Authors: Charles Cumming
Of course, not a day has gone by when I didn’t fear that all this would come to an end. And contained in Caccia’s warning is an intimation that the game is up, that somehow the Americans have discovered my true intentions and pulled the plug on JUSTIFY. Every instinct tells me that this is the case, yet some grudging stubbornness in me will not accept the situation. It could still be a wild coincidence that Andromeda’s people pulled out of Baku just hours before Fortner left for the States with his London life packed into four large suitcases and a cabin bag. There is still that tiny possibility.
There is a message on my answering machine when I get home:
“Hi, man, it’s Saul. Listen, hope you’re okay. I just got your message from last week. I was in Scotland. Ring me if you still need to talk about whatever it was…. Ring me anyway, will you? Do you fancy going down to Cornwall this weekend? I need to talk to you about that. I want to bring someone, try and maybe leave tomorrow night. So…give me a ring.”
I call him back on his mobile.
“Alec. How you doing? Everything all right?”
He sounds concerned.
“Everything’s fine.”
“I was worried. You sounded in bad shape. What happened?”
“It was just a scare. Nothing.”
“What kind of scare?”
Let’s try this.
“Just Mum. We thought she might have a skin cancer, but it turned out to be benign.”
“Shit. I’m glad. Send her my best.”
“What’s this about Cornwall?”
He stalls momentarily.
“I’ve met someone.”
“And?”
“And I wanted to invite her down to Padstow this weekend.”
“Why are you asking me? You want my permission?”
He does not laugh.
“No. It’s not that. I wanted you to come with us.”
“Sounds very cozy.”
“It won’t be. She has friends down there already. We’re going to hook up.”
In all probability, events at Abnex will prevent me from going.
“Can I let you know at the last minute?”
“Sure,” he says. “No problem. Look, I’ve got another call coming through. We’ll speak first thing tomorrow.”
I take a lasagne out of the freezer and microwave it for dinner, finishing off a bottle of red wine that I opened last night. I have to prepare now for Katharine; it needs to be just right. There are two crucial things to find out: why did Fortner go to the United States on such short notice, and what happened in Baku? It should be easy getting an answer to the first question. Katharine will most probably volunteer all the information we need. Whether she reveals that Fortner has gone to America will be a first signal. If she lies about that, we may have a problem. Finding out about Baku will be more difficult. She would never bring up 5F371 on an open landline, though it may be possible to ask a more general question about Andromeda, which could lead to her revealing something about the present situation.
I also need to recapture something of my customary mood. The Alec they knew before the attack on Cohen was chirpy and biddable, untroubled by matters of conscience. It will be essential not to sound nervous or distant. Nothing can seem out of the ordinary. This has to be just another phone call, just the two of us touching base after a break of six or seven days. There’s no hidden agenda. We’ll just be two old friends talking on the phone.
I wash up my plate, put it on the rack, light a cigarette, and go out into the hall to make the call.
Their number rings out, long enough for me to suspect that Katharine is not in. She usually picks up promptly, and sure enough the answering machine kicks in after several seconds. This is frustrating. My mood was exactly right to handle the conversation. Not too tired, not too tense. Oddly calm, in fact.
The beep sounds.
“Katharine, hi, it’s Alec. Just calling to—”
There is a loud scraping crash on the line, as if the phone has been dropped on a hard wooden floor. Then a thud and a tap as Katharine picks up the receiver, her voice coming through.
“Yes?”
“You’re there.”
“I’m here.”
“Screening your calls?”
“No. I just got in.”
“From work?”
“From work.”
She sounds immediately detached. I feel a rushing heat across my forehead and extinguish the cigarette.
“Everything okay?” I am trying to sound as easygoing as possible.
“Oh, everything’s just fine,” she says, a little archly.
She waits for me to respond and, when I do not, says, “So, what are you calling about?”
In any normal conversation between us, there would be friendly inquiries after my mood, about Saul or Mum, my work at Abnex. Perhaps even a joke or a story. But nothing tonight, merely this odd reticence.
“Just to see how you were. How things are going.”
I wish I could see her face.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“And Fort?”
A fractional pause.
“Oh, he’s fine, too.”
This is said with no feeling.
“Katharine, are you okay?”
“Sure,” she says, lifting herself. “Why?”
“You sound odd. Are you tired?”
“That must be it.”
I should end the conversation here. She knows something, she must do. But is that simply paranoia? How could the Americans have any idea of the truth?
“You should get an early night,” I tell her.
“I have to go out.”
“For dinner?”
With a low hum she confirms this.
“Who with?”
“Just some friends.”
Where is the detail, the shading-in? She is being stubbornly, deliberately obtuse.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“No.”
A longer pause now, so much so that I think she may be about to end the conversation. Finally she asks a question.
“So what’ve you been up to these last few days?”
“Not much,” I reply.
Then I recall lying to Saul about Mum before dinner, a conversation that the Americans may have tapped and alerted her to.
“There was one slight scare, but otherwise everything’s been fine.”
“What kind of scare?”
For the first time she sounds interested by something I have said.
“Mum thought she might have a skin cancer, but it turned out to be benign.”
“That’s a relief. And how’s Kate?”
Nothing prepares me for the shock of this, a carefully weighted jab exactly timed for maximum impact.
I manage to say, “What are you talking about?” although my voice cracks like an adolescent on the word
talking.
“I asked after Kate.”
They have got to her. Kate has been burned.
“But you know I don’t see her anymore. I haven’t seen her in over two years.”
“That’s not what I heard. Fort says you two still sleep together, for old times’ sake.”
“Why would he have said that?”
“You mentioned it to him one night when the two of you were out drinking. Or don’t you remember?”
That was months ago, a slight lie in a pub just to fill the silence. Instinct tells me to deny all this.
“I don’t remember ever mentioning that to him.”
“Were you bragging, Alec?”
What does she want to hear? I do not know what Kate has told them. Then—a chink of light—it occurs to me that someone from their side simply saw me going into Kate’s house last week. They know no more than that.
“Was it male bravado?” Katharine is asking. “Was that what made you say it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So you two still hook up from time to time? How come you never said anything to me?”
Her voice becomes significantly warmer with this question, more friendly and engaging. Is it possible that she is simply jealous?
“It was private. Kate wanted me to keep it a secret. She has a boyfriend. I’m sorry I told Fort and not you.”
“That’s okay,” she says calmly.
“You can understand why I didn’t say anything. Not even Saul knows that I still see her.”
“Of course,” she says, creating a brief lapse in which an instinct to get away from any talk of Kate fatally overrides my common sense. I ask, “How come Fortner is in the States?”
And there is silence. And nothing I can do to retract the question.
“Why do you ask that, Alec?”
I can say only, “What?”
“Why would you think Fortner is in the States?”
“Isn’t he? I just assumed he wasn’t home.”
“Why didn’t you ask if he was here?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”
“It’s very simple, Alec. How did you know my husband had gone to America?”
I am trapped now, with no way out of this but ineffectual bluffs.
“I just assumed. It sounded like he wasn’t around. Usually I would have talked to him by now.”
She’ll never buy that.
“You just assumed.”
I go on the offensive. It may be the only way to distract her.
“Kathy, what are you getting at? You’re being really odd tonight.”
Then it is as if every sound around me has suddenly ended, a tunnel of silence into which Katharine whispers, “My God, it is true. I could not believe it until I heard it from you directly. I would not believe them.”
“Believe who?”
Very slowly, she says, “You’re so dumb, Alec. How did you know Fortner was in the States? Isn’t that revealing a little too much of what you know?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“You want me to
tell
you why he’s there?”
“Maybe we should talk another time, Kathy. I don’t know what’s got into you, but…”
“He’s there because of your fucking girlfriend.”
I have a sensation now of cold fear, like falling through space in a dream and the black ground rushing up to meet me.
“Kate’s apartment is bugged. It has been ever since you told Fortner you were still seeing her. Just like your home is bugged, your car, your telephones, Saul, your mother’s place. Everyone is being listened to.”
My body goes stiff with panic. It was nobody’s fault but my own. They heard everything I said to Kate.
“And you know what the irony is. We almost shut it down. You never visited Kate, and we figured you weren’t about to in the future. It was a sleeper, but Fort insisted we keep it on. He had some hunch you might go there someday, said he knew how you felt about her. I gotta hand it to your people: 5F371 was a smart plan. You guys worked us over. Nice little Alec hands over 3-D seismic imaging showing the strong possibility of oil in a field where none exists. Caccia has known all along that the crude was beaten out of it by the Soviets in the sixties and seventies, but Andromeda buys out Abnex’s validity of rights, drills an exploration well, spends—what?—about three hundred million dollars, and find nothing when we get there. Meantime, the Azerbaijani government loses confidence in Andromeda and, next time around, is more open to the idea of joint ventures with Abnex. Only you messed up, Alec. You couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut. You went soft on them.”
To hear her anger spat back, the triumph of it, sickens me almost to the point of retaliation.
“You gonna say something, Alec? You got anything you want to say to me?”
Only Hawkes’s voice in my head, like an invocation, prevents me from tripping into confession. When caught, he said, deny everything, if only for the sake of legal process. Never admit charges, never verify their accusations, however much information they may appear to have against you. The other side will always know less than you think they do. Resort to lies.
“I have nothing to say to you, Kathy. And frankly I’m disgusted that you think this about me.”
“Oh, get off it, Alec.” She is shouting now, making no attempt to control the flow of her rage. “Have you no self-respect? Is your vanity so great that you crave this kind of recognition, from men like David Caccia, from men like Michael Hawkes? It’s pitiful, truly it is. I’m flying to Washington tonight. Do you understand that? My career is most probably over. How does that make you feel?”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
“Oh? And how do you spin that one?”
“I’m not spinning anything.”
“Why don’t you just have the guts to come out and admit what’s going on here? It’s over, Alec. You’re beaten.”
I know that she is right. The situation is out of control. Whatever happens now, this is over.
“I am not beaten, Kathy. No one is beaten. This is all…”
“Why are you bothering to deny this? Is that what they taught you, huh? Is that it?”
And suddenly I snap. I just let it go.
“Listen. This is the game we’re in. It’s that simple.”
There is a momentary silence as she acknowledges that I have broken cover for the first time. But her anger soon returns.
“The game? Doing undercover work for a snake like John Lithiby? You have any idea of that guy’s record, Alec?”
“And what about you? You work for an operation that helped to arrest Mandela, that relocated Nazi war criminals….”
She emits a dry and contemptuous laugh.
“That’s ancient history. We both know that. It’s a freshman conspiracy theory.”
“You want something recent? Okay. I’ll give you something recent. We’ve just caught American intelligence agents hacking in to the computers of the European Parliament. CIA people trying to steal economic and political secrets, just like you, just like Fort. Just doing their job, in other words. That computer linked up to five thousand MEPs, researchers, and EU officials with their confidential medical and financial records, all of which the CIA would have had no hesitation in using if it gave them some leverage. So don’t lecture me about ethics.”
“So that’s all this is? Tit for tat?”
“If you want to see it that way, sure.”
“What are you saying, Alec? That SIS isn’t doing exactly the same thing with its own European allies? Are you so blind that you think the good old Brits aren’t up to that? You really suppose your government is too clean to spy on its EU partners?”
“Not at all. But that’s how all of this works. You spy on me, I spy on you. And every government in the civilized world spends millions of dollars going round and round in circles.”
“There are too many people who know about this, Alec.”
“Meaning?”