One-On-One

by Philip Spires

  Christine and I were in the living room, having a good laugh, but the other two were rather heavily engaged in a rather noisy bout of activity in the adjoining bedroom. I had no idea where the lady’s chemicals had taken her, but I knew where she was coming from. As the big hand sped towards the vertical and lock-in hour approached, the two of them seemed so engrossed in their studies that it seemed simply callous to interrupt. I jest, because we had no idea what time it was. We were smashed. Christine, who was not used to boozing, and certainly not used to the other things we had tried, and who, in any case, was still in a relatively weakened physical state, was out for the count by the time there was a knock on the door, somewhere near midnight, if I recall.

  Well, let’s put it this way, I rather saved the day. My friend the porter chap came to tell me there was a commotion outside. There had been an intruder, a bloke trying to climb over the fence. He had been apprehended, but had indicated, somewhere in what my porter chappie described as ‘the man’s rantings’, that he was looking for a particular room, which happened to be Christine’s. There were people around, the police had been called, and there was plenty of noise and much confusion. Once the intruder had been dealt with, he expected the police would want to have a word with Christine to see if she could shed any light on the matter.

  It was a pretty pickle, for us in the rooms, Christine and her three after hours guests, two of whom were male, while the third was out of her brain on acid, emitting the sound effects of continuing casual sex, loud enough to wake up half the staircase. In short, we would all have been sent down, despite the previous decade’s claim to new enlightenment. We were breaking the law, let alone petty little local rules. We had used and were still in possession of banned and illegal substances. If the police came in, we were on our way out, probably into a cell for that particular night, but definitely out of Oxford, and perhaps out of our careers as well. Certainly I would have been finished, and with disgrace for my family name to boot.

  I, of course, had the most to lose, since my career was already under way. My studies were being sponsored by my employer, who had already invested a small fortune in my training. I had been ear-marked, so I was told, partly as a result of my background and partly because of my modern language skills, for a particular area of activity, for which I was deemed suitable. The rest is history. But that night, as the porter stood at the foot of the stairs before me, I could see all of this, both my past and my future, dissolving before my eyes, as I slipped twenty-five quid extra into the porter’s mitt and delivered a few quickly thought, but well chosen words. I suggested he inform the police that Miss Gardiner had gone away for the weekend and also doctor his records to indicate she had signed out earlier in the day. I knew that he and his colleagues regularly arranged cover in this way for several of the old hands in the college. I suggested he note down that Christine had gone to visit a certain family called Green in Hampshire and supplied my mother’s name and address so it could be entered in his ledger. I told him how confident I was that he could make a good fist of forging a signature.

  Immediately he left, I made a swift call to mummy from the pay phone in the corridor, ensuring that any query reaching her on the whereabouts of either myself or Christine could be answered with a recognition of the fact that we were down for the weekend. A little story about the two of us having gone off for a touch of overnight nookie in a New Forest pub would provide the cover for not being able to contact us, and surely all would stay quiet. I could imagine the tone... “You know what these young people are nowadays...” My mother’s lips would create something credible while she held the phone in her habitual pose, a good six inches from her ear and mouth, a distance that could allow the punctuation of a flick of the head or a knowing laugh to be added. Our backs would thus be covered.

  You will appreciate that, next morning, Christine and the others were somewhat appreciative of my efforts on their behalf. Had I not told them how we had skirted disaster, however, I doubt any of them would have been any the wiser, so deliriously incapacitated were they at the time. They all did, however, and especially Christine, who went as white as a sheet at the prospect, register how close to disciplinary action, even expulsion, they had been.

  And for Chris and I, it did the trick, certainly a trick. It cemented our relationship which, until then had been one of developing friendship. After that night we became the joined phrase, girlfriend and boyfriend, a conjunction that has lasted until today, despite its occasional estrangements. From that night she trusted me implicitly and, gratified that I had lent more than just a helping hand, I concluded that assisting Christine long-term in her battle with her disability might prove rewarding for both of us. Two years down the track, as Cartwright had indicated, I was able to assist her further by identifying an employment opportunity, which she accepted, along with my proposal of marriage.

  Incongruous it may seem, but during the hours when I watched my unchanging screen, hours during which my wife slept like a babe in Cartwright’s arms (presumably, because I couldn’t see!), I succumbed to this enduring nostalgia. I include it here, since Cartwright had referred to Christine’s ‘recruitment’ while still at college. In addition, he knew my name, since early on he had referred to Christine as Mrs Green, though there was probably no significance attached, since her married name is no secret, no matter how rarely it is published.

  I remain a government employee, a civil servant, nothing more nor less. My military background, as far as I am aware, is nowhere publicly linked to my current post, which, of course, remains that of a communications officer specialising in Central Asian languages. Christine did come under my wing, so to speak, when we were both at college but, on replaying the sequence of my memories, I am currently of the opinion that Cartwright’s choice of words was no more than a lucky stab in the dark, a mere colloquialism with no more status than a throw away remark. He had no specific knowledge, for if he had, and he really did want to make a point of his intelligence, he would have mentioned my name in the same breath. Left open and unattributed, his assertion was probably just a general, uninformed skit.

  ***

  I confess that I slept. I had lost track of time again. As I continued to watch the unchanging scene, my screen had remained dark, with even night enhancement revealing only the random dots of boat lights passing across the distance within the confines of the door frame. There was no other light, except a glinting moonlight that rippled occasionally across the sea between creeping rain clouds.

  I awoke after their dawn to find an unchanged scene. I found myself stupidly standing up to see if I could somehow peer over the settee-back to check if the two of them still lay there asleep, locked in their embrace. Save for the noises of the day, the house was silent, but there was a wind, and even a little rain in the air, rain that fell this morning, unusually, as drizzle. Thus the microphones had adjusted their levels to amplify all noises. And so the lapping of the waves below, the occasional swish of a hanging bag on the balcony wall, the merest click and tick of bamboo poles straining against one another and their twine lashing, all these were surreally grand, emphasised beyond their significance, and thus commanding my attention.

  As time passed without further stir, it began to dawn on me that I might have missed them. It was just possible, though unlikely, that they had stirred, got up and left the house without the sound gain from the microphones stirring me while I slept, or later registering while I reviewed the material on fast forward. By nine o’clock their time, I had concluded that this was precisely the case, however unlikely. They were out on the boat. I felt stupid. I should have checked earlier. My front balcony camera appeared to have the two mooring ropes in place, tied to either end of the balustrade. Sometimes, I knew by now, the boat might drift a little, in which case it might settle under the house and thus be invisible from my points of view. I had assumed this was the case this morning. Later, some time later, I looked again and no
ticed - quite by chance, since I had not consciously inspected them - that both ropes were hanging vertically and were not tensed at an angle that a moored and drifting boat would have stretched.

  So someone was out in the boat - either that or it had drifted loose in the wind. I re-ran the material that each camera had recorded through the night while I slept, but this time ignored the screen and watched the sound level. And, sure enough, well before dawn, while it was still completely dark under a passing cloud, Cartwright had stood up from the couch, had retrieved Christine’s prosthesis from where it had hung on its nail for the better part of a day and presented it to her. They had actually made quite a lot of noise as they climbed down into the boat, Christine especially, for this, after all, was the first time she had actually gone down Cartwright’s house-pole ladder since she had arrived, having spent all of her time inside the house, thus far.

  Everything was dark and they lit no light. Under the cloudy sky there seemed to be only profound dark, their images and movement being revealed in full only when viewed in the infra-red. Surprisingly, neither of them had spoken. Cartwright had led her by the hand, and had meticulously guided her feet onto the ladder rungs from below. That neither of them had uttered a word suggested cooperation, something almost akin to a whispered conspiracy. Its only purpose could have been to exclude me from what they were attempting. It is conceivable that Christine’s silence was a result of threats from Cartwright, thus raising the possibility that coercion had been used. Whatever the case, the need for silence had been requested and acknowledged by sign language I had not seen since, even on the highest gain the sound system could offer, not even a whisper had registered prior to their departure.

  Cartwright took the boat away on an oar, a long paddle at the back that he swished from side to side, so it too made no noise above the waves. Their progress was slow, but within seconds I could see nothing, since by then the cloudy sky had neither moon nor star, and neither could I hear, since the nearby wind and waves, though gentle, were dominant and drowning. There was, however, an occasional glint off the prow, whenever the slightest gap in the cloud passed above, so with care I could trace flashes of their ponderous progress. Eventually, and in a far distance, a motor started, but not at a roar, only a gentle chug until distance had itself been amplified. Their departure had taken the better part of an hour, but the associated noise had lasted barely a minute, and their movements had not registered at all, except in a spectrum the human eye itself would not see. And that was why earlier I had missed them.

  What galled me most of all was that Christine had not thought to put on her glasses before leaving, the glasses she had worn that first morning on the hotel jetty. At least then she could have taken me with them. As things stood, they were not only out of my view, but they were also out of my protection, a state for which I could not accept continuing responsibility. I thus sent an immediate emergency message to the office. No doubt you have retained its text. No doubt, also, you placed in train the emergency procedures it triggered.

  Now I may have over-reacted. I could have waited but, after decades of these occasional assignments in collaboration with my wife, I had never before known her to go out of range without a reason, and a reason always shared with me, encoded or explicit, before the event. Before we were able to have online contact in real time, Christine would telephone or email with details of her intention. She would provide an itinerary, sketched out as accurately as circumstances allowed, and contact numbers at destination or en route wherever possible. Of course, in the pre-mobile phone era, there were always some occasions when she might not be contactable for a few hours or even more, but never, even then, had she ever simply gone out of my range without warning. This was something special, something quite unique.

  I felt I had to act. I feared for her safety. I did not trust the man. From the start I felt he had asserted control, that he had fed us with precisely what he had planned, offered us no leads, presented nothing we did not already know and all of this, I felt, was so carefully executed that it must have formed part of a broader strategy, a bigger game, if you like, probably one as much imposed on him as devised by him.

  From the very start I had consistently expressed the view that Cartwright was a mere front, a public face - a not so public face! - and an innocuous one at that, for a consortium of oligarchs bent on securing ownership and control of assets without the need for explicit declaration of their identity. And everything that had happened since Christine’s arrival had, for me, only confirmed this view. Cartwright had told us nothing new because he had nothing to tell. The bogus research that had given rise to the bogus mathematics he had deliberately presented to the camera was, put simply, bogus. It was already six days since Christine had arrived and he had yet to switch on his personal computer, despite his claim that he only went to his island to work. And yet our communications team was telling us that trading in his name on multiple international markets was continuing without interruption, with the number of deals completed each day hardly changing. He had, of course, claimed that his systems were fully automated and could therefore operate without any human intervention, let alone his own, but an alternative analysis might suggest that Cartwright’s trading was done by his associates, and that this was why it could continue despite his being otherwise engaged.

  My decision to raise the alarm was taken quickly: this I am quite willing to acknowledge. But the decision was justified, as things developed, since Cartwright and Christine did not reappear that day, nor that night. By the time the sun went down, I was convinced we would never see Christine again. She had left without her luggage, her laptop, notepad or mobile phone. I recognise that she had worn her prosthesis, and had taken time before she left to put it on, meaning that she could also easily have picked up her phone or a change of clothes, neither of which she did. But this recognition offered no reassurance and I grew steadily more convinced with the passing of each hour that her departure and the terms imposed upon it were dictated by Cartwright, and that she had followed his instructions to the letter under duress and out of fear. Her wearing the prosthesis was, on reflection, essential. In order to leave the house, she had to climb down the house-pole ladder, a task she could simply not have attempted using only her arms and one leg. This, along with the assumed secrecy and complete lack of words shared between them, convinced me that she had been threatened, albeit quietly, and thus forced to comply. There was simply no other explanation.

  I did not sleep that night, since I had already instigated an emergency. But as dawn began to glimmer across my screens above the distant horizon and there remained no hint of return, I became convinced that my analysis would prove correct. The sun rose, and then the sky clouded over. A wind got up and then there was rain. All the microphones could register was the incessant drumming of constant drops and the only views available were obscured by those unbroken rivulets of falling water as they drained off the roof. Several times during the day, these coalesced into a near-sheet that completely distorted or obscured my view. I could see the interior of Cartwright’s shack, but it remained empty. As emergency procedure demanded, I filed a status request every two hours to record no change.

  It rained all day and continued after dark until nine o’clock local time. The wind was still gusting, and the sea probably remained uncomfortable, if not necessarily dangerous, as it had been earlier, for a craft the size of Cartwright’s water taxi. I could see little through the night, but the sky cleared and a moon rose, so reflections on the sea told me that it was still almost as rough as it had been throughout the storm. I had no idea, of course, of Cartwright’s intentions, so I could not even speculate if the weather had played a part in their non-return.

  ***

  There have been scares in the past, for sure, but they have never reached the status of ‘emergency’. Presumably, you can familiarise yourselves with any details after checking the special actions section of Christi
ne’s file, so here I will only make scant reference to a couple of incidents, to indicate just how different the current events had been, thus prompting my action.

  There was the time in the Middle East, when Christine was investigating the role of private armies. She feared she may have been abducted, when in fact she was merely being chauffeured at gunpoint. She could have immediately instigated her own emergency code, since she had her phone in her bag, and it predated the era when possession of a mobile phone was simply assumed, so her chauffeur had not checked for its presence. She could easily have fiddled in her bag and pressed out her code, but she did not, and neither did I. The situation was clearly developing and, though we had not anticipated a greeting from six men carrying an automatic weapon each, it was not so out of character of the area to warrant anything other than careful monitoring.