Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell

permanent state of panic over terrorism,' she said, 'there was a period of a few years, quite recently in fact, although it seems a long time ago to us now, when MI5 and MI6, shall we say, lacked work. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, their duties diminished as did their concerns, and the budgets they had at their disposal collapsed, which, as we now know, was a great mistake. For example, the budget for MI5 went from ?900 million in 1994 to less than ?700 million in 1998. Then it gradually started creeping up again, but until the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, which set all the alarm bells ringing and provoked much breast-beating and many dismissals from the ranks of middle management, there were about seven or eight years when a large part of the world's Intelligence Service, and, of course, our own, felt almost useless and superfluous, how can I put it, unoccupied, unnecessary, idle and, worse, bored. Many of the people who had spent decades studying the Soviet Union found themselves not unemployed exactly, but surplus to requirements, with a sense that they had not only wasted their time, but also a large portion of their lives, which were abruptly coming to an end. A sense that they had become the past. Those who knew German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish and Czech were called on less frequently, and even Russian experts lost prominence and work. Suddenly, there was a kind of unacknowledged superfluity, suddenly, people who had been of fundamental importance were no longer needed, or only for minor matters. The situation was so depressing that even the department heads realized how demoralizing it was, and I can assure you that in any job anywhere, they are always the least likely to notice their subordinates' problems. Anyway, the fact is that they did finally cotton on, incredibly late-and only a few days before September 11th, if I remember rightly, the press, The Independent, I believe, reported that MI5, through the then Director General, Sir Stephen Lander, was preparing to offer its espionage services to the major companies of the land, like British Telecom, Allied Domecq, Cadbury Schweppes and others, whom it could provide with very useful information about their foreign competitors. Apparently, it was the agency that approached the companies, and not the other way round, in the course of a seminar held at their headquarters in Mill-bank, the very first time, if I'm not mistaken, that representatives from industry and the financial world, both from the public and the private sectors, had been invited there. The reason given was that it was just as important and as patriotic to help the British economy and make it more competitive in the world, as well as shielding our large companies from the foreign spies who doubtless exist, as it was to protect the nation from dangers and threats to its security, be they internal or external, political, military or terrorist. The idea was basically to commercialize the activities of the SIS'-I remembered this acronym, I'd heard Tupra and Wheeler use it: the Secret Intelligence Service, she said the acronym in English, s, i, s, or to Spanish ears, es, ai, es, even though we were speaking Spanish- 'to win lucrative contracts, which was tantamount to a partial privatization of the agency, to reap immediate large rewards and rescue from boredom a good number of the idle and depressed by sending them to work more or less directly for these companies. And that, of course, brought with it a real risk of dividing their loyalties. Lander roundly denied this through a spokesman, who stated that offering to spy for private companies in exchange for remuneration would go beyond the competence of MI5 and that such a proposal would be illegal. He admitted that MI5 had, for some time, been mounting operations with a view to uncovering foreign spies in British companies, and that they provided free advice mainly to the defense industry and to those developing new technologies when they were preparing to sign large contracts or if there was any suspicion of computer fraud. The spokesman added, however, that Lander's controversial paper at the seminar, whose theme had been 'Secret Work in an Open Society,' had dealt only with the growing threat from hackers, and that he had offered advice, with no mention of money, to public and private companies on the best ways of guarding against hackers and of combating software piracy. Several of the invited guests, however, acknowledged in private that Lander's initiative had been quite different, and that he had promised to aid them in their business dealings with a constant stream of privileged information about companies and individuals, 'if they asked for it.'

Young Perez Nuix paused and now she did accept my offer of a drink, her mouth must have been getting dry after her long speech, a mouth with attractive firm red lips, like Capitan Trueno's Viking lady love, Sigrid, or some other character out of a children's comic, one always looks at the lips of anyone who talks for any length of time, students look at their teachers' lips, audiences look at actors' lips, spectators at the lips of speakers and politicians (the latter always make a bad impression). I got up went into the kitchen, and from there (not very far away, my apartment was not that big) I called out to her what I had in the house, only Coca-Cola, beer, wine and water, I was perhaps a less than perfect host because in London I wasn't in the habit of being one, almost everyone who came to see me, and they were very few, came to do just that, to be only briefly occupied with me. I also offered her a black coffee, perhaps a glass of milk, or a white coffee if she preferred something warm and comforting, and she replied that she'd like wine as long as it was white and chilled. I remembered that I had six unopened bottles of Sangre y Trabajadero sent to me by a kind, long-standing friend from Cadiz, but I couldn't be bothered to set about opening a crate at that hour.

'Here you are. It's cold enough for me, but it may not be for you,' I said, placing before her knees, on two coasters (I'm a clean fellow) the bottle of Rulander that I opened there and then (I don't know much about wine) and a not entirely suitable glass, which she allowed me to fill almost to the brim. 'If she's drinking because she's thirsty, she'll be drunk in no time,' I thought when she didn't raise her hand to stop me. The run in her stockings kept growing each time she made a movement, however slight or delicate, or when she crossed her legs, and she crossed and uncrossed them often, with the consequent upward movement of her skirt, this was only minimal with each crossing and uncrossing, but her skirt was gradually creeping up (until she tugged it down again). She still hadn't noticed the damage being wrought, when perhaps she should have. Given the nature of runs, it didn't look out of place on her leg, although it did seem destined to reduce her tights to tatters if our conversation lasted long enough, and she had, it seemed, completely forgotten that, in her words, 'it'll only take a moment,' and, in part, forgotten about me too. I realized that, after the initial surprise and my sense that the visit would only be a brief one, I was in fact enjoying her prolonged presence there, especially with the dog at her feet, for dogs, when they are still, do make one feel calmer, even comfortable. The creature, which had apparently dried off considerably, was still dozing with one eye open, lying close to his mistress. ('Sleep with one eye open, when you slumber,' I sometimes sing or repeat to myself.) He seemed kindly and ingenuous and honest, the very opposite of a joker or a trickster.

'Aren't you having anything?' Perez Nuix asked. 'Don't tell me you're not going to join me. It's embarrassing drinking alone.' And she immediately overcame any embarrassment by emptying the glass as if she were Lord Rymer the Flask in one of his greedier moments. She was probably thirsty, which was perfectly normal after that walk in the rain, what was odd was that she hadn't asked me for a drink earlier. I refilled her glass, not quite to the top this time.

'Later, in a few minutes,' I replied. 'Go on.' And so that this did not sound like an order, I leaned down and again stroked the dog's head and back, felt his thin bones. This time he didn't even lift his neck, he must have got used to my presence and simply took no notice of me, he was very dignified that pointer. Everyone thinks it makes you look like a nicer person if you behave affectionately towards animals, and that was the effect I wanted then. (If there's one thing I can't stand it's writers, and there are hundreds of them, who have themselves photographed with their dogs or cats in order to project a more amiable image when, in fact, they just come across as affected and twee.) I took advantage of my friendly bowed position to take a long look at Perez Nuix's thighs from close up, I will not deny that they continued to attract me. I suppose she pretended not to notice, she certainly didn't cover them up or move them a fraction of an inch. At that point, I did feel as puerile as De la Garza, but then the sexual admiration that precedes sex is always puerile, and there's nothing to be done about it.

'I don't know what happened to those measures, they may have gone ahead, but under cover and with much less fuss than planned,' she went on, having, without a pause, downed half of her second glass of wine: I hoped that her speech wouldn't start to become slurred. 'Because shortly after came September 11th and from that day on no one was entirely superfluous. However, those measures, especially if they were genuine, came too late and were, anyway, hardly original, they simply made official what had been going on for years without the intervention and almost without the knowledge of the high-ranking officers in the service, well, they half-knew about it, but that knowledge was accompanied by a degree of passivity, a lot of turning a blind eye, little curiosity and a desire not to cramp anyone's style. The agents with the least to do, once they'd got over the long period of confusion that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, had started looking for external clients, both occasional and otherwise, according to their respective fields and possibilities. Some, who felt sidelined, actually resigned, those who could simply left (depending on how much responsibility you've been given, that isn't easy and sometimes impossible). The majority, though, didn't manage to do so or simply didn't want to, and although still employed by the State, started getting other work here and there, which meant they were serving different masters. They offered their skills to the highest