by Brian Martin
At exactly eight o’clock Arne made his excuses and went home. He made no fuss, was not embarrassed, shook hands warmly with Paul and me, and rather formally with Rovde. He hoped we would enjoy our dinner, called a waiter to find his coat, and we waved after him as he walked out into the street. As he went out, Mark came in. He was shown to a table at some distance from ours. We did not signal recognition.
From the moment of Arne’s departure, Uri concentrated on his quarry. Throughout the evening, I could not help but break in occasionally to lend support to what Uri said. I told Paul that I thought he could go far in the US government intelligence service. I did not tell him about my connection with Willy: it would have been unwise to tell anyone. Paul could draw his own conclusions. I could see that Paul was interested. His imagination was stimulated by the idea of covert work. He was not foolish enough to believe that he would become an American James Bond. He realised that the greater percentage of intelligence work is hard graft, routine work, collation, sifting, report writing, analysis, documentation of one sort or another. In fact, it had its boring, civil service side to it. Yet it required intellectual ability, persistence, concentrated focus, and, in the field, a variety of human contact, much travel and often considerable excitement.
Paul had no illusions. He was quite prepared to leave Arne and Myrex, and even more ready to serve his country in the ways that Rovde described. By the end of the meal, Rovde declared that he would like to transmit the burden of their conversation to his superiors back in Washington and report that Paul was a willing new player in the Great Game. In the meantime Paul should continue working conscientiously for Myrex and pay close attention to Arne and his role in the corporation’s proceedings. He mentioned that even if Paul were to be taken on by the American service, it might be thought necessary to keep him in his Myrex post for a while. What was happening in the Baltic states, and the operation of Western companies and corporations in those ex-communist countries, was of crucial concern to the US government. Someone who worked within one of those companies would be invaluable.
Just before 10.30, Rovde, who looked thoroughly pleased with himself, elated by the success of the evening, said he had to go: he was to meet Mo and did not want to keep her waiting. Paul looked happy and satisfied. I think he saw the progression of his career laid out in front of him: it all seemed most satisfactory. We finished on a high note of bonhomie. The three of us were all well pleased. Everything had gone to plan. We were in excellent spirits. I regretted that I had to leave Mark seated at his separate table. It had not been appropriate to introduce him then, although I was very keen for Paul and Mark to meet. I had no doubts about them liking each other. In retrospect, that dinner and its conclusion in the Italian restaurant was the high point of success and satisfaction. After that, it was a quickly accelerating decline into grim horror.
23
Arne made it perfectly clear the following day, the last day of the conference, that he, or rather, Myrex, wanted an answer from me. Was I going to be tempted and fall in with their ideas of employment for me; or was I going to refuse. At one point after lunch, Arne remarked, in what I thought then was jest, that if I was reluctant, then Myrex would make me an offer I could not resist. Subsequently I realise the import and implications of his statement. I remember thinking that it was time I made my refusal of their offer plain. I could no longer sit on the fence, prevaricate. So, I told him as we drank our coffee. Paul had gone to photocopy some papers for Arne and to send a fax to Seville – I assumed to Raoul.
‘Look,’ I said as I sipped the jet black brew of my espresso, ‘I am quite clear in my own mind. I don’t want to make a change. It’s very generous of you and Raoul, and whoever else might be concerned, but I am content with my life at the moment. I don’t want to shift. You’ll have to tell Raoul, I’m afraid.’ I thought to myself that Raoul could have consulted his wife. Roxanne would know how I felt, although she would obviously not know all my reasons for refusal. She could explain; offer some sort of credible explanation for my turning down of what most people would see as a brilliant opportunity. Yet I knew that to mention the intimacy of a husband, wife, lover, relationship, would embarrass Arne and, almost certainly, annoy Raoul. I decided to keep my thoughts quiet.
‘He is going to be extremely disconcerted, put out, I think you say. He will not like it. He has been determined to have you with us. My instructions were to engage you at all costs. Myrex’s conditions could not be more generous. Raoul, and some of his other board members, are not going to be pleased. In fact, he will be furious. I know he was relying on your cooperation. I do not know what he will do next.’
‘Oh come on, Arne. I’m not as important to Myrex as all that. You’re being melodramatic. I’m a small fish who likes swimming around Raoul’s wife. What’s so great about employing me?’
Arne replied unusually sharply, ‘I do not know. But there is something about you that Raoul and his colleagues want to secure. You cannot ask me: I do not know what it is.’
I began to feel awkward. I did not like the way the conversation was going. I could not calculate whether to believe in Arne’s ignorance of motives or not. He seemed to be on edge, even annoyed.
He continued, ‘I shall have to let Raoul know at once. In a sense, we have kept him waiting. He has been very patient. He will not like it. Like Napoleon, he is used to having his own way.’ I had to work out if Arne’s Napoleonic observation was a joke or not. I decided not: Arne was not in a joking mood. I am not sure that he ever was.
In fact, the mood had changed. Arne was more clipped, more curt than he had been. His few words became fewer. Paul returned from his secretarial tasks and did not realise that a mild frost had fallen on the proceeding. He soon discovered the proper register. He observed light-heartedly that the girls in the office where he had just been, were attractive and companionable: there were three of them and perhaps we could invite them for supper. Arne was not amused and quickly called Paul to order by asking him to fetch the agenda for the final plenary session of the conference. Paul detected the tone, flat and determined, in Arne’s voice, glanced at me, and hurried off. Unnoticed by Arne, I had widened my eyes, but Paul saw the hint in my look, took stock, adjusted the tenor of what he was saying and behaved appropriately.
It was good to see that Paul was adjusting to his new situation. He was more aware than he had been that life was not as simple as he first imagined. His work with Myrex had suddenly become important now that he had talked to Rovde. His position there with Arne was not just a job to gain some sort of passing experience of the business world. He knew that it would have some other significance. Rovde had intimated that without giving him any specific idea at that point what it might be. Paul knew he was on a different course. He was watchful and alert to nuances of behaviour in, as it were, the players on stage. Prior to his meeting with Rovde, it would not have occurred to him to look out for signs and signals. Nothing, of course, had been finalised between Rovde and him, but we all knew that Paul was launched in the direction of service with the Agency.
Later, after the finish of the plenary session, I was standing in a group discussing US dominance over the EU member states, especially in matters of defence. There was an Estonian government minister aged about thirty, dressed in a hand-made suit, with styled hair, and smelling of eau de cologne, another journalist from Le Monde, a woman director of a Dutch consultancy company, Arne and myself. We came to no conclusion except to agree that US commercial expansion, supported by massive military superiority under the White House administration then in power, was aggressively active, strident and effective. Privately I reflected that their intelligence service was very similar. Gradually the meetings of one or two people here and there broke up. The conference began to dissolve. Taxis drew up outside. Delegates with their suitcases appeared out of lifts and were driven off to the airport or to the hydrofoils. Arne asked me when I planned to leave. I told him that I would stay for the rest of the week and leave Satur
day in the late afternoon.
‘We must meet tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Let us walk around the old city in the afternoon. Then perhaps, if you were not doing anything on Friday, you would like to come out to Paldiski to see how we progress with our labs. Who knows, I might still be able to persuade you.’
‘That would be good. Tomorrow I can write my copy for the Journal. I’d love to see how things are going at Paldiski. I look forward to that.’
When I remember what I said to him, I see the acute and awful irony. I had no idea of what lay in store for my friends and me.
That evening we all relaxed. Rovde, Mo, Paul and I, met for dinner in the Gloria’s cellar. Mark and I still thought it best to maintain a discreet distance but I continued to keep him aware of where I was and what I was doing. Arne no doubt went to bed early. His change of tone, his tartness, would not have been welcome. The rest of us were in ebullient mood. We drank good Chilean wine in front of the open fire. It was strange to think that in frozen Estonia we were drinking wine from the warmth of a completely different hemisphere. Mo was totally enraptured with Uri. She attended to every word he uttered. They were a good matching pair. Intellectually, they were sounding boards for each other. They discussed and argued, but never bitterly to the last ditch. They complemented each other. Uri was a physical heavyweight, tall, broad, big-boned: Mo was also tall, but slender and stooped. If you had combined them together somehow, you could have produced two normal-sized people.
Paul was elated. I suspected he saw his life taking an unexpected turn. He saw, no doubt, excitement, adventure, an extraordinariness that would mark him off from most other people. I kept damping down his sense of exhilaration by pointing out that what he might be committing himself to was in essence dangerous. No matter how obscure you were in the service, you were nevertheless a target in the front line. It was known to the enemy that you were there. They did not necessarily know your identity, but you were in direct line for elimination. Anyway, I stressed, the Agency might turn him down. Just because Uri thought him suitable, it did not mean that his superiors would. That I knew was not a strong argument: it seemed to me that Paul was an ideal candidate. When I thought of some of our own agents, individuals we had recruited for a variety of odd reasons, I could see clearly that Paul would be outstanding. If the Americans could not see that then they deserved to fail in all their intelligence quests. Compared with some of our old drones, Belmont for example, Paul would become razor sharp. Belmont had been a certain typical sort of British operative, seedy, inefficient, in the end a liability. Paul would quickly become a professional. I saw him as a future Washington favourite, destined for high office.
It was a good evening. We enjoyed each other’s companionship, conversation, concern for values in the world. We broke up about eleven. We were all slightly drunk, pleasantly, warmly so. I saw the three of them away. I stood outside the Gloria on the frosted pavement. It was cold and the temperature was still dropping. In saying goodbye, we all hugged each other. Paul’s embrace was distinctive. He conveyed in it a powerful concern and care for me. I wondered if it was the same for the other two. As I stood outside the hotel, I felt like the owner of some great manse who was saying goodbye to his dinner guests as they left after a particularly convivial evening. I waved as they disappeared into the gloom of that cold night, Paul back to the Myrex house and the spectral Arne, Uri and Mo, more than likely, to his place. I wondered how the night would end for them.
I was alone. In the vestibule I rang Mark’s mobile.
‘You all seemed to be enjoying yourselves. It’s not much of a holiday for me. I’d like to meet those two Yanks. They look good fun.’
‘You will,’ I said. ‘All in good time. Now look, I think we should meet for breakfast. What do you reckon, here or in the English café?’
‘The café,’ he said. ‘It’s more in the open and safer. We can make it look as though we met by chance. Nine o’clock?’
‘Fine. You arrive at nine. I’ll be there at five past. I’ll grab my breakfast from the counter and as I pass your table, I’ll drop my newspaper. You pick it up and that way we’ll get into conversation. I’ll then join you at your table.’
‘OK. See you in the morning. Sleep well, dear prince.’
The following day was sorted out. I could spend most of the morning with Mark and maybe arrange for him to meet Paul; and in the afternoon I would walk with Arne around the old town. When I reached my room, I felt languorously tired. As I lay in bed, I was haunted briefly by erotic thoughts of Lena. I suppose it was the Washington connection. Thoughts of the Agency, Rovde and Paul were running through my mind. Lena soon appeared in my imagination. Her shape, her form, her delight and enjoyment, all came back to me. Then I slept, deeply and soundly.
24
All went as expected the following morning. I went to the English Café as we had planned. I appeared to drop my paper accidentally as I passed Mark. I rested my breakfast plate and coffee on his table, stooped to pick up the paper, he reached for it before me, and so we struck up, what must have seemed to any onlooker, a casual conversation. Loudly enough for most people in the café to hear, Mark invited me to sit at his table.
I wondered to myself what on earth we were doing. Suddenly, it all seemed ridiculous. Any self-respecting security organisation would have known exactly who we were, and I was convinced that anyone from Myrex commissioned to watch me would have known our identities and relationship. Still, we performed the charade, and soon we were deep in conversation. It was such a pleasure to talk with Mark. I immediately relaxed. I became oblivious of place. We might just as well have been back in our pub on the London riverbank. I explained to Mark that Arne was going to walk with me round the old town that afternoon, and that the next day I was going out to Paldiski. No doubt Arne would further test me on my declared determination not to join Myrex. Why were they so keen to recruit me? That question exercised our minds. We talked about possible reasons in quiet tones fearful that we should be overheard. Mark reckoned that for a certainty Myrex must have been involved in business that was less than legitimate. Since Tallinn was so important in the expansion of their enterprises, he thought that Raoul and his partners must be connected with criminal activities. He alluded to drug smuggling, money laundering, arms dealing, internet conspiracy and fraud. I suggested that there might be a link with the Russian mafia: perhaps Myrex’s interest in computer technology, e-business and encryption, had to do with the many pornography sites that were based in Russia. Huge amounts of money were being made by hard-core pornography companies. I saw Raoul as an entrepreneurial exploiter who did not care how Myrex’s money was made, and Arne as his clinically efficient, amoral facilitator.
Our discussion on that subject was inconclusive but we remained sure that there was something unorthodox going on, to do with Myrex’s programme. Mark went on to tell me about the book he was reading, a powerful but extreme tirade against Islamic expansionism by an exiled Italian author in her eighties who lived in New York. At the same time, he had been dipping into Buddhist scriptures, trying to understand Buddhism’s religious philosophy.
‘What I find so attractive about Buddhism is its kind of stoicism,’ Mark said. ‘There’s no point in looking for reasons all the time. It teaches a philosophy of acceptance. There is suffering in the world and there is nothing we can do about it. You should merely accept the fact and endure as best you can. You’re wasting your time if you look for reasons, rationalising why it came about.’
‘I can understand all that, but I need reasons. At least Christianity, Judaism, Islam, put forward reasons for the existence of evil. I need explanations, or, at least, attempts at explanation.’
He started quoting bits from the Buddhist scriptures. He said he had not consciously made an effort to learn them; they had just stuck in his memory. We were talking about certain rules that are supposed to govern monks’ lives, when Paul came in. He looked around to see if there was anyone there he knew, saw me, raised his
hand and waved, and joining the short queue said he would come over to our table. I was elated by his arrival: Mark and he would meet. I knew they would like each other; and I was right. Naturally, Mark was fascinated that he was at close quarters with someone who moved at the centre of Myrex operations. I had stressed to him that Paul was merely Arne’s PA in the most menial sort of way, but, nevertheless, Mark held that Paul’s privileged position must have made him privy to all sorts of matters that other people could not possibly know about. Mark did not know what kind of man Arne was. Although I had described his obvious asceticism, Mark found it difficult to believe the extent of its effect. It was not until you met Arne that you appreciated his objectivity, his cool calculation, and, as I have mentioned, his amorality. Mark had yet to find that out.
Paul could not stay long. He had simply stopped by for a cup of coffee and whatever passing company he would find in the café. He apologised for not being able to stay longer but told us that he had to report back to the Myrex house where Arne was working. He had just delivered an important dossier to someone who had booked into the Italian hotel the night before, and felt he had better return. He left hoping that he and Mark would meet again. I said to him as he stepped away from our table that I would make sure they did.
As we sat there musing about what Myrex’s real business might be in the Baltic, Mark said that it would be interesting to discover who the person was that had moved into the Italian hotel the night before. He thought he should investigate. It would be easy enough to find out who it was. Mark knew that I had to write my copy for the Journal that morning. While I was doing that, he said he would pursue his inquiries at the hotel. We both considered it essential to ascertain the legitimacy, or otherwise, of Myrex’s dealings. I told Mark that I would find out more about their business when I went with Arne to Paldiski the following day. He agreed that it was an incomparable opportunity.