Phone

by Will Self

  Cubist irrealism: all glassy block-jaws and compound eyes that

  then shatter in the rifle’s flash. The Butcher observes this – and

  recognises a phenomenon he first witnessed at Langley three or four

  years ago, when he and Colin were given a demonstration of the

  Friends’ latest box of delights: operations coordinated and conducted

  using pinpoint-accurate satellite locations to obtain audio-visual

  take from multiple sources, so enabling real-time remote-control of

  the man on the ground. A little revolted – but mostly fascinated,

  the Butcher and the then Chief had watched on a monitor, which

  was directly connected to a camera mounted on the operative’s body

  armour, as he’d stalked along Beirut back alleys. The experience

  had been uncanny: ducking beneath rusting fire escapes festooned

  with laundry, scampering across cluttered courtyards, turning to

  the right and the left, then sliding down and around a shattered

  staircase, at the bottom of which the bed-head of some Mohammed

  or other who’d crossed the Agency had been turned to … mush.

  As he recalls, the SeeEyeAy man who made the kill was cracking

  open a can of Mountain Dew as he told the shooter where to

  aim … where to fire. To the player, whether he be a twelve-year-old

  soldier of fortune in Hampstead or a middle-aged spook in Virginia,

  the illusion remained the same: you appeared to be making

  definite progress – moving forward, scoring points and so acquiring

  additional powers. But the truth was you were completely and

  Medievally static – as static as the warm body you’d abandoned,

  slumped in a chair. It was the virtual world which revolved around

  these digi-bodies, not vice versa: a turmoil of zeroes and ones,

  forming and reforming an ever receding middle ground of mud-brick

  walls, mosquito-infested puddles, corrugated-iron roofs and

  unemployed young men. Oh, I dunno, Vron, the Butcher says,

  tightening his arm in hers in a way he hopes she finds … affectionate?

  Boys will be boys and all that jazz. When I was a boy, my brothers

  and I were pretty damn blood-thirsty – constant diet of war films

  and comics. Only diff’ was we had to use our imagination –

  but does that really make it any better? Y’know … in my mind’s

  eye, Vron, the butchery I carried out was a great deal more realistic

  than this … Vron peers at the Butcher a little oddly – and he

  knows she’s recollecting the story told about him at Oxford: how

  during Freshers’ Week he’d joined his college’s vegetarian society

  and invited its members to meet in his rooms, where he’d prepared a

  colossal fry-up for them – lashings of rashers, chains of interlinked

  sausages, slices of greasily gleaming black pudding and two or three

  bulbous kidneys. The spectacle had caused them to … flee – pissing

  themselves. The nickname subsequently bestowed on him was fairly

  predictable … although, as they wheel round once more and clack

  back across the parquet, he does wonder: Has Baldwin been

  saying things to her? Saying – or merely twittering? They’ve entered

  an aviary … full of Tories: a bright and overwhelmingly floral

  room – floor and wall coverings both – furnished with large soft

  sofas and chairs, and equipped with a baby grand upon which are

  silver-framed photographs of family, friends and the more famous

  politicos … he wishes were his friends. There are vases of late

  daffodils and early irises poised on occasional tables, and, as they

  advance between them, the Butcher searches the faces that open up

  to him – Hi, Jonathan … Jonathan – what’s the news, old chap?

  D’you know Jonathan De’Ath? – for any indication of … consciousness.

  At the old Lubyanka, where tea ladies in nylon housecoats

  pushed their trolleys along strip-lit corridors over dun carpeting,

  past despairing pot plants and beneath disintegrating ceiling tiles,

  the scene was so dispiritingly anonymous it had been difficult to

  visualise the building at all – unless you were actually standing on

  the scuffed linoleum floor of the reception area. For EyeBee officers

  of the Butcher’s generation, who’d joined the Firm when post-Philby

  paranoia remained rife … Kall-me-Kim, the Kommie Kunt

  wore brown suede shoes – keweedee all brown-suede-shoe-wearers are

  Kommie Kunts, and London was played by Moscow Rules, there

  was a degree of security to be gained by this fact alone: their own

  offices were so woefully under-imagined they were impossible

  to surveil – whether with the mind’s eye or a sub-miniature Minox.

  But now … ? Well, since the Service’s public avowal, courtesy of

  the Currie-stirrer, the fish-eye lens had been inverted, so, children

  that we undoubtedly are … with our Secret Sam briefcases and

  bottles of invisible ink, we hide in plain view – although remaining

  exiguous … a distortion in full sunlight … a spinning sphincter

  implanted in the smooth screen-skin –. How’re you, Jonathan? says

  an … affectionate? voice, issuing from a corn plaster the Butcher

  peels off, exposing the pink face of … that pinko one (Who’s always

  banging on about civil liberties …) and has been demob-happy since

  ninety-seven – ‘though I’ve heard he’s a weekend warrior. – Not too

  bad, David, you? Then the politician does an unexpected thing –

  rising from his flowery chair, he takes the Butcher’s arm and

  leads him through the open French windows and into the garden.

  A series of red-brick terraces descend to an oblong ornamental

  pond covered in water lilies. Beyond this rhododendrons screen off

  the garden below – for the hillside falls away sharply here, while,

  from the Baldwins’ peak perspective … Nick must be minted –

  this place has to be worth five mil’ and rising, the Butcher can gaze

  right out over North-West London, all the way to the leafy streets

  surrounding Shoot-Up Hill. What a perfect day, David says,

  and the Butcher agrees: Yes, such clarity – I feel I might look into

  the soul of Kilburn. David darts him an odd look, then gestures

  with his flute: Not drinking, Jonathan? They’ve gained the edge

  of the first terrace and the Butcher peers down at his handmade

  Franceschetti loafers and shuffles them a little (Nice sheen!): Bit of

  a flap on at the office – prob’ly have to go in later … Better keep

  a clear head … The politician perks up – and when the Butcher

  gets out his cigarettes and offers them, takes one, then a light,

  before striking a macho little pose with this prop and saying, Oh,

  yes, the office – you mean VeeBeeArr, don’t you? David has the

  look they always do: eyes clenching into knuckles, which in turn

  deliver the lightest knock on the door of … hell’s darkest chamber.

  The Butcher smiles tightly – but says nothing, only puffs away,

  thinking of how newcomers to London – natives and long-term

  residents as well – cannot help but think of the Thames as a straight

  line, and so are repeatedly surprised by the way the solid bastions of

  the North Bank – Saint Paul’s, for
example – suddenly up foundations

  and, trailing their … cold stone skirts, step over its chilly waters.

  This grand optical illusion is particularly evident when the Butcher

  goes out on to the terrace of the Aztec Camera, escaping the airlessness

  of his office to breathe in a cigarette. From this vantage, the

  channel separating VeeBeeArr, Tintagel and Camelot houses from

  the Tate Gallery, Millbank Tower and Thames House … where

  the EmmEyeFive plods swing their limp dicks appears ruled straight

  by Victorian masons. No wonder, he’s often mused, the British

  political class, despite our numerous betrayals, continues to place

  such trust in its intelligence services. Any former imperial power

  will have – in the modern idiom – abandonment issues, but

  we spooks aren’t going anywhere: Here we are … right beside

  them, hiding in plain view, and perfectly located for upstream data

  collection … As it is with the buildings – so it is with their denizens,

  who constantly cross over from one side to the other of this, the most

  deceptive bend in the world … Taking the Butcher’s abstracted

  silence for clamorous engagement, David remarks, I’m just back

  from Saudi … then goes on to recount how … he walked in marble

  halls, while the Baldwins’ other guests nose out from the French

  windows, lowing hungrily about the roast to come: When all’s said

  and done, I’m perfectly happy with chicken … David – perhaps

  make-believing he’s in the field – goes sotto, so his tale of a furtive

  princeling, beckoning him away from the Potemkin progress of the

  trade delegation, becomes compressed to the width of a news-thread

  which unrolls between them: I’mnotsayingthere’sanythingdefinite

  therebuthemadeitprettycleartomehe’dbeinterestedinworkingwithus

  ObviouslyIunderstandabout … andsaidnothingtoindicateIwasany-thingotherthanwhatIappearedtobe

  … As the EmPee rattles on,

  the Butcher allows some warmth to enter his expression – albeit his

  mind remains, as ever, coldly calculating: What’re such assets

  actually worth? Fuck-all, really. I’ve seen ’em all and done ’em all

  myself … There’re so many of these princelings, swirling about in

  the cloacal confines of the court-cum-seraglio – they bob about in

  there, slathered in the shit-and-piss of their kickbacks and corruption,

  and if you ever try and catch one of ’em by his toe – (He hollers,

  I’m the PeeEmm’s son! So you have to let ‘im go!). So to David

  he says, Well, that is, ah, interesting – I’ll certainly mention it to

  some people who may be … ah, interested. The EmPee looks a bit

  deflated and shuffles his desert boots on the suburban terrace. The

  Butcher considers the many solecisms David embodies – where to

  start? Surely with this screamed admonition: Never, ever, ever …

  BROWN IN TOWN! But then it’s the baby-boomers who’ve their

  fingers on the brass buttons now. He remembers being in Kosovo

  with Dick, who was then head of the Eastern Europe Controllerate.

  They’d watched the Great Liberator going walkabout in a crowd of

  natives, sporting the same black Levis as this one, together with a

  red shirt thrifty Cherie prob’ly bought for him at fucking Millets …

  Watching him bend his smiling, beautifully orangish face to their

  frowning hairy brownish ones, Dick had said, We’ll wait ‘til he’s

  had his fill, then we’ll tell him they’re all his enemies … Confident

  words, spoken cramped up in a whited-out Warrior with YouEnn

  painted on its turret – assertions they were more than able to back

  up with the contents of the buff folders they’d brought with them.

  The Butcher remembers also, how, as TeeBee flicked through the

  pages, Dick grew giddy seeing the application of the secret cog to

  the political drive-shaft … ahh, the old in-and-out. – The Filipina

  reappears bearing a plate covered with little filou-pastry parcels.

  What’s in these, please … ? But before David has an answer he’s

  popped one … two into his mouth, and positioned a third on his

  meaty palm. Vron, who comes fussing along behind her maid,

  says, Honestly, David, you won’t have any room for lunch … And

  he offers up: But these look too scrumptious, Veronica – besides,

  I’m utterly famished. Well, she titters nervously? You can blame

  Jonathan for that – took him forever to chop up a few cloves of

  garlic … She looks to the Butcher for ruefulness? but he’s yards

  away – an iridescent dragonfly, flitting over the lilyscape – then

  miles … While the new Chief had sat cosseted by Cumming’s

  clocks, the Butcher had stood at the window looking down at

  the deceptive river, and remembering the previous year, when the

  great Ferris wheel had been borne upstream on tugs in prefabricated

  sections, then assembled and oh-so-slowly winched upright. For

  at least a day it was set at a forty-five degree angle, its massive

  clockface … gushing time: a mighty flow of hours and days,

  swirling past TeeBee’s tit, Canary Dwarf – and all the other terrorist

  targets – and out into the sea of forgetting. Thing is … Dick had

  spoken to the hands massaging the Butcher’s tender kidneys …

  I mean to say – well, I hope … The Butcher rounded on him:

  You don’t seriously imagine I thought I was in contention? There

  was then some fountain-pen fiddling – so the Butcher went on,

  quite recklessly: For Christ’s sake, Dick, I know what people say –

  I know what people would think. No … he’d dropped down into

  cockney … I know my place. There’d been restrained laughter at

  this, and the Butcher considered then – reconsiders now – how the

  mores of the secret world are really an extreme intensification

  of the reticence, obfuscation and well-schooled evasiveness the

  English upper-middle classes think of as … good manners. Manners

  only intensified by the spooks’ tendency towards selective breeding.

  All those colonels’ daughters, whinnying and whickering – bucking,

  snorting, ramping and curveting, their jodhpurs and hacking

  jackets cast aside, before whinnying some more – until they hand

  over a leisurely composed note, on a piece of pale yellow notepaper,

  decorated with a single drooping primrose, which reads: I think I’m

  going to come … But Dick sees Jonathan run – Dick knows Jonathan

  likes dick … Dick can still remember the fag hunts of the late seventies,

  when swishy-swashy, swishy-swashy … they swept through

  the Intelligence Branch: Dick was trying to tell him times have

  changed … trying to flush me out … The Butcher was having none

  of it – he waited the moment out: he was to be sidelined – that

  much was clear. And why not? Another round of cuts was hacking

  dead and live wood alike from the decision tree, it being so very

  hard to convince the Exchequer that the bearded weirdos and

  Turkish smack-runners represented quite the same existential threat

  as the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Thing is … Well, the thing is …

  Dick had eventually stuttered into life … I mean, the sort of thing


  you do at the moment … sort of troubleshooting, really – going

  into a station … a whole section as well, and sort of sorting it out.

  Well, I thought –. – You wondered whether I’d be prepared to keep

  on with it, now you’ve taken the helm? – Yes, yes … that’s right.

  Would you, Jonathan? Would you do … just … that? And the

  Butcher, staring across at the Tate Gallery, but seeing only Kins’s

  scraggy saggy unshaven RED face staring back at him from the

  lead-reinforced glass, had thought, What the hell, one more roll of

  the dice … Dick had then told him about the Chargé d’Affaires

  attached to the Iranian delegation in Geneva: Might be bugger all,

  but we’ve reason to believe he’s one of Younesi’s. Claims he’s an asset

  well placed to source intel’ on Saddam’s doubleyouemmdees. I’d

  really rather it was you who went over and met with him – you’ve

  some Farsi, haven’t you? It’s not that I don’t have confidence in

  Roger, or his people, it’s just … At this the Butcher turned from

  the window to confront the man (You must, perforce, call your line

  manager). Fair enough, Dick, I’ll sort out some fig-leaf cover with

  Requirements and get over there in a week or so – but if you’re

  expecting me to play pat-a-cake with this stuff, put it in an acceptable

  shape for the PeeEm’s bag-man, I’m not playing ball. I won’t

  bypass the usual analysts, and I’m not going messing about with

  long-established sources – some of whom I recruited myself …

  Given the circumstances, this had been about as pale and yellow a

  note as he could manage. Vron Baldwin has gone. David stands

  with that stupid, puppyish expression on his face they all have:

  those loyal dogs, waiting for their scraps of clandestine preferment.

  The Butcher toys with telling him what happened to the last EmPee

  the Firm ran – because it does happen, although very rarely, and

  only in collusion with the more paranoid prime ministers. He’d

  been useful enough for a while – reasonable product on the Serbs

  around Milošević. Then it all got a bit tainted, and the Butcher had

  taken a rather proactive role, working closely with the officers faking

  photographs, receipts and bookings. He’d shared just a soupçon

  of his intimate knowledge of London’s nethermost portions. The