Authors: Charles Cumming
I have waited so long for Caccia’s people to prepare the data from 5F371 that when it finally arrives there is a hurried sense of expectation that catches me off guard.
It is a gray March day at work. The morning has adhered to its usual routines: phone calls, reports to be written, a meeting with some clients in Conference Room C on the sixth floor. I have a late lunch—steak sandwich, Sprite—in a café down the street, doing my best to avoid making eye contact with two Abnex employees eating spaghetti on the far side of the room. Then, just before three o’clock, I make my way back to the office.
Cohen, who is working at his desk, looks across at me as I come in, putting down his pen.
“Since when did you start getting packages from the boss?” he asks, an uncharacteristic suggestion of defeat in his voice. “Barbara Foster, the chairman’s PA…”
“I know who she is.”
“Well, she left that package for you while you were out getting lunch.”
He is pointing at a white padded envelope in my in-tray. I know immediately what it is and experience a surge of grateful satisfaction that proves critical.
“She did?”
“Yeah. Told me to let you know it was there.”
I make no gesture to pick it up.
“So what is it?” he asks.
“Probably his remarks on a report I did for the board three weeks ago. The one about Turkmenistan and Niyazov.”
“I didn’t know you’d done a report for the chairman,” he says, a flicker of envy about him as he looks away. His ego has been wounded by a lie. “Can I look at it?”
“Sure. But I’m taking it home tonight. Want to read over what he’s said.”
Cohen nods unconvincingly and returns to his work. I open my briefcase, drop Caccia’s envelope inside it, and, without even pausing to think, retrieve the small card on which Katharine wrote down the contact number for Don Atwater. The card is frayed at the edges now, worn by the constant movement of pens, coins, and files in my case. So keen am I to alert the Americans that I dial the number right away, with no thought of Cohen’s proximity, the receiver clamped between my neck and chin. It starts to ring as soon as I have punched in the last digit.
There is no immediate answer, but I wait. Still no one picks up, even after a dozen rings. I am on the point of replacing the receiver, thinking that I have dialed the number incorrectly, when a voice responds at the other end.
“Hello?”
It’s woman, Irish accent. For some reason, I had been expecting an American male.
“Hello. This is Mr. Milius calling. Is my dry-cleaning ready? I brought it in last week.” As an afterthought, as if to take the edge off the absurdity of what I am saying, I add, “A jacket.”
Cohen is tapping something into his Psion Organiser. There is a brief pause on the phone line backgrounded by a rustling of papers. The woman seems vague and disorganized, and this worries me.
“Yes, Alec Milius. Hello,” she says eventually. There is relief in her voice, an enthused lilt. “That’s fine. You can come and get it.”
“I can?” I say, with enthusiasm. “Great.” These simple words feel unnatural and self-conscious. “See you then.”
“All right,” she says, abruptly hanging up.
As I replace the receiver, my left thigh is shaking involuntarily beneath the desk. I need to walk around, need to splash some cold water on my face to throw me clear of worry. In the gents’, I run the cold tap for a few seconds, eventually filling a sink. Then I scoop handfuls of icy water onto my face, letting it wash out my eyes and cool my temples. Having lifted the lever to release the plug, I stare open-eyed into the mirror. Bloodshot whites, tired and weary, with a spot coming up on my nose. I run through Katharine’s instructions one more time.
It’s watertight. Relax. Just do what you’re being paid to do.
Crossing the room to the hand dryers, I stick my face in a rush of warm air, eyes squeezed tight against the heat. Behind me, a cubicle lock snaps open, making me jump. Duncan from accounts emerges from one of the booths looking disheveled. I glance at him briefly and leave.
Toward six o’clock, Piers invites me to join him for a drink with Ben, but I explain that I already have a dinner engagement and make my excuses. I need time in which to settle myself before the handover tonight, time in which to gather my strength.
At half past, I join the early evening rush hour and for once am glad of the people crowding up the tube, glad that we stop between stations and wait in the darkness for the train to jerk just a few yards down a tunnel. It takes three times as long for the sheer volume of passengers to get on and off at each station, and every passing moment shrinks my waiting time before meeting Atwater. I dread the inevitable slowness that precedes a handover, the dead period in which I can only anticipate capture. Every enforced delay is welcome.
It is quarter to eight by the time I get home. A weak drizzle has begun falling outside, a wetness that clings to the roads and buildings, glistening under the street lights. My hair is damp when I get inside, and I dry it off with a towel while boiling the kettle for tea. Then I sit for more than an hour half watching television, my mind working slowly over the details of the plan for the last time: the circuit of the roundabout, the route to Chelsea Harbour, the tenor of the meeting with Atwater. I stay off the booze and occasionally pick at a microwaved potato, but deep concentration has left me with no appetite.
Just after nine o’clock, I go through the contents of Caccia’s package. The envelope is padded with bubble wrap and contains a light blue plastic folder labeled
CONFIDENTIAL
in bold black ink. Inside it there is a twelve-page document with a handwritten covering note attached by a paper clip: “5F371 as requested. Good luck. DRC.” These are Caccia’s initials. I burn the note in the sink. On the inside back page of the folder, housed within a clear plastic flap, is a CD-ROM marked with the Abnex logo. When I open the disk on my laptop, bitmap 3-D seismic imagings of 5F371 form on-screen, with magnetic surveys and information on rock samples available in separate files. It all looks realistic. The printed document contains everything from assay data to sources of capital, with details about loans Abnex has taken out to finance drilling operations in the North Basin. There is more here even than I had promised them. I go into my bedroom and take a new A4 manila envelope from my desk in which to place the contents. Once I have put the disk and the documentation inside, I seal it up with a lick. The gum on the flap tastes like curry powder.
The minutes then drag out until ten o’clock. I stare at the envelope on the kitchen table, smoking dumbly, drinking cups of strong percolated coffee that only make me feel more shaky and tense. Finally, unwilling to sit things out, I place the envelope inside a folded copy of
The Sunday Times
and leave the flat.
My car is halfway down the right side of Godolphin Road, about a thirty-second walk from the front door. There has been an ice cream van parked in the same space next to it for weeks, painted with cartoon characters and pictures of Cadbury’s Flakes. When Kate was a small child her mother used to lie to her, would tell her that the jingle of the van, the ripple of bells in the street, meant that the vendor had actually run out of ice cream. Kate told me that story on the first night we met. It was one of the first things she said.
Inside the car, buckling up, I realize there are things I have forgotten to do. I should have filled up with petrol, checked the tires and oil, and turned the engine over at least once in the last few days to free it of winter cold. When I put the key in the ignition, the starter motor turns over asthmatically, sounding disconnected and worn, and I switch it off for fear of flooding the engine. At the second attempt, there appears to be less seizure within the system. The starter moans briefly, flicks over twice, but then catches and the engine fires. I whisper a grateful “shit” to myself, switch on the headlights, and pull away from the curb.
There are still plenty of vehicles on the roads: lorry drivers making up time before stopping for a night’s rest, cabs shipping people across the city. I drive down Uxbridge Road, join the one-way system at Shepherd’s Bush Green, and glide in the wet under the mocked-up Inter City walkway. Cars are waiting in queues of five or six, preparing to go on to the roundabout; with the sheer volume of traffic, I’m concerned that making a full circuit with surveillance check may prove difficult. I sit in the outside lane with my turn signal on and wait for the lights to go green.
As I go around, I check my mirror every other second for any sign of sudden movement behind me—a last-minute indication, a swerve-out or burst of acceleration. After passing the second exit, a cabdriver blasts his horn at me when I cut across his lane, and another beeps as I pass through the traffic lights leading back toward the Green. All the time I am watching as vehicles build up behind me, trying to gauge where they have come from. As far as I can tell, all appear to have entered the roundabout from either Holland Park Avenue, Holland Road, or the Westway. It looks as if no one followed me completely around.
So I head for Chelsea Harbour. Katharine suggested going via Fulham Palace Road, but I take a different route, with which I am more familiar—via Brook Green, Talgarth Road, and Fulham Broadway. The journey takes no time at all. Only once—my eyes distracted by a girl on the North End Road—do I brake fractionally late and almost rear-end a designer Jeep with a skiing rhino painted on its spare tire. Otherwise, the drive is incident free: no tail, no motorcycle outrider, nothing to report at all.
By half past eleven, I have arrived, a full thirty minutes before the scheduled meeting. I look up at the Wharf Tower, London’s puny skyscraper, and consider my options. There is no need to go into the harbour complex to flush out a tail because I have experienced no surveillance problems en route. And my presence there will serve only to alert the Americans to my whereabouts. There can also be no reason why I cannot meet Atwater before the prearranged time. If he’s not there, I will simply wait outside on the street until he arrives. There is no advantage in following Katharine’s instructions to the letter. Better to put myself in a position of control, rather than play into their hands and be dictated to by others.
So I do not turn into Lots Road. Instead I continue down King’s Road until I come to Edith Grove, driving with the one-way system as far as Cheyne Walk. After a brief block in traffic I cross the Battersea Bridge lights and park in the first available space on the left, just a few feet from the statue of Sir Thomas More. From here, it’s a short walk to Atwater’s office.
There are three white stone steps rising to number 77. I climb them, the file and
Sunday Times
clutched in my right hand, and press a small plastic buzzer marked
DONALD G. ATWATER, CORPORATE ATTORNEY
. A wild wind is gusting off the Thames; it whips across my face as I stand in the porch. The lock buzzes softly and I push the door.
The foyer is an enclosed hall with high white walls and a checkered marble floor. There is a mirror to one side with a wooden umbrella stand directly below it. Opposite that, above an empty cream mantelpiece, hangs a large watercolor depicting thin children at the seaside, paddling in the shallows. I stop and wait, hearing heavy footsteps coming down a staircase. There is a deep male cough, what sounds like the rustling of small change in a pocket, and then a man comes into the hall through a door in front of me.
Donald G. Atwater is a large, humorless American, full of expensive lunches. He moves toward me more quickly than his short stumpy legs would otherwise suggest.
“Alec Milius?” he inquires in a slurred Virginia drawl. He is holding a small white envelope in his left hand.
“That’s right.”
“Privilege to meet you, sir.”
Sir
sounds absurd coming from a man of such size, a man who must be twice my age, but by now I am well used to empty American flatteries. He extends a hand, which I briefly shake. His palm is dry and hard.
“You got the package?” he asks.
Down to business right away. No pleasantries.
“Yes. But first I have to ask who you are.”
He seems surprised by this and gives me a strange sideways glance.
“I’m Don Atwater.”
“Do you have some sort of identification?”
He fishes around in his pockets for a business card, die-stamped with his name.
“Thank you. I just had to be sure.”
Atwater cranes his neck back and looks down his nose into my eyes. There is an unsettling quality about this man, a suggestion of lazy ruthlessness.
“You wanna come in or are you happy doing this out here?” he says, glancing carelessly around. Somehow we have got off on the wrong foot.
“Why don’t we just do it here?”
“Fine,” he says, curtly.
I take the envelope out of the folded-up newspaper. Atwater reaches out and takes it with a thin smile, his eyes staying focused on the pale manila. He tucks the file firmly under his left arm and coughs at a higher pitch than before. Neither of us says anything, as if in deference to the moment. Then, as this awkward silence draws out, I ask, “Why was it necessary for me to give this to you?”
“Excuse me?” he says. He has a way of talking that implies I am wasting his time.
“This isn’t the way we normally proceed.”
“I’m just acting on behalf of my client,” he says, downcurling his lip. Interesting that he used the word
client
there, singular. He may be working on behalf of an Agency case officer higher up the food chain. But I might be jumping the gun. Atwater could have no knowledge of the contents of the file and consequently no idea of the real importance of JUSTIFY. He may be just what the Americans said he is: a lawyer, acting as a middleman.
“Then is there any reason why your client was so adamant that we meet this late on a weekday night?”
“Mr. Milius,” he says, making no attempt to disguise an impatience with my questions. “As I understand it, the fewer people who know about this, the better. Am I right?”