“Better switch off your computer, then,” he says, housing the pen in his jacket pocket.
“Yes.”
I move around to my desk and sleep the system. It folds into a slow screen saver, colored shapes in space disappearing into a vast black hole.
He is already halfway to the exit when he says, “Couldn’t you have written your letters at home?”
“What?”
Pretending not to have heard him buys me the time to think of a reason.
“I said couldn’t you have done the letters at home?”
“No. I had all my notes here.”
“I see. Bye then.”
“See you, Harry.”
He turns the corner and disappears, taking the stairs all the way to the ground floor. I continue to sit at my desk, wanting to clutch my head in my hands and sink to the floor. After all the planning and preparation, it seems extraordinary to me that something should have gone wrong so quickly.
I put the documents into my briefcase, place the letters beside the postage meter, shut off the lights in the office, and take the lift to the foyer. The blur of aftermath makes it impossible to think at all clearly. I leave the Abnex building without speaking to George and disappear out onto Broadgate. It’s five thirty.
Some things become clear as I walk around.
I may have overreacted. What did Cohen really see? He saw Milius, the new boy, doing some printing. No more, no less. He saw letters on my desk, cold cups of coffee, the outward signs of an afternoon’s work. Nothing untoward about that. Nothing to make him suspect sharp practice.
What do I know about Cohen? That he is guileful and malevolent. That he is the sort of person to sneak up on a colleague in a deserted office on a weekend afternoon and get a kick out of giving him a fright. Cohen feels simultaneously threatened by what I am capable of and contemptuous of what I represent. He’s just another Nik, snuffing out his insecurity by making others feel uneasy.
But he will be watching me that much more closely from now on. It was my first mistake, the only thing to have gone wrong so far.
Why didn’t I see him coming?
23
Just after six, still feeling restless and shaken, I take a slow, half-empty tube to West Kensington. I have rationalized what happened, and yet it continues to play on my nerves. There should have been a clean through-line of action in the last six hours, right up to the handover this evening, but it has been disrupted by Cohen and by my own stupidity.
Emerging from the underground station into a humid September evening, I walk slowly, clutching the briefcase tightly in my right hand. Sweat has warmed the handle, making it clammy to the touch. The contents feel almost radioactive, as if they will somehow burn through the leather case. This thought in itself strikes me as absurd, yet I cannot shake it off. I want to stop and open the briefcase to check that the documents are still inside. Dog walkers and lone queers pass me as I walk through Hammersmith Cemetery, and each one appears to steal a glance at the case, as if aware of its contents. Their faces seem full of bored, suspicious loathing, and this only deepens my sense of isolation. I was warned that the first drop would be like this, but the chaos of it has completely bewildered me.
Approaching the door of Saul’s apartment building at seven fifteen, I turn around in the street to check for evidence of a tail. There is an old lady loitering near a fenced-off expanse of grass, but otherwise the road is deserted. I look closely at the cars parked up and down the length of Queen’s Club Gardens, but all of them appear to be unoccupied. Now there is not solely the probability of American and British surveillance, which I had anticipated, but the added problem of Cohen. It is as if I am expecting him to appear around the next corner at any moment.
Saul buzzes me in without saying hello and I climb the four flights of stairs to his flat. This is a slow business. My mind has been scrambled by the afternoon’s events and my body feels tired and cumbersome. Yet the optimism contained in his smile as he opens the front door momentarily lifts me. I had forgotten just how much I rely on him for a sense of being liked. He plants his arm across my back and gives it a slap.
Katharine and Fortner have come up behind me on the stairs. They are so close that Saul asks if we have come together. How could I not have seen them after staring so long down Queen’s Club Gardens? They must have been parked a long way from the building, watched from a distance as I entered, and then followed me up. As soon as I see them, my stomach tightens.
“Hi, sweetie,” Katharine says, kissing me on the cheek. Her face looks puffy up close, suddenly middle-aged. “You okay?”
“Fine, thanks,” I say. “Fine.”
Both of them look unnervingly focused. Fortner’s complexion is almost gray against the faded white of his shirt, but there is a look of intense concentration in his fixed, still eyes. In his left hand he is holding a single bottle of wine wrapped in thin crepe paper, and in his right a tanned leather briefcase that I have not seen before. He will be using this to carry my documents away.
Katharine surges forward to plant a kiss on Saul’s cheek and compliments him on his clothes. He is wearing a cream shirt and a trim pair of dark moleskins with what look to be a new pair of running shoes. Saul has always had the money to buy decent clothes. He and Fortner shake hands as we shuffle around, putting our jackets and coats in the hall.
With Saul’s back turned, I set my briefcase down next to an old umbrella stand and look to Fortner for approval. He nods quickly, letting me know that he has registered where it is. I look back at Saul to check that he has not seen this exchange, but he is speaking to Katharine, unaware. It occurs to me that I have still not properly considered the implications of allowing a handover to take place here. Should Saul ever find out, the consequences would be enough to end our friendship, yet I barely feel a jolt of betrayal. I have to concentrate so hard nowadays on every aspect of my relationship with Andromeda that there’s no time to consider anything as mundane as friendship.
“Everything all right?” Fortner says to me, not bothering to lower his voice.
“Absolutely.”
“Did you find that stuff we needed?”
Across the hall, Saul is still talking to Katharine, though she must have one ear listening in on what we are saying.
“Yeah. I got it. It’s there.”
I nod in the direction of the briefcase. Fortner sets his own down beside it.
“Nice goin’.”
“Come through and I’ll introduce you,” Saul is saying, and he guides the three of us into the sitting room.
I just float through the next half hour, oblivious of the others, unable to concentrate on anything beyond the possibility of discovery. We are introduced to Dave, Saul’s friend from Spain, and Susannah, his girlfriend. They are the only other guests, which concerns me. Fortner’s absence, when it comes, would not be so noticeable in a larger crowd of people.
Dave is a squat thirtysomething, bald before his time, with a generous smile stitched below weak eyes. Susannah is also short, but pale and thin, with vanished tits and charity shop wardrobe. I distrust her immediately and think of him as ineffectual. He has a slightly desperate way of looking at me, a craving to be friendly and
