward? Yes and no. The actual transactions are always fairly simple: well planned, isolated, unobserved by third parties. There is the small problem of obtaining suitable information, or of getting freely available documents home, where I can make copies. There are security systems to be circumvented at Abnex, random checks on packages leaving and coming into the building.
So JUSTIFY has become routine, just as it was supposed to, just as we had planned it all along. Yet, something in me will not rest. When asked me to do this, to give over the next two, possibly three years of my life, I agreed to it with the private acknowledgment that things would be difficult at times, occasionally even intolerable. The long-term gain, the promise of a settled and fulfilling future, outweighed any immediate reservations I had about conceding to a constant duplicity. The hard fact of being caught between two sides was presented to me as a relatively simple arrangement. It was just a question of maintaining balance.
That is easier than it sounds. A third party was never foreseen. We reckoned without Cohen; we did not factor him in. I was ready to feel on edge, watchful and suspicious, but I expected that to be attended by feelings of elation and personal fulfillment. Instead, because of his constant, nagging presence at Abnex, I feel isolated and consumed by an apprehensive solitude that I am increasingly unable to control.
To give an example. In mid-October, I began to notice that black rubbish bags were being taken from the outside of my building as often as three or four times a week. No other garbage is removed from the road with the same frequency. The council truck is scheduled to come only on Thursday mornings. I could not mention the problem to anyone, for fear of worrying them about the security of JUSTIFY. It was conceivable that American agents were going through my bins as a way of checking on the validity of their agent. This is common practice.
But that was not all. At around the same time in October, I made a telephone call to British Telecom requesting a second copy of my itemized phone bill. I told the assistant that the first had been mislaid and I was late paying the balance.
“Haven’t we already sent you one?” the operator asked. “Didn’t you request an itemized bill last week? I’ve got a note here on my screen.”
No, I told her, I did not.
So who requested it? The CIA already has a tap on my phone. Was it Abnex? Cohen himself? Or had the operator simply made a mistake?
Thirdly, the post has started arriving later than it did, as if it is being intercepted en route to my flat, then checked, resealed, and sent on. First-class letters take two days instead of one; second-class, up to a week. Parcels have often been tampered with, seals broken and so on.
I expected taps and tails, but everything else is outside normal U.S. and British procedures. It is possible that, because of Cohen, Abnex has placed me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. There is at all times a feeling of being watched, listened to, sifted, followed, pressures exerted on me from all sides. I live constantly with the prospect of abandonment, constantly with the prospect of arrest. Things have been like this for so long now that I cannot recall what life was like before they started. The sensation is not dissimilar to the experience of being ill. The world outside goes about its business, and you cannot even remember what it felt like to be healthy and well.
Walking to Colville Gardens tonight to make JUSTIFY’s sixth drop on a cold December evening, I feel tight and self-contained, certain in the knowledge that I am being tailed—by Cohen, by the Americans, even by our side. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is playing out of the open window of a house on Pembridge Crescent, but there are no visible signs that it
is
Christmas. The streets have not been decked out with lights, there are no glowing trees in the bay windows of sitting rooms, no carol-singing children scurrying from flat to flat in the cold.
In the inside pocket of my long overcoat, zipped up against thieves and spooks, there is a single high-density IBM 1.44 MB floppy disk inside a small manila envelope containing crude oil assay data from a well-head sample in Tengiz. My adrenaline, as always, is up, my heart beating rapidly with a rush like caffeine pushing me quickly down the street. I tilt my head down for warmth and watch my breath as it disappears into the folds of the coat.
For perhaps the tenth time today, my mind casts back to a confrontation I had with Cohen last week. I cannot ignore what happened, because it convinced me that he is assured of my guilt. This, at least for once, is not paranoia, not just some by-product of my persistent agitation. There are hard facts to consider.
We were standing beside the printer where, three months earlier, he had discovered me spooling out the commercial price sets on that quiet Saturday afternoon.
“Those Americans you’ve been spending so much time with,” he said, adjusting his tie.
“What about them?” I replied, a void immediately opening up inside me.
“Alan has found out about it.”
“What do you mean he’s found out about it? You two been keeping tabs on me?”
That was my first mistake. I was too aggressive, too early. There was nothing in what Cohen had said to cause me any alarm, simply a sly tone of voice, an implied rebuke in his manner.
“We like to keep an eye on new people.”
“What do you mean, ‘new people’? I’ve been with the company over a year.”
“Did you know they work for Andromeda?”
“No kidding, Harry. I thought they were guides at the British Museum. Of course I know they work at Andromeda.”
“And do you think it’s wise to be spending so much of your time with a competitor?”
“Implying what?”
“Implying nothing.”
“Why ask the question, then?”
“You’re getting very ruffled, Alec.”
“Listen, Detective Inspector. If I’m ruffled, it’s because I don’t like the undercurrent of what you’re saying.”
“There’s no undercurrent,” he said, calm as quicksand. “I merely asked if it was a good idea.”
“I know what you asked. And the answer is that it’s my private affair. I don’t keep tabs on what you do behind closed doors.”
“So you do things behind closed doors?”
“Fuck off, Harry. Okay? Just fuck off.”
At that, both Piers and Ben looked up from their desks and stared at us. Cohen knew he had me cornered so he kept on probing. Typically, he phrased his next remark as a statement, not a question.
“I was simply going to say that they don’t ring as often as they used to.”
I responded to this without thinking through my reply.
“No, they don’t,” I told him. “I wonder why that is.”
That was my second mistake. I should have reacted to the strangeness of Cohen’s observation.
“Look,” he said, sympathy suddenly in his voice. “I’m just telling you this because you might need to be prepared for some questions.”
“About what?”
“Anybody who spends an unusual amount of time socializing with employees of a rival firm is bound to come under suspicion. At some point.”
I had to presume that this was a lie designed to flush me out. He paused, leaving a silence that I was supposed to fill. My body was wretched with heat, exacerbated by the warmth of the office. I managed to say, “Suspicion of what?”
“We both know what I’m talking about, Alec.”
“This conversation is finished.”
“That’s something of an overreaction, don’t you think?”
“Fortner and Katharine are my friends. They are not work associates. Try to make that distinction. Your life may begin and end with Abnex, and that’s admirable, Harry, it really is. We all admire you for your dedication. But the rest of us try to have a life away from the office as well. You’ll find as you get older that this is perfectly normal.”
Smirks from Piers and Ben.
“I’ll take that into consideration,” he said and walked back to his desk.
I ring the street bell of Katharine and Fortner’s building and the door buzzes almost instantaneously. They have been waiting for me.
When I get to their apartment, Fortner opens the door slowly and offers to take my coat. I pass him a bottle of wine, which I bought in Shepherd’s Bush, and extract the manila envelope from my inside pocket. He takes it quickly, a magician’s sleight of hand. Simultaneously he is talking, asking about the weather, hanging up my coat, pointing out a scratch on the door.
“Never noticed that before,” he says, rubbing his thumb against it. “Do you want a drink?”
“Glass of wine?”
“You got it.”
Katharine is in the kitchen, washing up after dinner. She has had her hair done. It makes her look older. The clock on the wall says ten to nine.
“Hi, Alec. How you doin’, sweetie?”
“Fine. Tired.”
“Everybody is,” she says. “I think it’s the change in temperature. Isn’t it cold suddenly?”
She comes over to kiss me, a warm dry lingering on my right cheek. In the next room, Fortner starts up some classical music on the CD player, piping it through to the kitchen with a switch on the stereo. The orchestration is loud, talk-smothering.
“Oh, that’s nice, honey,” Katharine says as Fortner comes into the kitchen.
“Chopin,” he says, with no attempt at an accent. “Let me get you that glass of wine.”
We have a signal, one of only four, that I use to inquire whether it is safe to talk. I simply put a straightened index finger to my lips, look at either one of them, and wait for a nod. Katharine glances at Fortner and does so. It is safe.
“I had a conversation with Harry Cohen at the office last week that I think you should know about.”
“Cohen?” Fortner says. “The one who’s always on your back?”
He knows exactly who he is.
“That’s him.”
“What did he say?” Katharine asks, touching her neck gently with her hand.
“He’s noticed that you’ve stopped calling me at the office. Brought it up out of nowhere.”
“Okay, so we’ll call a little more. I don’t think you should be unduly concerned. Did he say anything else?”
Fortner takes a sip from one of two glasses of wine he has poured near the stove. He hands me the other.
“No, there was nothing else in particular. I just found it odd that he should have brought it up.”
“Listen, Alec,” he says quickly. “Far as I can make out, this guy has been all over your job since you started. He feels threatened by you, just like they all do. Askin’ you questions about a couple of Americans who happen to be working for Andromeda is just his way of bullying you. You gotta ignore it. You’re doin’ a great job and nobody suspects a thing.”
I want to leave it at that, but Katharine comes a step closer to me. She is biting her lip.
“You all right?” she asks. “You look almost feverish.”
I sit on one of the kitchen chairs and light a cigarette. My hand is shaking.
“No. I’m well. I’m just…I get nervous. I worry about being followed, you know?”
“Natural reaction,” says Fortner, still very matter-of-fact. “Be strange if you didn’t.”
They have bought a new picture, a Degas print in a wooden frame. The one of the girl at ballet school, bending down to tie her shoes. Now, just briefly, I let things slip. My intense desire to talk to someone momentarily outweighs the wisdom of doing so with Fortner and Katharine.
“It’s funny,” I tell them, trying hard to sound as solid and as capable as I can. “I’m living with this constant fear that some journalist on
The Sunday Times
is going to call me up out of the blue and start asking questions. ‘Mr Milius?’ he’ll say. ‘We’re running a story in tomorrow’s edition that names you as an industrial spy working for the Andromeda Corporation. Would you care to make a comment?”
“Alec, for Christ’s sake,” Fortner says, putting his glass on the counter so hard that I fear it might break. I cannot tell if he is angry with me for being afraid or for making a direct reference to JUSTIFY. Even in the security of their apartment it was unwise to mention it. “What are you getting so bothered about all of a sudden? There isn’t some Bob Woodward out there trackin’ every move you make. Not unless you’re being dumb.”
There is a brief silence.
“
Are
you being dumb?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go. Now just relax. Where is all this coming from?”
He doesn’t give me time to answer.
“If you’re worried about being tailed, we can have one of our own people follow you. They’ll know in thirty seconds if you’ve got a surveillance problem.”
The nerve of this. They’re already tracking me.
“Great. So now I won’t know if I’m being tailed by the CIA or Scotland Yard or a private security firm hired by Abnex.”
Fortner doesn’t like this now, not at all.
“Now look, Alec. You’d better start being cool about this or you’re gonna slip up. When they caught spies during the Cold War, they were sent to Moscow and made into heroes. If they catch you, you’ll be sent to jail and get your butt fucked. And if you get caught,
we
get caught. So let’s all just calm down, all right? Let’s not get too excited.”
He sits on the chair nearest mine, and for a moment I think he is going to try to reach out and touch me. But his hands remain folded on the surface of the table.
“Look,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Bottom line. If things get too hot, we have a safe house for you here in London. In fact, we have safe
houses,
plural. We can get you in the Witness Protection Program back home, whatever you want.”