by Mick Herron
Before the lights came on, there were men in each corner, four of them, waiting—a trap. But when the now-familiar flickering to life was done, the men turned into pot plants, their thick green leaves like rubbery imploring hands. Instead of earth, the pots were rim-full of smooth stones, between which, she imagined, each plant’s roots twined and clutched. Low-maintenance vitality.
She took the right-hand door. There were offices here, but glass-walled, and she could see through them to the outside world—London after dark was a fairground whose wheels kept turning. Sleek buildings, already higher than they had a right to be, strained further skywards still, while in the spaces between them cranes clustered, resembling huge metal birds, building nests where the city allowed.
The streets were different at night too. Were colder, damper, and those who asked you for change did so in tones more aggressive than suppliant. The daylight hours taught them to know their place, and know it they did, and it was here, and now.
But she had a job to do. And once she was back on the street, Harvey would be waiting for her, bearing the thanks of a grateful Intelligence Service.
The office she was looking for was the largest on the floor, a corner suite. Ahead of her, the lights buzzed to life, and she knew that if she were observing this building from across the road, a story would be telling itself, one in which a lone woman—probably a cleaner—made her way through the night, scattering darkness as she went. But no one would guess her real mission. The door was not locked. She entered the room. It will take two minutes, no more. Harvey’s promise. Before the lights had time to turn themselves off, she would be on her way back to the stairwell. She approached the desk, on which a laptop sat, locked to its docking device with a chain sleeved in plastic. Two minutes. She reached into her pocket for the flash drive.
It was gone.
Whatever happens, you mustn’t let this fall into their hands.
She went through her pockets again—all of them. Even the ones the drive had never been in.
They mustn’t find it. I can’t tell you how crucial that is.
In her throat, a rising tide. It would all overcome her now, this mission she’d been chosen for, its importance, her own inconsequence. She could run away, hide under her bed, let the world go on without her. Except that that’s precisely what it would do, wouldn’t it? If she ran now, and failed in her mission, then the things Harvey had warned her about would happen, and the world would turn for the worse.
Once it’s done its job, you have to either get it out of the building, or hide it somewhere it won’t be found.
It hadn’t done its job yet, and it was still in the building. It must have fallen from her pocket, would be on the stairwell, or somewhere between this office door and the lobby, or else—
The toilet.
There, where she’d crouched for hours, waiting for the office block to grow quiet and dim. She’d all but frozen in place, and even now her arms and legs felt heavy. But before leaving she’d had a pee, and that must have been when it happened, must have been when the flash drive wriggled free from her pocket. How could she not have heard it? But that was a useless thread to follow. For now, the choice was stark. She could return to the lavatory on the eighteenth floor, or . . .
Or the world would turn for the worse.
Maggie left the office. For no sensible reason she ran in a half-crouch along the corridor, as if that silent watcher in the neighbouring building weren’t simply following her story but preparing to pick her off with a high-powered rifle. But the watcher didn’t exist. She was alone, and hadn’t been found yet, but she had no right to be here, and there was a guard on a floor below, and more people below that. All these nervy thoughts made her clumsy—at the door to the lobby her lanyard caught on a button, and in a brief slapstick routine she tugged its catch loose and her security pass fell to the floor. She bent to collect it and, as she straightened up, saw through the lobby door’s porthole window the lift opening, and a man stepping out.
Once through the door, he stopped.
Was he sniffing the air, like a dog, for strangers?
Maggie had scrambled round the corner. She was now in a break-out area, so called, as if it were from here that workers might make their escape: an area three metres square, surrounded by high-backed sofas. She was lying on one in case he dropped to the floor and scanned for visible feet. Though it was more likely that he would simply walk past and see, not just her feet, but all of her, one whole young woman, twenty-six, very scared.
She closed her eyes, that ancient trick. I can’t see you, you can’t see me.
Harvey, what do I do now?
The man was talking. That same bass delight she’d heard in the stairwell. Joshua, the guard.
“Yo, yeah, I’m on twenny-five.”
crackle
“No, it’s juss, lights are on, man. Like something triggered them?”
crackle
“Pussy yourself, man. Doing a job here.”
crackle
“Yeah, well, you get tired watching TV, we can always swap.”
The crackling stopped.
Joshua paused.
He’s by the pigeonholes, thought Maggie.
She knew those pigeonholes well.
And if he was by the pigeonholes, he was standing not far from where she lay. Might even be staring in her direction. If he had X-ray vision, she was caught already. And if she made a sound, a squeak, a rustle . . . She was trying not to breathe. To make herself smaller than small.
The floor creaked. He’d taken a step.
Towards her?
It was like a thought experiment. Any move she made to determine his whereabouts would give her own away.
Another creak.
Was that one closer?
The sofa was red, though this didn’t matter. Of the other three, another was also red, and the remaining pair were blue. Big bright bold shades. There’d have been a meeting and someone would have passed round a catalogue and a vote would have been taken. Unless there was an underlying protocol which overrode democracy—a corporate livery, a company style. This didn’t matter either. All that mattered was that she was curled up on the world’s reddest sofa, whose tall back was the only thing shielding her from—
crackle
“Yo.”
crackle
“Sweet, man, yeah, maybe a mouse. You know I put them traps down? The humane ones? Catch and release, right?”
The planet shifted, and if she hadn’t already put a hand to her mouth, wasn’t already biting down on her outstretched index finger, she’d have screamed.
He had turned and was leaning against her sofa. The back of his head had swum into her ken, a shaved and cratered moon.
“I’ll release it I catch it all right. Release it from the window. Twenny-five floors, see if the little fucker lands on its feet.”
crackle
“So yeah. Kettle on. See you in ten.”
She could not breathe. She could not move. She could swear she could feel his heat.
Could smell the odour of smoked cigarettes.
The sofa moved again, crawled half an inch across the floor, and seemed to vibrate at the same time—what was he doing, was he toying with her?
Catch and release.
This was what cats did, they played with their food.
And then her heart flipped as he let out a huge sigh:
“. . . Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .”
When Maggie realised what he was doing, that he was using the sofa’s high back as a scratching post, she had to bite down on her finger again, this time to keep hysteria in. A big burly man, and he was giving it a real jiggle, reaching those places his own hands never could. It must feel so great, it must feel so grand, but oh God, what if he came round to push the sofa back into place when he wa
s done? There she’d be, curled up like his special treat, and all he’d have to do was reach out and pluck her.
It didn’t happen. The sofa stopped moving as he finished his scratch and then he was gone, back the way he’d come. She lay there while he, presumably, checked the nearest offices, their glass frontages making it unnecessary for him to step inside, and then she was hearing the lobby door open and close, after which there was only silence.
Five minutes later, maybe less, the lights went out.
Harvey, you should have been there.
She wanted to make herself happy, to turn this into an anecdote.
It was like being trapped up a tree, only the bear can’t see you. And all it wants to do is rub its back against the bark.
But it wasn’t working. Joshua was gone, yes, but she was still here, and the flash drive still seven floors below, in the ladies’ loo—she hoped—and there was nothing funny about any of it. Maybe one day. Maybe when she was in a wine bar, and Harvey was pouring the last of the second bottle into her big glass. Then it would be funny. But not yet.
The seconds ticked by, followed slowly by the minutes. She wondered if it were true, if there were mice in the building, and with the thought came a phantom tickle up her thigh, and she yelped and slapped at her leg—couldn’t help it—and the lights came on.
Which was, as it were, a wake-up call. Maggie stood and clenched her fists and hurried to the door. Let herself through to the lifts, whose numbers showed that three were at ground level, the other on the twelfth. This was as much a guarantee of safety she was going to get. Out on the stairwell the air felt colder, so much so her breath was visible. She counted the steps down: twelve per half-flight. One hundred and sixty eight in all.
On the eighteenth floor, all was quiet. There were no potted plants here, though, and it struck her she’d never noticed this before. At night, you have different eyes. Different details shuffle into view.
In the ladies’, everything was as she’d left it. The door to the third cubicle hung open and the toilet lid was down. The automatic freshener had spritzed the air, and a tang of artificial pine prickled her senses, but on the floor there was nothing—no flash drive—and her heart slumped inside her.
Whatever happens . . .
Where was it?
. . . you mustn’t let this fall into their hands.
If not here, where?
She’d have seen it on the stairs if that’s where she’d dropped it. It would not have been possible to miss a thumb-sized wedge of plastic . . . This was the process her mind was going through, a logical one-step/two-step that, followed to its destination, would restore everything to how it ought to be, and leave her triumphant, the flash drive in her palm. But her body had ideas of its own, and even now was forcing her onwards, one extra step, beyond that final cubicle to the wash-space, where the basins lined the wall. And there, in the centre of the floor, having scuttled under the partition, lay the flash drive. It was with a peculiar sense of calm and rightness that she bent to retrieve it. All that panic, Maggie, and where did it get you? Just an unnecessary shock, when if you’d gone about things in a methodical way, you’d be out of the building by now.
It was time to take a grip. Drive firmly in hand, she left the toilets and headed up the stairs again. The lights on the twenty-fifth were still on, her recent presence still eddying the air. In the corner office she knelt by the desk, unfolded the flash drive so its male part was showing, and inserted it into its port. Then turned the computer on.
“What will it do?”
Harvey had looked at her thoughtfully, weighing up, she assumed, the exact degree of her right to know.
And if he had refused to say, would it have made a difference? She had come this far, after all—had allowed herself to be recruited. This might have made others bridle. Made them feel used. But being used was being shown that you were useful. And Maggie wanted to be useful.
Besides, he had already told her so much, so much.
“The company is not what it claims to be,” for instance.
And: “If you could be part of something huge—something life-savingly important—what risk would you be willing to run?”
Nobody would know, of course. That had been clear from the start. The heroism he was offering was anonymous, deniable, and might even be deemed criminal if things went wrong.
Turning it over and over in his mind, the way she was turning the flash drive over in her hand.
“It will install a surveillance program into the company’s network.”
“. . . That’s all?”
“It’s enough, believe me.”
He had a halting way of speaking, a verbal dawdle that became more pronounced when he was at his most earnest.
“It will allow us to monitor all their internal communications.”
“Can’t you do that anyway?”
“Theoretically, yes. But not without using a much wider net. And that means bringing in GCHQ, and that means . . . I’m sorry, Maggie. We’re outside your need to know here.”
She said, “You’re worried that the more people know, the more chance there is of someone leaking the operation.”
“Maggie . . .”
“You’re worried there’s a traitor in your organisation.”
He glanced around.
“Nobody’s listening, Harvey.”
She felt like they’d just swapped shoes—here she was, reassuring him. But they were talking quietly, and the café was its usual mid-morning mayhem. Infants in their carriages and mothers on their phones. They’d have more chance of being overheard if they’d been using semaphore.
Harvey said, “Certain operational . . . weaknesses have come to light. Which make this a particularly . . . sensitive matter.”
“Which is why you need me.”
He smiled that gently ugly smile of his. “Which is why I need you.”
The drive weighed nothing. Weighed less than a snowflake.
“So I . . .”
“You plug it into the USB port, then turn the computer on.”
“I’ll need a password.”
“Nope. You just wait until you’re prompted for one. Then power down, and then remove the drive. Couldn’t be simpler.”
It was safe in her grip. Safe in her hand.
Couldn’t be simpler.
The screen asked for a password, in that officious way screens had.
Maggie was tempted to key a retort, Ha ha, screw you, but had visions of a net dropping from the ceiling, of bells going off. To have come this far to get snatched now, well. That would be . . . disappointing.
She held the power button down until the machine emitted its yelp, then closed the lid, pulled the flash drive free, and put it in her pocket.
Job done.
All that remained to do was leave.
She took a glance round the office before doing so. The view through the windows aside, it looked ordinary, as if no grim business were conducted here. The desk, the furniture, the two armchairs posed around the glass-topped coffee table, were unassumingly anonymous. The art on the wall had been chosen not to draw the eye. She had a vision of whoever it was did business behind this desk, a blank-faced man, a featureless woman, with a circular face and an inked-in nose. And then she blinked it away, and headed for the lobby.
For a moment, she considered summoning the lift and dropping twenty-five floors in one fell swoop, marching past the front desk with a wave. Harvey was waiting for her down the road. He’d be standing on a corner, their appointed rendezvous, checking his watch. My clever girl, he’d call her, or something. Job done. Job done.
But the lift would be a mistake, a change of gear she had no business making. Careful steps had got her this far, and careful steps would see her home. She let herself back into the stairwell. Twenty-five flights, fifty sets of
stairs. There was a rhythm waiting in them, and her feet found it soon enough, just at that tipping point between speed and safety. When Maggie looked down she couldn’t see the ground floor, and when she looked up couldn’t see the roof. Caught between two extremes, so much the opposite of her real life, she might as well have stepped, not into a stairwell, but through the back of a wardrobe.
There’d be time for thoughts like this later. For now what mattered was these remaining flights, fifteen of them, fourteen and a half. Fourteen.
On the thirteenth floor, where else, the door opened, and she all but ran into his arms.
“Miss?” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She came to a halt. Vocabulary failed her. “Oh.”
“Can I ask what you’re doing here, miss?”
“I was just . . . on my way home.”
“But you shouldn’t be up here, should you, miss?” Joshua tilted his big head to one side. “Not this time of night. I know you, though. I know you, right?”
“I work here,” she said, fumbling her security pass free.
He clicked his fingers. “I do know you,” he said. “You work in the post room.”
“. . . That’s right.”
“You work in the post room,” he repeated. “But you shouldn’t be here now.”
“No, I was going home.”
“Yes, miss,” he said. “But you’d better come with me first. Just while we straighten this out.”