freely available documents home, where I can make copies. There are security systems to be circumvented at Abnex, random checks on packages leaving and coming into the building.
So JUSTIFY has become routine, just as it was supposed to, just as we had planned it all along. Yet, something in me will not rest. When asked me to do this, to give over the next two, possibly three years of my life, I agreed to it with the private acknowledgment that things would be difficult at times, occasionally even intolerable. The long-term gain, the promise of a settled and fulfilling future, outweighed any immediate reservations I had about conceding to a constant duplicity. The hard fact of being caught between two sides was presented to me as a relatively simple arrangement. It was just a question of maintaining balance.
That is easier than it sounds. A third party was never foreseen. We reckoned without Cohen; we did not factor him in. I was ready to feel on edge, watchful and suspicious, but I expected that to be attended by feelings of elation and personal fulfillment. Instead, because of his constant, nagging presence at Abnex, I feel isolated and consumed by an apprehensive solitude that I am increasingly unable to control.
To give an example. In mid-October, I began to notice that black rubbish bags were being taken from the outside of my building as often as three or four times a week. No other garbage is removed from the road with the same frequency. The council truck is scheduled to come only on Thursday mornings. I could not mention the problem to anyone, for fear of worrying them about the security of JUSTIFY. It was conceivable that American agents were going through my bins as a way of checking on the validity of their agent. This is common practice.
But that was not all. At around the same time in October, I made a telephone call to British Telecom requesting a second copy of my itemized phone bill. I told the assistant that the first had been mislaid and I was late paying the balance.
“Haven’t we already sent you one?” the operator asked. “Didn’t you request an itemized bill last week? I’ve got a note here on my screen.”
No, I told her, I did not.
So who requested it? The CIA already has a tap on my phone. Was it Abnex? Cohen himself? Or had the operator simply made a mistake?
Thirdly, the post has started arriving later than it did, as if it is being intercepted en route to my flat, then checked, resealed, and sent on. First-class letters take two days instead of one; second-class, up to a week. Parcels have often been tampered with, seals broken and so on.
I expected taps and tails, but everything else is outside normal U.S. and British procedures. It is possible that, because of Cohen, Abnex has placed me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. There is at all times a feeling of being watched, listened to, sifted, followed, pressures exerted on me from all sides. I live constantly with the prospect of abandonment, constantly with the prospect of arrest. Things have been like this for so long now that I cannot recall what life was like before they started. The sensation is not dissimilar to the experience of being ill. The world outside goes about its business, and you cannot even remember what it felt like to be healthy and well.
Walking to Colville Gardens tonight to make JUSTIFY’s sixth drop on a cold December evening, I feel tight and self-contained, certain in the knowledge that I am being tailed-by Cohen, by the Americans, even by our side. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is playing out of the open window of a house on Pembridge Crescent, but there are no visible signs that it is Christmas. The streets have not been decked out with lights, there are no glowing trees in the bay windows of sitting rooms, no carol-singing children scurrying from flat to flat in the cold.
In the inside pocket of my long overcoat, zipped up against thieves and spooks, there is a single high-density IBM 1.44 MB floppy disk inside a small manila envelope containing crude oil assay data from a well-head sample in Tengiz. My adrenaline, as always, is up, my heart beating rapidly with a rush like caffeine pushing me quickly down the street. I tilt my head down for warmth and watch my breath as it disappears into the folds of the coat.
For perhaps the tenth time today, my mind casts back to a confrontation I had with Cohen last week. I cannot ignore what happened, because it convinced me that he is assured of my guilt. This, at least for once, is not paranoia, not just some by-product of my persistent agitation. There are hard facts to consider.
We were standing beside the printer where, three months earlier, he had discovered me spooling out the commercial price sets on that quiet Saturday afternoon.
“Those Americans you’ve been spending so much time with,” he said, adjusting his tie.
“What about them?” I replied, a void immediately opening up inside me.
“Alan has found out about it.”
“What do you mean he’s found out about it? You two been keeping tabs on me?”
That was my first mistake. I was too aggressive, too early. There was nothing in what Cohen had said to cause me any alarm, simply a sly tone of voice, an implied rebuke in his manner.
“We like to keep an eye on new people.”
“What do you mean, ‘new people’? I’ve been with the company over a year.”
“Did you know they work for Andromeda?”
“No kidding, Harry. I thought they were guides at the British Museum. Of course I know they work at Andromeda.”
“And do you think it’s wise to be spending so much of your time with a competitor?”
“Implying what?”
“Implying nothing.”
“Why ask the question, then?”
“You’re getting very ruffled, Alec.”
“Listen, Detective Inspector. If I’m ruffled, it’s because I don’t like the undercurrent of what you’re saying.”
“There’s no undercurrent,” he said, calm as quicksand. “I merely asked if it was a good idea.”
“I know what you asked. And the answer is that it’s my private affair. I don’t keep tabs on what you do behind closed doors.”
“So you do things behind closed doors?”
“Fuck off, Harry. Okay? Just fuck off.”
At that, both Piers and Ben looked up from their desks and stared at us. Cohen knew he had me cornered so he kept on probing. Typically, he phrased his next remark as a statement, not a question.
“I was simply going to say that they don’t ring as often as they used to.”
I responded to this without thinking through my reply.
“No, they don’t,” I told him. “I wonder why that is.”
That was my second mistake. I should have reacted to the strangeness of Cohen’s observation.
“Look,” he said, sympathy suddenly in his voice. “I’m just telling you this because you might need to be prepared for some questions.”
“About what?”
“Anybody who spends an unusual amount of time socializing with employees of a rival firm is bound to come under suspicion. At some point.”
I had to presume that this was a lie designed to flush me out. He paused, leaving a silence that I was supposed to fill. My body was wretched with heat, exacerbated by the warmth of the office. I managed to say, “Suspicion of what?”
“We both know what I’m talking about, Alec.”
“This conversation is finished.”
“That’s something of an overreaction, don’t you think?”
“Fortner and Katharine are my friends. They are not work associates. Try to make that distinction. Your life may begin and end with Abnex, and that’s admirable, Harry, it really is. We all admire you for your dedication. But the rest of us try to have a life away from the office as well. You’ll find as you get older that this is perfectly normal.”
Smirks from Piers and Ben.
“I’ll take that into consideration,” he said and walked back to his desk.
I ring the street bell of Katharine and Fortner’s building and the door buzzes almost instantaneously. They have been waiting for me.
