A Spy by Nature (2001)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘And it doesn’t bother you that Cohen may go to the press and mess everything up before that happens?’

  ‘Of course it bothers me. Do you know what a scandal it would cause if we were found to be selling fake secrets to the Americans?’

  ‘No more of a scandal than that the Americans were buying them in the first place.’

  Lithiby likes it that I’ve said this: it’s the argument that legitimizes his operation. He pushes out his lips to smother a grin that steals up on him. Then he crosses his legs and says with absolute conviction:

  ‘Cohen isn’t going to go to the press.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I speak to David Caccia regularly. He has never mentioned anything about a security alert at the company. Cohen must have kept his mouth shut. And there’s no way an employee of the firm would go to The Times - girlfriend or no girlfriend - without making certain of his story beforehand. He would need to instigate a thorough internal investigation of your activities before he went to the press. If he was wrong, he would lose his job.’

  This reading of Cohen’s behaviour makes perfect sense. And with the slow absorption of his logic I experience a first buzz of relief.

  ‘That is not to say he isn’t a fly in the ointment,’ Lithiby adds. ‘But Cohen is easily dealt with.’

  ‘How?’

  He pauses for a moment, as if weighing up a raft of options. Then he leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head.

  ‘What would you say were his weaknesses?’

  There’s relish in the asking. Lithiby has allowed his grin to burn through, not bothering any more to hide it. This is the part of the job that he most enjoys, slicing imperceptibly through an opponent’s Achilles’ heel.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s gone beyond that? Beyond playing psychological games?’

  ‘That’s what we’re about, Alec. Now what would you say are his weaknesses?’

  ‘He’s competitive. Ambitious.’

  ‘You see those as flaws?’

  ‘If you can exploit his vanity, yes.’

  ‘What else?’ He is unsatisfied by this avenue of thought. ‘What about his fiancee. What’s her name, this journalist?’

  ‘Sarah Holt.’

  ‘How long have they been together?’

  I don’t feel like having this conversation and I am curt with Lithiby, almost rude.

  ‘Long enough to get engaged.’

  ‘Is Cohen faithful to her?’

  ‘John, I don’t know,’ I reply, thinking immediately of Kate. ‘I assume so. He’s that sort of person.’

  ‘What hotel is he staying at in Baku?’

  ‘If it’s the one we normally use, the Hyatt Regency.’

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll take care of him.’ Then his face seems to shut down and his appearance takes on the calm detachment of one who has access to terrible power.

  ‘What do you mean, you’ll take care of him?’

  ‘I mean just that. We will see to it that Harry Cohen no longer poses a threat to the operation.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That will require consultation.’

  ‘With whom?’

  I am suddenly fearful for Cohen’s safety, the first time that I have ever experienced any measure of sympathy for him.

  ‘It’s not your problem, Alec. You can relax. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Good,’ he says, in a tone close to reprimand. ‘We’re on your side. Don’t lose sight of that.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ I tell him, summoning a sort of strength.

  Lithiby smiles unconvincingly and takes off his glasses, polishing them on a lint cloth which he produces from the breast pocket of his shirt. Here sits a man who exists outside the usual parameters of right and wrong. I will one day be like him if they decide to keep me on. He replaces the cloth and moulds the thin, wire-rimmed glasses back on to his face.

  ‘There are positive elements to be drawn from this,’ he says, standing up. He wants to stretch himself out with a little theorizing.

  ‘And what are those?’ I ask.

  ‘The Americans know nothing about this. Everything in that respect is going very well and that’s in large part down to your efforts. I’m very pleased, on the whole, with the way things have gone.’

  On the whole.

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’m glad.’

  We are facing one another now, both on our feet, the conversation coming to its natural end. I have a deep need to be away from this place.

  ‘I should be getting back to work.’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, clapping his hands against thin hips. ‘No point in upsetting the firm.’

  I turn towards the door and as I do so, Lithiby puts his arm around my waist to guide me out. The physical contact is sickening. A card hooked on the door handle reads: Please Do Not Disturb. Just as I am reaching for it, he says:

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something, Alec?’

  We are a pace away from being outside, yet it feels as if I will never leave. There must be something that Lithiby knows, something that I have omitted to tell him. But I cannot think what that might be.

  ‘I’m not following you,’ I say.

  He withdraws his hand from my waist and rests it on the bone of my left wrist. It becomes clear.

  ‘Oh, you mean the watch? The Rolex?’ I hold it up and give it a slow shake. ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘Katharine was seen buying a Rolex in Bond Street by one of our people. I noticed today that you are wearing a Rolex. I merely put two and two together.’

  ‘They gave it to me as a gesture of goodwill. Of thanks. For the North Basin data.’

  ‘Did they?’ he says, opening the door with a dry smile. ‘Well done, Alec. That’s a good sign. Well done.’

  Sinclair, I see, is already waiting outside in the corridor. He nods complacently at me as we come out. He’s heard everything.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ I tell Lithiby.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, already turning to go back inside. It is as if the vivid glare of indoor light in the passage has startled him.

  ‘Chris,’ he says, just as an acknowledgement of Sinclair, nothing more.

  The single syllable trails off as the door closes and there is silence now, not a sound from anywhere. Just Sinclair and I standing alone together in the corridor.

  Eventually he says:

  ‘All set?’

  30

  Limbo

  And what now?

  It appears that I am expected to go about my business as normal, to conduct my everyday life with the same blank regard for routine that I have shown for the past eighteen months. I receive no instruction from Lithiby, no hint or tip about Cohen. I can measure his disappointment in the silence that follows our meeting.

  Six days go by. I wait by the phone, sleep only with the help of pills, drink from twilight till two a.m. Self-discipline erodes. At work I am somnambulant, incapable of clear and sustained thought. Tanya enquires if I am ill - you look tired, she says, you look sick, Alec - and I leave every afternoon at four, eager for the simple shelter of home.

  What has happened is this: I have grown bored of secrecy. I have developed a compelling urge to confess. I want now to be rid of all half-truths and deceptions, of all the necessary lies of my life. I have been doing this for so long now that I cannot recall when the deceiving began; when it became necessary, in the name of a higher cause, to be something other than the person I once was.

  Did I let this happen willingly, or was I lured into a trap set by Hawkes? I have never been able properly to answer that question. Late ‘95 and ‘96 is a blur of heartbreak and bruised ego. SIS rejected me - but in the next instant, just a day later, I was presented by Hawkes with a plan. At the time it seemed a lifeline thrown by kinder fates, a glimpse at last of something promising. And I grasped at it with no thought to conseque
nce, no concept of its dependence on total secrecy, and with nothing but a young man’s blind greed for acclaim.

  That, of course, is how they operate: they appeal to your innocence, to your secret and grandiose dreams. Any large corporation is the same: get them when they’re young, prelapsarian, before they’ve had a chance to get too disappointed with what life throws at them. When being faced with a choice does not constrain but rather liberate; when the thought of the clandestine life is thrilling, not abhorrent.

  I no longer recognize the person that made those choices, and yet he was surely a better person than I am now. The one that Kate knew. If I could only get back to that.

  On the weekend of 4 April I set myself to do some clear thinking, but it’s vague and contradictory. For a while I convince myself that there was a part of me that was waiting for Cohen, a desire actually to get caught. Something about his persistence was comforting: it offered me a way out. And just below the constant fright of imminent capture I am experiencing a curious sense of relief, an intimation of rebirth, a feeling of beginning again in the past. To be free of Lithiby, of Caccia and Hawkes, to start afresh, seems possible now.

  But to believe this is fatuous. If Cohen bleats, SIS and Five will deny all knowledge of me and I will be left to fend for myself, as a traitor against the state. And if the truth comes out - that the Americans have been victims of an elaborate hoax - it will be denied at official levels in the interests of the special relationship. What was Hawkes’s line? ‘We’ve been hanging on to the shirt-tails of every US administration since Roosevelt.’ That isn’t about to change just so that Alec Milius can sleep soundly in his bed at night. I will then be a marked man, the target of an expansive American grudge. Either way, my options are hopelessly limited.

  Why did I not see all of this coming? Why did I not recognize immediately the grim paradox of the trade: that we are all of us foolishly reliant on the goodwill of corrupt men for our safety and peace of mind. Their loyalty can - and will - vanish in an instant, because everyone must be ultimately deniable. That’s what breaks the chain. You came here lonely and you will leave alone.

  Saturday night. There’s nothing on TV but talking heads and Noel’s House Party in ‘A New York Special’. Edmonds has taken the show to a television studio in Manhattan where William Shatner and David Hasselhoff have been invited on as his special guests. Next to these tanned, protein-rich megastars, Noel looks like a very small man awed by America. I switch the programme off and the room lapses into silence, the thin electric whine of the TV fading out, just on the edge of sound.

  There is a buzz on the doorbell, a sharp sudden punch which kicks me out of the reliable calm of home. What if it’s a journalist, a scoop-hungry hack with a TV camera bolted to his shoulder? I have lived this last week in persistent dread of the journalist on the phone, of the item on the six o’clock news. More wild hallucinations. Who is at the door?

  It’s just a pizza delivery boy, clear-skinned and accentless, called to the wrong address. I show him where he wants to go - 111B, next door - and he thanks me with a grunt. Going back upstairs, passing all the flyers and pamphlets littering the hall, I allow myself a little knowing smile: perhaps, at the end of the day, all of this is merely appealing to my sense of dramatic effect. Perhaps everything will be fine. Perhaps the Americans will use the data, oblivious of its defects, Cohen will be taken to one side and told to act in the best interests of Queen and Country, and JUSTIFY will prosper. And maybe I should stick to the plan that has existed all along: to leave Abnex in three or four years and accept Lithiby’s offer of employment with Five. In the final analysis - Cohen’s intrusions apart - I am good at my job. I have a talent for it.

  I had thought about a confession to Saul. It came from a deep-seated desire to be unburdened of the facts, a simple need, in the wake of Lithiby, to explain to someone exactly what has been going on. No evasions, no half-truths. The total picture. I would sit him down, apologize for being such a lousy friend and explain that I used his flat for a dead drop. But what could I expect in return? Forgiveness and understanding? Why burden him with something so beyond his experience? There is nothing Saul could usefully do for me but bob his head sympathetically and pour me another drink.

  The general election campaign is gathering pace. Martin Bell, a former war correspondent, has left BBC News, bought himself a raggedy white suit and been manipulated by Labour spin-doctors into making a Conservative MP called Neil Hamilton look bad. It isn’t exactly clear what Hamilton has done wrong. He has not been tried by a jury, nor confessed to any crime. But we are encouraged to see him as a liar, a stuffer of envelopes cloaked in sleaze. An unfortunate-looking man with weak eyes, Hamilton’s position is made worse by a handbag wife called Christine who is constantly at his side, straining her indignation like a pug on a leash. They are victims of image, laid low by media men who have glimpsed their meagre secrets and inflated them into crimes against the state. Bell, by sharp white contrast, is offered to us as a symbol of stainless rectitude.

  The two of them meet on a windy heath, a green square of moral high ground in Tatton. It’s like a duel in Pushkin. Bell, for once, is on the other side of the microphone, and he looks edgy. He knows it’s his duty to take his opponent to task - to unleash the simple sword of truth - but something holds him back. He is unused to adopting a tone of baseless aggression for the sake of a soundbite; he is frightened by the idea that his words could ruin a man. As a journalist, Bell has spent his life tracking some of the century’s more despicable individuals; when he looks at Hamilton he sees only that he is just like the rest of us. Just like Martin Bell, probably. An opportunist when backs are turned, an ambitious man with a fool’s face. Not a criminal. Not a Philby.

  So Bell looks at the circus gathered around him, at the crowd baying for blood, and he tries to act honourably. When Hamilton asks him if he believes that a man is innocent until proven guilty, Bell agrees enthusiastically, speaking hopefully of letting the facts come out, of a period of quiet contemplation before the passing of judgement. But common sense goes unheard. It’s good cop, bad cop, because that’s how the media want it. And there’s nothing either one of them can do about it.

  I sit there watching all this as it develops on TV. What is clear - what would seem most plausible - is that Hamilton has lied, but with no great vigour or aplomb. I think this not because of any weight of evidence, but because he looks haunted and guilty, and because his wife reminds me of Mrs Thatcher. There’s no logic to my conclusion: it’s based solely on his lack of personal appeal.

  And I start actively to dislike Neil Hamilton for the simple reason that he has lied badly, without wit. He has made Nixon’s mistake: once he was caught, he should have admitted to it right away. The liar must not cling on, piling little lie on little lie in the hope that it will all go away. That is to build a house of cards. Instead: confess, seek pardon, and move on. It is the simplest trick in the book, but the pride of the powerful man, the play of his complex egotisms, will not allow him to do such a thing.

  31

  Baku

  At work on Tuesday afternoon, three days before Cohen is due back from Baku, I get a call from Katharine. I am unprepared for the conversation and struggle to summon up the necessary zip. My mind is so slack that I speak only briefly in abrupt phrases that tail off, going nowhere. Katharine, who is evidently cheery and content, picks up on this and after a couple of minutes asks:

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I dunno. You sound kinda odd. Sad.’

  I almost believe she cares.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  We talk about the election (everyone is talking about the election). Katharine says that if she had British citizenship she would vote for Blair, because he has the requisite ‘dynamism’ that’s lacking in Mr Top Lip. Fortner, on the other hand, feels sympathetic to Major, seeing him as an essentially decent man laid low by
the vanities of his grudge-filled colleagues. But he would put a tick in the box marked Ashdown ‘because of the military background’. We both laugh at this.

  ‘By the way,’ she says, shifting ground suddenly. ‘That gift you gave us, the CD. It’s great. Terrific. Just exactly what we were hoping for.’

  I absorb this, the first piece of good news in days.

  ‘I’m glad,’ I say, but nothing else.

  ‘It took a long time for you to find it but it was worth the wait.’

  There’s the sound of a tap running in the room where she is talking. She must be using the phone in the kitchen. Fridge magnets, a wooden rack of wines. My concentration wanders and I can think of nothing to say.

  ‘So maybe we’ll see you before too long, huh?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  I cannot lift myself out of this sapped funk: the intensity I need for JUSTIFY has somehow vanished. I cannot even lie with my voice on a phone.

  ‘You sure you’re OK, Alec?’

  ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe you should take a vacation. They work you too hard.’

  This is when I see Tanya coming out of Murray’s office, her eyes flooded with tears. I think at first that she has been fired, but this is sadness for another person; it isn’t the grief of self-pity. Her cheeks, the stretch of her face, has flushed to raw pink, like someone with a bad cold. She has a handkerchief balled tightly in her right hand which she is pressing weakly against her nose. I am the only other person in the office.

  ‘Alec?’

  ‘Sorry, Kathy. Look can I ring you back?’

  ‘Sure. Get some rest, will ya?’

  ‘I will.’

  I replace the receiver slowly, without saying goodbye. Tanya is slumped now at her desk and I start walking over to console her. Murray appears in the doorway, arms propped on both sides at head height.