I was wondering why she had bothered ringing. The conversation felt rushed. She had made the call out of a sense of professional duty but had neglected to think of anything to say.
“Hey, Milius. How ya doin’?”
Fortner sounded humdrum and tired. It was ten in the morning on the East Coast.
“Fine. Fine. You?”
“Same old same old. Been seein’ some friends. Eggnog and old movies. Fuckin’ smoke police at every party we go to. Tell you this, pal. Nowadays it’s easier takin’ a gun out of your pocket in America than it is smokin’ a cigarette.”
“It’s nice of you to ring.”
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Get any gifts?”
“Some. A shirt. A couple of videos.”
This was all starting to feel easier. The pressure, for once, was off.
“What d’you give your mom?”
“Stuff from Crabtree and Evelyn. Bath salts.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice lifted. “Crabtree and Evelyn.” He pronounced Evelyn like Devlin. “We have that over here. Makes Kathy smell like a rose bush.”
“Good.”
“What about that CD you wanted? You get that?”
And straightaway I was back in the fog of duplicity, no break from it. The CD was code we used for the geological data from 5F371.
“No,” I said, stumbling for words. Three days away from London and I had forgotten how to lie. “Mum couldn’t find it in the shops. But I’ve ordered one. It should be out in the New Year.”
“Great. So I guess we’ll see you when we get back.”
That was all they wanted to know. As soon as Fortner had established that the data was not yet available, the festive niceties could be dispensed with. It was not a social call.
“How ’bout you come over for supper sometime in January, once we get back?” he said. “Say Wednesday the twenty-ninth?”
Why was he so specific that it should be that date?
“Sounds great.”
“I’ll get Kathy to fix it up. She’s sayin’ good-bye. Give our best to your folks.”
Folks, he said, plural. A slipup.
“I will,” I said, and I was halfway through saying good-bye when the line went dead.
We speak transatlantic on two occasions in January. Both are calls made to the Abnex offices, which I think of as risky and unnecessary. The first is from Katharine in New York, “just calling to touch base.” In a ten-minute conversation that can be clearly overheard by Cohen, she makes no reference to 5F371. The second is from Fortner, now in Washington, just two days before they are due to fly back to London. He asks almost immediately about the CD, and I am able to tell him that I have ordered it, expecting delivery within eight to ten days. This is what Caccia has indicated, and he is usually reliable. Fortner sounds pleased, reiterates the invitation to dinner on the twenty- ninth, and quickly curtails the conversation. This angers me. My work phone is presumably tapped, and if an Abnex official happened to be listening in on the conversation, they would surely find the exchange between us odd.
The night that they get back, Katharine e-mails me to confirm the dinner date for the third time. Clearly they have something specific planned. I enter a lie about it in my desk diary: on Wednesday the twenty-ninth, instead of “Dinner F + K,” the entry reads, “Cinema. Saul. Maybe Some Mother’s Son?” a film about Northern Ireland that has just opened in London.
Then it’s just a question of waiting.
26
The night of the dinner, Wednesday, January 29, is glacial, as cold as it has been all winter, with a freeze chill in the air that might precede snow. Walking to Colville Gardens, I am characteristically apprehensive, and yet there is also an unfamiliar edge to my mood. Although no handover is taking place tonight, the meeting has been arranged a month in advance, which is more than enough time for the Americans to have planned something unexpected. It is too much to suggest that I am being lured into a trap, and yet something is not quite right. Is it only that I am coming empty-handed, without a disk, a file, even a photograph? To meet them purely on the basis of our friendship is both so unnecessary now and so utterly false that it feels almost sinister.
I take a pair of gloves out of my briefcase and put them on. The people around me are moving quickly, hurrying, just wanting to be indoors and out of the cold. I have started to notice a gradually increasing dampness in my left shoe, as if rainwater has seeped through the leather, wetting the sock, but when I stop to check it there is only pavement dreck and muck on the sole, with no sign of a hole or tear. I light a cigarette and continue walking.
Turning right into Colville Terrace from Kensington Park Road, a pair of car headlights flash twice in quick succession on the opposite corner of the street. Two people are sitting inside a gleaming green Ford Mondeo, one in the driver’s seat, one in the back. The headlights flash again, briefly flooding the street with light. I stop and peer at the car more closely.
Fortner and Katharine are sitting inside. I cross the street and move to the passenger door. Fortner reaches across to open it.
“What are you two doing here?” I ask, trying to sound nerveless and calm as I climb inside. “I thought we were going to meet in your apartment.”
After a last drag on the cigarette, I toss it into the gutter, twisting around in my seat to give Katharine a smile. She looks gaunt.
“Close the door, Alec,” Fortner says with heavy seriousness.
I clunk it shut. The interior smells like a rental car.
“When did you pick this up?” I ask, tapping the dashboard lightly. My heart is racing furiously.
“This morning,” Fortner says, activating the central lock before turning the key in the ignition. The engine roars briefly and then settles back to a low hum.
“What happened to the old one?”
“Garage,” says Katharine, deadpan.
Fortner pulls out into the street. We are heading back up Kensington Park Road.
“What’s going on? Where are we going?”
“We’re real concerned about something, Alec,” he says, turning to look directly at me. “We believe that our apartment may have been penetrated. It may be under audio surveillance. The vehicle also. That’s why we picked up a fresh one. The Mondeo is clean.”
Fortner grips his hands firmly around the steering wheel, turning back to look at the road. My reaction here will be crucial. I have to get it exactly right.
“Your apartment is bugged?” I say, with what may be too much emphasis. “Why would you think that?”
“We picked something up on a routine sweep,” Katharine says. She has positioned herself directly between the two front seats, leaning forward between us.
“A routine sweep? So it’s something you do all the time?”
“All the time,” she says.
Fortner makes a turn into Ladbroke Square. I cannot think what to say to them. If their apartment has been bugged, it may be because of mistakes I have made at Abnex, and that will not have escaped their notice.
“Don’t worry unnecessarily,” Katharine says, resting her hand gently on my shoulder. “This may have nothing to do with JUSTIFY. It may be completely unrelated. But we’re gonna have to make some changes. When are the geological plans due? Any day now, right?”
