(at full force)
For we will not live in fear.
Danny amazed by this act of self-creation, and it’s not the anti-depressants - it’s Scottie pulling himself out of a dark hole. And it’s breathtaking.
SCOTTIE (CONT’D)
I’d very much like to finish this particular adventure with you, Daniel Edward Holt, if you’ll have me.
Scottie offers Danny his hand. Danny accepts.
EXT. SCOTTIE’S HOUSE. FRONT GARDEN. DAY
Danny exits the house, readying a rickety old bicycle. A moment later Scottie exits.
Scottie gets into his car, an off beat vintage car.
The two part without a word, in opposite directions.
EXT. WOOLWICH FERRY DOCKING AREA. DAY
Danny waits at the docking area for the Woolwich Ferry.
Scottie’s car pulls up beside him.
Danny puts his bike in the back.
EXT. WOOLWICH FERRY. DAY
Danny and Scottie at the back of the ferry as it crosses the Thames. They stare into the churning murky water.
Danny’s uncertain whether to bring the subject up, expecting it to be a painful subject.
DANNY
The place where no one cares?
To his surprise Scottie’s amused.
SCOTTIE
I’ve always taken comfort from the idea of people not caring, that they have better things to do, that there are more important matters to worry about. I like it when people walk past me and couldn’t care less what I was wearing, or whose hand I was holding. The place where no one cares. When I was young I spent a lot of time searching for it, promising myself that if I ever found it - if it ever existed - I’d make it my home.
London in the background. The murky Thames. Not a romantic image of the city. An ugly one.
Yet, perhaps, our most celebratory.
EXT. EAST LONDON. DERELICT INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. EVENING
The abandoned factory where Danny stored the cylinder. A bleak outline against the darkening sky.
Danny and Scottie stand outside.
INT. DERELICT INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. EVENING
Holding flashlights, moving through rubble and rats, Scottie and Danny pass the graffiti wall. Danny makes no mention of it. But Scottie spots Danny’s name.
SCOTTIE
You?
DANNY
Me.
Scottie’s curious, comparing the two, name & man.
INT. DERELICT INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. EVENING
Danny and Scottie sit on the carcass of an old machine. Scottie’s reading Danny’s teenage diary. We should see, in detail, the content of the crinkled pages.
Breezy, as though he didn’t care:
DANNY
What do you think?
SCOTTIE
Ambition. But no conviction. You skip from short stories to lyrics, from poems to sketches, hoping the world will tell you who you are. But you must tell the world.
Danny not remotely offended. We should feel an echo of Alex’s directness in this reply.
Reaching the end, Scottie puts Danny’s old note book down and picks up the faded porn magazine.
SCOTTIE (CONT’D)
This - on the other hand - knows exactly what it is.
They hear footsteps on rubble.
Both Danny and Scottie stand.
Claire, the Provost of UCL, appears. She assesses the space. The two of them. The porn magazine.
Scottie discards the magazine.
He and Claire hug.
Danny watches their interaction, assessing the nature of their friendship. Extremely close.
SCOTTIE (CONT’D)
Were you followed?
Claire adjusts to these spy requirements.
CLAIRE
I don’t believe so...
(beat)
I don’t know...
(beat)
How does one know?
SCOTTIE
Will he help us?
CLAIRE
He didn’t say.
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. NIGHT
Scottie and Claire working on a cryptic crossword. Filling in alternate answers. At speed. Danny watches.
DANNY
Where did you two meet?
Scottie and Claire pause.
SCOTTIE
At Cambridge.
Scottie is unusually cagey and abrupt. However, Claire warms to the subject.
CLAIRE
I was the first person he shared the secret of his sexuality with.
SCOTTIE
At that time ‘it’ was illegal. And there were rumours.
CLAIRE
I agreed to play the part of his lover. We walked arm in arm, took picnics in the scholar’s garden. It was supposed to be for no more than a few months. Enough to keep the whispering at bay.
SCOTTIE
It lasted two years.
DANNY
(to Claire)
Are you gay?
CLAIRE
No.
DANNY
Did you see other people?
CLAIRE
No.
Silence.
Scottie remains unusually tongue tied. As if this is the only story he can’t bring himself to tell.
SCOTTIE
I tried to become the man I was pretending to be...
(to Claire)
You know, I even prayed? For the right kind of desire?
(she never knew)
A sham romance, you might say.
CLAIRE
No.
SCOTTIE
No.
They kiss. The kiss of celibate lovers.
Finally Scottie turns to Danny and smiles.
SCOTTIE (CONT’D)
But we’re friends. We’ve remained friends for many years. How can you be sad about that? No, I refuse to be sad about that.
Danny and Scottie hold a look.
And in that instant Claire catches Scottie’s affections for Danny clearly too.
Claire smiles at Scottie. He smiles back at her, a daisy chain of unrequited physical attraction.
Broken by --
MARCUS
It’s all very touching.
Alex’s professor - Marcus Shaw - has been standing in the gloom, watching for we don’t know how long.
Late fifties. Stern & brutally so. No hint of whimsy or nerdy intellect. Physically in excellent shape.
He assesses the three conspirators, in particular - Danny. He’s unimpressed.
Claire introduces them.
CLAIRE
Marcus, this is Danny, Alex’s partner. And this --
Interrupting, Marcus cuts to the chase:
MARCUS
Where is it?
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. NIGHT
Danny takes out a laptop, improvising a desk from the ruins. He inserts the data stick and loads the file.
On screen - in the darkness of this disordered space - we see beauty and order. A stream of mathematical formula.
Danny’s eyes fill with the glow of Alex’s numbers. He’s beguiled by them, even if he can’t understand them.
Marcus takes his turn at the laptop, effectively brushing Danny out the way.
And Marcus’s stern expression softens for the first time.
Danny remains close by, his presence irritating Marcus.
MARCUS
This will take time.
Danny backs off, reluctantly.
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. NIGHT
Marcus at the laptop.
He stops working, offering no explanation.
He heads off. Scottie and Danny share a glance.
Danny follows the Professor.
EXT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. NIGHT
Danny sees Marcus smoking outside.
He approaches, covering his ulterior motive by indicating that he’d like a smoke too.
Marcus isn’t surprised,
or annoyed, when Danny appears, a subtle implication that he even intended to lure him out.
He offers a cigarette and lights it for him.
The two men stand opposite - as opposites - considering each other.
MARCUS
You didn’t know, did you? How smart he was?
DANNY
I knew.
MARCUS
But, not really?
DANNY
Not in the way you did, no.
MARCUS
(toying with word)
His ‘partner’
(beat)
Without any appreciation of his intellect? Beyond some generalized sense that he was good with numbers. Love without knowledge. Popular culture might depict that as a romantic notion, I suppose.
DANNY
He never spoke about his work.
Marcus finds that fact incredible.
MARCUS
What did you talk about?
Danny tries not to sound defensive.
DANNY
Everything else.
MARCUS
I see.
(beat)
No. I don’t. I don’t see at all.
DANNY
What did you two talk about - outside of work?
MARCUS
We didn’t.
Danny finds that fact incredible.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Try to understand I was sure - absolutely certain - he was going to change the world in some way. Not my world - the world. Can you comprehend the enormity of that feeling? Being in the company of someone like that?
DANNY
We knew different people.
MARCUS
The man I knew was exceptional. The man you knew was not.
Danny about to reply. Marcus cuts in.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Or are you going to tell me how many sugars he took in his tea? Or how he liked to be fucked?
Danny has teased from Marcus unresolved, closeted feelings. And Marcus senses he’s revealed too much.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Do you think these are the details that define us?
DANNY
I think being admired is lonely.
MARCUS
You’re right, I’m sure. But that was the price he had to pay. The ordinary world was not for him. And his flirtation with it was always going to end badly.
Marcus stubs out his cigarette, leaving Danny behind.
DANNY
Professor?
Marcus looks back, expecting an insult.
But Danny surprises him.
DANNY (CONT’D)
I miss him too.
Marcus registers Danny’s loss. And underneath all his great intellect, a pulse of emotion.
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. DAWN
Marcus still working at the laptop. Fragments of daylight creep through the broken walls.
Danny waiting, watching, never far away. Claire and Scottie are huddled beneath a coat.
Abruptly Marcus stands from the laptop. He seems to have forgotten about Danny, Claire and Scottie.
He finally turns to them.
MARCUS
He did it.
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MACHINE ROOM. DAWN
Marcus searches for a surface to write on, animated in a way we haven’t seen. The barbed aloofness is gone.
We glimpse the Marcus that Alex loved. A radically different proposition.
Excitable. As he scrambles about, followed by Danny, Scottie and Claire.
MARCUS
The 9/11 attackers sent emails using pre-arranged code words. “Faculty of Urban Planning” was the World Trade Center. The Pentagon was “The Faculty of Fine Arts”.
Marcus takes out a felt pen, trying to write on the rusted surface of a machine. It doesn’t work.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Mohammed Atta’s final message to the other terrorists referred to their semester beginning in three weeks. In faculty of urban planning. And fine arts.
Suddenly he sees, in the adjacent room, a huge broken mirror, or glass partition window.
He hurries towards it.
INT. RUINED INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. MIRROR ROOM. DAWN
Marcus writing on the mirror or window. His audience expect him to write an algorithm.
Instead Marcus writes:
“Meet you at the Zoo”.
Marcus then writes the identical sentence underneath:
“Meet you at the Zoo”.
MARCUS
In this email -
(points to first)
Zoo means Zoo. In this email -
(points to second)
It means airport.
(beat)
How can you tell them apart?
His audience have no idea.
Marcus rubs out all the words except for ‘zoo’.
He adds the words ‘museum’, ‘child’ and ‘charity’ allocating numbers above each of the words.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
People who go to the zoo also visit museums. Watch animated movies. Buy children’s clothes. Donate to animal charities.
Zoo 113 Museum 72 Child 44 Charity 9
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Now convert our entire online history into numbers.
Marcus rubs out the text, leaving only the numbers, hastily adding rows of other numbers, several repeating.
Marcus draws a pentagon around the number 113 linking it to other repeating numbers.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
A real visit to the zoo looks like this.
A ‘molecular structure’ of different numbers.
Now Marcus wipes the steel clean, writing the number 113, repeating it at random spots across the steel.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
A coded message looks like this.
He draws a pentagon around the number 113. Except there are no other numbers to attach. No ‘molecular structure’.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
The 9/11 terrorists used ‘innocent’ words. But they didn’t use them like everyone else.
Marcus fills an entire window pane with a chain of numbers, very quickly, speaking at the same time.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
We like to think of ourselves as individuals. But we’re a pattern. Married. Professional. Rich. Poor. Gay. Straight. Our online DNA. Revealing our true nature, even when we lie.
The first detail Danny has heard about Alex’s work. A side to him never explored. A kind of magic.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
I told him he’d change the world. I just never told him how dangerous that would be.
He turns, abruptly, leaving the room, hurrying up the stairs, towards the roof.
Danny hurries after him, followed by Claire and Scottie.
EXT. DERELICT INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. ROOF TOP. DAWN
Danny emerges onto the roof to see --
Marcus standing on the edge, staring at the sunrise.
Danny joins the Professor. They look out together. Marcus turns to Danny, without hostility.
MARCUS
You’re a ‘thoroughly nice guy’, aren’t you, Danny?
It doesn’t seem like an insult. Danny waits.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
So was Alex. For all his intellect, an innocent, really. When he told me that he was going to work for GCHQ, I knew it was a mistake. That he didn’t belong in that world. And I could feel him wanting me to tell him so.
DANNY
Why didn’t you say something?
MARCUS
We didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Claire and Scottie arrive, joining them. A little out of breathe having climbed the flight of stairs.
SCOTTIE
Why did they kill him?
EXT. DERELICT INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE. ROOF TOP. DAWN
The team are seated, huddled. Marcus smokes.
MARCUS
He decided to apply his concept to speech.
Scottie,
Danny and Claire can’t see the connection.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Words don’t occur in isolation. They’re part of a series of actions. Your intake of breath. Facial gestures. Pupil dilation. Hand movements. Alex theorized they form patterns. And these patterns would be different if you were telling the truth or telling a lie.
CLAIRE
A lie detector?
SCOTTIE
Important lies are told by important people. They’d never consent to a test of any kind.
MARCUS
Alex didn’t need their consent. That was the genius of it. They’ve already provided all the information. The world’s most important people are also the most documented.
We follow Danny’s eyes to the precise movements of Marcus’s lips: the physicality of his speech.
MARCUS (CONT’D)
Study every word they’ve ever spoken - mundane, profound - it doesn’t matter.
Analyze as many variables as possible. Translate the information into numbers. And identify the patterns. A fingerprint. For our truths. And our lies.
CLAIRE
We’d be able to analyze every statement?
MARCUS
Every political claim. Every case for war. Every court case verdict.
SCOTTIE
The end of lies.
MARCUS
If the four of us survive a week, I’ll be surprised.
And now excitement adjusts to apprehension.
London Spy: The Complete Scripts Page 18