A Spy by Nature (2001)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘Yes.’

  Everything feels rushed in these final seconds. I shake Atwater by the hand, but his skin is damper than before, a nervous heat spread out across the palm. Then I turn round and pull the handle on the front door. It does not budge. I look back at Atwater who says ‘Wait just a minute’ as he hits a small black button to his left. This buzzes the lock electronically and I open the door, passing outside on to the unlighted porch. I am still holding the copy of the Sunday Times in case anyone is watching from the street. The door swings shut behind me. Deep inside the hall I hear Atwater say ‘Goodbye now’, but I am given no opportunity to reply.

  I walk back to the car and unlock it just as a little girl in a Don’t Look Now raincoat is crossing the road from the river, tightly clutching her mother’s hand. She looks wise and canny, too old for her age, staring at me for that too-long length of time known only to kids. What’s she doing up this late?

  When the two of them, mother and daughter, are out of sight, I drive away with an odd sentimental feeling that nothing will ever be the same again with Katharine and Fortner. Why I think this now, so suddenly, I cannot be sure, yet the gift of the Rolex has already acted like a seal on our arrangement: they have what they think of as the main prize, and my usefulness to them may well have ended. Often the immediate aftermath of a handover is like this: there are a lot of questions in my mind, many doubts and queries, but the predominant sensation is one of anti-climax, as the adrenalin seeps away and all that remains is exhaustion. For some inexplicable reason I start to miss the thrill of the drop, the risk of capture; everything that follows is dull by comparison. And this feeling soon bleeds into solitude, into self-doubt.

  The streets are drenched with the early evening drizzle that turned to rain at midnight. I like the noise of tyres on soaked roads, the quick wet whip of water thrown up by speed. In my tiredness I listen to this sound above the quiet noise of the engine, driving more or less on instinct, barely paying attention to what is happening on the roads. For once I feel capable of sleep; I can drive home now and get seven straight hours with no need of booze or pills or useless, lust-filled walks around the streets of Shepherd’s Bush. An odd, edgy meeting has left me with a rare feeling of calm: perhaps I know now that the worst is over.

  28

  Cohen

  I see the black Volkswagen in my rearview mirror three times on the way home: once at the lights coming on to King’s Road; again on Holland Road, which is where I start to get suspicious; and finally on Goldhawk, when it sweeps behind me as I make a right turn on to Godolphin Road on my way back to the flat. I can’t, of course, be sure that it was the same car every time; my mind has been wandering, and the second sighting was obscured by a night bus heading east along Kensington High Street. But it would be wrong to write off the reappearance of the same car - same colour, same lines - to mere coincidence. Someone might have been tailing me from Cheyne Walk.

  So I don’t take any chances. I park about a hundred and fifty metres short of my front door, which is on the corner of Uxbridge and Godolphin Roads. This is further away than I need to be - there are several spaces nearer to the flat - but I want a good clear sighting of the street. Now I wait, inside the car, staring out through the windscreen, waiting for the Volkswagen to reappear. The rain starts up again and an old man appears at a bedroom window high up to my right, closing curtains in a dirty white vest.

  Nothing happens. No cars, no pedestrians, no cyclists. After ten minutes I get out and lock up, convinced that there’s nothing more to worry about: it’s just the play of my paranoid mind, the cautious proddings of self-preservation. So I begin walking towards the flat, relaxed and ready for bed. An animal - but not a cat or a dog - darts across the road in front of me, sleek and wet. Just as it vanishes behind some broken fencing a car turns into the north end of the street directly ahead of me. I halt beside a wall. The headlights are so bright that I can make out neither the type of vehicle nor its colour: it might be the black VW, it might not. The car stops directly opposite my front door, one hundred metres ahead, engine still running.

  The driver remains there for several seconds and then moves off, coming towards me now, creeping malignly down the street. Slowly I move forward, edging away from the wall, walking through the pools of orange light thrown on to the road by street lamps. I halt again almost immediately, pausing under the shadow of an overhanging bush. The car stops, fifty metres away, and I hear the gearbox shift into reverse. The driver is backing up into a parking space.

  I can see the make now. It’s a Vauxhall, like mine: a bottle-green, four-door B reg with chafed hub caps and a sprig of heather threaded through the radiator. I move out of the cover provided by the bush.

  Driver and passenger get out just as I am walking past. They catch me looking at them in a split, nervous instant, and I recognize their faces: I’ve seen them buying newspapers in the neighbourhood, watched them walking to the Tube. They live in the next street - Hetley Road - a young couple with a kid. They look startled, wary with mugging nerves, and we do not greet one another.

  I walk on, relieved, reaching into my trousers for keys, now just a few paces short of the front door. There is loose change in my pocket, tiny balls of laundry fluff and an old packet of gum. I look up, tugging the cold keys in my fingers, pulling them free.

  He comes directly at me, moving quickly with a flat, focused walk. He’s wearing a heavy brown corduroy jacket, gloves and a black scarf.

  Cohen.

  He stops, feet scuffing on the pavement as he comes to a halt.

  ‘Hello, Alec.’

  Cohen’s new company car is a Volkswagen. He was taking delivery of it last week.

  ‘Harry. What are you doing here? Been out to dinner?’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been out.’

  ‘Where?’

  He is breathing quickly: vapour clouds out into the narrow space between us.

  ‘Are you pissed?’ I ask him.

  ‘No,’ he says with a quiet authority which cancels out any trace of affability. He has been rushed to get here, but has quickly regained his composure. ‘I’ve just come from Cheyne Walk.’

  I try to work through the consequences of this. He must know something. He must be on to me. Think.

  ‘Where have you been, Alec?’

  ‘I’ve been on Cheyne Walk as well. But something tells me you already knew that. What’s all this about? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Who were you with tonight?’

  ‘Is that your business?’

  ‘Why don’t I tell you who you’ve been with?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He inches forward on the pavement.

  ‘You were with your contacts from Andromeda. The Lanchesters.’

  I am briefly relieved. He has made a baseless assumption.

  ‘What is it with you and those two, Harry?’ I ask him, letting out a little sputtering laugh.

  ‘Are you saying you weren’t with them, or not?’

  The manner in which he asks this worries me: it is as if he already knows the answer to his own question. Perhaps Cohen saw Katharine and Fortner going into Atwater’s building before I arrived. There would be no logic in that, but it is possible. They may have been there throughout the meeting. I feel suddenly rushed and get lost in the double negative of Cohen’s question. Taking a chance without thinking things through, I tell him, ‘No.’

  And immediately I sense from his reaction that he has trapped me.

  ‘No? You’re saying no?’ His tone is one of grim sarcasm. ‘Then why did I see them enter the building you’ve just come back from half an hour before you got there?’

  Why would the Americans have kept that from me? Momentarily this question outweighs the grave fact of Cohen’s accusations. I try to stay on the offensive.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing wasting your time following those two around?’

  ‘I wasn’t following them,’ he says unconvincing
ly. ‘I was having dinner on a houseboat and I saw them going into the building as I was leaving.’

  ‘And you decided to spy on them?’

  ‘An appropriate word, wouldn’t you say?’

  I take out a cigarette and light it as a means of shutting out the inference.

  ‘Am I not allowed to see the employees of other oil firms after a nine o’clock curfew? Is that it? Is that a clause in my Abnex contract?’

  ‘That’s not the issue.’

  ‘Well, then, I don’t know what is. You’re wasting your time. I’m very tired. I want to go inside and get some sleep. Maybe we can have a word about your problem in the morning.’

  This is weak, a thin attempt at escape. And of course it does nothing to deflect him.

  ‘You made a telephone call this afternoon,’ he says.

  ‘I did?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I made a lot of phone calls today. That’s part of what we do, Harry.’

  ‘Ostensibly to a dry-cleaner.’

  I try to disguise my reaction to this, but some of the shock must seep through.

  ‘That’s correct,’ I reply, not bothering to deny or deflect. Better to find out how much Cohen knows, to listen to the evidence he has compiled.

  ‘You went to the toilet afterwards.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After you got up from your desk I pressed the redial button on your telephone.’

  It is as if something collapses inside me.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  I do not expect him to answer this. Cohen knows he has the upper hand: he came here with enough evidence to flush me out and he is interested only in confession. He has acted with a greater swiftness than I would ever have anticipated.

  ‘A woman answered,’ he says, moving a few inches closer to me so that his face is suddenly bathed in the grim orange glow of a street light. He is almost whispering now, as if out of courtesy for my sleeping neighbours. ‘Do you want to know what she said?’

  ‘You had no right to do that, Harry,’ I tell him, but my anger makes no impression on him.

  ‘She said: “Mr Milius? Alec, is that you?” Now, does it strike you as odd that she should say that?’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘You must be very friendly with your dry-cleaner to be on first name terms with her.’

  ‘I’ve spent a lot of money there. We know each other by name. It’s not that uncommon, Harry. Did you come here just to tell me this?’

  In my stupidity I think that this remark may be enough to deter his questioning, but it is not. What comes next is the worst of it.

  ‘Does the word “justify” mean anything to you?’

  His eyes scour mine and I look away down the street, my body suddenly limp with fear. I inhale deeply on the cigarette and try to think of a response. But any reply will be futile. This is over.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘“Justify”?’ says Cohen, as if the effort of repeating it has annoyed him. ‘Does that word mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘The woman on the phone. She had an Irish accent. She used that word as if it were some sort of code. Is that what it is, Alec? Just tell me and let’s get this out of the way.’

  I do not know if he sees my face in the darkness with its flush of humiliation. Perhaps the fall of a shadow saves me, a simple lack of colour in the night. I can say only this:

  ‘Go home, Harry. I don’t know if you’re drunk or paranoid or whatever, but just go home. The word “justify” means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing at all.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘I’m very tired. You’re getting a big kick out of playing private detective and I’m very tired.’

  ‘Just tell me. I’ll understand, I promise,’ he says. Then, after a calculated pause: ‘How much are you being paid?’

  ‘You want to be careful what you say.’

  ‘How much are they paying you, Alec?’

  Our eyes lock in a tableau of male bravura, a standoff on a street corner. I have to deny this; I cannot betray the truth to him. I must, from somewhere, summon the energy to counter-attack. Yet I feel - as I have felt for so long now - completely worn down by him. Cohen has always second-guessed me; he has always been there, right from the beginning, hounding my every move. How did he know? What clue did I give him to allow his slight suspicion of me to develop into something altogether more serious? What was my mistake?

  Again I say:

  ‘Go home, Harry. Get in your car and go home.’

  But he says:

  ‘This is not going to go away.’

  And now it is all I can do to stretch my panic into self-preservation. At least I can find out who else knows.

  ‘Who the hell else have you been spreading these rumours to?’

  To ask this is an innate piece of common sense that I am lucky to have struck on. His answer will prove crucial.

  ‘As of this moment, nobody else knows.’

  This is my only glimpse of hope and I use it to turn on him, this time with more force.

  ‘What do you mean, “Nobody else knows”? There’s nothing to know.’

  ‘We both know that’s a lie. Tonight has proved that.’

  ‘Tonight has proved nothing.’

  I turn in the direction of my front door.

  ‘I’m on the Baku flight first thing tomorrow morning,’ he says, barely raising his voice. ‘By the time I get back I expect you to have spoken to David, to have put your side of the story. I’m not a rat, Alec. I will not be the one to turn you in. I have always worked on the principle that I would give you the chance to give yourself up. But if you haven’t cleared things by the time I get home, I will see to it that you go down.’

  He turns to leave, without waiting for a reply, heading back in the direction from which he came.

  ‘This is all shit,’ I call after him, struggling to conceal my desperation. He is already turning the corner on to Uxbridge Road when I say: ‘Wait. Harry.’

  He stops, making to come back.

  ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ I tell him. ‘Call me from the airport when you’re more clear-headed.’

  He does not reply.

  ‘There are things you should know.’

  He takes a step forward, intrigued.

  ‘Meaning?’

  I have to do this, have to tell him at least something of the truth.

  ‘I know why it is that you have these suspicions. But believe me, things are not as they appear to be. You think you’re on to something, but the only person you’re going to end up hurting is yourself. In your mind it all adds up, but you have to try and see the bigger picture.’

  He looks at me with contempt and then he is gone. I am left staring at a section of empty street with no clue as to how to proceed. I tried to make him privy to the complete truth of this. I was prepared to break the central binding law, but he withdrew from it.

  A car goes past with the radio on, a song playing loud that I do not recognize. I feel cold, hungry and beaten. How quickly failure settles on me. Cohen has won: in this, as in all things, he has proved the better man.

  29

  Truth-Telling

  This is what they told me, a long time ago.

  Only make contact in the event of an emergency.

  Only telephone if you believe that your position has been fatally compromised.

  Under no circumstances are you to approach us unless it is absolutely necessary in order to preserve the security of the operation.

  This is the number.

  I ring from a telephone box outside the Shepherd’s Bush Theatre. With Hawkes out of contact, I have no other choice. The woman who answers says:

  ‘Two-seven-eight-five.’

  ‘John Lithiby, please.’

  ‘One moment.’

  Lithiby picks up.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘John. It’s Alec.’

>   ‘Yes?’

  ‘We need to have a meeting.’

  ‘I see.’

  It sounds as if the breath has gone out of him. I never wanted to be a disappointment to them.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Near my home.’

  ‘Can you get to the restaurant for midday?’

  ‘I’ve taken the morning off.’

  ‘Good. I’ll send Sinclair to meet you. He will escort you to a place where we can speak freely.’

  At the restaurant off Notting Hill Gate, downstairs out of sight of the street-facing window, I order a bottle of mineral water and wait for Lithiby’s stooge.

  The only consolation in all of this is that I am doing the right thing: it is better to act now, when I can take preventive measures against Cohen, than to let matters get beyond my control.

  But I never thought it would come to this. I never thought it would be necessary to tell the truth.

  Sinclair is on time. He comes down the stairs at a fast clip wearing brown suede loafers and a corduroy suit. There is, as always, too much gel in his hair. He scans the room, sees me, but makes no discernible greeting. His height - six-three - is immediately striking. It marks him out. He walks over to my table and I stand to greet him, to shake his firm hand. He looms four or five inches above me, looking down like a prefect. I hate the unearned psychological advantage of the tall, the pay-off from an accident of birth.

  ‘You’re lookin’ a bit ropey, Alec.’

  His accent suggests a desire to shake off London vowels.

  ‘I’m not too bad.’

  We sit down. The waiter, new to the place, comes back with a bottle of Hildon, two menus in his other hand. He pours each of us a glass of water and begins reciting the specials in halting English. Sinclair lets him get to the third dish before he says:

  ‘That’s all right, mate. We’re not staying.’

  The waiter looks confused.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t like it here. It’s just we have to be somewhere else.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he says, a Russian accent. ‘You don’t want eat?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll leave money for the water. Just let me know how much it is.’